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People complain about Dear Esther's linearity [but] that's just not what the game is.
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No, that's just not what
a game is.
You can stick
Dear Esther in a gallery and praise it all you want as a virtual installation, but The Chinese Room call themselves
game developers and list
Dear Esther as their first
game, and should be critiqued as such. And as a
game,
Dear Esther is the absolute bare minimum.
It's not the linearity I take issue with, it's the lack of interactivity. As many have remarked, making a game with no interaction is like making a film with no images - it might sound great, but there's no reason to be using that medium.
Dear Esther gives you a free camera when there's never any reason to turn around. It gives you freedom of movement, when there's never anywhere to go but forwards. Do you see? It's relying on the conventions of games that allowed you to actually
do stuff in order to give the player a role, but never gives the player any of the responsibilities that make that role fulfilling. It's an on-rails shooter without the rails.
A visual novel is designed from the word "Go" around a limited number of perfectly-realised views and passages. It doesn't have the mechanics of an open-world game, but unlike
Dear Esther, it doesn't try and ape the aesthetics of one either.
And just for the record,
Dear Esther as a VN would just be a PowerPoint slideshow. The only thing that makes the average VN a "game" is the numerous choices and interaction with characters; of which
DE had neither.