Ether One

Ether One
Developer(s)	White Paper Games
Engine	Unreal Engine 4 (PlayStation 4 port)
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4
Release date(s)	Microsoft Windows NA March 25, 2014 PlayStation 4 NA May 6, 2015
Genre(s)	First-person adventure game
Distribution	Download, Blu-ray Disk (PS4)

Ether One is a first-person adventure game released for Microsoft Windows on March 25, 2014. A PlayStation 4 port is due to be released in the future. The game was developed by a six-person team at White Paper Games.^[1]

Plot

Ether One follows an employee of a futuristic memory-retrieval company called the Ether Institute of Telepathic Medicine. The player must investigate the thoughts of Jean Thompson, a 69-year-old woman diagnosed with dementia, and retrieve lost memories. The Institute is able to generate 3D simulations of damaged memories, and the player must reconstruct the memories using the remaining artefacts of memory.^[1]

Gameplay

Ether One is a first-person exploration game with optional puzzle solving. The player is cast as a "Restorer", "an individual with the ability to project himself into the mind of someone suffering from mental illness in the hopes of restoring their memories".^[2]

Ether One places the player as a "Restorer", "an individual with the ability to project himself into the mind of someone suffering from mental illness".

Development

Story

"Our main goal was to tell a story that we could invest ourselves in," said Pete Bottomley, co-founder of White Paper Games and game designer. "That's the only way we knew we could create something really interesting. If someone looked at a part of the game they hadn't seen recently and some aspect of it didn't seem credible they'd be able to see something immediately."^[1]

PlayStation 4 port

On August 14, 2014, White Paper Games announced a PlayStation 4 port of Ether One. The company also announced that the game would be rebuilt from scratch in Unreal Engine 4 for the PS4 edition.^[2] Bottomley ruled out a possible Xbox port, saying:

There’s not really much to say. Sony contacted us first and were really excited about getting Ether One onto the platform. It feels like a good partnership and the whole PlayStation team has been great to work with. No one from XBOX has contacted us and none of the team are XBOX players so it wasn’t really a consideration.^[3]

The game will be released both digitally and on Blu-ray Disk.^[4][5]

The game will be released to PlayStation Plus subscribers for free as part of the "Instant Game Collection" on May 6, 2015.^[6]

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings 81% Metacritic 82/100 Review scores Publication Score Destructoid 9/10 IGN 7.9/10 Joystiq PC Gamer (US) 82/100

Ether One has received largely positive reviews from critics. Aggregating review website GameRankings gave the PC version 81%.^[7] Metacritic gave the PC version a score of 82/100, indicating "generally favourable reviews".^[8]

Several reviewers praised the atmosphere and immersion of the game. S. Prell of Joystiq praised the environment, writing that the uninhabited dreamscapes feel "almost haunted; there is a constant, pervasive feeling that something is not right here." He also favourably compared the game to the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz.^[9] IGN praised the way the game "sets up a hauntingly cryptic atmosphere with no real hint of exactly where it's going, slowly opening up the watercolour town of Pinwheel for exploration".^[10]

The narrative of the game divided critics. IGN felt that the story was "definitely fragmented and often confusingly told, but in a way that feels appropriate for the dementia plot at its core and the revelations that unfold. It's a story about putting together the pieces, and part of that is finding and picking them up in the first place".^[10] PC Gamer's Angus Morrison described the narrative as "tragic [...] a saga of dementia, death and industrial decline that is discovered rather than told". Morrison, however, criticised the ending, writing that it was "unnecessary; a blunt-force ending to a game which should have left us guessing."^[11] Joystiq called the story "simultaneously [the game's] greatest strength and most sizable weakness", complaining that plot threads were dropped "seemingly willy-nilly", but also stating: "That being said, despite its sometimes convoluted structure, the plot hits all the notes it really needs in order to make players empathetic to the Restorer's plight."^[9]

Several reviewers favourably compared the game to 1993 puzzle game Myst.^[10] PC Gamer said, "Ether One's lateral challenges are not Myst's. Making sense out of Myst demands the mind of a prodigy and a diet of LSD. When Ether One has you stumped, you're missing the obvious. For an adventure puzzle game that's the Holy Grail."^[11]

The game's lack of violence (in comparison to other games of the era) was praised by Steven Hansen of Destructoid, who stated that "There's been blowback against first-person games that don't feature a gun or at least a sharpened tooth brush. Anything to harm someone with. While exploratory and firearm free, Ether One isn't exactly in line with The Stanley Parable or Gone Home. Not entirely, anyway."^[12]

Depiction of dementia

Ether One has been praised for its portrayal of dementia. The New Yorker stated: "As a player, you’re never sure what’s important and what isn’t, so the system encourages you to take everything. This hoarding is repaid with periodic puzzles [...] As the game progresses, these puzzles increase in complexity, as does the array of random objects filling the shelves. The collection gradually overwhelms the player’s ability to remember just where all of these things came from and why they seemed important enough to retrieve. Why did I bring this plate all the way back here? Whose hat is this supposed to be again? It’s a tidy simulation of the cognitive degradation of dementia."^[1]

Destructoid also praised the simulation, stating that the game takes "a sort of reverse Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind approach".^[12]

References