What Remains of Edith Finch (Video Game 2017)
The story begins with the player character traveling by ferry to Orcas Island, Washington, carrying the journal of Edith Finch. Inside its pages, Edith recounts her return to her long-abandoned family home after a seven-year absence.
At just seventeen, she believes herself to be the last surviving member of the Finch family, and through her eyes, the player explores the vast, peculiar house—uncovering the mysterious and often tragic stories of each relative’s death. The truth behind these tales remains uncertain, as every account is told through a different and often surreal perspective.
According to Edith, her family has long believed they were cursed, haunted by generations of untimely deaths. The curse’s origins trace back to 1937, when her great-great-grandfather Odin Finch fled Norway after losing his wife, Ingeborg, and newborn son, Johann. Determined to escape his misfortune, Odin attempted to bring his family home with him across the Atlantic—literally transporting the entire house by barge alongside his daughter Edith Sr. (Edie), her husband Sven, and their infant daughter Molly.
However, tragedy struck again when rough waves capsized the barge just off the coast of Orcas Island, drowning Odin and sinking the old home. The surviving Finches settled on the island, building a new house and a family graveyard nearby.
For a time, Edie believed the curse had been left behind in Norway. But one by one, misfortune found them again. Molly, at only ten years old, died after consuming a mix of holly berries and toothpaste, apparently from neglect. Barbara, once a child star, was murdered at sixteen following a violent argument with her boyfriend. Calvin, one of Edie’s twin sons, died at eleven after swinging himself off a cliff. Years later, Sven was killed at forty-nine in a construction accident while working on the house, and Walter, after living three decades in self-imposed isolation in a bunker beneath the property, was struck and killed by a passing train the moment he decided to rejoin the world. Edie memorialized each loss by preserving their bedrooms as detailed shrines—miniature museums of frozen memories.
Sam Finch, Edie’s surviving son, grew up and married Kay Carlyle, with whom he had three children: Dawn, Gus, and Gregory. Yet the pattern continued. Gregory, just shy of two years old, drowned in the bathtub after Kay left him unattended. Gus, at thirteen, was killed when a totem pole collapsed on him during a storm. The tragedies drove Sam and Kay apart, and their marriage ended in divorce. Later, Sam himself died at thirty-three during a hunting trip with Dawn, after being thrown from a cliff by a startled deer.
Shaken by the relentless loss, Dawn fled across the world to Kolkata, India, where she married Sanjay Kumar. Together, they had three children: Lewis, Milton, and Edith (Jr.). In 2002, an earthquake claimed Sanjay’s life, prompting Dawn to return with her children to the Finch home. Soon after, eleven-year-old Milton mysteriously vanished, never to be found.
Terrified of losing her remaining children, Dawn grew reclusive and paranoid. She sealed off every memorialized bedroom and forbade Lewis and Edith from learning about their ancestors—believing that ignorance might be the only way to break the family curse.
Years later, the tragedy struck again. Struggling with depression, isolation, and substance abuse, Lewis, now twenty-one, took his own life—decapitating himself with the fish-cutting machine at his cannery job. Devastated and desperate to protect Edith, Dawn decided to abandon the Finch house for good.
But Edie refused to leave, clinging to her home and her memories. Their argument ended in a painful separation, and Dawn fled with Edith, leaving Edie behind. The next morning, Edie was found dead at ninety-three, having mixed alcohol with her medication.
Seven years later, Dawn succumbed to illness, leaving seventeen-year-old Edith as the last known Finch. She returned to the family home, driven by a need to understand the truth of her lineage.
Wandering through the sealed rooms and secret passages, Edith uncovered each story and recorded her thoughts in her journal—hoping to preserve what remained of her family’s history. As the player eventually learns, Edith is pregnant, and the journal is written for her unborn child, in case she dies before being able to share the family’s story in person.
In the game’s final moments, the perspective returns to the ferry ride from the opening scene—revealing that the traveler carrying the journal is Edith’s son, Christopher. Edith died giving birth to him in 2017, continuing the Finch legacy of sorrow and remembrance. In the closing scene, Christopher visits his mother’s grave, gently placing flowers on it—a quiet acknowledgment of the stories she left behind, and the hope that he might finally be free of the Finch family curse.
#WeTakeAStand #OpinYon #OpinYonNews #GamersGuide #WhatRemainsofEdithFinch