A Review of The Suicide of Rachel of Foster of (game review)
I heard that The Suicide of Rachel Foster is a lot like What Remains of Edith Finch, so I knew I had to play it because I love seeing games fail to be greater than the greatest game of all time. I’m probably approaching this game unfairly, huh?
The Suicide of Rachel Foster is another walking simulator in the grand tradition of walking simulators with adorably pompous titles that bring in the word “of” to do the work of an apostrophe. Look, I’m not saying the apostrophe s is suffering financially or socially, it is doing just fine. The apostrophe s doesn’t need our help. It has had restaurant titles locked down for generations. But don’t get me wrong, ofs aren’t doing bad for themselves either. Sure, they famously lost out to an apostrophe in the great “of the clock / o’ clock” war of 1583, but they’ve done quite well for themselves since then.
There are some hold outs, for sure. The Beginner’s Guide stood strong. Good for you not The Guide of Beginner.
If anything, bring in an x to help out. They’ve been doing the work of Zs forever and rarely get their due credit. So yeah, let’s talk about the Suicide X Rachel Foster.
The Suicide of Rachel Foster (I’m not committing to that X bit) practically advertises itself as yet another thematically depressing entry into the genre. It’s got the word suicide right in the title. And I like that, actually. This game title is both a warning to those who may be triggered by such dark subject matter while acting as a beacon for players like me who actually enjoy getting bummed out by our games. Some people like being scared by horror games. Some people like being uplifted by happy games. Some people like having a brain that convinces them that one more donut is fine because we’re all going to hell anyway. You know, walking simulator fans.
And if the title doesn’t warn the player enough, an intro screen is there to save the day by warning the player that The Suicide of Rachel Foster contains sensitive subjects that explore grooming and suicide.
The game takes place entirely in an abandoned hotel that the player character, Nicole grew up living in and is now, by way of the player, free to navigate. The hotel is owned by Nicole’s family, but upon the passing of her father has been bequeathed to Nicole herself. Yeah, I used the word “bequeathed”.” Remember, this is a walking simulator that uses “of” as a possessive form. Every waspy New England property owner would roll over in their graves if I failed to say bequeath. Sorry, they’d roll over in their family plots. People who say bequeath definitely believe in segregation, even in death.
While Nicole’s impetus to return to her childhood home/hotel involves inspecting the hotel prior to selling it, the journey quickly takes on a new objective as Nicole learns that her father was somehow connected to the titular Rachel Foster, who committed the titular Suicide of. With the help of Irving, whom she communicates with via cell phone walky-talky thing, she navigates the hotel and explores its mysteries. In this way it’s like Firewatch.
Much like Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch before it, The Suicide of Rachel Foster is about being confined to single building that is at once both familiar and alien. This approach means that the game designers can get away with using backstory to flesh out the story in a way that doesn’t seem like obnoxious exposition. These are characters that have, let’s say, a complicated history with the explorable environment and so it makes sense for them to talk about that history, even to themselves.
The Suicide of Rachel Foster gets off to a rocky start by making Nicole entirely unlikable. She hates being back at this hotel, but the player isn’t yet made aware why, so we’re left to divine our own logic from Nicole’s attitude. She gets angry at Irving, literally the only tether she has to the outside world (I forgot to mention that a snowstorm prevents Nicole from leaving the hotel). She treats this entire inconvenience as a burden she alone suffers when in reality we’ve already been introduced to characters that are equally as inconvenienced. For example, the family lawyer who is trying to figure out all this bequeathment, Irving, the guy on the cell phone, who Nicole knows at this point to be just a very easy going guy trying to do his job, and not to mention her entire living family who just had their father figure die.
But the annoyance doesn’t last long and soon enough the game takes the player into proper mystery solving mode. Eventually, the story takes its expected dark turn and things get quite interesting. No spoilers, of course, but I do really respect the way this game plays with the idea of emotional manipulation in ways that aren’t always presented in games and movies. This story is still dark, there’s no character proclaiming that emotional manipulation is good, or anything, but let’s just say the villain has some nuance to his character that I was not expecting, and I don’t think you will either.
Overall for fans of What Remains of Edith Finch, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Gone Home, and to some extent Ether One, The Suicide of Rachel Foster is a great addition to your library of weird games that when you try to explain to friends why you like them they will feign interest for about 2 minutes before finally just asking “can we play Doom or something.”
