Gone Home
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JaySevenZero
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Gone Home
Here is where you can leave your thoughts regarding the Gone Home for possible inclusion in the podcast when it's recorded.
Re: Gone Home
Thinking back, I can't really remember exactly what let me to buy Gone Home. If I recall I'd seen it receive a very high review scores (and even some GotY awards) but didn't really pay much attention beyond adding it to my Steam wishlist as I'm prone to doing. I picked it up during a Christmas sale at something like 85% off but it sat unloved in my library for quite some time. It wasn't until much later that I felt a bit guilty about the number of games in my library that I was yet to play so I decided to install Gone Home as a bit of a palate cleanser from whatever I was playing at the time, still not really knowing anything about it. Looking back, that was the perfect way to experience the game. All I knew was that it was story heavy and would only take a couple of hours to complete. But what a couple of hours. I was immediately drawn in by the mystery surrounding the empty house and the absolutely superb voice acting. I was torn between wanting to quickly run through and get to the bottom of what had happened to my missing family and wanting to slowly and meticulously explore every square inch of the house. I was a wonderful experience exploring the house as it was absolutely dripping with atmosphere and clues for a player patient enough to seek them out. You get to know the rest of your family in their absence and they feel like fleshed-out, real people - something I believe many video games fail in. I really wish I could just forget all about Gone Home and experience it all over again. It was one of those games that further opened my eyes to the potential of the genre and even indie games as a whole. I absolutely love Gone Home.
Very highly recommended, and I can't wait to see what Fullbright do with Tacoma.
Very highly recommended, and I can't wait to see what Fullbright do with Tacoma.
Re: Gone Home
I had a similar experience to Luke in that I had heard a lot of praise for Gone Home, but didn't really know what it was about, and had either gotten it in a steam sale or bundle, where it sat for a while before finally playing.
Gone Home is an excellent example of storytelling in video games. Though I didn't personally relate to the characters, I was enthralled by their story and wanted to learn more. It's been well over a year (maybe two?) since I played the game, so I don't remember many specifics of the plot.
As much as I love other walking simulator games, and even prefer them overall to Gone Home, I think Fullbright nailed the setting as it relates to telling a story. Dear Esther felt more like a poem that was written by one person, and a painting done by another in response to that poem. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture's setting directly relates to the story being told, but it still feels vast and overwhelming, especially on subsequent visits. Similarly The Stanley Parable can feel overwhelming in its own way.
The house in Gone Home feels cozy and small enough to not get lost in, but still has enough variety and personality in its rooms to make me want to explore.
Gone Home is an excellent example of storytelling in video games. Though I didn't personally relate to the characters, I was enthralled by their story and wanted to learn more. It's been well over a year (maybe two?) since I played the game, so I don't remember many specifics of the plot.
As much as I love other walking simulator games, and even prefer them overall to Gone Home, I think Fullbright nailed the setting as it relates to telling a story. Dear Esther felt more like a poem that was written by one person, and a painting done by another in response to that poem. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture's setting directly relates to the story being told, but it still feels vast and overwhelming, especially on subsequent visits. Similarly The Stanley Parable can feel overwhelming in its own way.
The house in Gone Home feels cozy and small enough to not get lost in, but still has enough variety and personality in its rooms to make me want to explore.
Re: Gone Home
Using all my graphic design education thus far, I made some info-graphics that sort of go with my post above, giving my thoughts on the structure of various walking simulators. I don't think any actually spoil anything (except maybe in the last one), but I've put them in spoiler thingys just in case:
Dear Esther
Dear Esther
- Spoiler: show
- Spoiler: show
- Spoiler: show
- Spoiler: show
- Spoiler: show
- Spoiler: show
- Spoiler: show
Re: Our next-but-two podcast recording (28.3.17): Gone Home
Haha, those are the best! 
Re: Our next-but-two podcast recording (28.3.17): Gone Home
Apologies, but much of this is copied straight from my previously posted thoughts on the game...
I must admit, upon release this didn't really interest me in the slightest. Over time though, from people talking on forums and podcasts I grew more and more curious, and ended up really wanting to play it. I was really pleased it was on PS+ last year, and saved it until I had the time to go through it all in one sitting.
