You will reach a point where you have seen and heard everything that the game lets you, and youвЂ™ll be stuck there watching nothing new happen.

Playing the game this way makes it feel less emotional without the feeling of life going by fast, and you miss out more on one of the most defining aspects of the game: using your eyes as a controller to see BennyвЂ™s life through BennyвЂ™s eyes.Д«ut letвЂ™s say that you really wanted to hear everything and feel that youвЂ™d get more out of the story by using the mouse. Some players opt to use the mouse rather than the webcam, but this greatly reduces the immersion of the gameвЂ“I know this because I had to rapidly speed through a segment of the game that I already played after the game crashed. We get a better feel of just how fast the past goes flies away, and this immerses us in BennyвЂ™s reminiscence of his life. What limiting how much we can see and hear does is make for a more real experience in that we better feel the sense of urgency that life presents to both Benny and ourselves. Like Benny, we cannot dwell on the great and horrible parts of our past: we must move forward. While we may want to stay in the present, we simply cannot and have to pursue the future. We watch BennyвЂ™s lives unfold before us, and the memories they hold quite literally go away in the blink of an eye. The Ferryman tells us early on that while we may want to stay back and see all of BennyвЂ™s memories, we cannot. However, this is a great thing narratively. One may think: but I want to see everything! Yet, the eye-tracking system hinders you from doing so вЂ“ of course not so much if you hold the Guinness World Record for the longest time with your eyes kept open. The most prevalent eye-tracking mechanic, however, is that blinking when there is a metronome on the screen moves us to the next memory in BennyвЂ™s life, making us miss out on the rest of the game narrative from the previous memory. This made us feel more of the loss of BennyвЂ™s innocence as he was exposed to lifeвЂ™s cruelties. We usually had to close our eyes to listen to BennyвЂ™s parents discuss their depressing, emotional thoughts on Benny that he wasnвЂ™t supposed to hear.

The game starts us off by immediately introducing us to the eye-tracking system.Д«linking while hovering over the eye symbol on the screen will allow you to interact with objects/ take pictures, shutting your eyes while prompted to (via the shut your eyes symbol) lets you progress through and hear more parts of the story, and keeping your eyes open while the hourglass symbol appears allows you to progress while blinking inhibits you.ДЇorcing you to keep your eyes open such as when we had to view BennyвЂ™s dead kittens and hearing his grandfather died, allows us to better feel the horror and intense emotions that Benny experienced when he lived through those dark times. Such choice further immerses us into reliving BennyвЂ™s life, bridging choice to the narrative, making it as if WE are Benny shaping BennyвЂ™s story. We even get to see the effects of some of our actions such as viewing the paintings that we created in the art gallery near the end of BennyвЂ™s idealized life. Although they do not affect the ending, we can create our own artwork, decide to answer phone calls, choose to crumple up and throw contracts/ sheet music, and more. Throughout the game, we are presented with many choices. To further our experience, the developers utilized another form of immersion: choice. By living through a character, we better understand them, and the emotional impact of the story gets much, much more real. A great example to support this is that we didnвЂ™t know all the hardships that Chloe was feeling until we were told that her mother died. Such emotion was created by living as Benny, and I do not think it could have effectively been conveyed if we didnвЂ™t play in BennyвЂ™s perspective. I instantly felt dread inside my body as I watched Benny feel and write as if he was worth nothing. One of the saddest moments that stuck with me was reading BennyвЂ™s typewriter as we see him call himself a loser and self-loathe. We feel more emotion and better feel how BennyвЂ™s feelings by playing this way. This strategic form of storytelling already makes us feel as if we are Benny reliving BennyвЂ™s life, immersing us in recalling his life story. We instead see BennyвЂ™s life through BennyвЂ™s eyes. We never actually see what Benny looks like in the story. вЂњYou canвЂ™t understand someone until youвЂ™ve walked a mile in their shoes.вЂќ

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