Spoilers for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture follow:
To date, a lot has been written about Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and rightfully so. The 2015 game by The Chinese Room (Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs) carries a somber tone and aesthetics that offer a quiet beauty well worth documenting. However, the peaceful atmosphere presented by Rapture is deceptive, perhaps aligning with what T.S. Eliot would call “a face to meet the faces that you meet,” for beneath the beauty lies a hideous beast.
Although Rapture is not a horror game, it definitely deals with a distillation of horror. Essentially, it is fundamentally based on something truly horrific, but opts to hide this beneath a warm tale of desperation and heartbreak, experienced vicariously through an unnamed protagonist. The fact that the protagonist is unnamed is coupled with the first-person rendering of the game, dramatically heightening the degree of immersion experienced by the player.
The main mechanic in Rapture is based on the player’s interaction with floating orbs of light, which hang suspended in the air. These golden orbs resemble the kind of light which constitutes “the pattern”, a celestial entity discovered by Kate Collins and Stephen Appleton. Elements of the story are unlocked by interacting with these orbs, as interaction yields a scene from Yaughton’s past, featuring the local townspeople. However, the people appear as pseudo-silhouette formations of light, similar in substance to the orbs themselves, and promptly disappear after the scene in question unfolds. The town of Yaughton is entirely deserted, aside from these strange orbs, and for some unknown reason, the player. While one may think that they are experiencing peace in solitude, they are actually all alone in a place of repressed horror where nothing makes sense.
In terms of horror, the most interesting part of Rapture is the nature of the golden lights. First observed from Yaughton’s observatory, the initial pattern was recognized as a potential life form by Kate and Stephen. A highly-advanced scientific facility in a small, ordinary town is Lovecraftian, to say the least, but the influence of the inimitable H.P. Lovecraft vitalizes the story as a whole, particularly in relation to his investment in cosmicism, which is a philosophy “stating that there is no recognizable divine presence, such as God, in the universe, and that humans are particularly insignificant in the larger scheme of intergalactic existence.”
By applying this concept to Rapture, the peaceful, somber tone of Yaughton becomes incredibly sinister. The reason Rapture is so breathtakingly peaceful is that it takes place in an emptied rural mundanity. Almost pastoral in tone, the nature behind this absence is so utterly horrific, that the player subconsciously assumes a sort of blissful apathy, electing to see the last tree in a burning forest. Yaughton, like many rural settings, is comprised of a tightly-knit religious community. However, when the pattern arrives, it quickly becomes clear that humanity and its institutions are not only insignificant but are completely powerless. After all, Earth is but a microcosmic pebble within the macrocosm of the Universe.
This pattern, seemingly a being from somewhere in the outer cosmos, presents itself to humanity as a series of lights. Whether this is its actual form or an illusion is up for debate, but is largely unimportant. What’s important is that mistaking its activity for an effort to make contact, Kate and Stephen accidentally invite the mysterious force to instigate a literal rapture. Beginning with farm animals, the pattern begins to spread an alien infection, always resulting in either death or disappearance. Somewhere within the peaceful pastoral, a horror strikes down the innocent.
Kate and Stephen hold very different opinions on the pattern. Kate believes that it is a benevolent sort of higher being, attempting to communicate; the deaths thus far have only occurred because it is naïve to the fragility of the human mind. Stephen, however, recognizes it as a malignant entity that is hell-bent on eradicating humanity from the planet.
The distinction between these opinions essentially boils down to whether the pattern’s infection is a misguided attempt to make contact, or a malevolent attack on humanity itself. Stephen is positive that it is the latter, and he reaches out to the government, requesting that they quarantine the infected area. The quarantine is placed, under the premise that Yaughton has suffered an outbreak of Spanish influenza. Terrifying when you think of it – the residents of Yaughton are worried that they could have the flu, when in reality, they’ve become the prey of a godlike predator.
However, the infection immediately adapts, breaking through the boundaries of the quarantine. Out of desperation, Stephen requests that the government bomb Yaughton and the surrounding area, as he realizes that the infection can now spread through any transferrable medium, from radio waves to telephone lines. If the infection is left unchecked, it could potentially lead to the extinction of the human race.
Remember that all of this morbid information is received by witnessing the interactions of golden lights in a beautiful and quiet setting. Even the darkest story can be warmed, seemingly, as the juxtaposition of a proposal for mass genocide in order to prevent an extraterrestrial infection with the quiet and small landscape of Rapture is nothing short of sublime.
Towards the end of the story, Stephen waits in a bunker for the bombs, intending to kill himself after he has ensured that every infected person in the surrounding area is dead. However, as one might expect, the pattern comes for him, too, and for the first time, the player gets an insight as to how the pattern operates. Stephen, doused in gasoline, challenges the pattern, stating that he’d rather kill himself than give in. However, before he can attempt to set fire to himself, he recognizes Kate within the lights. An illusion, of course, but one by which he is utterly enchanted. As Stephen gives in to the pattern, he reaches out to be reunited with Kate, but clumsily drops his lighter, setting himself alight. The saturation of the golden lights contains the horror of the fire that ensues, but when examined closely, the scene can be recognized as truly tragic, and utterly horrifying.
The game concludes in the observatory from which the pattern was first spotted, which has been locked up until this point. The last sequence of lights displays the pattern presenting itself to Kate, who challenges it. The pattern, now successfully communicating with Kate, reveals its true intention. It denies having done anything wrong, as it believes that it has brought everyone together in death and that each individual can now find their true other half. A Romantic sentiment, but a sentiment that motivated unspeakable actions with horrific consequences.
Incredibly, Kate actually agrees with the pattern, saying that humanity can now “slip away, unafraid.” Unafraid, maybe, but only because there was no choice – only pain, followed by death. Kate announces that she believes the pattern to be her counterpart, as she reaches out for the apocalyptic force she invited, and subsequently protected. The blood of humanity on her hands, Kate slips away, unafraid. Humanity expunged, all that is left is the remains of civilization. Tranquil as the deserted Yaughton may seem, it is haunted by an otherworldly presence.
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture confronts the apocalypse with a warm, somber tone, but the eventual and inevitable heartbreak prevails, as the player is left facing a distillation of perhaps the most horrific fate imaginable. Horror never seems horrific when you witness it in awe.