E3 2014: After Dear Esther, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

Yeah, that was my issue with Dear Esther as well. I have no problem with people doing first-person exploration games, but if you're going to make one that has a story that is not at all concrete or direct, you better make sure your prose is pretty fucking good. And I just don't think Dear Esther managed that.

I don't even mind that it didn't necessarily contextualize the narration with your location. For me (like you said), the narration just wasn't enlightening or intriguing. I know it wasn't setting out to be a gripping page-turner of a mystery with plot points A, B, and C. It's like the video game version of a poem; it doesn't expressly have to tell a story with a beginning and end, and it's minimum goal is to just evoke a feeling or thought within you, through language (and in this case, graphics). But if all these letters to Esther, and mentions of the car accident, and then other mentions of the shepherd who used to live on the island a hundred years ago, and then eventually the narrator starts blurring people together because it's trying to make metaphors or something, if all that was supposed to be evocative and moving, it just wasn't. It was a muddled tale, and sucks to be this guy who (probably?) lost his wife in a car accident, but the style of storytelling actively prevented me from getting invested in really anything the narrator had to say for the duration of the game.

The environment was beautiful, but it feels like the whole game hinges on you, the player, having this nostalgia-for-a-time-before-you-were-born, a time when people wrote each other letters frequently, and women were named Esther. I honestly believe that the people who profess to like Dear Esther were sold on the idea, top to bottom, within the first minutes, when they arrived at this lonely island and the narrator started saying "Dear Esther" a few times, and they thought to themselves "Oooh, isn't it tragic that old people used to write letters to loved ones they couldn't be near, and also people died". What followed could've been just about anything, and I'm convinced these people would've liked Dear Esther regardless, because what it actually delivers after those first few minutes is just obtuse and murky. Their standards seem low, because it seems like they bought into Dear Esther pretty much based on the premise.

I think The Stanley Parable does a little better, in that at least it has humour to lean on, and isn't trying to move you deeply. Some of the jokes work, some don't, some just go on too long but not in a funny way, but overall I liked the ways The Stanley Parable poked fun at video game narratives and player agency within them.

The fact you would think it's offensive and hostile to call something not a game shows what's wrong with the gaming community.

These games are not for me, as much as I wish they were ... but I love that they exist and hope many peope enjoy them.

@hazelnuttz: I mostly agree with you, but I feel that saying that something is over someone's head or they just didn't understand it is equally as dismissive as someone saying that its pretentious. Some people are being reductive but to say that if someone doesn't like it then it went over their head is silly, maybe they did understand it but had other valid criticisms.

The problem with Dear Esther is not that there isn't really much gameplay and that you are just walking around, nor is it that it tries for something "arty" which seems to be used as a pejorative. The problem was that it didn't do a good enough job of contextualising the voice-over with your location in the environment, it never felt as though you were discovering something that you were then told about as much as the voice-over was arbitrarily being triggered as you walked. I think this is why people claim Dear Esther is not a game. On top of that the prose was not very good, it was pretentious in the pejorative, vague statements that were not enlightening or intriguing. I hope the developers are able to move beyond what, to me was holding them back (I never played their amnesia game).

I enjoyed games like Gone Home, Proteus and Jazz Punk. In these games all you do (mostly) is walk around and experience interactions that you trigger. I have my reasons beyond mechanics for liking each of them, whereas I did not like Dear Esther, The Stanley Parable or Thirty Flights of Loving (which I consider all to be of a certain type). I could explain my stance on each, but I would not reduce them to having no gameplay or being too arty. They are still games whether you like them or not

The Rapture has really gone downhill...

Really excited for this, but it's a shame it's a PS4 exclusive. That trailer showed absolutely nothing though.

Calm down dude. The game will come out and you will still be alive. People opinions man, that's all. By the way, YOUR comment sounded pretty offensive and hostile. Probably would fall under the "terrible" category as well?

Quickly dismissing something as "Pretentious": A tacit admission of the inadequacy of the critical apparatus somehow becoming - as it has done so often - a means of undervaluing creative endeavour.

Why don't we all stop fighting and watch the trailer from last year?

The negative comments about this game are infuriating to me. Dear Esther was a game that is NOT made for all audiences, people that say it's a waste of time or boring are clearly NOT the people the game is intended for. Why bother belittling something that is CLEARLY over your head (and I don't mean that to say you're too stupid or ignorant) I personally adored Dear Esther, I preferred A Machine for Pigs, and I will most certainly love this game to bits.

Now I really hate it when people say "if you don't like *insert IP here* don't comment" because that implies that negative criticism is not welcomed when it should be. But the kind of criticism this developer's games receive tends to lean toward turning the games into something they never intended to be in the first place and ignoring what the games have accomplished. If your criticism is "add mechanics" or "give it a story" you have already proven that your ideals are not inline with what the game is going for.

Why so hostile, friend? Have I wronged you in some way? Why do you hate JRPG's and what do they have to do with anything I just said?

The "not a game" tag is not an insult as you seem to have implied. It simply means there is no skill for which to master, much like your average visual novel, things which also aren't games. By taking it as an insult, people like you have stripped the gaming community of the needed vocabulary to describe this new type of software.

Yes -- the circle-jerk beckons, you pathetic, sorry excuse for a nerd. Would you prefer a moeshit jrpg? Your comment is terrible, as are the four above yours.

