Category: Student Posts

Dear Esther and Gone Home

Richard Bell describes “Gone Home” as a game with a historical narrative and as a means from which we can learn from the past. On the other hand, Bell portrays “Dear Esther” as a literary source where the player must learn through the poetic literature presented in throughout the game.

I agree with this distinction having played both games and I find both ways to be effective because both games try to convey different techniques of gameplay. Although it was difficult at times in Dear Esther to know exactly who was narrating, that in itself was motivation to finish the game so that I could find answers at the end. Unfortunately, I was as confusing, if not, more confused after the conclusion of the game.

FREEWRITE: Dear Esther

 

I agree with the distinctions that Bell makes between Dear Esther and Gone home. Dear Esther encourages us to make sense of the story through literary texts whereas Gone Home is a more engaging game in that it lets us interact with intimate objects in order to piece the story together. Dear Esther is more of a game in which students with a strong literary background can excel, which makes it more of a contextual game than Gone Home. Even the formal texts in Dear Esther depicts a type of writing that is more advanced and professional. I personally like Gone Home in terms of the player’s interaction with the game and the objects within it. Anyone with any degree of common sense is able to piece together some part of the story whether it be about Katie, Sam, or their parents. People with some knowledge of the culture in that particular time era can better understand the game, which makes it more of a historical game. Both games are similar in the way they let the players explore the plot for themselves. Nothing is conveyed all at once.

 

Dear Esther

Gone Home and Dear Esther are similar yet different in many ways. Both games force you to draw conclusions of what happened where the player plays as the narrator, hearing or reading stories about others to create some image. Dear Esther seems to be more literature to me. It seemed to be more story telling than even a game actually. Players just explored the island and excerpts of the narrator’s thoughts and letters came up. There did not seem to be an objective really. However, with Gone Home the player had to uncover and discover parts of the narrator’s story. Gone Home was a lot more interactive than Dear Esther. Gone Home would be more historical the literary, since players had to uncover many things, draw conclusions, and several historical references were also made.  I do agree with Richard Bell’s distinction about the two games as literature and history. Honestly though, I do not see Dear Esther even as a game. Both games gave a gloomy and depressing vibe when first playing the game. However, I do not believe Gone Home ended sad, but Dear Esther continued to be haunting even till the end.

Dear Esther/Gone Home Free Write

Both Dear Esther and Gone Home are slow paced games which allow you to explore the setting around. The games do this in different ways. Gone Home allows you to examine the objects in the Greenbriar’s middle class home and use them to make assumptions about Katie Greenbriar, her family and her friends. You take the objects and learn what each character is going through and the history of that character. In Dear Esther, you are more guided down one path. You can explore the setting, but there is really only a few different paths you can go in each level, and every step to the next level is the same for everyone. Also in Dear Esther, there is only really one story. A man is hurt and stuck on a deserted beach and is trying to escape. In the end, he can’t take the pain anymore and frees himself from it by committing suicide. It is more simple than gone home because the clues to explain the plot are told to you or directly in your path.

New-Form Literature

Richard Bell, in Family History: Source Analysis in Gone Home, compares Dear Esther and Gone Home in the ways that they portray characters, narrate stories, and engage the player.

Dear Esther, in my opinion is clearly the more literary one, as Bell mentions. It isn’t as “engaging” in the sense that the player merely doesn’t have to do anything else except walk and listen. Gone Home, on the other hand, is far more captivating. We find ourselves solving puzzles, picking up every piece of the story (sometimes missing a few), and the story we get is directly related to our actions. But, for anyone who enjoys reading poetry, old novels, or any other work of literature, it is a great game to be exposed to a source that is considered an idiosyncratic source of literature.

Dear Esther Free Write

My first reaction while playing Dear Esther was that it was going to be exactly like Gone Home. I thought that I was going to need to be picking up objects and waiting for journal entries to come up. So, the first thing that I did was head into the abandoned house and look around. To my surprise, I wasn’t able to pick anything up, I was only allowed to walk. after a couple minutes of walking through the mountain, something similar to a journal entry from Gone Home came up. I kept on following the paths in the hopes that I was heading the right way. In the end, although I definitely enjoyed the sights more in Dear Esther, I was able to understand Gone Home’s story better. The problem I had with Dear Esther was that sometimes the “journal entries” were too far apart from each other, so sometimes I could’t quite remember the last thing he was saying. Also, the entries would just go away, you weren’t able to replay them which made it hard to piece everything together. 

