Gone Home, Stayed Home

I'm just going to assume that Popeye isn't asking
Bluto if he can borrow his chainsaw.

I know what I’m doing even as I start doing it. I look down and see my chubby little fingers plodding away, bashing out another snarky witticism and acting on behalf of my subconscious as it tries to hide some surprisingly heartfelt emotion behind a shallow mask of crude humour. Fortunately, I catch the plump wee bastards in the act and I muster up just enough self control to stop them dead in their tracks, temporarily at least, while I dial back my usual drool response. I lean back in my cheap mesh computer chair and accidentally bang my knee against my even cheaper writing desk, causing it to shake like a haunted shit house while I baste my bedroom walls with some of the saltiest language heard this side of a Samuel Leroy Jackson autograph signing session. I’m no longer in the mood for paying any sort of extravagant homage, the moment was well and truly shattered after my wayward leg went all muay thai versus plywood, so I holster my potential slow-clap and settle for an approving nod and a swig of cold hazelnut coffee. Yep, Gone Home was pretty dang good.

It’s funny sometimes how these things end up coming about. I read recently in a “Best Indie Game of 2013” write-up that Gone Home was a hidden gem, and I’ll be brutally honest, had it not been for the lavish praise that said article doled out, I probably wouldn’t have given this game a second glance. Frankly, if Gone Home was a dirty housewife advertising herself in the local classifieds, I’d be pissed off that I’d just wasted twenty seconds scanning over her notice. A first person interactive story adventure? So basically you mean I get to look at everything but I can only get down and dirty with the parts you want me to touch? Umm, okay, that’s kind of restrictive but I can dig it in a weird domineering sort of way. Hold on a sec, did I miss something? Oh I did but I’m free to go back and sample that fun any time I want? That’s awfully charitable of you, what’s the catch? It won’t make any difference to the ending, even if I miss a whole bunch of stuff I’ll still be paying for half a back rub and a hairy eyeball? Well at least you’re consistent.... and honest I guess. This whole concept stunk of Heavy Rain, and just in case I didn’t make myself clear in my last article, that is the sour tang of linearity mixed with a cloying odour where any gameplay should be. Still, the editorial I read was so liberal with its flattery that I almost felt like I’d be doing the author an injustice if I didn’t put his good word to the test. Well, that and the fact that the story of a young woman returning to her family home on a storm wracked night, to find the house empty and relatively unattended save for a trail of scattered notes, was framed with just enough mystery that my curiosity ended up getting the better of me.

Usually when I finish a game that inspires me to open Word 2007, I do so with a burst of quick-burning enthusiasm. I brainstorm up a scattering of ideas and then I leave the document alone for the next few weeks, just long enough so that most of my original fervour for writing the article has withered into irrational dread at the thought of actually having to write anything at all. Not this time though. I figured that if a game manages to illicit such a strong favourable reaction out of me in the meagre two and half hours that it takes me to download and finish – sandwich breaks included – then I can probably afford to free up the next few hours and delegate them to singing such a games praises. And sing I shall. Like a canary sent twittering into the gloom of a potentially poisoned mineshaft, I loaded up Gone Home with the heavy weight of trepidation slouching me into the most un-ergonomic of stances, and truth be told, my first thirty minutes or so did very little to dispel my apprehension. Initially I wandered around the foyer of the vacant home, rifling through draws and listening to voice messages wondering whether I could really be fucked. The setting had me more than a little confused you see. Stormy night, dark empty house, mysterious notes, all of these were indicative of a horror twist that well, never showed up. So I continued to rummage through cupboards and ransack the house, learning more inane information about the Greenbriar family – mainly Kaitlyn the protagonist and her younger sister Samantha – with the sort of wanton and aimless abandon that was sure to send me into an OCD induced panic sooner rather than later. As I read certain notes or messages, I would reach a story significant point where Samantha would recite a relevant passage from her diary. It didn’t seem like much at first, just a lot of general teenage angst directed at her lack of friends and a pair of archetypal overprotective parents. Over time though, the diary entries helped to create a connection between Samantha and her older sister, particularly as Sam would often reference her in stories and also write many of the entries so that they recounted events for Kaitlyn to later catch up on.

