Gone Home, and how video games are changing the way we tell stories

I will readily admit that I am already that crotchety old woman who wants to live in a cave where stories are eternally written on a bunch of bound paper. There's nothing quite so satisfying as the smell of paper, the sound of a turning page, or closing your book after a nice, long reading session and seeing the progress you've made.

But this crotchety old woman has, yes, bought a Kindle and has been more or less glued to it since quarantine. This crotchety old woman has also experienced a brand new type of storytelling—one that is immersive in a completely different way than book or film because it quite literally puts the player in the driver's seat. It's video games.

I'm no stranger to the fact that video games have been a vehicle for storytelling for a long time. Role playing, or the act of assuming an identity other than your own, has been around probably for as long as people have been able to communicate. RPGs as we know them initially became popularized in 1974 with the release of tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons (also a deep and intense love of mine), and moved quickly into the video game genre in the 80's with the release of games like Rogue.

They've remained a staple in my video game diet—in fact, they've made up a hefty majority of the games I most enjoy. As a person with an insatiable desire for story, it only makes sense, right?

But Gone Home (2013) is unlike any other game I've ever played. Instead of the narrative being the throughline by which the adventure of the game is propped against, the narrative is the whole game.

You play Katie, a 21-year-old who has returned home to a note on the door from your sister Sam, who urges you not to try to find where she has run off to. The house is eerily empty—as if your entire family left in a hurry. You walk through the house, interacting with and picking up objects as you try to uncover the secrets your family has kept from you while you've been gone. And, like all families, nothing is ever quite what it seems to be on the surface.

From a game play perspective, there's nothing special or interesting. The action of the game is quite literally opening cabinets, picking up notes, and turning on lights. But the immersive quality of the game comes from the interactivity of unraveling a story on your own.

It's unlike experiencing story in any other medium. Watching film or TV often lets you take a backseat in the narrative process. You are being told, shown, and fed a story. But when you take a story and put it in a video game format, although it's really taking up the same number of senses, the interactivity plunges something else straight into the center of the story: You.

You become the driver of the story. The development of the narratives lies not in the passive experience of watching events unfold or being told a story as an audience member. Instead, you, as the audience, are also responsible for the unveiling of the mysteries of a seemingly familiar world around you. You choose what to dig into and what to leave alone. You dictate what pieces of the narrative filter into your attention and what gets left behind.

The interactive storytelling plunges you not necessarily into the role of Katie, who, for the most part, had no effect on my experience of the game. Instead, you are Katie. This is your sister's room and your parent's house.

Which leads us to the interesting question Gone Home asks: What do the things we leave behind say about us? What stories could someone unravel by walking around our homes and looking at the keepsakes we've squirreled away in cabinets? A scrap of paper from a piece of mail can build an entire story around it if you're paying enough attention. Our stories get written into the places we live and the things we keep.

The team behind Gone Home managed write a story built entirely from mundane objects that exist in every family home. They've found the remarkable in the mundane and given us a game with delightful twists and turns as we learn more about the broken family that lives within those four walls. They've managed to do all this in a contained game that somehow still feels expansive. And as you learn more about the people living in this house, you can't help but feel a little empty feeling in the pit of your stomach once the credits roll. It's as if these characters that, for a little while, lived with you, took their final bow and let the curtains close.

Perhaps most incredibly, Gone Home doesn't rely on gimmick or tension to drive its narrative forward. It relies almost entirely on the curiosity of the gamer in their seat—and their curiosity is richly rewarded.

The possibilities of a story experienced through the audience's action feels boundless. It creates an immersive experience not completely unlike an escape room, where you are plunged in an alternate universe and left to your own wits to make it out. Your own responsibility in exploration makes you dig a little deeper and think a little harder. But what greater gift can you give the story-hungry than a story they can live through and make all their own?

---

Note: Annapurna, the developer behind Gone Home also made another excellent interactive story game called What Remains of Edith Finch, which I found just as immersive and exciting (if not a great deal more melancholy).

Buy the games! Play them! You won't regret it.