My interpretation is that this game's about intergenerational trauma rather than a literal curse. If there is a curse, it's that they find it so hard to break out of the family pattern of neglect, carelessness, hopelessness and avoidance. Blaming it on a "curse" meant they never had to look at their situation or themselves critically and face that they could have possibly been more responsible for themselves and those around them (more often than not their children) but it also meant that they inevitably repeat the cycle and pass the trauma on to the next generation.
This! Thank you so much for putting this into words! I 100% agree with you here, I didn't feel like there was any sort of supernatural 'curse', but more of a curse of human behavior. This family completely refused to ever learn from mistakes.
They don't seem like the connect emotionally to each other unless it's through grief. Their personal struggles are ignored or are something they become fixated on to the point if ignoring each other and each ofhers struggles.
Working in a factory when you're dealing with mental illness is probably not the best thing. That one was definitely something I could identify with from experience. The repetitive nature, the isolated feeling because you're not always allowed to do things like talk to people or listen to music because it'll get in the way of "productivity" or might be a hazard around dangerous, deadly machines. Yeah, that chapter really hit a little close to home for me.
Lewis' section drives me to tears every time without fail, because I am a life-long maladaptive daydreamer and only recently has it tapered off to be more managable with the realization that it had a name and was classified as its own thing. I was seen by a pedriatric psychiatrist in school in early 2003, which was not even a year after the term was first coined. Needless to say, they didn't catch it. In fact, when I first played this game around 2017, I didn't know about MDD and was still feeling intense shame and anxiety from daydreaming where I would spend up to an hour and a half pacing - or if I let my anxiety reflect on the daydreams, it'd go into leaps and dances. I have great calves, I'm sure you can tell. So seeing Lewis and hearing his psychiatrist explain all of that hit incredibly close to home, especially at a time when I was at my lowest and most anxious for my future, completely rudderless. Being stuck at an unfulfilling job, hyperfocused and falling in a debilitating (and at the time for me, anxiety-fueled) daydream where you live out your greatness through a paracosm? That alone is heartbreaking. Having it lead to death is a tragedy that really stuck to me. But what struck me more was the intense feeling of representation. A lot of Lewis' circumstances map to mine and for the first time I felt like I was understood, and it was probably one of the steps towards me getting help.
"The last time I was in Edith Sr's room, I was 10 and she was painting my portrait" Edie painted portraits for every dead Finch, she romanticized their "curse" so much she was getting those portraits ready even when they were still alive. I wonder if she started on Lewis' portrait when Milton disappeared or after he died.
when you find lewis’s painting, edith says a week before they moved out edie was already painting lewis, meaning she painted it after he died, and shortly before they moved
My theory for the game is that it wasn't a curse at all, but rather a continuing pattern of neglect that was facilitated throughout the generations. A constant lack of safety precautions and proper parenting seem to be the thing that led to many of the children's demise. That, plus general illness and unsafe/reckless behaviours/conditions... I think ultimately that's what killed them off, one by one. And it was continuously justified as a curse to absolve anyone of responsibility for some of the more preventable deaths.
i saw a theory once that edie was the actual villian by keeping the "curse" alive, almost reveling in the disaster and misery, overdramatizing each death with a shrine and story.
“It’s a lot to ask, but I don’t want you to be sad that I’m gone. I want you to be amazed that any of us ever had a chance to be here at all” I’ve had this quote saved since the very first time I played this game around Fall 2020. It just hits different nowadays
@@dunedigger5093 - he became the king in "the unfinished swan", a game that was made before this one and is technically an easter egg(?) and explanation of what happened
@@lazyperfectionist3978 I always felt it wasn't a literal explanation of what happened, but more that The Unfinished Swan was a world that Milton created through his imagination and paintings. In spite of the fantastical explanations that Edie came up with for all the deaths in the family, this story is much more rooted in reality than the Unfinished Swan, so the idea that Milton had a literal magic door doesn't really fit. My personal belief is that there are a lot more passages in the house than what we saw Edith explore during the course of the game. We know that Milton explored the passages (from the drawings he left behind). I think he got stuck somewhere, possibly injured, and died somewhere deep in the house.
You actually meet Milton in these guys other game, "Unfinished Swan." He grows up and has a son. So the Finch we meet at the end of this game has a cousin somewhere.
I’m so glad you mentioned this game, I remember watching people play a game forever ago that seemed very familiar to Milton’s castle but I thought I was just remembering wrong!! Now I have to go rewatch a play through
I don't think that's what really happened. All these stories told with larger than life lenses can't be the actual truth. It feels more likely that the King's story in Unfinished Swan masked the actual story that Milton got lost in the woods and died drowning in the sea near where the old house is. Also several part of the story in Unfinished Swan seemed to portray the house in WRoEF. Like how you need to climb the tree to get into the castle. Or how the Lazy Giant was clearly his brother Lewis. And if you see carefully the last stage King statue looks very much like where the old house is located in the middle of the sea. Also how you need to race the time to avoid drowning, which mean it is in the sea.
It could be interpreted the other way just as easily. He ran away from home, and all the struggles in unfinished swan were his struggles to not repeat the cycle of carelessness that caused many of the family deaths
I don't think the family is cursed. I think that the grandma did think they were cursed ( she kept the newspaper of the Flinch curse and stuff), but most deaths just feel like negligence or bad choices. The baby was left alone in the bathroom, Molly wasn't given food, Walter was allowed to live in fear under the house instead of being given help after seeing his sister death, barbara was probably killed by her boyfriend "her biggest fan" and yet the grandma kept the magazines making a horror story out of it. Gus was left alone in a storm, and his dad decided to keep the party going even when there were clear signs of a storm coming. Sam didn't make sure the deer was dead, and Calvin had a broken leg yet they let him swing in what looks like a cliff, with a pathetic fence as protection. Every single death feels like they could of done something about it and yet nothing was done. Lewis i would argue is the only one who got help, but the rest feels like they were left to fester more "proof" of the curse. Barbara with the magazines and the room full of her acting career, Walter as the "mole" under the house, the guy who got "killed by a dragon" which the protagonist points out "Eddie could of just said he died building a dragon, but she didn't". It feels like the grandma convinced herself a curse was what killed everyone and therefore she didn't do stuff to prevent more deaths. Maybe i am reading too much into it, but considering our protagonist says "maybe we believed so much in a family curse, we made it real", and the fact she is CLIMBING THIS WHOLE ASS HOUSE WHILE PREGNANT, makes it seem like it's just them making bad choices and blaming a curse for them.
Agreed. It seems they all think "We're already cursed to die, might as well do stupid shit 🤷". Just look at Sam. He faced death head on. He's lucky he made it to his 30s.
To me this story is about a families lust for death, some of the older generations had this innate fascinations with death e.g. Odin, Eddie and Sam where the best example of this luster. This is reinforced that Eddie glorified everyone's deaths and Edith also claimed that the family believing the stories killed them. To summarises my thoughts it is a cautionary tales about a family lusting for death instead of living their lives. "Death is not a blessing, but a deliverance..."
Molly ate what looked like Holly, which is poisonous. She was just a kid being a kid, pouting because she got sent to bed without supper. I don't think anyone is really to blame in any of the deaths. Its just bad luck, not a curse. I had several close calls as a kid, just got lucky. Have had a few close calls as an adult too. If I had been standing an inch or two to the left here or had left 5 minutes later there. Sometimes things just happen, I don't think trying to place blame ever really helps.
@@dunedigger5093 Sure, kids make mistakes, but why was she locked in her room? Seems kind of overkill to send your kid to bed without dinner AND lock their door. If Edie hadn't done that she'd have been able to sneak out and find an actual snack instead.
@@int0thedepths Mom was mad and frustrated? Not that it is an excuse. I'm not a parent, but I can remember how annoying and frustrating I was when I was little. Sometimes the best thing to do is to separate yourselves so you don't say something you regret. And she was safe in her room, she should have been okay for the night, if not just extra hungry in the morning.
Like many people said, I think the 'curse' of the Finches was actually bad luck, bad parenting, generational trauma, and mental illness. TLDR: This becomes my interpretation of the family member's mental states and a general timeline Odin, after his wife and newborn died, attempted to move not only his family, which included his newborn granddaughter, but his house. Losing his life in the process. Edie, having lost all of her family, seems to become obsessed with this bad luck/bad decisions having an outside cause and decides that they must be cursed. She may also have delusions if the snippet of her at the old house is an indication. Molly eats poisonous berries that, presumably, her parents left unattended in her bathroom as Christmas decoration in her attempt to stave off hunger, killing her at only 10 years old after quite a trip. This death feeds into Edie's delusions of a 'curse' as well as allows her to distance herself from any responsibility over her daughter's death. The next death is several years later with her second daughter, Barbara, who was murdered by either her boyfriend or by a known murderer on her 16th birthday, while Edie and Sven were at the emergency room. I am under the impress that the murderer wore a mask of some kind since Walter, who witnessed the murder, is convinced that there is a 'monster', though it could be just how his child's mind could handle the horror. Edie's obsession with the curse is probably reignited and, in order to try and gain both sympathy and validity, publishes information about her daughter's death. She also does this to probably try and 'respect her daughter's wishes' since Barbara wanted to regain her childhood fame. This is where I think Sam's madness begins. We hear him mentioning being strong for your survival many times in his flashbacks of the hunting trip and I can imagine that he was thinking that if Barbara or Walter had been stronger/more prepared, perhaps she would have survived. (Also where were the twins during this? Surely they weren't just in their room while their sister was murdered?) The next death is only a year later in 1961. Calvin, who from Sam's account seems to have lost his fear of death after Barbara's death, flings himself off a cliff after swinging too high on his swing. Both Sam and Edie probably have some self-blame with his death, though they handle it very differently. Edie leans in further to the 'curse' to try and escape her culpability and Sam becomes hard and strict. His children are hardly left alone (as seen by the fact they all share a small room) and he treats them more like soldiers than children. Sven then dies from an accident in 1964, leaving a broken and probably delusional Edie alone with a 14 and 12 year old. Edie presumably encourages Walter's fears and own delusions with her conviction of a curse and Sam (as far as I can tell) shuts them out, leaving 4 years later to enlist. In 1968, shortly after he enlisted he married his first wife, Kay, and had Dawn. He was only 18. 1969, Gus is born. Sam's fear of death and his belief of controlling it by being tough turns aggressive and a note mentions that he hits his children. Walter saying he's been in the bunker for 30 years means that he went underground at 23ish around the year 1975. Guess the fear got to be too much. Interesting though that he probably met his niece and nephew before disappearing, They were 7 and 6. Sam and Kay's marriage seems to start having troubles (maybe because he treats their children like soldiers and his mom tells crazy stories about her dead children?) and they have another child, Gregory in 1976 when Dawn is 8. This (unsurprisingly) does not help their marriage, and the fighting continues. Gregory ends up accidently drowning while Kay argues with Sam on the phone, and they divorce shortly after. In 1982, Sam is getting remarried to a woman who has not met his children. We do not know her name. Gus, 13, is angry at this turn of events. He does not want his father to remarry and seems to generally dislike him. At his father's wedding, instead of participating, he stands apart and flies a kite. When his father demands that he come and take pictures and join the others inside the tent, Gus refuses. A storm hits and the tent flies off, hitting Gus and killing him. I believe that if Sam doubted his mother's claims of a curse, he now believes it and doubles down on trying to protect his remaining child. A year later, Sam takes his 15 year old daughter hunting. He wants her to be tough and strong, so despite her displeasure at hunting and her crying over the shot deer, he just pushes on about how proud he is. An avid photographer, Sam sets up a camera to take a picture of his daughter's first kill, and in his rush to get next to her by the timer, dismisses her concerns about the deer possibly still being alive. As he crouches down next to her, the deer bucks up pushing him off a cliff. Dawn has now witnessed two deaths that she probably feels partially responsible for; her brother, for not looking for him during the storm and her father for not protecting him during the incident. These things mixed with her Grandmother's stories about the family curse, drove her to try and escape it. At 18 in 1986, Dawn moves to India to escape and to teach English. There, she meets and marries Sanjay who I believe is a rescue worker or possibly some kind of missionary? She becomes religious in a way that the rest of her family is not. In 1988, they have Lewis. In 1992, they have Milton. In 1999, they have Edith. During this time, we are lead to believe that they stayed in India with Dawn being a teacher, and possibly homeschooling her children. Around 2000, Sanjay dies in an earthquake and Dawn is left alone with a 12, 8, and 1 year old. Lost and grieving, she returns with her children to her only family, Her grandmother Edie (And her Uncle in the basement) Lewis and Milton are fascinated by their grandmother's stories of they family. Milton and Edie are especially close, since they are both painters. Milton, in 2003 at 11 years old, draws a flip book of him painting and disappearing through a magic doorway, then disappears. At the time of the story (2016) he is still not found. Dawn seals all of the doors to the old bedrooms in the house. (TBH, it was creepy that Edie keep them untouched except for a shrine since her children died anyway. I mean, Molly's room was left the same since she died in 1947 and it's 2016? That's 69 years! Creepy, why not give it to your grandchildren or something? Why go through the trouble of adding additions to the house? Why didn't Dawn just get rid of all of that stuff and live in the main house?) I believe she seals the doors in response to her son's drawing, mixed with her grandmother's stories. Sealing the doors to prevent the curse from stealing your other children doesn't sound so insane when you've been told all your life that your family is cursed. In 2005, Walter finally gains the courage to face the 'monster' that has been terrorizing him since he was 8 years old and leaves the bunker, only to immediately be hit by a train as he is making his escape. (Why didn't he leave through the house? Was he convinced the monster was still there?) Edie has now lost all of her children, and takes solace in the fact that there 'wasn't anything she could have done to save them'. Lewis struggles with the loss of his brother and turns to substances to cope. Dawn gets him into therapy and gets him a job at the local cannery. After he gets clean, he starts to see his life as a monotonous chore and develops an intense and all-consuming imaginary world to cope. He delves deeper and deeper into this world of his own creation that he starts to lose his grip on reality and his will to live in the real world. In 2010, at 22 years old, the pain of existence proves too much while he is at work and he places his head underneath the blade made to remove fish heads, essentially beheading himself. Dawn, now having seen two of her sons lost to what she believes is Edie's stories, takes her 11 year old daughter and tries to run away from her family's curse once again. Edie, after arguing and drinking, dies alone in the house. Dawn and Edith spends several years traveling and moving. In 2016, Dawn becomes ill (Coughing suggests something respiratory) and slowly dies, leaving 17 years old Edith as the last Finch. The story takes place as Edith looks through the house and discovers the stories of her relatives and is told through her journal that she is writing to her unborn child. It ends with us looking over the shoulder of a young boy (7-10 years old) at Edith's gravestone in the family cemetery. The date of her death implies that she died in childbirth to the boy in 2017. So overall, delusions, mental illness, and the trauma of so much death is this family's 'curse' probably not something supernatural. (Though who knows with Milton, maybe there is something there. Or he could have simply been kidnapped like so many children unfortunately are.)
