Thirty Flights of Phenomenal Loving - call for interesting discussion!

[Pindolly]

I'm interested in how this game plays with the idea of memory and phenominalism, as well as amnesia and agency - how the player doesn't actually 'play' as such, rather is being played, and because you're no longer a 'player' who the hell are you!? Identity meltdown.
I'm trying to gather resources which provoke good discussion about this game - I realling think it does something fascinating.
SO, get posting! Any articles or essays which can shed light on this? Accolades for its experimentation or rants about its failure?

[Pindolly]

For example:

A great article exploring agency in the game[www.eurogamer.net], noteably how the linear play is actually freeing rather than limiting.

Edit: Likewise this article which argues how the bare bones narrative allows you to fill the gaps in the story.

So, does this mean that by keeping us on such a strict and minimal path, we're actually able to be so much more imaginative, arguably 'play' more (with ideas, images, plot) than we would in a conventional game?

[Pindolly]

Some food for thought - any discussion welcome!

[Shadowspaz]

I think it might do a bit of what Dear Esther did, albeit to a lesser degree. Esther was not designed with a solid storyline in mind. All of the bits and pieces of dialogue were constructed so that people would naturally attempt to construct their own theories. The mind goes crazy in an attempt to connect the dots.

TFoL does this, to a degree. There is certainly a single storyline they had in mind, but they left out the right pieces, in the right order, to cause people to figure it out. It's really an art in and of itself, to reveal the right amount of information in the right ways to create a multitude of theories. One of the commentaries even mentioned that the title itself played into that.

And before anyone decides to jump in with "It was just convoluted," well, if it was, it would just feel like that. But it doesn't. It follows a definite trend. Everything was deliberate. The bits of story that are reveals illuminate those that aren't, and it paints a fantastic picture. This, and Dear Esther, are the only two games I've seen that do this, and Esther was only an experiment. At this point, they knew what they were doing, and I feel that they knew it would work.