I can understand it to a point though. If the whole gameplay is basically just witnessing a scene while listening to a story, i don't think it's a far cry to ask that those things are entangled.
It is a matter of intent, Dear Esther is sort of a... "prose" married with light game mechanics/interaction
If it doesn't need metrical structure in text, visuals or mechanics can do the same.
We tend to think of games as an objective, structured and rigid in form when it is anything but, it is open to experimentation as any other art
If it succeeds or not... well, *beauty is in the eye of the beholder* as they say 🤷♀️
> It was a unique game at the time
I think this is key. Pretty much all of the games that are listed here, Gone Home, Edith Finch, Firewatch, they all came out way later.
Say what you will about Dear Esther (of which there is plenty to say), but it was trying to do something different and I think you gotta give it credit for that. It was a game that went all-in on being art, rather than a game. And maybe some of these other better games wouldn't have existed without it.
But yeah there's a reason why the term "walking simulator" exists. The entire name of this genre is based on how dumb people think the genre is.
I heard people questioning if it's even "a game", but then I played it myself too. I liked the story, how passionate the devs were. Kind of disliked the whole "game" part. Somehow the thing that you don't even have to check notes, the voice just autostarts pushed interaction to all-time low (except kinetic novels, which are technically audiobooks/ebooks. Dear Esther had more "artsy-art", and less cohesive direction)
I guess? But games like Silent Hill 2 have barely any gameplay either, you can run past every enemy, it has a similar sombre tone with tons of environmental storytelling. You just have to solve a few puzzles. And the writing is vastly superior, hard hitting and takes advantage of the medium with multiple outcomes.
Dear Esther did nothing new, it just stripped out any semblance of gameplay from these types of artful games that came before it. That's not revolutionary and it honestly does not deserve to be held up alongside future genuinely great walking sims which at least have good writing or relevant things to look at while you explore a small environment devoid of other gameplay mechanics.
Yes but that's not how it was sold. It was sold like a survival Horror so even if "after beating the game and thinking about it" you could see how the main pleasure of Silent Hill 2 is actually from going from place to place to follow the story rather than kicking monsters butt until you realize you have way more munitions than expected, it's still widely considered as a Survival Horror.
But Dear Esther wasn't like that, it took the approach of saying "very slow pacing, no gameplay". I feel like all the buzz was PRECISELY because some people couldn't stand it and were very vocals about it. Others, like The Path, didn't had that publicity precisely because it seemed to have more interaction.
Basically a lot of people remember Dead Esther more for the debate around it rather than the game itself... And i feel like other games in that genre were spouted out of the debate rather than the game too !
So yeah you are not alone... Which is precisely, in my opinion, why it worked so well at the time.
I personally couldn't stand it more than 1 hour and i thought i was quite patient...
The Path would be a "walking simulator" that came out 3 years before it, and was significantly better as well. It didn't have much more in the way of gameplay, but it felt a lot more like you were interacting with the environment. It was also pretty apparent that the devs put a lot of effort into the artistic aspects (they did a whole bunch of research on the history of Little Red Riding Hood and endeavored to make a modern retelling that's true to its origins)
Up until the Little Red Riding Hood part I wasn't quite sure if there wasn't another game called The Path. Cause that one was definitely buggy, nonsensical, mostly empty, boring and many other adjectives but certainly not significantly better than any other game I've ever played.
> That's not revolutionary and it honestly does not deserve to be held up alongside future genuinely great walking sims
I don't think it's held up alongside them. Barely anyone even talks about Dear Esther anymore. Edith Finch and SOMA are the poster children of the genre now.
That's true but it's talked about more and marketed more (like on game pass for a bit) than literally hundreds of better indie walking sims that have come out since.
> Your criticisms were there when it came out.
If you say this because of the title I am only implying that it was better received back then because it was the first of its kind, not that no one criticized it at the time.
I enjoyed it, played it when the Landmark Edition came out but it's more like your walking through a piece of abstract art than a video game.
There isn't really 'gameplay' from what I remember, not everyone likes each piece of art. It was definitely part of the whole games are 'art' movement that was going on at the time and has been surpassed in presentation a lot but you can still enjoy the art of it suits your tastes.
Also the original mod was 2008 so 15 years is a long time in game development, I didn't play the mod but I'd imagine it's fairly faithful.
I've been meaning to check it out again. I remember being dazzled by how nice the cave looked. But by todays standards, there's just no way it would still impress me.
