Finally a video about Edith Finch I can completely agree with! Edith Finch gets some things very right, but there's a lot in there that's a letdown too... no one ever seems to mention that part.
Yes, even the basic concept of using a walking sim as a frame narrative for an anthology of minigames which double as short stories---is really very clever. It's easily one of the best attempts at this type of game I've ever seen, and I do hope folks making similar games learn the right lessons from it.
As far as the mechanics (and I’m not an expert), part of the issue could stem from some behind the scenes circumstances as far as production is concerned. Plus, it seems they focused on the themes before going into how they implement it; after all, the production took five years. Like I said, I’m not an expert, but sometimes it could be as simple as time constraints or lack of resources /technology. I do see what you mean about playing with the same controls.
Yes, in some stories the gameplay could be better and directly connected with the script, but I think that sometimes it is not completely necessary, I think the variety between more playable scenes and more quiet ones is what makes this game great. For example, Milton, you basically said you want more details and to have a minigame to play as Milton, but I like how Milton story is told, it is very simple and short, but for me that builds up the mistery about it, if we control milton the mistery would be lost, we don't control him, because we don't know if he died, that's why (in the logic of the game) we can't know what happened to him. But, for me the approach you took doesn't seem entirely right, you said that you don't like to separate the plot from the gameplay, but still you focus much more one the gameplay, what I mean is that most of the stories are very coherent both in narration and in gameplay, maybe some could be better but if that's the case I can't think of a better way of doing them, for example Calvin I think is good, rather to be that focused con controlling him, I'm focuses on the tragic situation of his death and also in the letter by his brother (I think about what sam felt then), and I think that was the intention, so yes the gameplay is simple, but I don't think is necessary to be more complex in this case. I agree with you in the case of Barbara and Walter, I also expected more from those two. Even though I don't agree entirely with it, I'm glad to see people talking about the game, creating these discussions and exploring games with various approaches.
PS: I may seem that I don't like at all the approach of the video or that I don't value gameplay that much, in this case I have a different opinion, because that's the way I feel. But essentially I really value the gameplay. I think gameplay is probably the most important thing, because potentially a game would be better if it can use the gameplay as a narration (not only to games like this, but also horror, action or any type of game really). At last I very value this channel, and I'm not saying that you hate the game, not at all. Simply I think some parts of the game weren't as weak as you say.
Perfectly understandable perspective! My wife is quite fond of Calvin's segment as well (she says it strongly reminds her of swinging as a child). For some of the characters, and I would include Walter, Calvin, and Milton in this, I have no direct problem with the simple/repetitive designs in isolation---only with such a mechanically similar approach being used for all three.
Awhile ago I levied the criticism that you sound as though you're simply reading from a script. I still think so, and I think it causes people to bounce off your videos despite their quality. I wanted to comment about it again because I think I've realized a particular aspect to your delivery which causes this vibe: the lack of variation in volume/pitch and speed. The whole of the video is read at about a mezzo-forte with a very public speaking kind of tone. Don't get me wrong I think that's generally a good thing and a great starting point. Without any variation, however, without occasionally lowering your voice to let the viewer/listener in on a thing or two, without slow respect for an emotional moment here or there or changing tempo for a joke, it feels as though you're plowing ahead on a pre-laid track without any regard for the listener's ebb and flow of attention and energy. Sorry if this all sounds harsh, but its all love. I think you've got a fantastic approach and style, and pick very interesting lenses through which to examine your subjects. I'd love to see your videos reach a wider audience and cant help but feel that the spoken delivery is the only thing holding you back.
