Really well written and timely visual novel about the impact of AI. Excellent voice acting. My only real negative is that some of the art is a bit bland and ironically feels like it was generated by AI.
The story has two intertwining threads: one about AI and ethics, and another about self realization. The former is about as lofty and familiar as the other three thousand works of art you have seen, but made slightly more relevant with recent develop in the field. The latter is undoubtedly originated from genuine personal experience as someone worked in tech in Seattle. I find the latter more intriguing. In a sense, Nora ending is probably the canon one, since that's the path the creator of this game chose: to be a musician and writer.
Evelyn has a lovely voice that is perfect for therapy. I especially love the way some lines are performed with a subtle chuckle held in. Everyone else also sounds causal, professional, or emotional in all the right way. Massive kudos to the voice actors and director.
Evelyn has a lovely voice that is perfect for therapy. I especially love the way some lines are performed with a subtle chuckle held in. Everyone else also sounds causal, professional, or emotional in all the right way. Massive kudos to the voice actors and director.
love this concept to bits
Wow.
No idea how I missed this but in the age of ChatGPT and LLM's, Eliza asked important and thought provoking questions of the player's own views of the technology, the collection of private intimate data of everyday people and how that can be used to help or hinder humans efforts for a better world rather than a thicker bottom line.
I played it start to finish on Steam Deck, took me 7 hours and would highly recommend.
No idea how I missed this but in the age of ChatGPT and LLM's, Eliza asked important and thought provoking questions of the player's own views of the technology, the collection of private intimate data of everyday people and how that can be used to help or hinder humans efforts for a better world rather than a thicker bottom line.
I played it start to finish on Steam Deck, took me 7 hours and would highly recommend.
been reading about the frankly harrowing things going on with the Replika AI app (as well as the advent of AI as we know it in our everyday lives, particularly with regards to ChatGPT and Character.AI). now thinking about how prescient Eliza was with this sort of thing a good four or so years before issues like this were catapulted into the mainstream, once again fulfilling one of the metrics of truly great cyberpunk
I'll sound bitter and snobby talking about Eliza and its thought-provoking-&-ethics-exploring plot but jeez you guys sound like you never wondered why things are so or even read the news at all.
It doesn't serve any topic that hasn't been argued or highlighted to death in media. Data collection and selling, legally sanctioned invasion of privacy (with long contrived TOS cooked up by lawyers), the itemization of humans and their feelings and properties, reckless AI or consciousness manipulation research, and a few other things. This would've been commendable a decade or so ago, but this is just yesterday's news unless you're completely oblivious.
Art direction was mostly safe in character designs, their writing tries to add depth by casually hinting that a character is asexual/lesbian or a womanizer or an addict, but that doesn't do much to help. Story progression was too slow of a burn for me but that's slightly subjective.
UI design was pretty well done even in a diegetic sense honestly. There's no more praises I can recount.
TL;DR it could be a nice narrative if you have no idea about the dark side of the tech industry, but if you know the shtick there's nothing remarkable.
It doesn't serve any topic that hasn't been argued or highlighted to death in media. Data collection and selling, legally sanctioned invasion of privacy (with long contrived TOS cooked up by lawyers), the itemization of humans and their feelings and properties, reckless AI or consciousness manipulation research, and a few other things. This would've been commendable a decade or so ago, but this is just yesterday's news unless you're completely oblivious.
Art direction was mostly safe in character designs, their writing tries to add depth by casually hinting that a character is asexual/lesbian or a womanizer or an addict, but that doesn't do much to help. Story progression was too slow of a burn for me but that's slightly subjective.
UI design was pretty well done even in a diegetic sense honestly. There's no more praises I can recount.
TL;DR it could be a nice narrative if you have no idea about the dark side of the tech industry, but if you know the shtick there's nothing remarkable.
Such a thought provoking narrative. The voice acting was a mixed bag unfortunately. I spend quite a bit playing the solitaire mini game. Surprisingly addicting.
No se si será por el buen doblaje, el tema de ciencia ficción (que más bien es psicología y filosofía) que trata, o por los personajes tan bien construidos, pero Eliza se ha convertido en uno de mis juegos preferidos de siempre. Lo recomiendo encarecidamente. Quizás que las decisiones importaran más (exceptuando la final) estaría bien, pero no es algo que enturbie el juego en absoluto.
