Dear Esther Soundtrack

Dear Esther Soundtrack, Jessica Curry, 2012

It seems fair to say that it is usually indie games that push at the boundaries of the medium and leave audiences asking, “But is it a game?” – with “Is it art?” never far behind. One such work was Dear Esther, originally a research project at the University of Plymouth. Players find themselves on a barren Hebridean island and are left simply to explore. Meanwhile, a male voice-over reads fragments of letters addressed to a woman named Esther. With no threat of death and no tasks to complete, Dear Esther instead aims to sustain intrigue by letting players piece together – or simply interpret – a fragmented narrative hinting at some prior tragedy. Encouragingly, this experiment in digital storytelling was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful.

Dear Esther also launched the games career of composer Jessica Curry. Before it, her body of work included art installations, film scores, and cross-media projects. As a co-founder of Dear Esther developer The Chinese Room, Curry had been closely involved in the game’s creation from the outset. Her stated aim for the music was “to add an emotional dimension” to the experience. That was a crucial task, given that Dear Esther’s challenge-free design does not reward the player with any sense of obstacles overcome, but instead has to satisfy through the sheer force of the experience it creates.

And that is precisely what the Dear Esther soundtrack achieves, if by somewhat unexpected means. Curry is content to let the score unfold at an often glacial pace, working with only a handful of resources – string quartet, two pianos, female voice, and sound effects – to create a kind of minimalist, at times near-ambient classical music that leaves its mark through haunting, frequently dissonant textures. Listen to the nine-minute “Always (Hebridean Mix)” to hear the striking effects of this approach. The piece consists almost entirely of otherworldly, elusive string chords. Yet these lingering sonorities create a spellbinding sonic landscape that, provided one listens closely, transports the audience into Dear Esther’s dreamlike world with remarkable ease. Soprano lines add a sense of spirituality, though certainly not redemption.

This ambivalence – this refusal to provide emotional resolution – becomes the score’s defining and most fascinating characteristic. The piano lines in “Twenty One” and “The Bones of Jakobson” clash subtly, both harmonically and rhythmically. They never do so violently enough to push the listener away, but they do so insistently enough to make one listen more closely and wonder where the music is heading. And just when one begins to settle into the relative comfort of “Moon in my Palm”’s unexpectedly melodic contours, the intertwining violin lines turn chromatic and begin to threaten the cue’s tonal and emotional security. The resulting subtlety of expression points to an artist with impressive command of both instrumental colour and emotional effect.

Remarkably, the soundtrack’s heady nature never diminishes its emotional force. True, Curry’s compositional language may strike many listeners as angular. But those willing to sink into Dear Esther’s music will discover a haunted world unto itself, filled with palpable sorrow and regret. Dear Esther may be one of game music’s sparsest and most austere scores. But it is precisely that restraint which gives the bittersweet feeling at the heart of each composition its power. Even at its starkest, the music deepens the game’s anguished mood.

This balance between emotionality and austerity, between warmth and abstraction, gives the Dear Esther soundtrack a kind of emotional intelligence rare in game music. There is a refreshing absence here of clearly signposted intended effects. Instead, the score generates layers of emotional meaning that the listener must work through for themselves.

And this same ambivalence also carries Dear Esther to its satisfying, if hardly conclusive, ending. In the closing track “Ascension”, the score moves into yearning major-key territory for the first time. But then the eerie, pleading “remember me” chants of “Remember Me (Jakobson)” return, and the listener realises that the ghosts haunting both the score and its protagonist cannot simply be shaken off. This is no ascension towards the light, but a strange and frightening destination instead. And when the piece ends with a voice insisting “come back” and a single piano note flattening into an ominous, life-monitor-like tone, Dear Esther’s music leaves us with the same rewarding challenge as the game itself: to work out what it all meant, and what to make of the torrent of emotions the experience has unleashed.

Comparing the Dear Esther soundtrack with Curry’s later Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is especially revealing. Both scores explore otherworldly realms and ponder what might await beyond life. Their music is static, existing in a space where time no longer seems to matter. Emotional states are suspended, so that the protagonists may await judgement and reckoning. But Rapture is a walk through sunlit meadows and cathedrals, confronting the past with clarity and finality. Dear Esther, by contrast, is a far murkier affair: a trek across rocky, perilous ground in thick fog. No promise of forgiveness lights the way, and every step leads deeper into the unknown. It is a challenging, daring, and immensely satisfying prospect – one that very few game scores are bold enough to suggest.