Narrative
What Remains of Edith Finch is a narrative-driven game, which tells the story of a family who believe they are cursed to die. The user is playing the character of the child of the narrator- Edith Finch. The game starts with the player going through the house where we learn that once a family member dies, their bedroom is locked and memorialized, leaving the player to discover secret passageways to get into the rooms.
There is not necessarily one narrative plot, but rather a series of mini stories within the video game. These stories are produced with the use of various narrative devices such as epistolary in the form of diaries, books and letters of the character’s last moments. The use of epistolary allows extensive detail and a sense of realism as it is taken from a human perspective of the ordeal (National Postal Museum).
Once in the bedrooms, the player becomes the character who has died and is living in a flashback of their final moments and what led to their horrific death. The story is a beautiful tragedy, with most of the deaths being children. The player doesn’t have that much autonomy over what they can do, and the story will not change regardless of what is done.
What Remains of Edith Finch is written in a fishbone narrative structure, where a story goes from start to finish and for the most part is chronological. As stated above, there are mini stories within the main story, but it still will end the same way regardless of these mini stories. It is a very similar structure to a linear one, with the difference is a small amount of interaction (Maurin).