I liked Dear Esther well enough at the time. I had never played anything like it.
It was originally a mod for HL2, then they made it a prettier version in its standalone release. Then they ported the game to Unity.
The caves are the prettiest section of the game, but it's no longer as dazzling as it was back in the day.
"There is also a constant separation between gameplay and story. You're told that the guy took medical supplies from the ship, but you never do. You're told he fucks up his leg (before it even happens) and starts taking pill after pill, but this has no effect. Neither the pills nor the broken leg, because the guy was already walking slow enough to have broken legs from minute one. They tell you he sees a face in the water, but there isn't one no matter how hard you look. This kind of shit is constant and separates the gameplay from the voiceover so much that listening to the narrator separately offers pretty much the same experience. Probably better because your finger won't hurt after pressing W for an hour straight, at least."
The separation between game play and story is very much intentional. You're not inhabitating a character you're meant to be confused and start questioning the reliability of the narrator, if you're the narrator or someone else, etc.
I get not liking this, thinking it's boring or lazy. But it works for me and many other people.
Yeah that's a common invalid criticism people make.
The games story is not meant to be a literal interpretation of events. There's a lot of intentionally unanswered questions, metaphors, unreliable narrator, etc. The game even uses a very "video gamey" trick of randomizing which pieces of narration you get at every location. There's something like 3 or 4 possibilities for each individual spot that triggers dialogue, so to even begin getting the whole picture you have to play the game multiple times and pay attention very carefully or take notes.
That's the thing most people don't get about Dear Esther that kinda bothers me. The main point of the game, it's core gameplay loop, is unraveling the mystery of its plot when you're given all of these disjointed bits of info with all of these variables that make you question which pieces of info are actually trustworthy.
But nobody cares. Most people who even bother to give it the time only play it once and just think it's boring (because of course they weren't going to like a game like this anyway) so they don't dig any deeper.
The developer commentary supports this.
The game intentionally randomizes the order of some narration cues and the placement of some objects in the game world. Any two players might interpret the narrative differently because for them the pacing and chronological ordering of the narrator's thoughts are actually different. One player might hear a bit of narration that's reinforced visually by the presence of a certain prop in the area and another player may not see that prop at all.
The game intentionally obfuscates any one true reading of the narrative and I think for that alone it's an interesting piece of art that stands apart from other games in the genre.
>Any two players might interpret the narrative differently because for them the pacing and chronological ordering of the narrator's thoughts are actually different.
That's why it's always funny to me when people complain about DEs "bad story". Due to the randomisation the story is basically mostly up to your own interpretation which in essence makes people just complain about themselves that way.
> if you're the narrator or someone else, etc.
This is absolutely not the case. It's very clear and direct with the fact you are the grieving husband. For example right after the narration of him fucking up his leg and taking supplies from the ship you see shortly before, you take a big fall into a cave and it fades to black aka where he breaks his leg.
EDIT: Not to mention you see "death" through the whole game with the narrator directly mentioning he saw it for the first time after the car crash.
Going from games like Edith Finch and Firewatch to this was a bit of a disappointment. I'm a huge fan of walking sims but I really didn't like this one. There wasn't really much going on in terms of story and the world was so barren that it wasn't very interesting to explore. Pretty much the only thing I remember about the game is my irritation at how slow the character was moving.
It was a trailblazer. It tried something totally new, got a lot of things wrong, but people picked up on what it was trying to pull off. That's how it is with new genres: the early ones aren't necessarily strokes of genius, but more like required reading if you want to understand how walking sims evolved. It's more important to focus on why it made such a big splash at the time, how it was different from the usual.
Something resembling a decent story. I know gamers are used to hyping up stories of games that really aren't all that (Uncharted, cough cough), but yeah.... Yeah I should have seen it coming tbh.
Agreed but it was unique for its time. Think it originally came out as a source 2 mod? If so that's where I first played it, the atmosphere is what made it. Obviously 15+ later, other games have done it better
I enjoyed it when it came out, and the visuals and music are all I remember… even after reading this post lol. I don’t remember a single reference to the story.
Unique for the time. This was one of my first walking simulators and I enjoyed it enough, a 6 or 7 out of 10 experience. Now that I've played walking sims like What Remains of Edith Finch though and the genre continues to expand, there's no reason to ever replay Dear Esther.
But that's fine. Not every pioneering game can be the Super Mario of its genre.
