#The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

[hawke]

THE VANISHING OF ETHAN CARTER 2014, dev. The Astronauts

[finalvortex]

you know what i can do it too. based off this post but you have to choose one of my (relatively) obscure indie mystery game blorbos

[lurakha]

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (3 / ∞)

I've learned two things in life. No place is truly quiet and nowhere is really ordinary. Ethan warned me about that. Warned me not to be fooled by what I saw here. He didn't have to worry. I'd worked dozens of cases. Hundreds. This would be my last one.

[uraniumrailroad]

Light at the End of the Tunnel (The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux)

[pagesofkenna]

pspsps tell us about your vanishing of ethan carter opinions please

so unfortunately I can't talk about how much I loved The Vanishing of Ethan Carter without also mentioning how much I didn't like What Remains of Edith Finch. I went into EC feeling constantly reminded of EF - the titles are similar, the graphics are similar, the gameplay is similar, and I was really worried the experience would be the same as well

without spoiling much about Edith Finch, my main feeling about it is that the developers thought they were making a touching and bittersweet anthology of family deaths, but what they actually made was a whimsical light-hearted horror story of a family killing each other through negligence and obsession. I think I would have loved it if it had committed to being a weird horror story, but instead it just felt disappointing and tonally confused

Ethan Carter is pretty aware from the start that it's a whimsical horror story. the second puzzle in the game is a murder you're trying to solve, and theres more murders from there; a later puzzle includes a jumpscare portion, which I skipped entirely because I was playing at night, only to learn that this was one of a number of puzzles required to finish the game, and the game even included the ability to auto jump back to that puzzle so I wouldn't have to backtrack (I don't know if I would have had to fore-track - I really didnt want to do the jumpscare puzzle, so I ended up just watching a youtube video of the ending of the game lol)

mechanically the game was fun but could have used some work. they were very intentional about the game 'not holding your hand' which just meant that some portions were confusing and tedious (there's a loooooong stretch between the Astronaut puzzle and the Puzzle House where the game lives up to the genre title Walking Sim). i used a walkthrough to make sure i wasn't getting distracted by red herrings because I am an adult with a full-time job and video games are supposed to be fun. I think without a walkthrough I might've gotten frustrated by the game and the impact of the ending might've been less satisfying - or it might have been more satisfying, the world will never know

narratively the game really delivered. i'll save spoilers for under the cut below, but basically i went in expecting one kind of story, then the game slowly shifted my expectations and delivered a really satisfying gutpunch of a conclusion. by the time I entered the mines I had figured out that something wasn't quite what it seemed, and the payoff of that was the actual heartbreaking, bittersweet finale Edith Finch hadn't managed to capture.

you don't play as Ethan the way you play as Edith, you play as a paranormal investigator coming into town to discover what happened to Ethan, and learning about Ethan from this outside perspective made me really invested. he likes writing! his family is pretty awful! he had written to this paranormal investigator guy, not even directly asking for help, but the guy had come to help him anyways and I desperately wanted to find out what had happened to Ethan! and the ending made me tear up, which is the hallmark of a good game for me

spoiler additions:

what really made me tear up the most was the shots of the family (mostly just the parents though) trying to save Ethan from the fire. I think I figured out around the Church scene or the Mine scene that the 'Sleeper' wasn't literal; there were some narrative inconsistencies (the brother got killed up by the bridge, and yet was with his parents in the mines, which meant the bridge scene happened later but that wasn't making sense to me) and at some point the VO said something that made me think 'oh, he's not a paranormal investigator; he's Death'

that wasn't exactly right, but that means I went into the final scene expecting to be leading Ethan into death somehow, so the reveal that everything had been a story invented in the mind of a dying child didn't come as a shock to me. (I've seen some comments from people feeling like the 'its all a dream' reveal was a cop-out, but the eerie tone of the game never gave me the sense that this was a fantasy, just a fantastic interpretation of events, so yeah of course it wasn't real.)

like, in his dying moments this small child imagines the abuse of his family to be tenfold and the hero of his own invention to come and save him. like, damn, i can relate to that?? who can't relate to that?? maybe what hits so hard for me about this game is that i'm also a would-be storyteller. his family never actually tried to kill him anymore than there was actually an astronaut running around the woods; his brain had four minutes to reinterpret events in a way that made cohesive, narrative sense, which is definitely what all of us try to do to understand our own lives but it's really highlighted in the mind of a young, imaginative child

so anyway yeah, i teared up a bit, and i thought about ghosts and souls and how stories are true even when they're not factual, and thats kind of all i ever want from a horror story, and it was good

[knightofleo]

Mikolai Stroinski | Valley of the Blinding Mist from The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

[fandomsideworks]

[doctorlavender]

Graveyard Murder | The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

[hardcoregamer]

10 Best Story-Driven Horror Games

Don't get us wrong - there's nothing wrong with playing a horror game for the sake of being scared, but sometimes, when we want to dig a little deeper, a story-driven horror game is just what we need.

Have a look!

[a-wobbity-space-for-everything]

[stabbitydoomeso]

I wrote a review on "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter"

[mysteamgrids]

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

[lurakha]

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (6 / ∞)

"Do you know what ghosts are? They're sad, evicted things. Memories without homes."

[reecey9o5]

Back in the saddle with more The Vanishing of Ethan Carter!

It's good to be back.

[mino-vp]

Railroad

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

[mail-me-a-snail]

1) should i play alan wake

2) jumpscares yes or no