![]() ![]() Maybe you feel bored for a while, detached. You don’t need to be a classically trained actor to feel connected to this man. Nothing but a game can really guide you to feeling this kind of immediate empathy for the character. Nothing but a videogame can do this, regardless of how conventionally or obviously it is, in fact, a game. The caverns, the stalactites, the blues and greens and punctuated starry shimmer of the adjoining caves, are oppressively beautiful. You feel like the man in Wanderer Above the Sea Fog looking out over a vast, devastating, consuming sea. You walk up a crag into a field of weeds and the sea pans out over the horizon. It’s a cliché to say so, but you almost taste it. The environment begs you move forward, but on some level, you want to stay a little bit. Forking paths will trigger more and more fragments of his letters. You walk forward, and every so often, you trigger his monologue. Maybe this is the image of a man crumbling in the face of extreme personal loss. Strength of will, for meticulously leaving artifacts of his story painted all over the island for making his way up to the edge of that cliff for taking the plunge. If videogames are power fantasies, what is the source of this man’s power? Nothing obvious. Learn to empathize with the man, and he will reveal himself to you. But who do you think you are? There are some things you can’t control. He is not some container character, waiting for you to fill him in with your “agency” and your “choices,” deciding all by yourself his personality and behavior. Meet him: a tragic figure, seeking redemption, seeking release, at odds with himself. Well, to yourself.īut this is not “you.” This is the man. Since when is any game for everyone? This game has no win condition. I feel compelled to remind you, brother gamer, before we begin, that this game is not for everyone. Well, maybe “hero” is the wrong word here. The “experimental” game-and some have argued fruitlessly whether or not Dear Esther even counts as a game-puts the player in first-person control of an unnamed hero. ![]() The game, first released in 2008 by developer thechineseroom as a Source engine mod, has since been re-released as a full game on Steam. There’s just an island.ĭear Esther takes about two hours to play, if that. Reduce to ash, mix with water, make a phosphorescent paint for these rocks and ceilings.There are no weapons. Making it all acceptable for tearful aunts and traumatised uncles flown in specially for the occasion. Stitching arm to shoulder and femur to hip, charting a line of thread like traffic stilled on a motorway. I could not bear the thought of the reassembly of such a ruins. It seemed the more contemporary of the options, the more sanitary. "Headlights are reflected in your retinas, moonlit in the shadow of the crematorium chimney." It cannot be the place where you rained back down again to fertilise the soil and make small flowers in the rocks." It cannot be the chimney that delivered you to the skies. It cannot be the landfill where the parts of your life that would not burn ended up. "This cannot be the shaft they threw the goats into. "I have heard it said that human ashes make great fertilizer, that we could sow a great forest from all that is left of your hips and ribcage, with enough left over to thicken the air and repopulate the bay." Here are parts of the script that hint at her being dead and cremated: I think Esther died in the car accident, so that's a bit problematic. ![]() I guess this will be a day one buy for me, because I really want to know what the hell is going on. But Dear Esther can do an environment fly through with a monologue, reveal absolutely no information, and become the talk of the town? These are solid games that were released for free and updated for years I am talking about and yet, almost no one knows about them. There are dozens of solid Source mods out there that have dedicated teams pouring their sweat and blood into their mods day and night, non-stop, for YEARS, and they struggle to get a headline on a random blog. Honestly, I'm really happy for them making it onto the store, really confused about the game itself, and a little annoyed this is the Source mod Valve decided to notice. Is it the fact people are surprised Source looks good in 2012? Or perhaps it's the mystery of the whole thing that draws people in? I understand it's a storytelling game, and that revealing gameplay or story details could spoil the whole experience, but. It might as well have been an environment fly through for Robert's portfolio. I don't want to put the game down or offend the team, but I seriously learned nothing from that trailer or the previous ones. As far as I know this game's only merit is the fact Robert Briscoe has done an amazing job at making the Source engine look decent. ![]()
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