Review: Everybody's Gone To The Rapture

The end of the world is beautiful.

Platform: PC

Rating: M

Release date: 14 April 2016 (PS4 version released August 11 2015)

A pale-yellow sunrise on the horizon. Warm sunlight dancing over treetops that poke through the mist on the valley. White flowers on a nearby bush swaying in the breeze. Looking out over the Shropshire countryside in my first moments of playing Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture was like a dream—for about thirty seconds after the game began I didn’t even realise that I had control of the camera. There’s more to this game than detailed textures or flashy lighting design though. The real magic is in the rich narrative, despite the sometimes-tedious exploration required to unlock it.

This first-person interactive narrative has you exploring the fictional village of Yaughton—although Shropshire is a real county in England—to uncover a mystery: everyone in town has mysteriously vanished. You’ll be traversing the breathtaking countryside and snooping through abandoned buildings to find cassette tapes, recorded phone calls and other clues to piece the story together. The only way to truly uncover the mystery is to scour every inch of the map for these small nuggets of information—these fragments of the past. If you’re willing to put in the work, what you’ll find is an exploration of the complexity of human relationships and the consequences of pushing scientific research too far.

Early in the game you encounter an orb of light that leads you from one area to the next, quickly flying away when you come too close. Occasionally, this light will stop in a spot where an important event once took place. You’ll hear echoes of villagers’ past conversations and see glowing forms, akin to shadows, in the shape of the people who once stood there. These scenes are the bones of narrative where the additional elements, hidden throughout the township and surrounding land, are the meat.

There’s an air of suspense as you walk around with not a single living thing in sight—other than the light orb which seems to have some form of sentience. There is a ratio of sound to silence and volume variation that heightens your senses. Abrasive sound effects cut through the haunting musical score, composed by the game’s director Jessica Curry, and build the tension. There’s a perfect repertoire of sounds: crunching footsteps, faint whispers, transmissions from nearby radios and the occasional soft, unaccompanied hymn that builds to a crescendo alongside a full orchestra and choir as the pieces of the puzzle click into place.

At times your light orb friend will leave you to your own devices only to return when you’re approaching a relevant plot point. It’s a strange experience to be spying on people’s lives only to catch a glimpse of light moving in your peripheral vision and feel that you are the one being watched.

The sheer volume of detail in the world makes up for the lack of typical NPCs to interact with. The landscape is beautifully rendered—even grimy bus stop graffiti or a bee perched on a flower looks spectacular—and the township is so meticulously constructed that it feels like a real place. It seems the lack of character creation left room for developers The Chinese Room to perfect the details of world building. It’s the glimmering lights that are truly distinctive though.

The voice acting further contributes to the world feeling so immersive. The cast features award-winning actress Merle Dandridge who you will likely recognise as Marlene in The Last of Us. Each character has a distinct voice and personality so even without a physical form, they feel authentic. The emotion in Frank’s gruff voice paints a picture; the stubborn, defensive farmer who is vulnerable underneath it all. I had a giggle when he called his pompous sister Wendy ‘a nasty old bird’. The complications between families, friends and lovers all feel real and important. You can’t help but feel that you’re a part of the lives you observe, despite being strictly a voyeur.

Much like the game’s predecessor Dear Esther, the gameplay is just whole lot of walking and interacting with objects—it’s a slow burn. That isn’t going to appeal to all gamers. There’s plenty of ground to cover but I found myself getting bored and frustrated around half way through the story. The exploration was becoming tedious and some audio clips repeated in different locations so it felt like I was labouring to progress rather than being allowed to move freely. When I eventually realised you could build momentum to a run by holding Shift (R2 on PS4), it was easier to backtrack and find the necessary cutscenes to unlock new parts of the map.

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is a touching journey that shows how video games can go beyond surface level fun and elicit emotional reactions from gamers. The voice acting performances and sound design along with the technical skill at world building create a rich experience for players to lose themselves in. The overall narrative is deliciously complicated and it’s satisfying putting the pieces together—the game even makes you feel clever for doing so. There are some issues with pacing, which may be enough for some players to lose interest, but I enjoyed my time spent here. If you’re a completionist like me, you’ll feel compelled to unlock all the fragments of the plot and reach the conclusion.

Images: The Chinese Room/Sony Computer Entertainment - screenshots by Christie McQualter

An earlier version of this review was published in Textology, an anthology produced by RMIT Professional Writing and Editing students in the 2017 Towards Publication class.