Plk_Lesiak

Well, Digital Seclusion is now officially Fuwa-endorsed: https://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2021/02/27/digital-seclusion/ Those that didn't read it yet, shame on you, but consider checking out both the review and the VN itself. Also, further discussion is encouraged. :3

Well, you say "something like this", as if it meant a relatively small-scale project, but you point to one of the highest-budget EVNs ever made. Also, take into consideration that even that game, or something like Love in Space's Shining Song Starnova with its tons of content and JP seiyuus, do not ask for $60. Bah, the Sorcery Jokers and Grisaia, which you mention at the beginning of your post, don't try to sell for $60 in the West despite the licensing and translation costs being likely comparable to producing a smaller VN from scratch. Not saying this to hate on your idea or to discourage you, but realistically speaking, there are 2-3 studios in the West doing VN projects of this scale: PixelFade, Love in Space and Studio Elan. All three rely on years of experience and a loyal fanbase, along with regular crowdfunding to make it viable. VNs are still a very niche market and while a project this ambitious could work... It could just as easily turn into a disaster. particularly if you don't have experience in project management and a very good feel of the market. Be careful with this, particularly with the scale and associated costs, ambition tends to quickly run ahead of skills and resources at hand.

Welcome to Fuwa! And hey, I'd argue Americans and Europeans already made quite a few cool VNs. But I very much share your hope that we'll get more in the future.

So, I'm now past Chapter 3 and my God, what a combination of esoteric anime BS that has been. What makes it funny/weird is that the game doesn't know how to commit to its own brand of space magic. It suddenly introduces a planet of samurai giants, which is okay by itself, but also places two deities there that are completely outside of the established rules of the universe and get no real explanation. And it wouldn't even be hard to tie everything together, it would just need some conscious effort. I know most people don't care about consistency as much as pedantic nerds such as myself, but when you build this kind of complex universe with hours upon hours of story cutscenes, why not utilize it properly? ...and then the game transitions into some kind of meta-chapter with alternate-universe Earth where PSO2 is a full-dive VR game... And the introductory missions are obnoxious AF, with some rando high school girl being the new focus of the story. Why? We have a massive starfleet fighting space Satan, why do we need a Japanese high school in this with stupid student council drama??? Maybe it will get better...

1. People mix up quality and their personal enjoyment all the time which makes the discussion about it very loaded. Quality is somewhat quantifiable, while enjoyment is purely personal. It's utter snobbishness to claim you only enjoy good-quality things, or to not be able to appreciate the quality of something you personally despise. At the same time, it's easy to understand why many people do not have that kind of distance towards media they consume – they affect our emotions and can become so important that we see every critique of our favourites as personal attacks against us. 2. Quality isn't objective, as Palas nicely explained, but I also hate the perspective that it's 100% reliant on context. We get to something like claiming that Twilight is a quality series because bland self-insert protagonists and shitty, sappy writing are not considered negative traits for a teenage romance novel (and I've seen a writer that I semi-respect spewing that). I think that the "does it do its job?" question is important, but shouldn't be the end of the discussion. Otherwise, once more, we lose all difference between something being of good quality and just being popular. 3. And as the same time, the pedantic approach of overanalysing pieces of media by some (even well-developed) set of technical standards, and creating some kind of "mean score" assessment is absolute nonsense too. A piece of media is never just a sum of its parts, so to say something meaningful about it you need to include contextual knowledge and subjective impressions about its effectiveness in whatever it tried to achieve. So, to sum it all up... I'd argue that quality, if the word is meant to have any meaning at all, is a bit more objective than some people make it out to be – arts that develop over decades and centuries create their canons of good practices and techniques that are worth utilizing, and should be used as points of reference. But it's also not as important as some make it out to be – both because something doesn't have to be high-quality to provide entertainment and because high quality by itself doesn't create meaning. And that's good, because otherwise art and popculture would be awfully dull.

All Best Wishes to @Clephas! Let his hunger be always satiated with someone other than us. ^^

You sir need to chill out and let other people have their opinions. I didn't even say it was impossible, but quite like you yourself said about Corpse Party, "creepy" or unsettling is usually a better description of VN horror stories. I don't remember being scared by a VN or a horror novel the way I used to be scared by movies, or particularly by video games that requires you to actively steer the protagonist through threatening environments. You pretty much misconstrued our talk about what VN horror relies on into us hating on it, which was clearly not what anyone had in mind.

