Gone Home

Gone Home is an indie adventure title that has been gathering a lot of buzz as one of the best games released in 2013. As a fan of the genre, I was curious to give it a try, and in short, my conclusion is that people are easily pleased in this industry. This game doesn't even hold a candle to Ace Attorney 5 (which also came out this year) and doesn't have a whole lot going on to set itself apart. I feel like it would be unfair to trash this game, really, as it's clear tons of work went in to designing the house and making it look good, and for the most part it's well-written (though, who really had this many letters lying around their houses in the mid-90s?). However, the sad thing is a house of this size would normally be a single area in a bigger game and will often have as much detail packed in to the environment. When taken as a short, two hour experience, Gone Home is great. When compared to other games, it feels like a tech demo despite its strengths.

The setup of Gone Home is that a girl (Katie) has returned home after a trip from Europe and nobody's there. To its credit, the game does an excellent job making the house seem mysterious and spooky, which is the high point of the game. Your job is to explore the labyrinthine home and search for clues about what happened. I won't reveal what's been going on, but I will tell you it's unsatisfying because you'll figure out everything that's actually important within an hour. The rest is just following bread crumbs (which are lazily strewn about in letters all over the place) to the end of the game. Again, there's nothing wrong with this being the main gameplay element, but this kind of thing has been done in adventure games since the early 90s, and since Gone Home is so short it feels like a small part of a story that should have been a lot bigger. You can explore the house and find extra details unrelated to the mystery that the game thinks is so important, but none of that matters and the majority does not even tie in to the central conflict. As I said in my Dishonored review, I honestly hate how so many western games are full to the brim with pointless details that exist solely to 'flesh out' a world. It's a tradition that probably harkens back to Tolkien and does nothing for people who prefer a focused narrative.

Furthermore, I take issue with the main 'twist' that is at the core of Gone Home's plot. If you don't want to be spoiled on this one, I suggest you stop reading, but if you weren't interested in Gone Home in the first place, I'll save you an hour. Basically, Katie discovers after a bit of exploration that her sister is a lesbian and has been sneaking around with her girlfriend. It really annoys me when this is used as a 'plot twist' in stories, not because it's implying homosexuals are weird or something, but because it's an incredibly weak thing to hinge interesting narrative on. Imagine if a story was centered on the fact that a dude liked cats more than dogs--it's a nice detail to know, okay, but it's only a supplemental thing. You could make the female lover in this game male and absolutely nothing would change.

One thing I did like about Gone Home was how much it misdirected expectations. In other words, the game makes it look like something is about to occur or creates an assumption in your head, but subverts it later on. That's great, but it's just over way too soon. Being over way too soon is this game's trouble in general, and nobody will remember it at all within two years. Even though I'm preferring games to be shorter these days, sometimes you need a little more to chew on to get any pleasure out of a sandwich.

5.5