I got the impression that you were playing as Ester and hearing the letters from your husband as you wonder the afterlife.

I think its important to mention the chemical symbol drawn on the wall in the house in the opening chapter. It's the chemical structure of ethanol which is what makes alcohol alcoholic (perhaps relating to the car crash) . Maybe it's because I've played a lot of games like this before I played Dear Esther, but after that I immediately started to think of the game and the island as a whole as metaphorical.

As I played Dear Esther, I felt as though I were a stranger who chanced upon the letters to Esther, found out where they were written from, and came to the island to read them.

In my interpretation, the protagonist wasn't dead, he was in a coma from the crash and the brain tried to make sense of what happened after extreme trauma. Eventually it failed and the protagonist dies when the screen fades to black in the end.

Man I'm so glad I subscribed to this channel. Infrequent, but extremely high quality content!

I keep forgetting that this isn't "Every Frame a Painting."

I always figured that we are playing as either Esther or her lover, walking through a personal purgatory they've been in for what seems forever until our playthrough, where at the end, the narrator finally accepts what happened in the past, and leaves their purgatory to ascend into the final beyond.

Honestly, while playing the game I never assumed or felt like I was a character of the story As the narrator began when the game starts, I assumed he was someone telling me a story, maybe with a letter or through a 4th wall breaking expository piece. I can't really say exactly why, but I didn't assume that those where the thoughts that "my" character was thinking. And all throughout the game, I kept having the sensation that I was exploring someone else's story, even as a character. I felt like a guest wandering through somebody's memory, or purgatory, or whatever. For some reason, I also never took the island for "real". That's not me saying "oh, I'm so smart that I figured it out immediately!", I just had the feeling very early on that the setting of the game wasn't trying to present itself as an actual place, actually somewhere. I guess the absence of interaction with items or characters, combined with the narrator talking inside my head, quickly made me suspicious about the nature of that place. I really appreciated your analysis of the game and I think you made very interesting points, but as I remember how perplexed the game left me I really can't say that I am sure if what you see in this game was actually there or if it was mostly out of a well done but also "creative" interpretation. Or at least, to what degree the merit goes to the creators or to the interpreter. I think I might be sounding like a dick for some reason, but that's not my intention, mainly my poor second-language English is preventing me from expressing myself properly. Anyway, I'll stop, 'cause I've already wrote too much.

0:03 Car, where Esther died 0:16 A pier off an island 0:38 Piecing together basics 1:06 Written about current experiences 1:44 Hyperreal? 2:07 Fall down waterfall. The scene of the accident. In a pool. In a cave. 2:33 Haunted feeling 3:04 Motion, turning pages, pulled forward through it 3:32 Sinking, deep in the dream/place 3:55 Dense text, reread 4:15 1 1/2- 10 hours 4:34 What is And is not a Dream? + Doubt protagonist, here + You doubt your own perceptions Has anything been real? 4:57 Discrepancies - - Broken Leg? - Wrecked car? - Brush blowing in the wind, figures in the distance Is this Island Real 5:58 Is the narrator dead? 6:26 Feeling of lack when love exists in memory 7:07 New details pop up. _Memory is Fallible_ 7:44 _A tragedy may never make sense_

I've played this so many times and the ghosts/figures thing just wrinkled my brain.

I know that this hasn't got anything to do with the actual conversation in the video but I live in Scotland and no, caves off the coast of Scotland most certainly don't look like that :P

This game was seriously talked down on when it came out. thank you for this.

Is there anything in Dear Esther that makes it implausible for the player character to be Esther?

This analysis is SO INCREDIBLE. I wrote a paper in my undergrad with a large chunk focused on this game, and you said everything I wanted to say but so much more elegantly. It's great to hear more respect for this game, which I think gets shit on just, like, constantly, for really silly reasons based mostly in conjecture about authorial intent.

I only just played this game and never pieced together that it was about a car accident. Though I also didn't get the accident scene underwater, I got the gurney and tied that to the kidney stones (I believe that was the narrator's health concern). Due to this I assumed the island was his "life flashes before my eyes" moment where he both examined his life's high points while also dwelled on what lies beyond.

I watched part of this, stopped, played through Dear Ester and then finished watching it. Thanks for the great analysis!

Huh, it turns out I actually missed the car crash scene. When I fell in the pool I immediately struggled to the surface rather than looking around my environment. I like to think that was the character avoiding dealing with the memory.

