Dear Esther Hits It Big

[Ralen-Sharr]

I wonder if this might be an excellent way to tell stories, Making a "movie" or something like it inside a game engine, such as source, unreal or cryengine. Leave it non-interactive, or minimum interaction. Give us a pause at scenes that should really soak in and allow us to hit a button or something to proceed. Since it's not really a movie, there's no particular time limit and a well fleshed out story can be told without trimming the little details and context.

Just think about some of the games you've played that had stories that really grabbed you. Now imagine that you could experience the story, flowing uninterrupted by padding that didn't help the story, do-overs of a particularly hard part, or any kind of annoying or frustrating bits that were part of the game, but not part of the story.

Maybe it shouldn't be called a game, but that doesn't mean that it can't use parts of games to tell a great story with awesome visuals and a great soundtrack.

 

[newwiseman]

This can't be right no one buys PC games. /sarcasm

Always glad to see a publisher proved wrong.

 

[draythefingerless]

its nice, but not worth wasitn 10 dollars on it. i dont waste 10 dollars on any movie(except if im forced to by friends who wanna go see sum stupi 3D shit), and i only spend it on a game if i REALLY get something out of it. and albeit it is new fresh and complex and thoguhtful, it is a fast n waning experience, one i have by sometimes just reading a poem or listening to a song on youtube. not worth 10 dollars. for me at least.

 

[Denizen]

Looks like the Indie Fund forgot that steam was built around housing hl2 mods way before it was a venue for many other publisher catalogs. I remember when dear esther came out and am pleased to hear that it's found it's old and new audience again.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

Saw this on Indie Statik just a couple days ago and i was pretty blown back by just how beautiful the game was. Even though the gameplay might seem a bit lacking compared to those high octane things i think it'd be a nice change of pace... and scenery, New Vegas doesn't exactly have a lot going for it when it comes to graphics. See one part of desert wasteland and you've seen it all (Thank god for fast travel systems)

But anyways, i might offer up 10 dollars for this if only because it seems like a nice, new experience.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

That video... is that "in game" footage!? It's rather pretty.

 

[Weaver]

I'm still curious as to why Steam wouldn't be a good choice for experimental indie games... it's got a lot of them on there.

 

[Zakarath]

Eh... non-interactive? I took a glance at it and thought it looked kinda like Myst (which I quite enjoyed), but hearing that kinda kills my interest in it.

 

[bootz]

I've bought it and its worth it! and god mode works

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

So what exactly does the player DO during this little hike?

You listen. You experience. You open yourself to the emotional impact of what you've done, and what you didn't do. And if you're lucky, you spend a considerable amount of time afterward thinking about it.

You'll have to excuse me for not buying into that. How can I get an emotional impact for deeds I'm only told I did or didn't do? Wouldn't the impact be all the greater if we had a more active role in doing them rather than being told we did them?

One of the first things you get taught when getting into fiction writing is the principle of show, don't tell. Yet from what I've seen and heard of Dear Esther so far it seems to be all tell, no show.

The key boon of gaming as a storytelling medium is that it's interactive, so what use is there in reducing the interactivity to a bare minimum of pressing W until prompted to listen to some dialogue?

 

[EvilRoy]

So what exactly does the player DO during this little hike?

You listen. You experience. You open yourself to the emotional impact of what you've done, and what you didn't do. And if you're lucky, you spend a considerable amount of time afterward thinking about it.

You'll have to excuse me for not buying into that. How can I get an emotional impact for deeds I'm only told I did or didn't do? Wouldn't the impact be all the greater if we had a more active role in doing them rather than being told we did them?

One of the first things you get taught when getting into fiction writing is the principle of show, don't tell. Yet from what I've seen and heard of Dear Esther so far it seems to be all tell, no show.

The key boon of gaming as a storytelling medium is that it's interactive, so what use is there in reducing the interactivity to a bare minimum of pressing W until prompted to listen to some dialogue?

Not really, in Dear Esther exploration is rewarded with more audio snippets that you might not otherwise get to hear, as well as many visual clues as to the nature of the world around you.

Try to think of it in terms of bioshock. Yeah splicers and big daddies were scary and fun to fight, but if you just took a walk through the world and experienced it at your own pace, looking intently at things that intrigued you and ignoring things that didn't, listening to audio diaries as you went, you would find that the whole world tells a story all its own, separate from the driving (and fantastic) plot, intense and engaging all its own.

Dear Esther is like the story that Rapture tells you. You don't know exactly what happened, and likely never will, because neither place ever tells you exactly what really happened. They both use allusions, metaphors and visuals and let you try to figure it out yourself.

I totally understand why someone wouldn't like this, but as a person who walked through Rapture and enjoyed the worlds story just as much as characters story, I really find it to be a deeply satisfying experience. And for ten bucks its a pretty sweet dealio to get what I consider to be the better half of a good 'normal' game. (No matter how much you make at your work, if you're born cheap, you'll die cheap apparently, but whatever.)

 

[Excludos]

Bought the game after reading this article, and I was really amazed. I could probably have seen a youtube video of someone playing it, and seen the exact same things, seen the same amazing environment, and heard the same story. Yet I think this is a game that needs to be played to actually be good. Which is somewhat ironic as it borders on not being a game at all.

With that said, in this day and age where everyone only buys the latest call of duty and ignores everything actually good, it does amaze me that this game is so successful.

