Walking Simulators!
The most critically acclaimed new genre from the teens.
the twenty o’s. the years 2010 to 2019.
There’s no good name for this decade.
They let you experience the perspective of a richly written character or immerse yourself
in a meticulously crafted environment.
Originally, “walking simulator” was a derisive name.
Back in the beginning of the decade, games like Dear Esther and Gone Home got the name
because a lot of cranky gamers were annoyed you couldn’t beat the game by…
shooting things?
Now now now, It might seem like a silly thing to be worried about these days,
but we all too easily forget that back in 2013
it was really hard to find a video game where you could
shoot a gun.
Nonetheless, the name stuck — and a series of popular ‘walking simulators’ secured
a passionate audience.
As the decade came to a close, the Walking Simulator genre exploded with a bounty of games,
so much so that it’s getting a little hard to determine just what a walking simulator
is.
But the one thing we do know, is that they all have walking.
But what is walking?
Walking, for able-bodied humans, is locomotion at a moderate pace made by lifting and setting
down each foot in turn, never having both feet off the ground at once.
And yes — that is an official rule in the actual real sport of race walking, so I have
no choice but to follow it.
This is called ‘gait’ and it’s just one thing we have to check for when ranking
the walking in these walking simulators,
one of four parts of my
VIDEO GAME WALKING AUTHENTICITY
POWER RANKINGS RUBRIC.
Next, walking speed.
The CDC puts the average, comfortable walking speed at around 3-4 miles per hour.
Any faster and it’s a jog, any slower and you’re not moving.
Next, I want to know about the extremities:
Are they wearing boots?
Shoes?
None-shoes?
Whatever they’re wearing, I’ll need to measure what, if any, effect it has on the walking.
Also, walking is not merely an activity of the feet: the whole body moves in important
but subtle ways.
Our arms jostle rhythmically and our hips sway from side to side.
Walking is a full body sport.
Finally, I want to consider the entire walk holistically and ask,
“does it convey a personality?"
Most walking simulators have a lot of narrative,
and if the damn walking isn’t telling me something,
then how else are these games gonna communicate with me?
I mean it’s not like there’s anything to shoot.
Now that we have a rubric, it’s time to move at a reasonable pace to the judging.
I’ll put my rankings here on the board.
I’ll award each game up to 5 points in each category of the
VIDEO GAME WALKING AUTHENTICITY POWER RANKINGS RUBRIC,
and then we’ll see which games truly
simulate walking.
First up!
Dear Esther — the game that kicked off the walking simulator revolution.
The first thing we’ll evaluate is gait.
This game has none.
Because in Dear Esther, you do not have a body,
so there is no foot to firmly place down,
one at a time.
There are no arms to swing at your side.
You may as well be a ghost for how you glide over the haunting, weathered island.
Next, walking speed.
This required me to conduct some rigorous scientific analysis.
In order to calculate speed, I need a set distance I can time myself against.
That meant I had to approximate some measurement of distance in-game.
Standard front door size is 3 feet wide,
so we can extrapolate that this building is
23 feet long.
For the test, I timed myself walking the length of the building, repeating the test 3 times
so I could average the results together:
5.22 seconds.
Meaning a speed of 4.4 feet/second, or
3 miles per hour.
This ghost moves at walking speed!
I’m conflicted: In Dear Esther, you move at the right speed, but every other aspect
of the walking experience is compromised:
Well, to be fair, there is one other impressive walking feature:
this game makes it exceptionally easy to “walk”
straight to the bottom of the ocean.
(phone message) Hi mom, so I got my ticket home from Europe.
Next is Gone Home, the game which arguably brought
walking simulators into the mainstream.
It also made a lot of people angry, either because of it’s ingenious twist
or because the developers had the audacity
to make the main character a lesbian.
2013 man!
In the gait test, Gone Home also fails for lack of feet.
And hands.
And only the slightest of head bobs.
