If we lived forever, maybe we’d have time to understand things. But as it is, I think the best we can do is try to open our eyes… and appreciate how strange and brief all of this is.
What Remains of Edith Finch, Giant Sparrow, 2017
What Remains of Edith Finch is obsessed with death. Its characters, physical structures and narrative all revolve around the topic, morbidly recounting the demise of each family member aside from its sole survivor, Edith. Playing Edith Finch for the first time, I was struck by the forlorn atmosphere and phantasmagorical elements of the gameplay. Walking the abandoned hallways of the Finch home, I was reminded of classic 18th and 19th century horror stories – like Manderly Estate in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, these rooms were haunted by a distinct sense of absence. The game is consistently stressing to you that the person who belongs in this room is no longer with us, yet the space they once inhabited refuses to forget them. This feeling of melancholia and loss which cloaks the gameplay of Edith Finch is distinctly Gothic in genre, and I haven’t come across anything quite like it in video games before, or since I played it.
Now, to clarify, What Remains of Edith Finch isn’t really a horror game in the traditional sense of the term. There aren’t jumpscares, there are no real ‘monsters’ – the majority of the gameplay is just you as Edith, exploring the house and unraveling the Finch family mystery through found objects. The tragic tale is told through letters, diaries, comic books and photographs, recalling the epistolary formats of popular Gothic novels such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Considering this, I feel that writing about this game from the perspective of a horror blog is justified, as the game approaches its storytelling through these classic ‘Gothic Horror’ tropes and imagery, prompting the player to contemplate it’s morbid themes in a more psychological way. Though it doesn’t use typical horror game techniques to scare the player, Edith Finch’s contemplative, eerie tone asks the player to consider their mortality and perception of the world around them in a much deeper manner. It’s retrospective focus on life and death is profoundly macabre in tone – without the existence of Gothic Horror, What Remains of Edith Finch would certainly not be the same story.
In order to fully discuss this game, I’m going to have to delve into spoiler territory. I don’t usually put any precursory warning for this sort of thing in my writing, but I’d strongly suggest that What Remains of Edith Finch is a game worth experiencing for the first time by yourself. It’s surprising, mysterious, and subverts player expectations right from the get-go. I’d also comment that it’s narrative impact almost hinges on you personally being in control of the character, so bear that in mind before reading if you’re considering playing this game.
To summarise, What Remains of Edith Finch is an acclaimed ‘walking simulator’, released in 2017 by publisher Giant Sparrow. The narrative follows the last living member of the Finch family, Edith, as she returns to her towering, abandoned childhood home. This house itself almost becomes a character, its enormity and multiple secret passages cloaking the history of the Finches in mystery. When first entering the house, the player notices that each sealed bedroom door has a peephole, memorialising and preserving the living space of a deceased relative. Over the course of the game, Edith gains entry to the entirety of the Finch family home, each room featuring a short vignette revealing the tragic fate of each of her predecessors. Here, the player embodies that relative in their final moments, forced to live out the tragic death of each family member in order to discover the truth behind it.
Having established Edith Finch’s basic narrative, it’s not difficult to see how this game could be considered ‘Gothic’. Gothic stories perhaps have some of the most identifiable tropes in fiction – the spooky, decaying castle, the ever-present storm, the supernatural elements etc, etc, – however, I’d argue that one of the most defining characteristics of this genre is that of the ‘broken’ family. American Gothic horror tends to center around fractured families with difficult relationships – Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher being perhaps the most notable. The horror here lies hidden in plain sight behind the front door, unbeknownst to neighbours, friends or acquaintances. In the case of the Finch Family, a dynastic curse causes each family member’s untimely death. Only one child of each generation is left to continue the family tree, carrying with them the grief and loss of their siblings. Edith’s great-grandmother, Edie, is obsessed with this idea. She’s the one creating the peepholes and memorialising the bedrooms of her deceased family – in some ways, the curse could be considered a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Here, it would probably be pertinent to note that Gothic stories are also very much defined by their preoccupation with death. In Gothic Horror, death permeates the narrative, with most stories featuring the demise of a character central to the story. Suffice to say that the genre’s use of paranormal, supernatural or monstrous occurrences is rooted to this fascination with death and the process of dying. In the game, the Finch Family home alone is evidence enough of this gothic impulse – their house is surrounded by poisonous foxglove flowers and empty birdcages surround great-grandma Edie’s room, like tiny versions of each bedroom in the house. Because of the family curse, the Finches’ lives are delicately intertwined with death. It is part of their daily lives, looming like an anvil that threatens to drop at any minute. During the game, it’s mentioned that when family patriarch Odin moved the Finches from Sweden to the USA in the early 1900s, the first structure built on the property was the graveyard, further evidencing the family’s obsession with their morbid fate rather than the importance of actually living.
