Dear Esther Coming to PS4, Xbox One Next Month

Take a walk on the mild side with Dear Esther.

If you’ve never played Dear Esther or Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, I highly recommend both of them. The latter game is the more recent and well known of the two, but it’s only available on PS4 and Steam. Dear Esther has for years been available exclusively on Steam, but soon you’ll be able to play it on your PS4 and Xbox One.

Dear Esther pioneered the “walking sim” genre, and is the spiritual predecessor to Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. It’s a slow-going game. All you do is walk (slowly) around the beautiful environment and piece together a mystery that, in the end, will have you wondering exactly what was happening all along. It’s one of those “open to interpretation” kinds of stories, and it really is a mind-bender. If you have the patience for it, it’s not to be missed. Of course, Dear Esther holds a special place in my heart because it was the first video game I was ever paid to write about, and I did write about it – for about 12,000 words.

Now you might not like it that much, but it’s worth experiencing. If you’re at all intrigued, Dear Esther: Landmark Edition will be hitting PS4s and Xbox Ones on September 20. Developer The Chinese Room noted that this is a faithful port of the PC version, but some extra bugs have been taken care of. We’ll also get access to a Director’s Commentary mode, which I can’t wait to experience. I’m excited to see if my interpretation of the story holds up.

By the way: If you already bought Dear Esther on PC, then the Developer’s Commentary will become available to you free of charge in a few months. Try it out, and see what you think!