Gone home imdb5/31/2023 and TLC, not just indie and grunge bands (though perhaps it’s no coincidence that Gone Home is set just days before the release of Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill”). In 1995, people listened to Coolio and R.E.M. Sam and Lonnie are a little too hip for high school seniors, even ones from Portland. Still, some suspension of disbelief is required. ![]() ![]() The Greenbriars’ house is bedecked with the trappings of 1990s popular culture: Magic Eye images homemade VHS recordings posters for rock shows featuring musical acts like Weezer and Soul Asylum and Lisa Loeb (as well as obscurities like Veruca Salt) TV listings that include “Family Matters,” “The X-Files” and “Walker, Texas Ranger.” The game’s commitment to its period setting is considerable. Nor are there scripted videos to break up the game and explain the story, although there is some spoken narration. The Greenbriars are never seen, except in a family portrait on the first floor. Their story - told through the technologies of mid-1990s high school life, like crumpled notes passed during classes, photographs that had to be developed to be seen, mixtapes of riot grrrl music, even mimeographed zines - forms the game’s spine.īut there are smaller stories and characters to uncover, too, particularly those of Sam and Kaitlin’s father, Terry, a onetime novelist who has been reduced to reviewing equipment for a hi-fi magazine, and his uncle Oscar, whose house the family moved into while Kaitlin was away. Quickly it emerges that Sam, a high school senior, has a crush on a girl named Lonnie. As Kaitlin, the player searches through closets and drawers to find artifacts of family life that explain what happened to everyone. She has returned after a year in Europe to find her parents absent and a note from her missing younger sister, Sam, taped to the front door.įrom there, the game is one of almost archaeological exploration. The player is cast as Kaitlin Greenbriar, a 21-year-old college student who arrives at her family’s home in Portland, Ore., in the middle of the night on June 7, 1995. ![]() There’s just a house, a young woman and a mystery. But there are no guns, no space marines, no future soldiers here, nor any enemies whatsoever, at least that can be seen. The game employs the familiar first-person perspective that was popularized by monster-killing games like Doom and Quake, and later by Halo and Call of Duty. Gone Home, the first game from the Fullbright Company, is the greatest video game love story ever told and proof, in case any more were needed, that video games do not require shooting or punching or jumping or action of any kind to create gripping fiction.
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