Still, the discoveries won’t happen on their own, or without your help. Our focus is on atmosphere, mood, and the essential humanity of our characters.
While it features a private detective and quite a few mental challenges, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is not an especially puzzle-ridden game. Inspired by the weird fiction (and other tales of the macabre) from the early twentieth century, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter aims to significantly evolve immersive storytelling in games. Ethan has vanished in the wake of a brutal murder, which Paul quickly discerns might not be the only local murder worth looking into. Realizing the boy is in grave danger, Paul arrives at Ethan’s home of Red Creek Valley, where things turn out to be even worse than he imagined. You play the game as Paul Prospero, an occult-minded detective who receives a disturbing letter from Ethan Carter. If our game leaves any scars, we hope you won’t be able to see them. It contains no combat or explosions of any kind. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a first-person story-driven mystery game that focuses entirely on exploration and discovery. The background story is often more interesting than your actual investigations.About This Game GOOD NEWS EVERYONE: By purchasing the game, you actually get two games now: 1) The original The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, 2) The Unreal Engine 4 remaster called The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux.
Detective mechanics work well and get the balance between hand-holding and investigation just right.Ĭons: Some minor bottlenecks in terms of progression, and some sort of log book would’ve been handy. Pros: Fantastic visuals and a good quality script that tackles some disturbing subjects. In Short: One of the best story driven games of the year, and one of the prettiest, although you do sometimes wonder if it’s focusing on the most interesting aspect of its plot. That what remains is still so engrossing is a tribute to the developer and their storytelling abilities, but this may be the first time in any media where we actively hope there’s a prequel. The back story to what’s going on is essentially too good, as it does increasingly feel like you’ve turned up to the party too late and missed all the best bits. This is important because you can’t help but feel it would’ve been even more interesting to be involved in the events you’re investigating, rather than just finding out about them second-hand. But since the main draw is the story it’s the slight flaws there that are the most serious issues in the game.įor one, the preposterously named Prospero is something of a non-entity, and a stronger personality and more dialogue would’ve helped strengthen his presence in the story. Overall though this handles the idea of being a detective, supernatural or otherwise, much better than any recent contender. Although some sort of automatic log of important clues and conversations would’ve been helpful, especially as they’re usually fairly standard for this sort of game. The open world environment isn’t quite as large as it likes to pretend though and generally the balance is just about right. In terms of gameplay the major problem for developer The Astronauts is of not wanting to lead you by the nose, but also not wanting to leave you without any clue of what to do next. And despite all the red herrings and dead ends the story is wrapped up extremely well, and will have you immediately wanting to replay it just to try and spot all the clues leading up to the final revelations. What is real and what is not is always a key question, but why Ethan is so obsessed with the fantastical lies at the heart of the game’s darkest secrets. The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter (PC) – video games love a ghost detective