If you’re the sort of person who likes speaking to every single NPC in a game, this is the game for you - and, on top of that, you’ll get the bonus of many of those characters having interesting things to say beyond one or two canned lines. On top of the decisions, the game gives you ample opportunity to explore most facets of Whit’s life via lengthy conversations with everyone he knows, from his family, to his friends, to his acquaintances. I mean, if that is your thing, I can see why you might like Where The Heart Leads. I barely have the inclination to dwell on my own past and think about what might have been, so doing that for a fictional someone else held little appeal for me. Maybe it’s just conditioning from years and years and years of playing games where you’re expected to save the world or commit some equally big act of heroism, maybe it’s my own personal preferences for fiction that don’t skew towards the introspective, but reliving the more mundane moments of someone’s life just didn’t have much appeal for me.
Or, at least, I wasn’t able to get invested enough in Whit’s life to really care where my choices were leading him. Here’s my problem, though: I didn’t care about any of it. While some games make a big deal about player choice and agency, it’s rare to see one that commits to it to such a big extent. Where The Heart Leads apparently has dozens of possible endings, all stemming from the “thousands” of choices you make over the course of the game. It’s also worth noting that those decisions and events have stakes, at least to a point. Along the way, you get to know all the people in his life, from his family, to his friends, to his acquaintances. This can be as major as his courtship with his wife, or as minor as him gossiping with an old woman on a bench. As he slowly makes his way back to the surface, he explores his past, and you see all the major - and not-so-major - decisions and events in his life that have brought him to where he is.
You play as Whit, a man who plunges deep into a sinkhole as he tries to save his family’s dog and has to find his way out. To be fair, of course, that’s sort of the point of the game.
WHERE THE HEART LEADS PS5 SIMULATOR
Where The Heart Leads shows what happens when you have a walking simulator where the stories and the secrets aren’t that interesting. Whether it’s Gone Home, or Firewatch, or one of my all-time favourite games, What Remains of Edith Finch, there’s something deeply affecting about games that can draw you in with their stories as you walk through the world, uncovering its secrets.
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