Ha, hello again. Thank you for the concern. What you're noticing there is how some of the audio editing is done on my videos, where the time between sentences is standardized except when I want to emphasize something, or when the usual treatment sounds unnatural. I've tried a few different approaches over the years (including everything from totally freestyle custom spacing, to cutting out literally as much spacing as possible without sounding weird, to several more), and this one receives the fewest complaints by far. As a matter of fact, you're the only person to ever complain about it, since I moved over to it around the time of the NecroDancer video in late 2020. This is not to say there isn't still room for improvement; I'd ideally like to come across less 'public speaker,' more casual in my actual delivery, but doing that and still sounding enthusiastic is a hard line for me to walk. With that being said, having access to all of the statistics about my channel on the backend, the performance of my videos doesn't match up with your diagnosis. People don't 'bounce off' my videos. They simply don't click on them. Viewer retention once someone is watching is consistently high, much higher than any publicly available averages I've found for other channels. So, if there's an area of my channel where there is technically huge room for improvement and growth, it would be in making clickbait thumbnails, making clickbait titles, and picking brand new or controversial subjects (rather than a 6-year-old moderately successful indie game like this one, or, in the case of my next video, a 40-year-old moderately successful film). But I personally dislike clickbait, especially when it comes to thumbnails; and if I let popularity or recency guide my choice of subject matter, I'd probably burn out on this whole thing in a year.
Good video (as usual, how come you're the only game reviewer besides MrBtongue (God rest his soul) that actually has read a book in his life?), but I think walking simulators do deserve more flack than they got here for being so consistently unambitious in how they approach interactivity. The above average segments in Edith Finch should be the bare minimum of interesting interactions walking sims should accomplish, instead they're praised to high heavens for even sparing a single creative idea on how the player the engaging with the artwork. Too many just rely on pretty visuals and good music, how many of them even have good writing? I would also disagree on Edith Finch being to the standard of Shirley Jackson, maybe in the moment-to-moment, but it lacks that neat little bow to ties everything together. It might be the problem of being an anthology since those usually have that problem, but I can't see Edith Finch (outside of the Lewis segment, which truly is genius) amounting to mcuh other than a series of macabre and sometimes ironic deaths, like a slightly mroe surreal version of the Six Feet Under intros.
Thanks for the kind words. Certainly wish Btongue was still active. Anyway, as I say in the video, I think the existence of 'walking sims' was an inevitability; it's an artistic niche that was going to be filled eventually, and I've enjoyed some of them as they've occasionally provided a vehicle for interesting writing. I just mentally place the simpler ones in the 'multimedia art' category (like an abstract video installation in a museum) rather than the 'game' category.
I think Matthewmatosis said it best that we shouldn't get too hung up on what a game is supposed to be (people never ask if a song shouldn't have a poem instead), I don't think prescriptive rules for art are ever useful. The problem with walking sims is that they definitionally almost always have very little thought put into how the player interacts with it. They remind me of some film student doing a found footage romantic comedy, or a Wes Anderson horror movie, it might be fine as a gag (which is why Stanley parable is usually the most praised one despite the lame writing and lack of ideas) but the concept is so fundamentally contradictory, what usually does walking around pressing a context sensitive use key have to do with what's actually at stake in most walking sims? Usually nothing.
I don't think you've quite understood my response there. I'm not saying simple walking sims _should_ be multimedia art rather than games; I'm saying it's more fruitful to consider them to _be_ multimedia art rather than games. Not because they aren't games, but rather because, of all the things they arguably are, games are not what they're best at being. So, I'm categorizing them, not saying what they should've been instead. That's a descriptive, not prescriptive, stance. In Matthew's video on Dear Esther and Journey, when he insists that Dear Esther is a game, he's responding to the discourse of the era---which was mostly dominated by people denigrating Dear Esther by simply dismissing it as 'not a game.' So, he was defending the legitimacy of taking it seriously and discussing its merits (or lack thereof) in comparison to roughly similar works. I'm not disagreeing with that perspective. I don't mean to be saying simple walking sims can't be considered as games; they certainly can. I'm just saying that there are forms of interactive art other than games, and such simple walking sims are sometimes better at being those other forms than they are at being games. It's also worth highlighting that I don't think every one of them is an interesting or worthwhile artwork, regardless of how they're categorized. You, me, and Matthew are in agreement that Dear Esther and The Stanley Parable are low-quality (and, in the latter case, overrated) works.
@TheGemsbok They're sold on game stores, reviewed by game outlets, played by gamers, if they're not games then where do you draw the line? Is SOMA a game? I don't see how this distinction is useful.
