I slightly disagree with: 'really understanding Esther would probably require understanding the mind of the person/people who wrote and created the story.' You could try to play it again and follow a different path, hearing the story in a different order, but I do not think that any explanation of the story or any replay will change the way that you feel right now about the game. So maybe your experience of the game was imperfect, but in this instance that might not be such a bad thing because nobody experiences Esther the same way, and everyone has an untimately imperfect experience. Like a piece of modern art, really understanding Esther would probably require understanding the mind of the person/people who wrote and created the story. You've started to ask yourself why your experience of the game may have been either flawed or different from other people, which I think is ultimately what the game is intended to cause. in a way what you are experiencing now (and the questions you are asking) is exactly what was intended.

I think that the point was to try to create a piece of art which tells a story that each person experiences differently, and which in turn generates introspection about the experience of the game. It is less like a game in the traditional, linear story sense, and more like a piece of modern, experimental, interactive art. I felt the same way as you when I finished Esther, and after thinking abou it for a while, here are my thoughts on the game.Įsther is an experiment in non-linear story telling. Overall I'd give it about a 7/10, but maybe as my understanding increases so too will my appreciation of it.

Something was oddly beautiful about this game (if you can really call it a game), but I'd like to hear what others thought about it to help myself understand the point of the story aside from visual and aural beauty. I just don't understand it as much as I want to, and online descriptions didn't really shed much light. Then there's a part where he's in the hospital and has kidney stones. What's clear from the recurring themes is that the narrator is writing to a woman named Esther, likely his wife, who was killed by a drunk driver. So either I didn't quite understand (entirely possible, because I'm not very good when it comes to understanding poetry), or there was just too little substance provided to connect the various monologues into a coherent narrative.

I understand that's not really the point and that a story like this is inherently ambiguous - but for me there's a limit. My issue, however, was that despite that I felt kind of a calm loneliness while playing and the poetic thoughts being read to me were very pretty, I felt like my experience was diminished a bit by the utter lack of a coherent story. The narration was well done, and the actual writing was just very beautiful. The music was also beautiful, however much there actually was. Especially the cave part - I spent extra time just admiring the finer details in the cave, especially during the part where I waded into some shallow water, looked up and saw the moon shining through the 'well', as the narrator described it. My immediate first impression was that visually, this was nothing short of incredible. Not sure if that means I rushed it or it's really that short. I just played the standalone game (which was on sale for $2.50 today) and am not quite sure what to think. My apologies if this has been a topic of discussion before.

Dear esther analysis