k-ayfable

[k-ayfable]

+*. What Makes the Liar! Series Good

( NOTE: I get pretty wordy, so it’s put under a read more. )

Having just talked about the so-called literary game experience, it goes to say that I ought to discuss a game I like for its narrative. There's a lot of games I could've chosen for this that I honestly think nail down mechanics feeding into the story it tries to tell a lot better than the one I'm going to choose, but I figure I want to gush about a game I really like that I still think applies and is fairly interesting to me at least.

I really like the Liar! series, of which there are three mainline games officially localized in English and four mainline games with two spin-offs in Japan. The games revolve around their respective protagonists with a cast of ten other characters who all seem like great people on paper. The circumstances for why these characters are all engaged with one another changes from game to game, but the main thing is that the protagonist is aware via a fortune teller that nine of these people are going to lie to her and only one of them is someone she can place her full faith and trust in.

The player goes through each chapter with a thematic lie (it ranges from someone posting company secrets online to someone being abusive to their exes to someone leaving the protagonist to die in the cold) and they will take note of the various suspects' behaviors as well as investigate places until they get to a point in the story where they must accuse one suspect of being the liar and then prove through an argument section that the person isn't who they say they are.

The interesting part I want to note (though I do adore this game for many reasons) is that after you successfully clear a chapter, depending upon how fast you completed the chapter in addition to how well you did during the accusation period, you're able to access a variety of different endings.

Secret Ending: You get to see from the liar's POV how key parts of the chapter went down. This allows the player to try and understand what the person was thinking when doing and then covering up their lie. This is different from the True ending because it takes place in the present and is more about exploring thought process.

True Ending: You get to see how the liar became the person they are, and why they got into whatever bad trait they hold. This is different from the Secret Ending as this takes place in the past and relies more on backstory.

Love Ending: Not necessarily always a romantic ending, but this involves giving the liar the chance to reform and giving them another chance at being friends/potentially lovers with the protagonist.

Scumbag Ending: You read what potentially happens after the chapter in a timeline where they don't learn from the chapter and continue being a bad person or falling back into bad habits.

You're not obligated to read any of these endings, but you can read all of them if you want! It's interesting because if you do, then you get more insight into the character and will feel more sympathetic to them most likely. This falls in line with the series' theme: while yes the protagonists are right to want to cut out toxic people from their lives, they need to learn to know when to forgive and also ought to be more open-minded. Allowing the player to choose whether or not to read these additional endings emulates that act of being willing to not just blindly condemn people and being willing to forgive them.

Furthermore, it takes more effort to forgive and hear people out, paralleled by the fact it's more difficult in-game to clear it fast as well as perform well in accusation periods and thus get all the endings. You need to be motivated to want to get them, much like how you need to be motivated to want to understand a situation fully.

I would love to see more games have their mechanics echo their narrative or reflect it like that! It's subtle, but when you notice it, it really hits you. This is the joy of ludonarrative harmony; when everything aligns, it feels really good. Future games don't need to use this specific way of achieving harmony, but they should strive to have some kind of harmony nevertheless.

[k-ayfable]

+*. “The Perfect Literary Game Experience”

A while back, I discussed with my peers what traits they thought were necessary to create the "perfect literary game experience." Spoiler: there was a lot of discord. In the end, the majority came up with the following four traits:

Characters that are actually interesting and you care about

Immersive storyline that allows for personalization and engagement

Established theme or message

Clear causes for character development/improvements

I'll be honest and say I honestly don't actually agree with all of these points, considering that I think if we're trying to argue games can be anything like poetry, we technically don't need an interesting character nor an immersive storyline? Arguing we need clear causes for character development also implies we need character development to create a literary game experience at all.

Character development is always nice, but I will say that it's not always necessary. A static character can fulfill a role fine. There have been plenty of stories about characters that don't change that I have liked.

