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What made the original mod iteration of Dear Esther stand out in 2008 was its confident voice and style. They are linear stories where you primarily progress through movement alone and the goal is to see the end. These developers take the experimental approach of European developers (Ice-Pick Lodge, Tale of Tales) to their logical extreme by stripping out most interaction, combat, and immediate threat. I’m speaking of games and modifications such as The Path, Radiator, and past titles by Dear Esther developer thechineseroom ( Conscientious Objector, Korsakovia). Some bold, some alienating, and almost all ill-fit for the medium they chose to cram their ideas into. Over the past couple years, the vernacular of our medium has been expanding and morphing to include new types of experiences. While I didn’t come to the conclusion easily, the answer is: yes, it would have.
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This is exponentially true for game designers, as evidenced by Half-Life 2 mod-turned-retail interactive-narrative Dear Esther.Īs I kept my middle-finger glued down to the “W” key for the game’s duration (~70 mins), I kept asking myself if this story would have been better told through another medium. It’s something not enough filmmakers ask themselves throughout their career. That’s the first thing they told me to ask myself in film school. “Yes, but is this the right medium for that story?” Dear Esther is simply too disconnected from itself to ever connect with me. Along with that connection comes emotion. The linchpin of these games is to develop a connection with the player. Still, some people will find meaning and depth in what Dear Esther delivers. It’s the inferior way to present a story. Better examples like Gone Home are exploratory in nature and let the player discover their narratives through small but important details Dear Esther just force-feeds a trickle of dialogue and then shrugs if you don’t get it. This is a game from 2012, and it’s clear that the genre has grown past it. This soundtrack shapes the moodiness of the jaunt, and transforms all the locations into far grander places than they’d be without it.īut, it’s not enough to be Dear Esther‘s saving grace. This is the unequivocal high-point of Dear Esther.
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While Dear Esther never quite figures out how to affix its story to its setting, the atmosphere is helped tremendously by Jessica Curry’s score. Compounding matters is the enigmatic tone that these lines are written in, usually making them exceptionally hard to parse. These come along relatively infrequently when compared to the amount of walking in between, just enough so that you’ll find yourself wondering what that last message was. Dear Esther makes a point to grant short snippets of dialogue every so often along the journey. Most damning is the pace at which the narrative unfurls. But, the plodding movement speed combined with a number of dead-end paths mean that any sort of exploration is more of a chore than an incentive. Some places are stunningly gorgeous (the luminescent caves, particularly) and those locations can be a visual treat to traverse. It’s set in an empty world that’s often devoid of any significant indication that it’s lived-in. It may be easier to list what Dear Esther is missing rather than what it has. Released: Febru(PC), Septem(PS4, Xbox One) Dear Esther never ties these two necessary halves together in any meaningful way.ĭear Esther (PC, PS4, Xbox One )
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It’s a series of locales that are shrouded in mystery, but that’s the extent of the connection. Dear Esther is more a loose narrative strung along in a setting that doesn’t feel thematically consistent with much else. This is problematic because the purpose of this type of game is to tell a story and to evoke emotion.
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I wasn’t moved in the least, which is ironic given all that walking.
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There was no sense of revelation or tinge of intrigue. As I finished Dear Esther, I felt nothing.