What Remains of Edith Finch
Winner of Best Game at the 2018 BAFTA Game Awards, as well as Best Narrative awards at the GDC 2018 Choice Awards, 2018 SXSW Gaming Awards, and The Game Awards 2017, What Remains of Edith Finch is a collection of strange tales about a family in Washington state.
As Edith, you’ll explore the colossal Finch house, searching for stories as she explores her family history and tries to figure out why she’s the last one in her family left alive. Each story you find lets you experience the life of a new family member on the day of their death, with stories ranging from the distant past to the present day.
The gameplay and tone of the stories are as varied as the Finches themselves. The only constants are that each is played from a first-person perspective and that each story ends with that family member’s death.
Ultimately, it’s a game about what it feels like to be humbled and astonished by the vast and unknowable world around us.
Created by Giant Sparrow, the team behind the first-person painting game The Unfinished Swan.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a first-person exploration game. The player explores the Finch house and surrounding wilderness through a linear series of rooms, footpaths and secret crawlspaces. Players are guided through the house by expository voice narration from Edith Finch, her words visually displayed to the player as part of the scene to direct the player’s attention. Through the house they encounter a series of memorials to deceased relatives. Players make progress by interacting with these shrines and experiencing vignettes of the relative’s death. Each flashback varies in gameplay genre and visual style.
What Remains of Edith Finch Review
I genuinely think that this game includes possibly the best sequence of any game I’ve ever played.
I’m not expecting that this game is going to convert people who use the term ‘walking simulator’ derogatorily in to believers. Despite having moments where it has more ‘actual gameplay’ than is typical, it’s very much of that genre. But it is – in my opinion – the gold standard among games of this ilk.
The game tells a sombre story of a family that believes they are cursed. As Edith returns to her old family home, she explores the now abandoned rooms, and reminisces about the people who lived in them. Through this exploration, the overarching narrative is experienced through a series of vignettes, which are all intriguing in their own right.
One of these vignettes in particular – which I don’t intend on spoiling – incorporates player control as a storytelling device in a way that merely watching the story unfold would not be able to convey. Previously my prime example of this would have been a moment from Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, but I think Edith Finch has surpassed that for me.
As pretentious as it may sound, I think these types of moments are the best arguments for video games as their own form of art. In that they convey a profound message to a player in a way that is unique to the medium, and does not borrow from more well established artforms.
If this game looks at all interesting to you, I would heartily recommend it. I doubt you will be disappointed.
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