The main point behind it all is that I just require there to be intent behind things. If you're writing a story, there should be a point to it and most everything should build up to that purpose. If a character is static, then make sure it's part of the narrative that they're static.

I don't care for personalization either. Linear games are fine so long as I am engaged.

In the end, I think the most important thing for a literary experience is purpose, but then again, I can say that about anything in life truly.

For something I think is specific to games, if I wanted what I'd define as the perfect literary game experience, I would say then that I would yearn for ludonarrative harmony.

That's not to say that I think every game needs it in order to be good. There's plenty of games where the mechanics don't necessarily feed into complementing the narrative, but they're still good mechanics. Video games take full advantage of their medium however if they can manage to achieve that harmony where the mechanics DO mean something for the narrative.

Because then, at that point, the story cannot be told without it being a video game. The medium is inseparable from the tale. This then becomes the fact that this method is the best way to tell that narrative, and honestly, what more can you want?

[k-ayfable]

+*. REVIEW: Biosho/ck Infinite

In addition to playing Life is St/range lately, I've also played Bio/shock Infinite so hurrah for that!

Having gone through the first game in the trilogy as well, we can make some interesting comparisons. We know from the get-go that the two games aren't in the same universe, being introduced to a whole new cast, world, etc. Yet despite the fact we are in Columb/ia and are following Booker's tale, we still maintain a lot of core elements from the original Bi/oshock.

Vigors are the new plasmids, some sound effects sound similar, we share the same first-person camera with gameplay focused on melee and ranged combat, we still are encouraged to explore and find audio recordings of inhabitants of the world, and we even still start with a lighthouse taking us to a whole new city.

But Colom/bia isn't Rapture. Yet still this game carries similar mechanics and even visuals. I act as if this is impressive when it's not really considering they're both in the same franchise, and that's just the nature of franchises. They don't need to be direct sequels, but they should feel in line with their predecessors while still giving us new content whether that be improved mechanics or a whole new story.

Hell, even changing a lot of the mechanics can still work. Compare Fire Embl/em games with one another and you'll notice a lot of them are very different from one another but still are, at their core, turn-based strategy RPGs with a tile-based system where you recruit many different characters. So long as you have the core, you have the same spirit.

And that's what's important: keeping the things people love about Bio/shock and breathing new life into it.

[k-ayfable]

+*. REVIEW: Life is St/range Part II

NOTE: Warning that this one gets fairly long, so it’s put under a read more consequently.

Quite some time ago I mentioned playing through Life is St/range, and now it's time to revisit it. I played it in a pretty bad head space, triggering an even worse mental state that I truthfully haven't quite recovered from.

But I think it's not fair to blame the game for that.

A lot of things in my life led up to that moment, and to blame a video game for my depression taking a sharp turn isn't doing anything constructive. It also wouldn't be true to lay sole blame unto it either.

This does bring up a point I wish to address, however: video games have the power to affect us emotionally. This seems a bit silly for me to argue, but then I remember there's a lot of people who see video games as nothing more than toys — something to play with and then forget about in favor of whatever life has to give us.

( Not that I want to bag on toys considering how much I enjoy watching people create and open them, but that's not the point of this blog. )

I think that undermines the fact we can see our reality reflected into it just as we can with movies and literature, though that point is often ignored too. Fiction draws from reality and it affects it too. We can be told to see life in a new perspective from fiction. We can question things about ourselves.

Fiction is definitely a space to try and see events we would never want to happen to ourselves, but that doesn't mean it is safe always. Writers have a responsibility to handle things with care.

Life is St/range tackles a lot of different topics ranging from suic/ide to abuse to emotional manipulation and even more beyond that. The joy of visual novels and adventure games like them is that they tend to be able to live and breathe narratives a lot more easily than other genres, sometimes hinging upon their plots and thus the most care gets put into that fact. However, they can tackle dangerous topics.

Is it safe to give the player a scenario where they can succeed or fail at preventing a sui/cide attempt? Who knows. What I do know is that the themes echoed with me in the worst way: regret lingered and ensnared me over even the smaller details.