It also makes me see some potential in a completely new way of telling a story. Instead of seeing a movie or reading a book, you could explore the environment while the narrator talks to you. Think having the story of A Song of Ice and Fire being told to you while you explore different parts of that world. Would be a lot longer than this game thought.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

It's a philosophy book and an art film in a form of a video game without being a video game in a conventional sense. It's an interactive art form. It's a new form of artistic expression. It's definitely worth $10.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

I totally understand why someone wouldn't like this, but as a person who walked through Rapture and enjoyed the worlds story just as much as characters story, I really find it to be a deeply satisfying experience. And for ten bucks its a pretty sweet dealio to get what I consider to be the better half of a good 'normal' game. (No matter how much you make at your work, if you're born cheap, you'll die cheap apparently, but whatever.)

Well to be fair, people could always download the original mod to see if they like it, and then buy it if they do for the more updated experience.

 

[EvilRoy]

I totally understand why someone wouldn't like this, but as a person who walked through Rapture and enjoyed the worlds story just as much as characters story, I really find it to be a deeply satisfying experience. And for ten bucks its a pretty sweet dealio to get what I consider to be the better half of a good 'normal' game. (No matter how much you make at your work, if you're born cheap, you'll die cheap apparently, but whatever.)

Well to be fair, people could always download the original mod to see if they like it, and then buy it if they do for the more updated experience.

I was referring more to myself with the cheapness, but yeah that's also an option. To be honest I would suggest going all or nothing though, because just like a book the second time you play it the impact just isn't as good.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Appreciating Dear Esther requires that you leave all your expectations about games at the door. You don't so much win as you complete the story, turn the final page. If games are meant to have high scores, enemies or goals, then Dear Esther might not be a game. Then again, the answer might not be so simple...

In Dear Esther, you receive disorganized snippets from a letter, or several letters. You're left to piece the narrator's purpose together, the island's place in the story. This does certainly qualify as an objective, even if it's lacking in a traditionally defined way to achieve it. You have to listen and take everything in. You have to do your own thinking. If thinking isn't part of the underlying mechanics of any game and if thinking *cannot* become a game mechanic in and out of itself, then I'd say we have a problem.

I personally consider the player's own journey to be a mechanic in and out of itself. Considering this, a surface analysis would make it clear that this isn't a game, while going a little deeper does reveal that Dear Esther has enough gaming conventions to potentially be worthy of the title.

You won't earn Achievements, here. The name of the game is allowing yourself to experience something, which is the most informal achievement of all, what all games should strive for. You won't solve puzzles; except what's given for you to mull over. You won't defeat anything other than the plot's initial opaque nature. This feels like a game to me, albeit one where the controls are less WASD and my mouse as they are my mind and my ability to receive what's being given to me on an intellectual and emotional level.

As a game, Dear Esther is treading brave new grounds. As an interactive art piece, it has a comforting familiarity that's usually lacking in other examples of that genre, such as Oddyseus 101 - an interactive reading of a segment of James Joyce's version of Oddyseus. The artiness in that piece is obvious, but there's no sense of familiarity, no recognizable medium to give the experience a comfortable fit. Dear Esther doesn't have that problem.

As a narration or a story, it absolutely works. The visuals complement the narration perfectly, and what could very well be a ghost story ends up being draped in a delicate mixture of brooding thought and little snippets of Gothic anguish. This is something Poe would be proud of.

That's also where the problem is located. We're used to clear and recognizable divisions between forms of communication - books sticking with books and games with games, Art with Art. Things are changing, and this is why some people cling to previous definitions of artistry (i.e. Roger Ebert) and why others think this couldn't conceivably be a game.

The real question is: Does it *need* to be a game? Does it *need* to be Art? Can't it simply *be*, there to be taken in for what it is and what it has to offer?

 

[TitanAtlas]

I will always love TheChineseRoom for Korsakovia....

Always...

 

[Exterminas]

I'm still curious as to why Steam wouldn't be a good choice for experimental indie games... it's got a lot of them on there.

Probably because a lot of people still think of steam as "The Counter Strike-Thing" or "The guys who love the Cake-Meme" or "FPS-Thugs" or "PC-Elitists, who love graphic!" take your pick.

There are a lot of fun stereotypes around that could have fathered that idea.

 

[Chimichanga]

Dear Esther: It's art, but not a game.

More like playing through a very long and very well-executed cut-scene, or maybe one of those introductory/opening credits levels like the one found in games such as Call of Duty or Skyrim.

I agree in that the experience was interesting and I'm glad someone made it; but otherwise I found it to be kind of pretentious and boring as hell. It's like a whiny, self-loathing, 'survivor's guilt'-riddled cripple simulator.

Very impressive visuals.

While I'm well aware that my opinion will likely be considered 'blasphemy' here, I kind of think it was a tad overpriced. The experience, although definitely worth paying them for, was not worth ten dollars.

I'm not an idiot and I myself used to be considered an artist of sorts, so I'm not somehow less emotionally-attuned or mentally-deficient to appreciate "works of art", it's just that I think it was incredibly over-hyped, over-rated, and that the developers seemed to expect that scenery porn backed with long-winded and verbose walls of text about 'sadness and loneliness and loooosssssss' for narration is enough to make it some sort of cult hit.

TLDR; I didn't get it. Found it neither 'haunting' or even a 'mindfuck'. Maybe a little trippy at spots. TBH, most of the time my only emotive response was that of annoyance at how incredibly fucking slow the god damn decrepit gimp you play moves.

 

[teknoarcanist]

Mixed feelings having played it. Sufficed to say, it was pretty fascinating, I'm not sure I liked it (Yeah yeah, "You're not supposed to 'like' it" etc etc), but all things considered, I don't regret playing it.

And as far as this "is it a game," debate, shelve that shit. Of course it's a game. It's not a book, a symphony, or a turkey sandwich. You don't read it, listen to it, or eat it. You play it: therefore, it's a game.

How about instead of asking, "Is it a game," we ask, "Is it a GOOD game," and talk about why or why not?