![]() I felt as if Gone Home hadn’t totally earned its ending. That said, at the end of it, a tiny piece of me felt…I don’t know, cheated, in a way. For all those reasons and others which I’ll get to in a little bit, I think it’s the perfect answer to anyone who questions whether games can be mature in terms of their depth, rather than just in terms of how violent they can be. In a medium that’s not exactly known for nuance or intimacy or subtlety, it created a small, intimate portrait of a teenager, and it did so in a way that didn’t take shortcuts or rely on clichés. It had some of the best writing I’ve ever seen (er, read) in a game. On the one hand, it was an undeniably great experience. Exploration games will never be games to everyone, but they'll always be games to someone.I feel so conflicted about Gone Home. There's something about these titles that allows me and many others to think of them as games, and ultimately, that's enough. Gone Home, Dear Esther, and similar titles will never be games to them, and that's fine. They'll need their games to have controls beyond WASD, and challenges beyond figuring out which way to go next. Even when all a game asks us to do is walk from one place to the next, they're asking us to play a role in the story that no other medium could.įor many, that won't be enough. The most exquisitely written stories can't give us the chance to explore a strange world on our own. No matter how stunning they might look, movies can't actually make us fight monsters. That extra layer of interaction is what defines games. Merely walking in a different direction can make one playthrough of Dear Esther feel fundamentally different than the last. There are new locations to find, more narrations to unlock, and oddities to uncover. Even though things will end the same way every time, you can discover something new each time you play. It's easier to picture Dear Esther as a short film or a gripping piece of metafiction, but traveling through the world yourself makes it uniquely engrossing. It's a method of storytelling that doesn't suit any other medium. There's something very special about getting to know a cast of characters through the things they've left behind. In many ways, it would be stronger if it scrapped the narration entirely. A few lines on a crumpled of piece of notebook paper manage to say more than paragraphs worth of story. Gone Home's story is simple, but the way it's told is masterful. Still, although the gameplay in both titles is extremely limited, it's hard not to see playing them as an essential part of the experience. It's simply you walking through various beautiful locations. Without the narrator, there's no story to Dear Esther at all. At its core, it's a walking simulator, albeit an incredibly atmospheric one. There are no objects to interact with and no locked doors to open. Dear Esther asks even less from players than Gone Home does. It's hard not to see parallels between Gone Home and Dear Esther, which was released to similar acclaim in 2012. ![]() ![]() There's a narrator to fill in some of the blanks, but several of the game's tales are woven through objects alone. As you examine the letters, music, and books the home's residents have left behind, you piece together their stories. Many have described the title as a visual novel, but it's less about reading and more about investigating the titular home. You just walk through an empty house, look at things, and walk around some more.įullbright refers to their title as a "story exploration" game, which is a fair summation of the Gone Home experience. There's no way to lose, and beating the game doesn't really feel like a win. While it plays similarly to classic point and click adventures, it doesn't give you puzzles to solve or obstacles to overcome. It's easy to see why Gone Home's game designation is so shaky. Titles like The Fullbright Company's Gone Home are lauded as game of the year by some, while others don't see them as games at all. Games are categorized as "casual" or "hardcore", as are the people who play them. Gaming is bigger than ever, and the gaming world has gotten a lot more complicated. Some games required a special controller while others revolved around text commands, but it didn't matter how they were played. In the early days of gaming, not much thought was given to what was or wasn't a game. ![]()
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