For what end? I choose to believe it's to help me understand how I want to view life and ultimately I decide even if bad things happen, so long as I have good intentions, that's what matters most. Even if something didn't go my way in the game, if my heart was in the right place, I shouldn't condemn myself.

It's interesting to see discussion on what the right thing to do is in this game and especially in reference to the ending. I won't spoil it other than say it has a big decision, but I'll say that I favored one ending because it felt the most "right" to me, and perhaps that matters the most. For me, what felt "right" meant respecting character development and deciding to be unselfish, but that might mean something different to you.

If you give Life is St/range a try, I hope you figure out what it is you want.

[k-ayfable]

+*. META: Blogging

Blogging about blogs is the blog equivalent to critics beefing with other critics and the You/Tube commentary scene in a nutshell. It's typically not at all my lane, and I don't like doing it at all even if I express a great interest in the latter community. But alas, we all do make passive judgments about others in the same field, and all this is doing is bringing it to the surface.

Though I open this with a sense of discomfort and negativity, I do not mean to say that looking at one's peers must be a wholly negative experience. If anything, one has a lot to learn from looking at others. One should not exist in a vacuum. The good lends the possibility for growth inspiration, the bad lends the possibility to understand what one should avoid becoming.

Still, I don't speak today with that gravity either. Instead, I note other blogs from those in my circle tend to exhibit qualities that I can commend and praise all I want but note that isn't for me. But just because it isn't for me due to personal reasons (i.e. wishing to distance myself from people in most cases and not wishing to imbed myself too much into my work) does not mean it cannot be for others.

A lot of my peers tend to be very casual in their language and come across as amiable in their blog post introductions. They address their readerbase in a more personal way than I do, a more friendly way, and it gives them this aura of approachability. Having their introductions be this way can also make it so that their blogs feel like there's some kind of cohesive journey going along it all -- like you're hopping in for their vlog series, except here it's just discussing different video games over time. It creates a more unified narrative than mine does anyhow.

A blog that is friendly definitely has a big opportunity for others to like them. There's also the idea of just trying to convey a good personality in general. People will stick around someone they like more, though that's not to say problematic personalities don't get big -- especially in the gaming industry.

Still, it'd be nice if we all supported good people.

[k-ayfable]

+*. REVIEW: Life is St/range Part I

Lately, I've played through Life is S/trange. It's a bit difficult to discuss how I feel about the experience when it's roughly half the game but then almost everyone who discusses it does so with the knowledge of the full game in mind. Nevertheless, I will try my best.

A/lisha Kar/abinus writes the following as a major theme for their run of the game:

"So many focused on moments that defined Max’s sense of right and wrong, and the way she conducted interpersonal relations, even if those implications weren’t obvious at the time players are faced with the choices. Some seem so small, and yet they close off entire sections of plot while opening others."

They specifically use this point and say it's highlighted the most in Episode Five, but this can be true for earlier points as well. I liken Max's power to an in-game save state (for those that don't know what that is, when you run a game in an emulator, you're allowed to make quick saves -- up to ten typically-- at any point in time and you can be reverted back to that part with no strings attached, allowing yourself to not be limited to in-game savepoints) but it quickly proved to me that it was not quite like that.

A save state gives me power to feel more comfortable in going back in time and doing things right. Max's power is still limited in-game and you cannot go back too far. By the time you realize your choice landed a negative consequence you don't want, you are stuck with it. You must live with the consequences.

Max's power gives a false sense of security. It gives the player hope they can do things right, but regret still comes. The obstacle is coping with this. Ka/rabinus' point then comes to light with the whole game; even over minor outcomes like just how a character felt about Max or what they had access to later, I felt great anxiety. The anxiety might not have been in the moment as I could power through a lot of it, but the anxiety came in a dreadful sense much later as I contemplated how my run went.

