![]() All these mods are available on ModDB and were developed under the name of thechineseroom with a development team consisting of Dan Pinchbeck, Adam Griffiths, Jessica Curry and others. After receiving the funding, Pinchbeck went on to create four mods: Conscientious Objector for Doom 3 and Antlion Soccer, Korsakovia and Dear Esther for Half-Life 2. After finishing his Ph.D., he grew frustrated with the theoretic and slow nature of game studies and applied to the Arts & Humanities Research Council to fund the creation of a series of mods to quickly test various ideas rather than theorizing over them for a long time. In 2007, Pinchbeck worked in the field of game studies at the University of Portsmouth. Developmentĭear Esther was developed by thechineseroom however, it started as a Half-Life 2 mod mainly developed by Dan Pinchbeck. It is up to the player to figure out what it all really means. Over time, the narration grows increasingly confusing and succumbs to madness. However, as the game progresses, more and more surreal details appear in the environment, raising the question if the island and these characters really exist. A series of other characters are mentioned: Paul, Jakobson, Donelly and the Hermit. The narrator reflects on her death and their time together as the player walks the shores of the lonely island. The game takes place after a tragic car accident in which Esther was killed. There is no running or sprinting, no jumping and no interactions with items or the environment, forcing the player to focus on the story he is presented with. The mechanics of the game are very limited the player can only walk. These voice-overs are triggered when the player reaches specific locations on the island. The story is presented via voice-over letter fragments read by a male narrator to a woman called Esther. Game overviewĭear Esther is a single-player, first-person game in which the player slowly explores a deserted island. ![]() This post has first been published on my blog. Note that this post does contain spoilers and a brief description of the ending, so if you have not yet played Dear Esther you should play it yourself before reading this post. The game exclusively ascribes the painter, the sole focalizer of the game, the ability to ›see‹ and simultaneously establishes that his eyes are not to be trusted.This post will dive deep into Dear Esther's creation, intention, and reception and try to draw conclusions from this unique video game. LAYERS OF FEAR puts the player in the place of a painter who, while trying to complete his magnum opus, loses all grasp of reality – and his sanity. DEAR ESTHER’s narrator strives to inscribe an island’s ›always half-imagined‹ surface with his life and memories, while the player is compelled to question the narrator’s reliability to the point where she begins to question the island’s physical existence. ![]() In the subsequent analysis of DEAR ESTHER (The Chinese Room 2012) and LAYERS OF FEAR (Bloober Team 2016), the mechanisms of verbal and visual unreliable narration will be examined, as well as the interplay between these elements and interactivity, and, especially, how these aspects are connected to the mental instability of narrators and focalizers. After drawing connections between theories of unreliable narration and depictions of mental instability, this article explores ways in which subjectivity can become manifest in video games.
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