I was a bit worried I might have built it up in my head in to something it really wasn't, but three hours later, and it was better than I ever imagined. The story was incredibly emotionally engaging, and that's just the obvious one, without even mentioning her mothers affair, her dad's struggling life as an author and apparent depression and the uncles drug addition. Discovering the sub-plot between the dad and the uncle was one of those genuinely chilling moments, rarely experienced but always remembered. Finding the height chart down in the basement, marking off the height of the dad over the years, and the childs toy in the dingey alcove sent shivers down my spine.
The main story though, I just thought it was beautifully told, really quite touching, I found myself really wanting Sam to be ok. You ended up really feeling like you'd got to know these characters, despite never meeting a single one of them.
Overall, absolutely brilliant piece of work I think, and much deserved of every bit of praise that has been bestowed upon it. Probably one of my favorite interactive experiences, well, maybe ever.
THREE WORD REVIEW: Best walking simulator. (And sorry, I'm sure the term walking simulator will be much derided in the recording of this episode!)
I must admit, upon release this didn't really interest me in the slightest. Over time though, from people talking on forums and podcasts I grew more and more curious, and ended up really wanting to play it. I was really pleased it was on PS+ last year, and saved it until I had the time to go through it all in one sitting.
I was a bit worried I might have built it up in my head in to something it really wasn't, but three hours later, and it was better than I ever imagined. The story was incredibly emotionally engaging, and that's just the obvious one, without even mentioning her mothers affair, her dad's struggling life as an author and apparent depression and the uncles drug addition. Discovering the sub-plot between the dad and the uncle was one of those genuinely chilling moments, rarely experienced but always remembered. Finding the height chart down in the basement, marking off the height of the dad over the years, and the childs toy in the dingey alcove sent shivers down my spine.
The main story though, I just thought it was beautifully told, really quite touching, I found myself really wanting Sam to be ok. You ended up really feeling like you'd got to know these characters, despite never meeting a single one of them.
Overall, absolutely brilliant piece of work I think, and much deserved of every bit of praise that has been bestowed upon it. Probably one of my favorite interactive experiences, well, maybe ever.
THREE WORD REVIEW: Best walking simulator. (And sorry, I'm sure the term walking simulator will be much derided in the recording of this episode!)
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countstex
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Re: Our next-but-two podcast recording (28.3.17): Gone Home
If I recall I came to this game from a very round about way. I was spending a lot of time on the DoubleFine forums and with Chris Remo, who was still working at DF at the time, being involved I started to hear talk about Gone Home. I'm not sure how long after this I actually picked it up, but it was early enough that I hadn't really heard much about it, and so came in pretty blind. What unfolded before me kept me interested the entire time. I fell for the red herrings at first, well one particular RED herring in the bathroom, however fairly soon after that I think I began to work out what the main drive of the games story was. However I loved that there wasn't just this one core thread to be found with plenty of snippets of the parents lives which had me wondering about their future too. Maybe I was lucky, or maybe it was just good game design, but I uncovered most things in a nicely dramatic order which kept me guessing how everyone would end up. Gone Home is one of those rare games that stick in your mind for a good while after finishing it.
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ToQi
Re: Our next podcast recording (28.3.17): Gone Home
Gone Home is that rare work that precisely nails what it attempts—created by people who sensibly knew the limits of the project and used those restrictions (graphical, mechanical etc.) as a means to focus their work.
It also executes brilliantly what so few video games do: the ending. In many ways, its a finale so touching and memorable that it papers over any other problems I may have had with the game. Three years later, I only recall a subtle, spooky set up, multiple intriguingly spooled out stories and an extremely welcome human sensitivity that, to me, felt like a first.
It also executes brilliantly what so few video games do: the ending. In many ways, its a finale so touching and memorable that it papers over any other problems I may have had with the game. Three years later, I only recall a subtle, spooky set up, multiple intriguingly spooled out stories and an extremely welcome human sensitivity that, to me, felt like a first.
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The_reviewist
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Re: Our next podcast recording (28.3.17): Gone Home
Gone Home, was a title I was always going to play. As a long time advocate of the importance and potential of games such as Dear Esther and The Stanley Parable, I found that Gone Home was a natural extension of that "walking simulator" game style, I also found it to be a game both evocative, interesting and momentarily captivating, albeit in a flimsy half-hearted sense.
