What Remains of Edith Finch is an adventure (walking simulator) video game developed by an American Studio called Giant Sparrow. It was published in 2017 and received exceptionally positive review from the audience. The game was inspired by another walking-simulator game published in 2013 named Gone Home, in which player as the protagonist goes back to her old house to discover the mysteries about her own family. However, What Remains of Edith Finch takes it to another level by its rich and intriguing story and innovative and emotional gameplay mechanics.
Story (Without spoiler)
There is a curse for the Finch’s family: all but one child of each generation die, leaving a sole child to continue the family. The great-great-grandfather of Edith Finch, Odin tried to escape the curse by moving away from Norway to America with his house and only daughter, Edie, and her family. However, he encountered storm near the shore of America. Odin sank with the house while Edie and her family get on the shore to build a new house. Believing that she had escaped the curse, she gave birth to many children. But the curse continued. The member of Finch’s family died one by one in the most unusual way.
Edith’s mother, Dawn, insisted to take Edith away from the house after her husband died. Edie stayed in the house and passed away on the next day at the age of 93. 6 years later, Dawn died of an unknown disease. Before she passed away, she gave Edith Finch the key to the old house.
As the only one left in the family, the protagonist, Edith Finch, went back to her old family house. She explored the abandoned house room by room and uncover the reason and beautiful stories behind each death. (Partly excerpted from Wikipedia)
The overall theme of the stories are “the unnatural death”. However, from the narrator’s perspective, these death stories do not seem terrifying or sorrow. They are mixed or covered with other emotions such as bravery, taste of fame, dream come true, love or happiness. It can echo with audience with similar experiences.
Gameplay
The game uses an innovative way to combine narrative and gameplay: the floating text caption. As player explores a certain environmental object, the narrator will “explain” the meaning in the background, and caption will appear in game as 3D words. This serves multiple function. Firstly, it lets the player focus on the “right” object. Secondly, it leads the player hand in hand when he is exploring the house. Finally, player can sometimes interact with these words physically, resulting in unexpected visual effects.
Besides this, each story has its unique and out-of-the-box gameplay mechanic. For example, in the first story, player will read a diary of a 10-year-old girl named Molly Finch. Then player will become Molly to experience the story. Molly was so hungry at one night and her mother didn’t let her go out of the room. So she ate every edible things in her room. However, the story didn’t just stop here. After she ate everything, she was still hungry. She then saw a bird outside the window. She opened the window and “suddenly become a cat”.
She caught and ate the bird and then became an owl; ate the rabbit and became a shark; ate the seal and became a monster. Finally as a monster she went back to her room and saw herself sleeping on the bed.
The story never explicitly explains the reason for the death of Molly Finch. However, it successfully settles the mysterious and slightly creepy atmosphere for the game. Besides, it also shaped a child character with wild imagination, making the death less sorrow and more intriguing.
Another example is my favourite story in the game, the story of Lewis Finch. Lewis Finch worked in a fish cannery factory. His only job was to grab fish and cut down their head. Because of the boredom of his job, he started to develop an imagination of himself being a character in video game. As for the gameplay, player needs to use mouse the move the fish and arrow keys to control the character in his imagination.
His imagination grew stronger and stronger. At first it was a 2D black and white game. He was the lovable prince of the kingdom. Then it became 3D, and then first person. That’s when he realised it was all in his imagination. He was still in the factory, doing the most mundane job in the world. In the end, he made the decision to let his imagination completely took over himself. He walked up the stairs in his imaginary, prepared to be crowned by the queen. When he bowed down his head, the knife came down. He ended his own life.
The mechanic suits the story perfectly. Together they effectively conveyed the emotion of immersed in one’s illusion. Besides, the transformation of his imagination from 2D to 3D, then to highly realistic 3D FPS, also echoes with the development of video game industry.
Reception
The game was critically acclaimed and won several important awards including Best Narrative in The Game Awards 2017 and Best Narrative in Game Developer Choice Awards 2018.
Final Word
This was the game that inspired me to start my own game development journey. Although I have played a lot of other excellent video games through out the year, and many of them have great ideas, longer play time, and are more entertaining, What Remains of Edith Finch is the one I will always come back to. It is like an old house, strange and familiar at the same time. There is just too much of it, like a smile with too many teeth.