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krpalmerA while ago now, I finished an adventure game named "Digital: A Love Story" with the thought it had helped convince me to buy another game from its writer Christine Love, "Analogue: A Hate Story." However, she also happened to have created another adventure game in between those two with the more unique title "don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story." Where "Digital" was set in the past and presented through an antique graphical user interface, "don't take it personally" was set just in the future and had the look of something I'm aware of without quite having been able to experience. I know a certain number of anime series have been adapted from Japanese names called (among other things) "visual novels," and there can be a certain undercurrent of "the original was better" to how those series are discussed, just as with series adapted from manga or "light novels." However, the little matter of either having to learn Japanese or figure out how to apply patches to games that seldom seem "cross-platform," and certainly can be associated with that old scandal slapped on anime itself of "indecent drawings," do keep me detached from chasing them.
With "don't take it personally," though, the first few objections at least didn't apply, and it did look better than a good number of other fan-made "visual novels" created with the same game engine. The game was slow going for me at first, though, and it was only after letting it sit for quite a while that I noticed one more reference to "Analogue" and got back to my old saved games. This time, this far into the story something clicked for me, and I clicked all the way through it, even winding up with a few thoughts that seemed worth sharing (if thoughts that might give a thing or two in the game away...)
Where it's easy enough to let comments about "teenage protagonists" in anime (including series adapted from "visual novels") shade into complaints about limited variety, the character you play in "don't take it personally" is a high school teacher. At the beginning of the game, he's informed by the principal he has the ability to read the private online messages of his students on their "Amie tablets" (a subtle reference to "Digital," perhaps) to watch for online bullying, for example. I might have accepted that as an invitation in the game's own world as distinct from the real one and just seen all of it as the "omniscient perspective," never imagining that near the end of my game my character would have a different sort of take on "just following orders"... but as it turned out, there's a slug of "we're in the near future; we're all right with revealing things" at the close, and a suggestion there are different ways to keep secrets. As much as it's the sort of thing I can question, it also just might have affected one last "why not?" choice I made in the narrative, one I'd been strict about several old saved games back. I then managed to learn there were multiple endings to the game after all reached through the relative handful of either/or choices provided, but felt somehow content with what I'd happened on through the game's world, which I still seemed capable of detaching from the real one.
The "anime-esque" art (the "online profile pictures" look to be drawn by a different artist, but do leave me wondering a bit about "creating new identities) does sort of tie in to certain interests of the characters, and I do remember thoughts of certain apocalyptic fears from certain anime fans that "people not them" have or will have found other things to follow. In remembering them, though, they don't seem quite as pressing at the moment. Finishing the game at last, anyway, means I don't have any excuses to start playing the copy of "Analogue" I paid for and downloaded a while ago.
With "don't take it personally," though, the first few objections at least didn't apply, and it did look better than a good number of other fan-made "visual novels" created with the same game engine. The game was slow going for me at first, though, and it was only after letting it sit for quite a while that I noticed one more reference to "Analogue" and got back to my old saved games. This time, this far into the story something clicked for me, and I clicked all the way through it, even winding up with a few thoughts that seemed worth sharing (if thoughts that might give a thing or two in the game away...)
Where it's easy enough to let comments about "teenage protagonists" in anime (including series adapted from "visual novels") shade into complaints about limited variety, the character you play in "don't take it personally" is a high school teacher. At the beginning of the game, he's informed by the principal he has the ability to read the private online messages of his students on their "Amie tablets" (a subtle reference to "Digital," perhaps) to watch for online bullying, for example. I might have accepted that as an invitation in the game's own world as distinct from the real one and just seen all of it as the "omniscient perspective," never imagining that near the end of my game my character would have a different sort of take on "just following orders"... but as it turned out, there's a slug of "we're in the near future; we're all right with revealing things" at the close, and a suggestion there are different ways to keep secrets. As much as it's the sort of thing I can question, it also just might have affected one last "why not?" choice I made in the narrative, one I'd been strict about several old saved games back. I then managed to learn there were multiple endings to the game after all reached through the relative handful of either/or choices provided, but felt somehow content with what I'd happened on through the game's world, which I still seemed capable of detaching from the real one.
The "anime-esque" art (the "online profile pictures" look to be drawn by a different artist, but do leave me wondering a bit about "creating new identities) does sort of tie in to certain interests of the characters, and I do remember thoughts of certain apocalyptic fears from certain anime fans that "people not them" have or will have found other things to follow. In remembering them, though, they don't seem quite as pressing at the moment. Finishing the game at last, anyway, means I don't have any excuses to start playing the copy of "Analogue" I paid for and downloaded a while ago.