Gone Home from The Fullbright Company

[osmosisch]

You probably missed some story bits elmuerte - I was talking about him earlier in spoilers.

 

All the story lines are finished to some extent if you pay enough attention.

 

re: the missing hardware

Sam and Lonni took 'em to hock and finance their getaway

[elmuerte]

re: the missing hardware

Sam and Lonni took 'em to hock and finance their getaway

Make sense, but why didn't they take the duck?

[SecretAsianMan]

Man, this game really drew me in, and in a totally unexpected way.  I purposely avoided almost everything related to the game before playing it so I had almost no idea what to expect going in, and I'm glad I did.  I started off straightening things out.  I was turning off lights and closing cabinets and doors behind me as though I were in an actual house leaving a room.  But as I discovered more about the story, I stopped doing those things because I had to know what happened next.  By the end, I was racing through the house to get the next note.  While I don't personally identify with many aspects Sam's story, I still really loved it because of how genuine it felt.

At the end, I actually felt a little sad I wasn't going to see her and kind of missed her.

 

Random other thoughts:

Despite how much I love the story, I think my favorite note might be Sam's health class homework.  That was great.

The dad's books remind me of a crappy short story I tried to write when I was younger.

I love that you can put most stuff back right where you found it.  I hate just dropping things on the ground in most games.  Feels like I'm making a mess.

I like that there's an explanation why the lights flicker.  Details like this make me happy.

I like to think that Sam arranged the placement of the journals so they would be found in a specific order.  Like she walked through the house and thought "Ok, the first one goes here and the next one goes here..."

I got 3 trading card drops and they were all the same (Calavera de la Dia)

Definitely a GOTY*.

 

*The G stands for Ghost

[Twig]

Re: all the Oscar talk: All right! I got most of what you guys said, but just didn't pick up on EXACTLY what went down between the two. Now I get it, I think.

 

Personally, if I was away from home for months, and suddenly came home to an empty house with a cryptic note written by my younger sister, I would immediately start looking for hints as to what happened. So Katie's actions didn't really bother me the way it seems to have bothered others.

It wasn't that the actions bothered me; it's that she was so silent during all of it. Like she had nothing to say, except for maybe once out of every 20 items or so the text would say more than "a book" or whatever.

[melmer]

Chris plante (polygon) just tweeted this article. Not to be read until you've finished the game

http://clockworkworlds.com/post/58411117679/the-transgression-you-can-do-better

[Codicier]

Came back and finished the game off this evening. First off congrats to the whole Fullbright crew for telling a really affecting and compact story.

 

However I got quite frustrated at some of the game's choices about what parts of the environment I could or couldn't interact with (is "fidelity of interaction" the right phrase for this? I feel like it might be but not sure if there some more formalised term lurking out there) especially early on. Too many times it felt like I was actor thrown onto a set with no idea which props I was supposed pick up and make use of, and which were a glued down and immoveable part of the stage. 

 

Which is a shame because there were some purely static environmental elements which worked great and since there was only ever a few elements apart from the notes I felt I really gained anything from manipulating

the cassette cases stand out in particular, I loved turning them around trying to read the insides of them

. So looking back I feel all my early frustration from finding elements I wanted to interact with but couldn't didn't lead to any great benefit.

 

I can't remember who, but I remember a few years back someone talking about fake doors in video games, and how that the first time you attempted to use one (and discovering that it didn't react) drags you completely out of the immersion. Well that feeling happened time after time to me in the first hour or so of Gone Home (not with door but with notes and a dozen other little things), to the point where I had to walk away from the game in frustration.

 

It just seems strange that after Dear Ester showed that you can do great storytelling with a very static environment without running into these problem that the Fullbright guys decided to take this risk, especially when there's great examples static environmental storytelling here too 

My favourite little detail was the clothes with electronic tags still on them in Sams locker. Suggesting she'd been shoplifting (something which went against a lot of the impressions I'd been given of her but still ended up being a very believable action for her).

. I think I'd still feel more comfortable showing Dear Ester to a non-gamer than I would Gone Home, even though Gone Home definitely tells a more accessible unpretentious story.

Now I know things like Bio-Shock and the Deus Ex reboot have done very similar things but perhaps the lines in these games are more clearly drawn. I know people criticise the "glowing" effect that's used sometimes, but I feel the trade off for designers between jarring moments of non-interaction and unrealistic visual effects is one that slightly favours the glow if only because the jolt or non-interaction can completely knock me out of immersion while the glow annoys me but at a far lower level of irritation.

