The reason I feel this is necessary is because Anime Database websites when saying what the source material of an Anime is will classify as Visual Novels a number of different kinds of Games that have some similar elements but aren't actually the same, Dating Sims are just one of them but probably the most inherently confused with Visual Novels.
YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound Of This World is in fact neither but really just a Point and Click Adventure Game with a lot of Text to sit through between all the pointing and clicking. I myself have called it a Visual Novel on this blog in the past, mostly because I naively took others calling it one at their word.
The first Anime adapted from an actual Visual Novel was To Heart in 1999, the source material of To Heart was the 3rd Visual Novel ever made and the first to have essentially the same narrative premise as a Dating Sim.
In a pure Visual Novel like the original Leaf trilogy the only interactive element is the branching paths, the dialogue tree, it's basically a digital choose your own adventure book. While in a Dating Sim like Tokimeki Memorial or Doukyuusei you have a calendar and a map, and sometimes more numbers to keep track of then most RPGs.
Notice I said "pure", there is a kind of spectrum between pure Visual Novels and something I wouldn't consider a Visual Novel at all. Doki Doki Literature Club has the poem creating minigame, but it's mostly just an elaborate way to choose which girl you currently want to pursue, so it's mostly still a visual novel. School Days has a status bar telling us which girl Makoto is currently leaning towards, while Shiny Days has a similar one focused on only one girl. But the Dialogue Tree choices are still entirely what effects that status bar so they're also principally Visual Novels.
School Days and Shiny Days are the only Visual Novels I've actually played and only DDLC have I watched full play throughs of. So my ability to comment on other less then pure Visual Novels is limited, but what I've heard about how say the SciADV games function they have significant other variables that make me question them.
So when exactly a Visual Novel has too many other elements to still be a Visual Novel is difficult to pin down exactly, but there is a limit. This kind of overlaps with the debate about if Visual Novels qualify as Video Games, pure Visual Novels I'm inclined to agree do not otherwise every Choose Your own Adventure novel would be a Game of the non visual variety. And I guess my point here is the more of an actual Game you make a Visual Novel the less it still is a Visual Novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment