amily; most everyone you know has one, and while they all bring myriad of attachment or emotion, there’s one central theme that’s consistent with everyone who has one, or wants one—belonging, feeling like you’re a part of something, bigger than yourself. It’s a bond that remains constant, no matter how far you go, or how long you’re gone, it’s always insinuated that you have a permanent membership to that club you call a family. While the sense of belonging is interchangeable with the sense of bond, the harsh reality is that even family can fall victim to unstoppable force that works to claim everything in its path--time.
Katie Greenbriar arrives to the welcome of silence and difference of lieu of the fantasy Americana she expected from the past that she had left behind—This is Gone Home, and it is one of the most worldly experiences you’ll encounter in the deceptively humbling form of it being some dumb, yet engrossing video game.
On the outside looking in, the temptation to dissect the foundation of Gone Home’s narrative gameplay into familiar elements of the McGuffin or the narrative explorative dissonance of puzzle solving is strong, a majority of video games within the last 20 years has worked to condition us into playing like this, but that mentality doesn’t apply here. Within minutes of stepping that porch, the exercise of deciphering what makes Gone Home a game would be like Leo Tolstoy scrutinizing the story devices of Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, instead of just, you know—reading it.
The quality in Fullbright’s release is due to the brilliant subtlety it applies in its pacing. Mechanically, the indie first-person adventure title can theoretically play out like a straight-ass linear game if your scope is boiled down to the main objective, but the game never allows you to understand what the quote unquote “real” objective is, because the real objective is discovery. Priorities slowly flesh themselves out in your search for clues as to the whereabouts of your family, but none of these clues make themselves
apparent. Instead, you’re simply regulated to wandering your immediate quarters, examining anything and everything in your line of sight; the intrigue only gets stronger. From the most arbitrary of breakthroughs like the nutritional facts on the side of some can of fictional brand soda to a letter from your aunt that’s addressed to your mother about your parents struggling marriage; each step gradually engrosses you into this world.
Other games have tried to digitally emulate the dynamics of human curiosity coherently (Shenmue anyone?) but there’s a charm behind the course that Gone Home takes you through that speaks volumes of it’s design beyond throwing this all into a concentrated space like an isolated forest manor—the naturalism in the detail of everything you do. A lot of the magic the magic in the presentation is definitely in the execution, but it’s all stemmed from the detail in in the world that the mysterious house creates. Paperwork, Magazine covers, show flyers, it’s exquisitely meticulous in its exhibition of what the average American home looks like. The beauty in the authentic sense of naturalism isn’t carried in just its graphic details, the real sirloin is at the core of the exploration itself, the formula is built with a unique dichotomy it creates with the gradual introduction of an environment that’s both, new to the player, and one that Katie doesn’t recognize anymore.
The trip back to the homeland spins a wonderful tale that writes a love letter to all of the hallmarks to 90’s youth culture. The narrative is laden with the subtle allusions like Street Fighter II, underground punk rock/Riot grrrl, and Pulp Fiction to note, along with several others. Referencing the past is nothing groundbreaking, but it’s what Fullbright does with it is what makes these references so significant. These tropes and token homages to the era aren’t simply laced within the plot for nostalgia or fan service, instead, they exist beyond for the characters of the story in a genuinely significant manner when it comes to their development of their character and action within the unfolding plot. Uncovering the whereabouts of your immediate kin becomes organically engrossing the more you advance. The human condition is rarely captured outside of a cutscene or moment of dialogue in games and when you hear the audio monologues from the diaries of your sister that lead you around this strange house you’re supposed to call home, this fictional bond family and love pulls pulls you, hard. The looming themes of human disposition can go from ominous to a sense of rekindling to frustration over what you can’t control to unintentional comedy and never once does it feel like it’s scripted because it isn’t, it’s implied.
The events and things you come to learn are very real things that everyone encounters in day to day life, and while they may affect some more than others, Gone Home translates these elements into feelings that anyone this day and age can relate to. Alienation, acceptance, love…even though the game regulates you to being the outsider in through the thick of it, it will never rob you of from the sense of relation; the accessibility of how much a player can invest themselves is what brilliantly crafts the polish to its play. Everything that transpires in Gone Home gives the illusion that it occurs as a direct result of your actions that you fumbled into instead simply playing along to a process that will unlock the next choreographed sequence.
Katie doesn’t kill anything, or find pieces of a gargoyle statue to unlock some passageway behind the fireplace-she just simply interacts, and yet Gone Home will give you a sense of agency stronger than almost any other title out there to date, it's a game that should not be ignored.
