Visual Novels - Old or new, let's talk about them

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Pink Fluffy Cat

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I think there's more VNs with actual plot than ever. Also, galge isn't descriptive beyond "game that focuses on interacting with pretty girls", so visual novel is a more proper term when discussing works with plot no?
I don't want to sound like a shitter and I don't think VN will ever die out but honestly VN has no future in the age of face-paced consumption. It has the highest barrier of entry among all "otaku" mediums which people of the newer generations can't get into unfortunately.

So you're telling me you don't want to have sex with a catgirl? That's surprising coming from you.
I know the reputation of catgirls so I don't blame you for that, there are a few worldbuilders like myself who would try to give them formal lore but most of people just introduce catgirls for coom.
I honestly can't tell any "good" neko media, at best they would bother giving actual background to neko beyond fetish like in Touhou Project or Mao from Shining Tears but I don't think I can recommand any, bruh.
 

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I don't want to sound like a shitter and I don't think VN will ever die out but honestly VN has no future in the age of face-paced consumption. It has the highest barrier of entry among all "otaku" mediums which people of the newer generations can't get into unfortunately.
Doesn't that mean exactly the contrary, that it creates a valuable niche for people who enjoy slower and more complex media? Besides, what are you basing that statement on? There's more VNs than ever and western developers have started to chime in too. Just looking at r/visualnovels you can see how filled to the brim it is with people shilling their projects. Vndb is super active and there's a bunch of translation projects out there too. Hell, there's even a growing amount of interest for niche things like pc-98 games.

I know the reputation of catgirls so I don't blame you for that, there are a few worldbuilders like myself who would try to give them formal lore but most of people just introduce catgirls for coom.
I honestly can't tell any "good" neko media, at best they would bother giving actual background to neko beyond fetish like in Touhou Project or Mao from Shining Tears but I don't think I can recommand any, bruh.
Can you share your worldbuilding project? What's the lore?
 
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Pink Fluffy Cat

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Can you share your worldbuilding project? What's the lore?
Nothing really much special honestly as my world is a non-magical mundane world with mid-early 20th century technology plus a bit of diesel punk (like fallout but without mecha and the apocalypse).
As for the lore of the neko species, they are a carnivorous species live in mountain range that have their culture assimilated by human. I based their society and history on Chechen, Taliban and modern Egypt
 

SomaSpice

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Nothing really much special honestly as my world is a non-magical mundane world with mid-early 20th century technology plus a bit of diesel punk (like fallout but without mecha and the apocalypse).
As for the lore of the neko species, they are a carnivorous species live in mountain range that have their culture assimilated by human. I based their society and history on Chechen, Taliban and modern Egypt
Cool. Where can I read more?
 
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SomaSpice

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I haven't written my stuffs down yet, I will in the future when I have more free time.
Sure thing. You draw, right? Maybe you could show us your worldbuilding in a thread or community post.
 
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Sidewinder91

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I don't want to sound like a shitter and I don't think VN will ever die out but honestly VN has no future in the age of face-paced consumption. It has the highest barrier of entry among all "otaku" mediums which people of the newer generations can't get into unfortunately.
Yeah, but they're dirt cheap to make and don't require too much technical knowledge.

The pipeline for making a 3D character would be something like:
Concept Art > Sculpt > Retopology > UV Mapping > Baking > Texture Painting > Rigging > Animation

With a VN, all you need to do is pass along a reference sheet to an artist.
 
ps2 AIR.jpg


@L. Rhodes Look what I got other day for less than $5. Only got through the first day, but it's been really comfy so far. I watched the anime way back, but this is my first time giving the VN a real try
 
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someone chuckle fuck spoiled 3 for me though so i never finished it, i loved one and two though.
Honestly I don't think I've gone into a visual novel without being spoiled on it at some point, mostly because I've only played the more popular ones up until now, and I take so long to finish them, too. I'm leaning more towards some untranslated eroge I've found, so that's unlikely to be the case going forwards. I have my qualms the eroge, of course, and I do have some things that I would like to say regarding what @Pink Fluffy Cat and @SomaSpice said, but I'm not in the mood to write a blogpost about it.

Anyways, the one I'm on right now is titles "Alia's Carnival". I was expecting it to just be some sort of SOL with h-scenes, but it's got a plot and fight scenes and stuff. It's kinda really bad, almost in a so-bad-it's-good way, but also just fun because it's so over-the-top and I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen. Just reading it slowly in Japanese makes it a lot more enjoyable too. For example, the story starts out mundanely on a train, with no music playing. Of course, with autoscroll on, this only takes about five minutes. It took me two weeks to read through though, so holy shit getting off of the train and hearing the soundtrack finally kick in felt like such an accomplishment. Also, within 30 minutes, it has stuff like the protagonist jumping out of a second-story window and having "I have an IQ of 500"-esque chuuni monologues, so I love him already.
It also has card fights


If there's one thing I really don't like about it though (aside from the h-scene music, which is really out of place, just when compared to other h-scene music), it's the artstyle. I'm usually very tolerant towards anime/moe designs, and I adore both Ryukishi and Itaru's kusokino artstyles. But for some reason, the colour balance and character designs in this VN rub me the wrong way. It's especially prominent on the male characters, who look particularly uncanny.

As a side note, I've begun to realize from this that I'm almost always more interested in the generic self-insert MC guy than I am any of the girls when it comes to bishoujoge for some reason
 
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@L. Rhodes Look what I got other day for less than $5. Only got through the first day, but it's been really comfy so far. I watched the anime way back, but this is my first time giving the VN a real try
I'm winning...

When you get the time, I suggest you read through this interview from a games magazine back around the time the VN released. It cleared up a lot of things for me, and made me appreciate the VN a lot more than I did when I first beat it.


There's supposedly a few other Key interviews from around that time as well, but this is the only one which I could find a working archive of online
 

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and I do have some things that I would like to say regarding what @Pink Fluffy Cat and @SomaSpice said, but I'm not in the mood to write a blogpost about it.
How about a two sentence statement or a haiku?

For example:

Garuge is not
Equivalent to VN (vee-en)
Games you neko fag

Its easy and fun!
 
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How about a two sentence statement or a haiku?
Oh, but trying to condense my ever-verbose thinking process into a small amount of words is even harder...

Regarding specifically the assertion "Which is also why the most dominant titles are outright porn now, it's just that the market has turned back to what it initially about : erofics for cumbrains," though, I think it all comes down to mindset, of which this is a very narrow mindset to have. I'm assuming that among the amount of eroge, or "erofics for cumbrains" out there, a larger portion of them are either WEG or non-VN eroge, and still among the titles that have all the elements --Japanese, visual ADV, h-content-- I think it's limiting to call even those just "erofics", or to say that they are "for cumbrains". Though, just by going through the random visual novel section on VNDB, I do think that this is perhaps something that has gotten worse, just comparing the random PC-98 games I got to more recent titles.

Then again I dunno. I'm not the person to ask. There are some people who are naturally predisposed to hate anything remotely resembling a VN. There are some people who will just consume absolutely anything without thinking, and then post about it online. There are some people who can go into something completely mid, recognize it as such with an entirely critical mindset, and enjoy it far more than I've enjoyed anything in my life. I'm not the person to analyze things enough to be able to speak about them confidently. I'm rather both of the first two, though recognizing it as such, I realize that everyone should ideally strive to pursue the latter.
 
