Dear Esther Landmark Edition | A review of a revision; A prattle on a pioneer.

Dear Esther Landmark Edition | The Chinese Room | Curve Digital | Xbox One (Reviewed), PS4.


Dear Esther’s reputation always precedes it.

Its life had begun as a Half Life 2 mod, an experiment really. In the beginning the designer had set out to create a first person shooter that shirked most of the genres conventions, mechanics, and gimmicks, determined to remove the kill-rooms, escape sequences, and ‘stand-offs’ all used to normally pace the genre and drag you forward. Their aim was to replace all of those with a hidden story, a grounded world caught in time, and a confused narrator’s reading of levels, one left untrustworthy due to their confused realities and habit of dwelling on the poetic. The ultimate goal, to create a game where the player was driven only by their own curiosity of the world, and their want to understand the story.

In early 2008 the games industry was a very different place. First Person Shooters dominated the sales charts, and led a technical revolution in their own genre; games like Crysis had blue-screened tens-of-thousands of PCs (that rotting husk, the doomsayers said, whose awkward accessibility opposed to consoles surely meant that its end was nigh) welcoming in the widespread adoption of dual-core processors; Call of Duty: Modern Warfare had thoroughly smashed Medal of Honor: Airbourne, and ascended to stand by Halo as an example of console’s multiplayer potential and accessibility; and Bioshock had dragged us to unexpected waters, with a rich story (and memorable twist), and amazing visuals. Indeed, ’07 and ’08 were kind to the genre, and it was largely those years that laid out the fate of big 10 publishers of the time, through their successes and failings.

Even ignoring the blockbusters that dominated the first person view in 2008 (Fallout 3, Farcry 2, Battlefield, Left 4 Dead, Battlefield Bad Company, etc, etc) it’s plain to see that that personal, engaging viewpoint had become synonymous with guns, gore, and violence. Indeed even the open-world games (Fallout 3, Stalker, Farcry 2, and, we’ll mention Arkane’s 2006 Dark Messiah too) were dominated with action and explosions, simply pockmarked by moments of story, or traversal.

A first person, corridor shooter without corridors, or guns.

In many of these games, waving your gun around, you weren’t really playing for the story, you were pushing forward for the next big action scene, the next crescendo, the next helicopter battle, or adrenaline rush. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this; in the same way there is nothing wrong with enjoying sitting down and watching cheesy 80s action movies, or reading a pulp-era book full of adventure and wonder. It is, however, pretty hard to make yourself believe in the macguffin you are chasing down, or feel an ounce of regret at the inevitable betrayal of an ally, or even the death of one, especially when the game has build you up as an nigh-invulnerable messiah-figure who can single-handedly shape and outgrow the world they are within.

Similarly, a world built for action, death-defying feats, and vicious ambushes against evil, is one that rushes you forward, from beat-to-beat, never giving you time to slow down, for fear that you might wonder why you can’t go through that doorway, or why you can’t flank the boat, or thoroughly investigate that lead before you walk right into the trap. Are you still with me here?

Controlled fast pace, hollow macguffins, and guns then, that’s what dominated the first person perspective in games; and that’s what Dan Pinchbeck, who at the time was working towards a doctorate on how story functions as a gameplay device, decided to start work on. An experiment to see what would happen if you stripped a game free of those mechanicisms. Dear Esther became a tale of the player, in a ghostly saunter, making their way across a beautiful hebrides-esque island, the player playing tourist, while the story’s narrator reads a varying string of letters to the titular Esther.

An island out of time, in an unfamiliar sea.

The original Half-Life 2 mod launched in 2008, in a time when indie games were starting to breach the console marketplace through XBLA (and also Community Games, later XLIG) and PSN Indies, even then however the noose was a lot tighter on what launched on the platforms, even Steam only had 181 releases that year, pittance compared to the modern numbers. With the new influx of titles from smaller, approved developers the industry paid a lot more heed to their work, awards, jams and contests received a lot more attention, however, this in many ways brought along further issues. Smaller games, and Indie games, as you likely well know, can often not afford the budget to create a technologically, top-of-the-range, polygon party; as such a lot leaned heavier on nostalgic visuals, or tightly stylised visuals. It wasn’t just the visuals however that were nostalgia based, frequently tried-and-tested, but forgotten by the sudden visual jump from the shift from pixel to polygon, mechanics were built on; arcade was back, 2D platforming was back, twin-stick shooters were back.

With interest in the indie game, modding, and (the sadly, now long faded) remake scenes at all all time peak, it seems strange to remember back to the reactions to that early, pre-stand alone mod. At the time I was doing working at [a major UK specialist video game retailer] where customer reactions to things that challenged those first person norms were refused with cold shoulders, Mirror’s Edge and Portal were treated with a degree of mistrust by several of my regular customers; cynical remarks about boring passive playthroughs, or puzzle games having no replayability were the hot mumblings. Indeed, the initial reaction to Dear Esther by select pockets of press, consumers and industry members was one of defensiveness, with several reviews that persist online to this day [See Metacritic for some of the later standalone release reviews] dismissing it as barely a game, a story told by holding the W key.

Dear Esther intended or not, birthed a new genre of game. The first-person exploration genre, or as it was originally detrimentally called, the “Walking Simulator” genre. Soon it attracted an environmental artist from DICE, Rob Briscoe, who had contacted Dear Esther’s creator regarding an upgrade into a full release, away from the constraints of a mod.

