![]() ![]() You’ll become familiar with the small town they live in, and become acquainted with the other people who live there. You’ll get to know his wife, Rene, and their two young children, Kate and Alex. Sometimes those periods are fleeting other times you’ll hang around for hours, digging deep into the minutiae of Whit’s everyday life. In its 10-or-so hour running time, you’ll visit different periods of Whit’s life. There’s a touch of A Christmas Carol here a vein of ‘ghosts of Christmas past’ running through the narrative. You’ll get the answers you want eventually, but as Where the Heart Leads begins to unfold, it soon becomes almost irrelevant. Is he dreaming? Is he dead? Is he actually alive and will soon scramble out to safety? These questions will plague your early playtime of the game. That’s where Where the Heart Leads’ story truly begins: with Whit landing with a thump at the bottom of the sinkhole. Whit, on the other hand, finds himself plummeting further down. ![]() Taking up the role of family man Whit, your first experience of him is as he ventures voluntarily into the sinkhole to rescue the family dog, Casey. The opening of Where the Heart Leads is something of a metaphor for the rest of the game you don’t quite know what’s going to await you at the bottom, but you’re determined to keep peering in all the same. Sinkholes are a force of nature dangerous and terrifying, but somewhat intriguing in their mystery. You have to live with your decisions and the consequences – the good and the bad.Beginning with a giant sinkhole opening up in front of Whit Anderson’s house, Where the Heart Leads is the sort of narrative journey that’s hard to put down. Again, this is the game holding a mirror up to real life you get one shot and that’s it. There are so many different paths that you could send Whit on, and convince others to follow, that I don’t think we’re supposed to see them all. This is a game though and that means you can do it all over again. ![]() I imagine I’ll get that feeling again in about 20 years. Then, when I got to the final chapter and knew what lay ahead, I wanted nothing more than to be back in the middle, dossing around town with all the time in the world. Somewhere around halfway through, I did start to feel like I was going through the motions and that it was crawling along at a snail’s pace. A slow plod through the middle with a lot of filler, and then a quick burst to the end. The game is a little long, but so is life, and whether it’s a happy accident or by design, the pacing of the story captures what life is. Every decision changes the future, and that’s something we can all relate to in some way. Your choices influence all of these people and many more, whether you realise it at the time or not. Sege, the older artist brother, faces roadblocks at every junction in life due to his free-spirited nature. Aldwin, Whit’s father, battles his pride to keep the family afloat. His wife, Rene, struggles with being a stay-at-home mum when what she really wants is a career – a balanced life. Everybody has their own stories, struggles, trials and tribulations, and Whit is the vessel we see this through. Where the Heart Leads puts these questions front and centre, not just for Whit, but the rest of the small cast, too. If I go tomorrow, will I be remembered? If I manage to hang on for another ten years, will I do anything that matters? Will my family be proud of me? Will my son remember me as a good man? What will be my legacy? It’s perhaps the most relatable game I’ve ever played.Īs I’ve gotten older, and as this pandemic has brought death to the door, it’s forced me to think a lot more about life and death. That’s kind of the game’s central theme – choices, decisions and their consequences. ![]() They were mine we (Whit and I) had to live with them and go with the flow. I really liked being able to project a bit of myself onto Whit, even when the decisions I made weren’t all the great. Whit is a bit of a blank canvas and it’s up to us, the player, to make choices for him. I kind of knew what was coming very early on, as will many others, but it doesn’t take away from the story at all, and come the end, I guarantee that all who are human will get a bit of a shaky lip.Ī slow start with Whit and his older brother, Sege, lays the foundation for Whit’s life and the events you’ll lead him through. Dazed, confused, and wanting to get back above, Whit explores the underground passage while reliving his childhood, his teenage years, adulthood, and even beyond. Average is as average does until there’s an accident and Whit falls through the massive sinkhole that has opened up on his property. Where the Heart Leads follows Whitney, a married man with two kids and a dog. ![]()
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