Last week’s review was for the game What Remains of Edith Finch. And after listening to what others are saying about the game, I heard the phrase walking simulator come up a lot. And I can’t really disagree with that sentiment too much. However, I do think there’s a way to do walking simulators right and a way to get them very wrong.
Today I’d like to take a look at what Edith Finch does to turn an everyday walking simulator into a gaming experience like no other. And I’ll be spoiling the entire game in the process so if you haven’t played it yet, I can’t recommend enough that you do so before watching this video. With that being said, let’s get into this episode of… Dissection.
So first we should start out with a definition of a walking simulator. I’d define a walking simulator as a story-driven game in which the majority of the gameplay involves moving from one place to the next to progress the plot with few, if any, win loss conditions. In other words, think of games like Firewatch, Gone Home, and The Stanley Parable. The thing is, while these games got the formula right, many others turn into a slog, making progression seem more like a chore than a fun experience. So what is it that makes the good games different? I would argue it’s that they use their medium to their advantage.
Now, many people will argue that a good walking simulator needs a great story above all else. This is completely true. Without a good story, the game becomes worthless. But this isn’t about the bare minimum. It’s about what differentiates a good game and a bad one. And the answer, as with most game genres, is the gameplay.
Without unique game mechanics, or at least mechanics that aid in telling the story and putting the player in the characters’ shoes, why go through the effort of making a game at all? If player input doesn’t change the way the game is played or the way the story is experienced, what makes it better as a game instead of a movie or TV show?
Some games in this genre use gameplay to their advantage by allowing the player to influence the flow of the story, such as Heavy Rain or Until Dawn. Others have the player solve puzzles in order to progress such as Danganronpa or Pheonix Wright. While some of these games may be stretching the definition of a walking simulator, they do illustrate one way in which games can take advantage of their medium by doing something kinds of entertainment can’t: giving the player a voice in how the plot unfolds. Whether that be the end result or just the pace of the story, it gives meaning to player input.
But what about the other games? Those like Edith Finch? In this game, the story progresses from start to end without any changes regardless of what the player does. This is true, but what Edith Finch does is find a way to give player input meaning in different ways throughout the story. And this becomes obvious from the very first narrative.
In this first chapter, you learn about the death of Molly Finch through her own eyes, those of a small child. Her imagination causes her to believe in a magical world and she states that she hasn’t been fed which leads me to believe that she’s sick and dies of an illness, represented by the monster at the end. Although that’s just my interpretation and you’re free to disagree.
The important thing to note is that we get to experience exactly how vivid her imagination is by playing through it. We go from walking through the house as Edith to crawling around the trees as a cat, hunting for rabbits as an owl, swimming in the ocean as a shark, and then slithering through a ship as a monster. That’s 4 new control schemes introduced in about 10 minutes and each really feels like being the creature you control. This helps us to see the world through Molly’s eyes and brings the player closer to her as a character.
Moving on, we get to Calvin’s story. Here, all the player really does is swing back and forth while staring into the sunset, slowly getting higher and higher until Calvin finally makes it around the branch, which snaps off and sends him flying to his death. There is a lot to be learned from just this simple control scheme. First off, anyone who has ever used a swing has had the fantasy of being able to go around full circle and while it’s not exactly the same, living this moment through Calvin’s eyes really grants the player that feeling they’ve always wanted.
Also, as Calvin gets higher and higher on the swing, the tension of the story grows as well. The player eventually remembers that each story is about the person’s death and that elated feeling of going around the swing shifts to fear for the boy’s live, followed by an acceptance once they remember that this is how the story must go. The best thing about this story, in my opinion, is how they don’t show Calvin crashing into the rocks below him and instead fade away as he’s soaring through the air with Sam’s narration telling us how much he always wanted to fly. There’s something comforting in knowing that as his last act he got to do something he always wanted to do.
Later on you get into the story of Edith’s Uncle Walter. Here, the game has you repeat the same can opening sequence multiple times. It gives the player a small sense of monotony, which perfectly suits the story being told. Walter lived in the bunker for 30 years. So this feeling of boredom stemming from an activity the player performs only 3 times helps them to understand how much fear Walter must have felt to do the same thing every day for 30 years. It makes his story more relatable, but also much more sad, especially given the ending which has an irony to it so strong that I laughed out loud and then immediately felt bad about it.
The final story I want to talk about belongs to Lewis. I think this is the sequence does the best job of showing how well gameplay and story can intertwine. You start out in a factory, cutting the heads off of fish and throwing them onto a conveyor belt. As time goes on, the player is slowly dragged deeper and deeper into Lewis’s imaginary world. The thing is, while controlling the imaginary Lewis with the left hand, the player still chops fish with their right. This isn’t 100% necessary, but it helps to clear the screen to see Lewisville better.
As Lewis’s psychologist explains that Lewis made the world more and more complex, the world’s gameplay grows in complexity in turn going from a top down maze in black and white to an isometric village in full color, to a sailing game where he conquers other lands, a 3rd person palace to travel through, and ends in a first person guillotine sequence. While all of this is happening, the player is still chopping fish, though they become more and more obscured as the world grows, covering more of the screen. But by that point, moving the fish with your right hand becomes an almost automatic motion rather than one requiring focus and instead the player’s attention shifts to the imaginary world… just like Lewis.
I have never felt so in tune with a character as when I played this sequence. It cleverly shows how someone might feel if they’re acting normal on the outside, but experiencing turmoil on the inside. Not only does the player feel more in tune with Lewis as they continue, but the perspective also gets closer to the imaginary Lewis as time goes on. You start out far away in the top down view, then get closer and closer to having the camera behind Lewis, only to finally take on the first-person perspective of the fake king by the end, right around the same time Lewis takes on the persona as well.
I didn’t have time to get into every story, but I do want to shout out the awesome gameplay and story combinations from Barbara, whose B-movie story is well told through the horror comic, Sam’s story having the allegory between shooting with the camera and shooting the rifle, and Gregory’s bath sequence just being an absolute delight in imagination. All of the sequences in this game offer something new and different for the player to try out and I hope that in this video I’ve explained why that makes What Remains of Edith Finch a shining example of how to get a quote unquote “walking simulator” right.
That does it for this episode of Dissection. I hope you enjoyed the video and if you did, leave a comment down below telling me which game should be dissected next and be sure to subscribe for more dissections, mighty reviews and great gaming content. And as always, have a mighty nifty day today!