![]() ![]() It was Pinchbeck who originally suggested the idea. They agreed, and signed Esther as a Steam exclusive. But that changed when Pinchbeck and Briscoe decided to approach Valve with the view to licensing their engine to release a fully fledged indie game. Until fairly recently, the Dear Esther remake was still set to be released as a free Source mod. “And the great thing about going indie is that we've been able to do all of that – to make it more than just a visual overhaul.” “There's quite a bit more focus on exploration, properly rewarding the player for leaving the obvious path,” says Pinchbeck. With his level design techniques, Briscoe had transformed the world of Dear Esther into something remarkable: a game whose world was its primary character, and where every landmark told its own story. It was quickly obvious that this was going to be more than a simple graphics overhaul. I sent him pages of notes, and I've been looking at alphas and feeding back, but right up until the deal with Valve happened it was mainly Rob's gig.” “There's a lot of subtle stuff going on in there, and what's really cool is how Rob has responded to the original version and put his own spin on stuff. “The visuals are going to have a massive effect on how immersive the island is, and that's really important,” says Dr Pinchbeck, who afforded Briscoe a great deal of freedom while rebuilding his game. The picture painted by Dear Esther is as vivid as any in gaming. Outside, foliage sways and leaves blow in the breeze, as the moon forms a striking reflection on the eerily calm ocean. Realistic waterfalls cascade down the walls of extraordinary caverns, gleaming bright blue in the phosphorescent light. The remake pushes the Source Engine to places it's never been before. “It allowed me to create a much more rich and detailed world than ever attempted before in the engine,” he explains, “which encourages and rewards exploration with the incentive of uncovering small clues and details about the history of the island, its inhabitants and our protagonist.” Having worked with Source for over five years, Briscoe had a few tricks up his sleeve to bring the concept to life. “To be fair, it wasn't really a failing of the design per se, but a shortcoming of the Source engine and how it handles large outdoor environments.” “One of the most common complaints about the original was the tediousness of trudging through the simplistic landscape between audio cues and landmarks, which made exploring rather unrewarding,” he says. ![]() The story was fascinating, the ideas great, but the island worked against the game: players were getting lost, or stuck, or bored. It stuck in my mind for days afterwards, and although I toyed with the idea of translating Dear Esther's core mechanics to my own designs, I couldn't shake the feeling that there was so much untapped potential in the original, if only for a proper coat of paint and a more polished design.”įor Briscoe, Dear Esther's main weakness was the island itself. “A simple, highly original idea which was singularly focused on telling a story through the environment. ![]() “It was the inspiration I'd been looking for,” he recalls. Bible verses scrawled all over the island, and a flashing radio tower omnipresent in your view. Enormous chunks cut out of a cliff face in perfectly straight lines. Chemical equations etched into the sides of a cavern. Depending on how you read it, they might not even be three separate people at all. You learn of a syphilitic shepherd, an explorer whose infected injury sent him insane, and a man destroyed by guilt after a fatal car accident. The audio clips tell you about the island's history while simultaneously documenting a terrible accident back home in England. Instead, it builds atmosphere and an emotional weight. But it's also – and this is really important to me – about love and hope and redemption, and how people cling to each other in the face of a brutal, uncaring world.”ĭubbed 'an interactive ghost story', Dear Esther is never overtly scary. “Grief, loss, guilt, faith, illness,” says Pinchbeck, when I ask about his interpretation of the Dear Esther story.
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