Review - The First Tree
Separated from it’s family, a fox travels the world to find the ones it has lost. The First Tree is a mix of a walking simulator and a 3D platforming game from the developer David Wehle. It focuses very heavily on a narrative of loss and regret in the face of it. The gameplay itself was nothing special but, at once, only faced a few setbacks. While The First Tree was certainly a narratively ambitious title, I felt that it was a mixed bag of good and bad elements.
The gameplay is exactly what one would expect from a walking simulator with a few extra bells and whistles. The player controls a fox that can be moved around and jump. As one explores the landscape they will end up finding interactable objects that further the story. In the rather open environments of The First Tree it might seem that the player could easily get lost searching for these objects, however the developer alleviates this problem by having most interactable objects marked by a pillar of light that can be noticed from a ways away. Because of those pillars, the player rarely find themselves at a loss for where they need to go as there is almost always a new pillar to head towards. This is great because the heavy narrative focus of The First Tree, like most other narrative driven games, works the best when the delivery of said narrative is streamlined.
Despite the developer’s best efforts, there are still areas where it is possible, if not quite easy, to get lost. Particularly, any game element where the objective was not to immediately reach an interactable object faced serious risk of the player losing their way. I got lost on two separate occasions. One was where I found the three interactable items necessary to move forward and then had no idea where to go. Nothing seemed to have changed and there was no indication of direction. It ends up that a wall had opened across the map allowing me to enter the next area, but there was no indication of that and I was left wandering for at least thirty minutes. Regardless, the moments where the player can get lost are rather few and far between.
Besides finding the narrative there are a couple of other gameplay features. The game is divided into separate levels with the player’s job being to travel from the start to the end of level. Usually this requires solving some light puzzle such as learning to use pickups to jump higher or following some ethereal creature through the woods. None of these puzzles were intensive and that wasn’t a problem. As I stated before, the narrative focus of the game thrives on constant movement. To get bogged down in any puzzle would have hurt The First Tree because there just wasn’t enough gameplay-wise to engage a player in the puzzles. The other feature is the collectibles that are strewn throughout the map. Through a series of jumping puzzles, the player can pick up the small specks of light which ultimately give them a boon near to the end of the game. While most of the pickups are easy to get, the ones that weren’t were a nice challenge element to the game. By having these items be completely optional, they didn’t slow down gameplay as the player can take them or leave them.
The real focus of The First Tree lies in its narrative. A set of voiceovers that play whenever an item is found on the environment has a man telling the story of him and his father’s relationship. This relationship is a strained one that was brought to a head by the pivotal event of the game which I won’t reveal due to it’s spoilery nature. Regardless, the story focuses on dealing with loss in the face of regret and the value of relationships in that process.
While the story itself is okay, the way that it is delivered is an issue for me. By having the narrative occur exclusively in voiceovers, the gameplay and the story end up being disjointed. What is occurring onscreen and what is being told to the player rarely have any link beyond a few objects that seem to be haphazardly placed in the environment. There are a few moments where there is a thematic link, such as when the fox travels through a featureless lake and is only kept from becoming lost by a deer. This parallels the point in the voiceovers where the narrator is the most confused and is only kept on the right path via a key relationship. Yet these moments seem few and far between. A stronger link between the story (and thereby actions) of the fox and the current narrative would have made the game a more holistic experience instead of two disjointed elements of gameplay.
That also brings up the fact that very little of the gameplay played into the narrative of the experience. Going through jumping puzzles, picking up collectible stars, and sniffing around for objects were the key actions of the experience and they do not have any particular link to either the theme or the story in question. The overall goal of the fox looking for it’s children did have that link, but that quest was most often a pretext as opposed to a major element of the game’s events. Honestly, if the developers had better tailored the story of the foxes loss to fit the voiceover narratives, with heavy emphasis on linking gameplay elements to the voiceover themes, the experience would have been more cohesive as a whole.
Overall, The First Tree boils down to a good narrative and standard gameplay that existed as two mostly separate elements. If you’re just looking for a story to listen to, this is definitely a decent title to check out. The gameplay is light enough that there shouldn’t be any trouble experiencing the story. On the other hand, if you want a holistic melding of gameplay and narrative into a single experience, this game will only occasionally scratch that itch. If there had been as much attention to thematic detail throughout the entire game as there was in the empty lake scene, the game would be an instant recommendation from me. As it is, The First Tree is a decent narrative experience that is worth picking up if you’re interested.
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