Any faster, though, and you wouldn't notice the little details strewn about the land. The walking speed, for example, is barely faster than a crawl. Dear Esther is an empty world, and because of that emptiness, you'll find it easier to step inside the protagonist's shoes and experience the game first hand.Ĭiting any faults in Dear Esther is tricky, as most of what players would consider drawbacks are intentional limitations imposed to keep the game (and the player) focused. Everything from the writing, voice acting, and linear walking paths keep you focused on the story at hand. It's an experimental, minimalist game that focuses on storytelling and light exploration, giving you the chance to settle down for an honestly intriguing tale. The project continued to grow until early 2012 when the completed version, reviewed here, was released.Īnalysis: Dear Esther is a slow game that doesn't try to satisfy your craving for action, high scores, achievements, or bacon collecting. It received almost universal praise for its design and atmosphere, sparking an overhaul that improved the graphics and tweaked the level layouts. #Dear esther analysis mod#All you need to do is walk around the island, investigate the sights, and breathe in the story.ĭear Esther began as a mod for Half-Life 2 back in 2008. You can't jump, you can't run, you can't pick up things and stash them in an inventory. All you need to know is that the game follows a standard first person control layout, using to march around and the mouse to look at things. Talking too much about the plot of Dear Esther ruins half of the experience, so this article is going to remain delightfully spoiler-free. What happened in this dreary place? And, better yet, can you find a way out? There's very little gameplay to speak of, just a deep mystery about the deserted island you're walking on, along with unanswered questions surrounding a horrific crash and a book written by a long-lost explorer. From these findings, I argue that the current conditions of the genre - and by this part of videogames as a medium - to be silently expanding yet vocally restricted to the perceived limits of Walking Simulators’ earlier titles.Dear Esther is an interactive story told through a first person adventure setting. This analysis is guided by a theoretical framework that consists of the ‘lyric, dramatic, and epic position’, ‘affordances of aspects of actions’, and ‘patterns of spatial use’, as well a Critical Discourse Analysis that enables engagement with ergodic media. After problematising the concept of ‘genre’, outlining genre as interchanging, and stating generic experiences with canonical titles, I analyse Paratopic’s and Eastshade’s textual and discursive dimensions. Throughout this thesis, I expand our understanding of Walking Simulators by analysing two more recent and divergent titles: Paratopic (Arbitrary Metric, 2018) and Eastshade (Eastshade Studios, 2019). Thus, our expectations of the genre stem from the qualities that have been found in and through a small percentage of its earlier examples. While responses to these questions have been given by a broad variety of people, when it comes to what constitutes a Walking Simulator, scholars, critics, and gamers hold on to a handful of early, now-canonical titles. Since then, the term became a genre that raised questions on what constitutes a videogame, the narrative potential of the medium, and its societal possibilities. The term ‘Walking Simulator’ surfaced after the release of its acclaimed educer Dear Esther (The Chinese Room, 2012).
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