 

Still all in all despite those gripes I'm glad someone has tried to tell a very normal, very universal love story (& several interesting sub-stories), rather than settle for the normal bombastic shooting gallery, and for that I can more than forgive it struggling with some issues that effect many other games.

[juv3nal]

Over on gamerswithjobs forums, Bombsfall articulates a neat interpretation of the Dad's struggles with publishing which I happen to agree with.

The dad has a job that seems like a lot of fun but it probably drudgery, and he keeps trying to break out of that into something closer to his former (nearly realized) dreams of being a successful novelist. But his publishing house drops him, and his current job isn't interested in his "ruminations on his childhood". He's just doing a job that doesn't require a ton of investment, and can't make anything personal. When you're in the basement you find that d*ckish letter from his dad, and this is one of the most interesting parts of the game for me. He congratulates his son for doing well, but admonishes him for throwing in genre conventions and needless tropes just to please his supposed fanbase, and that it was getting in the way of him saying something real and personal. I know that letter is a discouragement and criticism of the dad's work, but it almost reads as a letter from Fullbright to themselves. They all worked on sci-fi and genre stuff, and then said f*ck this, we need to make something personal. When you start the game you are expecting a ghost, or a psycho uncle (god they do such a great job with that up front). You find the blood-stained bathtub but it's only hair dye. The note on the front door + the phone messages + the missing parents all clue you in to expecting the same kind of conflict you see in games all the time. But as you explore the house, it becomes less dark (I'm assuming most people leave on just about every light they find), and the genre conventions and expectations slowly drop away to reveal something intensely personal and real. You start expecting "video game" with all of these attendant expectations, and end up with something else altogether. The dad has to go to some wacked out tiny publisher (an indie publisher, one might say) to write his follow up book. And the synopsis for that book is a james-bond type character who in the previous books receives warnings from the future and has to save the president (fun genre stuff), but in this one he has to save himself. You find the manuscript not totally crumpled but obviously bent up in frustration with an encouraging note from his wife written on it. And so he moves forward, making the things he loves but trying to push it in a more personal direction.

 

[osmosisch]

That's a great post juv3nal; Given the spoilery speculation previously though that makes me hope the analogy ends at some point :/

[Eric]

I sort of approached this game with the attitude of expecting the unexpected and my expectations were really exceeded! When I heard it was going to be set in the 90s I was a little bit nervous. Knowing that a large part of the demographic was going to be people like me, 20-somethings who grew up during that time, and knowing how easy it is in media (especially video games) to fall back on nostalgia I was worried that it was going to be a mess of thoughtless surface level references(a la Tumblr circa 201X). I was relieved to discover though that Gone Home is a period piece that, rather than using nostalgia to justify it's existence, uses the time in which it is set to enrich the narrative and make it more relateable. I think the way we look back at the 90s here in the second decade of this millenium is often overshadowed by memories of pop culture, MTV, Video Games, Saved By The Bell, Bill Clinton, but Gone Home depicts the 90s not through the lens of pop culture, though obviously without these things an image of that time is incomplete, but of real culture. The modern romantic view of the 90s is eschewed for a depiction of the world and true experiences of young people during that time. The angst and frustration in the face of still prevalent social issues and the attempts by young people to cope and react are expressed along with the decade's forgotten banalities and defining characteristics. And within that setting a conscientious, meaningful, and remarkably affecting story is told from all sides, a feat which is still after however many years of narrative in video games a frustratingly rare thing. And then that fucking ghost showed up.

 

OK, joking. Admittedly I could have a narrow view of things as I grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the 90s but I really think this game is important. I think it's important for its thoughtfully reproduced setting, I think it's important for its story, and I think it's important for how it can have both of those and still be a compelling video game that is Fun to Play. Gr8 game Steve, I like the same music you do we should hang out some time

 

e: Additionally, I think this game made great steps toward telling an authored story by utilizing the characteristics endemic to a video game. This is as opposed to games that have cut scene driven narratives or games in which the narratives are expressed implicitly within the mechanics of the game

[osmosisch]

What are people's favourite subtle things? 

 

My absolute favourite is probably the social agenda where over time all the parents' paired activites are dashed through and only mom's solo activities remain, painting a chilling picture of a disintegrating marriage

[Twig]

I was a lot more optimistic about that...

