This review is going to be structured differently compared to my other reviews, so it's going to be more on an impression of today's game. Reason for it is that this game is really hard to talk about without spoiling later segments of the story, and even though I give examples of later segments of the game I try not to tell what exactly happens. I don't know. I guess this statement serves as a spoiler warning, so be careful going forward if you are someone who is interested in this game and want to check it out. Cause this game is best when going in blind. This could have been "A Brief Look" and add to what I plan to be a recurring series on this site, but this ended up being longer than expected so it's now just a basic review with a couple of differences. Otherwise hope you readers enjoy the review I wrote for all of you.
Walking sims, well that’s what a majority of people call them, aren’t really my thing. I never considered trying one out before, because everytime I look at reviews they always explain that they're great but not worth the cost due to how lackluster they can be. All you do is walk in a room that has a lot of time put into making it look pretty, find the one object that is glowing and shows that you can interact with it, press the button that allows you to interact, hear some dialogue, and move onto the next object in the room. That doesn’t sound like player engagement, it sounds like working in a factory line and contemplating how you ended up getting that job. The storytelling can be great, but I’m someone who aspires to titles that have both good game design and an amazingly written story. So you’re probably wondering how I ended up coming to this all of a sudden. What Remains of Edith Finch, which was developed by a small independent studio named Giant Sparrow and published in 2017 after spending four years in the works. Saw the game was on sale on the Playstation Store and decided to say, “F*ck it, why not?” Picked it up immediately and sat down with low expectations. Started on a boat looking out towards a lake, walked down a linear forest path, and immediately the game drew me in. I don’t know what happened. I was expecting to get bored after fifthteen minutes, but man this was a huge surprise.
The team who made it, Giant Sparrow to remind you, previously made The Unfinished Swan which was another walking simulator that placed a heavy emphasis on the narrative and visual presentation. Reception towards the game was divided though, as you had one side stating it was a work of art and another side shouting that it was uninteresting because remember, “It was a walking simulator”. I’m pretty sure The Unfinished Swan wasn’t a bad experience. It won two awards from the BAFTAs so it must have done something incredible, but it was just different to a lot of other games coming out at the time. 2012 is remembered as the year of shooters or first person experiences, so it wasn’t a year that blew it out of the park. For When we got a good game like Dishonored or Spec Ops: The Line we got a bad one like Resident Evil 6 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter. Plus it was from an independent studio whom nobody knew, and this was before indie gaming really got big. Wasn’t a good year for video games, but it was a reminder that there was tremendous room for improvement.
Giant Sparrow must have looked at The Unfinished Swan and said, “Let’s do something better”, and that’s what they spent the next few years doing. They decided to make the game where death was the recurring theme and the player would see it pop up numerous times almost like a pattern. The original scenario was to have a girl who was starving in her room, but then consumed some poisonous berries to feed her appetite and died straight afterwards. Giant Sparrow started expanding this idea about a girl who died of poison consumption, but then they decided to make multiple scenarios to keep up with death as the recurring theme. They took influence from numerous sources like The Canterbury Tales, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and at some point they wanted to make a horror game inspired by the likes of Lovecraft and The Twilight Zone. However, they decided to make a lighthearted emotional tale and that’s how they ended up making a game about a girl explaining her entire family history. They tried proposing their game to Sony and soon the idea was taken in by Santa Monica Studio, but it was dropped as Sony lost interest in helping out independent developers. Which is a shame because they could have helped out several others, but they decided to help out again recently with Returnal. Okay, I’m really stalling right now. Giant Sparrow kept working on their next game, they found a new publisher Annapurna Interactive who are known for publishing indie games, and soon the final product came out.
You would expect a game like this to bomb, especially since it came out during the first quarter of 2017, which was busy with big budget releases, but it managed to pull through and gain the attention of critics. A lot of people praised the game and it’s superb writing, it was more successful than The Unfinished Swan, and it was nominated for a handful of awards. Did this game age well and is it for everyone? Well it’s not for everyone, but the story is absolutely incredible and it carried me the entire way through. It’s short but sweet, and I think you really have to go in without any prior knowledge to fully appreciate it. Today I want to talk to you all about why I quite loved What Remains of Edith Finch and why it deserves your attention.
Story
The game opens up with our main character taking a boat to Orcas Island. They haven’t brought much with them besides a journal belonging to Edith Finch, the current and only remaining member of the long running Finch family. We soon depart from the boat and walk along a forest trail to find ourselves on the doorsteps of the Finch household. This massive manor where extra rooms have been handcrafted to stretch towards the sky. The porch entrance to the manor is locked and the key we have doesn’t open it, but we soon find another way and begin wandering around the house. We are told by the voice of Edith Finch that everything exactly as it was placed ever since the night she left the house. There’s garbage littered on tables, the furniture hasn’t been moved at all, and there are dozens of books filling the household.
