What Remains of Edith Finch: The Game About a Glowing Orb

Hello and welcome back to my blog, young whippersnappers!

Last week, I introduced my journey into the world of video game literature, and expressed my desire to explore new, unique games that I normally wouldn't think to pick up to experience new forms of stories within video games. Well, this week I played a unique game: What Remains of Edith Finch, and I'm here to tell you what I thought about it.

Let's go~

Last night, I finished playing through What Remains of Edith Finch. It is a relatively short (approx. 2-3 hours) game following the main character Edith Finch, as she travels back to her childhood home to discover the stories of her family members, who have all died due to a mysterious family curse. The story within this game is very intriguing. You can tell the developers spent a lot of time fleshing out the lives of each of the Finch family members, intertwining their stories and building suspense throughout the game until the final story, where Edith reveals the real reason why she is writing down the stories of all her ancestors. The game stands on its own as a work of literature, however it is sadly lacking in terms of game mechanic, to the point where What Remains of Edith Finch feels more like an interactive story-book than a video game.

Game-play mainly consists of the player controlling Edith as she explores her abandoned childhood home. The player is guided by glowing orbs of light and moving text that show the player what to inspect or where to go next. As Edith discovers each new family member's story, the player usually gets to play a sort of minigame, where they replay the events of that family member's death in a flashback. Each of these flashbacks was stylistically different, with one minigame even playing out in the form of a comic strip. My personal favorite flashback was Gus', where I got to control his kite to interact with the floating text that appeared as Edith narrated his story.

Flying Gus' kite into the text advances the story - an extremely creative game mechanic

These minigames are about the most exciting element of the game, and even then they are mostly point and click, which quickly grows boring. The majority of the game-play consists of simply walking around until you find a singular glowing orb that the developers intend you to click on to advance the story. The player has absolutely no choice in what order they discover the stories of each Finch family member, and the game requires little to no mental effort in terms of searching for clues. At some points, I felt like What Remains of Edith Finch became a game about looking for the next glowing orb. I was never required to use my brain to discover the secrets hidden within Edith Finch's house. I felt coddled to the point where I got tunnel-vision, only looking for glowing orbs and ignoring all other details within the game. This is extremely disappointing, because the game is beautifully designed and there are lots of little details for the player to discover to further flesh out each character, but they lose significance when the glowing orbs draw the player's attention only to the details that are accompanied by text.

Behold, the cursed glowing orb!

To me, games like this have very little replayability. There is nothing new to discover after the first play-through, and they garner little to no emotional investment from the player. I personally prefer games where the player has more autonomy and is expected to put in more effort piecing together the story, not simply spoon fed it in whatever order the developers want to give it to you. What Remains of Edith Finch works wonderfully in terms of interactive literature, but sadly falls short as a video game that is actually fun to play. I feel this game would have been much more fun as a puzzle game that rewards you with text for uncovering the little secrets about each Finch family member, immersing the player in the story. As it is now, the player feels a bit like an outsider, forced to follow the developers' intended path. Despite it's very well written story, at the end of the day, What Remains of Edith Finch felt more like a really good book with a splash of interactive art than a video game.

I believe every truly great video game lets every player have their own unique experience, even if they are still following a set path. When the player has the autonomy of using their intellect and making their own discoveries to immerse themselves in the story, the game becomes much more memorable and rewarding. That is the defining difference between interactive stories and true video games as literature.

Until next time~

ricecakerabbit