YMMV / The Suicide of Rachel Foster

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Was Leonard and Rachel's relationship genuine love, or did he abuse her? Leonard insists it was the former, with Irving and eventually Nicole agreeing with this interpretation, but many players view it as abuse, pointing out that Rachel was not only young enough to be Leonard's daughter and barely old enough to consent, she was extremely vulnerable; her father was excessively strict with high expectations, she was bullied at school, and she was seeking tutoring from Leonard due to her dyslexia and speech impediment, spending long hours alone with him. Many players interpret Leonard as having taken advantage of a lonely and troubled teenager and insists it was love to justify it to himself, while Rachel was likely starved for affection and approval from an adult. It really doesn't help that at the time of Rachel's death she'd been having sex with Leonard for nine months, meaning she was possibly only 15 when the affair began (which would make it statutory rape).
  • Why did Claire murder Rachel and go to the effort of making it look like a suicide when she ultimately left her husband anyway? Perhaps Claire deluded herself into believing it would all go back to normal after Rachel was gone (maybe she didn't even intend for the body to be found, with it being four weeks before Rachel's remains were discovered) only to realize she couldn't stomach staying with her cheating husband in a town where she and her daughter were constantly harassed (especially given Leonard continued to fixate on Rachel). Or perhaps Claire acted purely from spite, having already decided to leave Leonard but wanting to deny him a chance at happiness with Rachel.
• Audience-Alienating Ending: Lots of players have stated they didn't mind the game's plot and could've viewed it as a decent Environmental Narrative Game if it weren't for the ending, due to it never actively condemning Leonard's actions and instead pushing all the blame on his wife; while she is certainly guilty of killing Rachel, the narrative glosses over the married Leonard having an inappropriate relationship with a teenager, and even seems to present him sympathetically. Both protagonists abruptly committing suicide, or alternatively Nicole going insane, also made the whole thing seem pointless and unnecessarily bleak to some players.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: One of the main cruxes of the plot is Leonard and Rachel's affair. The fact that the game never really interrogates the validity of 49-year-old Leonard's romantic and sexual relationship with 16-year-old Rachel and in fact ends by chastising Nicole for not unquestioningly supporting their "true love" was enough to put a lot of players off the story. Needless to say, having your audience largely unable to connect with your protagonists or sympathise with their situation is... less than ideal in an Environmental Narrative Game (considering that getting invested in the plot and characters is the whole point of games in this genre).
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Many players guessed right off the bat that Rachel was actually murdered, especially those already familiar with these narrative-driven style games. The main plotline involves investigating the supposed mystery around Rachel's death, although if you take the official ruling that she killed herself at face value there's not much mystery at all: a lonely, bullied teenager with an extremely strict and religious father got into a sexual relationship with her married tutor, and when the affair was revealed she couldn't cope with the fallout.
  • By extension, some players have mentioned that the killer's identity was also obvious to them; there aren't that many cast members and out of all of them Claire has one of the strongest motives to kill Rachel (especially considering Leonard is depicted as treating Rachel as The Lost Lenore, making him an unlikely suspect). Even in the opening scene Claire's tone when discussing Rachel is contemptuous (such as saying she believed Rachel "did the right thing" by allegedly killing herself).
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The Golden Ending involves Nicole killing herself by carbon monoxide poisoning so she can "join her family in the afterlife." Considering her parents' actions (and, by extension, that she's cool with the rape and murder of a 16-year-old, not to mention killing herself to preserve their horrific legacy), said afterlife probably involves flaming sulfur and spiked chains.
• Nightmare Fuel: Late in the game, it's revealed that Rachel didn't kill herself. She was murdered by Claire, the wife of the man she had an affair with. Claire used her own daughter's hockey stick to beat a sixteen year old girl to death, then cleaned the stick and gave it back to Nicole so she could play a hockey game. Nicole had been wondering where her stick had gone and was clueless as to what had happened. Claire then drove Nicole home from the game with Rachel's body in the car boot, acting as though everything was normal and with Nicole oblivious. Nicole is utterly horrified when she finally realizes this, especially as she had spent her whole life believing her mother was an innocent victim and admiring her for staying strong.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: One of the most talked about elements of the game is the accusation that the story glorifies (or at least badly mishandles) the subjects of ephebophilia and sexual abuse; it also gained controversy for ending with a graphic interactive suicide scene.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: It's widely agreed that the game's visuals and sound design are excellent, creating an eerie and suspenseful atmosphere as you explore the abandoned hotel uncovering secrets. The plot is a lot more polarizing, with many reviews feeling the story descends into schlocky melodrama by the second half and doesn't handle sensitive subjects like suicide and child grooming particularly well.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Despite her being central to the game's plot, we never get to hear Rachel's perspective on what happened, such as via letters, diaries and so forth. The only descriptions we get of Rachel come from the other characters (most of whom come off as Unreliable Narrators for one reason or another). Rachel mostly just exists to be a plot device for the other characters, when it could've been interesting to hear her side of things.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: This game has a pretty dark, disturbing story and bleak atmosphere, dealing with a troubled woman investigating the circumstances of the death of a pregnant teenager who her father had an affair with, discovering that the girl was murdered by her mother and ending with madness and suicide with the player even being directed to carry out the steps of Nicole's suicide in one ending. Considering no one is ever held accountable for what happened to Rachel and most of the characters - including Nicole in places - come off as unlikable, some players found it difficult to care what happens at all by the end.
• Underused Game Mechanic: In some places the game allows the player to choose how Nicole responds to Irving over the radio. This seems like it would have an influence on how exactly the plot plays out, how Irving and Nicole's relationship develops, and potentially determine which ending you get, but in practice it barely impacts the gameplay and plot at all; in fact, some of Irving's responses will be either identical or all but identical no matter which response you choose. Some players see this as missed opportunity for deeper immersion and greater replay value; as it stands, this mechanic is so underused in the game it could removed without changing anything.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Nicole loses lots of players' sympathy towards the end of the game, due to her lack of reaction towards her father's questionably consensual relationship with teenage Rachel. Some players find it especially weird that Nicole is more upset by Leonard potentially building a shrine to Rachel than her father having impregnated a vulnerable girl young enough to be his daughter. Nicole even admits to having been jealous of Rachel and blamed her for ruining her family. While it's understandable Nicole would've unfairly blamed Rachel ten years ago due to Nicole's own young age at the time, many players thought that as an adult revisiting the incident she should know better. However, Nicole never calls out Leonard's actions; in fact her opinion of him seems to improve over time to the point of devotion. She even seems to believe Leonard's and Irving's dubious claim that Leonard and Rachel were simply in love, which players found baffling at best. Nicole appears to grasp that she was wrong to have resented Rachel, but she seems to think this is because she should've just accepted her father could love more than one person, as opposed to realizing Rachel was likely abused.
  • Leonard really suffers from this. The game tries to justify the relationship between him and Rachel, and it tries almost desperately to portray Leonard as a man who was driven to despair by his true love being stolen from him. Instead, players found him to be a pedophile who groomed a vulnerable teenage girl, and his obsession with her after her death was seen as disturbing rather than any sort of tragedy on his end. They also blame all of the pain and suffering that happens to him and everyone in his life once the affair is discovered, squarely on him. Many have been so disturbed/disgusted by the story's attempt to make him sympathetic, that it's pretty much overshadowed the rest of the game.