Or – as is often the case – go the only way there is to go. Follow subtle visual cues that lead you to your next destination. However once you know what to look for, it’s easy to figure out which way to go. As visions danced across my screen, I was told to ‘come back’ which…not creepy at all, no sir.
There’s no instruction in Dear Esther on what to do or where to go – you kind of find this out for yourself and sometimes it ends badly.Ĭase in point, at the beginning of the game I walked out into the water at the starting beach. It’s refreshing to see a game that encourages you to explore on your own without explicitly telling you what to do. The specially commissioned soundtrack from Jessica Curry is also available separately should you want to have a listen.Ī double-edged sword of Dear Esther is its simplicity. Stepping into caves, broken tones and out-of-place sounds had me wondering ‘wait! What’s going on here?!’ giving rise to the hair on the back of my neck. It fits so perfectly with the rest of the game, helping create those somber feelings, yet also helping to foster an unsettling atmosphere. I really wish that there were more words to describe it, but there simply aren’t. The other notable thing about Dear Esther is the audio. Even the narrator talks as if there were once many, many people on this island, but nary another soul to be found. There are broken ships scattered on the beaches, empty, dilapidated huts torn apart by years of abandon seem as if they were just inhabited yesterday. The isolation the main character must feel is enormous. The island feels like a living, breathing, albeit completely empty place. The cliffs, water, rocks even grass and sand show beautiful detail. Caves light up with eerie, mystical light. The game takes place on a deserted Hebridean island. This game pushes the Source Engine to its limits, featuring some intense visual effects. Since there’s so little of the story, I won’t go into much detail about it and instead rely on the official description.Ī deserted island…a lost man…memories of a fatal crash…a book written by a dying explorer. The method in which the story is told requires a lot of piecing together. The story in the game is intriguing, however it’s something that I wish there were a little bit more of. It’s through these letters that the player gets their exposition and tiddly bits of story from. Exploring different areas, he narrates fragments of letters written to a woman, Esther. The game follows an unnamed protagonist, voiced by Nigel Carrington as he completes a trek through the island. It’s beautiful, with extremely somber overtones and deep symbolism. This is the overall feeling I took away from Dear Esther. It was incredibly vivid and atmospheric, but what stuck out most was the contrasting feeling it conjured up. The whole dream was filled with such bright, almost unnatural colours yet was filled with such a dreadful, somber feeling. For one thing it was at night, but that wasn’t the unusual part. I was in a field – one that I had thought to be Hyrule Field –but it was somehow different. When I was younger, I had this recurring dream. Dear Esther is unlike any other game I’d ever played before – and that’s one of the things making it truly special. Is it a game? Or is it simply an interactive narrative? An experiment in interactive art – a haunting experience regardless.
What I’ve found during my playthrough of Dear Esther is that it’s hard to classify what it is. So going into the game, I was completely blind. I took a precursory look at the game’s website, but didn’t delve too far into it. I’d actually not even heard of the game until site staff had suggested I give it a whirl. I went into playing Dear Esther with no pre-conceived notions of what it was.
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