Perhaps I'm just not being clear. They can be games, at the same time as being other things; but they may be better at being those other things than at being games. It doesn't ultimately matter what they're called. It only matters how they're thought about. Just because something fails when categorized as what one person thinks of as a game, that doesn't mean it can't succeed when categorized in a different way by that same person. It's not as though every piece of interactive art has to be judged as a game and only a game. Something can be a game, and also multimedia art, and also a short story, and also a virtual sculpture, and on and on---I'll always just think of the work in question as whichever thing it's best at being. A play with audience participation may be a terrible game, but could yet be a great piece of theatre. A museum installation that gives visitors a historical role may be a terrible game, but could yet be a great educational experience. A door with street art on it may be a terrible game, but could yet be a great decorated entrance. I'm not really concerned with what storefront a creator chooses for distribution, nor who chooses to review what. If everything sold on Steam and discussed by game reviewers had to be considered primarily a game, then Aseprite, Retroarch, the Steam Deck, and Indie Game: The Movie are all games. Ultimately, all that concerns me is the content of each work I consume---what it seems like it's trying to do, and whether I find it to be good at doing that. So, when I say I consider the simplest walking sims to be multimedia art rather than games, what I mean is that that's what they're best at being. Regarding Matthewmatosis, think of the essay in his video 'Meta Microvideos' entitled 'An Esoteric Text on Criticism,' which expresses almost the same point.
This 20 minute video can kinda be reduced to you not enjoying the walking sim segments of a walking sim. I read the less mechanically-demanding minigames as being a pacing device, since all the dexterity segments are kinda spread throughout the game and they usually take longer to complete than the bits where you hold a button. I enjoy ludonarrative harmony in my games as much as the next guy, but Edith Finch already provides more of that than most games and it seems like a weird complaint to ask that 100% of its minigames match its highest highs. But maybe I'm too sympathetic to gamedevs and how expensive it is to re-prototype gameplay segments that already work fine for the story.
Thank you for taking the time to comment. But I must admit, I would characterize that as a somewhat serious misreading of this video. That concern is addressed in several ways throughout it. First, as I say in the intro, I think walking sims fill a worthwhile artistic niche. I like Gone Home, which is a somewhat unpopular opinion (if Steam reviews are anything to go by). And I like lots of walking-sim-adjacent works, like Firewatch, To the Moon, Finding Paradise, Proteus, Brothers, Journey, and . . . What Remains of Edith Finch. Second, the primary part of the game sporting conventional ‘walking sim’ gameplay is Edith making her way around the house and yard, and you’ll find that _that_ gameplay is not directly criticized at any point in this video. In fact, I believe Edith walking around the house serves the exact purpose you’ve identified: it provides pacing to the game, and spaces out the mechanical experiments. And third, the second main section takes great pains to establish that (1) each minigame _does_ try some unique mechanical experiment, (2) where those minigames are simple or repetitive it is only the abundance of similar experiments that make it a problem, and (3) that if ‘simple and repetitive’ could describe _every_ minigame, we could just categorize the whole experience as a conventional walking sim and not bother to look deeper into its mechanics. Also, just to address your point about Edith Finch offering more ludonarrative harmony than most games---I agree. I generally don’t bother anymore with writing criticism of games I think are atrocious, which have nothing going for them but potential. These days, I’m much more interested in pushing the medium’s good and great works toward unbridled excellence. Hence the hopeful tone of my conclusion section.
You're close. My actual position is that all games can be _approached_ as art, but some are more apt for that approach than others. Hence my saying in the conclusion that more and more games are releasing that are "amenable" to such an approach. My article explaining this position can be found on my site: thegemsbok.com/art-reviews-and-articles/infinifactory-zachtronics-games-as-art/
Finally a video about Edith Finch I can completely agree with! Edith Finch gets some things very right, but there's a lot in there that's a letdown too... no one ever seems to mention that part.
Yes, even the basic concept of using a walking sim as a frame narrative for an anthology of minigames which double as short stories---is really very clever. It's easily one of the best attempts at this type of game I've ever seen, and I do hope folks making similar games learn the right lessons from it.
By far the best "walking simulator" I've played. Left me with a profound feeling that I just experienced true art lmao
As you can probably tell by three out of the four sections of this video pouring praise on it, I'd basically agree!
always appreciate how well organized your videos are, thanks !
Ha, no problem. Thanks for saying so.
