Summary
Dear Esther is a ghost story, told using first-person gaming technologies. Rather than traditional game-play the focus here is on exploration, uncovering the mystery of the island, of who you are and why you are here. Fragments of story are randomly uncovered when exploring the various locations of the island, making every each journey a unique experience.
Dear Esther is a ghost story, told using first-person gaming technologies. Rather than traditional game-play the focus here is on exploration, uncovering the mystery of the island, of who you are and why you are here. Fragments of story are randomly uncovered when exploring the various locations of the island, making every each journey a unique experience.
“A deserted island…a lost man…memories of a fatal crash…a book written by a dying explorer.”
Two years in the making, the highly anticipated Indie remake of the cult mod Dear Esther arrives on PC. Dear Esther immerses you in a stunningly realised world, a remote and desolate island somewhere in the outer Hebrides. As you step forwards, a voice begins to read fragments of a letter: “Dear Esther…” – and so begins a journey through one of the most original first-person games of recent years. Abandoning traditional gameplay for a pure story-driven experience, Dear Esther fuses its beautiful environments with a breathtaking soundtrack to tell a powerful story of love, loss, guilt and redemption.
Forget the normal rules of play; if nothing seems real here, it’s because it may just be all a delusion. What is the significance of the aerial — What happened on the motorway — is the island real or imagined — who is Esther and why has she chosen to summon you here? The answers are out there, on the lost beach, the windswept cliffs and buried in the darkness of the tunnels beneath the island… Or then again, they may just not be, after all…
Two years in the making, the highly anticipated Indie remake of the cult mod Dear Esther arrives on PC. Dear Esther immerses you in a stunningly realised world, a remote and desolate island somewhere in the outer Hebrides. As you step forwards, a voice begins to read fragments of a letter: “Dear Esther…” – and so begins a journey through one of the most original first-person games of recent years. Abandoning traditional gameplay for a pure story-driven experience, Dear Esther fuses its beautiful environments with a breathtaking soundtrack to tell a powerful story of love, loss, guilt and redemption.
Forget the normal rules of play; if nothing seems real here, it’s because it may just be all a delusion. What is the significance of the aerial — What happened on the motorway — is the island real or imagined — who is Esther and why has she chosen to summon you here? The answers are out there, on the lost beach, the windswept cliffs and buried in the darkness of the tunnels beneath the island… Or then again, they may just not be, after all…
Dear Esther Key Features:
1, Every play-through a unique experience, with randomly generated audio, visuals and events.
2, Explore Incredible environments that push the Source engine to new levels of beauty.
3, A poetic, semi-randomised story like you’ve never experienced in a game before.
4, Stunning soundtrack featuring world-class musicians.
5, An uncompromisingly inventive game delivered to the highest AAA standards.
6, DirectX®:9.0c
| Minimum System Requirements | Recommended System Requirements | |
| CPU | Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz / AMD Sempron 3600+ | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5600+ |
| CPU SPEED | Quad core 2.4GHz or higher | |
| VRAM | 128 MB | 256 MB |
| RAM | 1 GB | 1 GB |
| OS | Win Xp 32 | Win Xp 32 |
| Graphics Card | nVidia GeForce 6600 / AMD Mobility FireGL T2 | nVidia GeForce 7600 GT 256MB / AMD Radeon HD 2900 GT |
| Direct X | DX 9 | DX 9 |
| SOUND CARD | Yes | Yes |
| HDD Space | 2 GB | 2 GB |
| Game Analysis | The player progresses through the plot of Dear Esther via a series of voiced-over letter fragments to a woman named Esther. The game does not directly specify who the narrator is, but there are suggestions he is Esther's husband and that she is dead, killed in an automobile accident. These monologue fragments are triggered as the player reaches certain locations in the game, and are randomly selected for each given location. This random selection of voice-over parts causes a lack of coherency, and forces the player to draw his or her own conclusions. As the game progresses, the readings become more vague and start to contradict one another. Later in the game, the readings begin to allude to the story of Paul on the road to Damascus, which is also the subject of some of the graffiti found painted on the cliff walls. | |
| High FPS | 200+ FPS ( GTX 1060 ) | |
| Optimization Score | 10 | |
| Minimum System Requirements | ||
| CPU | Intel Core Duo Processor (2GHz or better) | |
| RAM | 2GB | |
| OS | MAC OS X 10.6.7 or higher | |
| Graphics Card | ATI Radeon 2400 or higher / NVIDIA 8600M or higher / Intel HD Graphics 3000 | |
| HDD Space | At least 2 GB of Space |
Overview
Platforms
Release Dates
Related URL
Developers
Publishers
Genres
Game Engines
Game Modes
Game Themes
Player Perspectives
Languages
Keywords
PEGI Age rating
What's your reaction?
Very Bad
0%
Bad
0%
Average
0%
Alright
0%
Good
0%
Super
0%
This Game has no review yet, please come back later...
This Game has no news yet, please come back later...
This Game has no walkthrough yet, please come back later...
Trailer
comments
Beautiful animation
Not actually a game. No choices or interaction whatsoever.
IMO this can’t even really be considered a game. Literally all you do is walk forwards and listen to the narrator. There are no choices you can make as a character, there is nothing in the environment you can interact with. This game is very aesthetically pleasing, but as a game it is severely lacking. My suggestion would be to save your money and watch a walkthrough on YouTube as it would be the exact same experience, but you save your thumb the pain of holding down the “forward” key for 2 hours.
* Amazing deep emotional moments.
* Incredible graphics and sounds.
* There is no challenge, it can't be played as a conventional game.
A man lost within his own world, represented as an abandoned island. As he walks, he studies the traces of his own past, in search for hope. All you do in this game is walking and listening to the narrator. But if you let yourself be taken by the narrative, the experience can be amazing. This game is really special to me, because it helped me think about my own situation of loss and confusion.
The character starts walking on a familiar place, then he finds signs of a something terrible, that left marks on him. He is compelled to walk to another place. On the way, it seems to recite a letter to a woman. He also finds symbols of chemical elements and mysterious phrases.
There are deep emotional scenes that makes you think: Is suffering necessary to find peace?
Dear Esther is an emotional game, it requires patience. Do not expect any challenge. The challenge is to pay attention to details and assemble your own experience from the elements that are given. How much time do you decide to spend in a certain place, looking for a particular sign? What are you looking for? These elements will form the final narrative. So it all depends on you, really.
Conclusion: Dear Esther is like a mirror. What do you see? I see a man going in and out of the cave, finding hope amid the rubble of his own life. So it was a worthwhile experience for me. It will not be for everyone. But that’s the difference between a work of art and an entertainment product.