The culmination of these Gothic themes of family and death can be found within the bedrooms themselves, fashioned to be shrines to the person that once lived within. These bedrooms provide the key to the story itself – only within the space of the rooms does the narrative of Edith Finch progress, suggesting a need to look back to the past in order to move forward, for the Finches. Upon entering Molly’s room for the first time, Edith remarks that she feels as though she has ‘stepped behind a painting,’ demonstrating the liminality of these barred-off spaces within the Finch home. To Edith, the rooms represent crossing the threshold between life and death, traversing back through the lives of her ancestors in order to gain a greater understanding of her family history. In gameplay, this is taken literally. Through objects taken from each room, Edith is transported to see the world through their perspective – though the game is told in first person, this shift in viewpoint is demonstrated by a change in clothing and scenery. During each vignette, the player embodies each member of the Finch family tree, forcing them to also become complicit in acting out their unavoidable death.
The dedication of space to the deceased within the home likens it to a tomb, with the living literally residing amongst spaces once inhabited by the dead. By the time Edith’s generation comes along, the house has been expanded upwards to accommodate space for more dead Finches – they are essentially residing atop the graves of their family. Thus, over the course of the game, these enshrined rooms are transformed into portals between the boundaries of life and death, allowing Edith to enter the mind of her passed ascendants through personal objects eulogising their demise.
Molly’s story is the first we experience within the game, and establishes this idea within Edith Finch. In the game, Molly is sent to bed hungry, without dinner. In retaliation she hunts round the room for things to snack upon – running out of options, she suddenly transforms into a cat to find a larger meal. Following this is a disturbing sequence, during which she becomes an owl, then a shark, then a man-eating sea-monster; the thoughts of which are narrated by sweet little Molly. The end of the story loops back to the bedroom, where the sea-monster comes back to finally eat Molly, herself. It’s… dissonant, to say the least.
Though in gameplay Molly shapeshifts into a cat, an owl, a shark, and a sea-monster in turn, her death can be explained through entirely natural means. At the start of the episode, Molly consumes holly berries and a whole tube of toothpaste in hunger – both of which are toxic when eaten in large amounts. As a child, her overactive imagination (or toxin-induced hallucination) takes over the diary, prompting these phantasmagorical sequences throughout the text.
Unsurprisingly, considering this, there’s something dreamlike in each vignette. By introducing us to Molly’s story first, the player is primed for otherworldly aspects within the game. Her story suggests to us that there is something strangely uncanny about both the Finches and the family house, without needing to implement any additional gameplay elements to further demonstrate this. After Molly’s story, What Remains of Edith Finch tends to be a little more down to earth in narrative style, but the player retains that feeling of generalised strangeness when thinking about the Finch family for the rest of their playthrough. These elements of magical realism also follow suit with gothic tradition – dreams, premonitions and the supernatural are each deeply entangled with discussions of death within the Gothic genre.
Furthering this sense of the Gothic in What Remains of Edith Finch, the majority of the Finch Family are also revealed to pass in extreme, and unusual ways. Being complicit in each death, the player is forced to act these out, heightening the horror which the narrative attempts to induce. What’s effective about the episodic approach is that each story will impact each player in a different manner – some vignettes may seem ridiculous or far-fetched, whilst others are like an emotional punch to the gut.
For me, Lewis’s death struck the hardest. Here, we read a letter to Edith’s mother from her older brother’s psychologist – an apology for not noticing the warning signs sooner. Lewis worked in a cannery and was jaded with his life, often falling into daydreams during his monotonous workday. Gameplay wise, this is conveyed by splitting the controller in half – one thumb-stick controls Lewis’s hands chopping heads off salmon in the cannery, and the other controls his daydreams on the other side of the screen. Gradually, these daydreams begin to overtake the screen. They’re more complex, interesting and colourful than the cannery, and as players, the hand movement associated with his monotonous job fades into the background and becomes automatic. Like Lewis, we become enamoured with his fantasy world. The vignette ends with us as Lewis, bowing his head to be crowned king of his medieval daydreams – in reality, he places his head on the chopping block.
Lewis’ story, played through in its entirety.
Thinking about the gothic from a gaming perspective, this segment of the story becomes particularly interesting to me. In epistolary Gothic literature, the style of writing allows the reader to feel more involved in the story, heightening the horror it attempts to induce. Reading Dracula feels like finding a hidden cache of letters in a drawer, recounting some awful events which you cannot confirm the authenticity of. It adds to the sense of horror and perhaps injects an element of realism – especially at its time of release. In comparison, What Remains of Edith Finch does epistolary horror in such a uniquely Gothic way. Not only is it dreamlike and boundary-breaking, allowing the player to travel through time and mortality; it also makes the player complicit in each death, and thus, the family curse. In playing Edith Finch, the player themself becomes afflicted with the curse, entering the Finches’ dynastic cycle of dying and grieving, over and over again.
