There are a decent number of video settings to fiddle with (and it's a very pretty game), but the options to adjust the game's controls are almost completely non-existent. And once I was into the game it became irrelevant anyway: What Remains of Edith Finch isn’t a very long game-I logged about a half-dozen hours into it, and that’s with plenty of poking around-and it was so enthralling that I had no interest in stopping anyway. I was frustrated at first by the checkpoint save system, but they come at a decent frequency, and the 'saving' indicator is easy to see, with bright, bold letters, so I was never unsure about when it was safe to pack it up and take a break. None of these interludes are mechanically complex, but it was amazing to see so many different styles incorporated, and handled so well, into a single game. Reading each of Edie’s memorials to a deceased family member took me on a unique adventure through different first-person formats: I got to know Grandpa Sam through the lens of an old, manual-focus camera, I flew a kite with Gus over a wedding on a beach, I even became the ruler of a brightly-colored videogame kingdom. And even when the story moves into unambiguously dangerous territory-the death of an infant, which you will not just witness but participate in-it does so with remarkable grace and sensitivity.īut the stories of the Finch family tree that are interspersed through Edith's journey more than make up for that narrow focus. Most of us probably know someone like Lewis, a kind young man with a keen mind who just couldn't find his way in this world. Yet while their demises grow less fanciful as their lives become more familiar, the impact of their losses strike much more powerfully. Early tales like Molly's may have only the thinnest basis in reality-or maybe not!-while those of her uncle Gregory or her older brother Lewis are firmly rooted in fact.
The family stories told in What Remains of Edith Finch are filtered through the lens of time, and the closer they come to Edith's own life, the less fantastical they seem. But that, like so much of the game, was a deft bit of misdirection. By the time it was over, I honestly believed that I'd been faked out, and that What Remains of Edith Finch was in reality a straight-up horror tale about a 'real' family curse that only comes out at night.
Molly's story is as out-of-left-field as anything I've ever encountered in a videogame, and it ended on a note of completely unexpected, and thoroughly disturbing, darkness. Molly's story is as out-of-left-field as anything I've ever encountered in a videogame.
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