There are three games I routinely get mixed up: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and What Remains of Edith Finch.
We discussed What Remains of Edith Finch last October, and so this year I decided to finally play The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.
(I’ll probably never play Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, since I haven’t enjoyed the developer’s other games, unless someone wins the contest and asks me to review it.)
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a story-driven mystery in which you play an occult detective investigating the strange incidents in Red Creek Valley after receiving a letter from a boy named Ethan Carter.
As you explore the area, you’ll come across crime scenes and similar disturbances. Using your supernatural abilities, your goal is to learn what happened. This usually consists of recreating the scene as it was before by finding any missing objects or other changes, then correctly ordering the ghostly images that appear. Once you’ve put the scene in order, the entire thing plays out.
These scenes, along with notes and documents you find, teach you more about Ethan Carter, his relationship with his family, and the events leading up to his letter. You soon learn that Ethan awakened a supernatural force known as “the sleeper,” which caused his family to turn against him and try to kill him due to the influence of this evil force.
Piecing together the crime scenes was fun, and the story seemed to be going in a creepy direction. But have you ever had the sinking feeling that a story you’re enjoying is building up to a conclusion you won’t enjoy at all?
After the first few notes, I realized a possible direction the story might go in. That concern hung over me like a shroud for the rest of the time I played, despite a few glimmers of hope that it wasn’t going there after all. Unfortunately, my prediction was right.
Click for major The Vanishing of Ethan Carter spoilers
I’d said to myself, “I hope this isn’t one of those stories where the supernatural incidents turn out to just be a metaphor.”
See, the notes had given me the idea that at least some of the scenes were based on stories Ethan had written and the flashback conversations made me wonder if his family actually turned against him because… uh… he’s a writer?
That was not nearly as interesting to me as the creepy story about “the sleeper,” so I really hoped it wouldn’t happen.
But yes, that’s how it turned out. Ethan’s family considered him weird because he liked to write stories, none of the murders actually took place, and even the protagonist is a fictional character invented by Ethan, who is dying after getting trapped in the old house.
Writing this actually made me dislike it even more. Edith Finch might have left its curse ambiguous, but at least the incidents themselves actually happened. None of the murders in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter actually happened!
I would have much preferred an ambiguous horror story about “the sleeper.”
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter does a good job of foreshadowing its twist, I’ll give it that. It’s just the one twist I was hoping not to see, because I was much more interested in the direction the story appeared to be going at first.
In the end, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter certainly fit my theme for this month and had a lot of creepy potential (including a Lovecraft reference I enjoyed), but the conclusion left me disappointed with the game overall.
As announced during a recent IGN Japan live stream, game developers Suda51 and Swery65 are planning to make a horror game together.
