As players, we’ve been conditioned to sort doors into three categories: a challenge, the entrance to a challenge, or non-interactive decoration. It’s a location in a video game, however, which weighs it down with a surprising amount of baggage. I love you.įrom a traditional storytelling perspective, there’s nothing notable about Gone Home‘s porch. Please, please don’t go digging around trying to find out where I am. I’m sorry I can’t be there to see you, but it is impossible. Gone Home does nothing, save for telling you which button looks and does, and that creates a gnawing void in the player’s mind. Menu tutorials pointing you down the path of grand strategy or fantasy RPG, bombastic cold opens where a plethora of terrorists and explosions plant your virtual feet firmly on the soil of war simulation. Most games practically fall over themselves telling you what to expect in the coming hours. A kind of confused hesitation is present, largely because this game never really steps up and declares its intentions. The situation is mundane to the point of being suspicious, and there’s a curious sensation one finds when standing outside the house for the first time. You are Kaitlin Greenbriar, returning to the family home after a year abroad. This is where Gone Home begins, fading onto the Greenbriar’s porch and offering little context to the player. It’s simply an apology between sisters, and a request for privacy. The note contains no revelations about alien body snatchers, dark rituals in the basement or unsolved murders. Not the gateway to some terrifying hell dimension, or the entrance to the villain’s secret lair, just a wooden door with non-threatening stained glass insets and a hand-written note taped on one side. This article contains spoilers for Gone Home. We agreed our last night together would be our happiest ever, and we'd forget tomorrow was going to come at all.
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