Gone Home

Developed by people with experience on the BioShock series, the game of The Fullbright Company completely revolves around the concept of environmental storytelling and exploits it to experience a rich and exciting story firsthand, which is articulated on some mandatory, but fixed, points. at the same time it leaves the player reading, in-depth study, and interpretative modalities. As a girl who comes home to meet her sister, but finds the house empty, she finds herself rummaging around the house, immersed in a dark and stormy night, trying to understand what happened, putting her hands, eyes and heart in the touching events of a person who, perhaps, the protagonist of the game did not really know, as much as we players.

The bulk of the story is told by the classic excerpts from the diary, read by the voice of the lost sister, through which you find yourself immersed in the thoughts, dreams, joys and sorrows of a teenager struggling with his own life. But as games of the caliber of Dishonored, Fallout, BioShock cited teach, audio recordings are only part of the experience, albeit the most direct and strong. Then there is everything else, all the incredible work done on the setting, on the objects, on the details.

The charm of Gone Home lies enormously in the interaction, in putting things in hand, in rummaging among the drawers, behind the doors, in the cavities, in scrutinizing small writings on the walls, drawings scribbled on a piece of paper, concert tickets , postcards, books. To really enjoy the events, you must abandon any desire for "victory", for quick completion, and simply turn around the rooms, investigating, deepening, immersing yourself in that small virtual world. And then here is that slowly the mind starts to connect the dots, some consciously, others without even being aware of it, and creates a delicate fresco, in which you find yourself involved without respite and which then goes to make those excerpts tremendously stronger of first-person stories that occasionally emerge.

The tracks of the diary are several, some are well hidden and not all are necessary to reach the end of the game. Which, if desired, can generate a hint of replay value.

The ability to create a strong atmosphere and truly immerse yourself in the game world is one of the strongest features of Gone Home, first of all the daughter of a very effective graphics engine, worthy of a production from a completely different budget, but more than anything else of the incredible design work. The structure of the house, the skill with which the objects are scattered around, the attention to the small details that characterize the personality of the environment, the simple amount of things with which it is possible to interact, often in a completely superfluous way ... everything makes up a world with an expressive force outside the parameters, even in its simple normality. And there is actually nothing superfluous, because every cup taken in hand, rimirata, rotated and put back in place, every concert ticket, every book, everything contributes to make you feel there. And it does, carefully, without ever guiding you by the hand, without ever being intrusive, allowing yourself only a handful of mandatory steps to reach the end. Gone Home does not feel the need to force you to do this or that, to follow you step by step through its history: it slams you there and gives you ample freedom to ignore much of what it offers, as much as to scour every single pixel. It's a splendid, liberating feeling, fundamental in the game's ability to engage.

Wandering around the rooms of Gone Home, maybe late at night, with a nice pair of headphones to drop you in the right atmosphere, you really have the feeling of being in an empty house, in the dark, in the middle of the storm, while wandering around worried looking of something, or someone. Everyone faces it in his own way, for heaven's sake, but I found myself behaving exactly as I would in reality, closing every door behind me, turning off the lights that I had turned on and those I had found turned on, put back in its place that that I collected, close the open drawers, stubborn on the dishwasher door that wasn't working, worry about that drawer off its axis ... crazy. You really feel that feeling, very strong, of being there, which also leads you to be a little restless, because you are alone, in the dark, scattered who knows where, in a house full of ancient noises, with the rain outside ... and in fact after a while I started not to turn off the lights anymore and to leave some doors open, to feel more peaceful. Just like I would in reality.

Everything in the past plunges in the nineties, in a natural, solid way, never focused on the only taste for the slightly nostalgic quote, to create an even stronger context, clearly effective especially for those who lived that period as teenager.

