Just finished playing Dear Esther

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Absolutely Dear Esther has flaws, but I think this whole thing more of an experiment to see if anyone would really play it, and what the people who do play think about it. The lack of controls is incredibly frustrating but they had a good reason for putting it in, which as somebody said is to focus more on the environment and so that the dialogue doesn't trigger too fast. That's all this game is essentially, the environment and story, gameplay is evidently not it's strong point. It wasn't created to please people who like action and whatnot, it was made for the devoted cult fans, which I think can attribute to the cost being so high. I think they knew it wouldn't get huge sales and therefore upped the price to make up for development costs. And loads of people bought it and loved it.

I myself was in-between for it, I liked the environment and the voice acting, but I was very bothered by the slow walking and lack of controls. The story for me wasn't that good, but the writing was so I enjoyed that as well.

I wasn't expecting any action at all, I was just expecting something and got nearly nothing. Okay, it has a bitchin' score, cool performance by the narrator and stunning visuals. But it means nothing without a strong storyline which I think this game didn't have.

Compare it to the film Memento, where on the first viewing you are totally in the dark until the very end. It is also presented in a fragmented manner and can be interpreted in several different ways. The way in which these two pieces of art differ is that Memento sets up a strong premise and then presents you with a confusing narrative where you are allowed to fill in the blanks as the film goes along and Dear Esther gives you nothing but (apparently randomized?) blocks of narration that explain nothing.

It's just not cool to delegate such a huge part of the writing process onto the audience. Have you ever heard of a mystery novel where the characters don't even know there is a mystery?