The aspect I most enjoy from Kotaro Uchikoshi's games like 999, VLR etc is that they are branching narrative VNs where starting to understand the very structure of the branching aspect of the story deepens your understanding of the mystery and enjoyment of the story as opposed to ruining it.
I remember Jon Ingold of Heaven's Vault fame saying in an interview that he did not make/write his games "for people who like those [story flowcharts]!" in reference to David Cage style diagrams which show exactly how to obtain the desired results and navigate the game exactly. On the one hand I get it, being transparent in your systems can risk ruining the mystique, letting the player see the man behind the curtain and even calls into question the dynamic between designer and player if you yourself are purposefully guiding the pace of the game so surgically. Heaven's Vault is entirely opaque in its branching and works beautifully in this respect and feels self contained when you end a playthrough.
On the other hand games like VLR invite the player, for good and for ill to jump between branches, getting new information from each run both as the player and diegetically as the "SHIFTER" who can jump between timelines. And I think this is just as valid an approach for an adventure game, though admittedly it does cause VLR to bite off more than it can chew narratively and ultimately most of its flaws.
The point is, peeling back the layers of how a game narrative works can sometimes ruin it, or it can deepen your enjoyment and insight into it as a piece of fiction. Answer these 10 questions is sort of in the middle. I think doing the quiz more than once and finding out they all work out to be essentially the same is trying to make a point that this relationship was obviously doomed from the beginning cause these two (though mainly the woman who administers the quiz) are very toxic and wrong for each other, as if you needed any more indication of this.
The reason Ive spent like 2/3rds of the review talking about uchikoshi and branching narratives is that I basically got nothing else out of this experience. Admittedly Ive never actually been in a serious relationship so maybe that's why but all I really got is that you should definitely leave relationships with people that actively make you miserable? Which I think I already knew Idk.
I remember Jon Ingold of Heaven's Vault fame saying in an interview that he did not make/write his games "for people who like those [story flowcharts]!" in reference to David Cage style diagrams which show exactly how to obtain the desired results and navigate the game exactly. On the one hand I get it, being transparent in your systems can risk ruining the mystique, letting the player see the man behind the curtain and even calls into question the dynamic between designer and player if you yourself are purposefully guiding the pace of the game so surgically. Heaven's Vault is entirely opaque in its branching and works beautifully in this respect and feels self contained when you end a playthrough.
On the other hand games like VLR invite the player, for good and for ill to jump between branches, getting new information from each run both as the player and diegetically as the "SHIFTER" who can jump between timelines. And I think this is just as valid an approach for an adventure game, though admittedly it does cause VLR to bite off more than it can chew narratively and ultimately most of its flaws.
The point is, peeling back the layers of how a game narrative works can sometimes ruin it, or it can deepen your enjoyment and insight into it as a piece of fiction. Answer these 10 questions is sort of in the middle. I think doing the quiz more than once and finding out they all work out to be essentially the same is trying to make a point that this relationship was obviously doomed from the beginning cause these two (though mainly the woman who administers the quiz) are very toxic and wrong for each other, as if you needed any more indication of this.
The reason Ive spent like 2/3rds of the review talking about uchikoshi and branching narratives is that I basically got nothing else out of this experience. Admittedly Ive never actually been in a serious relationship so maybe that's why but all I really got is that you should definitely leave relationships with people that actively make you miserable? Which I think I already knew Idk.
1 Comment
''BREAKING NEWS: Game says toxic relationships are bad.''
Honestly I was tempted to try this for myself out of morbid curiosity, 'cause every review I've seen from the people I follow are negative; but I ened up passing beacuse I really don't wanna lose my time to something that doesn't deserve it, especially when I could be playing something better, like 999, as you mentioned. Really good review!
Honestly I was tempted to try this for myself out of morbid curiosity, 'cause every review I've seen from the people I follow are negative; but I ened up passing beacuse I really don't wanna lose my time to something that doesn't deserve it, especially when I could be playing something better, like 999, as you mentioned. Really good review!
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JackDBS
1 year ago