The Vanishing of Ethan Carter review: Weird tales
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is unlike any video game I've ever played. It naturally shares elements with other games, of course. It's played from a first-person perspective. It relies on the familiar structures of mystery and horror. And yes, its inhabitants have a proclivity for scattering their diaries, letters and newspaper clippings everywhere. All of these pieces combine to tell a very engaging, supernatural story, but that's not what makes The Vanishing of Ethan Carter special.
The difficult part – from the perspective of the person writing this review – is that I don't want to spoil a single second of the stuff that really shines. It's impossible to completely avoid that in the words that follow, but I'll try to summarize by saying this: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter revels in the fact that anything can happen in a video game, and that those happenings are made more meaningful by the interactivity of the medium. It gets a hearty recommendation from me.
If you need a little more to go on, and you're willing to expose yourself to one teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy spoiler – I promise it won't ruin anything – then please read on.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter puts you in the shoes, and presumably the fashionable fedora, of Paul Prospero, a sort of metaphysical detective. You've been summoned – via a handwritten letter, if you can believe it – to the aid of one Ethan Carter, a young boy who lives in Red Creek Valley, in what appears to be the Pacific Northwest. As Prospero's internal monologue plays aloud (in true detective style), you don't learn much: Ethan is entwined with the metaphysical himself, he's in some kind of trouble, and he needs your help.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter makes its ambiguity clear before the story even begins, telling its players, "This game is a narrative experience that does not hold your hand." There are no instructions, no tutorials, just the aforementioned monologue. As you step out of a darkened train tunnel into the dappled sunlight of a pine forest – everything is absolutely gorgeous, by the way – you're free to go wherever you want. That freedom is important, but we'll get to that.
Should you choose to follow the train tracks, you will be rewarded with a detective's reason for living: Clues. You'll see a smear of blood, rope tied to the tracks, a pair of severed legs and, eventually, the murder victim they belong to. Graphical overlays prompt you to examine these clues, and doing so causes Prospero's thoughts to flutter around the object in question. Near the blood, for example, you'll see phrases like "blood trail ..." and "dragged away?" or "crawled away?" It's a fun effect that not only helps you search for the remaining clues, but also gives you a peek into Prospero's thought process.
Once you've discovered all the clues in a given scene, you return to the corpse, where Prospero can open a sort of tear in reality. This reveals a series of characters, frozen in ghostly tableaus situated around the murder scene. These tableaus represent the course of events that led to the murder, and it's up to you to piece together what happened, walking through the scene, examining the tableaus and using button prompts to put each one in the correct order. You'll have to (lightly) flex your logical muscles here, using visual cues to determine the timeline. You can deduce, for example, that the tableau in which the victim is standing and talking to someone must have occurred before his legs were forcibly removed. Once you've put it all together, you're treated to a cutscene that lays out precisely how everything went down. These scenes help move the story along, painting a picture of Ethan's life and the darkness that surrounds his family, and they usually give you an idea of where to investigate next. It's a very clever concept, and it lends some vibrancy to what could have been cut-and-dry sleuthing.
You'll repeat this process several times throughout The Vanishing of Ethan Carter – clues, corpse, tableaus – and if that's all there was to it, you'd have an intriguing paranormal mystery with an alluring investigation mechanic. But there's another layer to game, one that delves even deeper into the metaphysical, and it's here where The Vanishing of Ethan Carter transcends being "good" and becomes something that borders on magical.
Again, the game makes it plain that you're on your own. The second the story begins and you step out of that tunnel, you can go wherever you want. Yes, you will eventually need to discover and unravel each murder, but you have the freedom to explore the world around you ... and you should. Hidden around the world are several playable vignettes – for lack of a better term – that seem to distort the game's already distorted reality, at times even altering its genre. These vignettes are generally set up as a framework for puzzles, which give further context to Ethan's relationship with his family when solved (hint: Ethan's home life isn't that great).
Recent Reviews
But it's the way that these vignettes transform the very fabric of the game's world that makes them so exceptional. You don't so much "find" them as you stumble into them. That's exactly why I don't want to spoil any of them but, if you've read this far, you needed some convincing, so I'll offer a small morsel of one.
Wandering through the forest near the train tracks at the beginning of the game, I came across a strange machine protruding from the ground: a metal pole adorned with four screens. It had absolutely no business being there. I quickly discovered that it was a simple puzzle, and I had to click each screen in the proper order. Upon doing so, a portal in space opened before me and, standing on the other side, staring back at me through a mirrored visor, was an astronaut. In the middle of the woods. In what I thought was a typical paranormal mystery game. I had about enough time to process this thought before he bolted off into the trees, which was my cue to chase after him.
I won't tell you what happened next, but it was one of the most peculiar and wonderful things I've ever seen in a video game. There are only a handful of these vignettes in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and some of them are more effective than others, but they greatly enrich the experience, both with pure spectacle and unexpected insight into the game's characters. They aren't simply weird for the sake of being weird, either. These wildly disparate moments are part of the same whole, and they are masterfully tied together, and they are as essential to telling Ethan's story as Prospero's murder investigations.
The only complaint I'll level at The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is that, in addition to investigating every murder scene, you'll need to discover every vignette in order to complete the game. It's entirely possible that you might miss a few vignettes along the way, especially if you're not the kind of player that goes exploring whenever you're given the chance. I am that kind of player and I still missed one vignette, and I had to hoof it all the way from the final area back to the beginning to find it. Then again, that's part and parcel of the game's open nature, but some may find it bothersome.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a singular experience, at times strange, astonishing and even bewildering, but always captivating. The mystery will keep you going, but what the game does best is surprise. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter has a great story to tell, even if it's not the one you were expecting.
This review is based on a Steam download of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, provided by The Astronauts. Images: The Astronauts.
Joystiq's review scores are based on a scale of whether the game in question is worth your time -- a five-star being a definitive "yes," and a one-star being a definitive "no." Read here for more information on our ratings guidelines.
