I didn’t like Gone Home. At the time I thought that was because I played it too long after its release and after it had been spoiled for me. Some games just have their moment, and if you don’t catch them then you can’t go back. There were other things I didn’t like about it too. I didn’t like the fact that your character was following another character’s story, instead of learning her own. I didn’t like the character being followed, or find her story compelling. I thought the environments were not super attractive and the 90s kitsch was cute but also a little annoying. I came away from the game thinking “Really? This caused that big a stir?” It’s not that I hated it, it’s just that it didn’t resonate with me. I found it a little bit boring.

But I loved Firewatch, and I loved Night in the Woods, which is not strictly a walking simulator but shares many elements with the genre, so I was excited for What Remains of Edith Finch. What I heard about its macabre sense of humor and absurdism seemed right up my alley. I went (mostly) media silent on it, picked it up just before release and…it drifted into my backlog for a bit. But last night, after I finished Horizon: Zero Dawn, I pulled it out, intending to at least start it as a major change of pace from Horizon’s open world action.

Instead I finished it and…meh. Didn’t do much for me and definitely wasn’t worth the price. And this time I can’t blame it on coming to it too late or having it spoiled. This time I had pretty much the experience I was supposed to have. So why didn’t I like it?

What Remains of Edith Finch is as close to a Gone Home clone as you can find in a genre that’s all about presenting a unique environment and story. You play as a young woman returning to an empty family home to explore the environs and learn what happened to its inhabitants. The house unlocks bit by bit, with secret passages and routes, and you learn much of the story through notes you find stashed around the dwelling.

The key difference between What Remains of Edith Finch and Gone Home is that while Gone Home focused on a grounded story of a particular character, Edith Finch tells surrealist tales of a bunch of the Finch family members and how they met their various demises. And unlike Gone Home where the story played out via audio logs, in Edith Finch you get to actually play through the vignettes. It promises to be like an Edward Gorey or Tim Burton book brought to life, with a rambly old house and lots of delightful little deaths.

It promises, but it doesn’t really deliver. What Remains of Edith Finch lacks the courage of its convictions. It gives you the rotting old storybook house and then tells a bunch of stories with various styles and tones. This creates variety in both visuals and sort of gameplay, but takes away from the cohesive feeling. What Remains of Edith finch is also a lot less gloomy than I expected from the house and description, at times being even lighthearted.

What Remains of Edith Finch also isn’t only a walking simulator. It has a bunch of minigames in it that you play as you experience each character’s death. These range from a not very good first person platforming segment to a kind of boring kite flying simulator (I guess walking was too intense?) to a segment where you walk around but actually have a weapon you can use, which makes it kind of like a real video game, only it sucks.

That’s too harsh, but the various playable segments vary wildly in complexity and quality. The first one starts quite promisingly with a variety of play styles (though they’re pretty janky) and a cool little fantasy tale from a child’s mind, but most of the later segments cannot match it. You fly a kite. You swing in a swing. It’s not walking but that doesn’t make it fun.

That’s not to say they’re all bad, A couple of the lengthier experiences have enough complexity to at least feel clever or interesting, and there are a few moments that genuinely delighted me, mostly relating to the imaginations of very young children. The main story in the house is also presented well and has its moments, but it’s very short too and the whole game can be wrapped up in less than two hours. $20 for a two hour experience is a lot to ask, and when that experience is mediocre its way too much to ask.

I think, in the end, though, the reason I didn’t like Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch isn’t because they were short or had simplistic gameplay. It’s because the player characters are pretty irrelevant to both stories. They walk through a house, they learn about the actual, important, people, and that’s it. What Remains of Edith Finch does more to build your character with her monologues, which show up as text in the environment in a cool effect, but in the end it doesn’t amount to much. She isn’t all that interesting and this isn’t really her story. It tries to connect you to the other family members by having you play their stories but that didn’t work for me either. You spent too little time with them to really get to know them, for the most part, and…I didn’t care. I said that aloud to the screen multiple times. “I don’t care. Get on with it.” I was bored and disconnected. Not a good sign.

Firewatch and Night in the Woods, on the other hand, tell stories about their main characters. You learn about other goings on as well, of course, but both Henry and Mae are dynamic people with goals and problems and I connected well with both them. It propelled me through the narrative and involved me in those games, which made everything else much more interesting. Both games also presented larger areas and bigger stories, which let me settle in and get involved in the world. Night in the Woods features a side activity where you steal pretzels and feed them to rats, and you have to go do it every day until the narrative wraps up, and it’s super repetitive and not great mechanically, but damn it I cared. I cared about Mae and I cared about her rats and I wanted to make both of them happy.

