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Dear Esther


DANGERMAN
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Dear Esther came out last night, it's a source engine game and as far as I can tell its selling point is how it looks and its atmosphere. I'm not fully clued up on the story, I think that's deliberate, but you have gone to an island in the Hebrides looking for Esther, whoever or whatever that is. Thoughts are given through a spoken diary (not a selectable diary, more you see something and the guy narrates his wistful memories), and you wander round aimlessly for a while.

It's not all that aimless though as like Stanley Parable there's only so many paths, if you're meant to be somewhere you'll end up there. But you do walk in to the first house wondering if you're meant to be doing something. It all looks very cold and windy, it reminds me of a few holidays I went on as a kid, and it is dripping with atmosphere thanks to the howls of wind and seamless way the music starts up.

I've no idea what it's going to end up being, but the markings on the walls suggest it's not going to stay as plane as it has been. Feels very arthouse and, with all due respect, pointless so far, but it's clearly telling a story so you cant judge it in the first chapter

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I've just finished it, it's superbly done, like a few good thought provoking films, and Limbo as a gaming example, it drip feeds information and subtle hints to the point where all of a sudden realisation washes over you.

I'll spoiler the rest of what I'm going to write but I will say it's an interactive story, very slow to get going but you'll appreciate why later on. The music is stunning and timed perfectly, the spot effects, and the way things move in the wind all really ramp up the atmosphere. In every measure it's a beautiful game

I recognised the formula on the walls, couldn't place it for ages and then with one word in the narration it all clicked. Sane with the paint cans, there's loads of them in the house at the start, I couldn't tell what they were and wasn't sure if it was just a texture overuse thing, but when you start seeing them in the cave I internally did this face :o . The bit in the cave where it closes in as you climb is oddly one of my favourite gaming moments in an age, it works so so well. I couldn't read all the writing on the cliff past the lighthouse, but I read enough to see the references from the start of the game.

I know it's a fairly obvious 'trick' but when you wake up in the water, but it's the bypass where Esther died :mellow::(

dearesther2012-02-1511uind.png

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I know it's sold quite well, and i do think the price is a bit steep for the amount of time it takes you, but more people should play it, it's something you wont forget.

On that note, it turns out there is reason for a 2nd play through as items change and more information is given

in fact it says as much at one point, lost in the ramble at the start of the game, that each time he visits the island he discovers more. For example in the last section of the caves there's a bit where you cross a bridge and go up, but you can explore 2 dead ends left and right. I went left and the first time I played through there was nothing there but a diagram on the wall, the 2nd time scores of paper boats and some sound. To the right, where I'm sure there was nothing, was a nest of hatched eggs with a picture of Esther (and I think an ultrasound, that might have been somewhere else)

oh, and there's some ghosts to spot, I saw 3, the last one is right at the end in the radio tower enclosure and it moved :blink: (turn around as you start hearing the metal fence rattling), and there's this one towards the end

2012-02-16_00002ojugf.jpg

Brilliant, still effective a 2nd time too

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Sounds good, I had a bit of a read up and from that and your review I felt reminded of how i first felt when playing Myst, like what the fuck am I meant to do now...

I am tempted to give this a go but its the theme of exploring unhappiness that puts me off it. I like the idea of going back finding out more, I wish it actually changed the outcome if you went through it more times, rather than just a few little extras, like he remembers it wrong and after going back a few times actually discovers its different.

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If you've got the money spare it's worth playing as an experience, I think I said in the review (or on twitter) I dont think I've ever been as affected by a game before, but it is devoid of content

there's an interesting piece on RockPaperShotgun about the end and what it does in gameplay turns

it takes control away from you, the character climbs the radio tower and jumps. They make the point that it would have been better had they left you in control as they were going to jump by themselves. I agree with them, it never occurred to me that I couldn't jump, it seemed like the natural end, to climb the spire you see as you wake up in the game. I disagree with them that it tarnished the game, I thought it was still effective, it just made me think about how I'd have done it anyway

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Been reading a lot about the game and one theory that seems to tie in with a lot of the stuff ive read and seems to be established (if anything can really be established) is:

That you are a disease and the Island is the body, the cave veins and the beacon the heart slowly beating. When you make your ascension you are effectively killing the body. Other theories that are slightly more based in real life and the events of the game having happened are that you the player are Paul Jakobsen and that you are feeling remorse over killing Esther in a car crash caused by you being drunken driving. You also have syphilus which can obviously leave you mentally unstable as well as the physical effects that it has

I kind of like and hate that there isnt a definitive outcome. The guy who wrote it, and was in charge of it being more of an ambiguous interactive story than a game, has said that was his main intention. The script is filled with stuff that could be put together to make a story but only if you wish to do so, but its also littered with stuff that is completely random and non related.

