00:07I'm a game designer at the Astronauts. I want to show you a bit of the gameplay from The Vanishing
00:13of Ethan Carter and give you some insight into the design philosophy behind the game.
00:23I am a couple of minutes into the game now, past the intro, so let me quickly introduce our hero.
00:28You play the game as Paul Prospero, an cult-minded private detective who's received a disturbing letter from a boy
00:36named Ethan Carter and, realizing that the boy is in danger, arrives at Ethan's home of Red Creek Valley.
00:51Red Creek Valley. Seemed like a quiet, ordinary place. I've learned two things in my life. No place is truly
01:00quiet, and nowhere is really ordinary.
01:03Ethan warned me about that. Warned me not to be fooled by what I saw here. He didn't need to
01:10worry. I'd worked dozens of cases, hundreds. This would be my last one.
01:21So, that's our entrance into the valley. It's a pretty large place to explore. Later in the game, for example,
01:29you can also explore everything we see here, that other side of the lake.
01:33Actually, if you wanted to, you could go there right now, because we're not putting any artificial blockers in your
01:39way. It's totally up to you as to how you go about on your quest of helping Ethan.
01:58When it comes to the interesting stuff you find in our game, there are two basic layers of examination. The
02:04first layer is you. We're happy to let you look around and think and speculate and draw your own conclusions
02:11about what you see.
02:12For example, you may notice that there is some blood on the rail car, but there is none on the
02:18bridge. So, whatever bad happened, it didn't happen here. The second layer is this.
02:32As you can see, examination actually does not give you answers. On the contrary, you probably have more questions now
02:40than before the object was examined.
02:42But what is happening with that crank word?
02:47Well, this is where we begin to scratch the surface of a certain special ability of our detective.
02:53First, let's zero in on the direction of the item.
02:58And now let's see the item's surroundings. Let's see. The crank is near some rocks by the water. That's our
03:04main clue to go on. But if you look a little longer, you can find additional clues as for the
03:09item's location, like the relation of this place to the dam we saw in the distance.
03:14Okay, so we know that the crank can be found on the lake's rocky shore. Let's go and see if
03:19we can find the item.
03:20This is a different type of approach to the problem of finding important items in the average adventure game. In
03:27Ethan Carter, you don't have to randomly calm the environment. All you need is to be aware of the environment
03:33and try to compare the vision you just had with what you see around you.
04:05Outro music
04:09Whenever you discover an important clue, you tag the area with a short description of it.
04:15This helps to build a mental 3D image of the scene and is another step to understanding what exactly happened
04:22here.
04:23But for now let's just follow the blood trail.
05:00Hmm, alright, it seems I cannot connect with the deceased yet, as the death scene has been altered,
05:07in some way.
05:08In short, the concept here is that the dead would happily talk to you, metaphorically speaking,
05:13but the world around them needs to be as they remember it right before their death.
05:20I want to leave the details of this concept for you to discover in the game,
05:24so for now let's just search the area for more clues.
05:28By the way, it's your choice whether you want to investigate this death further
05:32or if you want to leave it for now and maybe return to it later.
05:46A body of water, rocks, the dome in the distance.
05:51This must be the place where we can find the crunk, so let's look for it.
06:00There's a lot of people in the distance for it.
06:01But one thing that is really good about that is not that we want to be used for the
06:06much more TRADPL.
06:20Or if you choose your personality.
06:22We can find the best way to find the right size of the grenade.
06:24There's a lot of people in the dark side of the video,
06:25and use the crank, let's see if there are any other clues in the area.
06:55I know it's obvious to everybody that this is where the railcar stood originally for months or years,
07:00but we keep the game systems consistent, so if there is a place from which an object is missing,
07:05you can always locate such object through your vision, even if you already know the location of it perfectly well.
07:14Let's use the crank and get the railcar back to its original location.
07:40There is a couple more things to do in the area before it's restored to how it was right before
07:45the ABC's death,
07:46but I want to avoid spoiling this fragment of the game to death,
07:50so let's just travel in space and time to what can happen a bit later.
07:55I've restored the death scene, so let's go and talk to our corpse.
08:40I'm still in the same world as I was seconds ago, but mentally I am in a different place,
08:46surrounded by the strongest memories of the deceased's final moments.
08:51My first job is to locate all the memories, and that's exactly what I am doing right now.
08:59When you find all the memories, the next phase begins.
09:02In order to sink deeper with this death imprint,
09:05you need to build a mental image of the chronology of the entire murder.
09:11This is when your own detective skills come in order.
09:14Here is a simple example.
09:15As you can see, the victim here already has both legs severed.
09:22And this is where we found the legs earlier, and well, the guy still has them both attached.
09:28So this memory here must be from an earlier time than the memory over there.
09:37Sticking to our no spoilers policy, let's jump in time again.
09:43After you propose the chronology, it's time to focus and visualize the crime.
09:53You can't destroy it, Ethan.
09:56You can't destroy time.
09:58And that's what he is.
10:00He is forever.
10:10Okay, so something went wrong.
10:13It's not how it all happened.
10:14I got the first memory right, but not the second one.
10:18But I'll leave it for you to figure out the right order.
10:21So let's jump in time again.
10:26After you solve the chronology and thus sink deeper with the death imprint,
10:30and understand it better what happened here and how it can help you find Ethan,
10:34you can see one more thing.
10:36Everything we dealt with previously happened before the deceased's death,
10:40but when we are in full sync, we can actually witness the dead man's first memory after his death.
10:51But that is another thing I do not want to spoil.
10:55So let me show you something else instead.
10:59Finding corpses and looking for Ethan is not the only thing you do in the game.
11:03There are places in the valley that are, let's say, different.
11:07Call them playgrounds or mini-worlds.
11:10They're places where our game's vision and imagination opens up the most.
11:14And it's up to you to discover their secrets.
11:18Let's take a quick look at one of such places.
12:07And here is another weird place.
12:36Okay, so I hope this video gave you a good idea of what kind of game The Vanishing of Ethan
12:42Carter is.
12:42Thank you for watching.
12:44Thank you for watching.
Commenti