[k-ayfable]

+*. REVIEW: Writers

There are many authors in the world of video game journalism, academia, and content creators. There's a large spectrum and information and evaluation from them can come in many flavors, but I choose to discuss the writing of someone who seems more traditional in their writing-- someone who writes like how you can imagine one would in a magazine or in a column as opposed to a video essay.

Kh/ee Ho/on Chan is an author who writes for a number of various different publications but it's always in print format-- digital print, yes, but print nonetheless. This may seem archaic to some especially in the golden age of Game Theory and various commentary youtubers, but that does not mean there is no merit to be had in print.

Chan straddles this line of impersonal and personal in my observation. She frequently brings in others' opinions and testimonies, creating a wealth of informal and formal knowledge and sources, but she rarely inserts herself. There's nothing wrong with using first person pronouns in my opinion, but I like that she doesn't insert herself unless it's necessary, i.e. regaling her hands-on experiences such as in VR arcades. It maintains professionalism that can be appreciated, especially when a lot of those who commentate on video games have a tendency to insert themselves wholly and can then become extremely defensive of their work to the point they'll derail themselves or their content.

At the same time, despite not inserting themself wholly, I am given the impression Chan knows what they're talking about and have faith in their ethos consequently. That's something I tend to not see in K/otaku articles or Ma/tP/at for example. Chan writes believably and is willing to criticize work that they also wish to praise. I like that Chan's scope isn't small but also goes to a broader, more societal viewpoint as seen in their Earth/bound and China pieces.

Chan's content seems full and she herself seems to have a good head on her shoulders which I can appreciate. Also judging from a quick skim of her social media, she doesn't seem to be a horrible person or someone who dives headfirst into drama. I'm given the impression she's evaluative and respectful which are both qualities I can appreciate.

[k-ayfable]

+*. META: Rapture & A/yn R/and

Worldbuilding is prevalent in Bi/oshock, but I would be lying if I said I really paid attention to it. Was I interested? Mildly. Did I play this game like most fans and fully immerse myself in Rapture? Aboslutely not.

In general, this game had an uphill battle to win against me. The idea of fully "immersing" myself in a video game is laughable considering how much I prefer to dissociate from video games, but sure, I explored the world a little. That mostly came from backtracking a lot through a world I found kind of confusing to navigate but I don't think that was entirely the game's fault because I do think it legitimately tried to make every room very different visually from all the others to avoid players getting lost. That quest arrow means absolutely nothing at times FYI.

The primary route of worldbuilding came from the little soundbytes you could collect as you went around various areas in Rapture. They would host characters talking from various points in Rapture's history and clueing the player in on the culture, motivations, economy, etc. of the underwater city. Even outside of that though, little things like breaking display glass and that triggering an alarm that shamed vandalism and likened thieves to parasites also was a dosage of worldbuilding.

The critique of Ay/n R/and's ideas are prevalent everywhere. Listening to the fall of everybody in Rapture via the audio diaries as well as quite literally seeing everything in ruins shows how Rapture was built on her ideals and then condemns them by showing everything in such a pitiful, crumbling state. Showing a society that was founded on A/yn R/and's philosophy but then depicting it as a wasteland after its attempt to survive is the most blatant method of critique they could have done second only to the game quite literally announcing, "A/YN R/AND WAS WRONG."

[k-ayfable]

+*. REVIEW: The W/alking D/ead

After finishing anything, one ought to take the time to reflect on how they feel about the experience overall. This remains true for video games, and so after recently finishing Season 1 of the W/alking D/ead, I feel it is only proper to sort out my feelings on it and give the game some closure if only for myself.

I felt like the ending was fair in terms of storytelling. Over the course of the game, it was building up Lee as a father figure, giving him and the player the responsibility of being a parent with many of the other characters reminding him of his role as well as affecting choices made in the game. Lee is tasked with raising Clementine and preparing her for the world, and so having an ending where she must live alone without Lee as a guardian makes thematic sense.

