Video Game Review: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter —Is This What it Would Be Like if M. Night Shyamalan Directed a Video Game?

Developer: The Astronauts
Publisher: The Astronauts
Platform: PS4 (reviewed), PC
Release Date: September 16, 2014 (PC), July 15, 2015 (PS4)

I love detective stories. Not the modern procedural cop drama that you can find airing every hour of every day, but the old, noir detective stories, with a grizzled alcoholic for a leading man. I also love weird, spooky horror stories. There have not been many good detective games, and horror is a genre that I historically have no interest in playing because of how most games convey horror (jump scares and purposefully over the top sound effects, typically). Along comes The Vanishing of Ethan Carter from The Astronauts, a small Polish studio that focuses on downloadable indie games. This game promises to fill a very specific niche that I have always wanted. That is to say, a creepy, horror-esque game that doesn’t fall victim to genre tropes like jump scares or zombies relentlessly chasing you. In The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, you are “supernatural detective” Paul Prospero sent to…find Ethan Carter, who has gone missing. Remember the title? All the while you are solving murders, figuring out puzzles and exploring this truly stunning environment at your leisure. Needless to say, this has been one of my most anticipated games in recent memory. I love the concept and I really wanted to love this game. While I think it was an interesting idea and there are so many parts of this game I love, I can’t help but also see the unmet potential. While I think you should try this game un-spoiled, I will be spoiling certain parts of the game, so be warned. Ethan Carter is a relatively short game, lasting around 3–6 hours. It took me closer to the 6 hour mark because I was making sure I did everything possible, and stopped on numerous occasions just to admire my surroundings and take in the wonderful milieu. While I can’t see revisiting this game, at least not any times soon, it’s truly a unique experience and one I’m glad I sought out.

Upon booting up for the first time and starting a new game you get the line, “This game is a narrative experience that does not hold your hand.” This really says everything you need to know about The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and if you’re like me, this will just make you all the more excited to play. After a short voiceover to setup the game, you emerge from a tunnel on a railroad track with forest on both sides. There is no objective, no map, no arrow or glowing trail to guide you to where you should be going. This game is truly a throwback to the old adventure game days where you have to figure everything out for yourself and run around the game world until you discover something. Of course, I began by wandering off the main path and trying to see how far I could go and what secrets I could uncover. While the actual area that can be traversed is very clearly limited, it makes sense narratively and what there is to explore does have some things to discover that could easily be missed by the unadventurous the first time around. One of the first things I took note of was how beautiful this game was. From the foliage and water effects to overlooking the dam from the long stone bridge, everything in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is beautifully rendered and fully realized. The attention to detail is incredible and makes this world completely creepy and atmospheric, but you can’t help but want to venture further and further. As far as video games go, this is one of the most interesting settings I’ve played in and even though there was a sizable amount to explore and traverse I would have loved for there to be even more.

As beautiful as this game is, I had an odd problem with the way this game handles motion blur. With the default “camera smoothing” setting to “off” I was having difficulty playing this game. I got a headache and was slightly nauseated. In my 20 plus years of playing games, and having played a ton of first person games over the years, I’ve never experienced motion sickness from a video game until The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. I set the “camera smoothing” to “medium” and this helped to an extent, but for the most part I just had to power through and get used to how this game moves and feels. By the end of my playthough I had adjusted, but it was still marginally uncomfortable to play. I’m not holding this against the game, but just wanted to mention it and give people who suffer easily from motion sickness a fair warning. I usually don’t even notice it in games people have historically had this problem with like BioShock Infinite or Portal but Ethan Carter caught me completely off guard.

Paul Prospero, whom you play, narrates the game and gives you insights on what is happening and on what secrets and clues he has uncovered. The main voice actor does a good job of sounding engaged and sounding like he is in fact a detective, working his way through this case. I loved being in the detective’s head, and while I normally don’t like overly narrated games I actually would’ve liked seeing more in Ethan Carter. In this context it makes sense because he is essentially voicing his detecting, as both he and the player try to make sense of these bizarre events. The rest of the characters in the game are not so good. Some performances feel over acted, while others fall flat. This isn’t helped by the poorly written dialogue many of these characters have to work with, for the most part. The music is creepy and tense and fits perfectly with the haunting environment. It is clear that this game is mainly concerned with being visually striking, and with a game this visually polished, it is understandable that this is where the majority of the effects budget went. In terms of gameplay, this is where I feel like Ethan Carter get two thirds of the way there, but just falls short of being great.

