Things I Played: Everybody's Gone To The Rapture - An Apocalyptic Game About The Triviality of Life
Have you thought about what you'll do when you go to the rapture? I admit I hadn't before I played Everybody's Gone To The Rapture - the latest Walking Simulator from the good folks at The Chinese Room - but now I'm left wondering. The Chinese Room's third game, released in August last year, is great but with so much praise shifted onto it already I'm struggling to find something to add to the story. It is, as stated by so many others before me, a mature and sombre game. One that leaves traces of emotion like little specks of liquid light. Actually let's leave it there because I won't find a better alliterative phrase than that.
Briefly then, Everybody's Dog and Their Rapture is set in the aftermath of an apocalypse. A quick look on Google doesn't reveal much about what kind of game it is. Even a short video doesn't say much at all. To tell you the truth, I didn't have much of an idea about what the game was really about until the last thirty minutes. Put simply and without spoilers, there's been an apocalypse, something about an infection in a small local village. It was quarantined but everybody died and we suddenly emerged afterwards. But there's nobody around. Just spectral light and audio recordings that reveal fragmented pieces of time and space in and out of order. Memories, relationships, feelings, thoughts. The expanse of fraught personalities laid bare. And cows too. A dozen of them at least.
To use an over-used comparison, the game is a lot like The Archers: At The End of The World. The small villages of Yaughton and Tipworth where the game is set, typifies a quintessential, even cliched, Englishness. We're caught in arguably the most exciting thing that's ever happened there but it only serves to reflect the lives of people who lived there before the catastrophe. This means we get to eavesdrop on past events of bishops afraid of losing control of their parishioners, nattering housewives caught up in pointless gossip, unfaithful husbands worried about getting caught, and even scientists trying to fix things to the bitter end. You know; ordinary folk dilemmas.
This means that unlike most media, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture gets its kicks from favouring banality. Filmmaker Chris Marker has a brilliant quote about this type of thing that reads 'I've been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me'. The experience EGttR offers is like a soulful sojourn to the supermarket; like time spent getting dressed in the morning; attempts at deicing your car in the middle of Winter. None of this happens int he game but it's no different to the simply drama of Stephen meeting with Lizzie for a pint, Frank crying about his cows, or Howard making sure the train signs are put up correctly. It's tender to the point of revealing how most games are fucking terrified of being so.
While the religious elements might not float everybody's boat it's hard to deny the designers have done a pretty damn good job emphasising the point that not everybody turns into John Cusack or Tom Cruise when threatened by the end of the world.
I mean, I would but not most people.
Pros:
- A wonderful setting? Never been to Shropshire but I reckon so.
- Exceptional music and voice-acting
- Respects the player's intelligence and/or attention-space
Cons:
- Too slow for some? Probably is.
- Emotional events can be a tad hit and miss.
- I saw some scaffolding go through a chair. And grass doesn't grow on roads, I think.
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