ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a detailed analysis of What Remains of Edith Finch (2017), focussing in the game’s use of what I call gameworld-centred forms of metareference. As a narrative-heavy game, What Remains of Edith Finch uses several devices familiar from other media. Indeed, the citation, remediation, and incorporation of different media texts is key to the game’s overall metareferential aesthetics. In addition to considering the game’s multilayered narrative structure and its overall concern with storytelling and mediation, the chapter analyzes three of its short stories in more detail. Milton’s story stands out for its close intertextual relationship to Giant Sparrow’s earlier game The Unfinished Swan (2012) as well as its attention to analogue media technologies such as painting and hand-drawn animation. Barbara’s story explores interrelations between cinema, comics, and videogames through the lens of horror. Lewis’ story, finally, is the most overtly self-referential in that it cites narrative, ludic, and audiovisual aspects typical of videogames while also creating interesting challenges by presenting two gameworlds side by side.