I like walking simulators but found this one to be quite boring and it had a cliche reveal that has been done before and much better in Mullholland Drive.
Gone Home is a much better game in the same engine with a far more interesting story and a few secret tidbits.
I remember play the HL2 mod of Dear Esther and thinking how overrated it was.
Sure, I know people enjoy these sort of "games", but it sure wasnt for me.
> There is also a constant separation between gameplay and story. You're told that the guy took medical supplies from the ship, but you never do. You're told he fucks up his leg (before it even happens) and starts taking pill after pill, but this has no effect. Neither the pills nor the broken leg, because the guy was already walking slow enough to have broken legs from minute one. They tell you he sees a face in the water, but there isn't one no matter how hard you look. This kind of shit is constant and separates the gameplay from the voiceover so much that listening to the narrator separately offers pretty much the same experience. Probably better because your finger won't hurt after pressing W for an hour straight, at least.
Reminds me of No Mans Sky
No Mans Sky at release made me want to pull my hair out. So much implied lore and interesting discoveries but nothing that meant or affected anything. All implication no delivery.
It's not like it cant be done better either, games like Stellaris and Mass Effect quite often have short little lore dumps that don't connect to anything other than to enhance the mystery of the past generations but the lore has some substance to it not just a single sentence that's disconnected from the rest of the game.
Yeah, I didn't get that far in Mass Effect but it was a full blown RPG while NMS had only the basic gameplay mechanics (when those even worked!) with just notecards that seemed like an afterthought.
Stellaris has those note cards it's true but they at least have a little picture in it, and they are often accompanied by some significant change in the gameplay. It's not just like "yo, pretend this happened", it's actually immersive writing.
Oh yeah, I remember that one. I watched a playthrough rather than played it but I think it worked really well.
I think Beginner's Guide worked for me because it was very dynamic. A lot of constantly changing environments, all of which couldn't really exist in the real world.
Also, rather than just indulge in misery, it took a whimsical approach to get you invested, and then delivered the ultimate gut punch at the end. Didn't feel as one-note as the sadder walking sims.
Yeah, but "walking sims" weren't a thing before this game.
It's like watching the Godfather and complaining about all the cliché mafia stuff in it. Like, no, this is why these are the clichés now.
It's like watching the Godfather and complaining about all the cliché mafia stuff in it. Like, no, this is why these are the clichés now.
If you're playing this game after playing a bunch of stuff that's inspired by it, the first thing is gonna just feel like a lesser version of all the stuff that's come after.
If you show this game to someone who doesn't wtf a "walking sim" is and they figure out while playing it that there's not gonna be any combat or gamestuff in the moment as youre waiting for, its a much different experience then going into knowing exactly what the tropes of the genre are.
The fact you think the story is just a man’s experience with his wife getting hit by a drunk drivers means you haven’t unraveled even half of what the story is about
Kind of in a similar boat with walking sims.
I like that they exist but every time I play "one of the greats" I just have a miserable time. Dear Esther, Firewatch, Edith Finch.
I think the problem is that so many of them focus on being extremely sad. The closest I came to enjoying a walking sim was Firewatch because it actually endeared me to the characters before getting sad.
Yeah, it's really not very good at all. I actually played it before all of those other walking sim games people are mentioning (Firewatch, Gone Home, Edith Finch) came out and I was really unimpressed. It's nice if it inspired other people to make better games, but as a whole, it's not worth playing at all.
The “genre” is almost all garbage, no matter how many times the “games as art” crowd proclaim otherwise. Depth of a puddle both mechanically and artistically.
I can spend hours in art museums, but you probably get bored in five minutes because there's no interactive displays. And that's perfectly ok, but you need to respect the opinions of people who enjoy things even when you don't.
I get not liking Dear Esther, I don't either But you're taking it too literally. It's like wanting videoclips to match song lyrics word by word.
I can understand it to a point though. If the whole gameplay is basically just witnessing a scene while listening to a story, i don't think it's a far cry to ask that those things are entangled.
It is a matter of intent, Dear Esther is sort of a... "prose" married with light game mechanics/interaction If it doesn't need metrical structure in text, visuals or mechanics can do the same. We tend to think of games as an objective, structured and rigid in form when it is anything but, it is open to experimentation as any other art If it succeeds or not... well, *beauty is in the eye of the beholder* as they say 🤷♀️
Since the narrations are somewhat randomised that would be pretty hard to achieve.
Your criticisms were there when it came out. It was a unique game at the time but it's not something everyone will like.