One small error Gus didn’t die from the tent if you look behind him you will see a totem pole the wind knocked over the totem pole which then collided with Gus killing him
I feel compelled to say this every time I see Edith Finch stuff - I'm the child of an avid genealogist, so I have numerous memories of going graveyard crawling with my mother, finding the tombstones of long-dead family, taking rubbings of the mossy engravings, building the tree, and so forth. It was never my hobby, it's always been hers. I'm sure one day I'll wish it had been my hobby, but I just can't force myself into it. That said, when your family isn't just your parents, grandparents, and any aunts, uncles or cousins you may have, but also great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents and so on, practically back to Noah (more like back to 400 years ago, in my case,) your family becomes more about the dead than about the living. When I first saw What Remains of Edith Finch, I never saw even a whisper of a curse. This? This is just _history._ People live. People die. Some people die horribly. Some people never reach the age of 10. Some people pass away just shy of a century. Some people suffer from illness, whether of body or mind. Some people are healthy and hardy and Death still comes calling. When my generation is gone and all that remains are our stories, you could call us cursed too. Some of us have siblings that were never born. Some of us lived until the mind had gone and we were imprisoned in a shell of our own body, our jailer nothing more than a heart that refused to quit. Some of us met accident that left us disabled, at birth or decades later. But for all that tragedy and sorrow, we also lived. There's joy still, and always. I think the most important thing is that your Remains aren't just how you died or the body you left behind. It's how you changed the world around you. That's what comes through for me in this story, as preoccupied as it is with the hows and whens and whys of death. Death is just part of life. And the fact that the Finch House is so whimsical and cozy speaks to me on that level - as afraid as Edith Jr. is of the house and its stories, you can clearly see it was a place of love and joy, marred by the kind of tragedy we all must face eventually.
The creators' approach to death is exemplified by Calvin's story. His brother doesn't remember the tragic death of a kid. He remembers that his brother wanted to fly. And he did.
i think about this a lot too. none of the men on my father's side of the family live past sixty (my father having passed away less than a week after his 60th birthday a few months ago.) and he called it a family curse. but after his passing, i'm starting to see it as less of a curse and more a cycle of people who just didn't take care of themselves. of men who couldn't admit they needed help because they only ever learned to rely on themselves. my father passed of complications from a stroke - itself caused by surgery complications he never sought help for. he'd previously had a heart attack and been in stage four kidney failure, and the only reason we found out about either of them was because he was seeing a medical professional for a regular check up. his father, my grandfather, died of a heart attack at 59 - bailing his car out of the snow, never bothering to ask any of his family for help, despite already suffering complications from alcoholism, back problems and a broken rib. my great grandfather died of complications from alcoholism. and so on and so forth, in a cycle of toxic self reliance. i think you're correct when you say this game isn't about a curse - it's about history. not just a personal history, but a family history, of how the dead once lived and what we the living can learn from their lives to help enrich our own. whether that's learning to trust others despite your own anxieties, or simply that certain choices are not to our benefit. the dead can often still pass wisdom onto us, so long as we're willing to listen.
Hearing Gab talk about her memories (especially the memory of her Grandma making the cake every Sunday and her sister making the same one after their Grandma passed) is really sweet. And it reminds me of all the small things my family does that makes me feel so, so loved.
Ahh, the same for me. It brought back so many wonderful memories. I am still trying to get some of my mom's recipes down. I think I have most of them now though. ^-^
I really enjoyed this game back when it came out. I wish there were more games like it; games where you explore huge mysterious houses with secret passages. The only thing I’d wish for is more puzzle solving and interaction with different objects, although I am aware that this game is more of a narrative driven adventure.
I'm always looking for games that let you explore places (like huge mysterious houses) with secret passages. It's why I enjoyed Gone Home and The Painscreek K*llings so much.
@@aliteraryfan I would recommend “The S*icide of Rachel Foster” if you haven’t seen it already. You explore a giant hotel and find out the truth of what happened to Rachel.☺️
How about the House On The Hill? It's an indie game about a guy robbing a big house/mansion that has secrets. Each chapter has their own game mechanic and story just like this game. Gab already played it, so you can check it out first
You can see the railing on the second floor landing is damaged and repaired in present day so I think that part of Barbara's story happened. Her boyfriend probably scared her while wearing a monster mask and she fell backwards off the landing and died. That's why Walter thinks there's a monster, after all he probably also read Molly's diary where she talks about a monster as well (their rooms were connected after all)
that part of the story in the comic happened in the basement though, i think it’s more likely the comic was closer to reality than you’d think, like most of the stories in the game were. while they were slightly dramatized and visualized in more flowery ways, they all DID die the way we see their stories play out, just less “pretty”. especially with the comic having knowledge of the basement key and everything, it’s likely she was actually murdered, and there likely just was a struggle like in the comic. i believe at some point there’s confirmation in the house that it was actually deemed a murder in the real world too, though i think i remember seeing that when this game first came out so i could be misremembering. walter thinking there’s a monster would make sense even with it being a murder because he was so young that creating an inhuman monster is often easier to deal with than a human, especially one he knew and likely trusted to some degree, was capable of doing something that horrible. you gotta remember he SAW or at least heard a lot of what happened, and that young trauma can form really strange coping mechanisms because they’re just a kid, and then he pretty immediately locked himself in the bunker for 30 YEARS, and that entire time still was convinced there was a monster out to finish him off too
@@lightworthy one point was that it was Halloween and there was a monster convention. I think the hook handed dude might have been a radio play that was playing, and one of the convention goers was a fan. I think maybe the convention cosplayers dressed up in monster gear, and when Barbara didn't show up they went to her house. Thats what Walter sees. They want to play up the horror thing but then it gets taken too far and she actually got murdered. Maybe the bf got murdered too, maybe he was a part of it.
@@frostfang1 I'm personally subscribed to the "the boyfriend killed her" theory for one main reason: the comic states that her fans killed her, and it also stated that her boyfriend was her biggest fan. importantly it put more attention on the fan part than the boyfriend part, implying he was her biggest fan before he was her boyfriend. a single deranged fan as opposed to a group of them. but that's just an opinion, her death is probably one of the most vague out of them all.
Honestly the game design is a masterpiece in storytelling. Each and every room is just so splendidly crafted. "Even the fireplace had a story" Edith says, and everywhere you look, you can see remnants of the characters that lived there. You walk down the driveway and note it wasn't used in a while, then you walk into the garage and see the car is covered up. You also see tools, and later find out her great grandpa handcrafted the house and most things in it. You walk into the kitchen and see cans of fish from the place Lewis worked. You can see the family in every room of the house.
Uh oh, got immediately hooked within the first two and half minutes and am now downloading on steam XD I'll see you back here once I'm finished! You're awesome Gab!
2:11:42 She definitely died during child birth. She said in the book that she hoped he wouldn't read the book and wanted to tell the stories herself. She said that if he's reading the book, it didn't work out that way (ie she's dead). By what it said at the end of the journal, it seems like she was somehow at high risk for complications. Also, old Edith probably committed suicide.
Love the imagination in this game! Lewis' section, I would never forget, it's just too relatable. I've always been bored to agony at my jobs, daydreaming would have been more tolerable. I would just constantly relive bad memories all day long, and it was just awful. Lewis' employers wouldn't care as long as the work got done, that's just how it is, sadly.
I think that part disturbed me the most, especially because it's fairly obvious that the psychiatrist could and should have done SO MUCH more to help him, but she just let him spiral to suicide -this game is fascinating because, for the most part, it's so easy (at least for me) to see how the 'curse' is just a horrifying series of negligence, highly unfortunate accidents, and untreated mental illnesses
The thing about this game is that, the family isn't really cursed. Maybe they were really unlucky in their time in Norway and they moved to America I'm guessing, where Edie was the only one left with memories of the family's curse. Molly's death, her first daughter, was the first death, which was caused by Edie herself in some way. You can say that she started blaming herself for it, and then resulted to blaming the family curse rather than herself, because it was less hurtful. Edie is the only one to ever mention the curse, she's the only one to make it public as well. I think that in the years after her children's passing, she lost herself, and started to almost feed into the "curse". Like how she leaked a bunch of stuff to the tabloids for Barbara's death (the layout of the house, the secret of the music box), or even how she made Sam write how Calvin died, so that the mind of a child would make it more fantastical, less real, more in the curse side. As for Dawn blaming Edie for everything, it is mentioned that Milton and Lewis spent a lot of time with Edie, where she told them about everyone's story in her fiction-style of storytelling. It fed Lewis' imagination (which made him lose control over it because of his depression after the death of his dad and the disappearance of his brother) and Milton's imagination which caused him to create a world beyond imagination (btw Milton is canonically not dead, as he is present in one of the developer previous game). The story is sad because a lot of death could have been avoided, Molly's intoxication, Barbara's murder, Calvin's jump to his death, Gregory's drowning, Gus's death by storm, Lewis head chop, Walter's hit by train even Sven being crushed by the dragon head slide. Edie only made it this far because blaming it on the curse felt better than blaming herself for those she could have stopped. Now of course, Dawn's sickness, Edith's death at childbirth, Sam's deer accident, and a few are unpredictable. But you can't say that was Edie was doing was good. She was losing herself in delusions, and when it came to an end, she chose to die with it.
I think in a way Milton's disappearance is its own special kind of heartbreaking. He was only, what, 11 when he essentially vanished himself? Did he ever try to return? For him, it might have seemed like an amazing adventure, but for his family and especially his mom it must have been an absolute nightmare.
@@Niriixa I mean, it did get his brother depressed so... You're right... I don't know enough about the life Milton's has in the other other than he is a king there I think, but he was a child, he probably didn't know how it would hurt his family.