Premier visual novel que je fais. On fait pas grand chose, forcément, mais les quelques choix proposés sont pas mal. Une des cinq fins part dans un truc quasi-transhumaniste, c'est bien vu.
I am a developer by trade. I have struggled on-and-off with depression for a good portion of my life even though I didn't know at the time what it was that I felt. This game spoke to me and touched me in a way that I didn't think was possible. Maybe it's just me and my very specific circumstances but the game accurately represented me and so much of myself so wonderfully that it was surreal.
I dunno if the game helped me in any way but knowing that maybe, just maybe, someone else has possibly gone through a lot of what I have and has maybe been better off at the end of it all gives me some hope.
As a game, being a VN, it is missing a lot of basic QoL features of a VN. I wish it had a log and a way to get back to specific points in dialog or a way to rewind. The chapters are fairly long and the chapter selection isn't good enough
This is quite a biased review so I don't have anything else to add here. Suffice it to say, this was an incredible experience for me and I hope you feel the same way about it
I dunno if the game helped me in any way but knowing that maybe, just maybe, someone else has possibly gone through a lot of what I have and has maybe been better off at the end of it all gives me some hope.
As a game, being a VN, it is missing a lot of basic QoL features of a VN. I wish it had a log and a way to get back to specific points in dialog or a way to rewind. The chapters are fairly long and the chapter selection isn't good enough
This is quite a biased review so I don't have anything else to add here. Suffice it to say, this was an incredible experience for me and I hope you feel the same way about it
Zachtronics' titles have always dealt with ethical and moral issues related to technology, at least in an oblique way: SHENZHEN I/O did so through the weapons project and with the city-state of Avalon, while EXAPUNKS dealt with it more frontally. Eliza has this same optic, but all the more direct, as the game focuses on this aspect, being a visual novel. It is difficult for me to describe the mechanics of this title objectively, as I felt so connected with Evelyn, the protagonist. Her calm and soothing demeanour, her exceptional intelligence, both technically and in the intensity of her empathy; everything about her reflects what I would like to be. Evelyn acts as a proxy for Eliza, a kind of weak artificial intelligence she developed before her breakdown, whose purpose is to analyse patients' speech and give them therapeutic advice. From there, several themes about the ethics of AI, crunch, capitalism and more general questions about the meaning of life unfold. The game is wise enough to present complex and believable viewpoints for the various characters, so as to let Evelyn and the player, vicariously, make up their own minds about these issues. The culmination is a final choice that is never a dilemma, but represents what feels right for Evelyn and ourselves. An exceptional mention must be made of the voice acting, which is properly excellent, with the natural awkwardness of the conversations – especially in the emotionally charged passages. In the end, Eliza exhibits the calm that Evelyn does, in a changing world where it is difficult to find one's way. It's a title that hits the mark in today's world, putting people back at the heart of the issues.
man backloggd has some weird people
great short vn
great short vn
My TL;DR review: Eliza reveals raw humanity and all its multitudinous dimensions with piercing relatability and the best voice acting performances of 2019.
My TL review:
Eliza is a visual novel about an AI that does counseling and the people who've had a hand in creating and developing it. Yes, it's named after the chatbot from the 60s. It's much more advanced though. This game's Eliza can measure its clients' biometrics and process their speech, using this information to respond properly all in real-time and give recommendations at the end of a session.
What makes this therapy service unique and successful is the presence of a "proxy", the human element. A real person sits in front of a client. They wear a pair of AR glasses that shows the script Eliza provides based on its understanding of the situation, which the "proxy" has to recite verbatim to the client.
You play as Evelyn. She is a software engineer who has come back to her former employer after a self-imposed 3-year exile, not to return to her previous role as part of the team that created Eliza, but as a proxy. Throughout the 5-6 hour game, she hosts counseling sessions with a handful of clients. In between the sessions, she meets with and talks with the other people connected to Eliza, each one having particular perspectives on the service.
Every single one of these characters is written and voice-acted superbly. They actually all sound like humans! The voices are so good that they breathe life into the static portraits, and these already look great with their painterly look. From their inflections to their pauses, each voice actor brings so much personality with their performance. And because the characters they play are written like real people, there is never a point where the voice actors sound like they're "acting" when they're delivering highly emotional lines or deep, cutting dialogue.
