Tag Archives: Aselia the Eternal

VenusBlood Frontier: Divine Conquest

If you are one of the many people disappointed in the recent news surrounding Sony cracking down on content with even the slightest whiff of “adultness” about it, you need to start paying attention to the Japanese PC games market if you’re not already.

Parallel to all the kerfuffle  surrounding the cancellation of Omega Labyrinth Z and the news that Xseed was being forced to cut out the “Intimacy” feature from the upcoming Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal, the localised Japanese PC games market has quietly been becoming an even more open and welcoming place to fans of games with adult content than it was already: just recently we’ve seen the release of AliceSoft’s excellent Evenicle on Steam, MangaGamer is continuing to work on English versions of the Rance series… and a long-running, well-received series of fantasy-themed games is getting a much-anticipated localisation.

I’m talking about VenusBlood Frontier, an upcoming Kickstarter-funded localisation project that, as I type this, you have a little over a day to back if it sounds like something you might want to see more of. Hop on over to Kickstarter if you’ve already made your mind up… or read on if you want to know more.

NOTE: For those who care about such things, I am a Kickstarter backer of this project but am otherwise unaffiliated with either Ninetail or JAST USA. Continue reading VenusBlood Frontier: Divine Conquest

From the Archives: On the “Idiocy” of Interactive Storytelling

Back at the end of November 2012, this article appeared over on community-led games writing site Bitmob (now folded into VentureBeat’s GamesBeat).

For those too lazy to follow the link and/or read the article, the gist is as follows: Shawn McGrath, creator of the psychedelic abstract shooter Dyad for PlayStation 3, made some rather bold proclamations on how inappropriate he thought video games were as a medium for telling stories.

Specifically, he noted that “linear story and interactive anything are diametrically opposed,” that they “make no sense together at all” and that “any attempt to put storylines in games in any traditional sense is completely idiotic.”

Strong words indeed. So what was his justification for this?

This article was originally published on Games Are Evil in 2012 as part of the site’s regular READ.ME column on visual novels. It has been republished here due to Games Are Evil no longer existing in its original form.

Continue reading From the Archives: On the “Idiocy” of Interactive Storytelling

From the Archives: Culture Shock

One of the things video games are particularly good at as an entire medium is allowing you to immerse yourself in… things.

Exactly what you’re able to immerse yourself in depends entirely on the game — in Microsoft Flight Simulator you can immerse yourself in a realistic depiction of what it is like to fly a real aircraft, for example, while in Xenoblade Chronicles you can immerse yourself in a well-realized fantasy world.

One interesting possibility that this immersiveness allows for is the ability to “live” in another culture. For Westerners, it’s particularly intriguing to be able to immerse oneself into Japanese culture, for example, which is in many ways rather alien to the societal norms we see in America and Europe. Of course, said societal norms vary even between America and Europe, but not quite so drastically as the divergence in culture between “East” and “West.”

This article was originally published on Games Are Evil in 2012 as part of the site’s regular READ.ME column on visual novels. It has been republished here due to Games Are Evil no longer existing in its original form.

Continue reading From the Archives: Culture Shock

From the Archives: Aselia the Eternal’s World Made of Words

I’m an RPG fan, and yet I typically find myself drawn to more linear experiences rather than open-world affairs.

Specifically, I often find that the richly-detailed worlds of titles like Skyrim leave me cold due to their lack of “personality”, for want of a better word — they may be beautiful to look at and packed with things to do, but there’s no emotional connection there.

I’d like to expand on this a little for this week’s READ.ME column, with particular regard to Aselia the Eternal, which we last looked at a couple of weeks ago.

This article was originally published on Games Are Evil in 2012 as part of the site’s regular READ.ME column on visual novels. It has been republished here due to Games Are Evil no longer existing in its original form.

Continue reading From the Archives: Aselia the Eternal’s World Made of Words

From the Archives: Aselia the Eternal and the Balance of Story and Game

A few weeks ago, we spent this column discussing the reason why we play different types of game.

The answer is, of course, different for everyone, but in the case of visual novel fans, most people will cite “story” as their main motivation to continue — even if the actual “gameplay” side of the title is left significantly wanting in the eyes of some people.

Take the title My Girlfriend is the President, which we discussed a while back, for example — in that game, once you’ve chosen which of the game’s four “paths” you’re going to undertake, there are absolutely no decisions to make that have any impact on the way the story ends at all, and yet that does not stop it from being a hugely entertaining and satisfying experience.

This article was originally published on Games Are Evil in 2012 as part of the site’s regular READ.ME column on visual novels. It has been republished here due to Games Are Evil no longer existing in its original form.

Continue reading From the Archives: Aselia the Eternal and the Balance of Story and Game