Post-game thoughts (SPOILERS! ALL THE SPOILERS!)

So, thought it'd be nice to have somewhere to talk about the game once it's been concluded. At Brad's suggestion seems the best way would be with a spoiler tagged discussion here.

Not sure how everyone will feel about accidentally clicking in, so gonna at least spoiler tag my first reply and see if other people want to do the same?

Now if I can just figure out how to do a reply in spoiler tags I'll be all set ;)

So, one thing I really wanted to mention about finishing the game was...

I'm glad someone started a thread about this game. Man did I enjoy that game! I can't even remember the last time a game has left me feeling the way that I do. The way they told the story of Sam and Lonnie was very well done and felt very real. I think I had some manly tears by the end of it.

Yeah, I definitely had something in my eye as it finished :)

@the_nubster:

@the_nubster:

So...... did anyone get a screen grab of the erotic note thing?

I'm on an iPad and can't use the fancy tags, and since this thread is clearly marked for spoilers I'll just type.

That climb up the attic steps was one of the tensest moments I can remember in a game. The note at the beginning from Sam apologizing for the mess had me expecting to see her to be swinging from a rope up there. Obviously I was greatly relieved to see what actually happened.

The way they tell the story is amazing. The slow discovery of the failed writer husband and the cheating wife, their inability to deal with their rebellious teenage daughter, and the final revelations that love has won out for both couples was amazing.

Some of the 'hey, remember the 90's?" stuff was a little overdone, but that time period was necessary for the story. With modern communications methods, you wouldn't be able to have this story take place. Plus I think the 'riot grrl' aesthetic really works in selling the Sam and Lonnie story

@kbohls: I wasn't able to find the combination for the safe. What was in it?

A few weeks ago, whichever of the Fullbright folk runs the @gonehomegame twitter account posted a Gone Home poster QR code for Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I tweeted in reply that it would look great next to the I Want To Believe poster I already had hanging in my house. Karla Z (@zusty) enjoyed it, and that made me incredibly happy.

Then I saw the I Want To Believe poster in Sam's bedroom, and I squealed. It was the unmanliest noise I've made in recent memory, and I don't care.

I didn't, but some other helpful user on Steam did. That link is incredibly spoilery. I mean, that's why we're here, but I'm telling you all just in case. Be sure you want to click it.

I'm of two minds about Gone Home. On the one hand, I desperately crave more games that are about real people in the real world, as opposed to space marines and wizards saving the universe. On the other hand, having just finished the game, I found the whole thing incredibly manipulative, emotionally. The entire game feels like an exercise in trying to generate artificial dread in the player, where none was necessary given the story they were trying to tell. "Oh no, scary lightning! Oh no, ghost sightings! Oh no, mysterious catacombs! Oh no, maybe she killed herself!" Frankly, I feel like Sam and Lonnie's story deserved better than tacky Halloween-House theatrics.

@tyler1285: Wait, was that the lined piece of paper? I thought my game glitched out when it disappeared. Did it vanish for you too?

And it's a perfect example of how manipulative the game is, which is exactly what I was saying. It's the designers just playing gotcha. I just don't know why they felt the need to add artificial drama when there's more than enough drama in Sam & Lonnie's story as it is.

I'm with you. I really liked most of what this game offered, but I do feel like a "bait & switch" happened. At the end of the story, I'm happy for Lonnie and Sam, but I feel empty when it comes to the experience as a whole. I had a feeling of: "Oh. That's it?"

@doskias said:

A few weeks ago, whichever of the Fullbright folk runs the @gonehomegame twitter account posted a Gone Home poster QR code for Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I tweeted in reply that it would look great next to the I Want To Believe poster I already had hanging in my house. Karla Z (@zusty) enjoyed it, and that made me incredibly happy.

Then I saw the I Want To Believe poster in Sam's bedroom, and I squealed. It was the unmanliest noise I've made in recent memory, and I don't care.

