Immersion, Empathy, and Fate: What Remains After What Remains of Edith Finch

Ian Bogost once suggested in his critique of What Remains of Edith Finch that the game would work just as well, if not more efficiently, in a non-interactive medium such as books or film. With all the resources used to create an immersive 3D virtual space as in Edith Finch, why shouldn’t the same narrative be performed through non-interactive media when players have no impactful influence on the narration of the game? Although I think it is inappropriate to directly compare games to other media as they are completely distinct, deep down, I resonated with Bogost’s argument – especially since I also felt minimal immersion in Edith Finch. I couldn’t alter any Finch family member’s fate, nor did I feel attached to any of the characters. For a game seeking to immerse its players, Edith Finch seems to fail with its objectives – or did I play the game wrong?

Perhaps I was playing it reflectively, as I’ve realized I had unconsciously linked immersion with impactful influences and attachments. I, and perhaps Bogost, partly rely on an assumption that immersive gameplay must involve effective interactivity, or the freedom to make impactful influences. Bogost dismisses the “fatalistic” style of interactivity in Edith Finch. Indeed, the game never lets players alter any Finch family member’s death – instead we enact their final moments in death scenes that can never be escaped, embracing our role in bringing about each Finch’s death over time.

This is not cinematic passivity, it is specifically a videogame phenomenon – players have enough input to feel they are “there”, yet not enough to prevent the outcome. If Edith Finch were a film, we could watch each character’s death, but we would not be the one walking them toward it. Such staging of deaths and Edie’s fantasization of them, is where the game’s target emotion blends with the player’s own curiosity. Edith Finch is meant to be played in such a way that players gradually stop caring about the deaths of the characters, and even become curious about them. This reaction mirrors Edie’s own thoughts on fantasizing about the deaths of her family members.

That contrast relates to Luca Papale’s framework in which he differentiates identification, empathy, sympathy, projection, and detachment. In Edith Finch, the simple act of input can encourage a sense of detachment from the dead Finch relatives. We know they must die, so rather than becoming attached to or empathizing with them, we watch from the outside, curious (even eager) to see how each death unfolds. We proceed to reveal each short tale’s end, effectively collaborating with the game’s fatal script. In other games players tend to have a significant power over their characters, here that power is undermined by each character’s inevitable death. Bogost treats this diminished influence as the reason to doubt the necessity of interactivity. Yet such critique underestimates the power of fatalistic interactivity to immerse players with the sense of detachment that linear film cannot mimic.

Looking back to Bogost’s critical stance, where he does not see the necessity for Edith Finch to be presented through interactive media, it seems that the core of this reaction is driven by a sense of detachment, evoked by minimal player impact. This detachment can easily be interpreted as a “downside” of games, since we typically expect interactive experiences to encourage immersion as attachment, not the opposite.

This is why, deep down, I found myself resonating with Bogost’s criticism after playing Edith Finch: most games I’ve played use immersion as a benchmark for high quality. The industry often discusses techniques to make games more immersive by creating more attachable content. I, too, have taken this standard for granted, as if emotional impact on the player was the key to immersion and therefore a videogame’s quality. This has even led me to downgrade Edith Finch when I felt the game lacked immersion due to a sense of detachment. Does immersion always require attachment, or can a game be immersive even through detachment? Is Edith Finch immersive, even if that immersion is intertwined with detachment? Perhaps what’s truly valuable about Edith Finch to me is its ability to evoke such reflections.

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Simon Liu is a Narrative Designer and System Designer exploring the potential of videogames as a form of expression of human nature. You are welcome to reach out via email, explore my work through this secret corner of the internet, check out what I’ve been up to lately on LinkedIn, or randomly spot me at your local ski resort.