I hope everyone had a great holiday season. I spent Christmas playing XCOM and New Year’s Eve watching Futurama. Truly a magical time of year. Anyway, I indulged in Steam’s annual “Games You Will Never Have Time to Play” sale and saw that Gone Home, a game I’ve had my eye on since months before its release, was on sale for half off. And I ended up really liking it. This game was the most 90s thing ever. The environmental storytelling is the best I’ve seen and for the most part, I enjoyed the story. I’m glad that a lot of people ended up liking this game too and have given it a lot of praise. Buuuuuuuuuuuut no one seems to mention that the game has a pretty dumb ending. Allow me to explain. Oh, and if you couldn’t tell by the title, this article will completely spoil the game for you. You’ve been warned.
Gone Home puts the player in control of Kate Greenbriar, who has been in Europe for the past year. Your family moved while you were gone (My family did that once. I’m still looking for them.) so you arrive at a completely unfamiliar house late at night after getting off of your flight. There’s no one home, and after seeing the mysterious note from your sister on the front door, you search the house for clues to find out what happened.
The irony is that if she hadn’t stolen all the VCRs I would have had something better to do than snoop around.
Through Sam’s journals, you discover that while you were gone, she fell in love with a classmate named Lonnie (the girl pictured at the top of the article). After a couple hours of headbanging and leaving drawers open like a jerk, you finally find out what happened to Sam. It turns out that Lonnie was about to leave for Army basic training but she just couldn’t go through with it and called Sam and told her to pack up so they could run away with each other. No plan, just gonna pawn off the Super Nintendo and VCRs and just drive. And according to the game, that’s a happy ending?
This was my face when I saw the ending. I am being so serious right now.
“Oh, it’s so beautiful, the girls finally end up together and find a place where they can love each other and be accepted.” NO. This is not a happy ending. This is the kind of ending that Cracked writes articles about. First, let’s look at the fact that Lonnie enlisted into the Army and then bailed out. Right after finishing the game, I asked two of my friends who are in the military (thanks again, Michelle and Kayla). They both told me that she could end up being charged with going AWOL and go to prison. I’m not an expert on military law, so it might be possible for Lonnie to use Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as a loophole out of this, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Even if Lonnie manages to avoid going to jail for deserting, she’s probably going to have to deal with a kidnapping charge. There are three very important facts about this situation. 1)Sam is a minor. 2)The parents think her being a lesbian is just a phase. 3)The parents already thought Lonnie was a bad influence. So with all of this put together, do you think they’re going to react with “Oh, I guess it was silly of us to get in the way of love”? OF COURSE NOT! It’s going to be more like “Officer help us, please! She took our daughter! Get our baby back, please!”.
“Oh, but Norbert, that only makes it more romantic. Lonnie is risking jail time to be with her lover!” Yeah, I guess that would be pretty romantic for the first couple of days. But how long until they’re broke, hungry and hate each other? They have no place to stay and no jobs. Sam hasn’t even finished high school. It’s going to be hard for them to love each other while they’re sleeping in their car with an empty gas tank after splitting a 7-11 hotdog that cost them their last dollar.
Ruining your life for romance is so 1995.
Please don’t get the idea that I hate this game. I really like it. The team is very talented and it’s clear that they put a lot of heart and care into this. The love story between Sam and Lonnie was enjoyable up until the ending. But all of that only makes me upset, maybe even angry, that they end this beautiful work with a gooey Hollywood ending that was clearly not thought out. When compared to the rest of the game, the ending felt downright insulting. The Fullbright Company can do better than this. I know they can. I hope they make another game but I sincerely hope they can fix whatever problem led to this terrible ending.
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Well I felt the same way. Also I felt tricked and misled that there was no ghosts or anything else supernatural going on when I was led to believe there was, but I guess part of that is the surprise of the game?
Maybe. I think it was a misstep for them to keep escalating the ghost subplot without giving it a conclusion.