Note: This article contains spoilers for Gone Home, so if you haven’t played it all the way through yet or are planning to, I’d recommend coming back to this later so I can pick your brain a little. In addition, the gameplay video above has a bit of profanity, so parents be aware for your kids!
So I watched a gameplay video of Gone Home on YouTube for an hour straight.
It left me on the edge of my seat. I was wondering what was behind each door. I was dreading whatever was around each corner. I was even trying to notice the silhouette of a person when the lights were off or when the thunder-storm outside flashed through the windows. It was a great way to get my mind to play tricks on me.
The ending left me unsatisfied, though.
Delving into the story
The story was a fascinating narrative of Samantha Greenbriar, or Sam, the sister of the character you control. She talks in a coming-of-age fashion, telling her tales of recent events in scattered increments you discover throughout the house. Everything is so detailed and specific! You thumb through her family’s personal items all over the house. It’s incredibly real, realistic and thought-provoking.
The one connection that either didn’t seem to add up or simply flew over my head was how the pentagram and the candles and the Possession and Exorcism book tied-in with how Sam supposedly ran off with her girlfriend, Lonnie. I understand that it’s a story exploration; I love stories! I liked this game before I got to the ending.
Questions left unanswered
How did that ghost, Oscar, tie-in to Sam’s decision to leave with Lonnie? Or was Oscar only supposed to serve as the initial spark/connection that led Sam and Lonnie into romance?
Lonnie was planning to go to the Army for basic training but she decided not to because she couldn’t stand being away from Sam. So she calls Sam up and says Hey, pick me up, I’m in Salem. Let’s runaway together (I’m paraphrasing). Did they magically disappear into the supernatural realm and run off together with Oscar? I mean the town Sam apparently drove to was called Salem, you know…
Or was Oscar just left hanging?
Did Sam put Oscar into Lonnie and then they ran off together? Probably not if Sam actually drove to Salem to get Lonnie… Mostly I got stuck on the candles, the pentagram and the book. Everything else was just like a diary.
Did the parents come home, discover that Sam wasn’t there and went off searching for her without leaving a note for Katie (the character you play)? Or were they still on vacation at the gorge?
It would’ve been a better story exploration video game if there weren’t so many loose ends. I liked it, don’t get me wrong, but the ending just left me scratching my head.
I was honestly hoping to find Sam resembling Linda Blair from The Exorcist in the attic and the game would end with her killing you, her sister Katie, or you finding her and Lonnie dead or Lonnie as the possessed one. Something more thrilling than finding another note at least! Too predictable, huh? I guess this should be considered more of a story exploration experiment and not just a story exploration because the story doesn’t add up at the end.
Ambiguity doesn’t always make for good storytelling
This is a perfect example of bad ambiguity because bad ambiguity, as I’ve mentioned in a previous article concerning The Last of Us, is when you’re left to make up your own mind on an ending that simply doesn’t make sense. It seems like the story is going in a million different directions and you don’t know which direction makes the most sense. You’re on your own, picking up the pieces of a muddled story and still not sure what the story was trying to tell you overall, thus leaving you forever unsatisfied.
Stories are meant to have coherent – not necessarily good, but understandable – endings, right? I guess I’m not used to seeing a simple story in a complex atmosphere…
Is that what’s wrong with games, gameplay, and some gamers nowadays? We expect so much out of the gameplay of the game that we forget how to enjoy a good story in a simple atmosphere? Something to think about…
What did you think of Gone Home? Were you satisfied with the ending or the story overall?
