Review and Commentary (spoilers for this game and Life is Strange but I'll warn you when they're coming)

[Gallifrey - CSSC Gaming Founder]

First - Epic freebie which is why not in the review section.

"What Remains of Edith Finch" may raise the bar significantly on what can be done with computer game narratives. In its storytelling and artistically it's the best I've seen, and I've seen a lot.

The overall impact is of a very dark children's fable. Very, very dark. In gaming I generally kill like an abattoir but there were parts of the game that rattled even me. It plays with some heavy narrative taboos.

It's not very long. The path through required a couple of moments of "Errmmm" and back tracking but nothing that required me to leave the game and hit Google. The game is deliberately opaque on controls but gamers should have no difficulties.

My advice would be - if you enjoy Stephen King novels, "Weird Tales" type horror stories, or the darker fairy tales buy this game on sale and play it. It will stay with you for far longer than it will take you to complete it. Replay value is limited though. If you're a fragile soul however - stay away. You have been warned...

Herewith follows the commentary with spoilers - if you haven't played the game stop reading now. You have my permission to return when you have finished the game. Also if you think you're likely to play "Life is Strange" and haven't finished it.

No, I'm serious. This is a great game and the more you know beforehand the less the experience will be. Go ! Now !

Okay my readers - I'm assuming from here on in I'm talking to people who completed the game.

Firstly kudos for the mechanics of the game. Let me tell you of a key experience for me. I approached the house. There's a fork in the path that goes downwards. However I'm getting a very "horror" vibe so I don't go down the very narrow dark path where bad things are more likely to happen. So I decide to check out the house. I figure once inside the house I'm not getting out again so I check the exterior and find the garage entrance. I decide that once inside there's probably no way back so I turn back to have a look down the dark path. The narrative tells me that something moved inside the garage. Now this is creepy/ scary but it could be a crittur or something non threatening so I go inside the garage - and the rollercoaster ride starts. Now that's good writing ...

Now there are no jump scares in the game. But playing for the first time you don't KNOW there are no jump scares. The opening sections are genuinely scary. The bit at the end of the crawl space to the scream girl's room with the decapitated doll and the tentacled thing toy. Real life I'd be gone. LMB does not equal use weapon in this game.

I liked that the bit where I had to work the tentacle I had to work out for myself.

So lets get to the monster in the room ... step forward please Mr H P Lovecraft. If you don't know who Mr Lovecraft is I'd advise you to investigate and in particular read some of his novels and stories. Writing primarily during the 1920s and 1930s Lovecraft's view of a universe blighted by horrors either indifferent to or actively hostile to humanity chimes well for increasingly agnostic and non traditional religious millenials. His influence grows ever longer the more years pass since his death and there are few horror writers who don't demonstrate at least a nod to his works. Certainly Stephen King does.

It also means that any death involving large bodies of water and things with tentacles automatically has Lovecraft's creation Great Cthulu brought in for questioning.

This raises an important query that the narrative never answers. Is the curse that pursues the Finches some sort of physical entity or a "Final Destination" type curse ? The game never lays its cards on the table - and personally I feel slighty cheated because of it.

Parts of the game suggest a physical entity stalking the Finches. The monster under the bed, the death of the child horror star, maybe the death of the mole man, the missing child (Yog Sothoth !) possibly even the boy on the swing (Wendigo ?). Others- the drowning baby, the hunter killed by his prey, the unfortunate guillotine accident/ incident - are very "Final Destination". I'm bad with names BTW. Cope.

A couple of tangents. Death of the child horror star. I didn't buy into the murderous gang thing at all. I thought the radio was some sort of Orson Welles type horror story not a newscast. Whatever killed her I didn't think was human. The railway tracks death - now that was just surreal.

Stephen King in "Danse Macabre" - a collection of essays about the horror genre - discusses horror stories that always keep the creature hidden. Our imagination is better than any Hollywood make-up artist or (now - old book) CGI. But he argues - and I agree - this is something of a cheat. Eventually the creator should make his audience face his monster and take the risk they titter rather than scream.

