It does make the characters stand out, though, as their art style doesn’t carry the same masterful touch as the environments and their animations jerk and slide around in unnatural ways. As far as environments go it’s one of the most immersive around, with convincing flora and realistically-weathered buildings.
Flowering bushes waft in the breeze, leaves flutter down from autumn branches, water splashes over glistening rocks, and the valley itself stretches out to a golden, sun-touched horizon. But my God, even two years out the Redux version looks absolutely incredible in all its vibrant details. So yes, the rest of the game is just walking around the valley, and if it weren’t such a lovely valley that might be a bad thing. The fragments DO reward you with some fantastic scenes though, definitely the creative high points of the title and absolutely worth seeking out. For the story fragments every one is different, from pursuing a fleet-footed stranger to rearranging the rooms in a house, but these are still only brief respites from the wandering at the core of the game. There’s no challenge to these sequences, as getting the order wrong does nothing but waste time. The murders require you to locate bits of evidence in and around the scene and then number the sequence of events when presented with their ghostly echoes. Those investigations and the additional story fragments are the only breaks in the wandering you’re going to get, and I’d be lying if I said they amounted to much gameplay.
THE VANISHING OF ETHAN CARTER GRAPHICS FULL
You won’t get the full picture without finding them, and they tend to be far more interesting in nature than the murder investigations. The main story beats are centered around the murders which are usually central to an area but there are other fragments of the story scattered in the far fields and crumbling buildings of the valley. Red Creek Valley is a vast, open place that hides many secrets along the path to your destination. This doesn’t mean you need to pore over scattered notes or audio logs, it means you literally need to go out and find pieces of the story. The game is quick to inform you when you begin that it’s a free-form story, one that you’ll need to piece together yourself. It’s a beautiful and disturbing journey, and one with more than a few surprises in store. Paul’s supernatural attunement allows you to uncover the truth behind a string of grisly murders and the strange events surrounding them, eventually revealing the nature of the place and Ethan’s disappearance. The boy has vanished somewhere in the pastoral fields and forests of Red Creek Valley, and immediately upon arrival it’s clear that the picturesque landscape hides a great evil. You play world-weary baritone detective Paul Prospero, a veteran paranormal investigator in search of missing child Ethan Carter. In fact it might just be the Platonic ideal of the genre, considering how much of its appeal hinges on graphics and story as opposed to actual gameplay.
Much of their appeal hinges on their graphics and environment design, and that’s where The Vanishing of Ethan Carter shines the brightest. I seek out interesting walking sims, ones that promise interesting scenery and clever storytelling, and while they may be rare they do indeed exist.
Honestly I think the term has been mostly reclaimed by a flourishing genre of environmental exploration games that arose in the wake of Dear Esther and Gone Home. “Walking Simulator” isn’t a pejorative to me like it is to some. This review is for the Redux version, included with the standard game.
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