Tear Jerker / Gone Home

• Due to the nature of the game's story, it is likely to strike a few nerves within anyone who comes from a dysfunctional family or has ever had a child or sibling run away from home.
  • Also, with anyone who has ever had a close friend drift away from them.
• Sam's reaction to her parents' "talk" about her and Lonnie, and how it didn't feel like they respected her.
• Sam's reaction to Lonnie going away to join the military, especially the final night up in the attic.
  Sam: We agreed our last night together would be our happiest ever, and we'd forget tomorrow was going to come at all. It worked for a while — we had a good time seeing Oscar off, then ran up to the attic to look through our photos, to find one for Lonnie to take with her... and looking at them, I realized they were all in the past, and there wouldn't be any more, and I didn't know what I was going to do, and I cried, and she held me. She said she knew it was hard, but life would move on. I said I didn't want my life to keep moving without her. That's when she cried too. I was so exhausted, I must have fallen asleep like that, in her arms. In the morning, I woke up, and I was finally alone.
• Sam's father and his publishing career, and how it shows that he's been drinking to deal with it. It gets worse when we discover that much of his writing centers around November of 1963, when he was abused by his Creepy Uncle.
  • Through other evidence we find scattered around this house, we see signs that he still hasn't gotten over this emotional trauma in his life 32 years later, such as him apparently writing about his childhood in his review for an electronics magazine.
• Imagine what Katie is probably feeling upon learning what happened? After a year abroad and with little correspondence with her parents or sister, she returns home and rather than receive a welcome home party or a heartfelt reunion, she instead finds that while she was away her family practically fell apart, and she is now (for the present moment) all alone in their large, empty house.

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