General hints | Controls The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Guide
Last update: 11 May 2016
1. "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" is an open-world adventure game. The events of the game do not take place in several motionless locations - the game world is vast and it is a good idea to visit each corner - thanks to this you will hear all of the dialogues and experience the beautiful scenery (admiration not required).
2. Solving the in-game puzzles requires you simple association of facts. Whenever you find an object that can be examined, you see keywords. Finally, you may also see a keyword that helps you find an item that is important for the storyline. Then, you need to manipulate the camera in a way that will combine the scatted keywords into one. After you collect all the evidence, you need to use the supernatural abilities of your character, in order to learn the exact course of events of the crime. At this point, you need to find the projections of the events in the past and arrange them in the chronological order. This will initiate a cutscene and you will see what actually happened.
3. It is impossible to die in the game, the developers have not included any arcade elements into the game. There only is one stage, where you deal with an opponent that obstructs the solution of the puzzle, which only makes the time, necessary to progress the storyline, longer.
4. You cannot save the game manually. After each cutscene (a resolved crime, finding of the elements of the story by Ethan) the game saves automatically and you cannot return to the previous events.
5. Not all of the activities need to be performed in a pre-determined order (this mainly goes for the sequences with Ethan's stories). Towards the end of the game, you will see the map, with all the puzzles marked - if something is missing, you need to go to there to complete the puzzle. Only by doing that, can you start the ending of the game.
6. Remember that you can run in the game, which will allow you to move faster, around the world. This is useful, if you need to return a longer distance, to make up for what is missing.