What Remains of Edith Finch (Gone Home, etc.) (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Tuesday, May 09, 2017, 16:22 (2764 days ago)

I finally got around to playing Gone Home for the first time last week. It was free with PS+ some months ago, but it just never made it to the top of my play list. Perhaps not worth talking about in too much depth, as I'm really late to that party, but I'll just say that I absolutely loved it. I already knew the story the game was telling (waiting years to play something tends to have that effect), but I still found it extremely compelling, and the game does an incredible job of building a sense of tension while you wonder around the house.

I also tried Everyone's Gone to the Rapture, but didn't make it too far. I'm not sure what it is about that one, but it just didn't hold my attention. I just didn't care about what was happening, and just wondering around and exploring wasn't compelling. I think it was the lack of interactivity--having played Gone Home made me want to be able to look through cabinets and drawers and find things, but Everyone's Gone to the Rapture has none of that. It's still on my harddrive; maybe I'll get back to it someday.

So, in the vein of those sorts of games, I played What Remains of Edith Finch last night. It just dropped last week. I really, really enjoyed it. The game has you playing as Edith Finch visiting her old family home, which is a crazy looking monstrosity (I immediately thought of The Burrow from Harry Potter). You must explore the house and find ways into the bedrooms, which have all been sealed, and find the story of the room's former occupant. Edith narrates as she wanders around, and when you find the thing in the bedroom, you play a short vignette (ranging from 3-4 minutes all the way up to 15-20 minutes) that tells the story of that room's occupant.

A few quick non-spoilery thoughts, but I'll put some spoilers below the video at the end of this post for any that have also played the game (or don't care about spoilers).
Like Everyone's Gone to the Rapture, I wish What Remains of Edith Finch had the interactivity of Gone Home. I'm not sure it would have actually added anything to the game, but I longed to pick up all the objects that clutter every square inch of the house. There are still lots of little details you can pick up on as you look around, but I just like feeling like I'm physically interacting with things in the way Gone Home let you.

The game tells an interesting story, or more accurately, some interesting stories. I found it very compelling, but it doesn't really come together in the end in the way I hoped. You never really discover the "truth" of what's going on--I guess maybe that's part of the point. It definitely feels like a collection of themed short stories rather than a complete novel, if that makes since.

I think this is probably the most interesting one of those games so far. I just really like the way it's presented (and it's a cool looking game). The interactive vignettes of the family's story are all fun. Each one is completely new and unique, like tiny games within the game, and even the long ones are short enough to not overstay their welcome.
If you like these games, I think this one is a no-brainer. It's about two hours or so to finish if that's important to you.

Here's Giant Bomb's Quick Look of the game. As always, I think it's a good look at what the game is. This quick look does play through the first vignette (and one of my favorites), so be aware of that. I personally watched the first ten minutes and that was enough to convince me to get the game--I didn't watch the rest of the Quick Look until I played it. Spoilers follow below the video.

The vignettes are the real selling features of this game, and I enjoyed all of them. The entire premise of the game is that the family is cursed, and these vignettes tell the story of how each family member died.

The first one you discover tells the story of a little girl that dreams about being incredible hungry. She wonders around looking for food, until she finds a bird outside the window and turns into a cat to chase it, which leads to her turning into an owl to hunt rabbits, and then she turns into a shark and hunts seals, and then turns into a tentacled monster and hunts humans, which ends with the monster hiding under her own bed as she turns back into herself. The player plays through this whole sequence, becoming each animal in turn as the little girl narrates how hungry she is and the animals hunt their prey. It's a particularly strong start to the game.

Another standout is a comic book that's telling the story of a teenage movie star as she babysits her little brother on Halloween night. It starts as a sort of motion comic, and then turns interactive as you control the girl through certain panels. It's just a neat presentation.

My favorite is a narrated letter from one of the family member's psychiatrist. She tells the story of a man who was previously a drug addict working in a tuna canning plant. Only after becoming sober does he notice how monotonous his job is, which you play through for a short while. Tuna enters the screen from the left. You must use the right thumbstick to grab the tuna, move it to the right side of the screen where it is beheaded, then throw the body forward. As time goes on, the narration tells of how he starts daydreaming. A new screen appears overlayed on the left side of the screen, and now you're playing a sort of dungeon crawler with the left thumbstick--but you must also still do the job of beheading tuna at the same time with the right thumbstick. The man's imagination keeps going, and the game expands and changes, taking more of the screen. It continues like this (this is one of the longer vignettes) until the man believes that his imagined life is the real thing and that freeing himself from his body will allow him to live his fantasies. You know how that ends.

The game ends with the revelation that Edith has been narrating a journal that she wrote for her child, who closes the notebook and is revealed to be sitting at the family cemetery in front of Edith's gravestone, the house you just spent two hours wondering through looming in the background. I suppose it's a decent enough ending, but I got the impression while I was playing that the stories were all going to add up to more, somehow, and it just didn't really happen.