“…but I waited, and the moment was gone.”
Gone Home is a memory of love. Not so much a traditional love story that takes place (or pretends to take place) in the moment, it is about the significance of what happens in the moment after the moment has already passed. It is about how you can feel the past in the present, especially in certain places and in certain things. This is a huge part of why, like a part of my own past, it has stayed with me so much.
I got the retail special edition in the mail today, and it includes excerpts from Steve Gaynor’s story notebooks. A lot of what is in there didn’t make it into the final game, which makes it an interesting look at how the story took shape, the way some ideas were toyed with and scrapped and the way that others evolved and became part of Gone Home as it exists today.
The most fascinating page to me is the one in which Gaynor hits upon what ends up being the core of Gone Home’s structure. At the top of the page, the words “MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH??” are written, and in the notes underneath, there is this: “The game is the player character READING THROUGH the diary AFTERWARD and thinking back to things she found, and the meaning they had.”
Yes. That’s why you hear Sam’s journals as you play through the game and explore the house. Gone Home is about memory in so many ways. It’s set in the ‘90s, a time period that many people who play the game will remember, and it triggers our memories of that time period with so many artifacts of the era. It’s about the memories of the characters, particularly in how what happened to Terry in the house in the 1960s lives with him still in the 1990s. And as you discover the story of Sam and Lonnie, everything you’re discovering has already happened. It’s already a memory not only for Sam and Lonnie, but for your character, for Katie, too. Even what you’re playing, your active exploration of the house, is something that is being remembered. You are living through Katie’s memories as she looks through Sam’s journals.
And through the delicacy of its storytelling, it asks us to participate in the creation of its memories. Right from the start, when you pick up the Christmas duck–the game never tells you exactly how the duck figured into the Christmas celebrations of the Greenbriars; instead, it asks you to make those associations, and because you do, the duck, and every other meaningful object you find in the house, can take on a kind of personal significance. I can’t look at the cover of Sam and Lonnie’s 'zine without imagining them laughing together, reveling in their fantasy of taking vengeance on Prinicipal Grossman. That’s not a memory Gone Home explicitly gave me. That’s one Gone Home left me free to create on my own.
![]()
Gone Home is a living memory, a memory you can step into and walk around in, like many of our own memories. It is memories within memories within memories.
Notes
thisisdanielle4 liked this
hal-k liked this mdryly reblogged this from carolynpetit and added:
I think you will enjoy Gone Home if:You enjoy poking around in other people’s things to solve a mystery. There’s no...
breakaweigh liked this carolynpetit reblogged this from agameofme
everysaturdaygames liked this
beepsalot liked this
hey-shoes-on-wrong liked this
awesomonster reblogged this from zusty
awesomonster liked this slytherindarcy-blog liked this
nickgoeshere reblogged this from zusty
nickgoeshere liked this
loseranthems liked this darlinggirlpicklock reblogged this from agameofme
zusty reblogged this from agameofme and added:
AWWW, Carolyn!!
zusty liked this
omgcolostomeboy liked this lightupwrists reblogged this from agameofme
jervo liked this
grayesthistle liked this
llonelyrollingstarr reblogged this from agameofme
llonelyrollingstarr liked this
mashatupitsyn liked this
pinwheelpunk reblogged this from agameofme
pinwheelpunk liked this
agameofme posted this