Dear Esther, the spiritual prequel to Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, is coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this summer, developer The Chinese Room and publisher Curve Digital announced today.
A narrative adventure game, Dear Esther first released in 2012 on PC and sees you exploring a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides. Playing as a troubled man piecing together the events that lead to his wife’s death, fragments of letters appear throughout the island as its secrets are gradually revealed.
For the console versions of Dear Esther, The Chinese Room has made some minor changes to refine how it looks and plays, “tweaking it ever-so-slightly for a modern console audience.” Additionally, you’ll find an all-new director’s commentary mode where replays will include an audio track featuring insight from members of the original development team.
The Chinese Room’s Dan Pinchbeck said:
We’ve always known that Dear Esther would continue its story, and we’re delighted to be writing that story with Curve Digital. Dear Esther is a hugely important game to us, so it’s great to know it’s in very capable hands – we’re excited to see the reaction from PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players.
Discussing the console version with The Guardian, Pinchbeck said, “It’s the same game. The whole thing has been lifted on to Unity, which Rob [Briscoe] did a lot of the work on before handing over to Curve. They’ve looked at the codebase and tidied it up, smoothing off some of the rough edges, taking care of a couple of glitches in the game. It’s an equivalent experience, just slightly smoother.”
Pinchbeck also revealed that a console version of Dear Esther has been discussed for a long time. “When we were working on Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, it came more to the forefront,” he said. “Rapture did really well so we thought it made sense to get the original game out there.”
[Source: The Chinese Room, The Guardian; Trailer is for the PC version]