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Anyways, the one I'm on right now is titles "Alia's Carnival". I was expecting it to just be some sort of SOL with h-scenes, but it's got a plot and fight scenes and stuff. It's kinda really bad, almost in a so-bad-it's-good way, but also just fun because it's so over-the-top and I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen. Just reading it slowly in Japanese makes it a lot more enjoyable too. For example, the story starts out mundanely on a train, with no music playing. Of course, with autoscroll on, this only takes about five minutes. It took me two weeks to read through though, so holy shit getting off of the train and hearing the soundtrack finally kick in felt like such an accomplishment. Also, within 30 minutes, it has stuff like the protagonist jumping out of a second-story window and having "I have an IQ of 500"-esque chuuni monologues, so I love him already.
It also has card fights


If there's one thing I really don't like about it though (aside from the h-scene music, which is really out of place, just when compared to other h-scene music), it's the artstyle. I'm usually very tolerant towards anime/moe designs, and I adore both Ryukishi and Itaru's kusokino artstyles. But for some reason, the colour balance and character designs in this VN rub me the wrong way. It's especially prominent on the male characters, who look particularly uncanny.

As a side note, I've begun to realize from this that I'm almost always more interested in the generic self-insert MC guy than I am any of the girls when it comes to bishoujoge for some reason

So I'm getting to the latter half of the task of finishing my first route, and it's been pretty disappointing so far. Neither as kuso nor as kino as I was hoping. All around kimo, really (a whole new third term which I've just added to my rating scale!) and while I'm not going to drop it, since I despise leaving things unfinished, I'm going to probably leave it on hold while I go read SubaHibi or something instead. I also managed to extract the OST from the game, and I may upload it to youtube since nobody else seems to have done that yet, but not until I finish the VN.

As a side note, the game likes to use "中二病" a lot and I've thought about it and I've realized that that's kinda fucked up. Like, "middle school disease"? If a Japanese person used that against me I think it would pain me more than any amount of English insults could
 

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I'm genuinely curious what people get out of visual novels. Too me it is just inherently inferior to both normal fiction, and graphic novel/manga. I've watched a few playthroughs of them and thought, Why would I ever want to do this instead of just reading something. The art can't be as high quality or impactful as manga, since the sheer length of them, and the writing/prose itself is not impressive from my short experience watching umineko playthroughs and other stuff. I guess the only selling point would be the music and small gameplay elements?, but its kind of a stretch to just have that to justify the experience. They story itself might be good, but why do authors choose to write visual novel, why not just write a novel or manga? I don't get it.
 
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I'm genuinely curious what people get out of visual novels. Too me it is just inherently inferior to both normal fiction, and graphic novel/manga. I've watched a few playthroughs of them and thought, Why would I ever want to do this instead of just reading something. The art can't be as high quality or impactful as manga, since the sheer length of them, and the writing/prose itself is not impressive from my short experience watching umineko playthroughs and other stuff. I guess the only selling point would be the music and small gameplay elements?, but its kind of a stretch to just have that to justify the experience. They story itself might be good, but why do authors choose to write visual novel, why not just write a novel or manga? I don't get it.
I have quite a few things to say about this, but I'll save it for now. I've actually only fully completed a single VN, and half-read a few others. Lain made a pretty good video defending his own points on this case:


There's another guy I follow on twitter who has quite a bit to say about them, as well, who I think is on to something. Other than that, though, everyone I've seen criticize visual novels has only done it out of places of ignorance, while everyone who has praised them has done so for things which they don't particularly do as well as they should. Ultimately, I think very few people, if any, have read a visual novel properly--at least in the English sphere, anyways, there seems to be quite a few highly educated papers written on VNs in Japanese, though I can't seem to find any archives of them online, and thus their exact contents are beyond me--which I think applies to your case, as well. It's ironic coming from me, who was made one myself, but VN playthroughs take away a lot of elements which would otherwise be essential for a proper reading; this applies even to video forms of kinetic novels like Umineko. I will say at least, that as far as I'm aware every good VN does things in ways which could not be properly translated to any other medium.
 

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why do authors choose to write visual novel, why not just write a novel or manga? I don't get it.
Cuz some people want to do multimedia projects?

In the end what people want to produce and consume is good art, the medium is just the medium. Don't overthink it.
 
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