In the case of Lewis’s story, specifically, it breaks the fourth wall to put you within his headspace at the time of death. Gameplay-wise, The hand movements associated with his daydreaming take precedence over the actions associated with cannery, which soon become automated and robotic. The player is forced into feeling the same way as Lewis himself, losing interest in his ‘real life’ and falling deeper and deeper into his delusions of grandeur. This heightens the sense of tragedy and horror within the player when witnessing his passing, as we gain a deeper understanding of his mental state. In allowing the player to ‘become’ Lewis, his story becomes more realistic, and plausible. Thus, not only is the narrative of Edith Finch entrenched in gothic themes, but the gameplay itself is, too.
I also think it’s interesting to contrast Edith Finch’s approach with other games which could be categorised in the Gothic genre. Examining tropes of Gothic horror in games such as Amnesia: the Dark Descent and Resident Evil 4 reveal an impulse to default to the more monstrous side of genre when games are created, drawing greater inspiration from the creatures of Gothic classics like Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula and Frankenstein in order to construct their stories. In video games, one expects action, primarily, so it’s understandable as to why horror games like Amnesia and Resident Evil choose to go down a more monstrous route – especially in the case of Resident Evil, where its monsters preceded the gothic tone. In horror games, creatures create room for chase scenes and suspense, something which allows developers to build interesting and fun mechanics from within the narrative story.
As a walking simulator, Edith Finch can’t do this, and neither does it aim to. It’s a game that’s largely unconcerned with actual gameplay, instead using the interactive nature of its medium to construct a detailed atmosphere in order to convey its story. Unlike games which focus on the monsters of its gothic universe, Edith Finch’s narrative still feels somewhat grounded in reality despite all its boundary breaking, supernatural elements. For example, both Molly and Lewis’ dreamlike sequences implement fantasy elements into their gameplay, but at their core there remains a deep sense of loss and tragedy that comes with the death of a family member – something that is realistic and relatable on a human level. This is ultimately what more subtle versions of Gothic horror are all about, they encourage the audience to question the limitations between fantasy and reality, delusion and actuality, and the implications behind this for the people within the story. It’s what Edgar Allen Poe’s cerebral, supernatural Fall of the House of Usher is to the likes of Bram Stoker’s Dracula within the Gothic Literary Canon, and I think that’s what makes Edith Finch feel so unique. Rather than approaching horror with a bloody, in-your-face demon chasing you down the hallway, it prompts the player to consider their mortality. This, in many ways, is far more terrifying than the former.
(As a side note, this is not to say that Gothic horror without monsters is in any way superior to those that choose to include them – I’m also a huge fan of creature features!)
As previously mentioned, I still don’t really consider Edith Finch to be a ‘horror’ game, despite its broad ludo-gothic themes, but that isn’t to say that the game is without morbid aspects. In it’s stark presentation of grief and loss through the tropes of gothic horror, the game draws the player in and makes them complicit in the curse, prompting a deeper reflection on these themes within the player themselves. Creative director Ian Dallas has previously stated that they set out to create ‘”an interactive experience that evokes what it feels like to have a moment of finding something beautiful, yet overwhelming.” In spite of Edith Finch’s preoccupation with these sometimes ‘overwhelming’ elements of violent, and untimely death, there is beauty to be found in the protagonist’s graceful acceptance of the curse. In reliving the experiences of her ancestors, Edith recognises that death is just a part of life – a realisation that is scary and saddening, but somewhat relieving in the context of the ‘curse’. In Edith Finch, death is posed as an inevitability that shouldn’t be ignored or swept under the rug, like her mother Dawn would encourage. Whether the curse on the Finch Family truly exists is not the ‘point’ of What Remains of Edith Finch. The curse is simply a mediation on the fact that we are all afflicted with the ‘curse’ of living – everything must come to an end, eventually. No-one is truly immune to tragedy, and nobody in the game recognises this as much as Great-Grandma Edie. Through these eyes, Edie’s dedication to the memorialisation of her family no longer appears to be so morbid, and the remembrance of those who have passed can be seen as more of a celebration of their lives, as opposed to a fixation upon the end of it. As a piece of Gothic art, What Remains of Edith Finch reminds us of what we leave behind after we pass, and to make the most of what we have whilst we’re still here.
Morbid Instinct 