I love this game so much because there's so much interpretation you can make out of this. And once you puzzle out all the relation it all clicks to form a bigger image. To summarize, there's no curse whatsoever, but it was the story of Great grandma Edie's depression of losing her daughter Molly that push her further into despair and away from reality, because she blamed herself for the death surrounding her. Molly's death is easily explained. She was grounded but eats poisonous holly. She started to hallucinate, she remembered why she was grounded because she climbed the tree as a cat, her pang of hunger as an owl, then she tried to barf out the poison (the big rabbit), but she kept it in. She felt breathless like a shark out of water. Calvin died of an accident, but Edie blamed herself because she prepared dinner (probably with mushroom). Calvin once said he would rather died than eating mushroom. Barbara died of home invasion, the trauma caused Walter to become a recluse. Edie blamed herself for leaving them alone (to bring Sven to the hospital). Walter was called the mole man by Edie (that's how far she was unhinged from reality) eventually escaped and either fall off the cliff or got into train accident. Sam died of a cliff accident. Sven died of an accident involving a dragon slide and Edie said he died because of dragon. All these incidents has cause Edie to detach from reality and all her stories to become an unreliable narration. Of the next generation's deaths, Gregory's looks colorful because it was told as a story by Sam who wants to lessen Kay's guilt because he had seen first hand what guilt has done to his mother Edie. Meanwhile Gus died in a storm. The next one is Milton and Lewis. Milton is lost in the wood and probably died drowning in the sea (this can be surmised from the game Unfinished Swan). Lewis might not died because of suicide. Experimenting with weed and working in the factory can cause any accident whatsoever. But what's important is his psychiatrist assessment, that says it was suicide. It was this assessment that caused Dawn to leave Edie. Because Edie's story glorified deaths and paints over the fact of what she did. The story of Edie walking into the sea to find their sunken home was actually Edie's own suicide attempt. She walked into the sea trying to drown herself when she's no longer lucid, but got washed back to the shore. She almost succeeded because she got up to the house and the "light" was turned on to invite her in, but she looked back. These stories caused Dawn to suspect it got a hold on her children and caused her children to look for their own deaths. She lost Milton to the woods, and she lost Lewis to "suicide". She would not risk Edith to listen to great grandma rambling and follow suit.
@@eilis5341 If you are talking about Edith Jr's dad, he did die. He died because of an earthquake on the site he was working on. If you are talking about Dawn's dad, he was pushed off the cliff by the deer and died.
This is my favorite video game of all time, it tells a magnificent story and never ceases to make me tear up near the end. Finches are also one of my favorite animals
As a finch owner i just wanted to say that you have an excellent taste for animals, ✨ (Finches are adorable and precious can we all appreciate them please)
I don't think I had ever stopped to think about the concept of air in sealed rooms being effectively in a state of stasis, and I definitely did not realise how much that freaked me out until you mentioned what your tattoo artist said about stale air 😅😅😅
This is a great follow up to "The Unfinished Swan" Milton disappeared into his own painted world. It was a really good game. With that story in mind, I think that all the Finches we're born with magic in them, but unfortunately most members ended in tragedy. Even Milton.
I think the unfinished swan was symbolic and wasn't ment to be taken literally, in my opinion it implies that milton left the finch house after learning about the stories of the other family members, grew up and became a painter. He became so engrossed in his art that his wife left and the story is about his son meeting him and him reflecting on the past.
My fiancé and I own a funky house on a woody acreage in northwestern Washington (this game takes place on orcas island, which is an island in the puget sound) and seeing gab in the beginning swooning over this land, which is very similar to my own property, makes me feel so proud of where we live and how hard we’ve worked to get here 🥲 I love this game.
For people who may be confused/didn't know, Milton's story (The boy who dissapeared) is a call back to another Giant Sparrow game, The Unfinished Swan. I have not played it so i can not say for sure what questions it may/may not answer.
this game is so amazing, i watched jack play it for the first time and i ended up asking and getting it for christmas but everytime i watch/play it and get to lewis' part i just end up sobbing bc i relate too much and im scared of losing myself to that sort of disassociation
I've watched Sean play this so many times and the video essay by Joseph Anderson about this game so many times I love this game to death I can't wait to see what you think of it Gab!!!☺️💗
I don't think there was a curse, it's just that a lot of them had a death wish and no parental supervision. And the way they built the house, danger upon danger lol. But I loved the game!
yeah I was sure that I saw you playing this before!!! thank you for replaying! I can tell you're a happier & more relaxed person now & I appreciate that you take your time with every game
I remember watching Jack playing this and then after some years, I look at this game again to come to a realization that I dislike Eddie Sr. She believed and became obssesed over a curse that wouldn't exist if she didn't believed in it. Then instead of fixing things, she just let it be as it was, killing everyone and remembering their deaths and not their lives.
i immediately noticed something cool in the area before you get to the house (the forest area) those purple flowers look like foxgloves. foxgloves are said to symbolize secrets, and are poisonous if consumed. it's possible since they're the only flowers that i noticed leading up to the house that they're meant to represent the secrets that the house and the family holds
And quite possibly, it could have something to do with the deaths. I read somewhere that the flowers induce hallucinations when touched. Maybe touching them caused Milton to hallucinate as he left home, and then he got washed away by the sea?
I just get so unbelievably sad whenever the music kicks in and I watch the game play for this game. That poor family. I feel so much for Edith jr and her child
I remember watching Sean's play through of this game a few years ago, and it had consumed my thoughts for weeks. The Finch family story felt so familiar to me, because I feel like it speak about first and foremost, intergenerational trauma, which I'm unfortunately rather acquainted with. Every single one of the Finch family just carries the trauma of the previous generation. Edith is right, this family was so deeply steeped in their past, living in the shadows of the dead,that they kinda cursed themselves. In a way, this cycle could be broken, if Edith's child never found out about his family's history. I know some people might think that Edith's story is a bit far fetched, but even my family's history is full of horrible instances, like genocide, war, displacement, immigrations. This is probably why this game felt almost... Quaint. Realistic? Idk, it's weird in a relatable sort of way.
I feel like Edith was right for writing the journal to her child explaining the “curse”. It could more or less prevent him suffering a bad faint like his family before him, it’s really upsetting knowing Edith can’t be there for her child to protect him from it herself but I’m sure her child will avoid falling into the same faint since he read the journal
This was wonderful to watch and if you'd like to know what happens to Milton, I implore you to play The Unfinished Swan. It's a delightful game and I think you'd love it.
Lewis's story hit way too close to home. I started those daydreams years ago and was getting pretty wrapped up in them; I hardly cared what I did in my actual life. I found it funny when you kept saying he should write it down! Writing them down helps me to separate reality from fiction; at least, I think of it as some fun that I'm not allowed to have until I've finished my work properly. Scary how it can worsen and end up like what happened with Lewis.
Even now, none of the factories I've worked in have allowed earphones. Only earplugs. Even if the earphones are safety rated, places don't allow you to listen to a podcast or music while you work. I definitely ended up with similar maladaptive daydreams, or just plain listening to songs in my head while working.
I always saw people playing this years ago and didnt give it any attention, until earlier this month it went on sale and i played it myself. One of the most beautiful games i've ever played
OMG I WATCHED THIS TWICE FROM HER and it's probably one of the best walking sim. Really good story, really diverse, a lot of art style, and I'm glad Gab is playing it again
Lewis was experiencing maladaptive daydreaming and chat was right it's a type of dissociation. With some delusions at the end of his imaginary Lewis being the "real one". I guess I'm lucky my daydreams don't feature myself in them but other characters that I'm just in the perspective of. They're very different appearance-wise from myself so there's no confusion as to who is real and who isn't and I know that I am myself and the characters are characters in my head. But yeah, I can listen music and pace around my house and daydream for hours. I've permanently hurt my body doing it in excess, unfortunately. So I try to stay under 5 hours of daydreaming per day now. Usually, maladaptive daydreaming has a repetitive movement aspect to it like pacing or rocking in place or in Lewis' case moving the fish around. But there have been cases where a person doesn't have to move to daydream. Also, you are right GAB a mental health professional would NOT write a letter like that...it was purely a narrative device in the game.
Yes, I pace back and forth when mine happens. I, too, am fortunate that my mind wanders into video game worlds and my characters are made up completely so I also know what is real or not. I work full time and that helps to keep me in reality as well, thankfully. I feel horrible for the people who end up blurring the lines and get lost.
@@JustKelso1993 yeah, my daydreams are usually inspired by the media I consume: tv shows and books. I'm 25. But I'm unfortunately unable to work due to my mental illnesses. I was diagnosed with primary agoraphobia in 2017 soon after just barely being able to graduate high school...as well as a couple of other anxiety disorders (social and generalized) so that gives me a lot of time to myself to daydream and disconnect from reality because I really don't engage with the world around me due to fear. Earlier this year, I was finally accepted into my local disability income support program for people who have never had any work experience after a couple attempts. And so I'm now saving up to get a psychiatric service dog to help with exposure therapy and physical independence. I currently can't leave my home on my own, I need a family member or friend to go to places with me or else I have a significantly increased amount of anxiety. But also taking care of and interacting with animals keeps me from daydreaming as much. I'm glad your job keeps you from daydreaming...I have a friend who is a writer and she also daydreams a bit more than the average person due to that and she has a very slow full time job that allows her to daydream and think of scenes that she then goes home and writes. It's interesting to me because I've never written down my daydreams...I don't find them all that interesting and they shift and change depending on what show I've recently watched and gotten inspiration from. But it's often scenes on repeat with tiny changes to the dialogue day-to-day but from what I've read about maladaptive daydreaming having repetitive scenarios over and over and over again isn't uncommon, which I previously thought it was strange before I looked into it. But it's such a personalized unique thing to experience... everyone with it experiences something different. Some are very much like Lewis and have an idealized version of themselves who goes on amazing exciting adventures that they physically can't or wouldn't do in real life and then there's people like us where it isn't a version of ourselves... it's very much characters that we give life to in our head. Both experiences seem to be normal within the community of people who maladaptive daydream. But yeah I agree, I feel for those where the line is blurred...from what I've seen real life can be very painful for them to experience after coming back from a exciting daydream...my real life is very lonely and that can make me feel very sad at times when coming back from a daydream but not quite as emotionally painful as they seem to describe feeling. It can be absolutely devastating to them.
Yay I’ve been waiting for this - I was able to catch some of it on stream but have been waiting for this video. I love this game and how unique everyone’s stories are, how they feel so individual to the people that the game, and I guess Edie, tells you about. Plus the house is so epic. So happy to see you give the game another go!
I'm only halfway through, but in case it doesn't come up later, the ladder in the water is just a ladder to a floating dock. They're pretty common in lakes and stuff here in the US. It's just a floating platform out in the water for people to swim to and hang out on.
Man, I watched Sean play this years ago and it still hits just as hard as back then. It's became one of those games that I think back on often. So glad to see your playthrough of it!
"But I know what happened wasn't your fault." Except it *was* the mom's fault. It doesn't matter if the water is low, or off. You don't *ever* leave a baby in the bathtub by itself because you never know what will happen. You can drown in just an inch of water. And this is a *baby.* He couldn't have just gotten out or yelled for help or anything like that. It was all the mother's fault and no one elses, and she should have all the blame put on her. I have to wonder if she went to jail for child neglect. I hope she did.
it's implied there was no water in the tub at all, and the baby somehow turned it back on. the father who wrote that letter blamed himself for calling and drawing her away from the bathroom. sure you can probably blame one or both of the parents in a roundabout way, but I don't think people necessarily think "ok the baby is in an empty tub with NO water running so it's still unsafe to leave the baby here for a few minutes while I'm on the phone"
I remember scrolling through your videos and finding this one. I wanted so see your older videos and I absolutely fell in love with this game. It even became a inspiration for my sims game. I would build a room for the sim I would play as and decorate it according to her personality and what she would to and when she died I would lock the door, put a picture of her on the door and continue with her child. And I would continue doing so even if the house would look really weird.
I literally gasped and almost choked on my food when I saw this being posted. I love this game SO MUCH. There is always one family member I cannot find but the storytelling is great in this and definitely gets my creative juices flowing
Everytime I play this game or watch it, I always notice something new. I can never find that family member's room and I actually took a break from this game so their name is slipping my brain but I am glad I am back
I think everytime I play: Gregory's story makes me tear up the most but I think Lewis's story impacts me the most emotionally because it is like two stories in one and you have to focus on multiple things at once and there is a level of how relatable it is. Other than that, it is Grandpa Sam because of how sudden it is
So I realized that the family member I am always missing is Dawn and I feel like this game goes in order of the tree. You can also tell which character is coming up because there is an area dedicated to them and Edith starts narrating about them to give the player some context. From the rock wall, up through the classroom, and before opening the door to the bridge; Edith talks about Dawn and yet she does not have a Memorial like the other people. There is one place with the Bible that looks like it could be it. I know Edie makes the wooden paintings and the Mom stormed out that night but her space is always blank. Is there a way to fill it in?
