Quick Look: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

Well this is disappointing. This is not at all what I hoped it would be.

Guess I'll just keep waiting for Fire Watch.

"That's the British term for funk"

I love how Jeff's mind works.

should be an oculus game..

I'll buy the soundtrack, but I dunno. I like Dear Esther quite a bit, but I feel like I might have gotten my fill of these games after Ethan Carter. It's a shame, because I'm really interested in a game that explores Christian themes and elements.

Ah Shropshire. It gave us the theory of evolution, the industrial revolution and two thoroughly bored Duders.

Charles Darwin sends his apologies.

(edit: FWIW, that gate thing is called a stile. They are ubiquitous in the English countryside)

Just beat it. Took me a bit longer than six hours to go through, and I feel I missed a load of content. Fairly lovely, melodramatic experience, though. Nice mix of Day of the Triffids and War of the Worlds with an obvious tilt of the hat to Philip K. Dick.

The second this started and I heard that Dan was headlining a Quick Look of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture I instantly thought, "WELP...this won't end well."

You're the type of person who only likes music that you can dance to, and only likes fun summer popcorn movies, I'm guessing.

@jensonb: I've heard some things about that game. Can you tell me what year it takes place?

I had more hope for this game. I really like narrative focus games, but I don't think I like games that are this passive. I really didn't care for what I saw with Dear Esther and A Bird's Story actually made me kinda mad in a weird way (It was me constantly saying "Come on!" every other minute, since it felt like all I had to do was walk over to one specific part of the room or else nothing would happen)

Besides the walking and not doing anything aspect, the story of Dear Esther didn't interest me at all, and nothing seemed super engaging with the story in Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. Might get it on sale? <shrugs>

@gregalor said:

Was that necessary? I wish we could have a more nuanced discussion about these type of games than 'well, if you don't like it, you're probably an unsophisticated lout'. I mean, it doesn't look fun to me, either - the dialogue is clunky and there's a whole bunch of design decisions I don't agree with. But it's cool that some people are enjoying it. It's just different taste, neither side is dumb.

@thisluckyguess: I think the debate probably rages around whether a game needs to be "fun" in order to be good. It's never been the case in other media, the best example I can think of is Schindler's List which is almost universally seen as being pretty great but can hardly be described as being fun.

I guess a lot of people would quite like there to be room in video games for such a distinction to be made and are willing to put up with a few clunky mis steps on the way if it means we get there eventually.

R2 R2 R2 R2 R2 R2 R2!!

OH....because tractor sounds like rapture. i get it now.

@gbrading: Published by Sony, co developed with Sony Santa Monica, I doubt it's ever coming to pc, but who knows, btw R2

I'm with Dan and Jeff. I loved Gone Home and liked Dear Esther well enough but I'm probably going to pass on this. The languid pace doesn't help, but nothing about the story I've seen has grabbed me even if it was put forward at a more reasonable speed. Not to mention the flat-out bad game design that is exacerbated by the slow speed.

@nayson: Papers Please was a game that wasn't meant to be fun, Still it was critically acclaimed and quite popular with the people as well.

That game used the medium to it's full potential by actually letting the player get involved with the story and interact with it.

Everybody's gone to the rapture seems a game that wants to tell a story without the player actively taking part of it. I don't think that speaks to the strength of the medium.

Gone Home might be relative similar, but at least that game lets you rummage through the stuff yourself, making you engage with the story.

Ryckert and Gerstmann maybe not the best guys for a game based on subtlety. Games are a lot more than button makes gun go bang now, and it's great that GB has expanded it's editorship to take this into account.

Now apply these resources appropriately?

Maybe a game where you walk slow isn't best assigned to a guy who said in a recent video "I can't stand it when something stops be from moving as fast as I possibly can."

Not that I've played this game, I might very well hate it, but I really don't feel that I can trust the judgement of these guys on this title.

