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When I stumbled across bunny running around in the frost, I had to stop and chase it to see if I might be able to catch it. The landscape made me want to explore everything and see how my actions would impact the storyline, if at all. The first area of the game was the most open by far, allowing me to wander around a gorgeous snow-covered mountainside.
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When I led the fox toward something on the ground-one of her cubs unmoving in the snow-I knew I was in for a pretty harrowing tale between Joseph and his dad. Though they appeared quite different on the surface, both narratives were intertwined around the same powerful themes.
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The dream conjured up memories of Joseph 's complicated, and often troubled, relationship with his own father, and as I continued the fox 's adventure, both parallel stories unfurled at once though his voiceovers. More and more, the dream was revealed as I played through an ongoing conversation between the couple.
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I quickly discovered that I was essentially playing the dream Joseph just woke from, about a fox in the wilderness searching for her lost cubs. As I made the little critter take its first steps, a conversation between a couple-Joseph and Rachel-began to play over the nature scene. The First Tree starts with a fox in the center of a snowy field between towering mountains, but I quickly discovered that the game wasn 't really about the fox at all. One of the latest to hit the console scene is The First Tree, created by one-man development team David Wehle.įrom the first frames of the game 's trailer, I knew it was something I 'd love to play, and was thrilled when I was offered a review key of the game for the Nintendo Switch to experience it for myself.
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I 've loved games including Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch and Gone Home, which involve exploring a space and slowly piecing together the bigger story with what 's discovered. As much as I love frenetic action games or puzzles that put my wits to the test, lately I 've been obsessed with video games that are all about the narrative.
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