@@TheGemsbok For sure, keep it up man
I’m very consistently impressed by every video you put out here. Really well done work here, you’re exploring things that I’ve never seen examined.
I never noticed that railing thing with Barbara. So many nice details 👍
Looks interesting.
I def ignored this game thinking it was just another Dear Ester people were fawning over. Will give it a chance now at some point.
"This is great stuff" - The Gemsbok
No but great video, this was a great choice of game to explore
Haha, thank you. I hope they use that pull quote on the box for their next physical release.
As far as the mechanics (and I’m not an expert), part of the issue could stem from some behind the scenes circumstances as far as production is concerned. Plus, it seems they focused on the themes before going into how they implement it; after all, the production took five years. Like I said, I’m not an expert, but sometimes it could be as simple as time constraints or lack of resources /technology. I do see what you mean about playing with the same controls.
you sure do keep making good videos 11/10
Yes, in some stories the gameplay could be better and directly connected with the script, but I think that sometimes it is not completely necessary, I think the variety between more playable scenes and more quiet ones is what makes this game great. For example, Milton, you basically said you want more details and to have a minigame to play as Milton, but I like how Milton story is told, it is very simple and short, but for me that builds up the mistery about it, if we control milton the mistery would be lost, we don't control him, because we don't know if he died, that's why (in the logic of the game) we can't know what happened to him.
But, for me the approach you took doesn't seem entirely right, you said that you don't like to separate the plot from the gameplay, but still you focus much more one the gameplay, what I mean is that most of the stories are very coherent both in narration and in gameplay, maybe some could be better but if that's the case I can't think of a better way of doing them, for example Calvin I think is good, rather to be that focused con controlling him, I'm focuses on the tragic situation of his death and also in the letter by his brother (I think about what sam felt then), and I think that was the intention, so yes the gameplay is simple, but I don't think is necessary to be more complex in this case.
I agree with you in the case of Barbara and Walter, I also expected more from those two.
Even though I don't agree entirely with it, I'm glad to see people talking about the game, creating these discussions and exploring games with various approaches.
PS: I may seem that I don't like at all the approach of the video or that I don't value gameplay that much, in this case I have a different opinion, because that's the way I feel. But essentially I really value the gameplay. I think gameplay is probably the most important thing, because potentially a game would be better if it can use the gameplay as a narration (not only to games like this, but also horror, action or any type of game really).
At last I very value this channel, and I'm not saying that you hate the game, not at all. Simply I think some parts of the game weren't as weak as you say.
Perfectly understandable perspective! My wife is quite fond of Calvin's segment as well (she says it strongly reminds her of swinging as a child).
For some of the characters, and I would include Walter, Calvin, and Milton in this, I have no direct problem with the simple/repetitive designs in isolation---only with such a mechanically similar approach being used for all three.
@@TheGemsbok Very interesting, thanks for taking the time to read and reply, nice day!
PLEASE DO VIDEO ON PONG ASAP!!!
Awhile ago I levied the criticism that you sound as though you're simply reading from a script. I still think so, and I think it causes people to bounce off your videos despite their quality.
I wanted to comment about it again because I think I've realized a particular aspect to your delivery which causes this vibe: the lack of variation in volume/pitch and speed. The whole of the video is read at about a mezzo-forte with a very public speaking kind of tone. Don't get me wrong I think that's generally a good thing and a great starting point. Without any variation, however, without occasionally lowering your voice to let the viewer/listener in on a thing or two, without slow respect for an emotional moment here or there or changing tempo for a joke, it feels as though you're plowing ahead on a pre-laid track without any regard for the listener's ebb and flow of attention and energy.
Sorry if this all sounds harsh, but its all love. I think you've got a fantastic approach and style, and pick very interesting lenses through which to examine your subjects. I'd love to see your videos reach a wider audience and cant help but feel that the spoken delivery is the only thing holding you back.
Ha, hello again. Thank you for the concern. What you're noticing there is how some of the audio editing is done on my videos, where the time between sentences is standardized except when I want to emphasize something, or when the usual treatment sounds unnatural. I've tried a few different approaches over the years (including everything from totally freestyle custom spacing, to cutting out literally as much spacing as possible without sounding weird, to several more), and this one receives the fewest complaints by far. As a matter of fact, you're the only person to ever complain about it, since I moved over to it around the time of the NecroDancer video in late 2020. This is not to say there isn't still room for improvement; I'd ideally like to come across less 'public speaker,' more casual in my actual delivery, but doing that and still sounding enthusiastic is a hard line for me to walk.