@@gregputnam7243 Well, Dawn is Edith's mom. So you get her child story in Sam's story and then later when Edith climbs up the rockwall, that is Dawn's room. It then talks about adult Dawn meeting Sanjay, going to India and then coming back when he dies.
OH TO HAVE A HOUSE LIKE THAT😭 omg im in love with this game the concept, the art, the music all SO GOOD gosh the comic book style totally interesting would love to see more game like this😌
Milton finch has his own game, its a short game all based on artistry and magic and its awesome! the name is "The unfinished Swan" and its breath taking! Please please play it, i'd love to see your input!!!
I remember when this game came out for the free game of the month on the old PlayStation plus network. When I first got it I played and never picked it back up again. It's nice to see you playing it after so so long of not seeing anyone else mention this beautiful game on anywhere. Thanks gabs!
Still watching so I don't know if you notice but the banister is broken and had been repaired in the exact same position that it was broken in the comic so somehow they had gotten really detailed information about the crime scene, leading me to believe that Edith sr might have told them details and that's why she kept the comic
This game always just resets my brain. I watch somebody play it every couple of months and I still just get the same pulling feeling every single time, I don't know why. Maybe because any of the things in the game could somehow apply to me or the people around me, one day I'll listen to their stories and maybe understand them better. That's all I could really hope.
I think because...it still feels like there were mysteries unsolved. What Eddie wrote to Edith about the day she was born, what happened to Milton, how the mom (Dawn) had the key to all the secret passages but sealed the doors anyways.
Gab if you want to clean and organize a home I got one for you. My dad developed dementia after getting COVID and left a home full of quirky things. Rooms packed clear to the ceiling. One room has cast iron stove surrounded boxes. One room is full of player piano scrolls and two types of player pianos in the other room. We are having to go through it this summer. It’s been an emotional experience.
One of my favourite games of all time, and I completely understand the wanting to sort a house like the Finch's. There's just something so enchanting about a mysterious clutter, you get to slowly deconstruct into a organizational dream! The previous owners of my house (120 Year old house, likely with older owner's stuff too) left a ton of stuff in our basement, as well as a bunch of stuff from my nan when she moved out her's, and our basement was FULL. I took a good 3 days straight of going through and organizing. An old workbench with old tools and hardware, a chest full of old reader's digest books filled with pressed flower petals, a huge box of antique keys, old cabinets, jars, boxes. I even found an old trunk that I sanded down and refinished, that I still use to this day.
the timing of the ads is crazy... you said woah what is this at that strange door and it zoomed to the peephole... then an ad for Expedia faded in lol I was in tears laughing.
I really like when Evelien teaches us Dutch and talks about her childhood, it's so interesting. glad to hear your sister did her best/ made your grandma's recipe better😊
It was lovely to see you play this again in a better mental space. I did the same where I played this and a lot of other games when I was in a bad place and couldn't appreciate it fully. It's great to revisit games when we're in a better place 💜
Death Explanation and Spoilers: Odin and Ingeborg drowned, Edie died the night they left alone in the house, Sven died falling off the dragon slide. Molly died of poisoning, Barbara was murdered, Walter was traumatized and believed the Curse was a monster after him - got hit by a train. Calvin was on the tree swing when it broke and he fell off the cliff. Sam got pushed off the cliff by the deer. Gus was crushed by the tent, Gregory drowned, Dawn had cancer. Lewis was decapitated, Milton 'disappeared' but realistically he probably ended up falling out of the castle trying to paint or he drowned in the ocean. (He's the main protag in their other game so his whole story is a callback to that game) and Sanjay was killed in the earthquake incident posted on the wall. Edith died during child birth. The literally ONLY one to survive, was Edith's son and Kay his grandmother so I think he probably ended up with her and she told him NOTHING on the family for this very exact reason. He's already got a broken arm. So he either broke the curse and survived something, or its just starting with him.
For anyone wondering here is all the deaths of the finches and when they died Ingeborg Finch (Odin’s wife): 1937 died possibly from childbirth Johann Finch (Odin’s son):1937 died due to birth complications (maybe) Odin Finch (Husband to Ingeborg and father to Johann and Edie): 1880-1937 drowned Molly Finch (Daughter to Edie and Sven older sister to Barbra, Walter , Calvin, and Sam): 1937-1947 died from eating non edible food Barbra Finch: (Daughter to Edie and Sven little sister to Molly older sister to Walter, Sam, and Calvin): 1944-1960 died from being murdered then cannibalized by the hook man killer Calvin Finch: (Son to Edie and Sven little brother to Molly and Barbra twin brother to Sam and older brother to Walter) 1950-1961 fell from the swings into a body of water drowning Sven Finch: (Husband to Edie father to Molly, Barbra, Sam, Calvin, and Walter) 1915-1964 dies from the dragon slide falling on top of him Gregory Finch: (Son to Sam and Kay little brother to Dawn and Gus) 1976-1977 died from drowning Gus Finch: (Son to Sam and Kay little brother to Dawn older brother to Gregory): 1969-1982 died from a totem pole crashing against him making him fall off a small cliff near the beach Sam Finch: (Son to Edie and Sven little brother to Molly and Barbra twin to Calvin and older brother to Walter father to Dawn, Gus, and Gregory ex husband to Kay): 1950-1983 died from a deer hitting him off a cliff Sanjay Kumar: (Husband to Dawn father to Lewis, Milton, and Edith): 2002 died from an earthquake Milton Finch: (Son to Dawn and Sanjay little brother to Lewis older brother to Edith) 1992-2003 he went missing when he was 11 but in the Unpainted swan it was confirmed that the king is Milton which the king dies due to drowning so he might be dead but it’s not confirmed yet if he is dead or not Walter Finch: (Son to Edie and Sven little brother to Molly, Barbra, Sam, and Calvin): 1952-2005 died due to a train hitting him Lewis Finch: (Son to Dawn and Sanjay older brother to Milton and Edith): 1988-2010 died from self termination from chopping his head off with the salmon deheader Edie Finch: (Daughter to Odin and Ingeborg older sister to Johann mother to Molly, Barbra, Sam, Calvin, and Walter wife to Sven): 1917-2010 died from taking her pills with alcohol this was either by accident or on purpose Dawn Finch: (Daughter to Sam and Kay older sister to Gus and Gregory wife to Sanjay mother to Lewis, Milton, and Edith): 1968-2016 died from an illness Edith Finch: (Daughter to Dawn and Sanjay little sister to Lewis and Milton mother to Christopher) 1999-2017 died from childbirth
Happy to see you uploading this beautiful game! This game is an incredible example for pure creativity, with one of the most breathtaking and heartbreaking journeys in video games. Every scene here is a work of art, with its own uniqueness and qualities, and every one is crafted masterfully. One of the best indie games out there, today still.
I love the story about your grandma, the recipe that can’t be replicated because it’s not really a recipe. I never had that, but my mom has a folder of clippings from food magazines and random scribbled down recipes; something so lovely about that. This game is so beautiful and heartbreaking, even though I come from a small family it all hit me in the feels.
One of the devs confirmed that Milton actually created a magic paintbrush and travel to another world through the door he painted. He becomes the king in The Unifnished Swan.
I really resonate with lewis. I had to do just that (listen to podcasts) I was genuinely getting so lost in my head that I started drinking a lot when I got home to try and get out of it. Finally started listening to science, psychology, and sociology to get some brain "exercise" or else I was just going mad. It's a real thing that people go through. I also just sent my stuff down a conveyor belt and went home
Sad what we lose when the older generation passes. My grandma made books detailing stories from the family and our history. Cool story about your grandma.
I was so confused…I KNEW I watched Gab play this before so I was like “is she playing it again??” But the older vid isn’t coming up on the search anymore, at least not for me So glad to know I’m not completely crazy and she did play this years ago 🤣
Milton may have been the only finch to escape the family curse. Also imagine your actually Edith. Your walking through a giant tombstone basically. A giant monument to your dead family. It’s such a sad story. I wish this game had been bigger than it was. It definitely didn’t get enough attention.
I have a pretty weird take on hunting. I've hunted, killed animals for food, and I hated it. Not the adventure, but the murder, and I despise hunters who do it for "sport". My family was poor, we needed meat, and a successful weekend in the woods saved us hundreds of dollars in meat cost (probably equivalent to thousands by todays market prices). These days I try to advocate a healthier balance with our friends in nature, working to be a park ranger so I might have some minimal impact in protecting nature from us humans. So yeah, you're not wrong that killing a magnificent creature could be motivation to want to help them. I never saw it as redemption, but rather the responsibility to appreciate the gifts these animals give us when they lose their lives.
What a coincidence, another channel I watch played this 2 weeks ago. Such a charming game, with a well written, mysterious story. I don't mind watching it again, I had forgotten how good it is.
i LOVE this game so much and was hoping you’d play it on stream!! so excited to watch your experience with it. the “smile with too many teeth” simile is one of the most eerie, spine-chilling things i’ve ever heard but i absolutely adore the way they used it in this game and how they fit it into an otherwise not scary game.
Gab there’s a game called Concrete Genie that I played a few weeks ago. I kept putting it off and just decided to play it. And it was really good. It’s not that long so you could probably beat it in a day. I think you would enjoy it.
you had no idea how perfect the timing is, im like 10 minutes in your gameplay from 5 years ago, found out about this game a week ago and decided to watch yours and now you we have the updated version, nice!
The paintings in the tower are scenes from "the unfinished swan"! Another amazing short story with great mechanics ! Giant sparrow is the Devs for both ☺️
Oh my gosh, I never comment on youtube videos but hearing you mention The Twisted Ones made me really excited! It feels like I'm the only one who's read that before sometimes!! I loved it so much.
I can’t believe you’re playing Edith Finch!! I remember watching so many TH-camrs play it but I’m so glad you picked it up again! Can’t wait to revisit the game with you!
My interpretation is that this game's about intergenerational trauma rather than a literal curse. If there is a curse, it's that they find it so hard to break out of the family pattern of neglect, carelessness, hopelessness and avoidance.
Blaming it on a "curse" meant they never had to look at their situation or themselves critically and face that they could have possibly been more responsible for themselves and those around them (more often than not their children) but it also meant that they inevitably repeat the cycle and pass the trauma on to the next generation.
This! Thank you so much for putting this into words!
I 100% agree with you here, I didn't feel like there was any sort of supernatural 'curse', but more of a curse of human behavior. This family completely refused to ever learn from mistakes.
They don't seem like the connect emotionally to each other unless it's through grief. Their personal struggles are ignored or are something they become fixated on to the point if ignoring each other and each ofhers struggles.
What Lewis was likely experiencing is called Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder (MDD), is a pretty extreme form of dissociation and its very real.
Came here to say exactly this. Lewis's chapter section made me cry.
Working in a factory when you're dealing with mental illness is probably not the best thing. That one was definitely something I could identify with from experience. The repetitive nature, the isolated feeling because you're not always allowed to do things like talk to people or listen to music because it'll get in the way of "productivity" or might be a hazard around dangerous, deadly machines.
Yeah, that chapter really hit a little close to home for me.
I struggled with MDD throughout my entire childhood….. & what he was experiencing was exactly that !
I guess it runs in the family? Based on how Calvin and Greg are spoken about, maybe even Molly.
Lewis' section drives me to tears every time without fail, because I am a life-long maladaptive daydreamer and only recently has it tapered off to be more managable with the realization that it had a name and was classified as its own thing. I was seen by a pedriatric psychiatrist in school in early 2003, which was not even a year after the term was first coined. Needless to say, they didn't catch it.
In fact, when I first played this game around 2017, I didn't know about MDD and was still feeling intense shame and anxiety from daydreaming where I would spend up to an hour and a half pacing - or if I let my anxiety reflect on the daydreams, it'd go into leaps and dances. I have great calves, I'm sure you can tell.
So seeing Lewis and hearing his psychiatrist explain all of that hit incredibly close to home, especially at a time when I was at my lowest and most anxious for my future, completely rudderless.
Being stuck at an unfulfilling job, hyperfocused and falling in a debilitating (and at the time for me, anxiety-fueled) daydream where you live out your greatness through a paracosm? That alone is heartbreaking.
Having it lead to death is a tragedy that really stuck to me. But what struck me more was the intense feeling of representation. A lot of Lewis' circumstances map to mine and for the first time I felt like I was understood, and it was probably one of the steps towards me getting help.
