One of the most rewarding moments of Gone Home, and any work of fiction for that matter, is when you take a jumbled mess of oddly shaped metaphorical puzzle pieces and finally put them together to resemble something familiar. This revelation sprang forth for me a few hours into my first-person walkabout through the Greenbriar household. As I rummaged through an abandoned kitchen examining refrigerator notes, discarded paperback books, and surprisingly named bottles of salad dressing, the proverbial light bulb suddenly illuminated.
Yes, I was exploring the Greenbriar home, a digital space where the first game by The Fullbright Company is set. But perhaps more importantly, I was exploring something strikingly similar to the house I grew up in. Each time I clicked on an item owned by a family member and studied its various traits, like empty liquor bottles belonging to a father who may or may not drink too much, or a sarcastically written term-paper on the female reproductive system that highlights a young woman's sharp wit, I was brought back to the uncountable innocuous nick-nacks that populate my parent's house.
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