Review: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
Exploration games are becoming more and more common place in today’s game community. From the experimental Dear Esther to the emotional Gone Home, these peaceful, yet powerful games are being made by some of the industry’s most creative minds. The latest edition to the genre (and the object of today’s review) is The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, created by some of the people behind Bulletstorm and Gears of War Judgement (you can read our interview with Adrian Chmielarz here).
Now, at first this might not seem possible, and the way studios get into the habit of cranking out the same game year after year you’d be forgiven for expecting this to be about Ethan Carter, space pirate and locust killer, but it’s not. In fact, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a beautiful, albeit spooky game inspired by Twin Peaks and other surreal thrillers.
Taking on the role of a private investigator, your mission is to explore the seemingly quaint Red Creek Valley to search for Ethan Carter, who, unsurprisingly after reading the title, has vanished. Red Creek however, is not only home to a beautiful vista and stunning abandoned towns, but also something very sinister. Known only as the Sleeper, this being is set about to kill Ethan Carter, and has possessed his family to do so.
It’s an interesting plot that blends the supernatural and the detective genres well, with a good collection of locations to explore in order to piece together the weird happenings of Red Creek Valley. However realistic it might be, some of these locations are a fair trek from each other, and however pretty the landscape and gravely the narration, it can become tedious. Ethan Carter is a game that promises not to hold your hand, and it doesn’t, but with such a spacious and open world a little more direction would have been nice.
Each location has about one ‘case’ to solve, as well as one additional puzzle. The cases, which revolve around the unnervingly ominous Sleeper and his puppets, require you to reconstruct a scene so that you may psychically sense what occurred. These are entertaining mysteries to be solved, but with the cryptic nature of the game, motives are more than a little unclear. The extra puzzles are small, hidden side missions that somehow change the tone and pacing of the game. For instance, one involves an infamous evil book and the awakening of some ancient gods. They are a nice extra, especially when you’re never one hundred per cent sure you’ve started one or not.
Being the open exploration game that it is, you can complete each location in any order, and may actually need to do so as some are far more difficult than others. But it’s not a long game overall, as it can be completed in one or two sittings. It’s a bit of a shame it couldn’t be made any longer, but the repetitiveness of completing each case could have been really felt over the course of a longer, 10+ hour campaign. The story, however vague does hold strong through your search for the titular boy, with an ending that will make you want to play through the game once more. After that however, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to return to The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.
As far as gameplay goes there isn’t much else to do other than exploring and completing puzzles. That’s not a bad thing, as they feel deep and satisfying, but puzzles are completed in the same way each time, so they will stay exactly the same during multiple playthroughs.
The Astronauts have created what I believe to be a fun game that does well communicating its creepy and supernatural genre, but turns out to be just a little too short and a little top linear to keep your attention once you’ve finished the story. It is a pleasant game, and tense at times, but there ultimately isn’t much to do.