Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is a first-person art adventure/walking simulator video game. Specifically looking at the opening of the game, the player is exposed to the delightful voice of a treble, in the track All the Earth, which begins with a piercing solo note accompanied later by the piano. This opening is powerful, and placed alongside the stunning visuals of a typical English village, it sets the scene for the rest of the game and definitely lives up to its art-adventure description.
Image from Playstation.com
Looking at the track Finding a Pattern, a choir is used accompanied mainly by woodwind and strings which have an emphasis on dovetailing between solo instruments, with a particular counterpoint occurring between a solo viola and violin. What first springs to mind upon hearing this is the symbolisation of pastoral England through the musical contour, which identifies greatly with its visuals. However, although beautiful like the game’s visuals and narrative, the melodies and use of instrumentation creates a haunting and spacious environment in the music, symbolising the empty village. During gameplay, the player is mostly surrounded by silence until triggering musical cues (either by area triggers or story triggers), allowing the player to focus on the voice acting provided. Regional accents, intonation, and nuisances symbolise the English village even more so, and although characters are not physical in the game, the player can paint a picture of personality and looks with the accompanied voice acting. If the soundtrack and visuals were not enough for the game to be considered believable then the voice acting makes it so.