In this sense, Gone Home is also a little clever, because it plays quite well with the expectations of the players and with the clichés of the video game. The way it does it is interesting, also very effective and often spot on also in the way it intertwines the story (I think of a certain reference on leaving the lights on around the house), but at times it is perhaps a bit 'to get carried away, especially in the way he enjoys playing with horror conventions. Although, in fact, the history of Gone Home goes to parry elsewhere, the atmosphere that you breathe, for large stretches, is subtle, disturbing, almost oppressive, only partially diluted by the continuous showing you that in reality there is no 'is nothing to fear and there is only one beautiful story to live.

This bizarre emotional mix is at the same time a nice asset and, perhaps, the main limitation of the game. Because on the one hand it comes out, in a certain sense, one of those beautiful horror films that know how to do their job very well despite being fundamentally interested in telling you something else and despite being, in fact, anything but horror. But on the other hand, this sometimes very strong atmosphere is likely to turn away from a beautiful experience those who may struggle to appreciate that kind of emotion, or perhaps deceive people in search of an Outlast or an Amnesia (after all Gone Home was born as a mod of the game of Frictional Games). In the middle, there are a couple of moments, which I will not be here to tell, in which in my opinion the developers got carried away a little too much by the taste for the meta-game, with inconsistent results that tend to "detach" from the emotional journey.

The setting in the past also serves to make sense of exploration, without a smartphone on the table where you can find everything you need.

But, mind you, these are criticisms of small details, slightly out of tune elements of a splendid and wonderfully successful game. Gone Home is one of the most beautiful things that have manifested themselves in this once again excellent year of independent development, it is another experience of those that "only in video games", is a concrete example of how strong interactive storytelling can be done , author, guided, while leaving ample room for the player's first-person vision, is a project developed without compromise, pursuing a strong idea without having to make concessions to the clichés of large productions.

Gone Home, above all, is a game that manages to paint very strongly what it really means to be teenagers, to live prey to that passion, that honesty, that naive violence with which one gets overwhelmed by life. The portrait of the young woman protagonist of the events is passionate, sincere, affectionate. You never slip into that sense of superiority with which you often tend, as an adult, to observe the youthful fury that you have known and forgotten. Instead, you only feel affection, tenderness, understanding, closeness. For a handful of pixels.

MODUS OPERANDI
Gone Home was released on Steam last August and we have guilty neglected it. The Christmas atmosphere, the discounts on Steam, the "snowy" image created by the developers, the update with the audio commentary, the prizes won by the game at the VGX and the guilt feelings made me want to write about it today. I received a download code from Steam directly from the development team and dedicated a couple of hours to the game, during which I completed the adventure rummaging a bit everywhere and then I went back to find the three pieces of diary that I was lost on the street. If you run, you can definitely take less. If you linger in the exploration, perhaps because you do not get scared by the atmosphere like myself, you can definitely take more time.

Oh, Gone Home, what am I doing with you? Actually, I should have to pull your mutton legs out: after two hours it's over and still 19 euros expensive, no replay value and as demanding as hiding against myself, with the price-performance rating (playing time divided by costs) you have long been "poor" Cashed in, overtaken "insufficiently" on the right and raced through the roundabout three times at "insolent".

But damn it, it was two great hours, sometimes wonderfully scary, then heartbreakingly human, always exciting and never cheesy, even if your ending certainly doesn't please everyone, but we'll get to that later. So I can't possibly judge you as a game and write a classic test, because that would be like trying to impale a butterfly with a pin in order to preserve its beauty.

Instinctively familiar

I have already started an article similar to that, almost a year ago, at that time the un-game was called Dear Esther and told a poetic story about guilt, atonement and the human desire to preserve the ephemeral, to drown it in formaldehyde and oneself to persuade it to stay alive.

Gone Home is so similar - just completely different. My journey does not begin on a nameless island in the Scottish Hebrides, but at home, a recognizable American home, but instinctively familiar, the spare key is badly hidden in one of those tacitly agreed places that every family knows and about which nobody really knows who originally came up with it.