I liked Dear Esther as a mood piece. I've replayed about 3 times now just because I like hanging out in that island. But from a narrative standpoint, I felt more like it was speaking in a foreign language. I got pretty much nothing out of it. There was a car crash was pretty much all I could decipher myself. In order to get a similar level of understanding of the story as you describe it in this video, I would probably have to get a transcript of all the dialogue and really study it. On a single playthrough I can't imagine how anyone can "get it". Maybe I'm just slow, I dunno.

Brilliant man, I love it. I hope to see more of this.

its because of this video that i learned the scenes can be randomized, and that on my first playthrough last night i got the surgery room and not the cars

Interesting, on my first go around I had taken it as all occurring in the final moments before the jump. A brief flash of 'sanity' for a human who had lost themselves in grief, retreading their steps until memory and reality (at the top of that tower) synchronized and the narrator's wild gambit of ascension past it all was enacted -to whatever effect you may believe. The boats in the water were assumed to be the letters, never sent, for lack of recipients. I guess that I had seen the narrator as some sort of living ghost.

I'm glad I found this channel.

Brilliant analysis. Underrated channel

This series is fantastic and I can't wait to see what you do next. Well done.

The developers created a landscape that changes with each playthrough, and mostly evokes a sense of emptiness and melancholia. The game mechanics are limited to exploring this environment, with the pathways, in a sense, serving as loading screens between the letters. Ghosts briefly appear while walking the island. The slow, sad piano and ethereal, orchestral sound track build over the course of the game and further increase the sense of being in a half-awake dream state. The letters tell various stories, all of which intend to create a sense of melancholy. The landscapes all imply a degree of human rot, natural beauty, and finally the beauty of death and memorials. Did the developers accomplish this goal? For Innuendo Studios, yes! All of these elements seemingly came together to create a moving experience. For me? Heck no. The drab island colors make the first part of the game painful, not melancholic, in that it feels like I'm walking through the landscape of a crappily made mod -- understandable, considering that's what it started as. Further, the 'gorgeous' caves and the eerie landscapes look rather rote and bland, or at least they did by the time I played. The ending candle scene impressed me, but subsequently Bioshock Infinite's opening has blown all comparative scenes with candles out of the water. The limited mechanics and slooooow walking speed leave me jiggling back and forth impatiently. Certainly, the mechanics of walking around that island aren't going to save the game if the other pieces don't stand up, and the slow walking makes me feel like I'm forced to experience the game through a bucket of tar. I certainly don't feel like a ghost, and even if I did feel floaty, then I'd just blame that on a built-in feature of the system if you're not a very good game developer, not a special element of game feel created for this world. The sound design is, at least, fitting, if you're into the I Am Setsuna track on repeat, mixed with a bit of New Age, but if that's not your jam, your ears are going to be pounded into bleak submission. Worst of all are the letters. Maybe for Inneundo Studios, the letters were evocative and special, but for me, the letters reeked of pretention. I felt like I was forced to sit through cliched readings of vaguely emo poetry. Each reading actively made me want to shut off the game. The writing didn't so much make me feel melancholia as screamed at me to feel melancholia, and instead I felt critical and bored out of my skull and desiring an end to this bleak and miserable game. Maybe that is melancholia! But wanting to blow my brains out because the narrative is bad, and wanting to blow my brains out because the narrative is so good at making me feel terrible, is a huge, huge difference. Part of the negative reaction to Dear Esther is justified, arguably, because the level of writing and self-importance gives the game such a strong aura of 'pretentious art game' that one can see the developer's nose stuck firmly in the air from miles away. Was it worth the doing? That depends. Is crafting a story that is secretly all a fever dream worth doing? Absolutely not. The 'all just a dream' trope is a cute way of saying 'none of this matters'. If anything, it's just a cute idea to throw in at the end of a game (see Mario), but basing a whole story around this trope is a narrative jerk move. How about exploration of dreams? That is worth doing, and certain games have taken a great look at the scenarios of dreams, such as The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Yume Nikki, To the Moon, just to name a few. It's not a bad theme to look at all. To the Moon is especially notable for being a look into the dreams and memories of a dying man, which also seems to be Dear Esther's conceit. And how about exploration of melancholia and misery? Ha, that barely even needs to be defended: so many, soooo so so many great games have looked at those themes. But let's look at another element. Is bleak, drab color and level design a goal worth aspiring to? Arguably, no, especially after the miserable browns and greys of late 2000s shooters. Boring the player to death isn't a great goal. However, Dear Esther also attempts to create beautiful, evocative environments, and attempts to tell stories with the environment itself, and those are worthy goals, even if Dear Esther itself is boring slag. The most contentious question: are walking simulators worth creating? I'd argue that we can't really judge an experience for what it's not trying to do. A lack of mechanics is a choice. However, the game then needs to be really fantastic with its other elements to make up for that lack of mechanics, in the same way as a game with no music maybe needs to try harder with its other aspects. Clearly, games with walking in them are worth making, as are games with environmental storytelling, as are games with heavy emphasis on storytelling. I really enjoyed Gone Home. I loved The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, but that does have some puzzle mechanics. I really enjoyed Stanley Parable, and that definitely counts! And I enjoyed The Beginner's Guide. So yes, I think these sorts of games are worth making. I just don't see Dear Esther as a great example of them, with the exception that maybe the graphics were groundbreaking at the time, and the soundtrack just might not be my taste. Of course, 2012, when Dear Esther came out, was the same year that Dishonored, Far Cry 3, Journey, and Mass Effect 3 came out, so even compared to other games like it at the time, it was visually a sack of garbage and not all that creative (except maybe the candles at the end?). In any case, what's interesting is that the element of 'it's all an evocative dream space, but that's the twist!' is something I find really lowbrow and, in other mediums, considered a joke or a punchline, but Innuendo Studios celebrates this as an exciting element that shows how great games can be. That, to me, is putting lipstick on a pig.

