Game Review - The First Tree

Game Review: The First Tree (PC version) by David Wehle
Score: +3/-4

A beautiful, 3rd-person exploration game centered around two parallel stories: a fox trying to find her missing family, and a son reconnecting with his estranged father in Alaska. Uncover artifacts from the son's life as they journey towards The First Tree.

I got The First Tree as a freebie from Epic Games. The "game" portion is light platforming. In between long distances of running through the beautiful landscape to these jumping games, the time is filled with a dialog between a couple that tells a very short but emotionally charged story.

- It's one of those titles that really stretch the expectations of "game" so much that it's barely a game. It has enough "game play elements" to qualify it, but that content is so light as to be nearly negligible and ultimately irrelevant to the core experience, which is actually having a story told to you. It's more like a linear short story or short movie. I feel that "games" such as this really need more disclosure up front, or a new genre title that expresses the de-emphasis on gameplay and the focus being the story experience. Which is not to say games don't have a story behind them -- that part is really critical to give context and meaning to the game aspect -- but when there is so little actual player engagement/interaction compared to time spent, it moves away from a game to simply being a story.

As far as light-gameplay games go, The First Tree is actually not bad. But there's an emerging genre of titles marketed as "games" that are in fact strictly linear stories and all the "player" does is press a button to advance a slide and read more story text.

Arguably there is "exploration gameplay" in The First Tree where you are looking for key locations to hear narratives or progress to the next chapter, but you are already basically given waypoints to these locations so it's less "exploration" and more like "travel". With the game world being so big yet empty of things to engage with, the waypoints are basically a necessity.

- If you didn't know this and you were expecting more "game" in your game purchase, then I think the price tag will feel excessive. But even if you did know this, I think you'll find the price tag somewhat steep compared to renting a movie -- but your mileage will vary depending on your personal tastes in the type of stories you like to experience.

+ Great emotional soundtrack with the usual suspects of violins and pianos to help evoke the poignancy of the narrative. This helps the presentation and impact of what is really a rather commonplace story/theme. Anyone can relate "that type of story" but the bells and whistles are here to elevate that into an experience.

+- Gorgeous world to run through -- and there's a lot of running through with basically nothing to do once each voiceover ends. The earlier chapters are better at keeping this dead space filled with narratives to unlock, but later in the game there's more running and a higher likelihood of running "the wrong way" and therefore a lot of wasted time backtracking for finding where you are supposed to go. This is contrary to the early game where you are encourages and "rewarded" to explore as you can find orbs of light that advance a mysterious counter of dubious meaning.

+- Interesting ending, but also a rather time-wasting one as there is no clear sense of whether you are supposed to do anything there or not and if there is more to do.