Game Memorial

Posted on August 4, 2012 by Arantor

Day 4 of New Beginnings Month, and in fine alphabetic tradition, we move onto D - and today's 'D' game is 'Dear Esther'. I gather there's some history to this game though I have no idea what it is, it looked interesting.

Before we begin...
I'm starting at the New Game screen, liking how beautiful the game looks, but I'm already confused.

There are 4 chapters to the game, The Lighthouse, The Buoy, The Caves and The Beacon, and I'm confused why it's telling me this; from the style of the art and music, I'm *already* - a few seconds in - getting a vibe of Myst off the game. So why give me any hints ahead of the game as to the story or its length, or indeed anything? Anyway, I digress, as The Lighthouse is the only part I can actually click on, so let's start at the start.

So I'm facing a lighthouse, and get a little caption and a voiceover telling me the story - as if it were something of a letter addressed to the titular Esther, about how the writer (you) was caught in a shipwreck and nearly died but somehow washed ashore.

And sure enough there's a Myst vibe. I'm left at the shoreline. No guide as to the controls, no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. The sad part is that I find that less irritating than the nonsense I got with Cargo! yesterday - Cargo gave me vague and not-overly-helpful hints about what I was supposed to be doing, Dear Easter gives me nothing. I'm left to explore the world in my own fashion, even down to the controls.

They're pretty straightforward and obvious - WASD to move, mouse to turn, left click to examine - and I can move around fairly clearly like that. But I have no idea what I'm doing.

First up, I'm curious to see what happens in the water - not having an obvious swim function, or a jump function (which usually substitutes for swim) and it's not long before I find myself in inky blackness, and about long enough after I enter the blackness that I'd pass out and die, there's a voice saying 'Come back to me'... and I'm back where I started.

So the game doesn't want me to die, that's interesting. But the world has more to offer, I'm sure. At the shoreline, I see the ruins of my boat, but I can't do anything with it, not even pick up the box that's in it which looks like it might be interesting... OK, so onwards and upwards, there's the lighthouse, and even at a distance it looks rundown and decrepit - and abandoned, which is not a good state for a lighthouse.



Exploring the house and a nice touch happens - it seems we're carrying a torch, though I had no idea that was the case, but we are - and it comes on automatically. Actually at this point I should mention the graphics.

I'm exploring the lighthouse buildings, and I can walk around and see the level of detail in there. It looks abandoned but I can examine it in far more depth than most games of this type - even compared to the likes of Myst, and I'm definitely getting more Myst vibes from this!

So I'm going through the house, looking at the decrepitude, the rusty toilet bowl and sink, the numerous rusty paint tins, even a book on the table whose title I can make out. Some serious effort went into this.



That said, the quality of detail stands up to scrutiny in most places, there are several places where it doesn't stand up, like the plants in the boat and the windows up close - it just doesn't look too hot up close, even if it looks great from a distance.



I can see I'm not getting up to the top of the lighthouse - no wonder it's not lit, the staircase is missing the bottom 7 feet or so. But I'm still not seeing what there is to do here, and nothing I can interact with, so I guess it's a walk along the cliffside now as that's the only direction I can go in.

I should add at this point, the sound is definitely doing its job. Mostly up to this point I've been outside with the wind and the rain and sea, but now I'm indoors and given a distinct set of clanking noises related to a run-down house. It's actually pretty creepy.

As I walk up the cliffside, I'm definitely treated to some nice views, but some slightly ropey terrain handling - there's a point where there are some steps, but I'm not going down the steps in steps, it's effectively treated as a ramp, so it feels more like a glide, and for all the realism I've been treated to so far, it is definitely jarring.



More cliff walking, and I get a little more story, presumably about Esther, as a child and a propensity to be noisy, and then some more story about people carving lines in the cliff to indicate a problem, suggests to me that whoever is here, if anyone, they're very ill and that I shouldn't really be here.

Right now, I have the same sinking feeling I had when I first encountered Myst: I'm in a land and expected to figure out the rules but I have only bits of a story as well as bits of the world lore and I really need more information if I'm going to do anything other than walk around and around. Oh, and some ability to interact with the world would be nice.

The more I walk around, the more I'm pondering the fragments I've heard so far and what I've seen. Certainly there's the feeling that I'm ill as a character - not only the mention about the lines in the rock but I also saw chemical formulae on the wall of the lighthouse. I also think something is very wrong here, as I get another hint of the shipwreck... apparently it had antacid yoghurt on board and there are no gulls or goats to eat it. This island is a mystery - and yet it feels familiar somehow - if the book in the house is to be believed, this is an island in the Hebrides, which is not so far from where I live.

The more I walk, the more hints I get, mentions of a Paul, of going to meet him and him going mad, of the narrator unable to stomach food - standing stones, more formulae. This is a strange place.



OK, after climbing down a cliff, seemingly into darkness, I'm given a bit more exposition. There's been a car crash, the narrator went looking for where it happened. I can only surmise that one of the people mentioned already was killed - Esther?

Following my feet onwards and I find a bay with the remains of at least three ships, which given what I just learned seems even more incongruous.

More wandering... my supposition seems to have been correct, though now we get onto kidney stones and somehow that's a metaphor for the island.

Wider thoughts
Time to stop. The game's had an hour of my time, give or take, and I have more questions than I do answers.

I get the impression that the game is set up like this deliberately - that it's about exploring the world and not really interacting with it, but there's only so much I can infer from what I've seen thus far, and the snippets of text and accompanying voiceover. I don't know that much about the story, there's certainly more to come, but the slow, almost stilted way of revealing the story is interesting as a delivery mechanism but I'm not sure it's what I really like in the game.

There is the inevitable comparison to Myst; Myst was driven by you exploring the world and revealing how the world - and story - work by your exploration and limited interaction. Dear Esther on the other hand appears to be more meta in concept; that you wind your way through life and the things that happen, happen almost irrespective of the decisions you make. I get the impression that's the feel the game is going for.

I'll probably play it again, but I suspect I'm going to want an afternoon or several free to go through the game - fast paced it is not (and there's no apparent run ability). It certainly is very atmospheric, though, even with the things I mentioned before.

On Steam for the usual $10 or so.