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The first time my wife saw me playing The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, she stopped what she was doing just to comment on the fact she couldn’t believe a video game looked so lifelike.
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It’s not hard to see why they wanted people to inhabit the game’s world, though: it’s incredibly gorgeous. There’s no rushing here The Astronauts really seem to want you to experience The Vanishing of Ethan Carter as an immersive narrative rather than as a bunch of puzzles to be solved.
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There’s the odd button prompt, of course, but those are so few and far between that they feel like the barest nod the game’s developers could possibly make towards the fact that they have, in fact, created an interactive experience rather than a really pretty animated movie.īecause of that, the only way to figure out what you’re doing is to move slowly and deliberately, keeping your eyes open for anything in the way of clues. That cold open sets the tone for the entire game, since you’ll be expected to piece everything together on your own, with no help or direction at any point in time. In other words, if you’re the kind of person who wants a little bit of direction in your games, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter probably isn’t for you. You’re just there, trying to solve a mystery, and it’s up to you to decide where to go next. There’s no guidance as to where you should go next, nor any indication of what you can or are supposed to do. Moments later, you find yourself emerging from a dark train tunnel in the middle of the woods. It doesn’t take long for the game to put those words into action. The very first thing you see in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a disclaimer: “This game is a narrative experience which does not hold your hand.”