There is a advantageous line numerous introspective indie games are strolling, between a cautious exploration of reminiscences and occasions, and solipsism. For me, The First Tree leaps over that line with a clumsily carried out, wildly incongruous double-jump. Sanctimonious from the opening moments, this can be a mediocre third-person exploration game made nauseating by essentially the most self-obsessed narration I’ve ever encountered. It makes Dear Esther appear to be Tolstoy.
The First Tree is about loss of life. Most prominently, the loss of life of a person’s father. I’m about to take a large shit on a game that, for all I do know, may effectively be a developer processing his personal emotions about his shedding his dad. You’ve been warned.
In this game you play as a fox, as a result of – er – it’s a couple of dream a person had? BUT WITH TEH FEELS. Within about 30 seconds of beginning, and realising simply how badly the fox strikes (she steers like a ship, reasonably than say, a fox), you encounter a useless child fox-cub mendacity on the grass. HAVE SOME FEELINGS NOW PLEASE.
From right here on out you steer your boatfox towards 2D sparkly lights across the crudely rendered fields and hillsides, as a result of there’s nothing else to do. Dig up free soil the place large columns of sunshine stretch to the sky, and also you’ll set off Captain Narcissism’s subsequent meandering reminiscence of his youthful years, of his most uninteresting teenage non-rebellions, and of vaguely fractious relationship points along with his father. All the whereas a simpering feminine voice oohs and ahh and agrees and soothes at this bilge as if it had been essentially the most riveting factor she’d ever heard.
It’s onerous to interpret The First Tree as something aside from some weirdly particular self-indulgent fantasy the place a man will get to inform a lady his outstandingly boring dream, and for some purpose she’s enraptured by it, hanging on each sixthform poetry phrase. “It felt like I was soaring in the air with borrowed wings,” he ponderously muses of driving his dad’s automobile. And inexplicably she doesn’t punch him nor stand up and depart. Obsidian rocks, we’re informed at one level, regarded like “sparklers pressed against a dark window”. What?
I actually can not overstate simply how a lot I loathed this writing. At one level the person is but once more whining about his blandly atypical teenage years, the place he did a few mildly naughty issues, lamenting that he barely upset his dad as if it had been essentially the most distinctive and particular factor that had ever occurred, when the lady-voice declares, “But if you hadn’t had that fire in you, we’d never have met!” AAARRRGGGHHHHHH! Oh my GOODNESS. “You’re absolutely right,” he says, right here and nearly each time she speaks, guaranteeing that he alone is the arbiter of correctness in his World Of Me. “Maybe the destination is all that matters in the end.” Oh fuck proper off.
It simply doesn’t relent. At one other level he regales us with the non-event of his pestering his dad over who left some litter within the woods, and his dad saying it was ghosts. So we’re then informed that he was so attention-grabbing as an individual as a result of he created this entire fantasy surrounding it, and he’d scare his much less fascinating associates with these ghost tales. But amazingly, so totally fascinatingly, he personally wasn’t scared by the made up tales he made up. Because, “Hey, I was a weird kid.” It’s the sadface equal of a person shrieking, “I’M MAD, ME!” at a celebration till everybody else leaves.
The game that’s beneath all of it is barely something. You acquire the sparkles for need of the rest to do, for finally no purpose in any respect, and dig up reminiscences greatest left buried, sometimes utilizing the ungainly double-jump to succeed in some greater up rocks. And nothing else. It’s a skeleton of a game, a half-finished prototype, that exists purely as a canvas for the story, as if listening to this man’s egotistical mediocrity is so totally necessary that what the participant really will get to do barely issues.
So you drag the fox by generic landscapes, bumping off the invisible partitions for lack of any path, and incongruously double-jumping to climb up some rocks. I’ve half-jokingly argued earlier than that every one games may very well be improved by a double-jump. This comprehensively proves me fallacious. It feels prefer it was carried out as a result of it was simpler than making the pathways work for a daily bounce. The game’s mechanics don’t have any purpose to be performed, aside from to press ‘play’ on the following sound file.
And I get it! It was the third anniversary of my dad’s loss of life final week. It actually sucks when your dad dies. Shock information. And hey, have a look at me, the large man kicking the game in regards to the man’s grief. But significantly, wow, no. If this actually had been a game exploring the complexity of grief following the loss of life of a guardian, then I’d be the target market. But it’s a game a couple of man telling a lady how troublesome and necessary his achingly atypical life is whereas she coos and agrees.
I did, after all, marvel if this was the purpose. If this was an exploration of 1 man’s self-obsession, whereas for some purpose additionally shifting a fox round. Toward the top the girl lastly is allowed to talk for a bit, and tells of a genuinely tragic childhood, horribly giving it equivalence to his mundane recollections of being a bit sniffy when he was 15. And I assumed, “Oh, now he’ll realise! He’ll get a grip and apologise!” No. There’s nothing, no self-awareness, and he carries on telling her his blitheringly boring dream.
By the time it was over, after its bizarro change to first-person, I used to be nonetheless solely clueless what this maudlin bathetic story of a mummy fox, aimlessly wandering between invisible partitions to blankly stare at useless fox cubs, needed to do with somebody being unhappy their dad had died. But I had shouted, “OH FUCK OFF” on the monitor a sizeable variety of occasions.
And it’s not like I’m penning this with out figuring out others have, for causes I genuinely can not fathom, beloved this. So perhaps you’ll find it irresistible too? But bloody hell. It felt to me like an train in narcissism and emotional manipulation. Dead child foxes are unhappy so, er, really feel unhappy about different stuff too? No. That’s not how feelings work. It’s really, I’d argue, grimly dishonest in the way it makes an attempt to drive pathos within the participant as this moany man moans whereas displaying you footage of useless cute child animals. That’s gross.
And certain, sure, irrespective of how blandly atypical our childhoods might need been (and goodness is aware of mine was) all of us come away from the lack of a guardian with regrets, of unstated phrases, of unresolved histories. I’d like to have performed a game that attempted to discover that rocky panorama, with some nuance, some introspection, and most of all, with some humility. This shouldn’t be that game.
