Everybody's Gone To The Rapture - PS4 Exclusive

Except Sony co-developed and published this game. The Chinese Room stated that they would not have been able to make the game without Sony’s money.

They aren’t just leveraging Sony as free PR, and I would say the chances of it coming out on the PC are pretty slim because money.

Angrily shakes fist at sky

-Todd

I’ve finished this twice now. I stayed up until 4am to finish it the first time, and just completed it a second time, because I realised that I’d fucked up on my first go and missed a bunch of important stuff. This is a masterpiece of interactive storytelling. It’s ultimately a story of the relationships between the characters you “meet” but the way it’s delivered it beautiful and heartbreaking. It’s also an excellent work of sci-fi horror by any measure. It is well worth taking your time to see everything you can. The ending is a little abstract but much clearer than Dear Esther or A Machine For Pigs, and as long as you’ve paid attention along the way, the end will make sense but still leave plenty of food for thought.

Strongly recommended. I hope it gets a PC port as it absolutely needs a wider audience.

Oh boy. Jessica Curry, the co-head of The Chinese Room is leaving primarily due to her illness, but she also cites some other issues in her goodbye post.

On publishers:

This is a tough one to write because I don’t want to negatively affect the company – there are lots of amazing people who rely on The Chinese Room for their livelihood. So I’ll tread carefully and please be aware that I’m speaking entirely on my own behalf now. Working with a publisher made me extremely unhappy and very ill. In the end I didn’t even recognize myself anymore- I had turned from a joyful, fun-loving, creative, silly, funny person into a short-tempered, paranoid, unhappy, negative heap. So much of the stress that I experienced was caused by what I see as the desperately toxic relationship that I was in. I can’t go into detail here for the reasons above but what I can say is that I look back at the way we were treated and it still makes me shake my head with disbelief. Big business and the creation of art have always been extremely uncomfortable bedfellows and making Rapture proved to be no exception for me. I don’t want to do this anymore- in fact I can’t do it. I want to surround myself with honest, open people whom I can trust. I’ve heard so many people say, “well, this is just the way publishers are” and “this is just what the games industry is like.” What I would say to that is while we all keep accepting this, while we are so afraid to challenge this behaviour then it won’t change and we all deserve nothing but the meager crumbs we are thrown.

Regarding sexism in the industry:

On a personal level I look back at my huge contribution to the games that we’ve made and I have had to watch Dan get the credit time and time again. I’ve had journalists assuming I’m Dan’s PA, I have been referenced as “Dan Pinchbeck’s wife” in articles, publishers on first meeting have automatically assumed that my producer is my boss just because he’s a man, one magazine would only feature Dan as Studio Head and wouldn’t include me. When Dan has said “Jess is the brains of the operation” people have knowingly chuckled and cooed that it’s nice of a husband to be so kind about his wife. I don’t have enough paper to write down all of the indignities that I’ve faced. Partly it was my fault. I don’t like doing talks, Dan loves them and he naturally became the public face of the studio. People assumed that he was the creative force behind the company and I didn’t want to seem like an egotist so I let them carry on thinking that. Last year I had a beautiful idea for Rapture. Dan went to LA and while he was there he told Sony about it. When he returned I said “what did they think of my idea?” He admitted that he’d ascribed the idea to one of our team members, not me. He was genuinely bewildered by my anger and asked “but why does it matter who gets the credit?” My reply: “It only doesn’t matter who gets the credit when you’re the person who always gets the credit!” There is a famous quote that behind every successful man there is a strong woman. Well sod that. I’ve realized that the only way I’m going to get credit for the work that I do is if I take a step away from Dan. I love Dan so, so much. He is a talented, intelligent, shining-souled man. This is not a rejection of him but of the society that still can’t cope with the fact that a woman might just be as talented as the man she shares her life with.

Coming to PC!

^.^

http://www.pcgamer.com/everybodys-gone-to-the-rapture-confirmed-for-pc/

That’s great news, I’ll probably buy it again. This was my second favourite game last year, behind Witcher 3. It totally deserves a wider audience than it got on the PS4, and the machine definitely struggled when there were lots of effects associated with The Pattern on-screen.

Steam page is up, and April 14th release date! :O

Yesssssss!

-Todd

Half off during the Steam Summer Sale, any final thoughts? Is it worth it?

Yeah, totally.

If I hated Dear Esther, but thought Gone Home was OK - any chance this will click for me? Walking simulators tend to bore me a bit, but if there is an interesting story / characters or a way I can influence the story to my liking then I’ve got a better chance of staying interested. I gather there really isn’t much ‘game’ to it. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter had some really good puzzles that kept me interested along with having a beautiful world to explore.

I would guess not. There’s really nothing to the gameplay other than walking around, looking at the environment, and listening to the story. Granted, it’s a gorgeous environment, and a good story with some very nice voice acting, but that’s it. And you walk reeeaaally slooooowly.

Do you go slowly even using the right bumper (I think) to speed it up? I saw a post saying they forgot to mention one of the controller buttons speeds up movement (at least on the port).

Even with the right bumper, it was still slower than I would have liked. Plus, there’s like a five ramp up once you hold it down. It was enough to markedly lower my enjoyment, and I’m someone who absolutely loved Dear Esther, with 12 hours on record in Steam.

Thanks. I think I’ll wait until it is really cheap and then try it out. Definitely has potential to be a flop to me, but worth checking out at the right price.

Whoops, looks like Chinese Room are shutting up shop (at least for a while).

I love their games (though I can’t play the new one as it’s a Google Daydream VR exclusive title, and my S7 Edge doesn’t support Daydream).

I thought they laid off their people back in July?

The Chinese Room now part of Sumo Group.

http://www.sumo-digital.com/sumo-group-acquires-the-chinese-room/

So… I’m very late to the party and tried to play this game this weekend. I REALLY tried, but about halfway through I just couldn’t take the DAMN SLOW CRAWLING SNAILPACED movement. I guess they wanted you to soak in the pretty landscape and to take your time, but this was horrible.

Basically I quit out of the game and watched a youtube assembly of all the cutscenes.

Overall an interesting game and if the movement had been better, I would have enjoyed it, but as it is that walking speed basically killed the game for me. (even including the slight speedup with the “run” button.)

SPOILER:

So basically the whole world is gone and thats a good thing, as everyone is happy now? Quite an interesting take on the “alien abduction” angle that is pretty much always presented as a negative.

No worries, I picked it up in 2017 and then forgot about the game totally till you bumped this thread.