"The last time I was in Edith Sr's room, I was 10 and she was painting my portrait"
Edie painted portraits for every dead Finch, she romanticized their "curse" so much she was getting those portraits ready even when they were still alive. I wonder if she started on Lewis' portrait when Milton disappeared or after he died.
when you find lewis’s painting, edith says a week before they moved out edie was already painting lewis, meaning she painted it after he died, and shortly before they moved
My theory for the game is that it wasn't a curse at all, but rather a continuing pattern of neglect that was facilitated throughout the generations. A constant lack of safety precautions and proper parenting seem to be the thing that led to many of the children's demise. That, plus general illness and unsafe/reckless behaviours/conditions... I think ultimately that's what killed them off, one by one. And it was continuously justified as a curse to absolve anyone of responsibility for some of the more preventable deaths.
i saw a theory once that edie was the actual villian by keeping the "curse" alive, almost reveling in the disaster and misery, overdramatizing each death with a shrine and story.
@@evilqueen6402 She literally has a shrine stash in the basement of those wood things she paints the death portraits on. Edie is definitely guilty.
I agree!
I agree, trauma cycles are truly and uderly impossible to brake
She beleived so much in the "curse" that she made it reality
“It’s a lot to ask, but I don’t want you to be sad that I’m gone. I want you to be amazed that any of us ever had a chance to be here at all” I’ve had this quote saved since the very first time I played this game around Fall 2020. It just hits different nowadays
It makes me cry everytime
I think Milton was the only one to break the curse. Him going into the door, and leaving was a symbolic gesture to that imo.
I wish we knew what happened to him, I like to imagine he left it all behind and started fresh and is happy somewhere.
@@dunedigger5093 the creators confirmed Milton is in their game called the unfinished swan :)
@@dunedigger5093 - he became the king in "the unfinished swan", a game that was made before this one and is technically an easter egg(?) and explanation of what happened
@@lazyperfectionist3978 I always felt it wasn't a literal explanation of what happened, but more that The Unfinished Swan was a world that Milton created through his imagination and paintings. In spite of the fantastical explanations that Edie came up with for all the deaths in the family, this story is much more rooted in reality than the Unfinished Swan, so the idea that Milton had a literal magic door doesn't really fit. My personal belief is that there are a lot more passages in the house than what we saw Edith explore during the course of the game. We know that Milton explored the passages (from the drawings he left behind). I think he got stuck somewhere, possibly injured, and died somewhere deep in the house.
@@sideshow_em - it was confirmed by the devs that the King and Milton are the same person
You actually meet Milton in these guys other game, "Unfinished Swan." He grows up and has a son. So the Finch we meet at the end of this game has a cousin somewhere.
I’m so glad you mentioned this game, I remember watching people play a game forever ago that seemed very familiar to Milton’s castle but I thought I was just remembering wrong!! Now I have to go rewatch a play through
I don't think that's what really happened. All these stories told with larger than life lenses can't be the actual truth. It feels more likely that the King's story in Unfinished Swan masked the actual story that Milton got lost in the woods and died drowning in the sea near where the old house is.
Also several part of the story in Unfinished Swan seemed to portray the house in WRoEF. Like how you need to climb the tree to get into the castle. Or how the Lazy Giant was clearly his brother Lewis. And if you see carefully the last stage King statue looks very much like where the old house is located in the middle of the sea. Also how you need to race the time to avoid drowning, which mean it is in the sea.
It could be interpreted the other way just as easily. He ran away from home, and all the struggles in unfinished swan were his struggles to not repeat the cycle of carelessness that caused many of the family deaths
I don't think the family is cursed.
I think that the grandma did think they were cursed ( she kept the newspaper of the Flinch curse and stuff), but most deaths just feel like negligence or bad choices.
The baby was left alone in the bathroom, Molly wasn't given food, Walter was allowed to live in fear under the house instead of being given help after seeing his sister death, barbara was probably killed by her boyfriend "her biggest fan" and yet the grandma kept the magazines making a horror story out of it. Gus was left alone in a storm, and his dad decided to keep the party going even when there were clear signs of a storm coming. Sam didn't make sure the deer was dead, and Calvin had a broken leg yet they let him swing in what looks like a cliff, with a pathetic fence as protection.
Every single death feels like they could of done something about it and yet nothing was done. Lewis i would argue is the only one who got help, but the rest feels like they were left to fester more "proof" of the curse. Barbara with the magazines and the room full of her acting career, Walter as the "mole" under the house, the guy who got "killed by a dragon" which the protagonist points out "Eddie could of just said he died building a dragon, but she didn't". It feels like the grandma convinced herself a curse was what killed everyone and therefore she didn't do stuff to prevent more deaths. Maybe i am reading too much into it, but considering our protagonist says "maybe we believed so much in a family curse, we made it real", and the fact she is CLIMBING THIS WHOLE ASS HOUSE WHILE PREGNANT, makes it seem like it's just them making bad choices and blaming a curse for them.
Agreed. It seems they all think "We're already cursed to die, might as well do stupid shit 🤷". Just look at Sam. He faced death head on. He's lucky he made it to his 30s.
To me this story is about a families lust for death, some of the older generations had this innate fascinations with death e.g. Odin, Eddie and Sam where the best example of this luster. This is reinforced that Eddie glorified everyone's deaths and Edith also claimed that the family believing the stories killed them.
To summarises my thoughts it is a cautionary tales about a family lusting for death instead of living their lives. "Death is not a blessing, but a deliverance..."
Molly ate what looked like Holly, which is poisonous. She was just a kid being a kid, pouting because she got sent to bed without supper. I don't think anyone is really to blame in any of the deaths. Its just bad luck, not a curse. I had several close calls as a kid, just got lucky. Have had a few close calls as an adult too. If I had been standing an inch or two to the left here or had left 5 minutes later there. Sometimes things just happen, I don't think trying to place blame ever really helps.
@@dunedigger5093 Sure, kids make mistakes, but why was she locked in her room? Seems kind of overkill to send your kid to bed without dinner AND lock their door. If Edie hadn't done that she'd have been able to sneak out and find an actual snack instead.
@@int0thedepths Mom was mad and frustrated? Not that it is an excuse. I'm not a parent, but I can remember how annoying and frustrating I was when I was little. Sometimes the best thing to do is to separate yourselves so you don't say something you regret. And she was safe in her room, she should have been okay for the night, if not just extra hungry in the morning.
Like many people said, I think the 'curse' of the Finches was actually bad luck, bad parenting, generational trauma, and mental illness.
TLDR: This becomes my interpretation of the family member's mental states and a general timeline
Odin, after his wife and newborn died, attempted to move not only his family, which included his newborn granddaughter, but his house. Losing his life in the process.
Edie, having lost all of her family, seems to become obsessed with this bad luck/bad decisions having an outside cause and decides that they must be cursed. She may also have delusions if the snippet of her at the old house is an indication.
Molly eats poisonous berries that, presumably, her parents left unattended in her bathroom as Christmas decoration in her attempt to stave off hunger, killing her at only 10 years old after quite a trip.
This death feeds into Edie's delusions of a 'curse' as well as allows her to distance herself from any responsibility over her daughter's death.
The next death is several years later with her second daughter, Barbara, who was murdered by either her boyfriend or by a known murderer on her 16th birthday, while Edie and Sven were at the emergency room. I am under the impress that the murderer wore a mask of some kind since Walter, who witnessed the murder, is convinced that there is a 'monster', though it could be just how his child's mind could handle the horror.
Edie's obsession with the curse is probably reignited and, in order to try and gain both sympathy and validity, publishes information about her daughter's death. She also does this to probably try and 'respect her daughter's wishes' since Barbara wanted to regain her childhood fame.
This is where I think Sam's madness begins. We hear him mentioning being strong for your survival many times in his flashbacks of the hunting trip and I can imagine that he was thinking that if Barbara or Walter had been stronger/more prepared, perhaps she would have survived. (Also where were the twins during this? Surely they weren't just in their room while their sister was murdered?)
The next death is only a year later in 1961. Calvin, who from Sam's account seems to have lost his fear of death after Barbara's death, flings himself off a cliff after swinging too high on his swing. Both Sam and Edie probably have some self-blame with his death, though they handle it very differently. Edie leans in further to the 'curse' to try and escape her culpability and Sam becomes hard and strict. His children are hardly left alone (as seen by the fact they all share a small room) and he treats them more like soldiers than children.
Sven then dies from an accident in 1964, leaving a broken and probably delusional Edie alone with a 14 and 12 year old. Edie presumably encourages Walter's fears and own delusions with her conviction of a curse and Sam (as far as I can tell) shuts them out, leaving 4 years later to enlist.
In 1968, shortly after he enlisted he married his first wife, Kay, and had Dawn. He was only 18.
1969, Gus is born. Sam's fear of death and his belief of controlling it by being tough turns aggressive and a note mentions that he hits his children.
Walter saying he's been in the bunker for 30 years means that he went underground at 23ish around the year 1975. Guess the fear got to be too much. Interesting though that he probably met his niece and nephew before disappearing, They were 7 and 6.
Sam and Kay's marriage seems to start having troubles (maybe because he treats their children like soldiers and his mom tells crazy stories about her dead children?) and they have another child, Gregory in 1976 when Dawn is 8. This (unsurprisingly) does not help their marriage, and the fighting continues. Gregory ends up accidently drowning while Kay argues with Sam on the phone, and they divorce shortly after.
In 1982, Sam is getting remarried to a woman who has not met his children. We do not know her name. Gus, 13, is angry at this turn of events. He does not want his father to remarry and seems to generally dislike him. At his father's wedding, instead of participating, he stands apart and flies a kite. When his father demands that he come and take pictures and join the others inside the tent, Gus refuses. A storm hits and the tent flies off, hitting Gus and killing him.
I believe that if Sam doubted his mother's claims of a curse, he now believes it and doubles down on trying to protect his remaining child.
A year later, Sam takes his 15 year old daughter hunting. He wants her to be tough and strong, so despite her displeasure at hunting and her crying over the shot deer, he just pushes on about how proud he is. An avid photographer, Sam sets up a camera to take a picture of his daughter's first kill, and in his rush to get next to her by the timer, dismisses her concerns about the deer possibly still being alive. As he crouches down next to her, the deer bucks up pushing him off a cliff.
Dawn has now witnessed two deaths that she probably feels partially responsible for; her brother, for not looking for him during the storm and her father for not protecting him during the incident. These things mixed with her Grandmother's stories about the family curse, drove her to try and escape it.
At 18 in 1986, Dawn moves to India to escape and to teach English. There, she meets and marries Sanjay who I believe is a rescue worker or possibly some kind of missionary? She becomes religious in a way that the rest of her family is not.
In 1988, they have Lewis. In 1992, they have Milton. In 1999, they have Edith. During this time, we are lead to believe that they stayed in India with Dawn being a teacher, and possibly homeschooling her children.
Around 2000, Sanjay dies in an earthquake and Dawn is left alone with a 12, 8, and 1 year old. Lost and grieving, she returns with her children to her only family, Her grandmother Edie (And her Uncle in the basement)
Lewis and Milton are fascinated by their grandmother's stories of they family. Milton and Edie are especially close, since they are both painters. Milton, in 2003 at 11 years old, draws a flip book of him painting and disappearing through a magic doorway, then disappears. At the time of the story (2016) he is still not found. Dawn seals all of the doors to the old bedrooms in the house. (TBH, it was creepy that Edie keep them untouched except for a shrine since her children died anyway. I mean, Molly's room was left the same since she died in 1947 and it's 2016? That's 69 years! Creepy, why not give it to your grandchildren or something? Why go through the trouble of adding additions to the house? Why didn't Dawn just get rid of all of that stuff and live in the main house?) I believe she seals the doors in response to her son's drawing, mixed with her grandmother's stories. Sealing the doors to prevent the curse from stealing your other children doesn't sound so insane when you've been told all your life that your family is cursed.
In 2005, Walter finally gains the courage to face the 'monster' that has been terrorizing him since he was 8 years old and leaves the bunker, only to immediately be hit by a train as he is making his escape. (Why didn't he leave through the house? Was he convinced the monster was still there?)
Edie has now lost all of her children, and takes solace in the fact that there 'wasn't anything she could have done to save them'.