With the discovery of this key, my interactive work is practically done, there will be a few little puzzles to follow, but I would rarely have to go stupid to avoid "playing" Gone Home to its controversial end, the following two hours do not provide any Demand - if I'm just curious, click on everything, take everything in.

Perfectly staged

While a storm is raging outside, I explore a house that is my house ... and somehow also completely strange, even scary. That sounds like a contradiction, but Gone Home stages it perfectly.

I play Kaitlin Greenbriar, just back from Amsterdam, a long trip through Europe with me and full of joy to see the family again in Oregon, but the family is not there, the house is ghostly empty and yet strangely alive, as if the residents were just walked outside the door and never came back.

When the television is switched on, a storm warning flickers, a half-written manuscript page lies in my father's typewriter, I find letters from my mother to a friend from my youth, I feel like an intruder on the one hand and strangely at home on the other hand, there is a literally intimate atmosphere, the family is slowly waking up to Life, with all the lovable quirks, everyday worries and subliminal abysses, rarely (if ever) has a game drawn such believable characters even though they are not even present.

Empty promises?

But what happened to them? The premise of Gone Home is reminiscent of the Mary Celeste, that famous ghost ship that was found abandoned floating in the Atlantic, the lifeboats firmly moored, the supposedly still warm food on the table, the crew as if swallowed by the ground.

Yes, you can accuse Gone Home of playing with marked cards, faking a classic haunted story, only to tell something completely different, apparently trivial, and if Michael is disappointed with the finale, even genuinely angry (see box), then act it is legitimate criticism.

But I do not share them. On the contrary: Gone Home is such a wonderful experience precisely because it illustrates how dogmatic our expectations of the medium have become - and how great it can be when a game doesn't meet them for a change.

Great because it is banal

Of course, when I think of an abandoned property in the raging storm, I involuntarily think of a haunted story. But why actually?

When I visit my parents on the weekend and no one is at home, I don't suspect murder, manslaughter and supernatural things right away - I'm almost instinctively convinced that there is guaranteed to be a completely banal explanation.

With Gone Home, however, I instinctively expect disaster, simply because it's a game. The fact that this catastrophe ultimately does not materialize (or better said: that it is a banal, everyday catastrophe) is not a disappointment to me, but a compelling factor for the story that Gone Home tells.

If Michael says that there is only an old support stocking in the supposed surprise bag, then that is absolutely correct - but I would find it inappropriate, even lying, if something else came to light.

One trick pony?

So Gone Home defies the conventions of a classic test not least because I would never come up with the crazy idea of recommending it to someone I don't know personally.

After all, with some justification one can understand it as a hopelessly overpriced and playfully undemanding one-trick pony, as a circus horse that can only do this one trick - and that's crap.

But you don't have to. It can also be seen as a wonderfully intimate story of growing up, a bold example of what games can do when they don't act like games. 19 euros is a proud price for such an experiment. But my last visit to the cinema cost more with popcorn, cola and 3D frills - and in those two hours I wasn't entertained as well as Gone Home.

GTA V impressed a lot of people - I'm one of them and gave the game the maximum rating. But not only the work of the Rockstar studio has received impressive reviews recently. Similar praises were addressed to a completely different production: Gone Home . The title of The Fullbright Company studio is something like an adventure game, similar in genre to such games as Dear Esther or Proteus , and thus giving up classic gameplay in favor of exploration. Gone Home gained fame also due to the unusual theme in games - a moral story about an ordinary girl.

We decided to come back to this proposal to see if Gone Home is indeed making a revolution in narrative and is a bold direction for games .

