Everybody's Gone to the Rapture
Jan. 5th, 2016 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingIt is a testament to my complete and utter lack of skill as a gamer that it took me almost two hours to figure out how to play this seven-hour game.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture dumps the player on a hill overlooking a fictional village called Yaughton in the west of England. The game is entirely first-person, and the player can only do two things: walk and look around. There's also an action button that can be used to turn on radios, pick up ringing phones, and enter open doors and gates, but we never see the player character's hands. The player is thus little more than a moving point of view. This is just fine, because Yaughton is gorgeous, but it took me awhile to figure out what I needed to do to progress the story.
What I eventually learned was this:
* If a door is closed, you can't open it.
* The purpose of the glowing comet is to lead you through the game.
* You have to use the controller's tilt function to get the pinpoints of light to talk (which makes sense in the context of the story, although as a gimmick it's not worth the PS4 console exclusivity).
The front end of the game is loaded with tons of disconnected narratives and characters whose relationship to each other isn't immediately apparent. After almost two hours of wandering around and trying to figure things out, I finally realized that the tourist maps posted around the town function as maps of the game, and that I was only at the beginning. At that point I stopped caring about seeing and finding everything and decided to follow the glowing comet to progress the story.
What the comet showed me was a series of conversations centered around a priest who was trying to come to terms with his faith in relation to what was happening to the town. After a climactic scene, the game changes, and something amazing happens. I'm not going to spoil the surprise, but OH MY GOD. It was so beautiful that I may have cried a little.
After that, the game becomes both more structured and more visually dynamic. The player now understands that each area of the game is the stage for a narrative surrounding one character, an understanding the game encourages by having the name of that character appear on the screen as one of the choral pieces of its soundtrack plays during the transition from area to area. After the first transition, the world of the game also becomes more active, with floating pollen, falling leaves, swaying flowers, billowing air-dried laundry, and moving shadows suggesting wind moving through the trees. As the natural world becomes more alive, so too do the characters as the pieces of the story gradually start coming together.
I'm actually a little worried that Everybody's Gone to the Rapture has elevated my tolerance for beauty. The sheer overwhelming joy I experienced while playing this game was intense.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture dumps the player on a hill overlooking a fictional village called Yaughton in the west of England. The game is entirely first-person, and the player can only do two things: walk and look around. There's also an action button that can be used to turn on radios, pick up ringing phones, and enter open doors and gates, but we never see the player character's hands. The player is thus little more than a moving point of view. This is just fine, because Yaughton is gorgeous, but it took me awhile to figure out what I needed to do to progress the story.
What I eventually learned was this:
* If a door is closed, you can't open it.
* The purpose of the glowing comet is to lead you through the game.
* You have to use the controller's tilt function to get the pinpoints of light to talk (which makes sense in the context of the story, although as a gimmick it's not worth the PS4 console exclusivity).
The front end of the game is loaded with tons of disconnected narratives and characters whose relationship to each other isn't immediately apparent. After almost two hours of wandering around and trying to figure things out, I finally realized that the tourist maps posted around the town function as maps of the game, and that I was only at the beginning. At that point I stopped caring about seeing and finding everything and decided to follow the glowing comet to progress the story.
What the comet showed me was a series of conversations centered around a priest who was trying to come to terms with his faith in relation to what was happening to the town. After a climactic scene, the game changes, and something amazing happens. I'm not going to spoil the surprise, but OH MY GOD. It was so beautiful that I may have cried a little.
After that, the game becomes both more structured and more visually dynamic. The player now understands that each area of the game is the stage for a narrative surrounding one character, an understanding the game encourages by having the name of that character appear on the screen as one of the choral pieces of its soundtrack plays during the transition from area to area. After the first transition, the world of the game also becomes more active, with floating pollen, falling leaves, swaying flowers, billowing air-dried laundry, and moving shadows suggesting wind moving through the trees. As the natural world becomes more alive, so too do the characters as the pieces of the story gradually start coming together.
I'm actually a little worried that Everybody's Gone to the Rapture has elevated my tolerance for beauty. The sheer overwhelming joy I experienced while playing this game was intense.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 11:27 am (UTC)What has exclusivity touched that it doesn't spoil.
Grousing aside, thank you for the review. I really wish "walking simulators" wasn't the popular term for these types of games.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:53 pm (UTC)Maybe "exploration game" would work better, though. It's more appropriate than "adventure game" (which implies puzzles and combat), and games that occur within a relatively confined space, like Gone Home, don't really feel like "walking simulators."
no subject
Date: 2016-01-11 10:52 am (UTC)