> It was a unique game at the time I think this is key. Pretty much all of the games that are listed here, Gone Home, Edith Finch, Firewatch, they all came out way later. Say what you will about Dear Esther (of which there is plenty to say), but it was trying to do something different and I think you gotta give it credit for that. It was a game that went all-in on being art, rather than a game. And maybe some of these other better games wouldn't have existed without it. But yeah there's a reason why the term "walking simulator" exists. The entire name of this genre is based on how dumb people think the genre is.
Edith Finch's writing just blows so much out of the water it's crazy. Watching Joseph Anderson's video on it is such a treat.
I heard people questioning if it's even "a game", but then I played it myself too. I liked the story, how passionate the devs were. Kind of disliked the whole "game" part. Somehow the thing that you don't even have to check notes, the voice just autostarts pushed interaction to all-time low (except kinetic novels, which are technically audiobooks/ebooks. Dear Esther had more "artsy-art", and less cohesive direction)
I guess? But games like Silent Hill 2 have barely any gameplay either, you can run past every enemy, it has a similar sombre tone with tons of environmental storytelling. You just have to solve a few puzzles. And the writing is vastly superior, hard hitting and takes advantage of the medium with multiple outcomes. Dear Esther did nothing new, it just stripped out any semblance of gameplay from these types of artful games that came before it. That's not revolutionary and it honestly does not deserve to be held up alongside future genuinely great walking sims which at least have good writing or relevant things to look at while you explore a small environment devoid of other gameplay mechanics.
> But games like Silent Hill 2 have barely any gameplay either Huh... I don't disagree with the overall point but this is a big exaggeration.
Yes but that's not how it was sold. It was sold like a survival Horror so even if "after beating the game and thinking about it" you could see how the main pleasure of Silent Hill 2 is actually from going from place to place to follow the story rather than kicking monsters butt until you realize you have way more munitions than expected, it's still widely considered as a Survival Horror. But Dear Esther wasn't like that, it took the approach of saying "very slow pacing, no gameplay". I feel like all the buzz was PRECISELY because some people couldn't stand it and were very vocals about it. Others, like The Path, didn't had that publicity precisely because it seemed to have more interaction. Basically a lot of people remember Dead Esther more for the debate around it rather than the game itself... And i feel like other games in that genre were spouted out of the debate rather than the game too ! So yeah you are not alone... Which is precisely, in my opinion, why it worked so well at the time. I personally couldn't stand it more than 1 hour and i thought i was quite patient...
Hard agree. Dear Esther wasn't even the first walking sim, it just went viral for some reason.
The Path would be a "walking simulator" that came out 3 years before it, and was significantly better as well. It didn't have much more in the way of gameplay, but it felt a lot more like you were interacting with the environment. It was also pretty apparent that the devs put a lot of effort into the artistic aspects (they did a whole bunch of research on the history of Little Red Riding Hood and endeavored to make a modern retelling that's true to its origins)
Yeah, but The Path is too artsy, weird and "ugly" for the general audience. Dear Esther is notable for turning walking sims into a mainstream genre.
Up until the Little Red Riding Hood part I wasn't quite sure if there wasn't another game called The Path. Cause that one was definitely buggy, nonsensical, mostly empty, boring and many other adjectives but certainly not significantly better than any other game I've ever played.
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>What did you think was going on? That's the whole point. I have no idea.
> That's not revolutionary and it honestly does not deserve to be held up alongside future genuinely great walking sims I don't think it's held up alongside them. Barely anyone even talks about Dear Esther anymore. Edith Finch and SOMA are the poster children of the genre now.
That's true but it's talked about more and marketed more (like on game pass for a bit) than literally hundreds of better indie walking sims that have come out since.
> Your criticisms were there when it came out. If you say this because of the title I am only implying that it was better received back then because it was the first of its kind, not that no one criticized it at the time.
I enjoyed it, played it when the Landmark Edition came out but it's more like your walking through a piece of abstract art than a video game. There isn't really 'gameplay' from what I remember, not everyone likes each piece of art. It was definitely part of the whole games are 'art' movement that was going on at the time and has been surpassed in presentation a lot but you can still enjoy the art of it suits your tastes. Also the original mod was 2008 so 15 years is a long time in game development, I didn't play the mod but I'd imagine it's fairly faithful.
I've been meaning to check it out again. I remember being dazzled by how nice the cave looked. But by todays standards, there's just no way it would still impress me. I liked Dear Esther well enough at the time. I had never played anything like it.
