Today I will be talking about What Remains of Edith Finch and the various ways games use to explain a player that a character has died. I am going to be discussing specific examples from games, so be warned, there are spoilers for the following games This is the art of death. Remember, if you like these videos and you want to see more, make sure to like and subscribe, would really help me out.
So, to understand what sets apart Edith Finch’s storytelling and deaths, it’s important to understand the different ways games can portray deaths: showing vs. telling.
Telling
There is of course the obvious way to explain that a character has died, and it is the end of the run: Just having the character die, and you see a bloodied screen or your character crumples to the ground. One of my favorite games to do this is the Halo series, which made for some hilariously ridiculous deaths with overexaggerated death noises. You get to see your character die, fly off a cliff, and all the other various violations your corpse will experience. Your corpse, and this death scene, is disposable to the story, and only serves to indicate failure to the player. No one is invincible or immortal, and these deaths make that clear. These deaths serve a purpose to the game, but not to the narrative as a whole. These deaths are often in the first person, and you directly experience the deaths yourself, looking on with frustration after dying for the millionth time. Death is more of a formality than anything else. You just respawn after you die at your last checkpoint, and brute force your way through the story until you get it. This is the visual equivalent of telling in a video game, and it does what it needs to do in the games it’s in.
Showing
But there is a different way to tell a story, and particularly that a character has died. One example I can think of this sort of storytelling is the infamous, but still relevant to this video, Five Nights at Freddy’s 4. Many people will scoff at this, but I think this game is a good example of what I’m trying to explain here. Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 was a welcome break from reality in the FNAF universe in a way. The animatronics were not real, but exaggerated nightmares from the eyes of a child. You can see various hints that perhaps the bedroom isn’t real either, as you occasionally see IV fluids or flowers on the table, indicating that you are hallucinating in a hospital room. I want to focus on a very small detail at the end of the game, though. It’s perhaps only a few seconds, but at the end of the game as it fades to black, you hear a flatline in the background, indicating your character has died. This is a good way to explain to the player that the character has died, while also not having to go through the trouble of coding that scene. And besides, it probably would not have worked in this game. Another game that does this is the Red Hood DLC in Arkham Knight, and the ending of Arkham Knight. The joker explains his descent into madness, what happened to him through a whimsical hallucination, and you as the player get to see the end of the tunnel. Even the ending of Arkham Knight does this, with Batman slowly overcoming his worst fear through a weird world where the player gets to play as the Joker, as Batman slowly makes this Joker more and more scared, and playing into Joker’s fear of being forgotten, until Batman locks Joker away in a box and sends him to the Arkham Asylum graveyard. These are all symbolic, trippy ways to tell the player that the character they know has died, but most importantly, they are the visual equivalent of showing the player what happened.
Which brings me to What Remains of Edith Finch, where death is not just necessary, it is key to the story. For those who don’t know, What Remains of Edith Finch is about a family whose family members are all doomed to die before they are 50. The family members you find all lived in one house near the shore, and whenever a family member was born, a new room was built, and upon their death it would be boarded up and walled off. These people all died in different, unique ways, but instead of just showing the quick and sometimes brutal methods these members met their end, Edith Finch chooses to instead show the player what their final thoughts were. For a baby who drowned to death while their parents argued bitterly about divorce, or a man who was a slow dropout who got grinded up at a fish factory, you aren’t greeted to the bitter end, rather an engaging story of what they were thinking. The baby who drowned does not see themselves dying, rather they are swimming in the ocean with their bath toys. They pass through the most beautiful of blue waters and see all their friends swimming around, before they drift down the glowing white light in the drain. Instead of seeing the ascent up to their death at the fish factory, you imagine you are a prince sailing a river, loved and worshipped by your men. Another subtle detail is that all these family members are given slightly different or vastly different art styles, whether it be in the style of a comic for a girl who died of a murder most foul, or the dark, murky shading of the girl who died of toothpaste poisoning. What Remains of Edith Finch raises an additional question of whether this family just has horrible luck, or there is a supernatural theme going on here.
Death in What Remains of Edith Finch is not the end, but rather the extension of the story. The player must experience each of these deaths before they can fully understand the family’s history. The deaths in Edith Finch are almost sort of a merciful killing, in that these characters in a relatively restrictive situation are given some moments to escape the monotony of their lives, and the bounds of the house, if but for a moment. There is a simple symbolism to the house, in that each room roots off from the ground floor, where the grandparents once lived. This is the family tree of the Finch family, and you realize fairly soon why you are exploring this house as an outsider. The circumstances in which you arrive upon the house are not simply because the writers needed an easy way to start the story, rather you are the daughter of the last remaining Finch member who left the home claiming that there was nothing but bad memories there, and you are determined to find out more about these family members your mother avoids so desperately. There is a simple clear purpose to everything in Edith Finch, and it is why it is perhaps my favorite game. It is through these almost whimsical deaths that Edith Finch unravels perhaps one of the most beautiful and compelling narratives in video game history.
