What Remains of Edith Finch: The Finch Stories

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As I walked down an old beaten path, a massive and abstract house stood before me. It looked as though the place had been built like a puzzle but with pieces that had nothing to do with one another. Inside the house was something I would be even more confused by. Within were the many secrets of the infamous Finch family, who for some reason had all met tragic demises at the hands for unknown forced. The character I was playing as, Edith Finch, was coming back to her childhood home for the first time in many years. Her purpose, to discover what lingering presence brought such sorrow to her and the rest of her family. After the first few minutes of playing What Remains of Edith Finch, I knew the story it would tell would be truly unique.

(Who was the architect who designed that?)

With Edith narrating you are given an intriguing perspective of the story as you progress through it. After entering the oddly designed house I was quickly thrown into the chaos within and the confusion Edith had before arriving. The Finch family was built on deception. After wandering through the house for some time, it quickly became apparent that someone tried to prevent anyone from finding out more about the Finch’s. On every door was a peep hole, there were hidden passages and of course, almost every door was locked from the inside.

(Nice hookah...)

So, without any hesitation I began my investigation, looking for any piece of information that could aide in my mission to learn about the Finch’s troubled past. Edith had come back in search of what had happened to her family members, all their deaths causes had been kept from her. She wouldn’t be disappointed, within the house she would find all the stories of their tragic demises and why there were no longer any Finch’s left but her.

(One of the many secret passages)

After uncovering more on Edith’s back story through items scattered across the house, I finally found a room that was open. It was the room of one of her relatives, Walter. Inside was a passage to the adjacent room, belonging to another relative named Molly. Molly had disappeared at the age of 10 from her bedroom and no one was able to find her. Upon discovering her diary, Edith read her last entry. Of the stories from the family members this was perhaps the most disturbing to me, I’ll get to the reason why shortly. In her diary, she wrote that she had been sent to bed without food, so she woke up in search of a way to lessen her hunger. You are then sent back in time into the shoes of Molly., where many bizarre things occur. At first, she eats a carrot from her gerbil’s cage, then some toothpaste. Not long after she runs out of things to eat in her room, a bird appears in her window.

(When you turn into various animals because you're hungry)

Molly approaches the window, trying to reach out to the bird she magically transforms into a cat. Now incredibly hungry, all she can think about is eating the bird. She chases it through the trees until she catches and eats it, but she’s still hungry. A series of transformations occur to Molly first into a cat, then an owl, a shark and finally a Lovecraftian monster. After killing two people as this monster Molly is STILL hungry. At this point I was incredibly disturbed by her story, but it was only going to get worse. Molly then talks about how she smells something so amazing when she is the monster that she travels tremendously far just to get it. This leads to a sequence of events where the monster eventually makes its way into her own room and she wakes up in terror from her nightmare. However, she now knows that the monster for her dream is coming from her and the creepiest part occurs, the last line in her entry. “I think it’s waiting for me to fall asleep. But it’s not going to wait much longer. It needs to feed. And we both know I… will be… delicious.”

(Why would you think you are going to taste good? What kind of a kid are you?)

I felt my heart race as I read the last line of Molly’s diary, knowing only too well what became of her and how she was almost excited for the monster to come and get her. As I said, I think this story was the creepiest to me but many of the others made my spine tingle just as much. Edith now knew that there was something to these stories although all of them were unexplainable for the most part. It seemed a curse all revolving around stories is what led to the disappearances and deaths of her relatives. All she could do was learn more about her family. However, the more she found out, the more certain she was that she would end up falling victim to the curse on her family just like the rest of them.

(A small section of the Finch family graveyard, plots fill up quickly here)

I’m going to leave my review there so that you can experience the rest of What Remains of Edith Finch for yourself. Although the game is rather short (around 2 hours long) I was hooked in from start to finish. The narrative, the storytelling, the graphics and the mysterious aspects of What Remains of Edith Finch are unlike any other game I’ve played. It’s rare that a game gets me so absorbed into the plot but I am happy to say that I couldn’t stop playing form the moment I started. I’m a sucker for a remarkable story and the creators delivered, it is without a doubt my favorite game that I’ve played so far, this year.