What Remains of Edith Finch

There are times when games can be called experiences and this is one of them. What Remains of Edith Finch has one of the best stories of recent memory for me as well as one of the best imagined worlds I have every seen. At it’s core this is a walking simulator where you explore a house to find out the history of various family members. That doesn’t do this game justice though. Each family member has it’s own type of game to it when you are experiencing their final moments. For instance for Barbara you are literally in the comic book you are reading and watch things unfold on the page. For Lewis you are working at a canning plant and have to keep up with chopping fish as you explore his invented world he is getting lost in. There are others I could mention but will stop there to just say that the variety and inventiveness of the flashbacks blew me away. This is what walking sims can be and should strive to be. The game doesn’t point you where to go next but at the same time makes it apparent. The graphics were well done and made good use of colour. The detail on plants; objects; and water were great. The voice acting was superb throughout as was the music. I played What Remains of Edith Finch on Linux using Wine. It never crashed on me and I didn’t notice any bugs or glitches. There was a v-sync toggle; four AA settings; and six other graphics options. Alt-Tab didn’t work. The game saves automatically at various points. A manual save system would have been nice but the spacing between auto saves wasn’t terrible. Performance was overall very good. There were some drops in frame rate but they only lasted a second or two and otherwise was well above 60. The game does seem to have a frame rate cap of 120 FPS but that is better than some games using the Unreal engine that have a cap of 60.

Walking simulators are usually unappealing to me. But something about this title was very alluring. When you first set foot in the game, you’re almost instantly hooked into a remarkable story. The narrative is delivered in really creative ways. You mainly play as Edith who’s returned to her family home to learn more about the supposed curse that surrounded all her ancestor’s deaths. Each story is delivered in a unique way. Some through the eyes of children and wild imaginations leading to playing as animals, others through the eyes of grown-ups dealing with traumas. The gameplay isn’t a setback as is the case with some walking simulators. The narrative is so captivating you almost forget how bare it is. You move the analogue stick or press RT every now and then to interact with something. You’ll climb, walk, chop fish heads off, take pictures and even swim or fly at times. It finds ways to add new diversity to navigation and storytelling. Each room and portion of the house is almost treated like a different level, in part because each room you visit embodies each family members personality in some way. Some rooms have photos and taxidermized animals for a hunter, another room has trophies and awards for a particular family member who was a child star. It’s this diversity that helps keep things fresh as you play. Visually the game looked great and the UI or icons weren’t obtrusive. Things were kept simple yet obvious enough to guide you through. It felt very eery playing this game. I was uneasy & constantly expecting a jump scare. This is where they did really well to hook you in and make you feel like you were experiencing the same feelings that Edith was when she exploring the home. I didn’t have high expectations for this, although my expectations weren’t low either, but I’m certainly glad I added this to my completion list. The narrative is amusing and gut wrenching. By the end of the story I felt myself longing for more and saddened by the end.

What Remains of Edith Finch is a story-driven game sharing Edith Finch's journey into her family's mysterious and unfortunate past. The game is split between exploring her family home and interactive vignettes of her family members' passing. These vignettes are the highlight of the game, and the best ones present some of the most creative interactive storytelling seen in games. The story is well-written and interesting, though I found it too ambiguous on certain key plot points, which diluted the potential message and the experience of the game. The main drawback will be how passive and slow paced the game gets in certain points. Further, even the best vignettes are limited in their interactivity and the game will often seem more like an interactive movie. I think with the game's short but sweet length, and the quality of the interactive scenes, this isn't a big issue but it will not be an experience that everyone will enjoy. The visuals and audio are evocative, and well placed to enhance the mood of the various environments you'll experience. The game can be finished in a couple of hours, which I'd take as a positive considering the strength of the story, but it might not be for everyone, especially at full price. Note that the game deals with dark and disturbing themes, including the death of children.

The stories are pretty shallow, there is only one or two that stand out and really draw you in. Most of them can be transcribed in 1 sentence... The controls are below average. It only takes 2-3h to finish it. Not a lot of things to like in this game.

It was a very unique experience for me. I have never played a "walking simulator" before, didn't even know that such a genre exist. The thing is, it's hardly a game - more of a FPP video that lets you to explore it in your own pace, but not giving you meaningful choices. There is a path that you must follow. After you get to know the stories, they give you a lot of answers but also leave many questions. I didn't like some of them (Walter), but most were engaging and surprising. After finishing the game (and I think that it should not be longer than 2-3 hours it really is) I read quite a lot of threads on forums with many discussions and interpretations of the stories. The game left me thinking about it long after I finished it and it's a feature that not many titles have to offer.