Lewis struggles with the loss of his brother and turns to substances to cope. Dawn gets him into therapy and gets him a job at the local cannery. After he gets clean, he starts to see his life as a monotonous chore and develops an intense and all-consuming imaginary world to cope. He delves deeper and deeper into this world of his own creation that he starts to lose his grip on reality and his will to live in the real world. In 2010, at 22 years old, the pain of existence proves too much while he is at work and he places his head underneath the blade made to remove fish heads, essentially beheading himself.
Dawn, now having seen two of her sons lost to what she believes is Edie's stories, takes her 11 year old daughter and tries to run away from her family's curse once again. Edie, after arguing and drinking, dies alone in the house.
Dawn and Edith spends several years traveling and moving. In 2016, Dawn becomes ill (Coughing suggests something respiratory) and slowly dies, leaving 17 years old Edith as the last Finch.
The story takes place as Edith looks through the house and discovers the stories of her relatives and is told through her journal that she is writing to her unborn child.
It ends with us looking over the shoulder of a young boy (7-10 years old) at Edith's gravestone in the family cemetery. The date of her death implies that she died in childbirth to the boy in 2017.
So overall, delusions, mental illness, and the trauma of so much death is this family's 'curse' probably not something supernatural. (Though who knows with Milton, maybe there is something there. Or he could have simply been kidnapped like so many children unfortunately are.)
One small error Gus didn’t die from the tent if you look behind him you will see a totem pole the wind knocked over the totem pole which then collided with Gus killing him
I feel compelled to say this every time I see Edith Finch stuff -
I'm the child of an avid genealogist, so I have numerous memories of going graveyard crawling with my mother, finding the tombstones of long-dead family, taking rubbings of the mossy engravings, building the tree, and so forth. It was never my hobby, it's always been hers. I'm sure one day I'll wish it had been my hobby, but I just can't force myself into it. That said, when your family isn't just your parents, grandparents, and any aunts, uncles or cousins you may have, but also great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents and so on, practically back to Noah (more like back to 400 years ago, in my case,) your family becomes more about the dead than about the living.
When I first saw What Remains of Edith Finch, I never saw even a whisper of a curse. This? This is just _history._ People live. People die. Some people die horribly. Some people never reach the age of 10. Some people pass away just shy of a century. Some people suffer from illness, whether of body or mind. Some people are healthy and hardy and Death still comes calling. When my generation is gone and all that remains are our stories, you could call us cursed too. Some of us have siblings that were never born. Some of us lived until the mind had gone and we were imprisoned in a shell of our own body, our jailer nothing more than a heart that refused to quit. Some of us met accident that left us disabled, at birth or decades later. But for all that tragedy and sorrow, we also lived. There's joy still, and always.
I think the most important thing is that your Remains aren't just how you died or the body you left behind. It's how you changed the world around you. That's what comes through for me in this story, as preoccupied as it is with the hows and whens and whys of death. Death is just part of life. And the fact that the Finch House is so whimsical and cozy speaks to me on that level - as afraid as Edith Jr. is of the house and its stories, you can clearly see it was a place of love and joy, marred by the kind of tragedy we all must face eventually.
I just want to say that this was beautiful to read. Just WOW!
Your way with words is just beautiful, IMO if you wrote a book I’d definitely be reading it ❤️
The creators' approach to death is exemplified by Calvin's story. His brother doesn't remember the tragic death of a kid. He remembers that his brother wanted to fly. And he did.
This was so beautifully put
i think about this a lot too.
none of the men on my father's side of the family live past sixty (my father having passed away less than a week after his 60th birthday a few months ago.)
and he called it a family curse. but after his passing, i'm starting to see it as less of a curse and more a cycle of people who just didn't take care of themselves. of men who couldn't admit they needed help because they only ever learned to rely on themselves. my father passed of complications from a stroke - itself caused by surgery complications he never sought help for. he'd previously had a heart attack and been in stage four kidney failure, and the only reason we found out about either of them was because he was seeing a medical professional for a regular check up.
his father, my grandfather, died of a heart attack at 59 - bailing his car out of the snow, never bothering to ask any of his family for help, despite already suffering complications from alcoholism, back problems and a broken rib.
my great grandfather died of complications from alcoholism. and so on and so forth, in a cycle of toxic self reliance.
i think you're correct when you say this game isn't about a curse - it's about history. not just a personal history, but a family history, of how the dead once lived and what we the living can learn from their lives to help enrich our own. whether that's learning to trust others despite your own anxieties, or simply that certain choices are not to our benefit.
the dead can often still pass wisdom onto us, so long as we're willing to listen.
Hearing Gab talk about her memories (especially the memory of her Grandma making the cake every Sunday and her sister making the same one after their Grandma passed) is really sweet. And it reminds me of all the small things my family does that makes me feel so, so loved.
Ahh, the same for me. It brought back so many wonderful memories. I am still trying to get some of my mom's recipes down. I think I have most of them now though. ^-^
I really enjoyed this game back when it came out. I wish there were more games like it; games where you explore huge mysterious houses with secret passages. The only thing I’d wish for is more puzzle solving and interaction with different objects, although I am aware that this game is more of a narrative driven adventure.
I'm always looking for games that let you explore places (like huge mysterious houses) with secret passages. It's why I enjoyed Gone Home and The Painscreek K*llings so much.
@@aliteraryfan I would recommend “The S*icide of Rachel Foster” if you haven’t seen it already. You explore a giant hotel and find out the truth of what happened to Rachel.☺️
@@_.RoYalTy._ Will check it out, thank you!
@@aliteraryfan I will have to check out The Painscreek Killings. Thank you!
How about the House On The Hill? It's an indie game about a guy robbing a big house/mansion that has secrets. Each chapter has their own game mechanic and story just like this game.
Gab already played it, so you can check it out first
You can see the railing on the second floor landing is damaged and repaired in present day so I think that part of Barbara's story happened. Her boyfriend probably scared her while wearing a monster mask and she fell backwards off the landing and died. That's why Walter thinks there's a monster, after all he probably also read Molly's diary where she talks about a monster as well (their rooms were connected after all)
but they found only her ear. No, I think she got killed by the hook killer the radio was talking about
that part of the story in the comic happened in the basement though, i think it’s more likely the comic was closer to reality than you’d think, like most of the stories in the game were. while they were slightly dramatized and visualized in more flowery ways, they all DID die the way we see their stories play out, just less “pretty”.
especially with the comic having knowledge of the basement key and everything, it’s likely she was actually murdered, and there likely just was a struggle like in the comic. i believe at some point there’s confirmation in the house that it was actually deemed a murder in the real world too, though i think i remember seeing that when this game first came out so i could be misremembering.
walter thinking there’s a monster would make sense even with it being a murder because he was so young that creating an inhuman monster is often easier to deal with than a human, especially one he knew and likely trusted to some degree, was capable of doing something that horrible. you gotta remember he SAW or at least heard a lot of what happened, and that young trauma can form really strange coping mechanisms because they’re just a kid, and then he pretty immediately locked himself in the bunker for 30 YEARS, and that entire time still was convinced there was a monster out to finish him off too
@@lightworthy one point was that it was Halloween and there was a monster convention. I think the hook handed dude might have been a radio play that was playing, and one of the convention goers was a fan. I think maybe the convention cosplayers dressed up in monster gear, and when Barbara didn't show up they went to her house. Thats what Walter sees. They want to play up the horror thing but then it gets taken too far and she actually got murdered. Maybe the bf got murdered too, maybe he was a part of it.
@@frostfang1 that’d make sense!!
@@frostfang1 I'm personally subscribed to the "the boyfriend killed her" theory for one main reason: the comic states that her fans killed her, and it also stated that her boyfriend was her biggest fan. importantly it put more attention on the fan part than the boyfriend part, implying he was her biggest fan before he was her boyfriend. a single deranged fan as opposed to a group of them.
but that's just an opinion, her death is probably one of the most vague out of them all.
Honestly the game design is a masterpiece in storytelling. Each and every room is just so splendidly crafted. "Even the fireplace had a story" Edith says, and everywhere you look, you can see remnants of the characters that lived there. You walk down the driveway and note it wasn't used in a while, then you walk into the garage and see the car is covered up. You also see tools, and later find out her great grandpa handcrafted the house and most things in it. You walk into the kitchen and see cans of fish from the place Lewis worked. You can see the family in every room of the house.
Uh oh, got immediately hooked within the first two and half minutes and am now downloading on steam XD I'll see you back here once I'm finished! You're awesome Gab!
It's a fantastic game, I hope you enjoy!
I did the same thing as its on gamepass just finished it ❤️
I the exact same thing and just finished the game amazing ❤❤❤
I did the same, just finished it! I love the twists and suspense. Such a good, thought provoking game.
@Mother Trashah what does that mean?
2:11:42 She definitely died during child birth. She said in the book that she hoped he wouldn't read the book and wanted to tell the stories herself. She said that if he's reading the book, it didn't work out that way (ie she's dead). By what it said at the end of the journal, it seems like she was somehow at high risk for complications.
Also, old Edith probably committed suicide.
Love the imagination in this game! Lewis' section, I would never forget, it's just too relatable. I've always been bored to agony at my jobs, daydreaming would have been more tolerable. I would just constantly relive bad memories all day long, and it was just awful. Lewis' employers wouldn't care as long as the work got done, that's just how it is, sadly.
I think that part disturbed me the most, especially because it's fairly obvious that the psychiatrist could and should have done SO MUCH more to help him, but she just let him spiral to suicide -this game is fascinating because, for the most part, it's so easy (at least for me) to see how the 'curse' is just a horrifying series of negligence, highly unfortunate accidents, and untreated mental illnesses
Calvin's story always hits that scary spot between fond childhood memories and dreadful worst case scenario.
The thing about this game is that, the family isn't really cursed. Maybe they were really unlucky in their time in Norway and they moved to America I'm guessing, where Edie was the only one left with memories of the family's curse. Molly's death, her first daughter, was the first death, which was caused by Edie herself in some way. You can say that she started blaming herself for it, and then resulted to blaming the family curse rather than herself, because it was less hurtful. Edie is the only one to ever mention the curse, she's the only one to make it public as well.
I think that in the years after her children's passing, she lost herself, and started to almost feed into the "curse". Like how she leaked a bunch of stuff to the tabloids for Barbara's death (the layout of the house, the secret of the music box), or even how she made Sam write how Calvin died, so that the mind of a child would make it more fantastical, less real, more in the curse side.
As for Dawn blaming Edie for everything, it is mentioned that Milton and Lewis spent a lot of time with Edie, where she told them about everyone's story in her fiction-style of storytelling. It fed Lewis' imagination (which made him lose control over it because of his depression after the death of his dad and the disappearance of his brother) and Milton's imagination which caused him to create a world beyond imagination (btw Milton is canonically not dead, as he is present in one of the developer previous game).
The story is sad because a lot of death could have been avoided, Molly's intoxication, Barbara's murder, Calvin's jump to his death, Gregory's drowning, Gus's death by storm, Lewis head chop, Walter's hit by train even Sven being crushed by the dragon head slide. Edie only made it this far because blaming it on the curse felt better than blaming herself for those she could have stopped. Now of course, Dawn's sickness, Edith's death at childbirth, Sam's deer accident, and a few are unpredictable. But you can't say that was Edie was doing was good. She was losing herself in delusions, and when it came to an end, she chose to die with it.
I think in a way Milton's disappearance is its own special kind of heartbreaking. He was only, what, 11 when he essentially vanished himself? Did he ever try to return? For him, it might have seemed like an amazing adventure, but for his family and especially his mom it must have been an absolute nightmare.
@@Niriixa I mean, it did get his brother depressed so... You're right... I don't know enough about the life Milton's has in the other other than he is a king there I think, but he was a child, he probably didn't know how it would hurt his family.
I love this game so much because there's so much interpretation you can make out of this. And once you puzzle out all the relation it all clicks to form a bigger image.
To summarize, there's no curse whatsoever, but it was the story of Great grandma Edie's depression of losing her daughter Molly that push her further into despair and away from reality, because she blamed herself for the death surrounding her.
Molly's death is easily explained. She was grounded but eats poisonous holly. She started to hallucinate, she remembered why she was grounded because she climbed the tree as a cat, her pang of hunger as an owl, then she tried to barf out the poison (the big rabbit), but she kept it in. She felt breathless like a shark out of water.
Calvin died of an accident, but Edie blamed herself because she prepared dinner (probably with mushroom). Calvin once said he would rather died than eating mushroom.
Barbara died of home invasion, the trauma caused Walter to become a recluse. Edie blamed herself for leaving them alone (to bring Sven to the hospital).
Walter was called the mole man by Edie (that's how far she was unhinged from reality) eventually escaped and either fall off the cliff or got into train accident.