It's important to note that three and a half years after release, it's perhaps slightly difficult to remember now the importance and dualistically hyperbolic gaming media reaction to Fullbright's Gone Home upon release. This was a game that both garnered praise as a critical darling, and also was lambasted in some circles for its lack of actual challenge, and to the extent that some saw it as a pandering nostalgic piece for 30 something gamers. This is arguable either way, as some have pointed out, it's a short game, in fact one that can be completed in less than two minutes if you know where to look. It's also very much a nostalgic hark back to the 90s. Indeed, if there's a single other media item this game puts me in mind of; it's the mid-90s TV show, My So Called Life, and in some ways, I can imagine the events of Gone Home transpiring in some other reality's 4th or 5th season of that show had it not been cancelled.
That's not to say there's anything wrong with some honest nostalgia, as I found myself cheerily heartened by the cassette tapes, the clumsily re-written VHS tape labels, and the X-Files references, being someone who would have been the same age as Sam and Lonnie when the game is set. From that perspective it succeeds in evoking a time and place with enough small but real detail to twang gently the strings of memory, while at the same time telling a relatively simple story of teenage self-discovery.
What strikes me more on replaying it is that while the game was marketed as something of a mystery and even perhaps a horror story, the truth be told it's simply a tale of discovery as Kaitlin wanders round her family's new home, trying to piece together where everyone is and what has transpired. Although, there is a creeping sense of unease to the game, not merely due to the somewhat unpleasant implied events and relationship between the previous owner, and Terrence Greenbriar, the failed-novelist patriarch of the family. In fact, the one single jump-scare of the game is actually a pleasant relief in that it's so ridiculously self aware that I began to laugh afterwards.
For me, Gone Home is a flawed gem of a small indie game, it tells a simple and believable story of forbidden teenage romance and rebellion in a simple, if occasionally trite, manner meanwhile laying subtle clues and hints towards the similarly troubled lives of the parents in the Greenbriar family. The small touches in building a realistic sense of who these people are is brilliantly established. Whether through the various evidence of Terrence's coping with his implied sexual abuse through alcoholism and writing, or the small but mounting hints that his wife Janice is having an affair with her co-worker, Rick.
However those storylines are most certainly secondary to the story of Sam, and indeed the way that the story unfolds left me genuinely unsure towards the end of what I would find in the attic, and I was fully prepared to discover something sad and terrible. Especially as Sam's portrayal is as neatly mundane in its realism as it is unique, from the cacophonous teenage obsession with Riot Grrl punk music and pamphleteering with home printed 'zines, to her evolving self-insertion stories of Allegra the Pirate and her lover the eventually gender-swapping First Mate. Sam feels like a real person. Which is more than can be said about Kaitlin.
If there is a weak link in Gone Home, it's that the main character seems like more of an outsider in this family than anyone. Although the idea of her being in Europe since before the house move explains the absence of almost all of her effects and influence, I always felt that there should have been more of her in the narratives. That said, Gone Home is part of a fine growing tradition of narrative experiences told through the medium of video gaming, and while it's not the most ludic of experiences, hopefully it's one that can be appreciated without the very need for its existence to be debated.
It's important to note that three and a half years after release, it's perhaps slightly difficult to remember now the importance and dualistically hyperbolic gaming media reaction to Fullbright's Gone Home upon release. This was a game that both garnered praise as a critical darling, and also was lambasted in some circles for its lack of actual challenge, and to the extent that some saw it as a pandering nostalgic piece for 30 something gamers. This is arguable either way, as some have pointed out, it's a short game, in fact one that can be completed in less than two minutes if you know where to look. It's also very much a nostalgic hark back to the 90s. Indeed, if there's a single other media item this game puts me in mind of; it's the mid-90s TV show, My So Called Life, and in some ways, I can imagine the events of Gone Home transpiring in some other reality's 4th or 5th season of that show had it not been cancelled.
That's not to say there's anything wrong with some honest nostalgia, as I found myself cheerily heartened by the cassette tapes, the clumsily re-written VHS tape labels, and the X-Files references, being someone who would have been the same age as Sam and Lonnie when the game is set. From that perspective it succeeds in evoking a time and place with enough small but real detail to twang gently the strings of memory, while at the same time telling a relatively simple story of teenage self-discovery.
