What Remains of Edith Finch is a real success. This maturing industry can provide a creative effort that, in any other artistic medium, would be almost impossible to carry out.
What is left by Edith Finch is further proof that gaming can provide experiences of any kind. It is genuine, intelligent, sincere and reflexive.
The rest of the Edith Finch game is a free PS Plus game in May, and you really should set everything else aside and put this lovely adventure on top of the pile. If, when it’s available, you won’t play it, when will you go? At best, you do yourself an active dysfunction.
Tales unspeakable
At heart, a series of vignettes tell what the rest of Edith Finch says. Small stories and life pieces are torn away from time and centred around a shifting cast of deceased characters, each containing the Finch family name.
Edith Finch follows the game on her way home to search for answers—answers to the secrets that lie behind every door-turned-door mausoleum in the estate.
“Experiencing a real pause in its players is rare for a video game.”
What Edith Finch Remain can expertly weaken a story that never fluctuates in its resolve-to let you feel speechless and sorrowful by its closing moments, in a web of torture and fragile self-reflection, exploring it in beautifully lived, captivating narration and subtle interactions.
Developer Giant Sparrow achieves this by presenting each vignette as a mini-game in itself, each of them introducing their own intuitive and unique method of interaction within the fiction unfolding in front of you.
The game has had 30 different control systems somewhere in the region throughout its history and does so without forcing a pause or confusion. The transitions between each style of play aren’t seamless, but they are frictionless. And it’s not only impressive; it’s masterful.
Everything about the trip
It is still impressive how much of the content can be related, especially if you suffered loss, sorrow and personal tragedy in the course of your life. But this lies in the real strength of the game. What’s left of Edith Finch is evocative but not because she makes you face death. It connects you with a whisper to each of his characters before the next breath again.
In some instances, it can happen in extraordinary circumstances, if not quite ridiculous circumstances. Still, in others, it can be cardiovascular and uncomfortable, too close to home and hard to confront.
The game calls for such an honest response from the player—so clearly and resonatingly—because the stories are presented in a direct way by Giant Sparrow. What Edith Finch’s remnants are written and performed beautifully delivers that few valuable titles can-hell, most of them don’t even try to-in this industry.
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Given the unique display, wide range, and powerful throughlines in every vignette of the game, it’s hard for me to imagine any player going away from Edith Finch’s What Remains without pausing to reflect.
What remains of Edith Finch is a deafening, defiant lesson to embrace a time of personal contemplation in a world in which we long for the next distraction and are appreciatively petrified by the idea of silence.
It’s unusual to create a real pause in the players, to instruct a moment of absolute, reflective silence in a video game, I think I’m not standing out. But Edith Finch does what remains so well to establish her story, her characters and her borders that it is hard to do. This game is designed to be connected to a person behind the control panel in a fundamental human level, locating the emotional touchstone.
And while it may not be for everybody this story experience, those who wish to cast out the spraying of what is and is not a video game will find for the medium something progressive. Better yet, you may only find something for a long time to stay with you.