Yes, the marriage was having a rough patch, but I felt like it entirely came down to Terry's own self-pity, which by the end was clearly going away as his books got republished and he started working on a new one. So this "couple's counseling retreat" they went on seemed a lot more hopeful than it might have in the context of a sad sap who was stuck writing tech reviews he didn't care about at all.

[SecretAsianMan]

I was a lot more optimistic about that...

Yes, the marriage was having a rough patch, but I felt like it entirely came down to Terry's own self-pity, which by the end was clearly going away as his books got republished and he started working on a new one. So this "couple's counseling retreat" they went on seemed a lot more hopeful than it might have in the context of a sad sap who was stuck writing tech reviews he didn't care about at all.

I got the same impression.

I felt like they were starting to fix things.  The self help books around and the retreat, plus her notes on one of Terry's manuscripts telling him not to give up gave me the impression things were starting to get better.  And don't forget the condom in the dresser.  I also imagine besides his self-pity about his books, Sam's increasingly rebellious attitude and their discovery of Sam's true relationship with Lonnie also put some strain on things.

[osmosisch]

I was a lot more optimistic about that...

Yes, the marriage was having a rough patch, but I felt like it entirely came down to Terry's own self-pity, which by the end was clearly going away as his books got republished and he started working on a new one. So this "couple's counseling retreat" they went on seemed a lot more hopeful than it might have in the context of a sad sap who was stuck writing tech reviews he didn't care about at all.

I agree, but that reversal is shown in stuff that comes much later. Like the other character arcs, there's an actual arc to it. I just found the calendar to be such a great way of showing the problems that they later at least attempt to work through.

 

Another favourite thing:

One of the magic eye things is frickin' Airwolf!

[Patrick R]

Oh man, I must have missed so much. I didn't even know Sam came out to her parents. I know a "13 out of 35 notes seen" counter would be a total tone-breaking dumb video game thing, but I do wish I knew how much I missed, to know if it'd be worth it to go back and play through again once my chief enjoyment (the sense of discovery) is gone. Maybe I'll just keep reading message boards, or a wiki if one ever gets made.

 

There's a lot about this game that is amazing and awesome. I felt the story was a bit simple. Maybe I missed significant parts of it, though.

 

Outside of the constant comments that 0 ghosts were found, were there many Idle Thumbs easter eggs?

[osmosisch]

Also goddamn but the voice acting in this game is just off the charts.

 

Patrick, I would definitely recommend playing through again. There's ana amzing amount of stuff that you will just smack your forehead at missing the first time.

[Patrick R]

Is it explained why Sam took BOTH of the VCR's from the house, but none of the component cables?

[osmosisch]

Another thing I loved:

Mom spent over a hundred bucks getting styled for her big date with Ranger Rick

[brkl]

I took everything out of the fridge and freezer and left it lying on the floor. Good game.

[SecretAsianMan]

Oh man, I must have missed so much. I didn't even know Sam came out to her parents. I know a "13 out of 35 notes seen" counter would be a total tone-breaking dumb video game thing, but I do wish I knew how much I missed, to know if it'd be worth it to go back and play through again once my chief enjoyment (the sense of discovery) is gone. Maybe I'll just keep reading message boards, or a wiki if one ever gets made.

 

There's a lot about this game that is amazing and awesome. I felt the story was a bit simple. Maybe I missed significant parts of it, though.

 

Outside of the constant comments that 0 ghosts were found, were there many Idle Thumbs easter eggs?

 

I've found at least 2 Thumbs references.  

The ghost board game made by Famous Games and the Phaedrus motorcycle.

There are probably more but I've only been through the house once.

 

Also this exists: Gone Home Wiki

[sclpls]

I took everything out of the fridge and freezer and left it lying on the floor. Good game.

 

Haha I did this too...

[brkl]

Is it explained why Sam took BOTH of the VCR's from the house, but none of the component cables?

 

Just a few pages ago in this thread. I don't know if it was in the game, but it makes sense Sam and Lonnie sold them. I think there were at least three.

[juv3nal]

There's salad dressing in the fridge named after a member of this forum.

[Patrick R]

There's salad dressing in the fridge named after a member of this forum.

Russian dressing, nonetheless. Exciting.

[SecretAsianMan]

There's salad dressing in the fridge named after a member of this forum.

There's also this

[SecretAsianMan]

Also, another dumb thing I liked

Someone completed the maze on the back of the cereal box