What Remains of Edith Finch didn’t make me care. It felt like I was going through a museum, viewing the various exhibits and reading the plaques and being bored. I don’t think video games are a great way to tell this kind of story. They’re best when they’re focused on the protagonist (if there is one) and what they’re doing. I’ve never played Street Fighter and wished I was playing as one of the guys in the butcher shop in Chun Li’s stage; holding a chicken and watching the fight. What Remains of Edith Finch and Gone Home make you background characters to the real story (though What Remains of Edith Finch does try to change that dynamic) and that’s not a good method of video game storytelling for me. I’d rather read a book or watch a movie if I’m going to be a passive participant.

Still, What Remains of Edith Finch isn’t a terrible game. It has some nice visuals, some good writing (though not consistently so) a decent environment and some moments I genuinely enjoyed. The short run time means it’s not around long enough to miserably drag. I wouldn’t strongly warn anyone against it. It’s short and not totally unpleasant and it was clearly a labor of love. I wish I liked it more than I did. Who knows, maybe you will.

Most of my disappointment with this game was that it didn't seem like it had anything to say, and none of it led to any sort of crescendo. You watch all these people die in horrifying ways in a whimsical wrapper, and then... credits? You never actually learn anything concrete or of much consequence about the family or house, which is supposedly the entire point for going to the house in the first place.

Taken in chunks, it's very pretty and uniquely presented, but it never really comes together as a whole.

I'm one of those people that loved both Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch. Contrary to you, I actually find it useful to downplay your character in games like these, especially due to it's first person perspective. The more of a character your perspective is, the less connected I feel to it as a window to the world and more as a piece of the world. For example, playing Deus Ex I am not 'me' but rather Adam Jensen's forward momentum. But I am not really there. While Gone Home and Edith Finch both have you playing a character, it gives you enough room in there to sit beside them and be them in a way a more defined character cannot.

Overall the big narrative idea behind Edith Finch is one of self discovery through history. Who we are in relation to where we come from. Your character is taken away from the Finch-reality so to speak by your mother and was never back there until the game unfolds. So it's natural that the house and the characters of the house are the main characters in a way because they're the reason you are there. To teach you about who you are and where you come from. I also think I found a lot more enjoyment out of the contrast of how light hearted the game treats death while at the same time explores some fundamentally dark themes of human tragedy.

To me, video games are exceptional at telling these kinds of stories. Well, assuming it works for whoever consums it I suppose. I would say the way I felt connected to the story of Edith Finch (or Firewatch and Gone Home) rivals a lot of the best books and movies I have consumed over the years. In part because of it's interactive nature, but also because a lot of these stories are slightly navel gazing in a way I can appreciate.

That all being said, I guess I need to get around to playing Night In The Woods, I have been hovering over it for a while but something about it's art style just rubs me the wrong way. But, I'll give it a shot.

@pezen: I think that these stories are much better told through a book or movie or TV series or something where things like pacing and progression can be more easily controlled. Examples of this issue from Edith Finch include that I backtracked along the road after approaching the house through the woods path so the dialog prompts played backwards for me, which was immersion breaking, and I snooped around the back of the house before trying the front door so I never saw whatever story was out front there. And that's all within the first 10 minutes or so of the game. These are the kinds of prices you pay for interactivity but I didn't see similar benefits.

It's worth noting that even though the game is very short and incredibly easy, and hasn't been on sale yet, just under a third of people on PSN who started it haven't finished it. A pretty large chunk of the audience appears to have gotten bored within the 90 minutes it takes to finish the game, and another third of players didn't even bother to find all the peepholes and telescopes.

Anyway, enough about Edith Finch. We disagree, and that's fine. However, I want to say that I highly recommend Night in the Woods. My thoughts on the game are here. I thought the art was gorgeous but even if you don't like the art, the music is also pretty special and that might be enough to carry you through the game aesthetically. But it's the writing that makes the game truly magnificent. I may not have liked the ending, but the journey there was unforgettable. Plus, you gotta go to the Snack Falcon! And the Ham Panther! There's a reason the Food Donkey couldn't compete you know. So modern!

The playstation trophies thing is not really a good argument. Pretty much every game has similar amounts of people not getting trophies very early on in the game (finish the prologue type trophies). I don`t know why so many people buy game and don`t finsh them, but having over two thirds of your players finish the game even if it is short is not too bad. Also I might be (I definetly am) a idiot, but I didn`t realize you could look through the peepholes until after I finished the game and checked out the trophy list.

I really enjoyed my time with Edith Finch, but I can see why it`s not for everyone. I have been pretty up and down on walking simulators myself. I really liked Gone Home, but despise Dear Esther. I liked the first 90% of Fire Watch, but thought the last 10% were terrible and kinda soured me on the game. I haven`t tried Night in the woods yet because the dialogue I have seen kinda turned me off the game, but so many people have reccomended it that I will definetly check it out sometime.