However, you do get the loud clomp of what I presume are some type of heavy boot.
* heavy boot clomps *
This might be an example of the character’s walking
reflecting their personality.
Perhaps implying you share your mother’s interest in forestry…
* punk music *
or your younger sister’s interest in punk music…
* punk music *
or maybe she just picked up some Euro fashions while studying
abroad in Amsterdam.
The problem is, I can't know for sure what type of boots they are,
since I’m a non-corporeal ghost.
To establish in-game scale, I approximated the double front door at 5 feet, making this
room about 25 feet long.
I recorded an average speed of 3.9 miles per hour.
Peppier than Dear Esther, but still within the normal bounds of walking.
Despite its accolades, Gone Home’s walking is nothing to gone-home about.
I don't like the sound of that.
Next up is Firewatch.
It has fully voiced, interactive dialogue!
A stunning art style by way of Olly Moss!
But the real home run here is that your character exists!
In three dimensions!
I haven’t been this excited about game feet since Blizzard announced Sigma!
And I can confirm that in Firewatch,
your character always has one foot planted firmly on the ground while walking.
Your shoes look appropriate for the location
and, when they’re not interacting with the environment,
your arms sway realistically at your side.
There’s also a nice head bob, which, if you hate immersion, can be turned off.
To measure the speed, I needed flat ground, which was harder to come by than I expected
in Firewatch’s gorgeous natural environments.
I went up to my fire tower and decided to use my twin bed as an approximation.
At 6.25 feet long, I could make an estimated guess that the room was about 16 feet.
My walk times averaged 2.87 seconds, for a speed of 3.9 miles per hour.
But then I discovered that's not your only speed.
In this game...
You can jog. (dun dun duuuunnn)
This is a walking simulator.
What in the world do I need to jog for!?
Unfortunately,
my VIDEO GAME WALKING AUTHENTICITY POWER RANKINGS RUBRIC
does not look kindly on jogging.
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, including you, since you’re a ghost.
No corporeality here in this picturesque, UK village.
There’s plenty of surreal and compelling narrative devices, to be sure, but
are you simulating a typical gait as you walk through town?
Since I can’t see my feet, there’s to way to know!
Let me see them feet!
I am however excited by the chance to measure the walking speed in EGTTR.
The game was infamously criticized for its slow walking speed and seeming lack of a sprint option,
though it turned the developers merely forgot to mention it in the UI.
It was easy to miss because the game’s sprint had gradual acceleration.
I’m explaining all of this because
I want you to understand I will be completely ignoring the “sprint” function
and that I’m excited about it because I want to see just how dangerously
slow this walking is.
Establishing scale in the strange universe of…
“Great Britain”
was trickier than expected.
First I tried to use this parking lot, since the standard British parking space is
7.8 feet.
My calculations gave me 3.6 mph, which was... moderate.
Perhaps even, brisk.
And that’s when I realized these parking spaces weren’t standard sized at all!
Something had clearly gone wrong in this town.
To correct this error, I decided to use this picnic table, which by all accounts appeared
to be of the 6 foot variety.
That gave me a 24-foot building I could measure against,
and calculate a walking speed of
3.15 mph.
A languid pace, just as I suspected.
and while the game immersed me in a far-away fantasyland,
I once again got the sense that the walking
wasn’t front and center.
* boat horn *
What Remains of Edith Finch breaks the mold by including a series of non-walking vignettes.
These moments contain deeply moving, melancholic stories that verge on the sublime…
and they are not walking.
This was disappointing, but I pressed on in my analysis.
Edith Finch continues Firewatch’s trend of making the player a corporeal being.
Weirdly, I need to give a spoiler warning before I show footage of Edith Finch’s feet...
please don't read too much into that statement.
If you want to just close your eyes, I’ll describe the feet.
Here is Edith Finch, walking through a forest,
now looking down at her feet we see that
one foot appears to stay on the ground as the next foot moves forward.
Excellent!
