kratoscar2008 Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 Again, I haven't played either of the series, nor have I played Rance, but the fact that they have gameplay, to me, immediately declassifies it as a novel. As strange as it sounds i kinda share your mentality. I mean Rance games are basically RPGs and Dungeons crawlers just like say Disgaea and Persona but it seems they dont seem to be considered the same genre. Many consider VNs with gameplay as VNs so in all the list made by GS is okay to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 Kamidori is an SRPG with hentai, and most of their other games are just that, games with hentai added on. I don't classify them as novels. The only difference between Kamidori and Fire Emblem for example is the fact that Kamidori has hentai, but you don;t see people toting Fire Emblem as a visual novel. There are 3 critical components of a visual novel - 1) It's told with a novel narrative (the novel part) 2) It contains visuals depicting the setting of each scene (the visual part) and 3) It contains choices within the text which branch the story (which is why it's a part of the Interactive Story genre.) Failure to conform to the first aspect means the game is most likely an interactive story (ala The Walking Dead), failure to conform to the second aspect prob means the game is an interactive fiction (ala 80 Days), and failure to conform to the 3rd option just means the thing is a kinetic novel. Fire Emblem doesn't conform to the 1st, or 3rd requirements (IIRC,) whereas Kamidori contains all the components. Thus people tout Kamidori as a VN (it at the very least has Visual Novel storytelling) as well as an RPG, whereas Fire Emblem is just an RPG. Zenophilious 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abyssal Monkey Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 There are 3 critical components of a visual novel - 1) It's told with a novel narrative (the novel part) 2) It contains visuals depicting the setting of each scene (the visual part) and 3) It contains choices within the text which branch the story (which is why it's a part of the Interactive Story genre.) Failure to conform to the first aspect means the game is most likely an interactive story (ala The Walking Dead), failure to conform to the second aspect prob means the game is an interactive fiction (ala 80 Days), and failure to conform to the 3rd option just means the thing is a kinetic novel. Fire Emblem doesn't conform to the 1st, or 3rd requirements (IIRC,) whereas Kamidori contains all the components. Thus people tout Kamidori as a VN (it at the very least has Visual Novel storytelling) as well as an RPG, whereas Fire Emblem is just an RPG. Fire Emblem DOES tell the narrative with novel sections just like Kamidori, except that its a third person omniscient narrator instead of first person. Also, number 3 is only the defining characteristic between a kinetic novel and interactive novel, and thus shouldn't be considered. EDIT: Some more evidence that you can't just write Fire Emblem off as not doing novel telling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pE2v9pwoHg&feature=youtu.be&t=42s Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 Fire Emblem DOES tell the narrative with novel sections just like Kamidori, except that its a third person omniscient narrator instead of first person. A novel narrative involves somebody telling the story in prose. Third person omniscient narration would involve something like: "Cordelia glared at the mug" or "Cordelia shook a finger at her horse." Or even "Cordelia was dancing atop the table, a mug of mead in her left hand and a dagger coated with poison in her right. She swayed from left to right in a rhythm only men at sea or the eternally drunk ever mastered. 'Only good things can come from this' Rohan said, in a soft breathy voice." Fire Emblem is more of a script, the little bits of narration at the start of each chapter can't possibly be called novel narration. Because novel narration involves someone telling the entire story (whether through an omnipotent 3rd person narrator or a more limited 1st person narrator,) and not just the first little bit of each chapter. If anything Fire Emblem contains a summary of what happened in the story up to a point, and then the story begins in script form. Sort of like the recap of a television show "this is what happened last week." I should point out that I'm not trying to be harsh, this is just an interesting conversation... which is distracting me from some work I should be doing *sigh* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abyssal Monkey Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 I would have stopped, but you keep agging me on x.x So you are saying its the type of writing that makes it a novel? If I were to take the script of any typical visual novel and cut it, it would look more or less like a play, and this holds true for both Fire Emblem and Kamidori. If you were to start comparing the places they appear in, the map overview in FE is like the story text that you get in the beginning each of the chapters of Kamidori, the prebattle banter is effectively the same in both games, and the support conversations in FE are equatable to the heroine romancing you get in Kamidori. Overall, the systems are pretty standard, and I'm still failing to see where you are making the distinction between them. The amount of text shouldn't be it; if you ignore the heroine romancing and the support conversation, using only the core story, FE probably has a longer script. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 So you are saying its the type of writing that makes it a novel? If I were to take the script of any typical visual novel and cut it, it would look more or less like a play, and this holds true for both Fire Emblem and Kamidori. Yes. If you ask google to define novel for you, it defines it as a fictitious prose narrative of a certain length. So most definitely the writing defines whether it's a novel. And no, while a play can be narrated it is not one of its requirements and not one of its characteristics. A play is merely a performance on the stage, it can involve no narration at all. Also, Kamidori is full of the type of narration you find in 1st person stories. Not as detailed because it is a visual novel, so bits of description covered by the visuals are redundant, but there is constant narration in Kamidori. You get no such bits of narration in Fire Emblem. If you were to start comparing the places they appear in, the map overview in FE is like the story text that you get in the beginning each of the chapters of Kamidori, the prebattle banter is effectively the same in both games, and the support conversations in FE are equatable to the heroine romancing you get in Kamidori. Banter and conversations are not narratives. If banter, conversation, and romance is all you need for a visual novel, then hello Mass Effect. The map overview at the beginning of a chapter are the only bits which even hint of narration, and are more like recaps then actual narrating. Overall, the systems are pretty standard, and I'm still failing to see where you are making the distinction between them. The distinction is Kamidori is narrated constantly throughout the game, whereas Fire Emblem is presented in script form ala "The Walking Dead." