Death is an inevitability.
Yet we spend such great parts of our life worried and anxious about it, trying to escape it, feeling sad and crushed about meeting it, grieving everything that we cared about inevitably succumbing to the great reaper.
It is as natural part of life as birth, perhaps even more so - you might not be born, but you will die.
What Remains of Edith Finch might seem as only about death. You will notice it for the first time when you open the Options menu - the book with their family tree is right there, and if you look at it for even a bit, you might notice something strange - only one name doesn't have a death date.
And far too many that do, have one too close to birth for comfort.
Indeed, the Finch family seems plagued by death, some in their old age, most in young, one terribly so; and you step into the shoes of the only living member of the family and through her eyes explore the huge family house from which no room of a dead person has ever been removed, only new parts have been added for the newly received.
It is a house of death, a literal museum of the family Finch, the rooms of its members kept in pristine conditions of the day they died - so deeply obsessed are the leaders of the family with memory that even a living twin had to share their room with the dead one for 8 years. It's a tragedy, and suffice to say, this family should really have moved on.
And yet the game is not nearly as morbid or as depressing as it sounds. Even within the most tragic of tales (even within the one I had the most difficulty playing through since my own child is the closest to that age, those moments mere miniature drops of time behind), there is hope and the acknowledgement of the beauty of life. A boy dies, but also flies; a man dies, but also lives; a girl dies, but within gives the greatest performance of her life; and so on. Within their deaths, they are not dying, but living, however short it might seem.
And you see it all through their eyes - within their rooms, you come upon the missives of their last memories and by entering them, you will learn what made them tick, and see their final moments; and again - while it sounds depressing, in the moment, it is not really so.
It is only afterwarfs that the real weight of this empty house and all those dead kids really hit me. The game, even within its very last moments, looks at death with acceptance and not with despair, but just a little dry sense of loss, as if it's too bad we didn't get to take the afternoon tea, but oh well, such is life.
Such is life, and such is dead; and What Remains of Edith Finch is the best walking sim I've ever played, and a surefire inclusion in my all time favourite games.
What's more, I yearn to walk again through the cluttered corridors and hidden passages of the childhood home of Edith Finch, even if all I'll meet there will be my lonely thoughts, the lingering ghosts, and the unavoidable fact of death. But what beauty as well!
Yet we spend such great parts of our life worried and anxious about it, trying to escape it, feeling sad and crushed about meeting it, grieving everything that we cared about inevitably succumbing to the great reaper.
It is as natural part of life as birth, perhaps even more so - you might not be born, but you will die.
What Remains of Edith Finch might seem as only about death. You will notice it for the first time when you open the Options menu - the book with their family tree is right there, and if you look at it for even a bit, you might notice something strange - only one name doesn't have a death date.
And far too many that do, have one too close to birth for comfort.
Indeed, the Finch family seems plagued by death, some in their old age, most in young, one terribly so; and you step into the shoes of the only living member of the family and through her eyes explore the huge family house from which no room of a dead person has ever been removed, only new parts have been added for the newly received.
It is a house of death, a literal museum of the family Finch, the rooms of its members kept in pristine conditions of the day they died - so deeply obsessed are the leaders of the family with memory that even a living twin had to share their room with the dead one for 8 years. It's a tragedy, and suffice to say, this family should really have moved on.
And yet the game is not nearly as morbid or as depressing as it sounds. Even within the most tragic of tales (even within the one I had the most difficulty playing through since my own child is the closest to that age, those moments mere miniature drops of time behind), there is hope and the acknowledgement of the beauty of life. A boy dies, but also flies; a man dies, but also lives; a girl dies, but within gives the greatest performance of her life; and so on. Within their deaths, they are not dying, but living, however short it might seem.
And you see it all through their eyes - within their rooms, you come upon the missives of their last memories and by entering them, you will learn what made them tick, and see their final moments; and again - while it sounds depressing, in the moment, it is not really so.
It is only afterwarfs that the real weight of this empty house and all those dead kids really hit me. The game, even within its very last moments, looks at death with acceptance and not with despair, but just a little dry sense of loss, as if it's too bad we didn't get to take the afternoon tea, but oh well, such is life.
Such is life, and such is dead; and What Remains of Edith Finch is the best walking sim I've ever played, and a surefire inclusion in my all time favourite games.
What's more, I yearn to walk again through the cluttered corridors and hidden passages of the childhood home of Edith Finch, even if all I'll meet there will be my lonely thoughts, the lingering ghosts, and the unavoidable fact of death. But what beauty as well!
4 Comments
@ThinkingFella Thanks! I'm glad you liked it ☺️
Great review bud!
@Craigjs91 Thanks!
ThinkingFella
7 months ago