What strikes me more on replaying it is that while the game was marketed as something of a mystery and even perhaps a horror story, the truth be told it's simply a tale of discovery as Kaitlin wanders round her family's new home, trying to piece together where everyone is and what has transpired. Although, there is a creeping sense of unease to the game, not merely due to the somewhat unpleasant implied events and relationship between the previous owner, and Terrence Greenbriar, the failed-novelist patriarch of the family. In fact, the one single jump-scare of the game is actually a pleasant relief in that it's so ridiculously self aware that I began to laugh afterwards.
For me, Gone Home is a flawed gem of a small indie game, it tells a simple and believable story of forbidden teenage romance and rebellion in a simple, if occasionally trite, manner meanwhile laying subtle clues and hints towards the similarly troubled lives of the parents in the Greenbriar family. The small touches in building a realistic sense of who these people are is brilliantly established. Whether through the various evidence of Terrence's coping with his implied sexual abuse through alcoholism and writing, or the small but mounting hints that his wife Janice is having an affair with her co-worker, Rick.
However those storylines are most certainly secondary to the story of Sam, and indeed the way that the story unfolds left me genuinely unsure towards the end of what I would find in the attic, and I was fully prepared to discover something sad and terrible. Especially as Sam's portrayal is as neatly mundane in its realism as it is unique, from the cacophonous teenage obsession with Riot Grrl punk music and pamphleteering with home printed 'zines, to her evolving self-insertion stories of Allegra the Pirate and her lover the eventually gender-swapping First Mate. Sam feels like a real person. Which is more than can be said about Kaitlin.
If there is a weak link in Gone Home, it's that the main character seems like more of an outsider in this family than anyone. Although the idea of her being in Europe since before the house move explains the absence of almost all of her effects and influence, I always felt that there should have been more of her in the narratives. That said, Gone Home is part of a fine growing tradition of narrative experiences told through the medium of video gaming, and while it's not the most ludic of experiences, hopefully it's one that can be appreciated without the very need for its existence to be debated.
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Bakers_12
Re: Our next podcast recording (28.3.17): Gone Home
I picked this up as part of the Psplus and soon after playing though everybody's gone to the rapture. I really got involved in the story, this is helped that it wholly takes place in a single house so finding the story beats is easier and more frequent unlike rapture. This made picking up what happened to residents easier and you have less time back tracking, which is a godsend for a narrative such as this. I really got invested in the family feeling for them. The dad’s story had me yo-yoing from feeling sorry for him to hating him and back a few times. I know that some people have not liked the supernatural red herring in the story but I found no problem with it, I think it in some ways makes the real world problems faced by the family more poignant.
Re: Our next podcast recording (28.3.17): Gone Home
I played through Gone Home over a year ago, so my memories of the game's finer details are now somewhat faded. One of the strongest impressions that Gone Home left on me relates to what it isn't, rather than what it is. Emerging from the dark, stormy night into a house laden with a atmosphere of disquiet, I was filled with a familiar sense of creeping dread and unease. Despite the fact that I'd read reviews which clearly stated this was not a horror game, I had to check several different forums to reassure myself that I wasn't about to be reduced to a shrieking idiot by some horrific ghoulie lurking around the next corner. Even then, with the game seeming to share so much of the genetic makeup of its distant horror-genre cousins, I found myself occasionally wondering whether I was the victim of an internet-wide conspiracy designed to make me lower my guard.
While I maintain that if my family were going to move into a house like that, I too would leave the country and go travelling, eventually I was able to settle down and properly enjoy the game's nostalgic beats and unfolding story. I don't deny that the manner in which the developers deliberately sought to subvert genre expectations - assuming that this was their deliberate intention - was cleverly done, but I also felt that in some ways this was a distraction from these other aspects of the game.
Unusually for me, I correctly guessed the outcome of the story about halfway through, although I did have a moment, stood at the foot of the steps to the attic, when I suddenly feared the worst. Part of me can't help but feel that those fears being realised would have made for one helluva memorable ending, albeit a very dark one, and not in keeping with the ultimate tone of the game.
Regarding the story, I'm a little torn. It's an interesting one, and an important one, but I didn't find the telling of it particularly compelling, and in a game like this story is so crucial. I feel like it fell a little short of its potential in that regard. Nevertheless, kudos to the developers for being bold enough to experiment and try something different. I'm glad I played Gone Home, although I can't see myself ever revisiting the house in Portland and its creaky floorboards.
