The breadth of video game genres and the width of stories within them has grown exponentially over the years. More and more talented artists, writers, graphic designers, and developers are creating enticing video game experiences. However, despite the vast number of games on the market, one amazing game still manages to stand out amongst the competition.

What Remains of Edith Finch does a fantastic job of taking multiple stories, each with a different play style, and morphing them into a beautifully designed video game. These stories explain the deaths of each family member of the Finch family, experienced in the viewpoint of Edith Finch, while simultaneously narrating to both the player and Edith’s child. But, all of that isn’t figured out until the end of the game.

As mentioned earlier, each level/story within What Remains of Edith Finch has its own playstyle and action, which helps tell the tragic story of that given family member’s death. Some characters’ stories are told in short clips and images, which don’t take too long to get through. Other levels required the player to perform actions and move around their person in order to experience the full backstory.

One of the more heart-wrenching levels describes the death of Gregory, son of Sam and Kay, who faced the “family curse” (which is a debate to be discussed and interpreted on your own time) just before he turned 2 years old. As most levels in What Remains of Edith Finch, the player must move whatever interactive element they are using to perform actions, towards words in the narrative, in order to reach the next part.

In Gregory’s backstory, the player moves around as one of Gregory’s bathtub toys, a cute frog, to visually show how complex and creative the baby’s imagination is.  The narration, that being a dramatic reading of a letter to Gregory’s mother from his father, following the couple’s divorce, is read to the player in the father’s voice while Gregory’s bathtub toys dance around. The player’s ability to become one of Gregory’s bath toys and interact with the other toys and your surroundings is a great way to combine good game mechanics with even better storytelling. This level also does a compelling way of combining two plots/backstories (the divorced couple, as well as Gregory’s death) and experiencing them both at once.

In order to progress through the story, the player must move the interactive object they are using to move around towards letters resting just above the bathtub faucet handle. Once that is moved, the bathtub begins to fill up, and after the screen fades to white and some words from the letter to Kay are spread across the screen, the player turns into Gregory’s frog toy, and must follow the other bathtub toys under the water, towards the water drain, where the player glides through, and the game fades to white, then back to reality.

It can be assumed that the goal of the creative directors and writers of What Remains of Edith Finch is to try to depict the feeling of sadness, maybe even guilt when each character reaches their unavoidable fate. This feeling can definitely reach the player through Gregory’s level because the player understands this infant cannot escape his inevitable death. Humans tend to hold empathy for babies and very young children, which the creators used to their advantage in Gregory’s story. The gameplay also shows the complexity of Gregory’s imagination, how beautifully he saw the world around him, and how innocently his mind made death seem.

Image Sources:

1. https://www.vidaopantalla.es/2017/07/what-remains-of-edith-finch-se-estrena-xbox-one/

2. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x70jis6

3. http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2018/04/17/What-Remains-of-Edith-Finch-game-review.aspx

4. https://epiloguegaming.com/what-remains-of-ludonarrative-in-edith-finch/