Dear Esther: An interview

[Sexbad]

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.

He's not removing all aspects of interactivity from the game; you still have to explore, and find all aspects of the story. Where you go, when, and even luck will determine the content, arc, and order in which the story is told. He's removed all challenge from the game, but challenge isn't what defines games, interactivity is. The way in which you experience the story is actually more varied and dependent on the player than many on-rails so-called RPGs.

I played the original three or four times, and did not recall any changes between these playthroughs. I highly doubt any of it is dynamic, rather than simply triggered monologues.

Anyway, I don't doubt that games can be about things other than not dying. After all, The End of Us, which I just linked to, does not focus on challenge at all. However, in Dear Esther, all you do, throughout the entire environment, is walk around. In the original, there was next to nothing to explore either. With this graphical update that could definitely change for the better, but there's definitely not enough interactivity to call it a game.

It's not some kind of storytelling revolution in games, just an audiobook set to a 3D landscape.