Everybody's Gone to the Rapture Review: The End

Apocalyptic fiction rarely focuses on the quiet corners of the world, preferring to show the heavy toll of catastrophe in the overpopulated cities and crumbling infrastructure of human progress. Coincidentally, much of this fiction focuses on the deterioration of the world rather than its inhabitants. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture succeeds by narrowing its focus to the quiet, personal and heartbreaking stories of the people whose lives are slowly disappearing into the ether.

Developer The Chinese Room is following up the polarizing Dear Esther with a first person exploration through Yaughton, a fictional British town at the center of a mysterious plague that’s causing people to disappear. The mysteries of the game – what caused this phenomenon and what it all means – are compelling enough to pull you along the story’s path. But it was the human stories, and the secrets they held, that kept me engaged and on the edge of my seat throughout my time with the game.

As Rapture’s story focuses on the quiet moments of the apocalypse, the game design also eschews the typical bombast that often accompanies the genre. The game only requires two inputs: press X to interact and use the six-axis motion controls to “tune” into some of the story sequences. Your main purpose in Yaughton is to explore the world at your own pace and discover the short vignettes of light that tell the story of the village’s former inhabitants.

Like its contemporary Gone Home, the world of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is open for you to explore at your own pace and the story requires you to piece it together. But where Gone Home often felt like a detective story as you parsed out clues in notes, letters, answering machines and personal belongings, Rapture is more akin to being a nosey busy-body in a town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Your character’s role in this tale remains a mystery until the final moments, but you often feel like an outsider – listening in on intimate conversations that weren’t meant for your ears, and glimpsing the fear, despair and redemption of the game’s six main characters from an outside perspective.

That strange retrospect voyeurism is your only means of interaction with the game, and that’s often to its detriment. You’ll want to be able to open a book and rifle through its pages, or pick up a bloody cloth to examine it closer, but Rapture doesn’t let you. To the game’s credit though, the story is told strongly through other means; strong vocal performances and excellent visual storytelling.

So much of Rapture’s appeal also lay in its sound design. Audio cues beckon you towards a radio holding the key to a story sequence. The sound of birds chirping reminds you that life still exists in this world. Every pivotal sequence is punctuated by a soaring, angelic score that is one of my favorites in recent years. It’s the voice acting, though, that really carries the experience. With no facial animations and limited physical performances to rely on, the voice cast absolutely excels at expressing the twisting emotional arc that each character endures.

The Chinese Room has constructed a complicated tale of broken, lonely, flawed human beings dealing with their own mortality. Some fight their fate to the futile, bitter end, while others embrace it as the inevitable. One scene features a senile elderly woman calling out to her long-deceased husband as the light overtakes her body. After spending an hour recounting her final days, I nearly lost myself, witnessing how in that moment, at the very end, she was truly happy.

What makes these stories all the more remarkable is the player’s ability to uncover them in a non-linear fashion. This system leaves room for error, as players can accidentally (or purposely) miss even the most powerful emotional scenes, but it’s a worthwhile tradeoff for the freedom to uncover the pieces in your own way. Rapture’s gameplay manages to remain consistently accessible and easy to control, while the emotional, non-linear story rarely panders to the audience. It’s a testament to the story’s brilliant structure that no matter how it’s consumed, it still retains a powerful resonance.

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture isn’t for everyone. In fact, it might not be meant for people who expect their games to offer immediate feedback responses to their actions. It might even resonate best with people who don’t typically play video games. If taken on its own merits – as a rich, tragic and thought-provoking tome – this is a game that transcends the art form. As such, it’s difficult to analyze the final product on any existing standard, since there are few experiences like it. For that reason alone, it’s a game well worth your time.