S3: Recurring Emotion

What Remains of Edith Finch explores every facet of a single emotion to reveal a thing of beauty.

"Crying.." by Anders Ljungberg is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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What Remains of Edith Finch, released 2017, Developed by Giant Sparrow, available on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch. You navigate through a house in first person listening to narration, reading in-game text prompts, and interacting with objects in short vignettes.

I have had time to internalize the last tragedy offered and elucidated by this house filled with tragedy. This death began playfully enough that I momentarily forgot that it would indeed end in death as they all do.

It helps that swing sets are fun.

As I zoomed back and forth in the evening, I began to remember that I would die, as I always do. I examined my surroundings and realized it was all so obvious and so sad. The swing would be the catalyst, its proximity to the cliff the premise, and the eventual fall the source of my demise.

How profoundly, utterly sad, I thought. As consciousness faded on one character, I steeled myself for the next one. There was a chance the next death would be my last, which, oddly enough, felt bitter sweet.

Whereas the game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons commits with intensity to the notion of “show, don’t tell,” What Remains of Edith Finch dwells exclusively on a run of absolute tragedies and deaths. Both experiences are incredibly focused in execution, which makes the thesis of the studio incredibly obvious. There are so many tragedies for the family, from various causes, that you’re actually able to rank them as a player. It is difficult, their use of Recurring Emotion is ultimately beautiful.

It also leads to a more valuable overall experience compared to games that tackle or pursue too many themes.

By committing to a single thing, the developers quickly remove what would be the biggest surprise in most stories - the death itself (because you know it will happen) - and instead challenge you to think about how it makes you feel. Your mental energy is not expended on waiting for the big twist, but is instead focused on every detail encountered.

This game allows more room to think about the impact on the other characters and put oneself in their shoes. In fact, that is the game’s entire gimmick. As you explore the empty house in the present day, you find diaries and items that transport you to the shoes of the character whose demise you will experience.

The consistency is key, and it is how you’re able to fully appreciate the subtler elements of the experience. Everything takes place in a Seussian residence that has housed the entire cast previously. The ingredients are as follows:

1. You will locate and gain access to the room of a member of the family.

2. The room will tell you who this person was.

3. You will discover something that lets you play their final moments of life.

4. They will die.

Because you know the character will die, you know that their room represents their age at the time of death. These are time capsules, yes, but capsules that end at the end of life. You know that one member of the family dies as a child who was obsessed with NASA and space, for example. I believe that is more potent than learning that an adult who died was interested in space as a child.

This invites questions. Would they have become an astronaut? What did others think of their hobby? How did they share this passion with the family?

Because you know the character will die, you pay more attention to text scraps and artifacts you might overlook as world building fluff in other games. After a few hours in a roleplaying adventure, most people stop reading every scrap of text in order to add the quest to their to-do list. But, the finality in Edith Finch means there is an authoritative source of materials and their existence in the room indicates their value.

Plus, you know that the character will die, and as humans, we naturally try to lend respect to the dead. Even those we do not know.

Because you know the character will die, you start looking for signs of their relationships with other characters. These typically second-tier details are less transient, more important, and more valuable to the whole, because you know the stakes.

The stakes, theme, problems, and questions the game wants you to ponder never need to be repeated after the first example. You do not need to relearn the players, be introduced to new problems, because this game explores a single note with extreme breadth.

It isn’t so accurate to say it is one note. More so that eight different painters each approached the same prompt using the same color palette, but new styles.

The One Cool Thing

My intention here is not to devalue the joy from a perfectly executed twist. Folks still delight in discussing the twist from The Sixth Sense or the shock of The Red Wedding. But, a well-executed twist requires the creators fill the space with subtle, yet meaningful hints and clues that many overlook or fail to appreciate.

By leaning instead on Recurring Emotion, What Remains of Edith Finch deftly yanks the table cloth that is the shock of death while leaving behind a full place setting that is worthy of examination. The result is a game filled with surprise that also provides a familiar, repeated structure to take in all of the details. It is a way to make each step of the experience more valuable without diminishing the first, or second, run of the experience.

I’m curious how The Unfinished Swan (a game I adore) would feel if instead of feelings of loneliness, fear, joy, it picked a single emotion that best aligned with its paint lobbing mechanism? I believe Strange Horticulture (also fun!) went the other direction, in that I am not really sure what its emotional angle really was. It is gloomy, sure, but the gloom feels aesthetic compared to its narrative. Here is a case where driving home a more dominant recurring emotion might have engendered a stronger tie to the experience.

Recurring Emotion requires an intensity of focus that will limit it to some experiences, but its gift is that the conversation actually begins at the moment of surprise. It is a conversation starter, or even a solitary examination of a premise.

There is beauty in that, not unlike an ultimately short, but well-lived life.

Preview for Next Time

I am writing about Tales of Arise next. I am very excited about this post and wholeheartedly recommend the game if you’re interested in tagging along.

Edited by Joshua Buergel