Gaming: What Remains of Edith Finch
I never thought I could finish a game which is completely linear, has hardly any interaction necessary, hardly any riddles, no fighting. What Remains of Edith Finch taught be differently. And it is amazing.
A friend recently pointed me at a blog about casual games, and surprisingly I found two games I have played on the list: Firewatch and The Witness. One of the other games on the list was What Remains of Edith Finch. This games was lurking in my Steam library for quite some time, and I realized I actually started playing it long ago, but only for a few minutes, before having given up, back then. What a failure I realized!
The games plays completely in the now deserted house of the family Finch. The youngest member of the family returns with a key to the house and uncovers the stories of her family. This is about all that is happening in the game. And it is so well done that I couldn’t stop playing (wouldn’t it be for my daughter interrupting me), and leaves you with the feeling to replay as soon as possible. The graphics are very well done, beautiful scenery, lots of love to details. The story progresses by walking (completely linearly) through the house, and text fragments appearing around you, telling part of the story, small hints, little secrets, everything that makes up a tangible set of family memories.
Exploring the house filled with locked rooms sealed as shrines for the deceased members of the family, Edith uncovers one by one the final moments of her family members, a family seemingly cursed. In these stories the player dives into the world and playing the role of the family members, re-living events of the past.
As I wrote in the beginning – don’t expect fights, don’t expect riddles, but be prepared for an emotional roller coaster, for a deep dive into a well written family history with lots of weird twists. An absolute great game with a playing time of around 2h.
Cheers Norbert, i’m sure you will appreciate ‘vanishing of ethan carter’ too, one of the best ‘walking simulator’.
About ‘what remains …’ it’s a game you’ll never forgot thanks to his versatile narrative gameplay (the bath scene was excellent). But the mansion itself, i’d like a free roaming through this incredible house now the game has told everything.
Hi,
Thanks for the recommendation, I will surely check out Ethan Carter. And yes, the bath scene was fun. I think that was the most difficult part in the game, but lots of fun! Yeah, free roaming would be nice, that is actually a good idea they should have put in.
Did you play this via Wine/Proton? Is it running well? I am always reluctant to buy Windows games, but this seems to be interesting as I enjoyed Firewatch and Kona.
Yes I played it on Linux, no problem whatsoever. I not even realized that it is running in wine 😉 BTW, I usually check the proton database, the information there is quite good.