Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
A deserted British town, a strange light that seems to guide you, visions of past events involving the people in said town, a Lovecraftian ethereal and nearly incomprehensible event that leaves many questions unanswered. Welcome to Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.
It’s a game that bears a strange relationship to Gone Home, because they’re both so similar and so different. The game mechanics are very similar, then there’s a mystery at the core and it’s intertwined with the mundane; you’re placed in a world looking for answers slowly piecing together what has happened in much the same way, slowly getting to know a set of key people. Heck, they both even involve finding out what happened to missing people. They both also possess a strong sense of place; lovingly crafted settings that are characters in their own right.
But the differences that do exist permeates the experience and make the games feel very different overall. Gone Home is confined to a single dark house in the middle of the night, involving a single family, whereas Rapture has a fairly large open area, much of which is in daylight, involving an entire village, though you only get to know and know of some of them. Gone Home is grounded, tight and ultimately rather mundane, and everything is ultimately explained, and Rapture… well, it’s a bit out there, metaphysical and open-ended. Naturally they feel very different though they do play similarly.
I wouldn’t call either objectively better, but their differences ensure many will prefer one over the other, and while I myself enjoyed both I do like Rapture a fair bit more.
It is beautiful and atmospheric, tragedy and darkness are present and also hinted at, but it’s not an overshadowing feeling as is the case with Gone Home, and I love the way they contrast the mundane and recognizable with the transcendental and beyond human comprehension. It’s original not just as a game, but as a story as well.
Oh, and the soundtrack is great, occasionally stunning even.
I’d go so far as to say that I love Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.