Free write

While Gone Home allows you to create your own narrative by drawing assumptions from various notes and objects, dear esther differs by drawing assumptions straight from the text and images given to you. The basis if Ball’s historical argument lies in the fact that in Gone Home your not given a story but have to discover pieces of evidence yourself and use them in order to puzzle together your own depiction of the family. Similarly, historians look at various pieces of evidence in order to construct an accurate historical account. Dear Esther acts much more like a literary text as you are given the narrative and draw assumptions based off the main character’s passages. Both games definitely have the same eerie feel with the main objective to explore in order to gain more and more parts of the story. What I believe makes gone home better is the historical argument that Bell is making. You, the user, has to actually act like a detective finding various pieces in order to construct your narrative.

Dear Esther & Gone Home

My game play of Dear Esther consisted of exploring and finding clues, much like Gone Home. It’s undoubtedly similar in the sense that I play with a first-person view, through the eyes of another, looking for random notes and objects to observe. While the similarities hold true, Bell’s depiction of both games shines a new light on the purpose and class of the games. I, myself, think both games were similar enough to overlook the differences, but then again my opinion on my play through can be vastly different than another person’s.

Evaluation of Literary Rhetoric in Dear Esther and Gone Home

Despite the medium commonalities of Gone Home and Dear Esther, the carefully guided rhetoric constructs of the two games allow for some interesting insights that would be normally elusive. Whereas the “literary traditionalist” might dismiss the use of video games as a method of conveying rhetoric and message and deem video games an unworthy comparison to the conventional literary counterpart,  Dear Esther and Gone Home pervades through the preconceived boundaries of alternative media to convey an unique literary experience. In “Family History: Source Analysis in Gone Home“, Richard Bell compares  Gone Home to a historical archive and Dear Esther as a more classical comparison to literature.

 

Gone Home Review

I found it absolutely necessary to play this game in broad daylight in order to avoid the mini heart attacks that would have occurred if I had played this game alone at night. As you can probably tell, I am not a fan of anything that falls into the horror genre. Personally, I did not enjoy eerie music and melancholic environment even though some people may think otherwise. I can see how the creators of the game utilize the background noise, such as the lightning and faint footsteps, to build a sense of anticipation and suspense. I desperately sought a light switch or lamp the second I entered a lightly dimmed room.

In terms of the structure of the game, I enjoyed being able to pick engage with the inanimate objects in the room. Even though most of the things we were able to pick up were completely irrelevant to the game, I still found pleasure in scoping the area and making some sense of the documents, stationary materials, cups, condoms, books and other random items. I felt as if each item played its own part in helping the audience piece together all of the information. We can assume the intimacy between Sam and Lonnie through their scribbled messages and drawings. From Sam’s first meeting with Lonnie to her first kiss with Lonnie, the audience was practically living her journey through her diary entries.Unlike a book, we found pieces of the story and we had to make our own interpretation of what is happening through the accumulation of clues through searching every inch of the house. It excites the audience and stimulates a sense of curiosity that is completely different from a book or movie feeding viewers information. The locker combinations for Sam’s locker and the filing cabinet as well as the key to open the darkroom were clues that the audience had to patiently find in the house. We weren’t watching Katie peace together the information; we were the ones who had to take a course of action.I feel that this gives the audience a more engaging first hand experience rather than a one-sided narrative text.

It was such a unique experience getting to know the characters through a game simulation. Even as minor characters, the mother and father had an interesting storyline as well. We can piece together the story behind the mother’s affair with the ranger and the father’s writing career in shambles. We can also assume that Katie is a very intelligent student whereas Sam seems to be quite the opposite. Through the narratives and little notes in the game, we can tell that she is a rebellious, strong-minded and resilient young woman. However, her diary entries also revealed a more vulnerable and timid side of her. In the late 1900s, someone coming out as homosexual would be unconventional, sometimes even shameful. Her parents were even in denial when she came out to them. Sam even doubted herself at first, but she learned to accept and love who she has become because her love for Lonnie proved stronger than traditional standards.

All in all, this game was definitely the highlight of my week. The excitement and curiosity that grew as I discovered additional information engrossed me until the very end. Homophobia and molestation were definitely touchy subjects at that time period, and it made the game all the more interesting. I enjoyed reading the short messages between Lonnie and Sam as well as hearing Sam’s voice in her journal entries because it added intimacy between the audience and the characters.  The sound of her faint and sorrowful voice in her entries give the audience a sense of sympathy towards her, but in a different way that a book or a movie would do so. When Sam said that her heart was beating faster and faster, I felt as if my heart wanted to do the same. At the end of the game, I felt more of a stronger connection to both Katie and Sam.

1 … 18 19 20 21 22 … 24