I couldn’t tell you exactly when it happened. Put a gun to my head or maybe just threaten me with an avocado and egg plant salad, and I’d probably say it was right around the point where Samantha started to write about the confusing feelings she was beginning to have for a senior girl at her highschool. That’s when my entire approach towards Gone Home suddenly changed. I went from being a slightly impassive burglar to filling the unfamiliar shoes of an older sibling torn between piqued interest and sisterly concern. All the filler about Terry Greenbriar and his unsuccessful series of novels, the Greenbriar mansion having been previously owned and occupied by a clinically insane uncle and hints about Kaitlyn’s tree-hugging hippy of a mother being involved in a potential affair, was no longer so frustratingly irrelevant. This information had managed to construct a living and breathing family unit out of bill payments, book reviews and steamy love letters. I needed to know these people so that I could understand what Samantha was complaining about in her next voiceover to Kaitlyn, and so I could relate to this being the type of family where the nerdy bookworm of a father was understandably pretty awkward upon meeting one of Sam’s new classmates. Again though, this was just the filler, the background framing for the main plot – a story which I feel pretty reluctant to try and summarise in my usual succinct fashion because I know I’ll fall well short of doing it justice. Gone Home is a love story folks. There I said it. It’s a coming of age tale that slowly unveils the details behind Samatha’s budding friendship with another girl called Lonnie. Yep, I know what you’re thinking, I’m going to struggle to insert any crude masculine humour into the rest of this article, and you may be right.

Yep, there were even a couple of magic eye posters to squint at. Sock rockingly cool.  

I’m going to come out and say it right now; on paper this story arc shouldn’t have captured me quite like it did. The Fullbright Company are dirty emotional shamans and they obviously realised that if they were going to minimalise gameplay in favour of slowly following a simple narrative, then they had to get a few things damn right. Gone Home features some of the most intuitive story progression I’ve ever experienced. As I learnt about Sam’s story, I’d unlock another area of the house and trudge there to investigate further. Along the way I’d read a lot of extra stuff concerning the Greenbriar family affairs but I stopped minding because it either provided some context for Sam’s messages or I just looked it over for the sake of being thorough. Sam narrates her diary entries in various states of fitting emotional distress or delight, all in some pretty solid voice acting I might add, and I even found cassette tapes in various rooms which I could then chuck on a convenient nearby stereo to provide a background cacophony of Sam or Lonnie’s favourite punk tunes. None of it was forced down my throat or monologued to me in a mid-game cut scene, everything I read and listened to, I did so under my own fruition because I wanted to and because frankly, I cared. 

The Greenbriar family feat. Terry's spectacular moustache

Now granted, this isn’t the sort of game that could have kept up such a stylised approach for much longer

than my prescribed two or three hours, but the story was paced brilliantly so that I knew when I was heading towards a climax well in advance of any possible tedium. And the story is, well, touching. I want to blow it, I really do. I want to come out and vent just because Gone Home put me through an emotional ringer, but that would be a horrible horrible injustice. It’s engrossing and vividly realistic and it’s probably the uncomfortably “close to home” and progressive nature of the subject matter which makes this game so strangely enthralling. You’re not going to play Gone Home for the Crytek quality graphics, or the orchestral score. There are no explosions, incredible staged sequences or Portal Gun puzzles. This is a game that chucked all of its eggs in one basket and decided to trust that some great voice actors, brilliant pacing and startlingly good writing would help keep people company on a bare-bones exploration of the Greenbriar house. So go and play the thing. Take the time out of your busy schedule to calm down and jam something other than COD: Ghosts. Make sure you shut your bedroom door first though, because you’d hate for anyone to hear you lose your shit after you accidentally attack your computer desk and you’d REALLY hate having to explain those sobs people might hear coming from your room after you finish Gone Home.