Spoilers below!
Gone Home (Fullbright, 2013) is an interactive story that focuses on exploration and discovery within a closed, unfamiliar setting to unearth a narrative that has already occurred; in this sense, the game is not dissimilar to Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope, 2018). But the mechanics, ambience, and scope of the two games couldn’t be more different, and although Gone Home also concerns determining the fate of certain characters (in its case, the player character’s sister), grim outcomes, such as death, seem to be out of the question at the start of the game simply based on the game’s blurb.
That is, until the player encounters the Front Door Note from the player character’s sister, which sets a tone of unease, but not so much so as to forecast a specific outcome. “Please, please don’t go digging around trying to find out where I am. I don’t want Mom and Dad anyone to know“—these words already raise red flags, and when the player subsequently encounters harrowing answering machine messages from a yet unknown character, the sense of wrongness and the anticipation of something horrific begins to build.
And yet, in the expanse of the house and its interactive elements, the player soon gets lost in the story, conveyed through the diegetic environment (objects and readable notes) and the voiceover of the sister. Indeed, in my opinion, it is the voiceover that keeps the game’s horror elements in check; the player is never alone in this setting that could pretty much be a haunted mansion. Any horror-related plot devices, like an ouija board or some kind of sacrificial altar, are caricaturized and portrayed in a way that makes them less scary; for example, the stereotypical horror icon of the ouija board being used to contact Sam’s deceased uncle becomes less relevant in comparison with the blooming relationship of Sam and Lonnie. The player’s expectations are still there, but they take are sidelined in favor of something that is even more emotionally compelling.
But, although the supernatural horror elements are essentially dismissed by the game, and thus the player, a different sense of dread is manifesting all the while. The notes left by Sam become a vehicle for this dread: “Please, whatever you’ve found, don’t tell Mom and Dad. The attic–” “Maybe I’ll go up to the attic… and wait…” “I said I didn’t want my life to keep moving without her.” Among others. But I think the only moment of actual horror I experienced was turning the corner to see the end of the hallway leading to the attic, bathed in the red glow. Suddenly, the conventional horror elements are there again, with demonic implications at the forefront. The navigable space of the game is set up in a way that evokes a reaction to these elements, but this reaction proves unfounded as the player approaches the scrawled note taped to the wall: “SAM’S DARKROOM DO NOT ENTER IF RED LIGHTS ARE ON.” It is only then that the player realizes that the red lights are on, and a different, worse horror (the horror of tragedy) comes to the forefront. At this point, the player has been immersed in Sam’s story and experiences, told through her own voice, and the possibility of the tragic ending becomes truly dreadful.
The game, in typical horror fashion, uses the idea of the implied and the unknown in its narrative and setting to keep the player both hooked and invested. But when it subverts the dread and implied tragedy, presenting a “good” if somewhat melancholy ending, the subversion of expectations evokes relief, and instead of challenging the player with something new, it provides emotional comfort with something that is, ultimately, a rather cliché resolution.
I think what you’ve observed about the subversion of expectations in the game is really insightful here. That side, I think I slightly disagree that the relatively “good” ending of the game is necessarily clichéd, or that a darker ending would’ve been necessarily more interesting. It seems to me that so much of Gone Home occurs through such a personal lens, that to end on a less narratively dramatic point resonates with the messy endings we encounter in day-to-day life, where neat conclusions so often elude us and we are often left with nothing but unsatisfied melancholy resonances, actually follows through on the “exploratory narrative” structure that echoes real life. In that sense, I actually think Gone Home’s ending might be more genre-complicating than a neater but darker ending, as other such “look for clues”-type games might feel the need to fall back on a more lively ending to compensate for the relatively slower-paced structure.
Further, this is somewhat unrelated, but this game strikes me as the one most “playable in real life”? I say this because playing Gone Home really reminded me of the Meow Wolf art installation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which I got to visit last year and also has sort of an environmental hidden emerging narrative. I don’t know what to make of that, but once again the line between life and game is really interesting to me.
I really enjoyed your discussion of the horror elements in Gone Home! When playing the game, I wasn’t necessarily sure if I should be scared or not; it felt like anything could come at you, but it just wasn’t really done that way. I found myself getting more engulfed in Sam and Lonnies love story than the story of Sam’s mystery disappearance, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that.