Walking simulator or adventure game?

[John]

Are there puzzles to solve or it's just a "walk forward until the credits start rolling" kind of game?

[76561198025235947]

Originally posted by John:

Are there puzzles to solve or it's just a "walk forward until the credits start rolling" kind of game?

Hey John,

there are plenty of puzzles to solve in the game. You are not just walking around the world. :)

Take care,
Adrian from THE ASTRONAUTS

[Wisnoskij]

Their are puzzles, but then almost all walking simulators have puzzles. In my opinion Walking Simulator will get you far closer to the truth than puzzle adventure/myst-like. Its very similar in style to Gone Home, in my opinion, with a Cthulhu inspired horror/detective story.

[Kamen]

Thank you, was wondering about this myself. Gonna skip this one since I didn't like Gone Home.

[76561198025235947]

Originally posted by Kamen:

Thank you, was wondering about this myself. Gonna skip this one since I didn't like Gone Home.

Our game is on a huge 85% sale now, Kamen, don't you want to give it a try? You will probably not get a better chance to do that in a long time. :)

Take care,
Adrian from THE ASTRONAUTS

[MalachiX]

I'd say it's somewhere in between an adventure game and a walking simulator (meaning that you're only goal is to explore and experience the story).

What makes it a little more than just a walking simulator to me is that a large chunk of the "puzzles" have a central gameplay dynamic of piecing together the events surrounding different murders. These feel more consistent and unified than the random puzzles you tend to find in pure walking simulators (though there are a few of those puzzles as well).

Every time you come across a crime scene, you need to search for objects used in the crime and return them to where they were before the murder occurred. Afterwards, you get a brief flash of several moments in the murder around the crime scene which you then have to figure out what their chronology was. This "piecing together" of the crimes helps make the game feel more active compared to something like "Gone Home."

As for whether you'll like this compared to "Gone Home," I think that depends on why you disliked that game. I wasn't a fan of Gone Home either but it had more to do with the the pointless story that delighted in red-hearings and false promises. Also, I hated how freaking slowly you walked (which is why I'm glad VoEC has a run button).

I think VoEC is a more compelling experience than Gone Home with a somewhat more interesting story. Unfortunately, while the basic plot is more interesting than Gone Home, the voice acting and quality of the dialogue/writing are much weaker (no offence to any members of The Astronauts reading this post).

I actually think that Gone Home's story got a lot more praise than it deserved because of the strong dialogue and (especially) the voice acting. This game, on the other hand, feels like it has its narrative potential squandered because of its weaker story telling (I frequently found myself reminded me of early Playstation games).

Overall, I think it's worth checking out for its artistry and it's narrative ambition even.

[Kamen]

Thanks for taking the time for this lenghty description :) I'll check it out next time it's on discount :)

[Gobra]

I don't think there is such a genre as walking simulator. Many games inlcude "walking" as its core gameplay feature (aside from other ways to interact with the game itself, such as clicking, shooting, etc), so the question here is how much of this "walking" alone lets you proceed into the game. Because walking is exploring, and someone already came up with a genre for that. Of course, proceeding into the game just by walking would cover a lot of genres, so that someone took puzzles into account. We now call these adventure games. Ethan - is that kind of game.
I didn't say anything about story because, even though it all started as that, story isn't what defines a game genre; in this case, story is more of a measurement, how much from other mediums this particular genre can "synthesize". That being said, a story-driven game can be defined as an adventure game.

The deal with Ethan, as it is with Gone Home, is the same as with many games today. Nowaday games tend to lean towards being a good, immersive experience: with good, realistic looking graphics and animation, "modern" (often dramatic) story, dialogue and, more and more regularly, inviting first person point of view. Whether it is more popular among players, easier to make, or just a generally adopted vision of gaming today.

Unfortunately for some, this course of action tends to put gameplay itself a little bit aside. Perhaps, devs can't rely on expecting players to play around in the game and be interested in it anymore; perhaps, this isn't what most of the players want anymore; but working on solid, thought-out gameplay nowadays seems to not be the priority. Thus we get the notion that some games today tend to be just "walking simulators", where the gaming part is just a way to be integrated, to experience the story and the world.

