Ark of the Lost Angels

Recently, I had the fortune of playing What Remains of Edith Finch. The game follows Edith Finch as she returns to her family’s home, the last member of the Finch line still alive, and has to piece together what happened and uncover the nature of a mysterious family curse that causes only one member of each generation to live long enough to have children.

The game starts on the ferry to Orcas Island off the coast of Washington state, and opens Edith’s journal which then flashes to Edith walking to the house and narrating her thoughts. The interesting about the narration is that subtitles appear around the environment and are part of the context of the world, which becomes more important as the deaths of Edith’s family members are explored through letters which trigger flashbacks and are narrated by those family members. The idea is a clever way to weave together the storytelling techniques.

The house appears in the distance as Edith walks to it, showing a haphazard expansion, that looks like a warped wizard’s tower coming off of a castle, and the words around the environment bring to mind a storybook. Once you make your way inside the house, the storybook connections come even farther. Up until this point. I had thought that the game was going to remain static, but the switching perspectives and gameplay styles kept it interesting.

As the story unfolded, I became more and more interested in the family curse. it was built up to be something that the family matriarch, Edie (Edith’s namesake) believed in, but a lot of what happened and how each family member died could be read as them living carelessly. It’s also ironic that they each get what they want in a twisted way. Experiencing everything from a first person perspective definitely adds to the emotional impact, especially when Edith is reading the letter from her great-grandmother about the family curse. It’s cut short when her mother catches her and pulls the book apart and takes her away from the house. Then we get the conclusion that Edie died after Dawn and Edith left, that they moved around a lot until Dawn got cancer and died.

Midway through the game, it’s revealed that at the time of writing her journal, Edith is 22 weeks pregnant, which makes the idea that the curse is broken appealing, as then, she delves into what happened to her brothers. The reveal of the end, that Edith is narrating it all to her son, who was the original playable character on the boat, and he’s trekking back to the house to put flowers on her grave, is incredibly impactful. We spent the entire game learning about Edith and her family only to discover that she’s gone and the hopes of her living to see her child are gone with her. It also allows a three layered storytelling approach to the game, and because so much is based on hearsay, it allows for multiple interpretations of each of the stories, and the lack of answers in a way gives more freedom to think and discuss the game. The lack of an answer to the curse is another example of that. Personally, I felt that it was a waste of a wonderfully well-done setup, but other people thought it was fitting, as indicative of real life, which often comes without complete resolution.