The Chinese Room, I have high regards for what they can make for these types of games. However with them basically fucking over PC gamers because Dear Esther or Amnesia: Machine for Pigs didn't do well enough - fuck off seriously.

Which sucks, because I would love to go through this.

@spicyrichter: Holy shit dude. They repeatedly talk about how they like Gone Home and other games of this ilk, but them not liking this particular one makes them incapable of being trusted to have nuanced opinions on non "button makes gun go bang now" games? Come the fuck on.

I think it's kind of shitty to insinuate that Jeff and Dan are incapable of enjoying games that aren't filled with guns and explosions. It's that kind of condescension in defense of these sorts of games that puts a lot of people off.

The game has an interesting premise and I like the world they created. It's a shame that they didn't spend that amount of time thinking of ways for you to engage with the world in interesting ways.

. Remember ladies and gentleman, if your game can be called artsy it can't be bad, all artsy things are good and interesting, even the ones that appear to be in no way interesting (like this one!) Seriously though, Neither Dan nor Jeff have an inherent hate of this genre, this one is just not very good. It's not bad because it's artsy, that has NOTHING to do with it, so you can cool it with the "you only hate it because you're not intellectual enough to understand it" rhetoric.

@spicyrichter: For someone that appears to be openminded about games, you're not very openminded about people. Why would Jeff & Dan only be interested in games where you can shoot?

I understand that the Chinese Room have no interest in making an interactive game experience and from their history they seem to like to stray as far from anything close to regarding gameplay as possible. But you should make you one interaction with the world, traversal, much more intuitive than just popping over a fence. I get that you don't want button prompts or to show first person hands clambering over a gate because you might not be a person and button prompts might ruin the immersion, but trying to find out what you can and cannot go over is frustrating and even more immersion breaking. It's like you're glitching over geometry rather than actually being in the world.

I've been trying to play this game for the last 40 minutes and have had it lock up three times. Anyone else having that issue?

Dismissing a genre because it lacks a story is just as childish as dismissing a genre because of its lack of gameplay. Some people are only interested in storytelling and some are only interested in gameplay.

@lazyimperial: "Each to their own" And then you continue to go on a diatribe about how you don't understand it. Okay...

"That sun is definitely holding down R2"

Genius, Jeff :D

This seems like the videogame equivalent of a one-sided conversation.

Or, if developer is totally insistent on muh art must not be for funsies there is still an absolute requirement for a certain degree of player engagement. Pretty graphics alone in an empty world with nothing to do and no direction is not enough. I understand the Gone Home comparisons but I think Journey is the better benchmark for minimally gamey game about exploration primarily. That game is, I think, the best example of how to go about it.

out of the of these types of games i've seen ppl play this 1 is probly the 1 that seems the worst so far sadly.

@minipato: The only thing I hate about forums is people responding to posts without reading other posts of that user. But that's like asking someone to read your twitter conversations afterwards.

I saw the thumbnail, and for a second thought it was a Farm Simulator QL...

I can't belive how developers of these games ignore or just do not understand the importance of satisfying movement mechanics. Movement is the most basic of inputs in a video game, it's existed before we pretty much got to do anything else. Developers have had decades to perfect movement and it's how we got Mario and Quake, later on Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty. Movement is one of the primary reasons why those games are so fun to play and why they're so massively popular.

And then come these "geniuses" who figure they're gonna reinvent the wheel by limiting your movement to the point of absurdity. If it was satisfying to move in these walking simulators, which ironically it isn't most of the time, the overall enjoyment of the game would skyrocket. I love the exploration parts in shooters but guess what -- I can sprint and duck and jump whenever and wherever I want in those games.

What is the point of having exploration and this 'open' world if literally the only thing that marks any sort of progression are these conversations? Are there ever any computers to look through for instance, logs and that sort of thing?

