# dissonant writing in the vanishing of ethan carter > don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass > ~ anton chekhov bollocks anton. in which the true crime in the vanishing of ethan carter is simply one against literature (oh the deadpan irony) you play teh garme as the ridiculously named paul prospero an 'occult-minded detective' who receives a disturbing letter from ethan carter. realizing the boy is in grave danger paul arrives at ethan's home of the all too likely sounding "red creek valley" where things turn out to be even worse than ey imagined - that is ey realizes ir's caught in a cheesy video garme. ethan has vanished in the wake of a brutal murder which paul quickly discerns might not be the only local murder worth looking into *queue strange ooo-wee noises* remotely inspired by the weird fiction (and other tales of the macabre) from the early twentieth century bookshelves of otaku the vanishing of ethan carter aims (rather badly it seems) to 'significantly evolve immersive(tm) storytelling' in garmes. while it features yet another hyper-generic private detective and quite a few mental challenges the vanishing of ethan carter is not an especially puzzle-ridden garme. the focus is on atmosphere mood and 'the essential humanity of our characters' - whatever that means using both paul's supernatural skill of being able to communicate with the video garming dead and your own eye-rolling powers of grinding observation you will discover the tired be'tentacled mystery behind a trail of corpses the roots of a 'dark ancient'(tm) force lurking in red creek valley and the no doubt trite fate of some missing brat 0:14 "(..) and give you some insight into the design philosophy behind teh garme" the design philosophy behind teh garme is written into its every visible surface: make something pretty with a minimum of tacked on 'weird' fiction mystery tosh as a photogrammetric (yet still generally artless) "next gen: honest!" bait-and-switch how does one go from painkiller bulletstorm and gears of war: judgement to this? wonder what is lost and gained in such a decision the fact that the dev has to give the viewer a half believable context for the existence of the entire garme before it begins says something unfortunate about the fact it can't stand on its own without tired expositionary lumpage thrown ir way - desiccated old bones before a listless dog 0:51 "red creek valley. seemed like a quiet ordinary place" "it was supposed to be a routine mission" syndrome in full effect - already? and what's with the full stop? ir's never been here before (or has ey? *ooo-wee-ooo*) 0:56 "i've learnt two things in my life. no place it truly quiet and nowhere is truly ordinary" two things - never believe an occult private detective who talks to himself or one that has only learnt two (stunningly obvious) things in ir life. "no place is truly quiet?" is that you john cage? 1:04 "ethan warned me about that. warned me not to be fooled by what i saw here" ouch. ey receives a letter in the post from a brat ir's never met before and already ir's treating ir words as timeless yoda-level wisdom? talk about 'not being fooled by what we see here' - if these brief snatches of awful hard boiled dialogue are anything to go by the player is in for a real cheesy cheat. paul prospero is hardly marv in sin city - but then ey doesn't need to be. paul should have been a relative - anybody in fact what's actually mysteriously dissonant about the writing in ethan carter is that nobody seems to have noticed anything's wrong with it at all. perhaps players have become so blindly used to the empty promise of meaning repeatedly stuck in ir faces by wow realistic gfx!(tm) that a little overlayed narrative cheese seems a small price to pay such questionable video garme writing should be put to sea on a rotten carcass of a butt // republic of bob