Dear Esther: An interview

[Sexbad]

Not doomed to fail, but doomed to succeed. Instead of an actual game, this dude is taking away all gameplay in favor of storytelling. And people are beginning to believe that this is how you get better stories in games.

Dear Esther is incredibly well written, beautiful, and atmospheric, but all you do is walk around. All that it attempts to be is a book in a 3D environment, instead of a game that tells its story through the gameplay.

I'll give a basic example of what I mean: Cryostasis. Cryostasis has the best story ever in a video game, hands down, and it doesn't sacrifice any actual gameplay. Now, the gameplay itself isn't great at times, but it's all there. Instead, to tell its story, it uses not just cinematics and voice overs, but neat shit like interactive flashback scenes, representative enemy designs, and incredibly interesting environments. Story and gameplay go hand in hand, rather than story completely burying gameplay. With the former way, you can develop methods of storytelling exclusive to video games. With the latter way, you might as well just be watching the entirety of Star Wars in the form of the text scrolls that appear at the beginning of each movie, and playing a game that consists entirely of cinematics (DE is not far from this, with narration replacing cutscene, making it even less substantial).

DE doesn't have enough (any) gameplay to be a game, and it doesn't have enough substance to be some kind of interactive audiobook or film. It's worth experiencing because of the narrative, but calling it a game makes me sick. That attitude is backwards and ludicrous.