I think the hot controversy comes from how the ultimate ending stays the same regardless of the choices taken to get there. For a game that advertised itself so much on how one's choices matter, can the ending feel cheap? Yeah. I think I'm overall satisfied with the ending, sure, but I won't deny that I probably would've liked at least one other ending or so. This ending could have just been the "True Ending" for the future sequels, but I also recognize that I'm not the target audience for this game at all.

I think Clementine sticks out the most because of her importance as a moral compass for Lee as well as seeing her grow up. Kenny also is notable because he's the one character where your choices matter the most probably; he's the one who is there with you the longest and he legitimately does remember your actions and behave differently accordingly -- even if we're all getting to the same place in the end anyway.

Doug is also notable to me because of how it's clear the game's writing cared less about him than Carley. Carley got more scenes from what I can tell, which seems pretty unfair to Doug. Doug's death also doesn't get the same emotional intensity as Carley's. I feel as if he could have lived longer and separated himself from "Carley's counterpart" if they didn't feel like giving him a pseudo-romantic arc like Carley's. I, in general, think he deserved more time and something better than an accidental death. There should be more justification and/or reward for a player choosing to save the character without a gun in the end of the first episode. I'm fairly biased on this though.

[k-ayfable]

+*. META: Game Mechanics for Storytelling

When people ask about what video games are there out there that make symbolic or meaningful use of mechanics to tell story or deepen narrative, there's a pretty obvious answer to come out of me if anyone actually knows which video games I tend to go on and on about. Unfortunately, I want to hide my cards for a while, so I'll go for the slightly less obvious but still fairly obvious choice:

The Fr/og for Whom The B/ell Tolls (alternatively its original JP name: K/aeru no T/ame ni Kane wa N/aru) is a first party Nintendo game on the Game Boy. For the people who have not played it, which I assume is most, it created the game engine for L/ink's Awa/kening -- a far more well-known game that might help you familiarize yourself with it. Still, all the mechanics I will discussing are all, for the most part, unique to it.

Warning, I WILL be spoiling this game under the cut.

The protagonist, the Prince of Sa/blé, goes through various physical fights in order to get to his goals. All of these fights are automatic turn-based fights where the player cannot do anything but watch them occur-- save for using an item mid-fight should they so desire.

These fights relying on solely stats exemplifies how the Prince of S/ablé relies on brute strength and little else. He is mocked several times during the game for not being too bright, and the fact he never wins his battles through wit shows this. There are no techniques, it is a mere war of attrition. The closest thing he gets to using wit is by throwing wasabi at certain enemies to paralyze them, but this is hardly a tactic based on intelligence. It is him gaining a dirty win at best so that he can still overwhelm his foe physically.

The game does not have a leveling progression system. The Prince of Sa/blé never learns to be a better fighter, and this reflects his intelligence and cunning not growing either. He is only able to make progress in his adventure because he's being guided and manipulated by Princess Tir/amisu and her knight. It is HER brains that pushes him forward, and The Prince of Sablé only grows physically stronger by picking up better weapons and power-ups: external sources of aid.

Even in the final battle, he thinks he's winning easily only to be completely fooled. The game's mechanics go out of their way to show how dense and ignorant he can be alongside the dialogue, and he cannot win his battles alone once they require actual thought. Every time a fight requires more than brute force, someone has to come in and aid him.

The fact he cannot win these battles alone also highlights the theme of the story extremely well. The story begins with the Prince of Sa/blé and his childhood friend Prince Richard as rivals; that is a kind thing to say considering Prince Richard has won every duel against the Prince of S/ablé thus far further showing how incompetent our protagonist is. They begin the game by competing against one another to save Princess T/iramisu, but over the course of the story, the Prince of S/ablé realizes he cares deeply for his rival and saving Prince Richard from the perils of their journey becomes his primary goal instead.