@tyler1285 said:

So...... did anyone get a screen grab of the erotic note thing?

I didn't, but some other helpful user on Steam did. That link is incredibly spoilery. I mean, that's why we're here, but I'm telling you all just in case. Be sure you want to click it.

Oh geez. I totally missed that note! And here I thought I got to see everything! Where was that note. It looks like it was next to some garbage can...

I also want to say that I really enjoyed the game! It was definitely one of those experiences that are few and far between in games today.

So where can you find the code for the safe in the basement?

Also, the "governor will be pleased" note was signed H W if I remember correctly. Who was that?

@evgar: Look on the wall nearby the safe.

@steelerzfan101: I missed that too, if anyone could answer where that was. I remember seeing a crumpled piece of paper in a trash can that I couldn't read. The only one in the house, but I didn't think anything of it.

@lord_punch: But isn't that the point? It's a flawed family and we're poring over every scrap of paper we find, did Mom run away with Rick? Did Dad get drunk again and do something terrible? Yet, ultimately it's the mundane that wins out, we get incomplete information and run with it, and the game subverts that at nearly every turn. Sam wrote a note that said not to tell Mom and Dad anything I found and that the attic, and then it ends. I understand why that might have been a let down for you, but it was the incredibly relieving for me. Those harsh red christmas lights and Sam's note had me expecting the worst, I was happy to see the game fooled me, personally.

@xceagle:

But at that point, the game just ends up feeling like wish fulfillment without any real conflict. Thus, all of the suspense, intrigue, and creepiness is merely contrived manipulation by the developers who aren't confident for this story to stand alone.

@kevin_cogneto: I disagree with you about that. I think we drew conclusions with incomplete information based on typical game and movie tropes. Is that manipulative? I don't think so. They never lied to us, Sam's notes give us more than ample reason to not suspect the supernatural. The tub having dye isn't manipulative either, the only reason we have to suspect that someone died is our own grandiose expectations for a game narrative, and the bottle if right next to that tub. The game played on the expectations we had for an empty mansion, but no I wouldn't say it manipulated us. It asked us to approach the game without preconceptions, and I'll admit I couldn't do that and was wrong multiple times.

Oh come on, the game certainly doesn't ask you to come to it without preconceptions, it deliberately creates those expectations from minute one. If the haunted house setting doesn't do it, the answering machine messages certainly do. They're deliberately trying to mislead you into thinking something terrible has happened to members of your family. When we see the dye in the tub, we jump to the conclusion that someone has died because the game has deliberately led us to that conclusion. To claim anything different is totally disingenuous. Has the game "lied" to us? No. Has it misled us? You bet it has.

In the end, it's about the stakes of the story. When a story ends with "it was all a dream", why do we get upset? Because it means everything we just saw doesn't matter, and whatever we thought was at stake never actually was. Now then, what does Gone Home lead us to believe is at stake? Nothing less than the very lives and safety of our family. What is actually at stake? The happiness of our sister. That's still important, sure. But at no point was her life in danger, not in any way shape or form. Yet the game does everything in its power to mislead you into thinking that it is. Is it as bad as "it was all a dream"? Not by a long shot. But what we thought was at stake -- Sam's life -- never actually was. And that's the manipulation that irks me.

That said, where the hell do I find the combination for the father's filing cabinet? Maybe I'm just dumb but no 4 number set I could find fit!

I agree with the OP, I just loved how they sidestepped the whole creepy house and familiar tropes to tell a love story.

I think tackling homosexuality in teenage years is a really brave thing to do and I'm happy this team took that chance. Some of the worldly-references regarding the issue (the military 'don't ask don't tell' and that in nearly every room there's a Bible) felt real forced. But I respect what they did and I think they did it pretty well. But when I've heard the sentiment that it is 'important' or things like that I can't help but scratch my head and wonder why. I mean I'm happy I played it. But come on.

