Gone Home Reflection (Spoilers)

 I always say 'If you want to write for Sportandfashion-news, pitch me an idea and send me something to work with.' I tried hiring people without doing that and it failed greatly. John Strand approached me with wanting to write about video games for Sports News on Tap. I am sure there are many of Tappers whom still play video games meaning there is a definite avenue for this genre. John will be writing once every week or two weeks on a video game topic. His first post is a review about Gone Home and spoilers are in here so be careful.  You can follow him on Twitter here  

I felt I would never play Gone Home 

Upon the release of Gone Home, the internet was abuzz with hype about the game that clocks in at a little under 2 hours (or over depending on your play style). This game intrigued me but hit a major roadblock: I am a console gamer and therefore do not have a PC capable of running most games. I held off on Gone Home out of fear that my PC would not be able to run this seemingly simple game.

I moved on to other games in my queue, content with contenders for Game of the Year like Bioshock Infinite and Grand Theft Auto V, but Gone Home kept nagging, begging to be played. Finally, Steam did was Steam always does, and a sale was upon us. For a paltry five dollars, I could purchase Gone Home, and I knew I had to do it. I bought the game from my iPad and planned to install and play it when I got home (Resisting a pun there took all of my strength). Once my machine had finally been prepared, I sat down, dimmed the lights and began to play.

Disaster struck.

My computer could barely run Gone Home. The framerate chugged, and the already foreign controls were incomprehensible because of input lag. I had been defeated. I shelved Gone Home and moved on.

However, I could not forget Gone Home. I returned to the game tonight, and upon completion, felt compelled to pen my story.

After going through what seemed like an arduous process to me, I finally finished Gone Home. The framerate (though seemingly improved) still stuttered. I still felt lost at the controls. But the world sucked me in.

The music and sound of Gone Home are truly remarkable. They make the game. I can honestly say if the gritty, thematic, punk girl music and the horrifying footsteps in an otherwise silent hall would not have been so clearly conveyed, I would have relegated Gone Home to a shallow grave on my desktop. But the sound sucked me in.

The sound and exploration allowed for a fully realized world. I couldn't help but be reminded of when I played Resident Evil for the first time. When my tiny hands first held that Playstation controller and explored the vast mansion, I truly understood what video games could be. They didn't have to be utter fantasy, jumping on top of turtles or blasting away at aliens. They could be mundane. They could be ordinary. Games could be real.

The Spencer Mansion is the first place that made the game feel real. 

While the exploration and sound design are executed on a level which rarely exists, they are not the reason I find this game so compelling. The story is where Gone Home becomes so unsettling. I struggled with finding the right word choice to describe the story. Many superlatives entered my mind, but I don't think the story is the best I've heard, but it did do something few games have: It shook me to the core of my being. It caused me to step back and question society.

The reason Gone Home's story is so unsettling and powerful, is because it subverts the story the player is expecting. It takes every piece of tone, ambiance and foreshadowing that it places at the player's fingertips, and exchanges it for something totally unexpected. This bait-and-switch caused me to sit back in my chair and sigh. As I entered the attic, the images of the hidden passages, Oscar's nametag and the Satanic circle were whirling in my head. I was afraid and physically altered because of that fear. I did not want to open the attic despite the fact that I knew that was how I would complete the game. I finally mustered the courage, used the key, and entered that forbidden place to find: nothing. Or so I thought.

Please. Please don't make me go up there. 

It disappointed me that there was no ghost or ghastly sight to behold in the attic. All I was left with was the final letter from Sam to her sister, Katie. In it, Sam writes that she is sorry, that Katie shouldn't be sad. Sam did what she needed to do, as a misunderstood gay woman facing an ignorant society, she escaped. The way that the letter is written is obviously ambiguous. Did she runaway with her lover, Lonnie? Did she reach the breaking point and take her own life? Depending on who the player is, the ending can be interpreted in a number of different ways, but no matter how you look at Sam and Lonnie's situation, there is one certainty: there was a monster waiting in the attic.

It wasn't a ghost, a vampire, or a werewolf. No, this monster is much more frightening. The real monster of Gone Home is humanity. We live in a world where this girl would rather take her own life, than live as she is. She felt closed off from her friends, from her family. She wasn't accepted by those who knew her best, and it is this message that Gone Home leaves you with. Although werewolves, vampires and ghosts are fiction, real monsters do exist.

 -John Strand