The Mundane and the Magical in 'The Vanishing of Ethan Carter'

Noting more peaceful than the great outdoors...

This week, my PopMatters column is about one of the most pleasant surprises of the year full of pleasant surprises: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

Every once in a while a game comes along that I just want to root for.  Ethan Carter tackles fairly non-traditional subject matter, making it more akin to Gone Home rather than BioShock in the world of first-person immersive sims.  The developer, a group of folks called The Astronauts, previously worked on games like Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgement, so it's nice to see them branching out.  They also have a great website where they post about everything from their technical approach to the YouTube influence on game sales.

What I like most though is Ethan Carter's juxtaposition of the natural and supernatural.  The world feels quite normal until a portal to another dimension opens up.  This portal is rendered with just as much care as any of the game's trees, giving it a sense of magical realism that few games have.  Odd as it sounds, I don't think many games take advantage of their innate ability to insert unexpected events into simulations of the real world.  It's either full on fantasy or a slavish devotion to verisimilitude.  Ethan Carter does a good job of mixing the mundane and the magical in a way that reminds me of Papo & Yo, one of my favorite game's of 2013.

I don't want to say too much more because experiencing it is very well worth experiencing the game without a lot of foreknowledge.  The game boldly declares that it won't hold your hand within the first few seconds and this ends up being a great thing.  It forces you to pay close attention to the world, which makes its magical elements all the more impressive.