In fact, the writing and performances are so good that I didn't mind at all how mechanically sparse the game is, even for a visual novel. It's a linear story where most of your choices don't affect where it goes, only nudging Evelyn toward expressing herself in a direction that is still within the confines of her largely defined identity. You only get to decide to alter the course of the story near the end after you've taken in all the smaller stories of each character you meet, which makes the process all the more empowering and impactful, and that, too, feels true to Evelyn's own character.
Everything about Evelyn (my favorite 90s romcom) is done so well, too! Aily Kei's understated depiction of a woman in her mid-30s that's been burned out by working in the tech industry drew me in close. Evelyn is thoughtful in every sense of the word; she's smart, she's observant, she's thoughtful, and gets into her own head a lot. It can be tiring inhabiting a mind like hers, one that's grappling with mental health issues internally and externally. Thankfully, her inner voice speaks plainly and honestly, never once veering into self-absorbed pretentiousness. It doesn't demand attention. Its vulnerable sincerity simply moved me to listen.
Everyone else has a distinct sense of self, each one motivated to act with their own purpose. There are some archetypes, but they're either given quirks to round them out or played with a natural conviction that I bought in. The supporting cast does a good job of representing the major roles you'd expect from a story told within the tech industry; from the calculating, delusional executives to the disaffected, privileged talents to the workers who are well aware of their place in the system but do their jobs to the best of their abilities in the belief that they can do something for society. They're all imbued with a little wrinkle of humanity that made me feel for each one, even if that feeling was just of strong disagreement for a couple characters.
Even the clients that Evelyn only interacts with during the brief counseling sessions reflect the multiple manifestations of modern alienation with authenticity. How they open up about (or talk around) their problems is disarming. It was easy to connect with their concerns and doubts, no matter how unfamiliar in their specificity some of those problems were.
And with the Eliza-proxy interface lies the game's central tension. Whatever the client says or the turns the session takes, a proxy should not deviate from the prepared responses Eliza gives them. Eliza is not a replacement for an actual medical diagnosis or psychiatric treatment, so says the Terms of Service. As much as Evelyn wants to reach out and directly help the clients, she has to stick to the script or the service won't work as intended. Complying draws a line of professionalism that allows the proxy to hear out their clients' issues and infer insights at a safe remove. The game explores this distance to disturbing effect.
I was immediately unsettled by the interface with the first client, but as the game went on, I fell into a rhythm just going along with what Eliza told me to say. There is comfort in following the convenience of the algorithm. Plus, it got me to recognize the simple techniques of psychotherapy, asking questions that reframe a person's view of a troubling situation, so that was neat.
And yet there was always this unease at the idea of taking myself wholly out of the equation, where a person is sitting right across me and sharing their thoughts and feelings that they dare not tell others, not even their loved ones, baring their specific and all-too-real pains, only to be given the same robotic spiel Eliza gives everyone at the end of a session. Everybody working a job that directly deals with other humans has to draw their own lines and stay out of other people's lives just so they can keep living their own without losing their sanity. Everybody's got their own shit to deal with.
Evelyn echoes my conflicted mindset.
Eliza, the game, tackles these big themes where big tech intersects with mental health. It balances philosophical quandaries brought on by technological progress encroaching human lives by touching on the deeply personal and very real, material ways today's society affects how people relate to one another. It does so with an understated boldness, avoiding the pitfalls of preachiness without excusing the negative consequences of the tech sector's blind obsession with innovation.
It's funny actually that the game crashed on me midway through. Trying to run it again loaded a crash report page that told me to restart and update my drivers to fix the problem. I did just that, but the crash report page kept showing up after multiple restarts. I even uninstalled and downloaded the whole game multiple times to no avail. I thought I had to start over, which was super frustrating because I was deep into the third chapter and was really enjoying myself.
So I followed the last resort instruction from that crash report page to email Mr. Zachtronics, Zach Barth, himself. Because of my rather peeved state of mind, the messages detailing my problems had... a bit of attitude. I didn't cuss or say insults because I'm not a total asshole, but I was "playfully" upset.
Thankfully, he responded not long after with a fix that let me continue where I left off with no problem. I apologized for my tone in the previous message and made a point to say how much I liked the game. He didn't mind and told me to have fun.
I think I'll be checking out the studio's other offerings. I'm sure they'll be just as emotionally affecting and thought-provoking as Eliza!
My TL review:
Eliza is a visual novel about an AI that does counseling and the people who've had a hand in creating and developing it. Yes, it's named after the chatbot from the 60s. It's much more advanced though. This game's Eliza can measure its clients' biometrics and process their speech, using this information to respond properly all in real-time and give recommendations at the end of a session.
What makes this therapy service unique and successful is the presence of a "proxy", the human element. A real person sits in front of a client. They wear a pair of AR glasses that shows the script Eliza provides based on its understanding of the situation, which the "proxy" has to recite verbatim to the client.
You play as Evelyn. She is a software engineer who has come back to her former employer after a self-imposed 3-year exile, not to return to her previous role as part of the team that created Eliza, but as a proxy. Throughout the 5-6 hour game, she hosts counseling sessions with a handful of clients. In between the sessions, she meets with and talks with the other people connected to Eliza, each one having particular perspectives on the service.
Every single one of these characters is written and voice-acted superbly. They actually all sound like humans! The voices are so good that they breathe life into the static portraits, and these already look great with their painterly look. From their inflections to their pauses, each voice actor brings so much personality with their performance. And because the characters they play are written like real people, there is never a point where the voice actors sound like they're "acting" when they're delivering highly emotional lines or deep, cutting dialogue.
In fact, the writing and performances are so good that I didn't mind at all how mechanically sparse the game is, even for a visual novel. It's a linear story where most of your choices don't affect where it goes, only nudging Evelyn toward expressing herself in a direction that is still within the confines of her largely defined identity. You only get to decide to alter the course of the story near the end after you've taken in all the smaller stories of each character you meet, which makes the process all the more empowering and impactful, and that, too, feels true to Evelyn's own character.
Everything about Evelyn (my favorite 90s romcom) is done so well, too! Aily Kei's understated depiction of a woman in her mid-30s that's been burned out by working in the tech industry drew me in close. Evelyn is thoughtful in every sense of the word; she's smart, she's observant, she's thoughtful, and gets into her own head a lot. It can be tiring inhabiting a mind like hers, one that's grappling with mental health issues internally and externally. Thankfully, her inner voice speaks plainly and honestly, never once veering into self-absorbed pretentiousness. It doesn't demand attention. Its vulnerable sincerity simply moved me to listen.
Everyone else has a distinct sense of self, each one motivated to act with their own purpose. There are some archetypes, but they're either given quirks to round them out or played with a natural conviction that I bought in. The supporting cast does a good job of representing the major roles you'd expect from a story told within the tech industry; from the calculating, delusional executives to the disaffected, privileged talents to the workers who are well aware of their place in the system but do their jobs to the best of their abilities in the belief that they can do something for society. They're all imbued with a little wrinkle of humanity that made me feel for each one, even if that feeling was just of strong disagreement for a couple characters.
Even the clients that Evelyn only interacts with during the brief counseling sessions reflect the multiple manifestations of modern alienation with authenticity. How they open up about (or talk around) their problems is disarming. It was easy to connect with their concerns and doubts, no matter how unfamiliar in their specificity some of those problems were.
And with the Eliza-proxy interface lies the game's central tension. Whatever the client says or the turns the session takes, a proxy should not deviate from the prepared responses Eliza gives them. Eliza is not a replacement for an actual medical diagnosis or psychiatric treatment, so says the Terms of Service. As much as Evelyn wants to reach out and directly help the clients, she has to stick to the script or the service won't work as intended. Complying draws a line of professionalism that allows the proxy to hear out their clients' issues and infer insights at a safe remove. The game explores this distance to disturbing effect.
I was immediately unsettled by the interface with the first client, but as the game went on, I fell into a rhythm just going along with what Eliza told me to say. There is comfort in following the convenience of the algorithm. Plus, it got me to recognize the simple techniques of psychotherapy, asking questions that reframe a person's view of a troubling situation, so that was neat.
And yet there was always this unease at the idea of taking myself wholly out of the equation, where a person is sitting right across me and sharing their thoughts and feelings that they dare not tell others, not even their loved ones, baring their specific and all-too-real pains, only to be given the same robotic spiel Eliza gives everyone at the end of a session. Everybody working a job that directly deals with other humans has to draw their own lines and stay out of other people's lives just so they can keep living their own without losing their sanity. Everybody's got their own shit to deal with.
Evelyn echoes my conflicted mindset.
Eliza, the game, tackles these big themes where big tech intersects with mental health. It balances philosophical quandaries brought on by technological progress encroaching human lives by touching on the deeply personal and very real, material ways today's society affects how people relate to one another. It does so with an understated boldness, avoiding the pitfalls of preachiness without excusing the negative consequences of the tech sector's blind obsession with innovation.
It's funny actually that the game crashed on me midway through. Trying to run it again loaded a crash report page that told me to restart and update my drivers to fix the problem. I did just that, but the crash report page kept showing up after multiple restarts. I even uninstalled and downloaded the whole game multiple times to no avail. I thought I had to start over, which was super frustrating because I was deep into the third chapter and was really enjoying myself.
So I followed the last resort instruction from that crash report page to email Mr. Zachtronics, Zach Barth, himself. Because of my rather peeved state of mind, the messages detailing my problems had... a bit of attitude. I didn't cuss or say insults because I'm not a total asshole, but I was "playfully" upset.
Thankfully, he responded not long after with a fix that let me continue where I left off with no problem. I apologized for my tone in the previous message and made a point to say how much I liked the game. He didn't mind and told me to have fun.
I think I'll be checking out the studio's other offerings. I'm sure they'll be just as emotionally affecting and thought-provoking as Eliza!
A very interesting story dealing with the topics of AI and mental health. The story is a bit slow at first, but once it picked up, I stayed invested up to the very end. Definitely a very enjoyable game.
I really enjoyed this one. The premise is something I'm already into and studied for quite some time so it appealed to me in particular. And they explore the topic well. There are dialouge options that can change the route of the story. The voice acting is decent overall. It is a little flat in presentation, but in substance it was a meaningful experience. Would absolutely reccomend it for anyone who likes visual novels.
temas abordados de formas interessantes e personagens cativantes 🤧
Eliza is a soon-to-be relevant and very interesting visual novel about artificial intelligence and machine learning that practically reads like what I would imagine a Black Mirror visual novel would be like, just much more realistic and down to earth taking in context of current technological advances. Based on a semi-dystopian Seattle, we are placed in the shoes of one yet unknown Evelyn Ishino-Aubrey as she works as a "proxy" for the Eliza counseling system, basically, she reads out ChatGPT prompts to clients of the service in a desperate attempt from the big corporation Skandha to push forward AI-powered mental health assistance with a liiiittle touch of human interaction in-between. And of course, Eliza sucks.
The counseling system barely does anything outside of listening into the conversation, asking a few redundant questions and then recommending medications and AR/VR experiences suited for the users' needs, and yeah, it's a pretty big testament against the usage of AI in conversational or counseling practices, the language model will have problems here and there and because there isn't any sort of empathy or logical thinking behind it, most sessions are to no avail because of this and there's always the feeling of wanting to say something from one's soul to another, but then Eliza providing the most cookie-cutter questions of all time.
It's a pretty interesting argument to make the center of a visual novel of this kind, with it being fully voiced and super well presented with amazing art for an individually developed one and with an actual message to deliver out there, it saddens me to say that it falls flat when it comes to telling its story, being kinda repetitive and boring and kinda overstaying its welcome. Characters range from being unlikeable to just plain and without much substance at all, including our protagonist which has had a conflicting past and is now suffering living with depression... A lot of it is very subdued and there's no real emotional impact as the novel would expect it to, infuriating knowing that there is real human soul behind it, and some of the struggles presented by the many sessions you do are pretty real.
And it pains me to realize that the novel never really works on getting a true instance on the advent of AI as an unethical, personal information harvesting and fed tool, it insists on being pretty open-ended and up to whoever's playing it and has pretty much no catch in a narrative sense, which would be fine if every ending wasn't literally what it says on the tin when you get to it, with no real resolve or way of knowing how our actions determined the future of Eliza, the world or how does Evelyn get to live with the burdens of her past that they like to tease so much throughout the runtime of the novel.
It's all pretty half-assed and kinda disappointing, I'm glad people can like it and get some perspective on how things are so royally fucked in real life, but for the rest of us that have been on this pond for so long, I think it's fair to complain about the lack of depth when touching these subjects that passed on to be so important in cyber life. Or just life in general.
The counseling system barely does anything outside of listening into the conversation, asking a few redundant questions and then recommending medications and AR/VR experiences suited for the users' needs, and yeah, it's a pretty big testament against the usage of AI in conversational or counseling practices, the language model will have problems here and there and because there isn't any sort of empathy or logical thinking behind it, most sessions are to no avail because of this and there's always the feeling of wanting to say something from one's soul to another, but then Eliza providing the most cookie-cutter questions of all time.
It's a pretty interesting argument to make the center of a visual novel of this kind, with it being fully voiced and super well presented with amazing art for an individually developed one and with an actual message to deliver out there, it saddens me to say that it falls flat when it comes to telling its story, being kinda repetitive and boring and kinda overstaying its welcome. Characters range from being unlikeable to just plain and without much substance at all, including our protagonist which has had a conflicting past and is now suffering living with depression... A lot of it is very subdued and there's no real emotional impact as the novel would expect it to, infuriating knowing that there is real human soul behind it, and some of the struggles presented by the many sessions you do are pretty real.
And it pains me to realize that the novel never really works on getting a true instance on the advent of AI as an unethical, personal information harvesting and fed tool, it insists on being pretty open-ended and up to whoever's playing it and has pretty much no catch in a narrative sense, which would be fine if every ending wasn't literally what it says on the tin when you get to it, with no real resolve or way of knowing how our actions determined the future of Eliza, the world or how does Evelyn get to live with the burdens of her past that they like to tease so much throughout the runtime of the novel.
It's all pretty half-assed and kinda disappointing, I'm glad people can like it and get some perspective on how things are so royally fucked in real life, but for the rest of us that have been on this pond for so long, I think it's fair to complain about the lack of depth when touching these subjects that passed on to be so important in cyber life. Or just life in general.
Eventhough I really like VNs I almost never play western ones since they are too romantic/relationships/datesim oriented. But this game... someone hold my beer... this game is awesome. The topics and depth of treatment of those way too good. A really nice outlier. I also spent so many hours playing the in game solitaire.
Polar opposite of Doom, Eliza is a visual novel about an AI therapist. The subjects covered in this game are a lot to digest so I would rather urge you to play it than try and discuss them in such a small space. P.S. There are real Eliza apps and that's horrifying
Eliza was thought provoking piece of visual literature with wonderful art and interesting characters.
The feeling you get from the main character and how she interacts with the choices made for her makes you think about the choices yourself.
I definitely recommend this game, and the one achievement that it has for the Kabufuda Solitaire was challenging but fun.
The feeling you get from the main character and how she interacts with the choices made for her makes you think about the choices yourself.
I definitely recommend this game, and the one achievement that it has for the Kabufuda Solitaire was challenging but fun.
I think Eliza does a good job exploring the ethics and moral frameworks held up by the various people with power in the tech industry. Although Eliza skirts around topics like the medical industrial complex, AI, ethics and philosophy, it is at its core a story about how uniquely unqualified the tech industry is at approaching human problems and how they do it with the utmost carelessness. In place of ethics or holistic research is ingrained a capitalist hubris to dream big and solve interesting problems without considering how those solutions fit into society and the systems it lives in.
A lot of this feels very personal, written out of the direct experiences one would have after working in the tech industry. Much of what I've been grappling with in the last few years maps pretty directly to the themes and feelings in this story. I found myself empathizing a lot with the societal withdrawal Evelyn experiences and just the way she disassociates, how she handles her personal relationships and the feelings of nothingness that aren't quite good but are comforting in some ways.
The therapy sessions were visceral. There were some that resonated so much with me. I wish their problems weren't dashed to the side so quickly to make room for the tech characters to ruminate on their personal philosophies and impact on society. It really feels antithetical to everything that came before, to criticize tech bro mentalities only for Evelyn to become an Important Figure that must decide the fate of herself and Many People.
Despite this, I think its heart is in the right place. The story of Eliza doesn't say anything too confidently, and doesn't call for radical change. But I think this is because its creators are learning to do one thing that runs opposite to the system they've been a part of for so long - be humble. Be a small change. It's okay for now.
A lot of this feels very personal, written out of the direct experiences one would have after working in the tech industry. Much of what I've been grappling with in the last few years maps pretty directly to the themes and feelings in this story. I found myself empathizing a lot with the societal withdrawal Evelyn experiences and just the way she disassociates, how she handles her personal relationships and the feelings of nothingness that aren't quite good but are comforting in some ways.
The therapy sessions were visceral. There were some that resonated so much with me. I wish their problems weren't dashed to the side so quickly to make room for the tech characters to ruminate on their personal philosophies and impact on society. It really feels antithetical to everything that came before, to criticize tech bro mentalities only for Evelyn to become an Important Figure that must decide the fate of herself and Many People.
