We know next to nothing about The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. It’s the first game to come out from The Astronauts, an indie studio formed by some of the key movers and shakers at People Can Fly, developer of Bulletstorm.
Besides that, we know it’s a horror.
Today the studio released a prologue comic that sets up a world that will tease at your attention long after you’ve finished reading.
You can read the comic here. I’ve given a summary below the teaser video.
The comic shows how the game’s protagonist, an old investigator with some form of special power, gets drawn into a case sent to him by a Ethan Carter, a young boy who discovers a symbol of evil in his Grandfather’s diary. Carter must disappear between this letter and the investigator’s arrival. I presume your task will be investigating what caused his disappearance but I’ve no idea how you’ll be going about the task.
Considering this is from the minds that brought Bulletstorm it would be easy to suspect the will have an action bent. From blogs on the developer’s site it sounds like this won’t be the case. Instead they’ve been taking inspiration from games like Dear Esther to see how to approach storytelling and game action.
Colour me intrigued.