Her left arm sways at her side,
with her right hand in her pocket,
a totally valid way to walk.
Okay, you may now open your eyes!
Calculating scale in Edith Finch was trickier than I expected.
I ended up using this envelope to approximate the size of the floor boards at 6 inches.
This allowed me to measure this runner carpet as 15 feet long,
which led to an average walking speed of 3.3 mph
A nice, moderate pace — just how I like it.
Still though, the non-walking vignettes bothered me.
Towards the end of the game you play a vignette focused on Lewis, Edith’s brother.
The game splits the controller in two,
with one side controlling his grim job in a fish factory,
while the other represents the colorful fantasy world he’s created in his mind.
A fantasy world where you get to walk!
I got through all these vignettes only to walk with half the controller!?
It’s like the game is trying to split my mind in two while I sink into a deep depression
about my repetitive, dead-end job, just as the bright, inviting world of my imagination
consumes and eventually endangers my very being.
And I know exactly what you’re thinking:
what does any of that have to do with walking!?
NOTHING.
Lunar transfer station Tacoma
Aww, Tacoma, the second game from Fullbright, the creators of Gone Home,
and like Gone Home, the only puzzle it presents,
is a story to unravel.
You do that on the Tacoma space station
by playing back recordings of the station's crew and
what the fuck.
you can float!?
I said you have to keep one foot planted firmly on the ground,
disqualified.
These trails aren't gonna take care of themselves.
Eastshade brought back what a lot of the early walking simulators had stripped out,
including quests lines, crafting, and an inventory.
There’s no violence or combat, so the story is still front and center,
and since it’s an open world, you do a lot of walking.
But the creator says this is
NOT a walking simulator,
And to be fair
I don't know if you're a bear-person or a monkey-guy
and I have no idea what their average walking speed is.
* pretty music *
Virginia is an interesting case
incorporating film editing techniques to
STOP THE CAR! THERE'S A BUFFALO IN THE ROAD!
Which probably means something because this games
surreal, metaphorical story
keeps jump cutting from moment to moment,
overwhelming the player with too many
distractions from what really matters, in this genre
which, to reiterate,
is the walking.
Well, we had more disqualifications than I expected… but that’s okay,
it’s time to tally up our totals and let the
VIDEO GAME WALKING AUTHENTICITY POWER RANKINGS RUBRIC
do its job.
* old timey computer noises *
oh
oh dear, what
doesn't make any sense...
This is so disappointing.
None of these games even come close to a high score on the
VIDEO GAME WALKING AUTHENTICITY POWER RANKINGS RUBRIC.
It just doesn't make any sense!
These are walking simulators.
They should’ve aced this test!
Maybe what I need to do to check my rubric, is try a game that is
not a walking simulator,
but has lots of walking.
a game like Death Stranding
You walk with one foot placed firmly on the ground
CHECK
You carefully move at an arduously slow pace through the game’s deserted environments
CHECK
Your extremities are clearly visible AND move
just how they should
CHECK
and Norman Reedus walks exactly how I’d expect him to walk
in a baffling world where he has no idea what the fuck is happening
CHECK
Sure, Norman Reedus can run and drive and tumble and swim to his own body after he dies,
but
in the 40+ hour playtime, you can do so much more walking than any of these
so-called walking simulators.
Could there be something I missed in my rubric?
Am I so out of touch!?
No,
it’s the games that are wrong.
I have to come to terms with the fact that these walking simulators are shitty at walking.
Sure, they tell some incredibly earnest stories that other games rarely attempt, and allow
you to inhabit and empathize with fully realized characters,
and they tweak your curiosity
with environmental storytelling that begs you to explore their spaces.
So if I want really immersive, truly simulated walking,
there’s only one place to go:
triple A games!
Have you seen the gait in Skyrim!?
Assassin's Creed! You better believe that's a moderate pace between 3-4 MPH
Grand Theft Auto, don't get me started!
Putting one foot down firmly in front of the other.