Refinement

Three years on, in 2012, that full release became a reality. Still powered by Valve’s Source engine, but visually overhauled and with the controls stripped down to simply what was required. Work was also done on tidying up issues like clipping through the newly retextured world, and fresh code ensured that the narrative looping, or stacking, bugs were out, and the world’s floors and walls were a damn-site harded to clip through.

Needless to say, Dear Esther’s full release stirred up a lot of the same remarks and questions about what makes a game, are games art, and does a narrative need to make sense first time through. Games as interactive media had changed however, parallels between literary, film, and art’s expressionist side or narratives were starting to become more common. When Dear Esther’s standalone Source version launched it did so alongside contemporaries like To The Moon which were being celebrated as successes in the genre the game’s first outing had spearheaded.

It’s been four years since that launch now, critically acclaimed entries into the genre; Gone Home, To The Moon, Firewatch, Ethan Carter, Ether One, all credited as inspired by DE have helped the genre grow and reach new audiences. Indeed the first person exploration isn’t going away soon, however, Dear Esther was set to. The Source Engine release came with its own issues, there were third-party licensing relics tucked within the engine, and the team were having issues adapting the game to run on other platforms; a PS3 version faded away, and a Linux version never materialised, even though a Mac version did rear its head.

Rebirth

To this end it was decided that the game should be transferred over to the Unity engine, that’s where the Landmark edition comes into it. Unity’s accessibility is well known, as well as the ease of which you can get the game onto a variety of platforms. Xbox One & PS4 versions have now launched, with a PC update set to be pushed live likely early next year. It’s the Xbox One code that I’ve been playing, having had it supplied by the game’s publisher Curve Digital.

Review

Dear Esther’s legacy is already cemented, the game spearheaded a movement in games that still echoes through the industry, it’s story is still discussed in hush tones even though the game was considered complete four years ago, and the studio behind it -now 15 strong- is financially secure and moving through other projects.

At it’s core, the game is a guided tour around a museum. Abandoned shacks, a distant beacon, deep caves littered with luminescent mushrooms, and scrawled messages written in paint, crashed ships, henges, sheer cliffs, steep mountains and teetering ravines, all these and more are the pieces on display. A impassioned, clear British accent reading letters and reflections serving in the place of a museum guide. He speaks in riddles, quotes, and memories, rarely making perfect sense, and only fleetingly directly telling the story straight.

There is something more than that guided tour in the game however, because you are on a journey, down an almost entirely linear route. Moments of steep incline and descent are carefully orchestrated to have you emerge from darkness into wide, open, brightly lit chambers; coloured lights bouncing around the room. Haunting, calming, or alien. This is never more obvious than the wonderful cave chapter of the game, glowing mushrooms, cascading waterfalls, and candle-light licking around rocks. The game though, as you’ll notice on further plays, is rife with moments like this from the start; As tunnel passages open up into glowing chambers, walls lined with equations and circuit-board diagrams painted with a nigh endless supply of paint, or as you round steep cliff edges and your view shifts from the waters edge to an open bay, Indeed, if stopping and enjoying the environment is your kind of thing, then you will find yourself working through Dear Esther’s hour long content in one sitting.

I found myself exploring the game world with a child-like curiosity; staring at the landmarks on the distant hills knowing surely that I will head there; staring at the paper boats, the ruined books, the ruined pieces of cars, and carefully trying to decide which route advances the narrative and which simply leads off to a path ending with an amazing view.

These little branches from the beaten path highlight the only issue with the game, speed of movement. If you make a snap decision to go up the hill rather than explore the cave, or follow the path away from the wreckage, rather than navigating the bay walls, but then have second thoughts, realising you’re potentially missing out on optional pockets of narration, when you walk back to investigate the missed path it is at the same, slow pace that you hobble through the rest of the game. It’s a hard thing to call out, because the walking pace is otherwise perfectly timed to ensure you catch the world at it’s best, or that the lighting changes overwhelm you at the right time. It’s also clearly tied to the wonderful musical snippets that break through the wind, and lapping of the waves, with powerful piano, violin and other instruments. Still, it would be nice if there was a way, having ambled away, to rapidly rejoin the path without breaking the immersion.

The game’s setting and pacing, then, are perfect, so I suppose it’s best time to discuss the work of the port. While the landscapes are amazing to look at, the graphics are certainly starting to show their age, especially now that the game is -in most cases- playing on a HD screen at 1080p. Performance isn’t an issue, with zero slowdown barring that done for dramatic effect. Some of the textures look a little too flat, especially when you get close, and there’s even a few moments where a weed or mushroom will reveal itself as a player facing 2D object; there’s certainly nothing game breaking, but they might be immersion breaking to some.

During a brief interview that I had with Dan Pinchbeck, the creative lead at the studio, he stated that parts of the audio had been remastered for the transition over to a new engine; Jessica Curry’s spectacular orchestral work remains present, and just as haunting as in the earlier versions, however certain sound effects have been remade, and several bits of narration were reworked.

I did notice that two of the narration segments seemed a tad odd, one near the start skipped a few words compared to the subtitles of the game, and another – near the conclusion of the game – seemed to have been recorded at a different volume setting. The subtitles use of grammar in regards to character names at certain points actually cast a potential twist on the conventionally accepted story of the game, with the lack of commas separating names (if deliberate) identifying names as paired rather than in a list.

Dear Esther was a great achievement, and with the successful porting of it to a new engine, and new formats, in the Landmark Edition it remains just that. While time has worn away slightly at the edges of this game, the beautiful setting, uniquely unravelling story, and music all excel at immersing the player into a mysterious, uncanny island.

Dear Esther: Landmark Edition is available now for Xbox One & PS4.