When I began playing “What Remains of Edith Finch,” I knew that it was a walking sim and expected that narrative and discovery would both be types of fun that I would experience. The type of fun that I didn’t realize I would experience was sensation. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the game mechanics were not simply walking around with the occasional simple interaction with objects. Throughout the game, there were all of these secret passageways that were very fun to discover and interact with. There were also constant POV shifts that put me in the shoes of someone new and allowed me to feel what it felt like to be them through auditory and visual elements. It was definitely very different from simply walking around a normal house.
While reading the paper titled “Worlds at our fingertips. Reading (in) What Remains of Edith Finch,” I found it interesting how the author pointed out that the themes of “death and its inescapability” are unique themes in Edith Finch when compared to other video games. The author writes that these are common themes in other literary works, but video games normally focus on the idea that through the mastery of in-game skills, death can be avoided. This makes me wonder, is it more uncomfortable for people to face the theme of the inescapability of death through playing a video game than it is when faced with it through reading a book or watching a movie? For me personally, I felt like the first person nature of Edith Finch made the story extra creepy and made me confront my own mortality more so than stories in other mediums that involve death. Also, do people generally want to be confronted so harshly with their own mortality in this way? At times, the game made me feel very uncomfortable, so it is definitely not something I would have played to relax during a lazy evening.
The author also describes how Lewis’s story shows how his attention is split between his monotonous real world on the right side of the screen and his imagined world on the left side of the screen. I thought that this was not only an interesting way to tell a story in the way that the author described, but also shows an interesting way of potentially helping players better understand what mental illness might look like. It is one thing to read or hear about the experiences mentally ill people have, but it is another to embody a mentally ill person yourself. I took a class at Stanford called “Virtual People” in which my classmates and I tried some virtual reality experiences that put us in the shoes of others, such as people with autism, incarcerated people, and other minority groups. While I think these virtual reality experiences helped me better understand those groups of people and what they experienced by allowing me to see and hear what they see and sometimes hear some of their inner thoughts, I think that Lewis’s fantastical imaginary world added another layer of understanding that I had for him. His imaginary world may not have been scientifically accurate to the mental condition he was experiencing, but it helped me grasp the internal struggle that he was having. This makes me wonder whether these experiences that strive to help people understand the lives of others may also benefit from incorporating fantastical elements, even if they are not completely “real” or “true.”
What I found most interesting about your commentary is the idea of exploring death. I don’t know what the right answer to this, but a lot of games do gloss over the idea of death in a game (you can revive to a spawn point, reset progress, etc). However, this was one of the first games that explored death – albeit often poking fun. I’m also curious about the presentation of death in games and whether people want to / enjoy exploring this idea and how.
Hey Rachel, loved your thoughtful response. What you mention about this game not being the type of game you’d like to play on a Sunday afternoon makes me think about how important it is for players to know what they are getting into when playing this game. As someone who started playing the game without knowing much about it, I was very surprised about the type of experience I was having where I was also thinking about my own mortality. I can see how it can be helpful for some as you mention, but the player certainly has to want to experience and learn from the dark scenes and themes of the game.
Hi Rachel, thank you for an insightful response. I also felt surprised about the depth of the game despite it being a “walking simulator”. I think death is a very unsettling theme. We are learning more about the fate of characters who have all passed away. We know at the end of it, they are going to die which makes it even more sad to witness.