Overview: For this critical play, I explored Dear Esther, a narrative-driven exploration game developed by The Chinese Room. The game is available on multiple platforms, including PC and console, and is designed for players who enjoy atmospheric storytelling and immersive environments rather than traditional gameplay objectives. Dear Esther primarily targets adults and older teens who appreciate slower-paced experiences and are interested in games that focus on narrative and emotional impact rather than over the top action.
Experience: Honestly, my experience with Dear Esther was pretty underwhelming. I spent a good amount of time wandering around, looking for something to do or some kind of goal, only to realize that there really isn’t one. I kept expecting the game to give me some direction, but it never did, and that got frustrating fast.
On the positive side, the graphics are gorgeous. The environment and visuals do a great job of setting the mood, and it’s actually pretty relaxing just walking around and taking it all in. But from a design perspective, there were a few things that really bugged me. For starters, there are a bunch of paths that look like they go somewhere important, but they just lead to dead ends. There’s no clear indication of where you’re supposed to go, so I kept getting lost or stuck, which pulled me out of the experience.
The narrator’s text is super vague and cryptic, which made it hard for me to actually follow the story. I didn’t even realize I was supposed to be a grieving husband until I looked it up later. I think it would’ve helped a lot if the game gave a little more context at the beginning, or at least some hint about what’s going on.
Another thing that threw me off was the sound. I played the first part of the game in complete silence because I didn’t know I was supposed to have my speakers or headphones on. Once I finally turned on the sound, it was way more immersive-the music and ambient noises definitely add a lot. But by that point, I was already kind of bored and not super invested.
Overall, Dear Esther nails the atmosphere, but the lack of direction and the super ambiguous storytelling just didn’t work for me. I think if the game had given me a bit more context or a clearer sense of what I was supposed to be doing, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. As it was, I just felt kind of lost and disconnected the whole time. I only played the game for a max of 40 minutes before I started to get really bored.
Ethics:
In section, my team and I played the role play game where we are bears attempting to steal an artifact. Our round of playing the game was very tame and we actually didn’t use any violence at all when playing. Only after hearing how other teams experienced, I realized that we didn’t use our claws and jaws to our advantage. I think that this is partially due to how our game master approached the game. She was very level headed which influenced the rest of us to stay calm as well. In terms of the narrative, it was much funner because we had control of what would happen next. WHereas for the walking game, the narrative wasn’t very engaging and remained open ended most of the time. It didn’t necessarily invoke any emotions and wasn’t violent at all whatsoever. I feel like at times, humans can have an innate violence. However my team and I had a completely different outlook as since the game didn’t necessarily clearly state that violence could be used, so we took a more tame approach.
I assume that Dear Esther can be interpreted as violent since there are themes of suicide and grief embedded within the storytellling. However, the game didnt come off as violent to me at all. The game we played in class also didnt come off as violent to me as well, maybe because my outlook is usually more positve. I did not understand that was the premise of the game until I searched it up, and the designers did a good job in conceling it subtly. Overall, I’ve come to the conclusion that for games that are more open ended, it’s up to the player to interpret how violent it is.