@khann:

@jasonr86:

@ztiworoh said:

I totally think that's what they were going for. I think its one of the most impressive thing about this game. I would be SCARED to release this game.

It has all these horror trappings that simultaneously don't have to be there and TOTALLY have to be there. If I made this game, I would be afraid that someone would not want to finish the game because they are so scared. Or worse yet, not pick it up in the first place because they think its a horror game. I would endlessly wrestle with if I should take out the lightning and stuff, and in the end I probably would so that adventure game fans would be more likely to play it. Now, I'm so happy that Fullbright stuck to their vision, because this game has masterful storytelling.

I don't know about you duders, but my heart was beating out of my chest when I found out about the compartment under the stairs. I tried to get there as soon as I could.

That goes double for the attic.

@kevin_cogneto: I think the horror trappings are absolutely necessary and key to the story. The game starts you with an expectation that something horrible has happened to Sam. Over the course of the game, you slowly figure out "Oh thank god. Nothing terrible happened. She's just gay." But (for me at least) that relief is part of the message. Being "just gay" (especially in Sam's case) is not all peaches and cream. I think the game is trying to put that into context, maybe sorta from the parents point of view?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the game seems to being comparing "Oh my god, my daughter is gay! This is the end of the world!" To "Oh my god! My daughter's life is in danger! I have to find her." I think its trying to point out how little that being gay should matter in the grand scheme of how much you care for this person as a human being.

Without the horror, I don't think the game would have been as awesome. It would have been a neat game experiment, a cool way to tell a simple story. But I think the horror delivery helped them create something that approaches game literature.

@kevin_cogneto: You're the one casting it as a "haunted house". It's a large empty house with flickering lights, and one of the first rooms you go into explains why the lights flicker. Have you never heard a teenager cry on the phone? Sam and Lonnie had just broken up, but we assume she's dead or run away from abusive parents, etc. Each of these has a completely innocuous reason that it could be happening, and yet we assumed the worst for this ordinary, flawed family: a teenager being melodramatic about her first love, a wife unhappy with her marriage and the slump it's in, and a father considering himself a failure and hitting the sauce. These are ordinary people with ordinary live.The developers allowed us to make the assumptions they knew we were going to make and didn't feel the need to correct us until the end of the game.

The moment that indicated this perfectly for me was the note on the board outside Sam's room that said something like "Sam, stop leaving all the damn lights on, you're as bad as your sister." And I started laughing, I had turned on every light in the house to that point and there was no way I was turning off any of them.

That's why I say we weren't manipulated because we were just predictable. We jumped to conclusions because of the familiar tropes presented to us, and Fullbright simply didn't correct us. But I'm willing to say that was my fault. I was given a large, empty house in the middle of a stormy night, instead of taking it as such, I assumed that all translated to ghosts or danger, and I let them subvert those expectations.

So maybe the stakes aren't as big as we're used to in games, but i'd say realization of sexual identity and committing herself to be who she is despite bullying at school and her parent's reaction is still huge; the story is still about her life, just not her death.

@kid_gloves: Where did you find that info about Oscar? The basement? I'd like to go back and try to find out more about him.

@xceagle:

I knew from the start it wasn't suppose to be a horror game but once I got to the sequence during which you find the attic key I was absoultly fearing the worst, but after hearing Sam's final passage in the game I was totally releaved. I think the story was very cute and I'm glad it came out as a happy ending for Sam.

Watched the Quick Look after playing, and aw, I forgot about the messages on the answering machine. Funny how context can change something so creepy and foreboding into something sweet.

It's interesting seeing people saying the dad got his happy ending when I felt it was completely opposite. In my mind, he wasn't writing what he wanted to write anymore, but desperately pandering to a small audience he didn't fully understand. I was half-expecting another letter from the publisher saying "Yeah, this is just the worst." But now I can see why it might be a positive thing. And I'm gonna choose to see it that way, because man, his whole story was really bumming me out.