With that being said, having access to all of the statistics about my channel on the backend, the performance of my videos doesn't match up with your diagnosis. People don't 'bounce off' my videos. They simply don't click on them. Viewer retention once someone is watching is consistently high, much higher than any publicly available averages I've found for other channels.
So, if there's an area of my channel where there is technically huge room for improvement and growth, it would be in making clickbait thumbnails, making clickbait titles, and picking brand new or controversial subjects (rather than a 6-year-old moderately successful indie game like this one, or, in the case of my next video, a 40-year-old moderately successful film). But I personally dislike clickbait, especially when it comes to thumbnails; and if I let popularity or recency guide my choice of subject matter, I'd probably burn out on this whole thing in a year.
Good video (as usual, how come you're the only game reviewer besides MrBtongue (God rest his soul) that actually has read a book in his life?), but I think walking simulators do deserve more flack than they got here for being so consistently unambitious in how they approach interactivity. The above average segments in Edith Finch should be the bare minimum of interesting interactions walking sims should accomplish, instead they're praised to high heavens for even sparing a single creative idea on how the player the engaging with the artwork. Too many just rely on pretty visuals and good music, how many of them even have good writing?
I would also disagree on Edith Finch being to the standard of Shirley Jackson, maybe in the moment-to-moment, but it lacks that neat little bow to ties everything together. It might be the problem of being an anthology since those usually have that problem, but I can't see Edith Finch (outside of the Lewis segment, which truly is genius) amounting to mcuh other than a series of macabre and sometimes ironic deaths, like a slightly mroe surreal version of the Six Feet Under intros.
Thanks for the kind words. Certainly wish Btongue was still active.
Anyway, as I say in the video, I think the existence of 'walking sims' was an inevitability; it's an artistic niche that was going to be filled eventually, and I've enjoyed some of them as they've occasionally provided a vehicle for interesting writing. I just mentally place the simpler ones in the 'multimedia art' category (like an abstract video installation in a museum) rather than the 'game' category.
I think Matthewmatosis said it best that we shouldn't get too hung up on what a game is supposed to be (people never ask if a song shouldn't have a poem instead), I don't think prescriptive rules for art are ever useful.
The problem with walking sims is that they definitionally almost always have very little thought put into how the player interacts with it. They remind me of some film student doing a found footage romantic comedy, or a Wes Anderson horror movie, it might be fine as a gag (which is why Stanley parable is usually the most praised one despite the lame writing and lack of ideas) but the concept is so fundamentally contradictory, what usually does walking around pressing a context sensitive use key have to do with what's actually at stake in most walking sims? Usually nothing.
I don't think you've quite understood my response there. I'm not saying simple walking sims _should_ be multimedia art rather than games; I'm saying it's more fruitful to consider them to _be_ multimedia art rather than games. Not because they aren't games, but rather because, of all the things they arguably are, games are not what they're best at being. So, I'm categorizing them, not saying what they should've been instead. That's a descriptive, not prescriptive, stance.
In Matthew's video on Dear Esther and Journey, when he insists that Dear Esther is a game, he's responding to the discourse of the era---which was mostly dominated by people denigrating Dear Esther by simply dismissing it as 'not a game.' So, he was defending the legitimacy of taking it seriously and discussing its merits (or lack thereof) in comparison to roughly similar works. I'm not disagreeing with that perspective. I don't mean to be saying simple walking sims can't be considered as games; they certainly can. I'm just saying that there are forms of interactive art other than games, and such simple walking sims are sometimes better at being those other forms than they are at being games.
It's also worth highlighting that I don't think every one of them is an interesting or worthwhile artwork, regardless of how they're categorized. You, me, and Matthew are in agreement that Dear Esther and The Stanley Parable are low-quality (and, in the latter case, overrated) works.
@TheGemsbok
They're sold on game stores, reviewed by game outlets, played by gamers, if they're not games then where do you draw the line? Is SOMA a game? I don't see how this distinction is useful.
