What Remains of Edith Finch’s family curse is ambiguity done right

destructoid.com:

This post contains huge spoilers for the entirety of What Remains of Edith Finch. If you haven’t played it yet, go do yourself a favor and take care of that, and maybe come back to this one later.

Five years after its release, I still think of What Remains of Edith Finch as one of the best interactive stories ever told. The performances are stellar, especially that of Valerie Rose Lohman as the titular role, the art is beautiful, and the game revolutionized narrative design on multiple occasions. It’s a must-play for anyone who likes story-focused games, and it was my most recent replay with a friend, because it seems that when I find something I like I’ll just keep going back to it until I die someday.

There was so much to appreciate on this second playthrough, and so many details I missed the first time, but what really struck me in our conversations after the game was finished was just how well Edith Finch uses ambiguity. There are so many stories out there that suffer from what we like to call “ambiguitis” – they don’t want to give players or readers or viewers concrete answers so as to seem deep or thought-provoking, but in doing so, don’t say anything meaningful about the themes or characters at all.

What Remains of Edith Finch is steeped in ambiguity. The stories that Edith is relaying to us are often outlandish and obviously embellished, and come from a host of unreliable narrators, from a ravenous eleven-year-old girl, to a puzzled psychiatrist, to a deeply traumatized great-grandmother. There is never really a way to know for certain what happened, but at the same time, the game hints that the truth of what really happened is out there, if you’re willing to go and look for it.

If you don’t remember, the Finch