What Remains of Edith Finch
What Remains of Edith Finch is a short but compelling game. In its quick runtime of fewer than 5 hours, I found myself spellbound by the games quiet charm. We follow the namesake of the game Edith Finch as she returns to the house she grew up in the forests of Washington. The house in question is not like most, however. It’s big enough that you can see it from a distance, even through the trees. And when you finally walk up to it, it’s clear it doesn’t follow the average house plan twisting this way and that with several additions added on seemingly after the fact. Edith has returned to her childhood home in an attempt to fill in the blanks about her multi-generational family and its strange curse.
The Finches as you come to learn, don’t exactly have a long life expectancy. Each one of Edith’s several family members has met their end in some way, shape, or form. Some of the Finches met Death in a fantastical way, others more mundane, but all meet him in less than opportune times. Much like everybody else when you think about it. So throughout the game, the question persists, is it really a family curse, or just terrible luck? As the final Finch, Edith attempts to find out without first succumbing to the families fate.
The gameplay is straightforward, guide Edith through her families winding home. The pace is slow and most of the time you listen to her comment on various things about the family or home. I found it to be a nice change of pace from the usual. There’s plenty to see while exploring the house inside and out, the graphics aren’t top-notch but they do just fine to paint the beautiful scenes. One captivating scene, I recall, was when looking for an entrance to the first relative you uncover, Molly Finch. You come around a corner and step into the ocean, or a painting of it at least, complete with whales. The ambient lighting in the corner submerging the room in a deep blue creates a mesmerizing scene. And that was all before entering Molly’s room. What Remains is full of moments just like that. Things really only switch up when entering the last moments of one of Edith’s family members. You soon realize that anything can happen in one of these vignettes. In one memory you become a cat, another you read a comic book, and another still starts you in a fish factory but soon you fall headfirst into a full-on hallucination, or is it reality? With the Finches, nothing is at it seems, and Death hides in every story.
As I made my way through the Finch family tree, my attachment to the Finch family grew much like the tree Edith sketches in her journal. I found myself smiling at Edith’s remembrances of her family members, grimacing at the difficulty the Finches encountered at every generational step and winced at the more surprising deaths on the family tree. I found one of the most enthralling things about the game not to be the more remarkable stories but the normalcy of the entire experience. The Finches could be anyone. Edith could be anyone. Whether or not the stories are entirely true is irrelevant. The emotions the experiences invoke are the sincerest part of the game. And I felt several strong emotions while playing this game. I strongly recommend it to anyone who has a bit of spare time. You can pick up What Remains of Edith Finch for $20 or less at your local retailer.
