amok: I don't agree. I did not really care that much about the story as such as all, though it was good in its own way. I liked Gone Home for daring to do something new with the medium, and as an experiment in implicit narrative it is really well made and very good.
AndyBuzz: That's actually my biggest gripe on this game. You can argue until you are blue in the face about the story, tech and visuals, different tastes and expectations and stuff, but the subject of innovation is rather more objectively defined. So what the fuck did this game dared to do new? Where the devs took a chance, tried to innovate? They played it as safe as it gets. It's the care-bear of game development.
Why do people conjure up praise out of thin air? Why you try to present the game as groundbreaking high art?
or just make a good game? so far non reviewers I know have actually called it a good game. Good engine, yes, good physics and the environmental destruction is very well implemented, but is there actually a good game in there?
sorry, I misunderstood. You meant Gone Home. They experimented with narrative structures. Most of the narratives in Gone Home is told implicitly, as opposed to explicitly as in most games. You could argue that video games as a medium is the only medium very implicit narrative can drive the narrative completely, still most do it explicitly. There are in fact several narratives in Gone Home, not just the main on, but they are implicitly told, and quite a lot of the main narrative also. You can say that the narrative in itself is quite 'care-bear", but the delivery was experimental.
As an experiment in explicit narrative it worked very well, and I have seen several developers taking note of it and discussing ways of implementing more implicit narratives in games, which I think is a good way forward. This is a game which already have had an impact on game development on future games.