thank you for this! what an amazing video and explanation of all the feelings i had while playing the game. your story beats are fantastic.

VINDICATION! Finally! Someone gets this game. I have always been disappointed people write the game off as 'Pretentious' when they never even attempted to understand it at all!

Holy crap that was good. And it's totally true as well, when I played Dear Esther, I kept doubting my senses- I thought I saw ghosts but then later found they were rocks or bushes, or maybe they weren't. The whole way through there was just this sense of confusion mixed with the need to move forward, like the tugging that leads you to the lighthouse at the end of the game. It is definitely true that you start to view yourself as a ghost. Great video :)

mannn u deserve so many more subscribers, been binge watchin ur stuff!

Excellent video. I look forward to seeing more of your work!

well that was...beautiful

Very nice video. Thanks for your insight about this game.

that was really good.

Beautiful.

Welcome back! We missed you!

Thank you for this powerful "close reading"!

I loved this

I haven't played the game but from this video I would like to hypothesise that every playthrough is a reader of a book doing to a pilgrimage to the island that inspired the narrator's book, that's why there are candle and car parts everywhere, fans of the book are bringing them on their pilgrimage like fans of Jim Morrison used to bring heroin to Jim Morrison grave.

Fantastic as always.

Thank You.

Amazing video as always! Thanks!

@InnuendoStudios Can you do a review of "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter?" Please. It is amazing.

I can't believe this has existed for three years without me seeing it. Thank you.

memory is fallible - Love it !

Dude. Wow. You're great at this.

Okay so you know how authors write a load of books, like hundreds, and maybe only three or four them are bestselling novels - even fewer are their blockbuster worthy novels. Well, I feel like your story beats segment is like the epitome of your masterpieces. Like yeah your other videos are pretty hit too but story beats are always blockbuster worthy. Always bestselling. The content envokes so much emotion and widens the mind with how story-telling can be so grippig and involved and you do a good job of communicating that in these videos. The fact that there are only four is so not money bruh.

I didn't think anywhere near this much about the game back when I played it. I just thought; "huh this was weird" and then went on with my life. At no point did I perceive anything as surreal. I'm used to all this shit man. xD

I really do love this game, I replay it every few years and it never ceases to amaze me

Huh, interesting. I never played Dear Ester, and nor do I plan too now that I've seen this, but now I think I may have been missing out.

God damn your writing has become so strong.

God, do I love your content.

I'm interested now in the idea of a book with some randomly generated elements. I remember hearing that the film Clue had different endings that aired in different theaters. It's a fun idea.

That's incredible... I played the game, but I never jumped down the waterfall. (As far as I can recall) Though I still finished the game... I think

I love this game and this video :)

Another great video.