His motivation for his quest becomes less selfish and more centered on his bonds with others. This carries through with the final battle focusing on seeing how your friends can help you, how your own physical strength is not enough, and even the last weapon upgrade that our protagonist receives is a sword that can only be wielded once the Prince of Sa/blé realizes he misses Prince Richard and wants to mend his relationship with him-- otherwise it does not respond to him.

The combat mechanics and the weapon mechanics combined support the dialogue in displaying how the Prince of Sabl/é is not enough on his own and overlays with his shift in egocentricism to his willingness to rely on others to help him where he consistently falls short.

[k-ayfable]

+*. META: NPCs and You

Isbister uses multiple video games to discuss the "startling power of NPCs for evoking intimacy and a disconcertingly real sense of connection for players," a point that I struggled to be as open to the more I read the essay as I realized the text was going further and further away from a viewpoint that I think Isbister actually understood (32). Isbister chose games that I believed were understood by her well but her ethos waned intensely when she discussed dating sims. Regardless of whether or not her explanation of the genre was correct for the time (at this point, the description of mechanics describes such a specific subgenre and is not very indicative of the majority of dating sims; I have been in debates over whether L/ove Plus should even be counted as a dating sim), she sympathized with a viewpoint of someone who is very much not an herbivore man. Older Japanese citizens, not to mention foreigners, tend to demonize herbivore men for the declining birthrate when there are so many more complicated factors at play; video games such as L/ove Plus are not the usual answer for the rejection of real-life intimacy in most anecdotes I read from Japanese millenials online.

But I digress. I am here to instead talk about the relationship between NPCs, myself, and decisions in the W/alking D/ead.

My experience playing the W/alking D/ead is... likely not one shared by most. In general, how I play video games involves a keen preference to dissociation. While I might say phrases such as "K betrayed me," or "L keeps being upset at me" or even "I accidentally flirted with P, oops," the 'I' and 'me' never comfortably means me truly.

The choices I make are less because the characters are truly attached to me and more because I wish to guide the player character. I view the story in video games extremely similarly to how I view the story in novels or film. I am the first to advocate that the player character in games is their own, unique character separate from the player-- this is true no matter how little dialogue, how many direct dialogue trees/choices we have, no matter how little we physically see or know of them.

On a psychological level, I need to rationalize these characters to not be me to be able to keep playing a game.

Still, are my choices not influenced by me then or my opinions? No, not necessarily. I tend to keep choosing very choices in various video games with such consistency that it would suggest they are indicative of my personality. However, my preference to make 'good' choices in video games derives more from two points I've observed:

My understanding of the video game and/or its genre and choosing what I think the developers would "want" me to do.

My desire to see people do the "right" thing.

The nonplayer characters in W/alking D/ead then steer my decision by helping me learn more about the narrative Tel/lTale appears to wish to tell, helping me slowly become more genre savvy. I see enough patterns and I try to convince myself I understand what the constraints are of what Tel/lTale would do in their world and how to maneuver around this perception I build.

The nonplayer characters also help steer my decisions by giving me opinions of them. If they do suspicious behavior or give me cause to believe they are bad or untrustworthy, then I take that information to guide the player character (Lee in this case) away from them based on my moral judgement.

For example, I tended to encourage Lee to be nice to Clementine and Duck because society has conditioned me to believe one should be nice to children. I tell Lee to seek a neutral route often or try and calm things down because I've been conditioned to fear conflict. I tell Lee to try and check things with precaution because I know the world has been set up to be dangerous and not to trust everything and everybody. I encourage Lee to spare others with the fear of karma that the game instills in me.

Really, I'm under the impression my choices don't matter that much. I'll get different flavor text but I'll end up in the same place. I am very well aware saving Carley vs Doug still lands me on the dairy farm with the same conundrum. No matter how angry Larry, Lilly, or Kenny are at me, life still moves on.

Is my life more bearable depending on my options? Maybe. Do I get to see slightly different things? Yes. I am not trying to undermine that these DO change gameplay runs, but I don't think I'd say choice here matters as much as is advertised.

