[REVIEW] The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

 

Though The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is far from a new game, it took me a while to get around to playing it, as I’d heard plenty of opinions that maligned it for being a “walking simulator.” Now, I can appreciate a good exploratory game, but I prefer a good story in the process, and I initially dismissed The Vanishing of Ethan Carter as not having this component.

I was very wrong.

 
The catch is that it’s entirely possible to miss some of the game’s brilliantly complex story if you don’t explore, and yet if you explore the wrong places, you won’t find what you’re looking for. Oh, some bits will be unavoidable, but it’s possible — even likely — that unless you’re thorough, you’ll reach the game’s ending and yet be unable to finish it because you bypassed most of the story elements along the way.

DISJOINTED MYSTERIES

The game starts with your emergence from a tunnel, complete with self-introduction monologue. You’re Paul Prospero, psychic detective, on a mission to find a missing kid named Ethan Carter. As you make your way along the trail through the forest, you come across some odd things. Blood on a railcar. Multiple traps that nearly skewer you. A man in a spacesuit.

And while it’s possible to bypass these things entirely, if you investigate more closely, you can use your psychic powers to uncover pieces of the past, with each element seeming strangely disconnected from reality and from each other. What does the spaceman have to do with the haunted mines, or the secret alchemy room?

The one thing that connects these little mysteries is the overarching plot. It’s slowly revealed that Ethan writes stories, and after completing each mystery puzzle, you get greater insight into him. And his family situation, which isn’t a happy one. Not only are Ethan’s creative skills disdained, but his family seems to be under the influence of some ancient demonic entity known as the Sleeper, which Ethan accidentally awakened as he explored an old house.

Oops.

You see all this through ghostly re-enactments of Ethan’s family members trying to resist the Sleeper’s influence, often with deadly results. Discovering more of the mystery is what keeps the game moving forward, though it doesn’t explain why you encounter pieces of Ethan’s fantastical stories in the same way you encounter his family’s tragedy.

OH ETHAN, WHERE ART THOU?

 
Once you reach the game’s ending, though, it suddenly all makes bitter sense. You find Ethan in the charred remains of a house, curled up on a bed in a back room. There it’s revealed that you, Paul Prospero, are a character in one of Ethan’s stories. You see his family in a tense situation, culminating in an accidental fire that scares Ethan and makes him lock himself away in the back room as the smoke pours in from under the door

Suddenly every disjointed scene makes sense. Ethan, that creative young man you’ve been looking for this whole time, is dying. Smoke is filling his lungs. Oxygen isn’t reaching his brain. And everything you’ve encountered thus far has been entirely in Ethan’s head, his own stories blurring and mixing as his body fails. The last firings of a desperate brain.

Ethan dies. And the camera pans out to reveal his family, frozen in a moment of battling the fire, time stopped for them because Ethan is no longer around to perceive it. It hits hard, a powerful moment that needs no words.

A STRONG NARRATIVE EXPERIENCE

 

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter informs you at the beginning that it doesn’t hold your hand, and it’s not kidding. It’s possible to miss things without a guide. Some puzzles are real head-scratchers. Solving a mystery doesn’t give you hints as to where to go next; you just have to keep moving forward and hoping you’ll encounter something new and that you won’t overlook something. You’ll find yourself wandering back and forth a lot, trying to find things, and sometimes there’s no indication of what you’re even looking for.

But it’s a beautifully constructed story, one that can leave you alternately baffled and then staring in shock at the screen as the pieces slowly fit into place. The narrative is strong, and it never once forgets what it is.

For all that the atmosphere is tense, there’s only one part of the game that provides jump-scares. This seems to be a much-hated section for players, as it comes far enough into the game that you’ve long since stopped expecting cheap scares and loud noises, and then suddenly it throws some at you. In the context of the story, it does make complete sense.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Right from the get-go, though, you’ll probably be struck by just how amazing the graphics are, how realistic. The game devs took inspiration from real-world locations and, from what I can gather, used photo and video of those locations as the basis for the game’s graphical design, which is why it looks so damn realistic. The ambient noise, which is often more background noise appropriate to the location than it is music, really works well for setting the scene and the tone of the game. Somehow it all feeling very much like the real world makes the creepy nature of the story have that much more impact on the player.

If you’re a fan of story-heavy games and strong narrative experiences the way I am, then yes, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is absolutely worth playing. It might have been nice were the game a little more approachable for first-time players, but that just makes it all the more satisfying when you solve puzzles and mysteries for yourself.

So for all that this game takes flak for being a walking simulator (which isn’t entirely unwarranted, I have to admit), it’s still a powerful game that deserves to be experienced. Do yourself a favour and play it, to understand what an immersive and emotional journey it really is.