What Remains of Edith Finch (hereafter “Edith Finch“) is a narrative video game that reveals its layers slowly as the player moves forward in a windy path through the house of the Finch family. Developed by Giant Sparrow in 2017, the game won over lovers of intricate narratives, as evidenced by their win in the Best Narrative category in the 2017 Game Awards. The game is rated for teenage players and older. But I suspect that the story would resonate the most for an older audience, especially players who can both feel nostalgia at Edith’s homecoming and understand the fear and grief of losing family members to tragedy. Edith Finch is available on all major consoles (Xbox, PlayStation, Switch), but I played on PC.
Edith Finch is able to create such a compelling narrative because of the fact that its core mechanic — “walking” — is so limiting for the player. With no other options, they player must place all of their focus on the story that unfolds in front of them. The narrow set of mechanics also heightens the player’s sense of observation and encourages them to look at the embedded narrative pieces littered along the path. The game also never explains anything, not even the controls. While this maximizes the fun through discovery for the player, this only works without inflicting frustration on the player because there are so few actions to learn.
To guide the player along the path of exploration, one central mechanic ties together loose pieces of information: the family tree. This family tree is actually available from the second the game begins, in the pause screen. Players may stumble into the pause screen during an interaction with a prop. For example, I had pressed the Esc key to try and put it down, which ended up pulling up the pause menu. An eagle-eyed player may notice that the birth and death years are present for many members of the family. And upon closer inspection, they might also notice that many members of the family died when they were extremely young. If players didn’t recognize this mechanic on their own, the game also opens the book for the player once a family member’s story has been viewed in order to draw a portrait next to their name. This mechanic quickly establishes the dynamic of mystery; the goal of the game is framed as synthesizing all the scattered pieces of information to draw a complete picture of the Finch family tree and figure out why so many family members died so young. This dynamic ensures that players feel the full fun of discovering new things. Every breadcrumb of information becomes deeply satisfying to the player because it’s building towards this goal.
Edith Finch also thoroughly utilizes embedded narrative pieces. In fact, there are pieces available to the player from the very onset of the game. Before Edith even enters the house, there is a missing poster for Milton on the ground. After that, the glowing white dot encourages players to interact with different objects in the house to learn more about the family. Importantly, the optional interactions provide secondary information about the family members, primarily acting to deepen the empathetic link with the Finch family. Main plot points are only revealed through narration at predefined points the player must walk through, so they can never miss critical pieces of the narrative.
The story utilizes the platform of a video game to its full advantage to deliver an enacted narrative. The game shows Edith using the family’s key to unlock secret compartments, which places the player as the primary actor that moves the story forward. Enacting is also used to fully immerse into the family members’ stories. Instead of recounting Molly’s story through words on the page, the player is literally sucked into Molly’s dreams, experiencing the world as a cat, eagle, shark, and tentacle monster. This experience is also enhanced by the lack of initial set of actions. As the cat, the player moves faster and gains the ability to jump between branches. Playing as a cat is not unprecedented in other games, but in Edith Finch, the player can noticeably feel this difference because Edith’s normal walking speed is so slow. This creates a surprising amount of fantastical fun even with a fairly tame system.
Edith Finch sets itself apart from other “walking simulators” in its class because of the variety of experiences it provides. Each family member’s story is unique in its presentation and gameplay, which prevents the classic objection claiming the genre to be boring and repetitive.
Violence is not absent in Edith Finch. During Molly’s dream, the player hunts down, kills, and eats different animals. However, what distinguishes the violence found in Edith Finch is how peaceful the rest of the game is. In context, the short violent act stands out more from the rest of the game. This paints the violent dream as a metaphorical representation of Molly’s tumultuous mental state instead of portraying violence as something that is inherently present in the medium. The infrequency of violence amplifies its meaning, which lends itself better as a tool to underline the tragedies that befell the Finch family.