Despite this, I think its heart is in the right place. The story of Eliza doesn't say anything too confidently, and doesn't call for radical change. But I think this is because its creators are learning to do one thing that runs opposite to the system they've been a part of for so long - be humble. Be a small change. It's okay for now.
Funnily enough, I think liking this depends on whether or not you like Zachtronics' other games, despite being a visual novel. Firstly, the visual and writing style is clinical, cold and smooth, even with the quirkier characters. And secondly, it still feels like work. Not a surprise, a lot of their previous games have you work for someone which honestly feels terrible, and this is no exception.
The best parts are the ones built on the story's premise - AI counseling, and they're done effectively, but they don't carry their importance out of these sessions, making the rest of the story an unclear blob. One of my main issues is the puzzling reveal of Evelyn to be a very important character (not in the sense of being simply the protagonist, but being very important in the game's world). It's dropped quite nonchalantly, doesn't have any emotional impact at all and the initial relatability you felt is completely gone. How much can I empathize with Evelyn, one of the very few people in the world with that level of demand and basically freedom to do anything? It's like the game entered a cheat code for itself.
Only the very last part, the one where someone with an obvious love for synths got to write about them, feels like genuine engagement, and I would've loved to see more of that.
The best parts are the ones built on the story's premise - AI counseling, and they're done effectively, but they don't carry their importance out of these sessions, making the rest of the story an unclear blob. One of my main issues is the puzzling reveal of Evelyn to be a very important character (not in the sense of being simply the protagonist, but being very important in the game's world). It's dropped quite nonchalantly, doesn't have any emotional impact at all and the initial relatability you felt is completely gone. How much can I empathize with Evelyn, one of the very few people in the world with that level of demand and basically freedom to do anything? It's like the game entered a cheat code for itself.
Only the very last part, the one where someone with an obvious love for synths got to write about them, feels like genuine engagement, and I would've loved to see more of that.
Eliza is a fantasy game - but instead of magic and dragons, its incredibly introspective hot people, for whom money is such an abstract concept they can take jobs recreationally to explore their personal philosophical frameworks.
Eliza es un juego que me ha mirado a los ojos, me ha agarrado el corazón y me ha tirado a la cara las preguntas existenciales perfectas para destrozarme por dentro.
Estoy... en un momento difícil mientras escribo esto. No "difícil" en el sentido de que lo esté pasando mal, sino en uno más... crítico. Estoy acabando mi carrera, tengo que elegir qué hacer con mi futuro y siempre estoy dudando de cada paso que doy. Y si acabo donde me sienta miserable, y si no me gusta, y si simplemente no me llega para vivir una vida normal... Quizás por eso me ha golpeado tan duramente la historia de Evelyn.
Eliza no puede darme las respuestas que busco. En ningún momento plantea una tesis donde diga exactamente lo que hay que hacer o qué debería hacer Evelyn. Pero sí que me ha servido como... como una compañera, escuchando y reflejando mis problemas.
Jugad Eliza.
Estoy... en un momento difícil mientras escribo esto. No "difícil" en el sentido de que lo esté pasando mal, sino en uno más... crítico. Estoy acabando mi carrera, tengo que elegir qué hacer con mi futuro y siempre estoy dudando de cada paso que doy. Y si acabo donde me sienta miserable, y si no me gusta, y si simplemente no me llega para vivir una vida normal... Quizás por eso me ha golpeado tan duramente la historia de Evelyn.
Eliza no puede darme las respuestas que busco. En ningún momento plantea una tesis donde diga exactamente lo que hay que hacer o qué debería hacer Evelyn. Pero sí que me ha servido como... como una compañera, escuchando y reflejando mis problemas.
Jugad Eliza.
Thoughtful introspection into psychotherapy and tech work - recommended for anyone that's spent time in this industry and struggles with the many ethical problems around tech culture and tech work. It strongly resonated with me personally because it spoke to many of my exact circumstances, but it's unlikely to have such an impact for everyone.
The writing and voice acting are good, but the story itself is not strong - exemplified by the rather sudden and pointless endings it has to offer. It asks a lot of questions but offers no advice or answers. It's surprisingly linear for a visual novel, where I would usually expect a little more variation given the number of dialogue choices to make throughout every conversation.
