Story
The player character takes a ferry to Orcas Island off the coast of Washington state, carrying the journal of Edith Finch. Through the journal, Edith recounts her last visit to her family's home on the island in 2017. The player witnesses Edith's return from her point of view, with separate vignettes when she writes about each deceased relative.
Edith explains that the family is believed cursed: all but one child of each generation die, leaving a sole child to continue the family. Her great-great-grandfather Odin, after losing his wife and their newborn child, tries to escape the curse by moving from Norway to the United States with his remaining daughter, Edie, and her family in 1937. Odin insists on bringing their home with them, but waves capsize the house and Odin drowns just off the shore. The remaining family build a new home on Orcas. Here Edie gives birth to more children, and builds a family graveyard nearby.
For a while, Edie believes they have avoided the curse, but unusual tragedies befall her husband Sven and all her children (Molly, Calvin, Walter, and Barbara) save for Sam. Edie memorializes each death by turning their bedrooms into shrines. Sam marries and has three children. Edie refuses to repurpose the bedrooms in the Finch home, and instead they construct additional stories atop the home for Sam and his children Dawn, Gus, and Gregory. Dawn is the only one to live to adulthood; she marries Sanjay and has three children of her own: Lewis, Milton, and Edith Jr. Following her husband's death, Dawn brings her family back to the Finch home. Milton, an aspiring artist, goes missing, and Dawn becomes paranoid. Dawn seals off the memorial bedrooms, not wanting the other children learning of their family past, though Edie insists they leave a peephole in each door.
Lewis commits suicide in 2010. On the night following his funeral, Dawn decides that the remaining Finches must leave the home, but Edie refuses. Dawn and Edith leave that night, abandoning most of their possessions. When the nursing home arrives the next day to pick up Edie, she has died.
Six years later, Dawn succumbs to illness. She leaves Edith a key to the Finch home, leading Edith to return and explore the house while writing her journal. Edith discovers the key unlocks secret passages between the sealed-off bedrooms. She writes her own thoughts and eulogies to the departed family in her journal. Edith eventually reaches her own old bedroom, and writes to the unborn child she carries, hoping her journal will help it understand their family's lineage.
In the present, the player-character is revealed to be Edith's son Christopher—the sole-surviving Finch after Edith dies during childbirth. Disembarking the ferry, he travels to the Finch home and places flowers at Edith's gravestone.
Reception
What Remains of Edith Finch received "generally positive" reviews across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.
Destructoid's Brett Makedonski scored the game a 9/10 with the consensus "A hallmark of excellence. There may be flaws, but they are negligible and won't cause massive damage."
Marty Sliva's 8.8/10 score on IGN stated that "What Remains of Edith Finch is a gorgeous experience and one of the finest magical-realism stories in all of games."
Andy Chalk's gave a score of 91 out of 100 on PC Gamer and said it was "Touching, sad, and brilliant; a story worth forgiving the limited interactivity to experience."
Josh Harmon of EGMNow awarded it 7/10, stating that Edith Finch is "a brilliant accomplishment. It's also a game that repeatedly fails to live up to its potential in serious, heartbreaking ways. Until now, I'd never realized it was possible to be both at the same time."
Griffin Vacheron from Game Revolution gave the game a score of 3.5 stars out of 5, saying that "If you're more like me, though, and deviate from the assessment of tragic events as an inherently higher form, then you may find the Finch's tale doesn't activate your almonds as much as it probably should. Still, as a spooky, logical evolution of the Gone Homes and Firewatches of the world, with an impressive short-story style to boot, What Remains of Edith Finch is ultimately worth your time if its premise grabs you."
"In What Remains of Edith Finch, death is a certainty and life is the surprise. Its stories are enchanting, despite their unhappy ends. I was sad I never had the chance to know the Finches while they were alive, but thankful for the opportunity, however brief, to learn a bit about them. The final farewell left me crying, but What Remains of Edith Finch is, without doubt, love," was Susan Arendt's conclusion on Polygon with a score of 9/10.
Colm Ahern's score of 9/10 on VideoGamer.com said that "First-person, narrative-driven games generally follow a pattern. What Remains of Edith Finch plays with those established conventions to create a beautiful story that breaks your heart, while making you smile just as much. A triumph in the genre."
Eurogamer ranked the game second on their list of the "Top 50 Games of 2017", while GamesRadar+ ranked it fifth on their list of the 25 Best Games of 2017. In Game Informer's Reader's Choice Best of 2017 Awards, the game came at fourth place for "Best Adventure Game" with just 10% of the votes, about 4% behind Life Is Strange: Before the Storm. The same website also gave it the award of "Best Adventure Game" in their Best of 2017 Awards, and of "Best Narrative" and "Adventure Game of the Year" in their 2017 Adventure Game of the Year Awards. EGMNow ranked the game at #25 in their list of the 25 Best Games of 2017, while Polygon ranked it 13th on their list of the 50 best games of 2017.
