Why is Everybody's Gone To The Rapture a video game? I don't want that to sound rude or facile but it’s the question that I think all of us ask ourselves when playing a game like this. Does it need to be a game? Exploration games (or as some obnoxiously call them Walking Simulators) are a contentious issue leading to those who support the movement to support all the games in the genre voraciously and those who hate it to tear every game in the genre down. The main argument is that of interactivity. Does the fact that the key, and sometimes only, mechanic is simply exploring an environment and piecing together a story mean that it’s just not a game. obviously that argument is foolish. If your vision of video games purely orbits around having fun or beating something then that’s the world you live in and none of this nonsense should bother you. Like all art, frankly, it’s bullshit unless you care. I mean if you are looking for a good time don't read Moby Dick. If you gain pleasure from what you see as cultural or artistically important things then push yourself through that 50-lines-per-sentence laden novel and dude, it’s pretty great.
Rapture isn’t Moby Dick. In fact I struggle to think of any game that artistically matches up to much more than a really, really good John Ford film. It’s the goddamn youngest art form and about 76% of the people playing games don’t even think it is an art form. We are all on giant bomb, in the forums…we all know this is the most important art form. I am hopefully preaching to the choir, but us and high art, it’s gonna be some time. That’s my doctrine anyway.
Walking around the world of Rapture is a joy. I’m English and you so rarely get to explore such an accurate and well rendered village. Even stupid things like the picnic benches outside of the pub excited me a little. The collection times on the postboxes, the doctors waiting room, it just feels like home. It’s undeniable that the game is beautiful. It goes beyond the environment though, the lighting is atmospheric and shifts throughout play to underline the moods it attempts to create. The music is overbearing but so well produced and oftentimes humbling that it rarely ruined the tone of the game and dramatically increases it’s production values making this game feel well worth he price of admission.
You are dropped into the game pretty cold. You never find out what it is that you are so to me the game is implying you are simply looking through this world and witnessing the narrative. You are nothing, you do not exist, you are the embodiment of a story line and you control it at will, presenting that information as you find it. Loosely following balls of light that may or may not be separate entities who were once human, you stumble across strange projections of people who seem to be acting out their final months of life before the rapture. These conversations are made up of around 10 characters with a definite 6 key players. It’s told out of order with the first projection clearly depicting the final days of the villagers. You’ll also hear ringing phones and tv’s with static, interacting with these will start audio recordings. Some are phones calls between two characters and others just classic audio logs, they are never jarring though them seem appropriate. That’s the game. Walk around, find a conversation, see some foreboding bloody tissues and keep going.
I got lost a lot and felt a constant overwhelming feeling of missing out. I often doubted myself and would turn back to make sure I hadn’t missed a plot point along the way. Honestly, this was only because I was enjoying the stories so much I didn’t want to miss any of it. My question though; Is this a good thing? I think Rapture should be a video game. Exploring the world in your own time and way is exciting and builds a lot of tension but this feeling of missing out overpowered a lot of my immersion. I feel a button to bring up some kind of light trail leading you to the nearest story point would not damage the game and instead decrease any moments of loss. Do the developers want me to feel like there is more in their world even if there isn’t? What purpose does that serve? If you do get stuck you’ll notice all of a sudden that you move so slowly that you can’t do a quick sweep of the area to find the next thing. It can irritate. I got stuck at the lakeside camp and was wandering around for a long time before I noticed I had missed a light ball that was hanging out so close to the main light ball, I just assumed it was part of that and not a story point.
Overall Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture is a good exploration game. All aspects of it are pristinely produced and if you can calm the collect everything side of your brain it’s a pleasant 5 hours. Hearing all of the villagers plots play out is really engaging and very satisfying. The main storyline however is lacking, don’t expect any satisfying conclusions. What you think is going on within the first 5 minutes is almost exactly what is going on. I feel Sci-Fi in situations like this is kind of always a bit disappointing. You won’t get a good answer because whatever response you get just aren’t reality. Infer what you like though, that’s the fun of art.