While I maintain that if my family were going to move into a house like that, I too would leave the country and go travelling, eventually I was able to settle down and properly enjoy the game's nostalgic beats and unfolding story. I don't deny that the manner in which the developers deliberately sought to subvert genre expectations - assuming that this was their deliberate intention - was cleverly done, but I also felt that in some ways this was a distraction from these other aspects of the game.
Unusually for me, I correctly guessed the outcome of the story about halfway through, although I did have a moment, stood at the foot of the steps to the attic, when I suddenly feared the worst. Part of me can't help but feel that those fears being realised would have made for one helluva memorable ending, albeit a very dark one, and not in keeping with the ultimate tone of the game.
Regarding the story, I'm a little torn. It's an interesting one, and an important one, but I didn't find the telling of it particularly compelling, and in a game like this story is so crucial. I feel like it fell a little short of its potential in that regard. Nevertheless, kudos to the developers for being bold enough to experiment and try something different. I'm glad I played Gone Home, although I can't see myself ever revisiting the house in Portland and its creaky floorboards.
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GoodShrewsbury
Re: Our next podcast recording (28.3.17): Gone Home
I played Gone Home on the back of finishing Dear Esther back in early 2014. I had heard the hype for this game and was quite excited to get to it, considering I had no clue what Dear Esther was before I played it and that game floored me. I must say, on my initial play through I wasn't as taken with it in the same way I was with Dear Esther. I believe this was a combination of hype-driven, misguided preconceptions, and playing it too quickly after another game with similar mechanics but wildly different narrative delivery. I really enjoyed the cryptic unfolding of Dear Esther's story, where by the end I wasn't wholly sure what I had just experienced. In this regard, Gone Home's story is pretty straight forward. There's really not much to decipher or interpret, but that's not to say it isn't wonderful.
After finishing it again for the show, I very much appreciate Gone Home on its own merits. In this play through I found that I couldn't wait to discover the next audio journal, or letter between Sam and Lonnie. Even knowing what ultimately happens, the way Sam and Lonnie's love story unfolds was gripping. The subplots with Mom and Dad, and Katie's postcards, fleshed out the other family members and gave the player just enough insight to construct what Sam's personal life must have been like. To hear Sam's evolution and struggle with her teenage emotions is something everyone can empathize with, and by the end I found myself really invested in that character and hoping she could find happiness.
Being that this game is quite short and scarce on activity, I feel the reasons I enjoyed this play through so much were the great voice acting, wonderful sound and score, and brilliant writing. Katie's attempted re-connection with her family is an unsettling journey through a tainted, empty place where two daughters can no longer call home, and while the window into the way this family fractures is an uncomfortable one I'm glad I was there to see it.
3WR: Cool Schmool Rules!
After finishing it again for the show, I very much appreciate Gone Home on its own merits. In this play through I found that I couldn't wait to discover the next audio journal, or letter between Sam and Lonnie. Even knowing what ultimately happens, the way Sam and Lonnie's love story unfolds was gripping. The subplots with Mom and Dad, and Katie's postcards, fleshed out the other family members and gave the player just enough insight to construct what Sam's personal life must have been like. To hear Sam's evolution and struggle with her teenage emotions is something everyone can empathize with, and by the end I found myself really invested in that character and hoping she could find happiness.
Being that this game is quite short and scarce on activity, I feel the reasons I enjoyed this play through so much were the great voice acting, wonderful sound and score, and brilliant writing. Katie's attempted re-connection with her family is an unsettling journey through a tainted, empty place where two daughters can no longer call home, and while the window into the way this family fractures is an uncomfortable one I'm glad I was there to see it.
3WR: Cool Schmool Rules!
Re: Our next podcast recording (28.3.17): Gone Home
In a dark dark house lived a dark dark man,
and his dark dark wife with her dark dark plans,
In that dark dark place lived a dark dark teen,
And her dark dark life, filled with dark dark memes,
To that dark dark place came a dark dark girl,
Finding dark dark clues to a dark dark world,
And in that dark dark house was a dark dark room,
And in the dark dark room was a...
(with apologies to Ruth Brown)
and his dark dark wife with her dark dark plans,
In that dark dark place lived a dark dark teen,
And her dark dark life, filled with dark dark memes,
To that dark dark place came a dark dark girl,
Finding dark dark clues to a dark dark world,
And in that dark dark house was a dark dark room,
And in the dark dark room was a...
(with apologies to Ruth Brown)
