The problem isn’t that the topics covered by the game are inherently uncomfortable–death, suicide, infidelity and loss pervade all forms of media on a regular basis, after all–it’s that they’re mishandled to the point that a believable drama turns into a bit of a soap opera.Īreas of the hotel are consistently believable, though it's a building with more typos than most. But around halfway into the three-to-four-hour playthrough–and more so during my second visit to The Timberland–it descends into something much less palatable. As it develops, this sense of foreboding is for all the right reasons: a dark subject matter and a creepy setting. A bungled storylineĮven before the story gets into full swing, things feel wrong. But the underlying story doesn’t share this steadiness and slowly unravels in ways you don’t want it to. At points, it made me as scared as the quieter moments of Resident Evil 7 and Layers of Fear. Sometimes, the fear of your surroundings ramps up foreboding terror, whether it’s from purposeful misdirection or outright jump scares, is consistently well delivered. Personal bonds are limited and the escapade feels all the more intimidating–something the game leverages consistently well through its limited core mechanics, specifically the camera and radio. The rotten-feeling Timberland is incredibly unnerving, despite it being your former home then again, it’s still a hotel, not the comparatively cozy Oregonian house of Gone Home. The game's opening sequence is very well realized. This intimate initial narrative soon falls away and before you know it, you’re in the dark, foreboding garage of the hotel, about to begin your slow trudge around the dated building. You start by reading an increasingly tear-stained letter, with pages punctuated by a top-down, rainsoaked shuffle through a crowd of umbrella-wielding mourners at a graveyard. Unsurprisingly, something feels very wrong from the beginning–something made all the more impactful by its high-art introduction. It’s rendered with impressive, often Scandi-noir visuals, throwing all sorts of minor details your way from the very start to create a setting that pairs perfectly with the initial story. What’s more, a lot of hard work has been put into its layout I wouldn’t be surprised if the developers used a real hotel floorplan. ![]() ![]() I don’t know if it’s the game’s low price point or just the endless comparisons to the 2013 game, but I was expecting something much smaller and lo-fi. While drawing a lot of obvious comparisons in previews with Gone Home, the hotel setting of Rachel Foster soon feels worlds apart from its predecessor. A believable, beautiful and atmospheric environment
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