Playing this game I felt the story seemed brutal enough to have the player get to know the boy Ethan, connect to the character, just for us to eventually find him dead somewhere. This awkward searching through Red Creek Valley, the uncertainty of whether you missed something or not, adds to the feeling of realism in the otherwise paranormal experience of exploring Ethan’s and Prospero’s story. It can also be discovered chronologically or you can go back and discover missing pieces in the wrong order. It’s up to you how much of the story you want to dig out. There’s nothing that forces the story upon the player. It’s a fresh approach to the video game medium of narrative storytelling. As you walk over different textured surfaces you can listen to the sound of your own footsteps changing. This bequeaths the player a deeply captivating experience of exploring Red Creek Valley.Īs there are no maps to help the player find it’s way it is easy to end up slightly lost. Unless you are so carefully that you comb through every corner of your surroundings (making the play time a lot longer than the suggested 3 hours) it is quite possible, even likely, that you will walk right past entire story elements without noticing them. The music and the visuals in this game is absolutely stunning.
It’s a filter, a wall between you and the game, between yourself and a sense of full immersion into the character you play. In most games mechanics such as tools and UI has that separating quality. The feeling of immersion experienced was definitely something special at least to me. Eventually as we piece together the clues we get to unlock the past and view it first hand through ghostly images of Ethan and his family members. As we touch objects and reconstruct crime scenes Prospero’s connection to the events of the places he visits grow stronger.
This is something we use as we follow the trail of bread crumbs that will hopefully lead us to the missing boy. This character is as much a mystery to us as Ethan Carter or the ominous ‘Sleeper’. What does become clear from the start is that Prospero posses not only excellent observational skills he also shares some sort of supernatural connection to his environment as well as to Ethan. We start the game introduced to the character we play as the detective Paul Prospero.
We now have, to on our own piece together the events leading up to the vanishing of Ethan Carter in order to solve the mystery of the boy’s disappearance and several other gruesome murders. There is no tutorial segment explaining sprint or crouch. We are then expected to discover how things work and what we’re supposed to do on our own. We are only given a very basic introduction to the story as the game starts. There is no user interface, no maps or tools to help you along the way. It’s a message from the developers, a disclaimer. The statement is definitely true. “This game is a narrative experience that does not hold your hand” is the first thing we see after hitting play. If you’ve already played through the game continue to my in depth story analysis to discuss theories! What is it? A first-person mystery adventure