The Neglected Children of Edith Finch

Giant Sparrow’s What Remains of Edith Finch is often lauded as an excellent narrative-driven game. It presents a rich world based around the Finch family house and a genealogical mystery as you move through it, unravelling the secrets of the lives and deaths of the previous generations.

What Remains of Edith Finch has a darkness at its core. It’s a game whose narrative focuses on the question of whether there is a curse on the Finch family, or whether it’s an unlucky history of freak accidents. In framing the narrative this way, the game ignores the child neglect and cruelty that appears central to its story. 

Not every Finch died when they were children. Plenty died as adults, resulting from construction accidents or by suicide. And some of the children’s deaths, the ones concerning kites and swings and perilous playtimes, could arguably have been accidents rather than negligence of not observing children at play. 

But there are other instances that seem to stem directly from neglect, cruelty, or abuse… 

To read more head over to the original article, published on New Game+.