I guess the main question I'm trying to ask, is does "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture" benefit from being a game and not a short film/mini-series? Because even Gone Home had an aspect you could point to and say, yes, this uses the medium to its strengths. This seems as though it does not.

Edit: Also, just going all in on this, I think it's a bit of a cop-out to straight up show the player conversations that happened in the past as the main narrative thread when the whole premise of the game seems to be to try to investigate just what occurred after everyone has vanished.

R2-D2 and what not.

Dan of all people is using the word ajar

I don't think I'll ever understand the point of these games. How are we supposed to get invested in any of this?

This is the next game from the people that made Dear Esther... what exactly WERE you hoping for? This seems like exactly the kind of game they'd make next. If it's not your thing, fine, but I think it's on you if this wasn't what you were hoping for, not the game.

You can upgrade your walk speed with a pair of British Knights that are hidden in the large potato silo.

Better tell my Dad to avoid this one, I don't think he'll handle Dan mispronouncing his name that badly.

After having watched this QL and read some stuff about it I can be OK with the fact it's not coming to PC.

Only playing games for fun doesn't mean everything has to be brainless. You can find fun in sprawling, 100 hour RPGs because of the way they engross you in the world. You can find fun in games like Gone Home because they tell a compelling, interesting story while also cleverly leaving tiny tidbits of information everywhere for you to find.

This game seems to fall flat by either of those definitions, most things that The Chinese Room makes do.

I suppose you can chalk it up to "you're just ignorant", but at the end of the day, TCR failed to make a product that engrosses certain people who want fun and/or engagement and that's a failure on their part. The latter especially so since this is a heavily narrative driven game.

Video game or interactive storytelling? You be the judge!

No really, you be the judge. I'm not gonna make that call. All I know is this: When I saw the Quick Look of Gone Home, I thought "I'd like to check this out sometime." After watching this, I thought "Meh."

"Wheat makes bread, right?"

Only Dan Ryckert could ask that with sincerity.

I admire Dan for asking questions when he doesn't know something. I'm sure a lot of people don't, purely out of fear of some armchair know-it-all putting them down for doing so.

Alright. I’m gonna be that guy and go ahead to say Chinese Room is a bad developer. Not because they are making "walking simulators", I´’m fine with those. But the main thing - narrative - in Dear Esther was atrocious.Everything about the setup of this game sounds super interesting but i dont believe Chinese Room can execute it properly (meaningfully). And then theres that walk speed thing...

This is one of the biggest things I really don't like about this site right now. There's this really weird proxy war some people in the community are waging between GB West vs. GB East, where either GB East are the enlightened intellectuals trying to be "serious" while GB West are practically drooling knuckle-draggers, or GB East has been brainwashed by the evil SJWs and GB West is the last bastion for good-old fashioned-fun.

I'm personally just interested in seeing entertaining content from either of them, but sometimes you see the incredibly passive aggressive comments that are doing nothing but splitting this community down the middle. It's a real shame.

I think there is value in seeing how people skeptical of these games would cover them, personally.

I understand a lot of people's hate for this kind of game. All I have to say is that you know going in if this is your jam or not. I honestly haven't played this, but from watching this quick look I am very interested. I have played dear esther and absolutely adored it. Truly. Again, I get why you may not be into this sort of thing but it's not "trash" as some have put it. It's not pretentious, it's not meant to be terribly interactive and judging it on what it isn't is completely missing out on what it is.

My best description of Dear Esther is that it is an exercise in creating atmosphere and non linear storytelling. Leaving you to fill in the blanks as you see fit and let the vibe of the world wash over you. This game seems to be in that same realm which is why it's going to be tough for the general crowd to swallow, you don't have to be 'open minded' or 'artsy fartsy' to enjoy it, it just has to be your thing. If you're not into it, you're no better or worse off it's just not for you, so move on.

I don't think there's anyone on the GB team that is into these sorts of games so it's hard to take Jeff and Dan's opinion to heart, I think Patrick could have given it a better shake