This game begins as an adventure game, requiring you to search your environment and contemplate your next move. Once you get into the rhythm of Ethan Carter and you understand the pattern for solving the murders and underlying game mechanics, things tend to go a bit quicker, but towards the start it admittedly took me quite a while to re-create the first murder scene and solve it. Every murder scene was a joy to play and I was interested in finding out how the “scene” played out, and where it would fit in the overall story. There are some puzzles to be solved on the side that don’t necessarily affect the story but let you learn a bit more about the world, and give yourself an extra challenge. Re-creating the murder scenes wasn’t overly challenging but the side puzzles required a lot more thought and a sharp memory. The game never rushes you while you are solving the murders or exploring. You are truly free to play at your pace, and to play this game in any order you want, and discover the story in a different order than someone else would. Once you get the hang of piecing together the murders, there really isn’t a whole lot of magic left to the core gameplay, and the curtain is lifted. At this point, my enthusiasm began to wane. The puzzles are an interesting departure, and all differ from one another enough to keep things fresh but it still would’ve been nice to have a wider variety of things to do, or at least more interesting things for those adventurous enough to explore the entire map. You can walk around the entire environment and explore everything you want to, coming back to murder scenes whenever you want to progress the story. I absolutely adore this type of gameplay and always seek out games that reward methodical, careful playing over frantic twitch-based gameplay. If the entire game was re-constructing these murder scenes and piecing together the horrors that happened to the Carter family I would’ve loved this game immensely. Unfortunately, it falls victim to some problems and gimmicks that are all too common with video games that begin to break the experience. Thankfully they don’t make up a large portion of the game, but do break the pacing and affect the story.

After re-constructing a couple murders, you inevitably make your way down into a mine that runs underneath the main house. At the bottom of this mine there is a maze. To be fair, this part isn’t mandatory, but it is still a part of the game and isn’t insignificant. You need to find your way through the maze to a gate at the center, with a cryptic code combination that needs to be entered correctly. To figure out the code you need to find dead bodies throughout the maze that will help you solve this puzzle. While you are trying to find your way through the maze, a cursed zombie miner is slowly patrolling the maze. If he spots you, he grabs you and teleports you back to the start of the maze. I was desperately hoping this game would be bold enough to completely omit any jump scares or sections of the game that break what makes this game so special. In the maze you are unnerved and can’t take your time or approach this section like you would any other part of the game. This is very deliberate but it completely breaks the pitch perfect atmosphere and style that Ethan Carter has been building since the start. Suddenly, you’re being stalked by a supernatural monster and find yourself playing through a terribly frustrating and uninteresting section of the game. What made this game special and what made it compelling was the fact that you were in this creepy environment, solving these murders but not actually playing through the danger that you do in every other survival horror game. For a game that is so focused on narrative and letting the player explore every nook and cranny, this section feels so out of place and speaks to a style of gameplay that doesn’t belong here, as indicated by the rest of the game. Even setting aside my personal disappointment for this games inability to keep true to its form, and my personal distaste for this style of gameplay, it just isn’t a well put together section. After being caught a couple times, the jump scare ceases to accomplish what it tried to do, it’s just obnoxious. Thankfully this isn’t a large part of the game, but it’s still the glaring problem that I will immediately think back to every time I think about Ethan Carter or discuss this game, and that really is a shame. If the zombie miner seems out of place, allow me to explain.

The outcome is Ethan Carter is ambiguous. Even the developers refuse to state a “canon” ending, and I do respect that. I was so immersed in this game when I was detective Prospero, searching for Ethan and solving a string of murders along the way. About half way through this game completely jumps the shark, unfortunately. Giant squids, witches, zombies, this game simply couldn’t help itself. I knew this story would have a supernatural spin to it, but the way it is done is very convoluted and messy. It feels as though they wanted to include certain monsters, or thought it would be cool to have a Cthulhu nod at one point, even though it didn’t necessarily fit within this particular game. I really wanted this game to be creepy and haunting because of the story, and while the story is indeed chilling, we still fall back on some genre stereotypes and cheap scare tactics. Looking back, each “story” that you piece together is a fitting allegory for a member of Ethan’s family, and playing through most of these stories was an enjoyable experience. It just doesn’t make a very compelling or coherent completed package, when all is said and done. I understand this game is about narrative freedom and interpretation but every way I thought about the ending of this game, and every way I looked at these characters, I just wasn’t satisfied. Nothing seemed as special as the mystique this game began in, and seemed to promise. It wasn’t that it was bad, but it fell into very “video game-y” tropes before everything wrapped up. What started as an open narrative that seemed to promote exploration ended up feeling very linear and forced by the end. For a game that seemed focused on player freedom and storytelling, the final product is nothing more than a checklist for completing areas of the game and completing puzzles, along with a narrative twist that was sadly predictable and felt like it was trying too hard to speak more profoundly than needed. I applaud the initiative but I keep arriving back on the idea that this game would have been much more compelling or satisfying had it stayed an adventure game wrapped up in a detective story, in a spooky open world where you are free to roam and explore at your leisure. There is a lot of this to be found in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter but it is tainted by the underlying game mechanics and shoe-horned supernatural elements throughout the story.

I’m purposefully dodging direct spoilers for the ending of this game because despite it not being what I wanted, it is still an interesting narrative and one I think many will enjoy. If you have the patience to “figure out” this game, you will find a mostly enjoyable adventure game with some interesting puzzles, one awful pace-breaking (and potentially repetitive) sequence, and an ending that I’m sure will divide audiences. I really love the world that is created in Ethan Carter, and it’s one of the most visually impressive titles I’ve played, it’s just a shame it wasn’t populated with more interesting characters and a wider variety of things to do and see. While I have some problems with Ethan Carter I’d love to see more games in this vein, and I look forward to what this studio makes next.