If there’s one thing that is an unequivocal downside to the increasing fidelity and realism of computer graphics, it’s the over-saturation of detail. Horror games are perhaps the worst offenders. What used to be creepy tableaux are now all too often gore drenched packages of jump scares.
Don’t get me wrong, some of the best horror games I've played have worked in good jump scares and have been judicious in their use of gore, and some have been unadulterated splatterfests which are a blast to play but don’t always create that sense of creeping doom that mark a really good horror story. Too often, the trappings of horror are on display, but the feelings are not properly invoked. Blood and skulls and arcane symbols and isolated locations can’t just be plopped into a title and expected to conjure feelings of dread. Once in a while, however, a game will come out that places the emphasis on the characters, on the story that they inhabit and the stories that brought them to this point, on a sense of the macabre instead of the gore. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter takes the player on a journey through a valley of the shadow of death and keeps them wondering long after the credits have rolled.
Taking on the role of psychic detective Paul Prospero, the player explores the sleepy hollow of Red Creek Valley to investigate the disappearance of a boy named Ethan Carter who wrote to Prospero in a prescient letter.
As he moves through the valley, Prospero encounters strange puzzles and short stories written by Ethan, each of them connecting to an area of the valley and a member of Ethan’s family, which seems to have fallen under the malevolent influence of a being referred to only as “The Sleeper.”
Yet even as the player explores, the lines between reality and fantasy are incredibly faint, and what the player sees at first is never quite what is seen later. The game is short enough that to say much more would be to spoil all the good stuff that keeps the player moving. While the first thing that the player sees is an admonition that “this games does not hold your hand,” even this statement is not entirely accurate, a moment of unreliable narration that carries over all the way to the end. You never feel like you’re pulled along, but you are very gently guided even as you explore the environment. All it takes is a willingness to go off the beaten paths and a sharp eye to uncover clues.
If you haven’t had a chance to see how the Unreal 4 engine looks in an actual game instead of a tech demo, Ethan Carter is an excellent opportunity. In some ways, the game shares a kinship with another macabre work that showed off what the Unreal engine could do, Clive Barker’s Undying. Although this game is far more quiet than Undying, it has that same sense of strange worlds and alternate visions that make it a cousin to Clive Barker’s first game project.
Good horror games aren't dark all the time, but rather play with light and shadow, revealing what should be obvious and concealing what should not, and getting the player to walk into those shadows despite their own sense of self-preservation. Both natural and manufactured environments have a high degree of detail and provoke a sense of curiosity. Some of the puzzles in the game are not just well thought out brain teasers, but cleverly designed demonstrations of some of the neat tricks that the engine can pull off. It’s really only after you walk away from the game for a bit that you start to realize just how nifty those tricks are. While you never completely forget about your primary mission, the environments often make you want to just wander around and enjoy the scenery. Sure, you could do a “speed run” of the game that might only take you an hour or so, but why would you want to?
If the visuals are lush and overflowing, the soundtrack is spare and ethereal, and it absolutely works. While the music has several refrains that come up again and again, it makes for a soundtrack that makes for almost meditative listening at home. It’s not something you throw on the CD player of your car to go blasting down the road. It’s what you fire up with a very good set of headphones and a kicking sound system to lose yourself in, letting your mind drift.
Outside of the soundtrack, the effects are handled with equal skill. While there are stretches of the game that don’t have any music, they are not at all silent. Wind, random birdsong, the sound of grass swishing against your legs or gravel crunching under your feet, it’s understated but very effective. It’s not trying to stand out, it’s working to draw you as a player into the environment, subtly reinforcing that suspension of disbelief that helps you get into the game and stay there. This game is damned near a master class on how to do sound design right.
As for the voice work, some might complain that there’s a degree of inconsistency in the quality of the script, that some lines sound perfectly natural and some sound strangely stilted or scripted. All of them are well voiced, but the words seem wrong to the ear for some reason. To my mind, there is a perfectly legitimate reason for this that is not bad writing on the part of the devs. It might be, of course, but if so it’s one of the happiest accidents in gaming. To say more would spoil the game.
On their website, The Astronauts have pointed to some highly notable names for their inspirations behind The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, writers such as Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft, masters of eerie short stories. And that’s a pretty good mental framework to adopt when approaching this game.
It’s not the sort of massive multi-volume saga that you’d find with Skyrim, or even the dense procedural or “techno-thriller” that matches up best with Call of Duty. It's a short story, and like any good short story, it stays with you long after you've reached the end. It harkens back to a time when games didn't deliver replay value by dozens of branching storylines, character creation tools with thousands of options, and DLC packs galore. It delivered that value by giving the player a wonderful experience that they could come back to at will and have the magic feel all new each time.
I cannot recommend this game highly enough, and I cannot wait to see what the Astronauts come up with next.
- Axel Cushing
The Good:
- Lush visuals
- A memorable, unsettling experience without the buckets of gore
The Bad:
- Still thinking...
Steam Curation Summary What starts as a detective’s last case turns into an eerie and surreal journey will fascinate and linger in the mind long after the credits have rolled.
