Embodiment in Her Story and What Remains of Edith Finch (Spoiler Alert)

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    Video games offer an experience unlike any other medium. Books provide readers a unique view into a character's mind. Film shows how cinematography and editing can show the world in a way that nobody could before. Video games however provide players an individual sense of embodiment. Most video games do this in a pretty straightforward way. Through the exposition of a game's story and mechanics the player see’s or is explained to who their character is. In some games though it is much more nebulous as to who players are embodying.

    Two games that go beyond standard player and player character relationships are What Remains of Edith Finch (2017) and Her Story (2015). In Edith Finch, players take the role of a number of characters. In Her Story, players embody one unknown character throughout the entire experience. Both of these games feature an amount of potential confusion for players in terms of who they are actually playing as. That is not to say it is a bad thing, but to say that it is one worth talking about. The confusion in Her Story comes because of the fact that the player is inhabiting a computer interface rather than a specific person. In Edith Finch it comes through one specific story in which the player takes pictures in a sequence of scenes on a hunting trip. 

    Upon booting up Her Story, there is no fancy introduction. With a fade to black post choosing start on the main menu, a windows 95 style computer screen is brought up. The camera is not a third person shot showing the player exactly what they look like, it is not a first person view showing what the game character might be seeing. Players are playing a computer interface. This adds to the mystery as to who the player is supposed to be. This is remedied a little bit when clicking on the “read me” files located on the computer's desktop. While the first file is simply a tutorial on how the game works, it is the second readme file, entitled “REALLY ReadMe!!!” that the player finds some semblance of true embodiment beyond themself. Text in that file such as “... figured this would be enough. Take your time.” is what truly introduces the player to who they are supposed to be embodying. As I was playing the game, at this I figured I was playing as some kind of detective re-investigating some long cold case. To me this was only supported when the police sirens flashed outside the room that the player character was inhabiting. While some people in the class mentioned that this gave them the feeling that they were playing as someone who broke into this archive to investigate this footage. For me, the police sirens told me that this was happening at night, and that my player character was so dedicated to solving this case that they were willing to work through the night. It felt very noir.

    It is pretty clear who the player is playing as in Edith Finch. In Sam’s story, the lines get awfully blurred. The vignette begins with the player going through some pictures that were taken while Sam and daughter, Dawn, were on a hunting trip together. Suddenly the player is thrust into controlling the camera that Sam is using to take the pictures. There are cuts of different times and scenes to show the trip progressing along. At one point though Dawn’s voice echoes, “I’m gonna take some pictures, okay?” for the couple of scenes it is now Dawn that is using the camera. This makes me think that in this story, rather than embodying any specific person, the player is embodying the camera itself. This is significant for two reasons that are very connected. The first is that at the end of the story when Sam wants to take a picture of the deer that Dawn shot, he props the camera up and sets it to automatically take a picture of the two of them and their defeated prey. In the excitement and rush of taking the picture the deer turns out to be alive and shoves Sam off the cliff and sends him to his death. In a way, it was the camera that ended up killing Sam. The player was playing as the thing that heavily contributed to his death. The other piece of this comes right after Sam places the camera to take the last picture. At this point the player takes control of Sam. This is quite significant because like all the other stories in the game, the player plays as the character as they die. In Sam’s story, the player embodies both Sam and the thing that majorly contributes to his death.

    The blurring of embodiment in these two games is quite significant and helps to show not only how unique video games are in their ability to allow their players to personify the characters they play as. It also shows how video games can blend and twist that embodiment to give players different perspectives and even allow them to fill in gaps for who they are in games.