Reviews VideoGame / Dear Esther

Pretty great.

The only reason I can imagine Dear Esther has such a terrible reputation is because the people who played it went into it expecting something different.

What's going to happen in Dear Esther is that the player is going to walk around an island on a mostly-linear path, examine their surroundings if they wish, and listen to a story being told. Conclusions about who the player is, who the narrator is, and what anything is are up to the individual.

It's an interesting story in the form of several fragmented letters to the titular Esther, that keep up the interest by very frequently shifting subjects, sometimes speaking of Esther herself, sometimes speaking of the island. Sometimes speaking of other things, which I will not spoil. I read House of Leaves recently, and after being reminded of this game's existence, I feel an odd connection between the two. For example, both succeed in giving details to keep the story's complexity progressing, while at the same time not giving any definitive answers. Dear Esther is not quite as mindblowing, it's not the greatest game or story or VN or whatever you want to call it ever, but it's certainly special in some way, and in a similar way to the aforementioned book. It's also visually nice, especially in the cave portions. I have good memories of the soundtrack as well.

Speaking of sound, the aforementioned narration is excellently done, conveying emotion and agitation when the narration gets intense, or in some of the more... Sanity Slippage esque parts.

It should be noted I've only played the game once and that was a long time ago, hence why I'm not citing as many specific examples of the game as I would usually - perhaps I will edit this review in the future to be more in-depth.

(Oh, and whether it's a game or not is a stupid debate. A lot of reviews tend to comment on this, saying "well it's pretty nice but wheres the gameplay?" The answer to that is you make the gameplay. If you go into Dear Esther with pessimism and criticize it instead of accepting it for what it is and enjoying yourself, you're going to play something fundamentally different. For Dear Esther to work, the player has to invest themselves and accept that it's going to tell them a story. Otherwise, it is nothing.)