You play as a detective, so when you inspect objects, your thoughts appear on screen in phrases that swoop by. Eventually you come across dead grass on the track which you can “inspect”. The tracks act as breadcrumbs moving you forward through the environment, keeping you, um, on-track. There are too many puzzle dead-ends, with no clear way to advanceĮarly in the game you find yourself walking along train tracks. But why is the design goal to hide gameplay scenes?Ģ. If the design goal was to obfuscate what the gameplay scenes even are, then I understand the decision not to include a fast-travel system (on top of lacking narrative justification). There’s a reason modern games implement “fast-travel” systems. Traveling through previously-explored spaces is a drag in any game. The shortcut is literally an elevator without a call button, meaning that is only useful for travel in one direction in any given time. There is exactly one shortcut in the game, but it is unlocked very late, and is mostly useless. These scenes are too far apart, easily overlooked, and there is no way to travel quickly between them. If you walk through the entire game world (not a quick process) and reach the dead end at the other end of the world, well, sucks to be you. One of these scenes is at the very beginning of the game, and is easy to miss, or just misunderstand and skip past. The narrative-advancing scenes don’t need to be triggered linearly, but do all need to be hit one way or another in order to complete the game. The environment, though it doesn’t immediately appear to be, is long and narrow. This game is separated into a handful of self-contained scenes spread out across a large environment to explore. Obviously, this contains major spoilers about the game’s mechanics and structure, which are intentionally obscured from the player. Here are some of the many places where Ethan Carter gets this wrong. The game should push the player in the right direction without the player ever realizing that they’ve been assisted and clued. A well-designed game should provide enough subtle hand-holding to get the player to accomplish their goals while still letting the player feel that they accomplished their goals on their own accord. You shouldn’t be taking a position on either of the all-or-none extremes.
![the vanishing of ethan carter mine the vanishing of ethan carter mine](https://images.cgames.de/images/gamestar/287/the-vanishing-of-ethan-carter_2492774.jpg)
The thing about hand-holding in video games is that there’s a sweet spot. My experience with this game in short: I really wish Ethan Carter had decided to hold my hand. So - good for you, Ethan Carter, for aspiring to be a narrative experience that doesn’t hold the player’s hand! I hope they’ve learned from the past and stick with this design philosophy in the future.)
![the vanishing of ethan carter mine the vanishing of ethan carter mine](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/oXDq_q9yaBg/maxresdefault.jpg)
(Mercifully, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, which was Nintendo’s next Zelda game after Skyward Sword, jumped off the excessive hand-holding train – for the most part they just let the player do their thing. Nintendo was so afraid of any player losing their way that they added hours of unnecessary over-explanation. Even though I found those items to be particularly useless, the game kept throwing them at me and stopping the gameplay whenever I picked one up to remind me in slow-scrolling dialogue what it was exactly that they did. I spent most of that game avoiding Amber Relics (and items of their sort) like the plague.
![the vanishing of ethan carter mine the vanishing of ethan carter mine](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-QIQMkG2Vbw/maxresdefault.jpg)
THE VANISHING OF ETHAN CARTER MINE SERIES
Skyward Sword was the worst of the Zelda series when it came to explaining and re-explaining and re-explaining what every single element in the game does. The Legend of Zelda series spent years falling deeper and deeper into the hand-holding trap when they transitioned to 3D, severely undermining their pacing. If a game has too much hand-holding, the developer might as well be telling the player that they don’t believe they’re smart enough to understand the game. Hand-holding in certain games can be egregious, to the point of actively taking away from the player’s enjoyment of the game. “This game is a narrative experience that does not hold your hand.”
![the vanishing of ethan carter mine the vanishing of ethan carter mine](http://www.consoleob.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/the-vanishing-of-ethan-carter_4.jpg)
At the very start of the The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, on-screen text tells us in no uncertain terms what this game is: