Resurrection: Dear Esther

Resurrection is a regular feature in which Resolution Magazine takes a step back in time and admires a game of yesteryear. This time, in unorthodox fashion, it’s an experimental Half-Life 2 mod built by a researcher and university lecturer…

“The gulls do not land here any more,” the voice says. And, no, why would they? The fog’s thick, the waters surrounding the island churning. No one lives here any more. There are no scraps to feed on.

“Maybe it’s the depletion of fishing stock driving them away. Perhaps it’s me.”

There’s a small hut ahead. The beach stretches out to the left, curving around the cliff face, stacks of rock obstructing the view. What little there is of it, anyway. The fog, remember. In the far distance, you can just about make out… something. A small flash. Red. If you squint hard enough, you can tell it’s attached to a structure beneath it.

“At night you can see the lights, sometimes, from a passing tanker or trawler.” It might as well be night already, so hazy is the view. A buoy floats a short way out to sea. Clouds fall to eye level long before the horizon.

A single bird emerges in the sky, flying to the left, over a dirt path leading up from the beach. “Dear Esther,” the voice says, “I sometimes feel as if I’ve given birth to this island.”

DESTINATION UNKNOWN
There’s something enchanting about this foresaken place. Videogame worlds, traditionally, offer focal points and areas of action. Dear Esther’s island is devoid of anything you might expect. There’s a beach, and a hut, and dirt pathways that you suspect might not lead anywhere. There’s no clear destination; nothing to do except exist and explore.

Developed in 2008 as part of a research project, Esther is a Half-Life 2 mod that omits everything integral to its mother game. There is no gun. No Combine soldiers or zombies emerge from its dark corners. It is a work of absolute minimalism, designed to answer the question: how do you react when placed in a first-person videogame, in which the story is fragmented and impenetrable, and there’s precious little of anything to do?

Maybe you get turned off straight away. Perhaps you bunny-hop around the island, desperately seeking some form of excitement to cling onto. Perhaps you give up after a few minutes. You might head to its page on ModDB and ask where all the bad guys are, or complain that the rocks are jagged and polygonal.

Maybe you stay. Just as the narrator did. “I have lost track of how long I’ve been here,” says his voice.

The path is thin up to the left. You avoid it for now. Inside the hut, someone’s drawn a series of complex chemical occasions on the wall. You examine them with a torch, but there’s little to make sense of – to your untrained eye, at least. Through the window, a lake beckons. You can’t get to it. You head back out, and begin to climb.

[Continues...]

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