Resuming my ongoing commentaries on my top 10 favorite video games of all the times.
Other entries in this series:
10. Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
9. Perfect Tides
8. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
7. Chop Suey
6. Knights and Bikes
5. Super Metroid
3. Butterfly Soup
2. The Last of Us Part I
1. The Last of Us Part II
4. GONE HOME
From people who helped give you BioShock 2 comes a game where you explore a big gay house with no guns, no enemies, no dialogue choices, no other characters to interact with whatsoever in fact, no puzzles, no platforming, no collectibles (to speak of), and no stakes that, with one simple clue, can be beaten in under two minutes! SJWs, amirite?
Yes, I have indeed heard the many, many criticisms of this game before. 
And yes it is also true: I am gay. And also also yes, my appreciation of Gone Home is closely related to that fact. Why? 'Cause frankly, I'd classify Gone Home as the first narratively lesbian-centric video game that was ever made in good faith. Good faith as in without reducing sapphic love to a fetish!
Set on a dark and stormy night in June of 1995, Gone Home is played from the (first-person) perspective of one Katie Greenbriar who, on returning from overseas to her family's new home in fictional Boon County, Oregon, discovers an unnerving note on the door revealing her younger sister, Samantha (or "Sam" for short) to be missing. Taking over control of Katie, the player walks into a curiously empty house to search her out. While the mystery of Sam's whereabouts hangs over the entire exploration that follows, it soon becomes evident that you are in no danger and can and should relax and take your time uncovering the backgrounds, personalities, and significant events in the lives of the Greenbriars that have led up to this point; a feat you'll accomplish by carefully examining the decor and objects of its rooms and hallways (nearly all of which are clickable) for bits and pieces of insight.
While the aforementioned implied player mission exists as motivation, the game has no defined goals. It's about discovery for its own sake. I like that about it! I've mentioned elsewhere on this list...commentary collection...thing...that I really like these mundane slice-of-life adventures because they are quite rare and often especially relatable. Gone Home, in this connection and others, reminds me in certain defining ways of the Theresa Duncan games (Chop Suey, Smarty, and Zero Zero) I used to love back in the 1990s, as well as, in a way, the Nancy Drew mysteries I used to enjoy playing around the turn of the century. It's sort of like if those concepts were fused into one game and polished into 3D with some of the strongest voice acting in this entire medium and most treasured music from my youth.
Speaking of, I was very much into the riot grrl underground (yes, that's a proper spelling) and a participant in the movement back in the day. Gone Home's fairly deep dive into that oft-forgotten world within the contemporaneous punk scene stands out as something that only this game has ever included before. The developers' depth of understanding of, and respect for, early '90s teen lesbian/feminist culture didn't just surprise me when first I experienced it, it completely overwhelmed me with emotion. To put matters in perspective for you, Gone Home was originally released the same month that Grand Theft Auto V was and the latter really did contemporaneously sum up where the relationship between video games and women was at the time just in general. I felt hated, straight up. There's no nice way of putting it. And then here was this proverbial torrential downpour of acknowledgement and validation in the midst of that climate. I will never ever forget how special it felt to get to experience that, especially in the view of its core message that home is not a space defined by your residence, but wherever you find love and acceptance. More than any other one title, Gone Home is the one that made an indie gamer out of me and set me down my current path of mind toward this medium.
Gone Home is about more than '90s teen lesbian/feminist culture though. One of Gone Home's most compelling mysteries...
Spoiler!
...revolves around the "haunting" of Katie and Sam's father Terry by his history of being sexually abused as a child in this very setting and all the attendant consequences that this has for his relationship to both his wife Janice and, seemingly, his attitude toward same-sex intimacy itself, as applied to Sam and her life and love. The story of his redemption is so deeply human and uplifting that the premise of his final book still gets me all misty-eyed to this day even though I've played through the game countless times at this point. And yet there's a deliberate irony to the game's conclusion in that his redemption has come too late to save another important relationship; the nuances of life represented honestly, to a bittersweet end. It's too bad that not everyone uncovers the whole of this side story because it adds a welcome layer of gravitas to the experience.
If you want to catch the hidden details of Terry's backstory, here are a couple hints:
1) When you're looking around Terry's haunts, try removing what only looks like the bottom of desk drawers.
2) There's a locked safe in the basement. It's important. If you want to open it, look at the scrap of paper found on the floor after opening the secret door into the guest room reserved for Katie.
3) For further info, pay close attention to the details of the general vicinity of the safe. It's located near some height measurements and a room that can't be lit. Think about what those things are telling you.
Those are the things people miss the most often.
While it would be easy to build a case that there are stronger stories about sapphic love in this medium today, the compassionate and well-rounded honesty of Gone Home's portrayal of where that stood in the context of 1995 and the way it imbues progressively greater meaning onto writings and objects noticed early on as you progress and unearth more revelations about the lives of the Greenbriars still stands the test of time incredibly well for me. There's a reason why you can see, and feel, nods to it in much bigger games that came out afterward ranging from Life is Strange to Uncharted 4. There are precious few gaming experiences truly like Gone Home, and fewer still that have felt as personalized and loving to me.
Fun aside #1 players may not readily pick up on: Gone Home and BioShock actually share the same universe. I just think that's awesome. 
Fun aside #2: Speaking of one of the clues about that, I want all of the fictional Super NES games in Gone Home to be made into full, actual products because they all look like they've got amazing premises the world cannot go on being without.
Fun fact #3: This is actually the second game on my top 10 list that includes at least one reference to the punk rock band X-Ray Spex. The first to do so was Chop Suey.
Fun aside #4: There's a secret diary entry by Mitten the kitten in this game that's meowch appreciated. 
Okay, I'll stop now. What I'm trying to say is that Gone Home was an emotional experience for me the first time I played it and has evolved into a source of comfort and safety for me since. It's become my principal go-to comfort game when I'm feeling especially down. It's home.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 05 June 2023
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