It's a shame Steam got rid of the "not a game" tag.

Seems some what interesting.... : /

HAHAHAHAHAHA what a complete waist of the devs time.

@pxabstraction said:

The game will almost certainly not have much in the way of mechanics. If you look at even something like A Machine for Pigs, where they had the obvious foundation set by the original Amnesia, they stripped out all of the resource scarcity (lantern fuel, tinderboxes) and stripped out the sanity meter stuff, with the only remaining mechanics being "outsmart the monster AI" and "solve some simple puzzles". I expect this game to be a lot like Dear Esther, by which I mean it will be kind of obtuse and I won't get a lot out of its story though I'll give it points for atmosphere I guess.

For future reference, the studio is called The Chinese Room, likely a reference to this thought experiment.

I like to think of these Dear Esther type games, rambler-likes if you will, as what would happen if you took the NPCs and the shit combat out of Skyrim.

It boggles my mind. I truly have no idea what some people want from this hobby.

You've arrived at those conclusions from a single trailer? Or have I missed the press release where they announced 'lack of gameplay'? What constitutes 'gameplay'? Must there be guns, weapons? Is there a quota of things to do that must be met before it's labelled a game rather than a 'digital interactive experience'?

Yeah, it's thrown around way too much. As soon as a game isn't something instantly familiar, it's labelled pretentious and thrown aside by a large amount of people—and yet those same people complain every time E3 comes around that we're just getting sequels.

Edit: Anyway, this looks beautiful and the little bit of information about this that we have so far has interested me enough that I'll most likely buy it.

For all the lamenting about yearly sequels and the same genres dominating the market with pleas for more original games, many people sure are dismissive of things that are different in ways they aren't interested in.

Hey we made these environments, but don't have the budget for gameplay. Hmm.. artsy video game!! It will probably be an ok "game" (digital interactive experience), when one feels in the mood for a mellow stroll down depression alley.

What an insightful trailer. .-.

Additionally, a game could not be pretentious in the way that was originally stated. The developers could be pretentious and characters within the game could be pretentious, but an item cannot truly imply more value or importance to itself. A person can do that though. An article could. In some ways, the intent or design of a game trailer could, but there would almost always be a person at the source of the pretension - not an object.

I don't see anyone from the development team doing that -- not in this trailer or anywhere else. You're applying the label based solely on the fact that there are no bros screaming at other bros. Any time the narrative slows down and isn't loaded with guns and drab colors and the same first-person crashing vehicle cutscene we've seen 1000 times, it must be pretentious, right?

Without using a direct definition, to be pretentious is to imply more value or importance to something that isn't actually worth such consideration.

Well one thing is clear: You don't know what the word pretentious means.

anyone know anything about this one?

I like exploration games, I like post-apocalpyse, hopefully i'll like this. Although this trailer tells me bugger all....pretty tho.

Anyone have an idea of release date...year...

You're going to have to show me more than that.

Yay. This trailer isn't very good but after both excellent prior games I have no qualms about picking up a game from The Chinese Room day 1.

Looks good!

I don't know man... not feeling it. >_<

Dear Esther is a game I'm glad I played, but I spent less than I would on lunch for the game and I feel like that low barrier to entry helped me enjoy what was there. Hopefully this game has a bit more meat on its bones. Still, for a trailer that didn't show much I still found it intriguing.

I think my enjoyment of this game will be based totally on whether or not you 'solve' the mystery. I hate stories where you finish them with more questions and no answers.

Games like Dear Esther, and presumably this, (aka weird walking around "artsy" games) are the type of early-in-the-morning-with-coffee-one-play-session kind of games that I'm entirely okay with. Doesn't mean they're necessarily good, but I still find them to be interesting.

Wait, Santa Monica Studios AND the Chinese Tea Room? This will almost definitely be a day-one purchase for me. The team at Chinese Tea Room have a way of creatiing incredibly immersive worlds through, what I consider, the best writing in the video-game industry, period, and fantastic sound-tracks. Their artstyle, beautiful, at times hauntingly so, at other times disturbingly so, is on par with the very best of them.

That said, from a purely technical stand-point, their games have been rather lackluster, neither "A Machine for Pigs" or "Dear Esther" were visual powerhouses, so this colaboration could lead to something truly mesmerizing to look at.

@lifeasclarity: If there's something we've learned from Chinese Tea Room's previous games, then it is that nothing is like it seems, so hey, your theory might turn out to be completely accurate. From the look of it, though, it just seems as if you're the last living person in the world and that you, too, have a set amount of time before that ceases to be the case, and so the game will focus on a profound sense of loneliness and loss as their previous games have.

I'm excited for this one. Dear Esther was a surprisingly affecting experience, Machine For Pigs was horrifying, and Jessica Curry's scoring of both was downright haunting.

Dear Esther is one of the best experiences I've ever had with a game, so I'm extremely excited about this game.

This trailer sucked, though.

@apothaeos: makes me wonder, with the countdown voice in the background of that trailer, if the Earth was abandoned for space travel to elsewhere, and you play someone or something wandering through the remnants of a town after everyone left Earth.

What about that middling Amnesia game are we just going to pretend that didn't happen?

@astrophyle:

2. The transporting of a person from one place to another, especially to heaven. There are no people in the trailer, as they have presumably all left Earth.

Anyway, I am sure Jeff will be psyched at the prospect of a game having numbers stations in it.