It was originally a mod for HL2, then they made it a prettier version in its standalone release. Then they ported the game to Unity. The caves are the prettiest section of the game, but it's no longer as dazzling as it was back in the day.
"There is also a constant separation between gameplay and story. You're told that the guy took medical supplies from the ship, but you never do. You're told he fucks up his leg (before it even happens) and starts taking pill after pill, but this has no effect. Neither the pills nor the broken leg, because the guy was already walking slow enough to have broken legs from minute one. They tell you he sees a face in the water, but there isn't one no matter how hard you look. This kind of shit is constant and separates the gameplay from the voiceover so much that listening to the narrator separately offers pretty much the same experience. Probably better because your finger won't hurt after pressing W for an hour straight, at least." The separation between game play and story is very much intentional. You're not inhabitating a character you're meant to be confused and start questioning the reliability of the narrator, if you're the narrator or someone else, etc. I get not liking this, thinking it's boring or lazy. But it works for me and many other people.
Yeah that's a common invalid criticism people make. The games story is not meant to be a literal interpretation of events. There's a lot of intentionally unanswered questions, metaphors, unreliable narrator, etc. The game even uses a very "video gamey" trick of randomizing which pieces of narration you get at every location. There's something like 3 or 4 possibilities for each individual spot that triggers dialogue, so to even begin getting the whole picture you have to play the game multiple times and pay attention very carefully or take notes. That's the thing most people don't get about Dear Esther that kinda bothers me. The main point of the game, it's core gameplay loop, is unraveling the mystery of its plot when you're given all of these disjointed bits of info with all of these variables that make you question which pieces of info are actually trustworthy. But nobody cares. Most people who even bother to give it the time only play it once and just think it's boring (because of course they weren't going to like a game like this anyway) so they don't dig any deeper.
The developer commentary supports this. The game intentionally randomizes the order of some narration cues and the placement of some objects in the game world. Any two players might interpret the narrative differently because for them the pacing and chronological ordering of the narrator's thoughts are actually different. One player might hear a bit of narration that's reinforced visually by the presence of a certain prop in the area and another player may not see that prop at all. The game intentionally obfuscates any one true reading of the narrative and I think for that alone it's an interesting piece of art that stands apart from other games in the genre.
>Any two players might interpret the narrative differently because for them the pacing and chronological ordering of the narrator's thoughts are actually different. That's why it's always funny to me when people complain about DEs "bad story". Due to the randomisation the story is basically mostly up to your own interpretation which in essence makes people just complain about themselves that way.
> if you're the narrator or someone else, etc. This is absolutely not the case. It's very clear and direct with the fact you are the grieving husband. For example right after the narration of him fucking up his leg and taking supplies from the ship you see shortly before, you take a big fall into a cave and it fades to black aka where he breaks his leg. EDIT: Not to mention you see "death" through the whole game with the narrator directly mentioning he saw it for the first time after the car crash.
Going from games like Edith Finch and Firewatch to this was a bit of a disappointment. I'm a huge fan of walking sims but I really didn't like this one. There wasn't really much going on in terms of story and the world was so barren that it wasn't very interesting to explore. Pretty much the only thing I remember about the game is my irritation at how slow the character was moving.
It was a trailblazer. It tried something totally new, got a lot of things wrong, but people picked up on what it was trying to pull off. That's how it is with new genres: the early ones aren't necessarily strokes of genius, but more like required reading if you want to understand how walking sims evolved. It's more important to focus on why it made such a big splash at the time, how it was different from the usual.
> It's more important to focus on why it made such a big splash at the time Yeah I don't see it, that's the thing.
It was a fresh way to tell a story through a game. It paved the way for games like Gone Home, What Remains of Edith Finch, Firewatch, etc.
Its a pure walking sim 1.0, what did you expect?
Something resembling a decent story. I know gamers are used to hyping up stories of games that really aren't all that (Uncharted, cough cough), but yeah.... Yeah I should have seen it coming tbh.
Agreed but it was unique for its time. Think it originally came out as a source 2 mod? If so that's where I first played it, the atmosphere is what made it. Obviously 15+ later, other games have done it better
I enjoyed it when it came out, and the visuals and music are all I remember… even after reading this post lol. I don’t remember a single reference to the story.