Video version:
So, to understand what sets apart Edith Finch’s storytelling and deaths, it’s important to understand the different ways games can portray deaths: showing vs. telling.
Telling
There is of course the obvious way to explain that a character has died, and it is the end of the run: Just having the character die, and you see a bloodied screen or your character crumples to the ground. One of my favorite games to do this is the Halo series, which made for some hilariously ridiculous deaths with overexaggerated death noises. You get to see your character die, fly off a cliff, and all the other various violations your corpse will experience. Your corpse, and this death scene, is disposable to the story, and only serves to indicate failure to the player. No one is invincible or immortal, and these deaths make that clear. These deaths serve a purpose to the game, but not to the narrative as a whole. These deaths are often in the first person, and you directly experience the deaths yourself, looking on with frustration after dying for the millionth time. Death is more of a formality than anything else. You just respawn after you die at your last checkpoint, and brute force your way through the story until you get it. This is the visual equivalent of telling in a video game, and it does what it needs to do in the games it’s in.
Showing
But there is a different way to tell a story, and particularly that a character has died. One example I can think of this sort of storytelling is the infamous, but still relevant to this video, Five Nights at Freddy’s 4. Many people will scoff at this, but I think this game is a good example of what I’m trying to explain here. Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 was a welcome break from reality in the FNAF universe in a way. The animatronics were not real, but exaggerated nightmares from the eyes of a child. You can see various hints that perhaps the bedroom isn’t real either, as you occasionally see IV fluids or flowers on the table, indicating that you are hallucinating in a hospital room. I want to focus on a very small detail at the end of the game, though. It’s perhaps only a few seconds, but at the end of the game as it fades to black, you hear a flatline in the background, indicating your character has died. This is a good way to explain to the player that the character has died, while also not having to go through the trouble of coding that scene. And besides, it probably would not have worked in this game. Another game that does this is the Red Hood DLC in Arkham Knight, and the ending of Arkham Knight. The joker explains his descent into madness, what happened to him through a whimsical hallucination, and you as the player get to see the end of the tunnel. Even the ending of Arkham Knight does this, with Batman slowly overcoming his worst fear through a weird world where the player gets to play as the Joker, as Batman slowly makes this Joker more and more scared, and playing into Joker’s fear of being forgotten, until Batman locks Joker away in a box and sends him to the Arkham Asylum graveyard. These are all symbolic, trippy ways to tell the player that the character they know has died, but most importantly, they are the visual equivalent of showing the player what happened.
Which brings me to What Remains of Edith Finch, where death is not just necessary, it is key to the story. For those who don’t know, What Remains of Edith Finch is about a family whose family members are all doomed to die before they are 50. The family members you find all lived in one house near the shore, and whenever a family member was born, a new room was built, and upon their death it would be boarded up and walled off. These people all died in different, unique ways, but instead of just showing the quick and sometimes brutal methods these members met their end, Edith Finch chooses to instead show the player what their final thoughts were. For a baby who drowned to death while their parents argued bitterly about divorce, or a man who was a slow dropout who got grinded up at a fish factory, you aren’t greeted to the bitter end, rather an engaging story of what they were thinking. The baby who drowned does not see themselves dying, rather they are swimming in the ocean with their bath toys. They pass through the most beautiful of blue waters and see all their friends swimming around, before they drift down the glowing white light in the drain. Instead of seeing the ascent up to their death at the fish factory, you imagine you are a prince sailing a river, loved and worshipped by your men. Another subtle detail is that all these family members are given slightly different or vastly different art styles, whether it be in the style of a comic for a girl who died of a murder most foul, or the dark, murky shading of the girl who died of toothpaste poisoning. What Remains of Edith Finch raises an additional question of whether this family just has horrible luck, or there is a supernatural theme going on here.
Death in What Remains of Edith Finch is not the end, but rather the extension of the story. The player must experience each of these deaths before they can fully understand the family’s history. The deaths in Edith Finch are almost sort of a merciful killing, in that these characters in a relatively restrictive situation are given some moments to escape the monotony of their lives, and the bounds of the house, if but for a moment. There is a simple symbolism to the house, in that each room roots off from the ground floor, where the grandparents once lived. This is the family tree of the Finch family, and you realize fairly soon why you are exploring this house as an outsider. The circumstances in which you arrive upon the house are not simply because the writers needed an easy way to start the story, rather you are the daughter of the last remaining Finch member who left the home claiming that there was nothing but bad memories there, and you are determined to find out more about these family members your mother avoids so desperately. There is a simple clear purpose to everything in Edith Finch, and it is why it is perhaps my favorite game. It is through these almost whimsical deaths that Edith Finch unravels perhaps one of the most beautiful and compelling narratives in video game history.
Video version: