Unravel showed me something I don’t remember ever seeing before in a video game

Unravel was one of the gorgeous, enchanting highlights of the Electronic Entertainment Expo media briefings last week, but it did something else I wasn’t expecting: it showed me something I don’t remember ever seeing before in a game.

Unravel is about a small creature made out of yarn going out into the world. The impetus behind Yarny’s (as he is known) actions is that he represents the last connections between a family and their matriarch. Yarny is a ball of yarn come to life that belongs to an old woman … and I want to pause the description here. When the grandmother came on the screen, I realized that she is something I’ve never really seen in a game before. I can’t remember playing anything on my NES, PlayStation, or PC that prominently featured an elderly female character that wasn’t some kind of witch or sorceress. I’m sure it’s happened, but it’s so rare that I could not think of an example. And it immediately illustrated that Unravel is different, but it also exemplified how many stories gaming has left unexplored.