As always, the less you know about this incredible game the better, but here is the set up: you play as Edith Finch, a 17-year old girl visiting her childhood home to reconnect with her family’s past and uncover the stories her mom tried so hard to keep away from her. She also narrates the story, and the words she says appear and disappear into your environment as you walk through them. There’s not too much here in regards to gameplay or difficulty: you walk, explore, and interact with elements of the environment on the way to uncover the truths and fantasies littered around the house. the house itself is a wonder of secret passageways, hidden doors, underground tunnels, and areas that shouldn’t connect to others. From afar it feels like if you poke it from the side the whole thing will tumble down. Like it shouldn’t even be still standing.

The catch is that as soon as you discover a family members story, the game transports you to their time and you get to play as them in their final moments.. Each story blends fantasy and reality. Each story is strange and poetic and sometimes horrifying. Each story ends in tragedy. Each of these segments offer the player a different set of controls and actions they need to perform; they’re all simple but the game never explicitly tells you what you have to do when you play these stories. You have to figure it out for yourself.

I’ve never quite played a game like this and I think it’s a really special example of the power that the interactive medium can have that no other medium can replicate. This wouldn’t quite work as a movie or a short story. In many ways it feels like playing through a pop-up book come to life, but giving you the point of view and attachment to Edith allows you a way to connect with her and her family in a profoundly moving way. It’s a heavy game that while not outright scary or visually upsetting, can be emotionally tough to get through. But I think the rewards at the end of the journey are so huge that it more than makes up for it. It has a lot to say about the stories we tell ourselves and how important but dangerous they can be.

This game will take you around 2 hours to complete and I paid $5 for it when it was on sale. Highly recommend

SPOILERS

Calling the reaction to this game divisive is an understatement: judging from the huge amount of negative reactions I’ve read online this feels even harsher and more toxic than the backlash to THE LAST JEDI. And no I don’t believe that the negative reaction has anything serious to do with rampant homophobia/transphobia that many fanboys have been plaguing the discourse with. Yes a shit load of gamers are terrible people, but I sincerely believe the overwhelming majority of people who dislike this game aren’t disliking it because they’re bigots (I know, maybe I’m too optimistic).

The reason why so many hate it comes down to the incredibly challenging story and uncomfortable character choices it puts the players through. At several points during the story I thought to myself “how the fuck does this game even exist??” If you haven’t heard, uhh bear with me: the main character of the first game, Joel, gets killed off about 1 hour into this 20+ hour odyssey on revenge, hatred, guilt and the lengths humanity will go through to excuse the awful actions they commit for “good reason.” Oh and Abby, the woman that brutally beat him to death with a golf club??? She’s the protagonist of almost the entire second half of this thing. oh and ON TOP OF THAT, in the end when Ellie finally catches up and bests Abby to get her revenge??? She can’t bring herself to do it. She doesn’t deliver the final blow. She let’s her live. Yeah again: how the fuck does the biggest game of the year have a storyline this bonkers???

People think Joel’s unceremonious death was character assassination. They complain “how can Joel give up his name so easily to a group of strangers?? the badass survivor from the first game is now an idiot!! plot hole!” Putting aside the fact that no matter how Joel dies people would’ve complained and found an argument to explain it away and clalim “shit lazy writing,” this argument still fails on the idea that Joel in TLOU2 is not the same character from TLOU1. He has changed, the whole first game is a massive metamorphosis for his character (try to imagine early Joel from TLOU1 teaching Ellie to play guitar at the start of TLOU2… yeah it’s hard isn’t it?). The idea that this man has softened up a bit in his old age and 4+ years of living with Ellie in a huge safe city is uhhh not too crazy. It also ignores the fact that these characters you play as are human beings. I know, I’m saying crazy stuff! But maybe characters making mistakes is… not bad writing?

It’s also interesting how many excuses players are willing to make to still like and root for the characters. It’s important to say this and to come to terms with this: Joel is not a good person. He has done inexcusable, unforgivable things to survive. Some of them necessary, some of them not. The ending of TLOU1, where he slaughters dozens of people to selfishly save Ellie to prevent her death from being used to give a cure to the world (indirectly dooming humanity by the way!) is not a victory. It is a tragedy. And some folks don’t even realize this. I hear many people still claim Joel is a “father figure” to them which is mind-boggling to me. Another massive sin he commits is taking the most important decision of Ellie’s life away from her. He doesn’t even LET her decide, he CHOOSES for her. I care a lot about him as I’m sure everyone does, but caring about someone doesn’t wash away the blood they have on their hands. Joel’s brutal death was a long time coming and it isn’t bad writing, it’s a logical consequence to living life without a moral line to cross.