I've never understood why some stories feel the need to be deliberately obtuse. Not for a while to build a mystery that is explained, but they just go on like that forever. I like an interesting story, not a simple story that was hidden from me. Dear Esther is literally just "I am sad because someone I cared about died in a crash," and yeah, that sucks, but why don't you just tell me up front? It doesn't feel like some mind blowing revelation to me, it just gives me a moment of mild annoyance at being given the runaround to what was ultimately very simple.

This game always reminds me of "Pincher Martin" by William Golding. Similar rocky surroundings, ends up becoming more and more surreal as the story goes on, sets up the island as a kind of purgatory...

Books, movies at home, and any other media consumed individually and under that individual's control can be consumed the way you describe. You say "you can't spend more time in the book because the only way to be in its world is to be progressing towards the end of the book", but this is also true of videogames. If you stop to look around without being urged onward, you are doing essentially what amounts to rereading a segment of a book. You can read the same passage over and over, you can go back and read what you read before with the knowledge you've gained since; in a matter of consumption, most games, and especially narratively driven ones like Dear Ester, are a much more controlled experience. You can't go back to the pier after going into the water to see what clues there are about whether it's real. You can in any other individually controlled medium. Simply because the cultural expectation of consuming certain works certain ways exists, does not make it a part of the text or even the medium, but an aspect of the cultural bias surrounding it.

interesting and short and nice!

Sold. I have schooling and training in Psychology & Literature; Counseling; & History...every video intrigues. I'm completely sucked into Innuendo.

I liked this video more than the game :D

I see the story as headspace. And time does get compressed. We can see it in how the narrator becomes less logical as the game continues. We are exploring this man's grief. The island IS grief given form (that is why others have visited the island) The narrator isnt dead until the scene at the aeriel. And he dies in a hospital bed; we can hear the EKG's sustained *beep* in the last few seconds of the game (hearing is said to be the last sense we retain at the end of life)

I was so confused, because, somehow, I played the game thrice, once with director's commentary, and yet I never saw the car crash. I saw the hospital bed every time. Guess I'm going to play it again tonight.

That was chilling and beautiful. Alas that I have but one like to give.

Ghosts in games are terrifying, and I don't mean like spooky white things, I mean like actual corner of your eye ghosts that you aren't really sure of because in a game those feel so much more real and terrifying and it feels like if I'm seeing them in the game I could see them irl too.

you just made a great argument for pov visuals in film. - cg

I got the game for free just now and played through it, I thought it was amazing. I also got the hospital bed in the water on my play through.

I'm so sad that I missed this game because I had the impression from everything that I heard about it that it was just like listening to an audio book with some pretty sights. I had no idea it did anything like this, I didn't know there were these surreal elements or any unique game-specific narrative tricks. And now I'm sad because that's been spoiled for me. God damnit

I've played through this game twice and the second time around, I found ultrasound scans. Indicticating that Esther was probably pregnant when she died. It's such a small detail that not every player will see, but adds an even more tragic layer to the story. Especially when it's hinted that this "Paul", the drunk driver who caused the crash...is you, the narrator. My favourite little details is when you exit the caves. The rhythm of the music is actually Morse Code that spells out E-S-T-H-E-R. Or how if you stand on the beach and look up at the flashing beacon, the mountain forms a silhouette of a woman lying on her side.

the fruit sent me :0

Never heard of this game, interesting...

Man I was like I can handle spoilers and watched the video. But not I wish I played the game and experienced it myself. I will never be able to do it

also around the end when you walk out of the cave, you can see a definite figure at the top of the mountain

I'd like to ask a question. I remember watching (or rather partially watching while working on Photoshop) this a few months ago and seeing no text summarizing what you said around 0:43-0:52. I think that your points about memory being fallible is very interesting and I find that I may be over thinking, but did you edit the video to add among any other subtle changes to it?

Hmm... i think the ghost easter egg in this game was Esther

Haunting.

Although others have come close, Dear Esther is easily my favourite game of all time. Sometimes the random elements do just reaffirm what's said in the video here, but sometimes they piece together in fantastically different directions. I remember a playthrough where making sense of the letters wound up painting the narrator as intentionally crashing in order to see a nurse once more, which only became more tragic as he dealt with how completely incapable of not only performing such a terrible act, but incapable of behaving any other way or dealing with the guilt of what he's caused. Other times, the island is a paradise to him, a comfort place that he returns to whenever he has to deal with some sort of tragedy, only now it becomes diseased and falls apart as he's overridden by sorrow and/or guilt and eventually has to find an escape even from his 'happy' place. At one point it seemed as if he and possibly Esther both came to this purgatory between lives, and that the island was a way to cope or deal with the failures of a past life (in which the narrator is both in the modern car crash and the syphilitic hermit that built the bothy) before eventually moving on to the next. What all these differences add up to is a game that explores grief, guilt and sadness in so many forms. Sometimes the end is a suicide compounding the tragedy of what's occurred before, sometimes its release from purgatory and self torment, indicative of a hopeful new start. That it's essentially a 'mood piece' that creates and explores so many different emotional arcs and strikes so many different tones makes it one of the most compelling pieces of fiction I've ever experienced.

