Revisiting The Landscapes of Dear Esther, 10 Years Later

thegamer.com:

For a game that’s just about walking, Dear Esther is a quietly monumental, as well as a strangely controversial piece of media. Ten years ago it inspired a flurry of conversations (read: discourse) about whether it’s a “real” game or not. Some critics have said that it is, empirically, a terrible one, since it’s devoid of the typical signifiers of games—interactivity, mechanical depth, player agency—but that it is also a fascinating, almost defiant attempt in reinterpreting the medium. Others have said that it’s akin to an interactive movie that tells a transcendental, moving tale about a man who’s seeking redemption and closure, a finale to his desolate state of affairs.

But Dear Esther is also deeply purgatorial. It’s a game about walking endlessly and slowly through a grassy, mountainous island and crystalline caves, diving into subterranean waterfalls, and ruminating over an apocalyptic future alone—purged of the usual cacophony of gunfire, the smouldering residuals of battles, and the trifling inclusion of illogical puzzles. It’s very much an experience about the quiet act of walking and wandering, made up of the in-between scenes of the most rambunctious of first-person shooters when you’re traversing between combat zones and taking in the scenic sights of the landscapes.

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As you walk, snippets of monologues are gradually unlocked, but you can walk at your pace—in fact, you’re encouraged to, given the absolutely glacial pace the man is walking at (there’s no option to run and jump). Dear Esther seems almost boring and devoid of activities to do at first, but without these distractions, you’re also made to meditate upon this isolation that