One "Analogue" Experience
May. 12th, 2014 06:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerIt's been a while since I first learned about one group of "visual novels" (or "visual novel-like 'indie games,'" anyway) by Christine Love, long enough that I can't remember exactly how I did it. When I was playing through her "Digital: A Love Story," though, I already knew she'd named a later game "Analogue: A Hate Story," which did pique my interest. As I bought that later game, however, I also decided I'd play through another one of hers "in between" the two named, and with one thing and another that took a while to do. Once I'd got around to "Analogue," though, I did seem quicker to get to one of its multiple endings. It was, unfortunately enough, what I suspect to be the "not enough accomplished ending," but even in reaching it I'd found plenty in the game to intrigue me.
"Analogue" begins in a science fiction future as "the player" is informed of the discovery of a long-lost "generation starship" (things have seldom seemed to go well on the centuries-long journeys of these miniature enclosed worlds right from the moment science fiction hit on them); the goal presented at the beginning is to connect to the ship's computers and read through old documents to figure out what happened. I became a little intrigued with a comment in the scene-setting prologue about how "It should be asocial enough for you"; on managing to navigate the command-line interface of the override terminal, though, I met one of the ship's artificial intelligences (but not the one the prologue mentioned), her name distinguished by a concept introduced back in "Digital."
Linking the concept of "visual novels" to Japan, it was quite acceptable to me that the art of *Hyun-ae was "in an anime style" (even if in looking up more information on the game I did encounter some perspectives from people who aren't as taken with it), but that somehow made for a bit of an odd juxtaposition for me with the ship and everyone on it being Korean. I understand that Japan having occupied Korea before World War II has made for uncomfortable relations in the nearer past, and there might have been a touch too of wondering if some nebulous "conventional wisdom" has concluded that now that we don't worry about Japan buying up the world the way we did in the 1980s, South Korea has moved into a position of "integrated world citizen," almost in contrast to "now harmlessly strange so long as you cluck at its pop culture." However, I did notice a comment that the social structure described in the documents was based on a particular period in Korean history. That was after I'd concluded the situation summarized in a note from *Hyun-ae as "Men are honoured, women are abased" was meant to show how things had gone wrong, but before I got to wondering "the author may be saying one thing, but is the character in the game more than just a neutral reporter?"
There are certain problems in communication to start with, and the "interface" with the AI winds up a matter of binary choices (and, perhaps, selecting what particular document you bring to her attention next). It might be I just didn't hit on the right string of binary choices to reach any of the other endings. However, in learning a great deal about what happened and having to make a major decision in a different way and in a hurry, I was also struck by how I just might be "determining my own reality presented" through certain of the binary choices. I don't know how much more time I'll be able to poke away at the game with before I wind up somewhere else, but I do at least know Christine Love has made one more game with an apparent direct link to this one's story...
"Analogue" begins in a science fiction future as "the player" is informed of the discovery of a long-lost "generation starship" (things have seldom seemed to go well on the centuries-long journeys of these miniature enclosed worlds right from the moment science fiction hit on them); the goal presented at the beginning is to connect to the ship's computers and read through old documents to figure out what happened. I became a little intrigued with a comment in the scene-setting prologue about how "It should be asocial enough for you"; on managing to navigate the command-line interface of the override terminal, though, I met one of the ship's artificial intelligences (but not the one the prologue mentioned), her name distinguished by a concept introduced back in "Digital."
Linking the concept of "visual novels" to Japan, it was quite acceptable to me that the art of *Hyun-ae was "in an anime style" (even if in looking up more information on the game I did encounter some perspectives from people who aren't as taken with it), but that somehow made for a bit of an odd juxtaposition for me with the ship and everyone on it being Korean. I understand that Japan having occupied Korea before World War II has made for uncomfortable relations in the nearer past, and there might have been a touch too of wondering if some nebulous "conventional wisdom" has concluded that now that we don't worry about Japan buying up the world the way we did in the 1980s, South Korea has moved into a position of "integrated world citizen," almost in contrast to "now harmlessly strange so long as you cluck at its pop culture." However, I did notice a comment that the social structure described in the documents was based on a particular period in Korean history. That was after I'd concluded the situation summarized in a note from *Hyun-ae as "Men are honoured, women are abased" was meant to show how things had gone wrong, but before I got to wondering "the author may be saying one thing, but is the character in the game more than just a neutral reporter?"
There are certain problems in communication to start with, and the "interface" with the AI winds up a matter of binary choices (and, perhaps, selecting what particular document you bring to her attention next). It might be I just didn't hit on the right string of binary choices to reach any of the other endings. However, in learning a great deal about what happened and having to make a major decision in a different way and in a hurry, I was also struck by how I just might be "determining my own reality presented" through certain of the binary choices. I don't know how much more time I'll be able to poke away at the game with before I wind up somewhere else, but I do at least know Christine Love has made one more game with an apparent direct link to this one's story...