What Remains of Edith Finch (2017)

Roll Credits?: No

Surprised/Let Down/As Expected: Let Down

Favorite Mechanic or Narrative Moment: Exploring the house was a treat. It feels like such a unique, lived-in space that hides so many well hidden secrets. Really makes you want to go explore an old family cabin for a weekend and just take it all in. Also, the murder/comic/actress bit with the one sibling was great!

Least Favorite Thing: The story felt far too disconnected for me to get interested enough to continue on after the 4th vignette or so. It did feel that it was all building up to something, but I wasn't interested enough to push through and see what that was. This may have been do to the plodding controls and sluggish gameplay overall, but I do feel that playing on the Switch was a major contributor to making the game just feel bad to play. Will have to catch the ending on youtube at some point.

I really resent games/movies/books that rely on cheap tricks to spark emotions so that you think they're good or engaging.

My most hated of these techniques is setting up a bunch of interesting questions and then just glossing over them or at best, expecting the player/viewer to consume the media multiple times to invent "theories" as to why stuff is stuff. Usually, there just are no actual answers.

It's not hard to come up with interesting questions...coming up with interesting questions that have interesting answers is hard.

This game is a walking simulator, so very little game, but I went in expecting that and was fine with that, but if the story doesn't deliver, then I should probably have just taken a walk outside.

The reason I'm giving this 3 stars is because the ways the vignettes were presented were inventive and interesting. Particularly the way Lewis's story is laid out. I just wish there had been stronger thread holding it all together.

Well I enjoy every single one of the stories that was written in this storyline. I love the artwork. the wacky characters. The style and how it was played out. BUT the ending it was just way over AMBIGUOUS. So is there a curse? is everyone just that unlucky? just coincidences? Lots of questions. I suppose you could take from it that life is fleeting and we should just enjoy the time that we have here but it's kind of hard to do that when you see all the salty sadness that happened to many of the characters....well it was a quick play and was free. I just wish the story was more developed.

Full 3 stars

"What Remains of Edith Finch" is not properly a game, it's an interactive story - a short movie that can be enjoyed in a single sitting and replayed to find more and more things you might have missed at a first glance.

With a painstaking attention to detail, it's hard to catch everything at a first glance and, even more, understand the underlying themes that branch out in a myriad directions and touch on things most people are all too familiar with: grieving, loss, trauma, coping and mental issues.

It was hard to play, harder even to finish, to be fairly honest and the entire reason stems from the Finches themselves.

"What Remains of Edith Finch" is also not a story about the supernatural. It's a game that can - and for some sensibilities, like mine, WILL - induce anger and a sense of dread and sadness that will last for the entire gameplay.

I will probably write my theories and expand upon what I think of the game's message in another piece - just to leave this review spoiler-less.

Similar to games like "Gone Home" and "Fire Watch," this game introduces you as a character returning to your childhood home to finally determine what actually happened during those years and why. It's a quiet, slow-moving game that takes you through multiple tales weaved together as part of the great Finch family, and explains how things went wrong over the course of numerous decades.

Story

You play as Edith, returning to your colossal childhood home out in the woods, to determine why you are the only remaining Finch left of the family. As you begin exploring the house, room by room, you will learn fascinating, humorous, and deeply tragic stories of what has become of many of your relatives, both ones you have met and ones from years and decades before you. As you go further and further in the house, you also learn more about yourself, your perceived views as a child, and where you stand now.

Gameplay

For most of the game, you walk and interact with objects. You will solve different puzzles and clues in order to make those stories progress, with those puzzles sometimes being a "mini game" and other times, just solving a situation. There's little action beyond that, you won't be interacting with everything in the spaces and you follow a very linear path that only lets you open one room/story as a time, so you can piece it all together as part of the larger narrative.

Overall

This is a good game for killing a few hours to quietly enjoy the story and interact with puzzle elements, and enjoy the music and sounds. While the story is not "horror," there are a few elements in the storytelling that can be considered horrifying in terms of tragedy and death, so keep in mind that the story can be very dark and heavy.

What a fantastic game, truly a work of art. I’d been meaning to play it for quite a while, and I regret not having done it sooner, especially considering how short it is (it’s basically the length of a movie). What Remains of Edith Finch is an emotional, deeply immersive game, both aesthetically and narratively. From the moment you start playing, you are instantly drawn into this parallel world which uses your actions to tell a story that is masterfully crafted and intelligently interwoven. Even though it can be considered a slow paced game, there isn’t one second throughout the entire experience I could consider dull, since it leads you to tell its tale through ton of different, creative ways. I found myself glued on to the screen the whole time, and my only wish is that I could’ve extended my stay in the Finch residence a little longer.

Recommend it to everyone. Especially if you're able to get it through a subscription service or some sort of deal (it is very short), it’s a no brainer. For what it is, it’s a solid 8.5/10 in my book.

legit the worst game and waste of time i have ever done, this game was painfully boring, the story is not interesting and full of strange things that doesnt make sense, the characters are as uninteresting as it gets the tedious walking sections forced slow walking made me bored to tears, i rage quit this game 10 mins before it end because i kept walking to this queen and it was so bad.

Awful game, i know its walking simulator but Firewatch was interesting at the least, this was a massive waste of time even two hours, terrible game. I will never understand how this game is rated so highly, whats amazing about it?

Gameplay: 4/5 Story: 4/5 Presentation: 4.5/5

Basis:

Story= plot progression, intrigue, characters, world

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

The minimalism and yet the intricacy of the story and environment is so engaging. I love every moment of my experience throughout the game. There was never a dull moment, unlike other walking sims where you could be wandering for 5 minutes without any plot progression. If my only mechanic is movement and small interactions at least make it progress the story.

The story takes you on a rollercoaster ride of emotions through. The majority of the time though the feel is either eerie or sad. I highly recommend this game. Not very puzzle intensive like other walking sims. Just a casual exploration that reveals many mysteries.

I haven't been playing games much in the last couple months since I didn't have a comfortable place to sit. After two months of waiting, the new recliner I ordered is finally coming in on Saturday. I am planning to finish off Okami HD and then move on to the rest of my backlog!

I have also begun my quest of playing through all of the core Zelda games with my five year old daughter. We are almost done with the original Legend of Zelda on the NES. She is really liking it, but keeps complaining that Link does not look like he does in the later games.

My wife and I are playing What Remains of Edith Finch together. What a wacky game!

Finally, here is a shot of my game collection after I recently reorganized.

Simple but powerful. This hit me harder than I expected it to. The storytelling was wonderful and I am glad that I picked this up.

Also, if you are planning to pick this up, also consider playing The Unfinished Swan. Not only because it is another great game from Giant Sparrow, but for additional reasons I won't dive too deeply into for fear of minor spoilers related to What Remains of Edith Finch.