‘What Remains of Edith Finch’ being the main reference given to us by the Games students for their Phone-booth VR game, I decided to delve further into the methodologies behind it.
It is essentially a narrative driven, first person game that uses storytelling, gameplay mechanics, music and a variety of visuals and movement to create a collection of short stories that are meant to shed light on the odd events that cause the members of the finch family their tragic demises. When beginning to watch a walkthrough video of the game I instantly noticed the uncluttered nature of the opening environment. Set in the woods, in which the main character is walking through, the sonic feel is uncluttered allowing us to enjoy the atmosphere of the woods whilst also registering every sound made through interaction, as well as the narrators overarching voice.
As the designated foley artist, I tried my best to pay special attention to the foley sounds throughout the game. The first thing I noticed however, which is also one of the first sounds we hear in the game, was the footsteps and how they seemed a little too robotic and without appropriate variation to recreate the feel of reality. Once the character reaches the house, once more I noticed that the sounds of the footsteps were inaccurate based on the amount of steps being taken, and did not sound appropriate the surfaces that were being tread on. Learning from this, I will make sure to pay special attention to variation and recreation when re-recording the foley for our group’s game.
On the other hand I noticed that in other parts of the game, footsteps had been omitted altogether, which I thought was done tastefully as it gave space for the music and narration and other sounds to take precedence. Being in a world that has been created for the purpose of narration means that the creator has the choice of what is heard, and in a way this omittal helped add to the suspension of fantasy one would find playing this game.
Considering the narrative nature of What Remains of Edith Finch, and it being the main reference, it made me see the Phone-booth VR in a different light; less about the completion of tasks, and more about the overall story or narrative. Using this newfound look on our work I wondered how else What Remains of Edith Finch could inform our game.
A couple things I noted was that the music at many points was intertwined with the soundscape, helping to underscore th narration as well as direct the emotional undercurrents. As well as this the music ever became an interactive experience of the game during parts of it; for example when winding the music box in the hallway to play the theme song. Lastly, descriptive sounds accompanied the narration at points, even being cued by it, bringing sounds in dependent on what the narrator was saying. This perhaps might be a handy tool to help concretise the spoken narrative that takes place in the phone-box in our game.