Of course, this turns out to be a bit unfair when talking about adventure games: they've always been like that. With the story being up front, in these games we, players, explore and use game features with mostly the purpose to proceed into that story, to see what will happen next. Players' actions themselves in a game like that are defined by the story. I would not go as far as to judge a whole, established genre for that. It is, after all, an adventure.

And Ethan is exactly that: with the premise, it's a story we delve into and in which we progress by exploring and solving its mysteries. In every scene, we are presented with a form of narration of things happened, with characters that have something to say, a theme. As it is in every genre representative, to dilute the exploration part we find ourselves interacting with the game by the means of puzzles, and with them comes what would be a very interesting narrative approach - sequence deconstruction. As creepy and as graphical putting in order every murder was, I, personally, couldn't get enough of it. On top of that, we get the meaning to all our actions, to what is happening; when every part, quite literally, comes together to expose us to the conclusion, the game also manages to bring the artistical wholeness.
With its scenery, its secrets, problems, hopes and dreams of the characters set in a remote, deceivingly peceful town - it is only fair to say that Ethan turned out to be a proper rural mystery that gets its hooks into you, a proper adventure.

[Wisnoskij]

I find the best way to think fo Walking Simulators (which is a tongue in cheek name, not a serious description) is as a visual novel with a first person real time engine.

While Dear Esther literally just has you walk down a single path as it tells the story, like pressing next while reading a visual novel, others (The Stanley Parable) will feature some branching storylines like most visual novels, and others even minimal gameplay.

[Simon]

I agree with the previous two comments. Walking simulator isn't so much a genre as an unflattering comment on the pace of a game. Some might say walking simulator means few or only very basic puzzles and a linear path but I call that more an interactive novel.

For me, walking *is* adventuring (so long as you're given the choice where to walk) and walking is a staple of most adventure games. There's a hell of a lot of wandering around in Skyrim is there not?

Ethan Carter is relatively non-linear and certainly gives you freedom to explore. You don't even have to solve many of the puzzles I don't think (I honestly forget but I thought that's how it went).

So yes it's an atmospheric narrative-driven adventure puzzle game with a moderate to slow pace which is fine because I never got sick of admiring the graphics.

[zolenta]

i think it also very much depends on whether you 'know' what you're doing or not. the first two hours i spent playing this, it felt like a pure 'walking simulation' (that is, admire the scenery, but with very little interaction). the puzzle elements are rather well hidden (sure, you stumble on bodies and blood stains but from there it's a pure puzzle game in trying to assemble all the clues) and interspersed throughout the game, so rather easy to miss (like for instance the astronaut puzzle, or the crank that didn't even spawn on the beach until i had finished the first 'puzzle' with the traps, even though i had been inspecting the rail car and the beach many times before that). it also took me forever to find doors into the houses when i wasn't aware that i was meant to be looking for them (again, i was very much playing a 'walking sim' until consulting a walkthrough as i was completely stuck going in circles after those two first hours - pretty circles as they may have been).

this is also why i'm rather torn on the game. had i watched a video walkthrough and NOT spent hours wandering around aimlessly, i probably wouldn't have bought the game. to me, the scenery *is* what is spectacular - but that quickly gets boring if you don't know what you're meant to do, specifically. on the flip side, once i knew what to look for and where to look for it, the game itself immediately took a rather "meh" turn. the puzzle mechanic doesn't really interest me, the story isn't even trying to keep anything from you, and the puzzle solutions are straight out of Sherlock Holmes or Soul Suspect, which came out at around the same time but that i played before this. i believe it would have been necessary with a more innovative approach to gameplay to make The Vanishing of Ethan Carter into a truly spectacular game. as it is, it 'just' feels like a somewhat derivative adventure game with lots of very pretty pictures, and an occasionally spooky setting.

[DocCovington]

Originally posted by Kamen:

Thank you, was wondering about this myself. Gonna skip this one since I didn't like Gone Home.

This is nothing like Gone Home, Dear Esther and any other of the boring crap games.

This game is no walking simulator! IMO, it is a unique type of adventure. Its story will reward you greatly, it is an exciting game to play and to date one of my favorites (and I have been a gamer since the early 1980s).