So: is it worth ten dollars?
The short answer to that - in my opinion - is no. The long answer is, it depends. What Dear Esther undoubtedly is is a combination of beautiful music and beautiful visuals with a bit of interesting dialogue here and there. What it isn't is a deep experience. And since a lot of people are bound to immediately disagree with me there, let me quickly explain.
If you looked at Dear Esther purely for what it is in the most blatant terms, it is a short, linear, first person walk through a few well-crafted sets. Viewing it a few levels higher, it is also an interactive experience asking us to ponder its melancholic atmosphere, obscure biblical quotes, and fragmented narrative. It wants to evoke emotion out of us, whether it's sadness, loneliness, contentment, wonder…you're supposed to decide for yourself.
So let's walk through that description again. Is it successful as a short, linear, first-person walk? Well, it forces you to walk at a slow, unvarying pace, which isn't a problem if you're busy soaking in the gorgeous visuals. It does become a problem, however, when you've seen the visuals the area has to offer and are trying to find your way to the next loading screen. For me, the drudging pace became a definite annoyance when I realized, five minutes across the map, that I'd just walked in a big circle. You'd think a game like this, with little else to do than walk and look at things, would encourage exploration; I found that the exact opposite was true. Quickly learning from my past mistake, I'd scan the area, make out my destination, and beeline straight for it - forgoing any trails off the path - and glancing appreciatively at the scenery on the way. Because the scenery is definitely breathtaking, from a smoky sunset to a glowing underground cave to a starry sky over the ocean.
Aside from walking, looking around, and listening to music, you also hear snippets of dialogue narrated by a pleasantly dry-voiced British man, who reads his deliberately vague lines with ease and finesse. The question is, is it vague for vagueness' sake? What does the narrative gain, by delivering itself in a convoluted, ambiguous way? I remember at one point, exploring some neat candlelit caverns, the narrator was talking about his kidney stones and how they paralleled with the stones in the mountainside. It didn't cause me to empathize with the narrator, or to evaluate how perhaps my own hypothetical kidney stones could be reflected by the scenery; it made me think "oh, I get it. Kidney…stones." In fact, it almost had a comical effect on me, which I don't think is what the story wanted to convey. I never appreciated any clever metaphors or turns of phrases because I did not invest emotionally in anything. With the narrator speaking largely in metaphors and abstractions, I didn't feel any immediacy in what he was saying because I didn't know what he really meant about it. "When I first looked into the shaft, I swear I felt the stones in my stomach shift in recognition." - there is no emotional picture to draw from a line like this, no interesting artistic parallels. If you reach far enough I suppose you can find one, but this particular combination of words doesn't blow me away with its imagery. The narrator brings up repeating motifs like cars, seagulls, and shepherds, and you do see some cars, some seagulls, and some ramshackle huts scattered around the island. But simply providing a parallel doesn't mean that there is depth here. Depth is when I discover something for myself, and this narrative leaves everything ambiguous enough that discovery isn't really an option.
My final impressions are, ultimately, that this game took some great visuals, some great music, some great voice acting, and a bare-minimum interactive mechanic, put it together, and called it art; and really, it's the graphics and the music that carry this whole experience. At the end of the day, I was not emotionally moved by it, and had a sorer finger for it. You could watch a "let's play" on YouTube for this game, and arguably obtain the exact same experience.
I don't want those who do enjoy the game, however, to think I'm deriding them for doing so. It is, if nothing else, a beautiful little hike through a well-made CG world, and it invites people to make of it as they will. But for those more hesitant about this title, I'll give you a DIY recipe for this game: take Skyrim's toolset and make a set of maps, play some of Chopin's nocturnes and a recording of an E.E. Cummings poem in the background, and slowly walk through it. You'll experience a culmination of art from the masters, and be ten dollars the wiser.