Category: Student Posts

The “Gone Home” Experience

 

www.mergegames.com

 Knowing that it was important to truly immerse myself in the game, I waited until 2 a.m. and put on a pair of headphones to begin the adventure that was Gone Home. Set in a dark, large house with continuous sounds of thunder and rain throughout the course of the entire game, it is no doubt waiting until 2 a.m. to play the game was a mistake. I had a weird feeling during the entire game that something in the game was going to attack me.

The “Gone Home” Experience

It was interesting to find about the characters little by little by reading letters and different objects found throughout the house. Even the slightest detail, such as the songs on the tapes found throughout the house tells us about the characters personality. I found that to be a very interesting way to introduce us to the characters and  the actual plot of the game, not by just handing the information over to us but making the player work his way around the house to find out what comes next.

To be honest, it was kind of a bummer that nothing really happened at the end. I kept on waiting for something to happen or for some kind of revelation to come my way that would permanently affect my ability to sleep but nothing like that ever came and I was able to sleep like a baby that night.

Overall, it was a great game that plays around with your senses and emotions to deliver a solid experience.

 

My Avatar

Fuerte El Morro en el Antiguo San Juan, Puerto Rico, al atardecer (Fort El Morro in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, overlooking the ocean at sunset)

I decided to make my avatar a photo of El Morro, a fort in Puerto Rico built by Spain in 1539 to help the island defend itself from attacking forces. This photo of El Morro overlooking the Atlantic Ocean encompasses the beauty of the island in which I was born and raised.

Creation of my Avatar

From his dashing looks to an irresistibly addicting but odd talent, Yoshi represents this blog and myself in various creative ways. As most gamers should know, Yoshi has a tendency to swallow up anything and everything just to spit it back out in the form of a deadly fireball or discard it encased in a polka-dotted egg. I believe this symbolizes exactly what my work stands for on this blog. Either viewers and readers will be burned and amazed by my “fire” blog posts or I will leave them in suspense with posts that are encased in a shell of mystery. Yoshi’s sunny demeanor and excitement for fun and games matches but sometimes surpasses my own enthusiasm. He will serve as the perfect avatar for me.

This image was edited.

Creation of my Avatar

Gone Home Reflection

Gone Home was one of the more intriguing games I’ve played so far. Right from the start, I felt a mysterious and eerie vibe just from reading the letter from Sam taped to the front door. I thought this was a great way to start the game because the player is immediately hooked by the ambiguity presented in that letter.

The game takes place in the aftermath of Sam’s escape from her unwanted reality. This reverse chronological structure is the first I’ve experienced in a game and its effects on the gaming experience is monumental. All I was thinking of was where’s the next clue or hint? The fact that there were also multiple locked doors at the start of the game pushed me to keep playing so that I could somehow discover what was being hidden.

The series of Samantha’s journal entries or letters addressed to Kaitlin also provides a unique narrative experience. Each letter exposes some kind of detail pertinent to the big picture, especially those messages that uncovered the mother’s affair and the father’s terrible childhood. This also ties into how the player must explore the house and find those clues that reveal crucial details about what happened while Kaitlin was absent. The freedom to roam around and make one’s own decisions during this game enables the player to take one’s time and absorb everything. In conclusion, Gone Home was a tragic but complete video game, one I won’t forget.

Dear Esther Quick Review

I partially agree with the idea that Gone Home is more of a game about history while Dear Esther is more relevant to literature given its obscure language with a fairly religious tone. Yet the two are the quite alike when it comes  to their skillfulness in drawing players into the context. When thinking about the two games, I barely scrutinize the information they give us, rather focus on how I feel about the game. Gone Home arouses my curiosity towards a certain culture and life while Dear Esther offers a sense of despair. Therefore, we can say that Gone Home and Dear Esther are different in the type of context they have designed but they’re quite similar to each other as games.

Dear Esther Free Write

One of the main differences between “Gone Home” and “Dear Esther” is the writing style of the queries that both narrators present at key moments in the games. “Dear Esther has a very poetic and abstract writing style. It is still unclear to me exactly what the writer of the game was trying to get across. The one thing that I am almost sure of is that the narrator (also the protagonist) got in a drunk driving accident that caused the death of his wife, Esther. The island that the narrator is on is one of isolation and guilt. He is severely depressed because of what he has done and feels like life is almost not worth living anymore. This island could be a metaphor of the metaphysical and social isolation that he experiences, from friends, and loved ones, for what he has done. In the end, the narrator decides that life is just not worth it anymore so he decides to take his own life and get off the island, away from all of his guilt forever. Not a single part of this writing piece was literally in the actual transcript of “Dear Esther” which is one of the main reasons why it is so different from “Gone Home” which has a much more literal approach.

“Dear Esther” and “Gone Home” in Richard Bell’s article

“Where Dear Esther invites the kind of textual analysis at which students of literature excel, Gone Home demands something more akin to source comparison.” What distinction is Bell drawing between these two games — between literature and history — and do you agree with his distinction? What similarities do you see between the two games?

Exploration is a core concept in both of these games: “Dear Esther” and “Gone home”, however they target different goals. In Bell’s article, the author draws a main distinction between the two in the sense that while “Gone Home” requires the gamer to have a skill of a historian when piecing the clues together, “Dear Esther” is based on “a single ambiguous narrative voice”. As a result, “Dear Esther” is mostly based on a literature analysis whereas “Gone Home” projects the reader in uncovering the story on his own. I agree with this distinction as I had the same feeling when interacting with both games.

Similarly, the player feels involved on a personal level in both games. In “Gone Home”, the fact of incarnating Katie and investigating her house and uncovering personal objects from each member of the family makes the reader feel also a part of the story. In “Dear Esther”, the player had the access to what is comparable to journal entries or letters from a man to his wife. As a result, the player has access to emotions which allows him to sympathize with the narrator.

-Richard Bell, “Family History: Source Analysis in Gone Home”. Play the Past, accessed 13 Sept. 2016.

The Chinese Room, “Dear Esther“, 14 February 2012

Dear Esther

Dear Esther and Gone Home are similar games in that both of them are relatable to our current lives. Gone Home depicts the troubles a modern family could have, and Dear Esther colorfully describes a car crash where a mans wife is killed. They use similar literary techniques that slowly reveal hints at what the main plot or message is. Both games use the dialogue of a narrator to narrate the story, but they also use imagery. Gone Home has clues about the family that you can find throughout the house, and Dear Esther uses the landscape of the island to depict small events or hints of the car crash.

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