Elora



Elora Silverman is the protagonist and player-character of Rides With Strangers.

She is a young woman who is trying to make her way to a job interview that could save her mother and is forced to hitch-hike to get there.

In-Game
The player controls Elora in the game. The game takes place in first person - Elora's full body and face are only seen in the opening menu and the trailer. Elora, as directed by the player, can walk along the highway and stick out her thumb to alert passing vehicles. She can then agree to hitch a lift with the driver. The player can then choose how Elora behaves during the ride, which could potentially prove fatal to Elora, if the player makes the wrong decision. Elora can ignore the driver or choose a variety of ways in which to respond to questions or conversation. She can also subtly search the car. If Elora starts to feel anxious or panicked by the stranger's behaviour, she can roll down the window to get air and calm herself. If the player feels Elora's life or well-being is in immediate danger, she can force the door open and roll out of the car onto the roadside. Presumably, Elora will be able to hitch rides from various strangers throughout the night, though at this stage only the Father is available.

Description
Elora is described as being an intelligent and somewhat introverted young woman. She is hard-working, optimistic and determined. Given some of her behavior and dialogue, Elora can be quite timid and soft-spoken and gets anxious easily. She quickly realizes if she's in a potentially dangerous situation and tries to calm herself to figure a way to defuse the situation and make it out safely.

However, despite her canonically established personality as shy and bookish, almost every piece of her dialogue is player-picked, so she can either be as polite and open as possible, crudely risque and offensive, or somewhere in the middle, meaning the player can shape Elora's personality and how she responds to situations as the game progresses.

Elora is a beautiful 23 year old, with long and wavy brown hair, matching eyes, and pale skin. She dons a beige sweater with a wide neck, pale blue jeans and black sneakers with white laces, as well as blue earrings.

Potential Deaths

 * If Elora fails to evade a potential threat, she may get killed by a stranger.
 * If Elora attempts to walk/run in front of a moving car that will not stop, she will get run over and killed.

Trivia

 * (contains spoilers for Welcome to the Game 2.0): In the 2016 Reflect Studios horror game Welcome to the Game 2.0, Elora makes a cameo in the secret ending, where the player character escapes onto the same highway from Rides With Strangers where they see Elora holding her thumb out to The Father, signaling for a ride. The player is jumpscared before they can interact with her.
 * Also, in Welcome to the Game, on one of the sites (known as Black Hat Post), it is possible to find requests by diverse users, one of them being a request for the current location of Elora Silverman, the text being as follows: REQ> Where is the current location of Elora Silverman. Mobile: 212-555-5428 RES> Client, The last known location of this mobile device is as follows: lat: 54.095347 lon: -125.198348
 * If the location data (54°05'43.3"N, 125°11'54.1"W) is accurate, then that would place Elora by the side of the Yellowhead Highway in British Columbia, which would mean that this game takes place in Canada. The Yellowhead Highway is an interprovincial highway which is 1,777 miles (2,895 km) long.