dat clip from El Espinazo del Diablo. I think Pan's Labyrinth would also be interesting to compare this to, what with the magical realism

I mean I don't know if the caves look like this here but I do know this is a strange land and there are hundreds of buildings over 5000 years old and even older, structures or artificial things that are out of place and seemingly been here forever and will remain so. After all the Romans thought Scotland was pretty fucking weird and they were went through the Mediterranean? So Yea... Scotland.

Mmmm...Drukqs.... Loong time since I listened to that fantastik double album. ("Come to Daddy" is a kick-ass EP as well). - You do quite often get Tyres (and sections of Tyres) washed up on uninhabited streches of coastline - Boats use them as "Crash Barriers" at the point on their hull where they bang against harbour walls / Jetties etc...But here they're the full car wheel, so yeah...Wierd.... - Also: I Didn't know anyone outside Northern UK would've known about bothies.....Are you a wilderness trekker? - I think the subjects you cover here; regarding the 'Text' of *Dear Esther* are explored much more powerfully (and imaginatively) in an experimental fiction by *JG Ballard* called *"The Atrocity Exhibition"* - though, definitely *not* for younger readers.....Give it a look-see. :) Another great Vid man, very enjoyable :)

Are you going to do this kind of video for the games SOMA or Disco Elysium? It would be awesome!

fuck... I'm a ghost... I'm fucking dead and I didn't even notice

I enjoyed this video and it made me curious about games in general, a topic I know very little about. But I do disagree on one point: it is absolutely possible to linger in a book, whether to admire the prose or the atmosphere or just because you aren’t sure you got a passage the first time and you reread it to try to make sure. Unfortunately, with the general emphasis on “page-turners”, this aspect of reading is being lost. No, just because you “couldn’t put it down” a book is not good. In what other context is addictiveness seen as purely positive? Putting a book down, in fact, is another way of lingering in it. Shut your eyes or stare out to space and reflect on what you’ve been reading. If the book is fertile, that’s when its shoots start to grow.

Didn't know about the movies you credited here, is the Bruce Willis scene from the sixth sense?

Whatn the fuck, I've played this game so many times and I just can't remember the underwater accident scene

One of my favorite games, very misunderstood I feel. I do however disagree or think I misunderstood the progression part of your video. Yes a book only has a certain amount of pages and therefore you can not experience it more than that. But even if you can play a game for 2-10 hours you still cant argue that that is experiencing it more. I can read slower too or think about what I just read and let it linger. Just because I dont choose to proceed for 2 hours in dear esther doesnt mean I experience 2 hours more, I will just stand in place.

That looks like my kind of 'game'.

I kept on expecting him to say that the main character was actually esther.

Would love to see a Story Beats on Death Stranding

Thank you for the video.. I just downloaded the game from Origin

You know that's all well and good (nice video, by the way), and I hate to be that guy, but why can't the developers of this game have done all of this AND made it more interactive by playing on the strengths of gaming as a whole?

very klever!

Maybe the protagonist, that is, the player you're controlling, is Esther's Ghost?

Hoping to see Everyone's Gone To The Rapture in this series!

bruh freeman actually need to sleep and eat which is omitted from gameplay and put into loading times because it would be dumb to waste time on it i never found that car scene i mean i haven't seen any underwater scene

Fuck me, where have you been????

Scanner sombre did something similar

Here's something how does the light keep charged up there's no electricity? And no solar panels yeh I looked there's no solar panels on the island so the light tower isn't real and when he jumps he doesn't go splat he flies like a ghost he is a ghost the real ass kicker here isn't that he's a ghost it's all those pain pills were not real . Terrible I think he overdosed and killed himself he's dreaming while his bodies dieing.

Scotland? That Lighthouse at the beginning is defo not a Scottish one. It lacks the white and yellow paint job, and the glass dome at the top is the wrong design.

Dense memes.