Perhaps I'm just not being clear. They can be games, at the same time as being other things; but they may be better at being those other things than at being games. It doesn't ultimately matter what they're called. It only matters how they're thought about. Just because something fails when categorized as what one person thinks of as a game, that doesn't mean it can't succeed when categorized in a different way by that same person.
It's not as though every piece of interactive art has to be judged as a game and only a game. Something can be a game, and also multimedia art, and also a short story, and also a virtual sculpture, and on and on---I'll always just think of the work in question as whichever thing it's best at being.
A play with audience participation may be a terrible game, but could yet be a great piece of theatre. A museum installation that gives visitors a historical role may be a terrible game, but could yet be a great educational experience. A door with street art on it may be a terrible game, but could yet be a great decorated entrance.
I'm not really concerned with what storefront a creator chooses for distribution, nor who chooses to review what. If everything sold on Steam and discussed by game reviewers had to be considered primarily a game, then Aseprite, Retroarch, the Steam Deck, and Indie Game: The Movie are all games. Ultimately, all that concerns me is the content of each work I consume---what it seems like it's trying to do, and whether I find it to be good at doing that.
So, when I say I consider the simplest walking sims to be multimedia art rather than games, what I mean is that that's what they're best at being. Regarding Matthewmatosis, think of the essay in his video 'Meta Microvideos' entitled 'An Esoteric Text on Criticism,' which expresses almost the same point.
This 20 minute video can kinda be reduced to you not enjoying the walking sim segments of a walking sim. I read the less mechanically-demanding minigames as being a pacing device, since all the dexterity segments are kinda spread throughout the game and they usually take longer to complete than the bits where you hold a button. I enjoy ludonarrative harmony in my games as much as the next guy, but Edith Finch already provides more of that than most games and it seems like a weird complaint to ask that 100% of its minigames match its highest highs. But maybe I'm too sympathetic to gamedevs and how expensive it is to re-prototype gameplay segments that already work fine for the story.
Thank you for taking the time to comment. But I must admit, I would characterize that as a somewhat serious misreading of this video. That concern is addressed in several ways throughout it.
First, as I say in the intro, I think walking sims fill a worthwhile artistic niche. I like Gone Home, which is a somewhat unpopular opinion (if Steam reviews are anything to go by). And I like lots of walking-sim-adjacent works, like Firewatch, To the Moon, Finding Paradise, Proteus, Brothers, Journey, and . . . What Remains of Edith Finch.
Second, the primary part of the game sporting conventional ‘walking sim’ gameplay is Edith making her way around the house and yard, and you’ll find that _that_ gameplay is not directly criticized at any point in this video. In fact, I believe Edith walking around the house serves the exact purpose you’ve identified: it provides pacing to the game, and spaces out the mechanical experiments.
And third, the second main section takes great pains to establish that (1) each minigame _does_ try some unique mechanical experiment, (2) where those minigames are simple or repetitive it is only the abundance of similar experiments that make it a problem, and (3) that if ‘simple and repetitive’ could describe _every_ minigame, we could just categorize the whole experience as a conventional walking sim and not bother to look deeper into its mechanics.
Also, just to address your point about Edith Finch offering more ludonarrative harmony than most games---I agree. I generally don’t bother anymore with writing criticism of games I think are atrocious, which have nothing going for them but potential. These days, I’m much more interested in pushing the medium’s good and great works toward unbridled excellence. Hence the hopeful tone of my conclusion section.
Were those deaths tragic or mysterious? Or were they preventable and glorify/romanticise negligence and mental illnesses?
what mechanics lmao
POTENTIAL ONly PARTially CaptuTURED!!! Welcome Bock Bok gr8 2 Have you in the tubes agane you philosophers LION CUB.
Ah, yes, the common snobbery that SOME games are art. Open your eyes, indeed.
You're close. My actual position is that all games can be _approached_ as art, but some are more apt for that approach than others. Hence my saying in the conclusion that more and more games are releasing that are "amenable" to such an approach.
My article explaining this position can be found on my site: thegemsbok.com/art-reviews-and-articles/infinifactory-zachtronics-games-as-art/