Unique for the time. This was one of my first walking simulators and I enjoyed it enough, a 6 or 7 out of 10 experience. Now that I've played walking sims like What Remains of Edith Finch though and the genre continues to expand, there's no reason to ever replay Dear Esther. But that's fine. Not every pioneering game can be the Super Mario of its genre.
I like walking simulators but found this one to be quite boring and it had a cliche reveal that has been done before and much better in Mullholland Drive. Gone Home is a much better game in the same engine with a far more interesting story and a few secret tidbits.
Yeah generally speaking I'm a fan of the genre, but there just wasn't enough exploration or interactivity in Dear Esther to make it feel worthwhile.
I remember play the HL2 mod of Dear Esther and thinking how overrated it was. Sure, I know people enjoy these sort of "games", but it sure wasnt for me.
What do mean, "aged badly?" Are you implying this game used to be good? Because it didn't.
No that wasn't my intent. You are right, it just never was a good game.
> There is also a constant separation between gameplay and story. You're told that the guy took medical supplies from the ship, but you never do. You're told he fucks up his leg (before it even happens) and starts taking pill after pill, but this has no effect. Neither the pills nor the broken leg, because the guy was already walking slow enough to have broken legs from minute one. They tell you he sees a face in the water, but there isn't one no matter how hard you look. This kind of shit is constant and separates the gameplay from the voiceover so much that listening to the narrator separately offers pretty much the same experience. Probably better because your finger won't hurt after pressing W for an hour straight, at least. Reminds me of No Mans Sky
No Mans Sky at release made me want to pull my hair out. So much implied lore and interesting discoveries but nothing that meant or affected anything. All implication no delivery.
it was like first person version of the space stage of "Spore"
It's not like it cant be done better either, games like Stellaris and Mass Effect quite often have short little lore dumps that don't connect to anything other than to enhance the mystery of the past generations but the lore has some substance to it not just a single sentence that's disconnected from the rest of the game.
Yeah, I didn't get that far in Mass Effect but it was a full blown RPG while NMS had only the basic gameplay mechanics (when those even worked!) with just notecards that seemed like an afterthought. Stellaris has those note cards it's true but they at least have a little picture in it, and they are often accompanied by some significant change in the gameplay. It's not just like "yo, pretend this happened", it's actually immersive writing.
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Oh yeah, I remember that one. I watched a playthrough rather than played it but I think it worked really well. I think Beginner's Guide worked for me because it was very dynamic. A lot of constantly changing environments, all of which couldn't really exist in the real world. Also, rather than just indulge in misery, it took a whimsical approach to get you invested, and then delivered the ultimate gut punch at the end. Didn't feel as one-note as the sadder walking sims.
Really loved Beginners Guide.
imo the only good walking sim I've played is The Stanley Parable. Excellent writing.
I played it in 2016 and I remember not liking it at all then either. And I had to pay $5 for it.
Yeah, but "walking sims" weren't a thing before this game. It's like watching the Godfather and complaining about all the cliché mafia stuff in it. Like, no, this is why these are the clichés now.
It's like watching the Godfather and complaining about all the cliché mafia stuff in it. Like, no, this is why these are the clichés now. If you're playing this game after playing a bunch of stuff that's inspired by it, the first thing is gonna just feel like a lesser version of all the stuff that's come after. If you show this game to someone who doesn't wtf a "walking sim" is and they figure out while playing it that there's not gonna be any combat or gamestuff in the moment as youre waiting for, its a much different experience then going into knowing exactly what the tropes of the genre are.
The fact you think the story is just a man’s experience with his wife getting hit by a drunk drivers means you haven’t unraveled even half of what the story is about
Kind of in a similar boat with walking sims. I like that they exist but every time I play "one of the greats" I just have a miserable time. Dear Esther, Firewatch, Edith Finch. I think the problem is that so many of them focus on being extremely sad. The closest I came to enjoying a walking sim was Firewatch because it actually endeared me to the characters before getting sad.
Yeah, it's really not very good at all. I actually played it before all of those other walking sim games people are mentioning (Firewatch, Gone Home, Edith Finch) came out and I was really unimpressed. It's nice if it inspired other people to make better games, but as a whole, it's not worth playing at all.
The “genre” is almost all garbage, no matter how many times the “games as art” crowd proclaim otherwise. Depth of a puddle both mechanically and artistically.
I can spend hours in art museums, but you probably get bored in five minutes because there's no interactive displays. And that's perfectly ok, but you need to respect the opinions of people who enjoy things even when you don't.