And that's why - despite its elegance and creativity I do feel cheated by "What Remains of Edith Finch" - there's nothing worse than a "Whodunnit" that leaves a mystery at the end.

These things don't always work out so well. "Life is Strange" ( big spoiler alert) had me replay the same clip of paedophile torture porn over a dozen times before I finally got the Googled sequence to end it right. By the end of the game so many people were dead or wanted on murder charges (I didn't have an optimal run) that I was actively happy that the game gave me the option to nuke the town. Not the emotional reaction the devs were looking for I think ...

That's why what the devs did here played a very high risk card. The tone and narrative fails and they are in a world of trouble.

Firstly the allegation that this is a suicide simulator is provably false. In suicides people want to die. Only one death in game comes close.

What the game actually does is worse. It makes you an active component in killing people. Worse than that - it makes you active in killing children. I'm assuming the moral guardians were so overwhelmed with Isis, crack cocaine, M-Cat, Spice, internet porn and Love Island that this one slipped the net.

In game I actually stopped the swing first time (what jerk put a swing overlooking a cliff ?). I couldn't do it first time. Because the story of the two brothers hurt - one an astronaut, the other a soldier. The height marks on the door that suddenly stop for one of them. Man that hit home.

Also the fantastical imagery and slightly awkward controls didn't distract me from the knowledge that my actions lead to the death by drowning of a baby. The fact that this is such a "real" death make it even more shocking.

Culture changes things. I understand in (most of ?) the USA the age of sexual consent is 18. In the UK it's 16. So a pregnant 17 year old has a different moral value here in the UK. Pragmatically with the family history I'd have advised if you want to raise a family start young.
(Don't get me started on that you need to be 21 to get a beer but you can have a gun at 16 in the USA). The hunting thing. In the UK all our bears and wolves were hunted to extinction by the end of the middle ages. There are no wildernesses and the population of wild large herbivores (predominantly deer) are small. In the UK only the very rich generally hunt and kill things (fishing is more proletarian).

The fact it was done so well disguises the courage it took to do what the devs did. If this had been done badly it would have been awful. Done well, as it was, it was a transcendent cultural experience.

Tell me if they ever mod the game to tell us what the old lady found in the sunken house (with a light on - I'm telling you Lovecratian horrors).

S.x.

[GrinningRabbit]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bMn4CoyUkM&feature=youtu.be

You should watch this. This explains so, so much. And i agree with his assessment.

[Gallifrey - CSSC Gaming Founder]

Watched most of it but don't buy it...

1) The death rate amongst the Finches is ridiculously high.
2) You're missing a key detail - the Halloween death. As you go through the crawl space you see the decapitated doll with the octopus over it. It's creepy as hell. The smiley face is replicated in the stickers for sale at the start of the comic book.
3) The house. That's surreal. Who tries to move an entire house on a boat ? Also if you're fleeing a curse why bring the house with you ? Why is the house still intact after decades in the sea ? Why is there a light on it ? Also why the hell would a house on an island have a working railway underneath it ?

I think Edi Finch is the key element. Why does the curse not affect her ? Also how does she die ? Why ?

I think we also ignore that we, the players, are key to the deaths. We faciltate them.

In my review I called the game a very dark fairy tale.

The game doesn't make sense as a linear horror story. We can't Hercule Poirot style unmask the hidden killer within the stories.

The hidden killer is us the players. Edi Finch builds the cemetary first. She knows that they are characters in a dark fairy tale and doomed to die. Edi only "dies" when the other characters leave because she only exists as part of their story.

The storm that sinks the boat, the monster under the bed, the Halloween monsters, the force that sends the boy off the swing, the kite being played in the storm, the hunting trip death (we "see" the deer first), the drowning in the bath, the guillotine execution - what connects them all ? No single monster or entity - we are the link.

The players are the curse that destroys the Finch family.

S.x.