However, what makes the Finch manor so interesting is that the rooms that each member lived in has remained intact. They have been sealed off and there are glassholes to see the museums left behind. We continue exploring and soon we find that there are several passageways scattered across the manor. Constructed as time went on and served as a way to access these rooms without having to open the sealed off doors. You begin discovering letters and notes relating to each member of the Finch family and they state their last moments before they died. You relive their memories and with each story you begin to notice a recurring theme. Each family member had died of an unpredictable cause and some of them were extremely random. It could have a coincidence, but as time went on this family began to believe that coincidence was a curse placed onto them. One that will continue the longer they stay within that household and it will wipe out every Finch that ever lived. You must learn what happened to each of the Finches and learn why Edith fears the house she grew up in. Why she fears the legacy of the Finches and their entire history.
Gameplay
What Remains of Edith Finch is a walking sim much like The Beginner’s Guide and Gone Home, but where it differs is that the game has some actual gameplay moments from time to time. You walk around the maze that is the Finch manor, crawl through passageways, and try to get into each of the family members' rooms. The game does a great job at guiding you towards where to go next by having text that not only subtitles what the speaking character is saying, but also guides the player towards the next point of interest in the environment. The rooms you enter represent a character’s personality and interests, and once you flip open a journal or a piece of paper you begin reading the last few moments of their life. These memories are supposed to show how each Finch member died, but sometimes they pull something creative and show what they could have been imagining during the highest point in their lifespan. You may have one where the family member is a famous actor who played in horror movies, and there’s a 1980s horror themed comic book lying on the table to illustrate how they died. One character talks about how they isolated themselves from the outside world for a long time, and each day of their life you spend it performing the same schedule over and over again until one part of that cycle completely stops. One character may be sitting in a bathtub playing with bath toys only to then be transformed into a frog and swim in this underwater segment. There’s even one later on where you play a fantasy quest while chopping fish in a butchery. It’s really creative stuff and the way they visualize all of this is extremely interesting. It gets the player to wonder whose memory they go through next and what tragedies lie around the corner. Plus these memories don’t overstay their welcome as they take less than five minutes to complete each. It’s all very fun, but it’s compelling at the same time for what it represents. Hopefully you can make it to the top of the manor and discover the fate that lied for Edith Finch.
Thoughts
What Remains of Edith Finch is one of the most intriguing narratives I played in a while and may just be one of the best of these “walking simulators” ever made. It’s not for everyone and it’s hard to justify the twenty dollar price tag when the game only lasts up to two hours long. I’m pretty sure it took me less than two hours to actually beat , but credit where it’s due, What Remains of Edith Finch does quite a few things right.
The visuals, environments, and lighting are amazing for an indie game and the way the game presents it’s story is very creative. The visual representation of the memories themselves are creative, because sometimes they give hints towards what happened without flat out shouting it to the player. The game is very linear and guides the player towards the next point of interest, so there isn’t a point where the player will get lost or wander off of the main path. The minigames you play in each story are simple and don’t take that much to figure out as they give you clever hints of what to do next. Interactable objects are highlighted with a white dot and other paths in the house are usually blocked off with barricades to prevent you from exploring or getting stuck.
Now some people may hate the game design and I completely understand where they are coming from. The movement is extremely slow and it seems like the main character moves at the speed of a turtle. At least adding a speed walk button would have made walking around much easier. The text that guides you towards where to go next may be insulting to some, because having a big neon lit sign telling you where to go feels insulting to the player’s intelligence. The way you interact with objects using the joysticks does take some time getting used to, but you should pick it up quickly. These games don’t have all that much to find outside the main story and they were made to go through once, so there isn’t all that much reason to go through it again.
Why do I like this game anyways? The story. Now that sounds like a complete game journalist thing to say, but bear with me for a moment. The story to What Remains of Edith Finch is an intriguing take on the topic of death and how we as human beings view it. Some of us may be discomforted by the fact that when death comes all our actions will be erased. We don’t know if what we worked towards was worth it or useless. All we can do is accept death. Then there are those who are fine with death and just don’t care. They enjoy their lives for what they are and then comes the embracing of fate. That’s it. This game is about fate and what to expect. It follows a family who believed they were cursed and that nothing but tragedy could happen down the line. There’s a point where Edith’s mother states that all her children are dead because of this acclaimed curse and you really feel bad for her because she neer got to enjoy life like everybody else. She never had a husband to love or children to play around with. She never got to go far from home without fearing she and her children would die. Some of the deaths early in the game are random and there was a point where I tried predicting how each member would die just for fun, but after a while I stopped joking around because I realized that the Finch family was a tragedy all itself. The ending to the game wraps it all up perfectly and I don’t want to talk any further, because it would spoil some of the more important moments in the story. This game is beautiful, sad, frightening, enjoyable, shocking, and above all emotional. It’s such an amazing story and one that really grabbed my heart. What Remains of Edith Finch is an amazing narrative driven game, not walking simulator, just narrative. I do highly recommend the game just for the narrative alone and if you’re someone who is skeptical about picking it up then I suggest waiting for sales. It goes on discount pretty frequently and it goes for an affordable price. You really owe it to yourself to play it. In the end I am going to give What Remains of Edith Finch a 9/10 for excellence at best.
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