[k-ayfable]

+*. META: Cutscenes

I watched most of the cutscenes for the video game Ch/aos W/ars (PS1) with none of the gameplay, and my feelings about it... are incredibly difficult to describe. Perhaps it would have been better to look at a game that is taken more seriously if I were going to try and answer the prompt of "are games that rely on cutscenes lazy?" but here I am.

At first, I was engrossed by the cutscenes because of how laughably bad the voice acting was for the most part. It kept me watching, and eventually as the voice acting improved, I grew to feel attached to some of the characters. I started commenting more about how interesting the gimmick of the story seemed. I started wishing I was actually playing the game as I engaged in conversation about it with a friend.

While the cutscenes could tell me everything I needed to know about the story, yes, (assuming we also took in some story lines from the battles as well) it wasn't enough to make me believe that's all I had to see. Watching the cutscenes gave me the motivation to try the game myself after everything was said and done.

I think depending on the controls of a video game, it can make experiencing the story worse or better. Storytelling through game mechanics is always something I appreciate, but I think it's naive to believe every game has to be like Journey in order to qualify as storytelling via video games. A game is allowed to have cinematic cutscenes to progress the story forward. It's as viable as a movie being broken into different scenes in the same way a book is broken into different chapters.

[k-ayfable]

+*. REVIEW: What Remains of E/dith F/inch

What Remains of Ed/ith Fi/nch is both a memorable and notable game and, at the point in which I am writing this, is certainly a unique one as well. This is why I regret to say it, but I overall did not enjoy my experience playing it. I am in indecisive on this next point, but I would likely never play this game ever again; perhaps that does not mean much though when I generally don't replay games that I like even.

I feel bad for being overall negative about a game that didn't take a very long time for me to beat, because generally my complaint is that games are as large as an ocean but have the depth of a puddle. No, WRoEF is fine in that respect.

For me, the major hurdle for my enjoyment of it came out of my struggle with the controls. For the record, I played on PC. I imagine this could have been a very different story had I played it on a console, but I found the controls extremely taxing to work with. Not mentioning the fact that there is little to explain how to do literally anything in this game ( I was extremely confused on the title screen, and I also would like to add I missed whatever was at the introduction of the game due to it not waiting for a button input from the player to begin playing ), some button inputs made little sense. Pulling back a panel required me to move my mouse forward for instance.

Speaking of the mouse, this game primarily focuses on WASD ( or arrow keys ) —  which I imagine with no tutorial must be extremely confusing for someone new to video games —  to move the player character around while using the mouse to operate the camera and interact with the environment. Besides confusing required inputs, some of which just didn't register half the time (I spent a great deal of trouble just opening Sam's memory), it was physically exhausting for me to do some tasks which surprised me considering... it's using a mouse— generally not something I view as too much effort. I've felt less exhausted playing Wii games for crying out loud.

My struggle with the controls made it difficult for me to fully enjoy the stories. What could've been smooth segments became awfully paced and long periods of me yelling at the controls to work. I imagine this would have been a much more fun experience if I had less issue with the controls.

The worst section, by far, was Lewis'. For whatever reason, it was the most intensive on my computer and so I moved at a snail's pace throughout it. It easily took up the majority of my time, with long stretches of silence between each line the psychiatrist was speaking aloud.

That being said, I do think the gimmick of telling stories in all different kinds of ways was clever and I did like how they incorporated gameplay mechanics into all of them even if it was a less than pleasant experience for me. The clues all seemed natural for getting from one place to the next, and I very rarely had difficulty knowing where to go next. The order in which all the stories was told also made cohesive sense for the narrative.

I think What Remains of E/dith F/inch is important and I wouldn't mind seeing more games like it, but I don't think it appeals to me in general. This game was on an uphill battle for me, even though I do enjoy story-based linear games. My dissatisfaction at the product is overall a great lament.