But the protagonist switcheroo half way through is the real big qualm people have with this game. After killing Joel, Abby is already arguably the most hated character in video game history, but then you have to PLAY as her?? NO! I want to play as Ellie! I love Ellie! Except… why do you love Ellie and Joel but hate Abby? Why was Abby’s quest for revenge invalid while Ellies quest is? Funny how when all is said and done, seems like Ellie kills more people in her quest than Abby does huh? And Joel kills more people at the end of TLOU1 then pretty much all the other characters… so why do you still love him?

Switching protagonist’s half way through is crucial to what the TLOU2 is trying to do, which is to put you into the shoes of your “villain” to force you to see the humanity and inhumanity in everyone you meet. Why does Abby kill Joel?? Because her father was one of the doctors killed in Joel’s rampage at the end of TLOU1. Every nameless person you massacre as Ellie in the first half on your endless quest of revenge? As Abby they are your friends, your loved ones, your allies. What this game is trying to do is not exactly subtle, not exactly hard to figure out. They practically beat the point across your head with a golf club. And the many small moments when Ellie or Abby excuse their actions to their companions only further drives the point. Every moment they do is more forced than the last. And the people that claim that Abby’s story is just “boring” I’m sorry to say are succumbing to the exact biases and prejudices that the game is forcing you to confront. Blindly hating Abby without seeing the human behind her because she killed Joel is EXACTLY the same as Abby blindly hating Joel for killing her father. Abby’s storyline, dealing with conflict between two hostile factions pitted against each other and her allegiance to her side coming into question when she’s saved by her enemy, is exactly the type of compelling exciting anti-imperialism story that could fund a blockbuster movie all on it’s own. And paralleling her “seeing-the-light” character study growth with Ellie’s slow descent into morally repugnant revenge is the cross-cutting masterwork that writers can only dream of.

This is some gripping, insanely ambitious storytelling and letting yourself fall prey to the biases it is directly commenting on prevents you from seeing the value with confronting the hard choices. It would be EASY to hate Abby all the way through, to say she’s evil and be done with it. It would be EASY for the story to end half way with Ellie getting her revenge and us rooting for the sweet sweet release of watching Abby die horrifically for what she did to poor innocent Joel!! Too bad this game is not interested at all with the easy choices.

And to the people that complain that this is too nihilistic or too bleak, or that they’re not interested in playing through a game where they hate everyone: it’s not as hopeless as you think. There are human moments sprinkled throughout this story that make it resonate even harder. Ellie’s birthday flashback is amongst the most beautifully endearing sequences I’ve ever seen in a video game. The moments of levity where Ellie and Dina are flirting or when Abby and Owen are bickering only make the horrible moments sting harder. And no Ellie doesn’t kill Abby in the end. She chokes, and does that make the whole journey worthless? No. It’s the only good thing she does across this whole game. It’s maybe proof that theres at least an ounce of humanity still left in her that she didn’t let the world take away. Does it redeem her and let her off the hook from all the people she killed along the way? No. Does Abby saving Lev redeem the selfish atrocities she’s committed on her own journey? No again. That is not the point.

This whole game is a profoundly difficult exercise in empathy, in putting yourself in the shoes of someone you hate and forcing you to understand them. It’s a harrowing story of damaged, broken people trying to make sense of their traumas in an unforgivable world. Trying to reckon with the choices they make, the choices they don’t, and the horrors they endure. It’s got a lot more on it’s mind than just “violence bad, revenge bad.” It is among the most emotionally affecting and uncompromisingly brutal works of art I have ever experienced. And it’s one that I will not be forgetting. Ever.

Gameplay rules but the story is the real highlight. Tying together Peters core relationships: his love (MJ) his family (May) and his city (Miles), putting them to the test, and ultimately showing how he needs them as much as they need him. Pete's relationships don't make him weaker. They make him stronger. A beautiful story that thoughtfully explores how the people we love make us who we are.

Outside of Spider-Verse and Raimis SM2, this is the best Spidey story mainstream media has given us.

And swinging through NYC is like free therapy