Sam died of a cliff accident.
Sven died of an accident involving a dragon slide and Edie said he died because of dragon. All these incidents has cause Edie to detach from reality and all her stories to become an unreliable narration.
Of the next generation's deaths, Gregory's looks colorful because it was told as a story by Sam who wants to lessen Kay's guilt because he had seen first hand what guilt has done to his mother Edie. Meanwhile Gus died in a storm.
The next one is Milton and Lewis. Milton is lost in the wood and probably died drowning in the sea (this can be surmised from the game Unfinished Swan). Lewis might not died because of suicide. Experimenting with weed and working in the factory can cause any accident whatsoever.
But what's important is his psychiatrist assessment, that says it was suicide. It was this assessment that caused Dawn to leave Edie. Because Edie's story glorified deaths and paints over the fact of what she did. The story of Edie walking into the sea to find their sunken home was actually Edie's own suicide attempt. She walked into the sea trying to drown herself when she's no longer lucid, but got washed back to the shore. She almost succeeded because she got up to the house and the "light" was turned on to invite her in, but she looked back.
These stories caused Dawn to suspect it got a hold on her children and caused her children to look for their own deaths. She lost Milton to the woods, and she lost Lewis to "suicide". She would not risk Edith to listen to great grandma rambling and follow suit.
The dad didn’t die they got divorced
@@eilis5341 If you are talking about Edith Jr's dad, he did die. He died because of an earthquake on the site he was working on. If you are talking about Dawn's dad, he was pushed off the cliff by the deer and died.
This is my favorite video game of all time, it tells a magnificent story and never ceases to make me tear up near the end. Finches are also one of my favorite animals
As a finch owner i just wanted to say that you have an excellent taste for animals, ✨
(Finches are adorable and precious can we all appreciate them please)
I don't think I had ever stopped to think about the concept of air in sealed rooms being effectively in a state of stasis, and I definitely did not realise how much that freaked me out until you mentioned what your tattoo artist said about stale air 😅😅😅
This is a great follow up to "The Unfinished Swan"
Milton disappeared into his own painted world.
It was a really good game.
With that story in mind, I think that all the Finches we're born with magic in them, but unfortunately most members ended in tragedy.
Even Milton.
Yay! Thank you for commenting the first game. For anyone wondering what Milton’s story is, absolutely play this game!
I think the unfinished swan was symbolic and wasn't ment to be taken literally, in my opinion it implies that milton left the finch house after learning about the stories of the other family members, grew up and became a painter. He became so engrossed in his art that his wife left and the story is about his son meeting him and him reflecting on the past.
My fiancé and I own a funky house on a woody acreage in northwestern Washington (this game takes place on orcas island, which is an island in the puget sound) and seeing gab in the beginning swooning over this land, which is very similar to my own property, makes me feel so proud of where we live and how hard we’ve worked to get here 🥲 I love this game.
i’m jelly, also so happy for u! 💖
For people who may be confused/didn't know, Milton's story (The boy who dissapeared) is a call back to another Giant Sparrow game, The Unfinished Swan. I have not played it so i can not say for sure what questions it may/may not answer.
this game is so amazing, i watched jack play it for the first time and i ended up asking and getting it for christmas but everytime i watch/play it and get to lewis' part i just end up sobbing bc i relate too much and im scared of losing myself to that sort of disassociation
I remember years ago when I watched Sean play this and absolutely loved it so I'm so excited that you're playing it now
I've watched Sean play this so many times and the video essay by Joseph Anderson about this game so many times I love this game to death I can't wait to see what you think of it Gab!!!☺️💗
I wish it was a movie
Or a
Book
yes same here
No matter how many times I watch playthroughs of this game I still get chills. Every. Time.
I don't think there was a curse, it's just that a lot of them had a death wish and no parental supervision. And the way they built the house, danger upon danger lol. But I loved the game!
I love it when Seán comes in to give you your coffee.
It's like he knows when you need your fuel! ❤️ ☕
yeah I was sure that I saw you playing this before!!!
thank you for replaying! I can tell you're a happier & more relaxed person now & I appreciate that you take your time with every game
I remember watching Jack playing this and then after some years, I look at this game again to come to a realization that I dislike Eddie Sr.
She believed and became obssesed over a curse that wouldn't exist if she didn't believed in it. Then instead of fixing things, she just let it be as it was, killing everyone and remembering their deaths and not their lives.
The hint toward the Unfinished Swan blew my mind
Milton is confirmed to be the King in Unfinished Swan. And I'm pretty sure that the protagonist in Unfinished Swan is Edith's child.
i immediately noticed something cool in the area before you get to the house (the forest area)
those purple flowers look like foxgloves. foxgloves are said to symbolize secrets, and are poisonous if consumed. it's possible since they're the only flowers that i noticed leading up to the house that they're meant to represent the secrets that the house and the family holds
And quite possibly, it could have something to do with the deaths.
I read somewhere that the flowers induce hallucinations when touched.
Maybe touching them caused Milton to hallucinate as he left home, and then he got washed away by the sea?
I just get so unbelievably sad whenever the music kicks in and I watch the game play for this game. That poor family. I feel so much for Edith jr and her child
I remember watching Sean's play through of this game a few years ago, and it had consumed my thoughts for weeks. The Finch family story felt so familiar to me, because I feel like it speak about first and foremost, intergenerational trauma, which I'm unfortunately rather acquainted with. Every single one of the Finch family just carries the trauma of the previous generation. Edith is right, this family was so deeply steeped in their past, living in the shadows of the dead,that they kinda cursed themselves. In a way, this cycle could be broken, if Edith's child never found out about his family's history.
I know some people might think that Edith's story is a bit far fetched, but even my family's history is full of horrible instances, like genocide, war, displacement, immigrations. This is probably why this game felt almost... Quaint. Realistic? Idk, it's weird in a relatable sort of way.
It made me incredibly sad but it’s such a beautiful story
I feel like Edith was right for writing the journal to her child explaining the “curse”. It could more or less prevent him suffering a bad faint like his family before him, it’s really upsetting knowing Edith can’t be there for her child to protect him from it herself but I’m sure her child will avoid falling into the same faint since he read the journal
What a gorgeous game.
Lewis is probably suffering from something called Maladaptive Daydreaming.
This was wonderful to watch and if you'd like to know what happens to Milton, I implore you to play The Unfinished Swan. It's a delightful game and I think you'd love it.
Lewis's story hit way too close to home. I started those daydreams years ago and was getting pretty wrapped up in them; I hardly cared what I did in my actual life. I found it funny when you kept saying he should write it down! Writing them down helps me to separate reality from fiction; at least, I think of it as some fun that I'm not allowed to have until I've finished my work properly. Scary how it can worsen and end up like what happened with Lewis.
Even now, none of the factories I've worked in have allowed earphones. Only earplugs. Even if the earphones are safety rated, places don't allow you to listen to a podcast or music while you work. I definitely ended up with similar maladaptive daydreams, or just plain listening to songs in my head while working.
I always saw people playing this years ago and didnt give it any attention, until earlier this month it went on sale and i played it myself. One of the most beautiful games i've ever played
This is one of the first games I played that made me just sit and think while the credits rolled. So good.
OMG I WATCHED THIS TWICE FROM HER and it's probably one of the best walking sim. Really good story, really diverse, a lot of art style, and I'm glad Gab is playing it again
I absolutely loved the whimsical storytelling of this game! I'm SO happy you're playing it again.
Lewis was experiencing maladaptive daydreaming and chat was right it's a type of dissociation. With some delusions at the end of his imaginary Lewis being the "real one".
I guess I'm lucky my daydreams don't feature myself in them but other characters that I'm just in the perspective of. They're very different appearance-wise from myself so there's no confusion as to who is real and who isn't and I know that I am myself and the characters are characters in my head. But yeah, I can listen music and pace around my house and daydream for hours. I've permanently hurt my body doing it in excess, unfortunately. So I try to stay under 5 hours of daydreaming per day now. Usually, maladaptive daydreaming has a repetitive movement aspect to it like pacing or rocking in place or in Lewis' case moving the fish around. But there have been cases where a person doesn't have to move to daydream.
Also, you are right GAB a mental health professional would NOT write a letter like that...it was purely a narrative device in the game.
Yes, I pace back and forth when mine happens. I, too, am fortunate that my mind wanders into video game worlds and my characters are made up completely so I also know what is real or not. I work full time and that helps to keep me in reality as well, thankfully. I feel horrible for the people who end up blurring the lines and get lost.
Mine happens when I’m a passenger in a car while i’m listening to music with my headphones!
@@JustKelso1993 yeah, my daydreams are usually inspired by the media I consume: tv shows and books. I'm 25. But I'm unfortunately unable to work due to my mental illnesses. I was diagnosed with primary agoraphobia in 2017 soon after just barely being able to graduate high school...as well as a couple of other anxiety disorders (social and generalized) so that gives me a lot of time to myself to daydream and disconnect from reality because I really don't engage with the world around me due to fear.
Earlier this year, I was finally accepted into my local disability income support program for people who have never had any work experience after a couple attempts. And so I'm now saving up to get a psychiatric service dog to help with exposure therapy and physical independence. I currently can't leave my home on my own, I need a family member or friend to go to places with me or else I have a significantly increased amount of anxiety. But also taking care of and interacting with animals keeps me from daydreaming as much.
I'm glad your job keeps you from daydreaming...I have a friend who is a writer and she also daydreams a bit more than the average person due to that and she has a very slow full time job that allows her to daydream and think of scenes that she then goes home and writes. It's interesting to me because I've never written down my daydreams...I don't find them all that interesting and they shift and change depending on what show I've recently watched and gotten inspiration from. But it's often scenes on repeat with tiny changes to the dialogue day-to-day but from what I've read about maladaptive daydreaming having repetitive scenarios over and over and over again isn't uncommon, which I previously thought it was strange before I looked into it.
But it's such a personalized unique thing to experience... everyone with it experiences something different. Some are very much like Lewis and have an idealized version of themselves who goes on amazing exciting adventures that they physically can't or wouldn't do in real life and then there's people like us where it isn't a version of ourselves... it's very much characters that we give life to in our head. Both experiences seem to be normal within the community of people who maladaptive daydream. But yeah I agree, I feel for those where the line is blurred...from what I've seen real life can be very painful for them to experience after coming back from a exciting daydream...my real life is very lonely and that can make me feel very sad at times when coming back from a daydream but not quite as emotionally painful as they seem to describe feeling. It can be absolutely devastating to them.
@@JustKelso1993 i pace when I daydream too! I can do it for hours
Yay I’ve been waiting for this - I was able to catch some of it on stream but have been waiting for this video. I love this game and how unique everyone’s stories are, how they feel so individual to the people that the game, and I guess Edie, tells you about. Plus the house is so epic. So happy to see you give the game another go!
I'm only halfway through, but in case it doesn't come up later, the ladder in the water is just a ladder to a floating dock. They're pretty common in lakes and stuff here in the US. It's just a floating platform out in the water for people to swim to and hang out on.
Man, I watched Sean play this years ago and it still hits just as hard as back then. It's became one of those games that I think back on often. So glad to see your playthrough of it!
"But I know what happened wasn't your fault." Except it *was* the mom's fault. It doesn't matter if the water is low, or off. You don't *ever* leave a baby in the bathtub by itself because you never know what will happen. You can drown in just an inch of water. And this is a *baby.* He couldn't have just gotten out or yelled for help or anything like that. It was all the mother's fault and no one elses, and she should have all the blame put on her. I have to wonder if she went to jail for child neglect. I hope she did.
it's implied there was no water in the tub at all, and the baby somehow turned it back on. the father who wrote that letter blamed himself for calling and drawing her away from the bathroom. sure you can probably blame one or both of the parents in a roundabout way, but I don't think people necessarily think "ok the baby is in an empty tub with NO water running so it's still unsafe to leave the baby here for a few minutes while I'm on the phone"
I remember scrolling through your videos and finding this one. I wanted so see your older videos and I absolutely fell in love with this game. It even became a inspiration for my sims game. I would build a room for the sim I would play as and decorate it according to her personality and what she would to and when she died I would lock the door, put a picture of her on the door and continue with her child. And I would continue doing so even if the house would look really weird.
