![]() Continued use of these apps may cause your IP to be blocked indefinitely. This triggers our anti-spambot measures, which are designed to stop automated systems from flooding the site with traffic. Some unofficial phone apps appear to be using GameFAQs as a back-end, but they do not behave like a real web browser does.Using GameFAQs regularly with these browsers can cause temporary and even permanent IP blocks due to these additional requests. If you are using Maxthon or Brave as a browser, or have installed the Ghostery add-on, you should know that these programs send extra traffic to our servers for every page on the site that you browse.The most common causes of this issue are: In Dear Esther all there is is some different dialogue to be heard but it's hardly worth torturing yourself to play the game several more times to get more of when it won't offer any further insight whatsoever.Your IP address has been temporarily blocked due to a large number of HTTP requests. At least in various other titles that have been derogatively called walking simulators in the same vein as Dear Esther - such as A Machine For Pigs itself, Firewatch, Gone Home and Tacoma to name a quick few - the player has a very subjective experience in some way that enriches the overall experience. I would honestly go so far as to say - and no other games immediately spring to mind that I would also say this about - that there is nothing to be gained from playing the game that wouldn't simply be gleaned from watching someone else play it on YouTube instead. Who, on the other hand, can't at least remember something about the last five minutes or so of A Machine For Pig's ending, whether it be finally reaching the heart of the machine, the powerful narrations or the stirring music? At least in that game you get the sense that the ending is earned on your part and that it actually concluded and was meaningful in some way, whereas in Dear Esther you simply just reach the tower eventually and the game ends in as an uninterested way as it began. ![]() ![]() ![]() Like, does anyone honestly remember Dear Esther's final moments? I recall that you reach the radio tower that's been in the distance for most of the game, climb it and them seemingly fly off but I can't for the life of me recall what the fly-through of the island is like, the music, anything that the narrator said or if he even said anything at all. The idea behind this, as far as I can tell, was to create ambiguity about the narrative itself (who's telling it, who the various characters are, etc.) but what it actually did was ultimately contribute, along with all the others issues I've mentioned, to making the game as a whole forgettable after a few times playing it.Ĭomparatively, look at The Chinese Room's take on the Amnesia games with A Machine For Pigs, their next release and a far more memorable experience, even if you disagree with the way that it's stripped back from its predecessor in a number of ways in terms of mechanics and despite it certainly being a different type of horror experience than The Dark Descent was. Much of the dialogue is randomised and I think this is also applies to some of the symbols and such that you see, as well as some spectres you can spot in the distance occasionally - but to me, this randomness only served to illustrate how meaningless the whole thing was when parts of the narration, the crux of the game, could just be stitched together in this way instead of flowing together naturally. The game is also lacking any interactivity whatsoever: you simply walk (at an excruciatingly slow pace) through its sometimes-beautiful environments, look at things such as the various symbols and listen to the narrator. This is reflected in the some of the writing and symbols you can see visually too, such as chemical formulas, images of circuits, the fibonacci sequence and biblical passages, probably amongst other things I've since forgotten but none of which mean much of anything either. But the writing in Dear Esther is awful, the type where a great many number of the words, sentences and paragraphs are so ornate and long - and in this case also delivered in such a serious tone by the game's dull, unemotional narrator - simply to disguise the fact that it actually has very little to meaningfully say. Naturally, I enjoy narrated, spoken and written text in games too when it's good. It's by far my favourite hobby and I've read a horrendous amount of words in books, comics, magazines and articles online during this lockdown and having a good time doing it, not unlike the main character in my favourite Twilight Zone episode 'Time Enough At Last'. The word is generally thrown around too much but Dear Esther is a game I genuinely found pretentious. ![]()
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