The product-of-assembly depiction makes for an idle assessment, but it’s difficult not to look at Ethan Carter and see narrative guidance from Twain and Vern, Lovecraft’s proclivity for the destructive supernatural, and Chandler’s pulpy detective fiction. The tale Ethan Carter ultimately aches to tell isn’t as complex or natural as its influences, but it finds ample success in directing a curious story through an interactive ensemble.
Further exploring its foundations in classic literature, Ethan Carter dutifully obliges the prevailing backlash against overt instruction. Books do not usually come with guides telling you how to read them, and Ethan Carter is deliberately unequipped to tell you how to play it. Taking place in the ostensibly vast countryside of Red Creek Valley, Ethan Carter boasts a handful of contained objectives and requisite mechanics to engage them, but zero guiding lines in their employment. Provoking interest through attractive tests of intuition serve as Ethan Carter’s interactive driving force; and the game openly states it’s not giving anything away for free.
Thankfully, making sense of all of this isn’t too difficult. Paul Prospero, heroic detective extraordinaire, is dropped into Red Creek Valley with vague inklings of severe human distress. The titular Ethan Carter has expectedly vanished, and in his wake is a macabre series of death and destruction involving his immediate family. Prospero frequently drops into obtuse soliloquies ruminating on the value of his surroundings and lessons from those who have passed on. Unfortunately, the construction of these instances ranges from slightly embarrassing to and earnest imitation of the genre fiction that birthed his persona. Prospero feels kind of silly in the ultra-serious world Ethan Carter depicts, but his rhyme and reason in the grand narrative survives his baroque ruminations.
Prospero’s abilities as a detective are means to solve Ethan Carter’s connected mysteries. The grisly murders that inhabit Red Creek Valley are subject to his supernatural means of cracking the case, and it’s here that Ethan Carter obliges more traditional adventure game mechanics. Inevitably Prospero will stumble across an overt clue, outlined by white text that begs further investigation. From there Prospero’s thought process visibly explores a series of related clues, occasionally manifesting into a core idea that, figuratively speaking, points toward the next clue. Once all clues are gathered, they separate into different vignettes the player must properly order. By ordering them all correctly, the player is treated to a connected tale that adds complete context to the victim’s unfortunate end.
The amount of trust Ethan Carter puts in the player almost runs counter to the relative ease of solving its mysteries. Red Creek Valley is beautifully rendered and geographically huge, and yet finding the specific triggers to initiate investigations can be a lot of trouble. In retrospect Ethan Carter offers a fairly clean “path” to its series of challenges, and it even manages to reward a bit of exploration along the way, but it doesn’t really make its process that enjoyable of a puzzle. Correctly ordering the sequence of events is uniformly easy, as is the task of placing the handful of inventory’d objects in their correct positions. This would be a crushing disappointment had it served as Ethan Carter’s beating heart, but it’s closer to the oxygen that pushes it everything into motion.
Other, divergent aspects of Ethan Carter feed its ambition. Chief among them are surreal instances of supposed delusion, including but not limited to some obscene, uh, extracurricular activities. Figuring why a group of people lost their lives may be the objective mystery, but they’re surrounded by a handful of smaller encounters that serve as the game’s charming puzzles. Ethan Carter’s highest card is played near its closing moments, so I’m reluctant to provide any concrete examples, other than to say its beauty is the revelation that ties it all together. Ethan Carter’s tragedy is wrapped in everything from disastrous fantasy to tangible, relatable family drama – but it only comes together with keystone of a finale.
Ethan Carter’s story, while tidying up quite well at the end, endures a few pains along the way. The voice acting, at least in English, stinks of bad readings or actors poorly informed of their character’s circumstances. Ethan fares pretty well as a free spirited kid and Prospero chews up his hardboiled lines, but the members of Ethan’s family suffer under the weight of poor performances. Likewise, the treasure chest of letters scattered about Red Creek Valley aren’t as nuanced or subversive as they’re intended to be. This is especially clear after playing a game like Eidolon, which taught veritable master class in the emerging explore/indulge genre of gaming. Ethan Carter boasts a disarming payoff, but its storytelling and pacing can’t compete with peers like Gone Home, Eidolon, or Dear Esther on the way there.
While its storytelling stumbles, Ethan Carter’s audio and visual presentation is unmatched in its genre and honestly impressive on its entire platform. Perhaps I’m dazed by my current string of low-fi indie indulgences, but at times I thought Ethan Carter (at max settings) was the best looking game I had ever seen. Even accounting for the ridiculous hyperbole of that statement, the fidelity of its textures, arrangement of its natural habitats, and sublime use of color trumps most anything else I’ve played on my PC. Photorealism typically isn’t my thing, but Ethan Carter’s resolute facsimile of nature and creaky rendition of abandonment seeks to impress from absolutely every angle. It’s happily supported by its music, a dynamically shifting arrangement of strings and percussive instruments apt for any encounter. Granted, Red Creek Valley isn’t exactly a bustling bastion of activity, allowing it to get away with quite a bit visually, but it’s tough to not stop, take a look around, and breath it all in.
The best, most satisfying kinds of projects are the ones you can put together without having to look at the instructions. Getting there may arrive with some tedious trial and error – and Ethan Carter’s resolution demands accomplishing all of its steps – but with it comes the pleasure of a job well done. Ethan Carter realizes this by the harmonious assembly of its environment, characters, and its narrative influences, coalescing into an affecting resolution and sympathetic experience. It’s one of the last things I expected from a supposed supernatural detective game, but, coincidentally, one I should have seen coming all along.