And here's my greatest find from the ripped-nukige-CG folder of that shady disc. I want to ask for context, but I know the answer could never be fully satisfying. Also, for those really curious, here's an ISO. I don't think it contains any actual copyrighted material... Outside of the screenshots/CGs from 25-years-old porn games which definitely didn't find their way there in a legit way, but I don't think those are problematic to share in this context?

Welcome, welcome! Just as Littleshogun mentioned that avatar is... something. ^^

I've made an archaeological discovery today.

All Best Wishes to @Silvz!

I've finished the second chapter of the story, which proved surprisingly long and involved. The plot at first felt just like generic anime BS and the formula of the cutscenes (segregated into usually very short "missions") made it seem a bit random/scattered, but I was surprised how well the many story threads came together in the Chapter 2 finale. It's still very much full of cliches, but it managed to become more imaginative and meaningful over time. There are cool relationships, plot-twists regarding the villains and characters that start out looking like caricatures but show decent depth later on... For an MMO, it's solid stuff. Also very well-voiced, but I guess that's standard for high-budget Japanese games. Ex. the crazy robot lady that acts as the ranger trainer is voiced by Kana Hanazawa and while she seemed like a tertiary character at first, she kept reappearing and it's hard to not appreciate her relentless and unapologetic bloodlust. The overarching lore has this Final Fantasy vibe of mixing sci-fi and fantasy and I think the latest story content went even deeper in the direction of mystical nonsense... But it's fun kind of cheese. I think I'm going to keep pushing for foreseeable future and in anticipation for New Genesis (which is part-sequel part-expansion on a new engine, apparently coming later this year). Edit: Also, apart from the story, I have to tell I really like the ability to freely switch between classes and essentially train in two specs at once. As the kind of person that puts everything into one character rather then creating alts, the freedom to experiment in this way is pretty awesome. Of course levelling requires a lot of time, but it's not necessarily "grinding". You can do a lot just clearing one-time quests, participating in events and completing battle pass tasks. Didn't feel much pressure to spend money either, apart from initial investment of like $8 to expand inventory.

I wonder, anyone still playing it around here? I kind of jumped into it due to rather generous Game Pass perks and immidiately got hooked. This is, like, the ultimate loner MMO you can play on console and not even be bothered by the lack of keyboard to communicate with people properly. I'm playing a ranger on ship 4 BTW. The account name is the same as here. I started playing last week, mostly just advancing the story and doing quests, but I've spent over an hour tweaking the character today. I'm going to consult my gf on the final touches tomorrow and post it here afterwards. xD Edit: The process of getting a screenshot from my xbox to PC proved a lot more complicated than it had any right to be, but I did manage to figure it out... Yay?

The bigger one was definitely more grating, but I also remember the smaller one getting to me a bit when I was reading later in the evening and with less backlight in my room. So it's probably not completely detached from my bad reading habits, but like I said, I usually don't get that effect much.

Huh, well... Now after finishing the game, I wonder what can I add over what Palas already said. I very much agree with him when it goes to the quality of the writing and the presentation. They are superb and while knowing you for quite some times through Fuwa and realizing how personal some of the fragments and protagonist's opinions are distracted me slightly, I think average reader will have an even better time with it. The horror subplot however, I can't fully make up my mind on...

I only read like the initial 20 mins before RL interrupted me, but I have to say, the visual style and music are spot-on. I love how thematic all the screams are, along with the ambience and sampled visuals and voices it really transports you to this eerie hikikomori world. I will comment more on the story when I get further into it. One technical comment I have is the flickering screen in the blog sections... I know it's for authenticity's sake, but it low-key gave me a headache and I'm usually not very susceptible to such stuff. I wonder if it would be complicated to create an option to toggle it off? It might just be me overdosing on coffee or something though.

No ecchi is a tall order when it goes to VNs. I don't think you should be scared of the Steam version of Little Busters. The forced fanservice from the old 18+ versions of the game should be mostly gone, but I haven't played it yet, so I might be wrong to some extent. Also, I looked at my own wishlist (not buying anything during this sale, but it's still useful for moments like this), the best deals for quality story-centric VNs seem to be Symphonic Rain (-70%), Gahkthun of the Golden Lightning (-70%) and House in Fata Morgana (-50%). Mybe you can even fit the Fata Morgana fandisc in that 50 dollars? -25% on Little Busters doesn't sound that amazing.

Nah, it's pretty low-key/not obnoxious and the heroine is more of a kuudere type... You could reasonably argue it's just her teasing the protagonist or masking her own bashfulness and overall it's one of my favourite anime couples. Still, it made me think about how calling someone a pervert is the consistently-used anime rebuttal to normal sings of affection and flirting. To the point where the only real meaning of the word "pervert" seems to be "not an asexual person". Edit: In the same vein of thought, I often have doubts whether the "pervert" tag on VNDB means anything more than the character being a horny teenager. Or, as most people would say it, a teenager.

This doesn't seem that excessive TBH. The part that generally baffles me in Japanese media is protags being called perverts for simply being attracted to a girl and expressing that in some mild manner. It makes me wonder whether it's just an anime/comedic trope or something cultural. It particularly caught my attention in Bunny Senpai anime, where the protag and the main girl were explicitly a couple. "You want to f*** your own girlfriend and reference that fact in a mostly inoffensive ways? You PERVERT".

Welcome to Fuwa!

At first glance, a puppet play feels like a good analogy for an average VN... I can't help to think of it primarily from the perspective of the writing process, but let's assume for now that the analogy works both ways. Writing a puppet play doesn't seem that distinct from writing a "real" one, but it forces you to compensate for additional limitations. Less in expressiveness of the characters and more in their capability to actually do things and present complex events to the audience. You have to rely more on narration (which you shouldn't overdo to not kill the pacing) and dialogue, as you're heavily limited in stuff that can be genuinely shown. Even the static backgrounds and many CGs are more like scenography that characters build the narrative over, populating them with people and action that would be too cumbersome to visually place there. But then, it would be easy to argue this whole comparison is a fallacy, as you basically never get a VN read to you in full. Which makes it a primarily literary experience, but also a multimedia one that can neither be directly compared to reading a play nor to watching one. This makes comic books a more reasonable point of reference, but I feel like they operate with a completely opposite set of limitations. You can show a lot in them, despite the missing links between scenes that the reader has to fill with his imagination, but you can't tell much without bloating it with text. So, ultimately I'd land in a similar place as Clephas – the closest analogue to VN, from the perspective of the reader, is probably a Light Novel, with a bit of puppet play mixed in.

Welcome to Fuwa! As Emi said, there's no problem in lurking, but if you ever feel like joining the discussions...

All Best Wishes to @Novel21!

The non-JP v-tubers usually don't lean into the cutesy aesthetic that much. There are exceptions, but I don't think any of the girls I highlighted in the initial part of the post could be described in that way. They utilize the cute anime aesthetic of their avatars in some ways and play with weeb culture motifs, but not to the point of playing a character or hiding their personalities. And the cult of personality... I don't know, it can get pretty cultish out there. And I'm not even sure how much avatars change, in this infamous Vice article the author said how being anonymous and hidden behind Live 2D makes agency v-tubers interchangeable/expendable... But that's pretty much BS. The voice and personality of the person behind the avatar are everything and because every girl develops a personal brand, they can't just be switched out with someone else. Less than an average idol group member can, at least. The part I like is that it's at least not your usual idol worship. The appeal of most of the girls is very much in them being weebs and weirdos, and being relatable. I know about some v-tubers way more than I knew about any YouTuber I've followed over the years, as one of their gimmicks is building a personal connection with their audience rather than just producing entertainment. Even disregarding the leaks I've seen "braking the 4th wall", I feel like anonymity of v-tubers is way less relevant than people make it out to be, outside of leveling the playing field when it goes to RL appearance and removing some negative aspects of internet fame (and making the agency v-tubers even more vulnerable to being screwed over by their managers, despite of what I said earlier).

We're talking about NTR though. The point is, there are people that do cuckolding IRL, but associating them with the fictional stories is the same as saying lolicons are automatically paedophiles. It might not be wrong is all cases, but these are pretty risky assumptions to made. You just need to take out one thing, like for example the reader not self-inserting themselves into the story, and you get a completely different picture. Plus cuckolding isn't even a very good parallel, because it's consensual. You can't really recreate an NTR plot in reality without being genuinely betrayed and humiliated and that's not something you can just stage by yourself. It'd be cool to see a study on how many people that enjoy NTR would like to essentially roleplay it through cuckolding, but I'd be shocked if the overlap was actually that big.