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.
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.