What Remains of Edith Finch

It really does a good job of telling its story. Whether you consider it a game is your problem.

This game tells amazing stories but it is the way in which it tells them that sets this game apart. It is very creative, fresh and stimulating to play through it, also it is very well designed in the way that I never got lost or went the wrong way. The designers have really succeeded in making a game that intuitively shows you were to go while also keeping the game feeling alive.

One segment of "What Remains of Edith Finch" best exemplifies how at odds I am with the wide acclaim this game gets. A number of reviewers call that segment imaginative, emotional, a high point. As for me, I cannot help calling it inappropriate, insensitive, abysmal. Yes, I'm talking about "Gregory's Story". Gregory is one of the tragically-departed members of a seemingly cursed family. You play the game from their viewpoints as each one moves toward his/her doom, with a voice-over narration giving some perspective about it. The special thing about Gregory is that he's a baby, which makes his death all the more gruesome. However, the game makes matters worse with its baffling way of sweetening the horror: while the player is asked to make Gregory progress towards his inescapable fate in a playful way, the voice-over assumes that he's been spared from agony by his own imagination. I doubt I've ever seen such a misplaced, exploitative use of the cliché about that "fantasy world" innocent babies supposedly create for themselves. The so-called "sensitivity" about death and tragedy and loss displayed throughout the game appears here as an artificiality built upon questionable storytelling tricks. That is just the worst-advised segment of a game so plagued by clumsiness as a whole, I can hardly understand how it could have been received so well. As a walking simulator, it tries to stand out by switching viewpoints, and gameplays as well, since each victim's story has its own gameplay. The execution of such an intriguing principle turns out to be a letdown, yielding a mishmash of mini-games of uneven quality, where some really nice ideas (e.g. one where you have to play asynchronously with your left and right hand, in an ominous progression) meet some terrible choices, messy controls, ugly use of the first-person perspective. All in all, I find myself unable to rate this game higher than "mediocre", and adding its questionable narration draws it even lower in my opinion.

The short stories are generally pretty fun, and I'll probably play a few of them again - I particularly enjoyed the baby one and the fish guy one (I've forgotten their names). Others were less impressive. Ultimately, I was disappointed after playing this game. It did not feel like the "masterpiece" that had been described to in other reviews. And with just 2 hours playtime, I felt like I could have gotten nearly as much out of the game watching a video walkthrough. There was some high points, but there wasn't enough to make me recommend it outright.

Actually, initially I was pretty much sceptical about a "yet another walking sim", but after 10 or 15 minutes in the game I realised that it had something particular inside. I must admit that this one has surpassed any other game of this type. The game is a profoundly touching experience. Also, it has a pretty easter egg tied to The Unfinished Swan, the former game of the studio.