![]() ![]() They talk like real people, discussing real subjects with real friends. The dialog is sharp and smart, allowing characters to brood, angst, and quip without ever falling into the obnoxious pitfalls of each of those styles of dialog. Somehow, through some arcane process which I am unaware of, the writing and voice-acting is fantastic. “I thought you said this game had good writing? That sounds insufferable!” Let’s be honest, the art might look great, but the setting isn’t always associated with qualityīut, au contraire, you’d be wrong. You’ve got the full package: angsty, queer teens with designs adjacent to furry art. Now, there is nothing wrong with any of that by default, but let’s not pretend you aren’t already imagining some of the cringiest writing you’ve ever seen in your life. You have a anthropomorphized and queer cast of high schoolers who want to make angsty art while having to confront deep themes. As in: “The meteor that killed the dinosaurs is coming, and this is the last year.” Now that’s a slugger of pitch, in my opinion, and a hell of a lot more interesting than most visual novels.īut, oh boy, I wouldn’t blame you if it also raised some red flags. Let’s get something out of the way: the premise for the game is that you play as Fang, an anthropomorphic dinosaur musician whose last year of high school is also the last year. Let’s start with the very simplest of improvements that Goodbye Volcano High brings to the table: it’s writing. Good Writing Improves a Narrative? Who Would’ve Thought! Even if it doesn’t, it is doing enough special that other narrative-focused games should take notice. Visual novels, seemingly, needed a pioneer, and Goodbye Volcano High looks to be it, if it maintains the level of quality it has in its opening section. It’s that good.Īnd not just “good” as in “well-written,” but good as a game, done in such a unique way so as to serve as a template (and, perhaps, as a standard) for visual novels going forward. Not only is it such a great experience (at least from the half-hour or so that I played) for me to considering it one of the rare exceptions to my usual distaste for visual novels, but it is also such a breath of fresh air that it gives me hope for the entire medium. ![]() In short, I’d long since abandoned visual novels as a method of storytelling and as a style of game, content to only return to it for exceptional cases.Īnd then I came across Goodbye Volcano High at PAX East. ![]() Even though, in both cases, I wished for something a bit, well, more. And even while I’ve enjoyed both of those, they were flawed exceptions for me games that still carried the baggage of all visual novels, but just happened to be well-written and special enough to prove that at least something could work. It’s a downright bleak method of storytelling, in my opinion, made barely tolerable by the relative bright spots of games within the medium like Doki Doki Literature Club or the Phoenix Wright series. This opinion is not improved by the majority of them being a… let’s say lurid romantic fantasy where the “choices” - the only style of engagement for most visual novels - boil down to which character you most want to romance. Suffice to say, I do not have a high opinion of visual novels. Typically, they have stock anime-style art, a generous conception of what “choice” means, and hackneyed writing that is so self-indulgent that you could psychoanalyze it in order to figure out in what ways the writer’s parents failed them. They are a medium that lacks the specificity of a novel proper, while also lacking the interactivity of a video game.
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