I long for the day when a game like Virginia with its jump cuts and female POC protagonists and heavy symbolism isn't immediately a standout because of its choice of storytelling. We need more games like this that push boundaries and expand audiences' minds as to what games can be and what they can be about. Whether it's a problem of mere existence or exposure, it needs to be addressed.

One big reason why that should happen is because stopping with Virginia means settling for overladen imagery, music that's too grand for its own good, and a strict adherence to a narrative device that turns simple human interactions into stiff, robotic approximations. Let ambition in creative aspirations run free, for sure, but there is a virtue to strive for in reining in the execution. The "indie" label for story-driven games is usually and unfairly associated with pretension, but I wouldn't disagree with anyone that slaps it on Virginia with some of its heavy-handed metaphors.

Though I would disagree with anyone that says it would be better as a short film, even if it were to retain its first-person perspective in that transition. Video games uniquely let you inhabit the role of a character in a predefined world with a predefined journey. I wouldn't have had those small but powerful mental breaks when I had to put on lipstick, rebuff the advances of a drunk dude by showing a ring on my finger, and receive an ocular pat down inside an elevator crowded with men if Virginia were a movie or a TV show where there's a more immediate understanding that you're merely watching. Stuffy it might seem at times, Virginia can punch through when it wants to.