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clephas Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 More or less agree with Rooke. All VNs have non-dialogue narrative, though the scale on which it is used varies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grim_tales1 Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 At least the article gives VNs as a genre some coverage. I'm not sure AA counts a real VN though? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decay Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 There's no way a site like Game Informer would ever mention or advertise eroge. Fan translations lay in a murky grey area so you can also imagine why they might not want to mention those, either. This leaves only totally legally available all-ages title, and I think they did decently within those restraints. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sakimichi Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 There's no way a site like Game Informer would ever mention or advertise eroge. Fan translations lay in a murky grey area so you can also imagine why they might not want to mention those, either. This leaves only totally legally available all-ages title, and I think they did decently within those restraints. Planetarian is not eroge, plus the VN's on steam are all-ages >w</ That guy need to be informed about it. He needs a bit more research if he wants to recommend better titles as a primer introduction to VN's Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kyrt Posted February 26, 2015 Share Posted February 26, 2015 The issue with the general media becoming more aware about this genre will always be limited since they ignore half the medium. In regards to this issue all of these games are definitely visual novels so regardless if they completely got the concept right it should be about the exposure. Getting the name "visual novel" out there is ridiculously good on its own. If someone is interested in finding more visual novels and they search visual novels the 5 places most likely to come up are wikipedia, steam, reddit, visual novel database, and fuwanovel. In this particular instance the article is not a bad one it is not ripping into the medium but merely informing (unlike some other game sites). I see nothing wrong with that. If anyone has ever bothered to play blazblue (any of them in the past) the series is a fighting game and a visual novel in one and has a very similar feel to melty blood in the way the game plays. Blazblue has choices which determine the route one goes in the story (at least the first 3 did not sure about the last one since I dropped the series). I think this is a good thing and honestly as an introduction it is pretty solid. They stick with licensed titles and stay away from the adult content which should intrigue people about the genre and then while searching if they like one of those might happen to stumble across fan translations or other games. If you want a starting point for vns then this works. Darklord Rooke 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbl Posted February 26, 2015 Share Posted February 26, 2015 It is good, about as much good I would expect a site like gameinformer to do for a sector of gaming that isn't already hyper-mainstream. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decay Posted February 26, 2015 Share Posted February 26, 2015 Planetarian is not eroge, plus the VN's on steam are all-ages >w</ That guy need to be informed about it. He needs a bit more research if he wants to recommend better titles as a primer introduction to VN's Planetarian is probably not the best title to recommend to total beginners. It's better to stick to ones that have gameplay or are at least lightly interactive for people who are totally uninitiated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Down Posted February 26, 2015 Share Posted February 26, 2015 Planetarian is probably not the best title to recommend to total beginners. It's better to stick to ones that have gameplay or are at least lightly interactive for people who are totally uninitiated. Depends what kind of point of view you take. What you say might hold true for people who come from a "video game environment", but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who came to know VNs from anime and didn't expect the slightest peck of interaction from it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decay Posted February 26, 2015 Share Posted February 26, 2015 Depends what kind of point of view you take. What you say might hold true for people who come from a "video game environment", but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who came to know VNs from anime and didn't expect the slightest peck of interaction from it. That's probably because you were already at least aware of what the format was, I assume. Considering GameInformer's audience, I expect most readers of that article to be the former group rather than the later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stray Cat Posted February 27, 2015 Share Posted February 27, 2015 Honestly, I think things like Zero Escape and Ace Attorney are good entry points for a lot of people into the VN world (even if they aren't technically VN's). It allows for people who are probably more cautious about it (or blatantly unaware like I was) to get a feel for things and still have some game-play without nose-diving into it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zakamutt Posted February 27, 2015 Share Posted February 27, 2015 Zero escape is very much a VN. Phoenix Wright is the black sheep, and I don't really think it translates into VN liking necessarily... what do I know, though? I started playing PW because I heard of it after I started reading visual novels, lol (and quit on the second game somewhere...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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