(Above preview image taken from Giant Sparrow)
What Remains Of Edith Finch is, to put it in a cliche, a roller-coaster of emotions and one of a handful of video games I've played in my life that has gotten stuck in my head and rattled around in there for days, as it's an ultimately bittersweet experience that culminates in an ending that throws more questions into the air than it does answers. Indeed, the very title itself poses a sort of question to the player like a pop quiz where at the end, it asks: "Alright class, what remains of Edith Finch?...Anyone?" I think if I were in that class, I would nervously raise my hand and try to answer it but feel wholly inadequate in doing so. Because as a game that derives much of the same tropes from other walking-simulator-type games, it also shares the criticism as well: it's rich in visual storytelling, but lacking in, what I said in my review of Abzû was, "actual gameplay". Though to be fair, Edith Finch is a bit more involving than Abzû when it manages to do some cool things with representative gameplay like in Lewis' section where he's daydreaming while performing a mundane job at the cannery. Your mouse controls Lewis' hand while your directional keys control the movement of the character in Lewis' daydream.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, the game also has a tremendous amount of mystery that bears very little fruit and just says "I don't know, you figure it out!" I understand that the point of games like these is to have the players ask questions and determine the meaning themselves, but as someone who has a weirdly personal grudge against that sort of storytelling and prefers definitive conclusions to stories that at least try and tie together their loose ends, I found it difficult to swallow. Maybe it's because I've seen that attitude to world-building and narrative so many times now, it's gotten a bit stale and kind of frustrating.
But that mild annoyance dissipates a bit as I'm filled with a giddiness the game gave me in its opening sections. When I was exploring the old Finch house with its secret passages, it filled me with a kind of nostalgia for those sorts of places you'd see in old whimsical children's films that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And then the game utterly shatters that fuzziness with a brutal sledgehammer that brings you back to the reality of the Finches' unfortunate situation. Hence my reference to that cliched roller-coaster analogy at the beginning of this piece which also mirrors quite nicely my overall feelings on the game: sometimes the heights the game hits with its visuals and game design are impressive...before I'm brought back down to how frustrating its narrative elements can be.
So if you want to piece together a puzzle on your own while not being at all challenged gameplay-wise, What Remains Of Edith Finch may be right up your alley. If none of that sounds good to you, then you may want to steer clear. But hey, do what you want. I'm not your dad.
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