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Thought i'd pop in for a quick chat :)

Not at all sure what to make of this at all. On the one hand it's a beautiful, haunting experience with a brilliant sense of place, but on the other it feels almost completely barren. I guess that's kind of what they were going for.

I like it for it's looks and setting but it's yet to grab me in any other way so i'm yet to make my mind up about it. I really just need to put in a good stint a blow through it in one sitting but I end up getting distracted and thinking about something else :(

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  • 2 months later...
  • 9 months later...

Finished it, I guess, but I just ended up with a black screen still with music playing lightly but no way of doing anything else so I had to quit to main menu.

I kind of understand the story but not really. In response to Ben's spoilers, can you elaborate on the symbols? I didn't get the reference.

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I may be a bit fuzzy on it all, but...

some of the cave paintings are of synapses, the bit of your brain that fires to cause action. The chemical formula is ethanol, or alcohol as it becomes. Basically he crashed his car because he'd been drinking, but he's trying to find any other cause. When she's dying in the hospital he finds out she's pregnant, on one of my play throughs I was in the caves in a section with a stone bridge, on a small shore was a nest with a broken egg in it :( I don't know if you saw them but on the final beach there's caves that have ultrasound machines, an engine, scans, surgical equipment etc

I think the need to blame something else is why he starts talking about syphilis and the car. The end I got was to climb the tower then to turn in to a seagull, I can't remember what happens after that. I will say that it's worth playing a 2nd time, there's things that are different, but straight away you'll piece together some stuff from the first lines of dialogue.

Some of the stuff that's different help fill in some gaps, some of it is just awesome. I went in a cave just after he talked about the hermit, I looked through a cave to another and saw a light flashing SOS. You'll also start seeing ghosts, you might have seen one already, I didn't on my first play, but there's a few there watching you

did you enjoy it though?

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I don't know if you read my post about what RockPaperShotgun said but

Would you have climbed the tower and jumped if the game hadn't taken control? I think I would have

edit: forgot to say before, some of the other diagrams are

the brakes of a car, I think the process of burning fuel too. I've a feeling I found a book on the internal combustion engine in the shack

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Finished my second playthrough and it was pretty much exactly the same bar...

The underwater sequence no longer had two cars in it but a hospital bed with a drip.

Also, I didn't notice any of the ghostly figures. I'm unsure of if any of the monologues had changed but some lines seemed more obvious now, perhaps due to not being in a state of confusion.

I now get that it's a tale of grief and obsession but I'm still unsure of some details. What's the significance of where the island is? It isn't anywhere near where the accident was. I can see that the whole thing is one long suicide note, essentially.

Was the guy a drunk driver or not? Towards the end, he seemed to change his mind of whether the guy was drunk or not and also seemed to suggest that he had killed or attacked the guy and he protested his innocence.

I didn't get any reference to her being pregnant except for some line about unbroken eggs but I wouldn't have thought about her being pregnant if you hadn't suggested it.

On the whole I thought it was a good story but I'm glad I got it in a sale, I would've liked more interaction.

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yeah, I think it does depend on what the game shows you, the 2nd time I played it I got loads of stuff about the hospital waiting room, the last time barely anything

I'm not sure what the island is either tbh, other than that he wants to be alone. Sam posted a theory that it's all an analogy, on the island he is the disease, the caves are the veins, which I guess would mean in Esther's life he was the disease that ruined her.

I understood the crash to be because he'd been drinking, not much but enough, and that's why he's looking at brakes, misfiring synapses, blaming the other guy (Colin?). At some point the names of the narrator, the explorer, and the hermit all seemed to blur to me. I got the impression that the explorer became the hermit and died of syphilis, and that the narrator is emulating him.

There's a line right at the start that's something like "every time I come to this island..." which I only really noticed the significance of on my 2nd playthrough because I'm not sure he has ever been there before, only that you have if you've played it before (the game starts with loads of seagulls next to you, as though you've become human again)

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