Gone Home begins on the porch of an American house that, as it quickly turns out, has been abandoned by its residents. In the game, we play the role of Katie Greenbriar, a girl returning to her family after her trip to Europe. We immediately discover that something is wrong - a note from her sister Sam hangs on the door, containing an enigmatic and clearly hastily sketched message. Where are Katie's relatives? The answer to this is provided by letters, documents, postcards and journal fragments discovered in subsequent rooms. From the gameplay side, Gone Home is something like a book whose chapters are scattered around the area . As items can be picked up, turned, and then dropped, after completing the game, the Greenbriar house looks like it has been broken into - there are rubbish thrown out everywhere. Until it begs a joke that in the Gone Home sequel we will have to clean up all this mess.

Gone Home positively surprised me with the presence of a few elements of typical adventure games . I was concerned that the game would only handle empty spaces and readable messages. Meanwhile, in the production of The Fullbright Company studio, we have a substitute for looking for clues, passages and keys. A substitute, because the whole thing can be completed in just an hour or two. In such a short time, I managed to catch the moments of weariness with the narrative used. Discovering secrets in private letters is fun the first time, the second, even the fifth. However, with the fifteenth sheet, you only think about getting to the end and having this "interactive experience" behind you .

More extensive contact with the world abandoned by people, i.e. the ability to open doors and cabinets, is important in that it helps to create the impression of crossing the privacy threshold. And that's what The Fullbright Company production is all about - it's an intimate journey into the world of your own family's secrets. In that sense, Gone Home has great moments, such as the scene where the heroine refuses to complete one of the notes left by her sister . Why? Because she describes her first sexual experiences in it. I have some doubts about the construction of the narrative, because the relationship between us, the protagonist and the other characters (who is spying on whom?) Is very complex. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that this title does indeed directly address a few topics absent from the gaming world.

What exactly do we learn about the Greenbriar state? Be warned that there is no need to do without minor spoilers . Let's start with the fact that nothing too unusual happened in this family, which is already of some value. There is no question of paranormal phenomena or monsters here. Gone Home talks about fairly down-to-earth things that most of us know from autopsy . So we have a father, an unfulfilled writer obsessed with a certain historical event, who earns money by piecing together boring equipment reviews. There is a mother who is probably responding to her husband's coldness in someone else's arms. And the aforementioned Sam, a younger sister who fights for her happiness in the world of social norms and ideologies that define the framework of correct behavior.

The game does not try to force these threads. We learn about the overarching story of ourselves in a linear way. The rest, explaining, for example, why the parents are not at home and where they really went, we have to find out for ourselves . Here, Gone Home gives only hints and leaves room for interpretation. I'm talking about it because the game has some mysteries and understatements. The darkest one has to do with Oscar, Mr. Greenbriar's uncle, who once owned the house that was the scene. Oscar has done something wrong in the past, and although it is never explained outright, you can guess what's going on.

Sam remains the main character, and her topic is her relationship with her friend Lonnie and the rest of her peers. In short, Sam disagrees with certain preconceived norms and looks for his own way. The game takes up issues that are not often present in games, e.g. feminism or, to some extent, the fight against patriarchy. I reassure you that Gone Home does not have the hallmarks of a manifesto . This is a light approach to both topics that shouldn't scare anyone away. The authors focus on telling a personal story. First of all, we read Sam's emotions and accompany her in overcoming her fear of rejecting the then unjust and artificial social norms. I would be lying if I wrote that I did not support her or that I did not care about her fate. Gone Home bought me, although not one hundred percent .

Doubts about the story boil down to the fact that, unfortunately, it is infantile . I can understand this because we are finally reading the story outlined by a teenager from the perspective of her little older sister. It is hard to expect any exaggerated excesses or strong scenes straight from the novels of Philippe Besson. Sam's story, however, quickly shows features of something we already know and which has been reworked dozens of times by pop culture. Gone Home varies between a truly poignant story and the emotionality of the golden years of Ich Troje. "Not the worst, but still" family-like "melodrama, the thought came back to me often . Perhaps the point is that the story serves something like a happy ending, it does not deprive you of hope that it will get better. It made me wonder if The Fullbright Company was simply about a teenage rebellion and running away from home.