A Game I Like: Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

A GAME I LIKE: “EVERYBODY’S GONE TO THE RAPTURE”.

Imagine the following scenario. You find yourself in a tranquil English countryside town. Small roads wind past hedgerows full of the colours of spring. The homes you pass by come straight from a chocolate box, complete with thatched roofs and pretty cottage gardens. And yet, despite the undeniable beauty of this place, something is amiss. Things are a little too quiet. The sounds of birdsong are absent. Our feathered friends are not whirling around in the skies; their corpses litter the ground. And there are no people, just empty homes, abandoned cars and radio announcements giving out warnings of an impending disaster that nobody is listening to anymore. Oh, and mysterious lights that float ethereally through the environment, containing the memories of this town that was.

What happened here?

That is the premise of a videogame by The Chinese Room, whose previous work includes ‘Dear Esther’. I call it a ‘game’ but actually it contains hardly any of the elements one might ascribe to a game. You score no points while playing ‘Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture’. You have no puzzles to solve, no enemies to defeat. It is not possible to lose this game. You will never see a screen saying ‘you died/ you failed, try again’. The controls could hardly be simpler. The left stick moves you through the environment, while the X button does everything else that can be done, such as opening doors, turning on radios and listening to telephone messages. The lack of button combinations is understandable, given the lack of traditional videogame entertainment on offer here.

So why would anyone care to play a game that offers so little? The reason why is because while ‘Everybody’ lacks in high-scoring opportunity, it is absolutely terrific at telling a story in a way only videogames can accomplish. The story is told in a completely nonlinear way, because the way it is told is completely dependent on how the player chooses to make their way through the environment.

The ‘right’ path is not signposted and so you can go pretty much anywhere curiosity takes you. Maybe follow this path toward that pub? Or perhaps it would be better to cross the bridge and journey through the park? You could head straight for the game’s conclusion or take whatever detour you want along the way.

As you come to each destination you may come across a radio broadcasting a mysterious set of numbers, or a ringing phone, or those ethereal lights I referred to earlier. It is by interacting with such things that you pick up snippets of dialogue. Since this game is really dependent on its story it would be ruined if the voice acting was not up to scratch. Fortunately, it is terrific. The story is brilliantly told, combining the everyday concerns of village folk with an apocalyptic event which somehow seems all the more poignant when contrasted against small concerns like who is having an affair with who.

A special mention must also go to the game’s soundtrack, which is just hauntingly beautiful. It does a perfect job of capturing the mood of a once-tranquil and idyllic village caught in the inescapable path of oncoming disaster.

I said earlier that the game lacks traditional play mechanics but you should not take that to mean you can experience ‘Everybody’ with your mind switched off. The way the story is told in a nonlinear way, through snippets of dialogue that can come in any order depending on how you choose to explore the environment, means you have to do work to figure out how these pieces of story fit into an overall narrative. In doing so, you solve the mystery of what, exactly, happened here. Cleverly, The Chinese Room has crafted a story that has several possible interpretations. Was this a natural disaster? Technology gone wrong? Alien visitation? What you think happened here will depend on the clues you happened to pick up, how you choose to connect the dots and how you interpret the picture that emerges.

If you want twitch gameplay, killcounts and high scores, my advice would be to avoid ‘Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture’ like the plague. Its slow pace and lack of trigger finger challenge would probably bore you to death. On the other hand, if you want to experience a story told in a way only videogames can accomplish, and explore beautiful environments without the constant hassle of failures and retries, then you may well like this game as much as I do.

Thanks to The Chinese Room for the images.