[h1] review [/h1]
What Remains of Edith Finch is one of the best examples of storytelling in games. It's a game that understands that gameplay itself can be a narrative device rather than something that exists between cutscenes.
Every chapter introduces a different member of the Finch family, and each story is told in a completely unique way. Instead of repeating the same gameplay loop, the mechanics constantly evolve to reflect the personality, emotions, and perspective of the character you're experiencing. It's one of the few games where the gameplay and the narrative feel inseparable.
The Finch house deserves just as much praise. It's easily one of the most believable and memorable locations I've explored in a game. Every hallway, hidden passage, and sealed bedroom quietly tells its own story before a single word is spoken. The environmental storytelling is exceptional.
It's only a few hours long, but it's one of those games that stays with you long after the credits roll.
[h1] A deeper look into the story *** SPOILER ALERT!!! *** [/h1]
[spoiler]I don't think the game is actually about whether the Finch family is cursed.
The "curse" is just the lens through which every tragedy is viewed. Once a family convinces itself that every generation is doomed, every accident becomes proof. The stories stop being records of what happened and become myths that explain why it happened. That's why almost every death can be interpreted in two completely different ways: either as supernatural fate or as the consequence of human choices, coincidence, neglect, or mental illness.
The house itself is probably the biggest metaphor in the game.
Instead of grieving and moving on, Edie preserves every bedroom exactly as it was. Nobody packs away their belongings. Nobody reclaims the space. Every room becomes a shrine frozen in time. As more family members die, the house literally grows upward, becoming increasingly unstable. It's almost like grief has become architecture. Rather than supporting the family, the house traps them inside their own history.
One thing I didn't fully appreciate until after finishing the game is how unreliable every story is.
Barbara's chapter is presented like a cheesy horror comic, complete with dramatic narration and ridiculous monsters. It's almost certainly not what actually happened. But that's exactly the point. Barbara wasn't remembered as a person anymore—she became a legend. The truth became less important than the story people wanted to tell.
Lewis' chapter might be my favorite piece of interactive storytelling ever made.
His monotonous factory job slowly fades into the background while the fantasy kingdom grows more elaborate until it completely consumes the screen. The player physically experiences his inability to separate fantasy from reality. If this had been a movie, it would have been sad. Because it's interactive, you gradually become complicit in building his fantasy. By the end, you're controlling both worlds at once, and you understand exactly why reality disappeared for him.
Gregory's chapter is another example of why this game could only work as a video game. You're controlling an infant whose imagination transforms an ordinary bathtub into an entire underwater adventure. As a player, you're smiling because everything feels playful and magical, while at the same time knowing exactly where it's leading. The contrast is devastating.
Milton is probably the biggest mystery in the entire story. Unlike the others, the game never explicitly tells us he died. His disappearance leaves open the possibility that not every Finch met the same fate, which subtly undermines the idea of an unavoidable curse. Whether he escaped physically or only through imagination is left entirely to the player.
Edith herself is interesting because she spends the game searching for answers but ultimately doesn't find any. She doesn't prove the curse exists, nor does she disprove it. Instead, she accepts that stories matter even if they aren't literally true. They preserve memories, identities, and emotions in ways that facts alone never could.
The final message I took away wasn't that the Finches were cursed.
It was that every family tells stories to make sense of loss. Some families pass down heirlooms. The Finches passed down tragedies. Eventually those stories became so deeply rooted that they shaped how each generation understood themselves. Whether the curse was real almost stops mattering, because belief itself has consequences.
Very few games trust the player enough to leave so much unanswered. What Remains of Edith Finch never tells you what to think. It simply gives you the pieces and lets you decide whether you believe in fate, coincidence, or something in between.
That's why I think it's one of the greatest narrative games ever made. [/spoiler]