The writing and voice acting are good, but the story itself is not strong - exemplified by the rather sudden and pointless endings it has to offer. It asks a lot of questions but offers no advice or answers. It's surprisingly linear for a visual novel, where I would usually expect a little more variation given the number of dialogue choices to make throughout every conversation.
This review contains spoilers
SEVEN ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️STARS
SEVERAL STIRS 🥣
Can mental health services be automated using artificial intelligence in an ethical way? Is technology able to improve the quality of healthcare supplied by corporations? How does the mental health of the people that create new technologies affect us as end users?
ELIZA’s a very polished visual novel. The care shown to so many small details across the scope of this small game is glorious. Being the last game made by Zachtronics, a small developer game known for titles that feature engineering-flavored game mechanics, it’s no surprise that ELIZA is a well-oiled novella. If you click to advance the dialog before the voice actor finishes speaking, it doesn’t abruptly skip over the last words, like some VNs do.
Even though the paintings of the characters aren’t animated at all, they come to life through great writing and realistic performances. While a character pauses to find the write words to say between sentences may say “umm” without that word being included in the onscreen text. There’s a conversational believability to how lines are spoken that brings the voice actors’ performances closer to feeling like a movie.
Many people have criticized ELIZA’s length. I can see how it could fly by for some. For me, the game was like a good book; I often stopped progressing the dialog to ponder the moral quandaries presented. That gave the game a contemplative richness. Who criticizes great games for being too short? Are the joys of poetry lost on them as well?
MINOR SPOILERS BELOW 🚨
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(however, if you’ve read a bit about what’s it’s like working for tech companies—which the protagonist does—or game companies, this will come as no surprise)
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I do like how the game deals with Burnout. I think it in the Kotaku review that I saw the protagonist described as “depressed,” and the reviewer felt that the this game has little new to say about depression. I see this game as not specifically intending to speak about depression, rather, it contains depictions of depressive symptoms within modern professional culture: It’s talking about burnout.
Also, it was cool that a character was into making music using modular synthesizers. I am too!
SEVERAL STIRS 🥣
Can mental health services be automated using artificial intelligence in an ethical way? Is technology able to improve the quality of healthcare supplied by corporations? How does the mental health of the people that create new technologies affect us as end users?
ELIZA’s a very polished visual novel. The care shown to so many small details across the scope of this small game is glorious. Being the last game made by Zachtronics, a small developer game known for titles that feature engineering-flavored game mechanics, it’s no surprise that ELIZA is a well-oiled novella. If you click to advance the dialog before the voice actor finishes speaking, it doesn’t abruptly skip over the last words, like some VNs do.
Even though the paintings of the characters aren’t animated at all, they come to life through great writing and realistic performances. While a character pauses to find the write words to say between sentences may say “umm” without that word being included in the onscreen text. There’s a conversational believability to how lines are spoken that brings the voice actors’ performances closer to feeling like a movie.
Many people have criticized ELIZA’s length. I can see how it could fly by for some. For me, the game was like a good book; I often stopped progressing the dialog to ponder the moral quandaries presented. That gave the game a contemplative richness. Who criticizes great games for being too short? Are the joys of poetry lost on them as well?
MINOR SPOILERS BELOW 🚨
.
.
.
.
.
(however, if you’ve read a bit about what’s it’s like working for tech companies—which the protagonist does—or game companies, this will come as no surprise)
.
.
.
.
.
.
I do like how the game deals with Burnout. I think it in the Kotaku review that I saw the protagonist described as “depressed,” and the reviewer felt that the this game has little new to say about depression. I see this game as not specifically intending to speak about depression, rather, it contains depictions of depressive symptoms within modern professional culture: It’s talking about burnout.
Also, it was cool that a character was into making music using modular synthesizers. I am too!
Impressively subtle storytelling pulling in philosophical, existential and metaphysical debates into its centre, whilst nevertheless maintaining its sensitive human perspective. Some of the more nuanced performances I've heard in a visual novel, Evelyn in particular standing out as a fantastic lead. She's reserved and introverted yet intelligent and curious. It's stupidly specific but her character drew strong parallels to Sonoya Mizuno's groundbreaking performance in Devs, tech workers quietly rebelling against the equally silent hierarchies scaffolding their lives. The ending choice was glaringly obvious to me at least, but perhaps that's not universally true. Also loved that solitaire game, cheers Zachtronics.
Great visual novel, loved the story. Sadly, ended quite quickly
The gig-run mental health society we'll end up as if we're not careful.