What Remains of Edith Finch Critic Reviews

What Remains of Edith Finch is a game that succeeds in recreating the childhood joy of reading a book and being utterly transported into its pages, only to reach the end and realise it’s not real. It will touch the heart of all but the most soulless of gamers.

Giant Sparrow delivers beyond our expectations once again. A touching story about a tragically unlucky family hits all the right notes, making What Remains of Edith Finch a worthy successor to the studio's sublime The Unfinished Swan. A walking simulator with a smart delivery mechanism paints the picture of a family tree full of misfortune and sadness, but leaves room for some happiness and sunshine. Between the most realised home we've ever seen in a game, the incredible voice work, and the moving, intriguing story, this is the genre's new golden standard.

A story like no other; both very grounded in reality, yet at times other-worldly beyond imagination. It’s touching and thought-provoking; daring to explore dark subject matters rarely delved into by video games. It may only take a few short hours to complete, but every moment is so packed with significance that it hardly matters.

What Remains of Edith Finch is a short experience, but one of the best that has been released in recent memory. Giant Sparrow rose to prominence with The Unfinished Swan and here the studio has cemented itself as one of the best at constructing narratives intertwined with engaging environments. Both a celebration of life and a commentary on the tragedy of death, What Remains of Edith Finch should be experienced by as many people as possible.

What Remains of Edith Finch is a personal story, one that really hit home for me in just about every way imaginable. It’s a game that finds beauty in death and demonstrates the importance of appreciating what little time we are given to experience what life has to offer. The story of the Finch family is strange and at times might not seem possible, but dig deep enough, and you’ll find a wonderful game with a profound perspective on life, family, and what we leave behind.

What Remains of Edith Finch has raised the bar for interactive stories and visual storytelling. The impact of static objects, while the story is beautiful and heartbreaking. This, like the Finch family members, cannot be improved, merely built upon and remembered.

It may depress you, and it may leave you with tears in your eyes afterwards, but when a game tells a story as well as What Remains of Edith Finch does here, it deserves not just to be played, but to be remembered and discussed and considered long after you've set down the controller.

It goes without saying that this game sets a new benchmark for storytelling, and the imaginative ways in which it's done, all the while dealing with death in a delicate and poignant way.

What Remains of Edith Finch is a journey to discover truth, even if that truth is debilitating. There is a charm and humanity here that’s hard to ignore and even harder to emulate. One in a million is too often used nowadays, but it holds true here.

Life isn’t often what we imagine and death isn’t usually what we expect. What Remains of Edith Finch responds by capturing death’s despair and tragedy through life’s lenses of whimsy and fantasy. Every emotion and detail is left in frame, exposing profoundly anguishing themes that nevertheless develop into endearing pictures of hope and determination. Edith Finch creates a portrait of a family that, even in their doomed eccentricity, feels not only sanguine, but also deeply human.

While it didn’t bring literal tears to my eyes, there are moments that certainly feel like a kick to the soul thanks to impeccable writing and direction.

Giant Sparrow offers a masterpiece. This game is made perfectly and makes us feel so many different emotions at once. What Remains of Edith Finch is surely phenomenal.

Edith is the last living Finch and that's meaningful because the Finches have one hell of a tough time staying alive. By my count, there are 37 tombstones in the cemetery -- 12 for the humans and 25 for the pets. I probably missed some.

In Edith Finch, death is a certainty and life is the surprise. Its stories are enchanting, despite their unhappy ends. I was sad I never had the chance to know the Finches while they were alive, but thankful for the opportunity, however brief, to learn a bit about them. The final farewell left me crying, but What Remains of Edith Finch is, without doubt, love.

It's an exceptionally well-told story, an anthology of remembrances experienced through the eyes of each family member at the precipice of their demise.

It's not often that a game's plot slips past the bitterness of grief to finally get to the acceptance, but that's the triumph in What Remains of Edith Finch. Ultimately, if the game has any resemblance of a moral, it's that the bravest, most beautiful thing every one of us does is choose to keep going, despite knowing what's coming.

One of the most engaging pieces of interactive storytelling I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing.

Quotation forthcoming.

By the end of What Remains of Edith Finch, I felt close to the Finch family. I felt close in a way that only games could articulate with their unique interactive language. I was a kid on a swing, trying to get as high as he can. I was a baby in a bathtub. I was a curious, hungry kid. What Remains of Edith Finch doesn't just tell you about the tragic history of the Finch family, it allows you to embody it.

If you enjoy narrative-based games, this one sets the bar higher and makes us thing we're still scratching the surface of the genre. A beautiful adventure that will be remembered.