I literally gasped and almost choked on my food when I saw this being posted. I love this game SO MUCH. There is always one family member I cannot find but the storytelling is great in this and definitely gets my creative juices flowing
There is also a character with my name so I was excited to meet him and then I did I bawled my eyes out
Everytime I play this game or watch it, I always notice something new. I can never find that family member's room and I actually took a break from this game so their name is slipping my brain but I am glad I am back
I think everytime I play: Gregory's story makes me tear up the most but I think Lewis's story impacts me the most emotionally because it is like two stories in one and you have to focus on multiple things at once and there is a level of how relatable it is.
Other than that, it is Grandpa Sam because of how sudden it is
So I realized that the family member I am always missing is Dawn and I feel like this game goes in order of the tree. You can also tell which character is coming up because there is an area dedicated to them and Edith starts narrating about them to give the player some context.
From the rock wall, up through the classroom, and before opening the door to the bridge; Edith talks about Dawn and yet she does not have a Memorial like the other people. There is one place with the Bible that looks like it could be it. I know Edie makes the wooden paintings and the Mom stormed out that night but her space is always blank.
Is there a way to fill it in?
@@gregputnam7243 Well, Dawn is Edith's mom. So you get her child story in Sam's story and then later when Edith climbs up the rockwall, that is Dawn's room. It then talks about adult Dawn meeting Sanjay, going to India and then coming back when he dies.
OH TO HAVE A HOUSE LIKE THAT😭 omg im in love with this game the concept, the art, the music all SO GOOD gosh the comic book style totally interesting would love to see more game like this😌
Love how Gab goes from excited to creeped out to excited again almost immediately. :)
Milton finch has his own game, its a short game all based on artistry and magic and its awesome! the name is "The unfinished Swan" and its breath taking! Please please play it, i'd love to see your input!!!
I remember when this game came out for the free game of the month on the old PlayStation plus network. When I first got it I played and never picked it back up again. It's nice to see you playing it after so so long of not seeing anyone else mention this beautiful game on anywhere. Thanks gabs!
Still watching so I don't know if you notice but the banister is broken and had been repaired in the exact same position that it was broken in the comic so somehow they had gotten really detailed information about the crime scene, leading me to believe that Edith sr might have told them details and that's why she kept the comic
This game always just resets my brain. I watch somebody play it every couple of months and I still just get the same pulling feeling every single time, I don't know why. Maybe because any of the things in the game could somehow apply to me or the people around me, one day I'll listen to their stories and maybe understand them better. That's all I could really hope.
I think because...it still feels like there were mysteries unsolved. What Eddie wrote to Edith about the day she was born, what happened to Milton, how the mom (Dawn) had the key to all the secret passages but sealed the doors anyways.
Gab if you want to clean and organize a home I got one for you. My dad developed dementia after getting COVID and left a home full of quirky things. Rooms packed clear to the ceiling. One room has cast iron stove surrounded boxes. One room is full of player piano scrolls and two types of player pianos in the other room. We are having to go through it this summer. It’s been an emotional experience.
Absolutely love this game, so glad she's playing it:0
One of my favourite games of all time, and I completely understand the wanting to sort a house like the Finch's. There's just something so enchanting about a mysterious clutter, you get to slowly deconstruct into a organizational dream! The previous owners of my house (120 Year old house, likely with older owner's stuff too) left a ton of stuff in our basement, as well as a bunch of stuff from my nan when she moved out her's, and our basement was FULL. I took a good 3 days straight of going through and organizing. An old workbench with old tools and hardware, a chest full of old reader's digest books filled with pressed flower petals, a huge box of antique keys, old cabinets, jars, boxes. I even found an old trunk that I sanded down and refinished, that I still use to this day.
Molly turning I to things/eating things was definitely just hallucinations from eating the holly berries
i have really bad insomnia and i can always find myself able to drift off to your videos, thank you
Oh! I had no idea you were going to play this. I loved this game when it came out. Gorgeous graphics and great story.
the timing of the ads is crazy... you said woah what is this at that strange door and it zoomed to the peephole... then an ad for Expedia faded in lol I was in tears laughing.
I really like when Evelien teaches us Dutch and talks about her childhood, it's so interesting. glad to hear your sister did her best/ made your grandma's recipe better😊
It was lovely to see you play this again in a better mental space. I did the same where I played this and a lot of other games when I was in a bad place and couldn't appreciate it fully. It's great to revisit games when we're in a better place 💜
OMG! one of my favorites! I'm so excited to see Gab's playthrough! Just got home from work and this seems like a great way to unwind!
That was really good. Being able to read/see only the beginning of Edie's story was such a tease though!
Death Explanation and Spoilers:
Odin and Ingeborg drowned, Edie died the night they left alone in the house, Sven died falling off the dragon slide. Molly died of poisoning, Barbara was murdered, Walter was traumatized and believed the Curse was a monster after him - got hit by a train. Calvin was on the tree swing when it broke and he fell off the cliff. Sam got pushed off the cliff by the deer. Gus was crushed by the tent, Gregory drowned, Dawn had cancer. Lewis was decapitated, Milton 'disappeared' but realistically he probably ended up falling out of the castle trying to paint or he drowned in the ocean. (He's the main protag in their other game so his whole story is a callback to that game) and Sanjay was killed in the earthquake incident posted on the wall. Edith died during child birth.
The literally ONLY one to survive, was Edith's son and Kay his grandmother so I think he probably ended up with her and she told him NOTHING on the family for this very exact reason. He's already got a broken arm. So he either broke the curse and survived something, or its just starting with him.
For anyone wondering here is all the deaths of the finches and when they died
Ingeborg Finch (Odin’s wife): 1937 died possibly from childbirth
Johann Finch (Odin’s son):1937 died due to birth complications (maybe)
Odin Finch (Husband to Ingeborg and father to Johann and Edie): 1880-1937 drowned
Molly Finch (Daughter to Edie and Sven older sister to Barbra, Walter , Calvin, and Sam): 1937-1947 died from eating non edible food
Barbra Finch: (Daughter to Edie and Sven little sister to Molly older sister to Walter, Sam, and Calvin): 1944-1960 died from being murdered then cannibalized by the hook man killer
Calvin Finch: (Son to Edie and Sven little brother to Molly and Barbra twin brother to Sam and older brother to Walter) 1950-1961 fell from the swings into a body of water drowning
Sven Finch: (Husband to Edie father to Molly, Barbra, Sam, Calvin, and Walter) 1915-1964 dies from the dragon slide falling on top of him
Gregory Finch: (Son to Sam and Kay little brother to Dawn and Gus) 1976-1977 died from drowning
Gus Finch: (Son to Sam and Kay little brother to Dawn older brother to Gregory): 1969-1982 died from a totem pole crashing against him making him fall off a small cliff near the beach
Sam Finch: (Son to Edie and Sven little brother to Molly and Barbra twin to Calvin and older brother to Walter father to Dawn, Gus, and Gregory ex husband to Kay): 1950-1983 died from a deer hitting him off a cliff
Sanjay Kumar: (Husband to Dawn father to Lewis, Milton, and Edith): 2002 died from an earthquake
Milton Finch: (Son to Dawn and Sanjay little brother to Lewis older brother to Edith) 1992-2003 he went missing when he was 11 but in the Unpainted swan it was confirmed that the king is Milton which the king dies due to drowning so he might be dead but it’s not confirmed yet if he is dead or not
Walter Finch: (Son to Edie and Sven little brother to Molly, Barbra, Sam, and Calvin): 1952-2005 died due to a train hitting him
Lewis Finch: (Son to Dawn and Sanjay older brother to Milton and Edith): 1988-2010 died from self termination from chopping his head off with the salmon deheader
Edie Finch: (Daughter to Odin and Ingeborg older sister to Johann mother to Molly, Barbra, Sam, Calvin, and Walter wife to Sven): 1917-2010 died from taking her pills with alcohol this was either by accident or on purpose
Dawn Finch: (Daughter to Sam and Kay older sister to Gus and Gregory wife to Sanjay mother to Lewis, Milton, and Edith): 1968-2016 died from an illness
Edith Finch: (Daughter to Dawn and Sanjay little sister to Lewis and Milton mother to Christopher) 1999-2017 died from childbirth
I didn't know this game was old! I played it recently and it quickly became one of my favorites. Excited to see a TH-cam I watch play it
And that children, is why you NEVER leave you baby alone in or near water
Happy to see you uploading this beautiful game!
This game is an incredible example for pure creativity, with one of the most breathtaking and heartbreaking journeys in video games.
Every scene here is a work of art, with its own uniqueness and qualities, and every one is crafted masterfully.
One of the best indie games out there, today still.
I love the story about your grandma, the recipe that can’t be replicated because it’s not really a recipe. I never had that, but my mom has a folder of clippings from food magazines and random scribbled down recipes; something so lovely about that.
This game is so beautiful and heartbreaking, even though I come from a small family it all hit me in the feels.
One of the devs confirmed that Milton actually created a magic paintbrush and travel to another world through the door he painted. He becomes the king in The Unifnished Swan.
OMG IM SO GLAD YOUR PLAYING THIS! I played this a year ago and I was BLOWN AWAY BY IT!
your approach to gameplay is my favourite - careful, yet curious. I love it to bits
I’ve heard fantastic things about this game, can’t wait to see you play through it Evelien!! Have a lovely weekend 💕
One of my favorite storylines. Thank you for the play through of this classic!
Milton's theme is so beautiful
I really resonate with lewis. I had to do just that (listen to podcasts)
I was genuinely getting so lost in my head that I started drinking a lot when I got home to try and get out of it. Finally started listening to science, psychology, and sociology to get some brain "exercise" or else I was just going mad. It's a real thing that people go through.
I also just sent my stuff down a conveyor belt and went home
Sad what we lose when the older generation passes. My grandma made books detailing stories from the family and our history. Cool story about your grandma.
Milton isn't believed to have died, he's in another videogame!!
This game is so unique and has so much personality. I can say this is the interactive version of reading a book.
I was so confused…I KNEW I watched Gab play this before so I was like “is she playing it again??” But the older vid isn’t coming up on the search anymore, at least not for me
So glad to know I’m not completely crazy and she did play this years ago 🤣
For the day dream one. That was a severe case of maladaptive daydreaming. It’s why if can be so dangerous
Milton may have been the only finch to escape the family curse.
Also imagine your actually Edith. Your walking through a giant tombstone basically. A giant monument to your dead family. It’s such a sad story.
I wish this game had been bigger than it was. It definitely didn’t get enough attention.
I have a pretty weird take on hunting. I've hunted, killed animals for food, and I hated it. Not the adventure, but the murder, and I despise hunters who do it for "sport". My family was poor, we needed meat, and a successful weekend in the woods saved us hundreds of dollars in meat cost (probably equivalent to thousands by todays market prices). These days I try to advocate a healthier balance with our friends in nature, working to be a park ranger so I might have some minimal impact in protecting nature from us humans. So yeah, you're not wrong that killing a magnificent creature could be motivation to want to help them. I never saw it as redemption, but rather the responsibility to appreciate the gifts these animals give us when they lose their lives.
I’m so happy someone else is playing this. I first saw this game in Sean’s play through and was hooked. It’s still one of my favorites
What a coincidence, another channel I watch played this 2 weeks ago. Such a charming game, with a well written, mysterious story. I don't mind watching it again, I had forgotten how good it is.
i LOVE this game so much and was hoping you’d play it on stream!! so excited to watch your experience with it. the “smile with too many teeth” simile is one of the most eerie, spine-chilling things i’ve ever heard but i absolutely adore the way they used it in this game and how they fit it into an otherwise not scary game.
Gabbbbbb this is my favourite game of all time and im so happy to see you playing it😭😭
That`s such a cool game with so much love for detail - Thank you very much for playing this once more!!!
this game is definitely something, and I'm glad my hero is playing it. keep it up gabs.
Gab there’s a game called Concrete Genie that I played a few weeks ago. I kept putting it off and just decided to play it. And it was really good. It’s not that long so you could probably beat it in a day. I think you would enjoy it.
you had no idea how perfect the timing is, im like 10 minutes in your gameplay from 5 years ago, found out about this game a week ago and decided to watch yours and now you we have the updated version, nice!
The paintings in the tower are scenes from "the unfinished swan"! Another amazing short story with great mechanics ! Giant sparrow is the Devs for both ☺️
Oh my gosh, I never comment on youtube videos but hearing you mention The Twisted Ones made me really excited! It feels like I'm the only one who's read that before sometimes!! I loved it so much.
I can’t believe you’re playing Edith Finch!! I remember watching so many TH-camrs play it but I’m so glad you picked it up again! Can’t wait to revisit the game with you!
to think that you're the ONLY ONE family exist in this big of a family it's terrifying