The press release mentioned dual audio, my guess would be a simultaneous launch. Also I’ve always heard that the series is pretty much ignored in Japan compared to over here. It would be nice if they came out with the trilogy on Steam eventually since there has been a surge of visual novels lately.
Yeah, Zero Escape has long been in the strange and publisher-unfriendly situation of being vastly more popular overseas than in its home territory, which is why it took so long for ZE3 to get announced, while the same publisher’s trashier and popular-at-home Danganronpa continues to get sequels and adaptations.
In more immediate visual novel news, after the strong popularity of the Groupees visual novel bundle, there’s another one planned for later this month, this time with bonuses and such. I’m not sure what they can reasonably do to fill this one with high-profile titles like Aselia the Eternal and Demonbane, but maybe we’ll end up with a surprise or two. (Probably not Steins;Gate.)
(EDIT: I shouldn’t do manual tags when I’m falling asleep, clearly.)
Probably not…but wouldn’t it be rad if they did?
Also apparently I signed some sort of Facebook petition to bring out Zero Escape 3, presumably back when I finished Virtue’s Last Reward. So go me, I guess.
That reminds me, there is an Indiegala bundle going on this week. Eden* and Higurashi When They Cry Chapter 1 and a few others for $2.99.
Umineko no Naku Koro ni is coming to Steam!
I own physical copies of Umineko, Umineko Chiru, and Umineko Tsubasa, so I won’t be rushing to get the Steam versions, but it’s still great news.
Looking forward to that one, it’s discussed constantly in the Visual Novels thread at NeoGAF.
I’m playing Danganronpa (the first one, Trigger Happy Havoc). I mentioned some of this in the Vita thread, but figured I’d put a little additional detail here.
I don’t think it’s very good. The dialog is fine, I guess, but the narration is super tedious, and I just wish that I could skip all of the blue text entirely.
I also have a problem with the mystery aspect of it, in that every mystery that is presented is telegraphed so blatantly. There’s little to nothing in the form of existing knowledge or callbacks. Pretty much every chapter can be easily predicted using just the information provided in that chapter (which is good form in general, but disappointing for a linear story). If you see two characters interact at the beginning of the chapter, guess which characters will be involved in the murder later on in the chapter? Did you see a new area open up this chapter? That’s where the murder will take place, and there’s no reason to ever return to a room that was already used in previous chapters. Adding new areas doesn’t make the murders more complex via combinations of options, since each one takes place entirely on it’s own floor. In fact, in a way, murders get less complex and interesting as you go because there’s fewer suspects.
(I’ve just started the 5th chapter, and the game told me I’m about halfway through, so maybe it will open up for the last mystery or two? I assume the last mystery will be the murder classroom.)
I guess there’s a tension between mystery puzzle and mystery story going on, to an extent? But it still means that there are basically no surprises. The broad strokes of the murder mysteries are all super obvious immediately. The details of the mysteries may not be clear until the trial, but as often as not that’s because the game actually hides information from you until that point.
It’s weird, because the anime-murder-mystery genre is pretty well established, and the game is well aware of it (Detective Conan’s bow tie is one of the in-game items). So, you’d think it would be made to appeal to fans of the genre already, but everything is so telegraphed and over-explained that it doesn’t seem like that’s the target audience at all.
I don’t remember having quite this level of dissatisfaction with the Phoenix Wright games. It’s possible that I’m remembering them incorrectly, but it may also be that the murders here aren’t written as well.
Also, the illusory choice / interaction is pretty annoying. Everything from the trial mini-games to the 3d world navigation seems built to make you feel like you’re doing something other than just navigating to fixed points and reading text, but honestly, I’d have been happier just reading text and skipping from node to node ala Persona 3 Portable.
Also, brief spoilers:
some murders
Literally, as I’m wrapping up Chapter 3, I say to my wife: “They’re really hitting the murder gimmicks hard in this game. The obvious one left is somebody committing suicide and making it look like a murder.” And then, Chapter 4 happened.
Also, I’m uncomfortable about them referring to Chihiro as “he” after her death. She presented as female, so I feel like they should respect that. Granted, given the context, there’s some debate as to what her preferred gender would have been, but it seems she was more comfortable as a girl and only felt the need to present as male due to societal pressure. However, given that it’s a Japanese game, I do understand why it was written that way.
CLWheeljack, since you made it to Chapter 5, you should push through and finish the game, despite there being more blatant telegraphs of things to come. It’s just one more chapter left. I’m sure we’ll hear from you again when you finished. I can’t wait…
For me, this game and the Phoenix Wright games are identical, other than this game’s action-based mechanics, and the mini-social-links. By the end of both games, I’m in the mindset of “ok just tell me how you’re gonna write yourself out of this”. I was like you in that I found the initial murders to be much more interesting and believable than the later ones.
I’m probably more forgiving than you about the illusory freedom aspects. I’ve played too many point-and-click adventure games to know the limitations of this genre, and of current computing tech in general.
those murders
Chihiro wasn’t amazingly comfortable as a girl. Remember that Sakura and Hina remarked that Chihiro gets along way better with guys and girls/them, no matter how hard they tried to engage Chihiro in everything. In the exposition at the resolution of the trial, Monokuma said that Chihiro is extremely meek, and found it less hassle to be meek by pretending to be a girl, 'cos cultural/societal assumptions. The between-the-line commentary is that Chihiro wasn’t having transgender issues. He’s a girl not because he wanted guys, but that he acts more like a girl himself.
Yeah, I’ll finish it up. It’s entertaining enough, I guess. I understand the constraints of non-linear storytelling, but I just wish that if it was going to be on rails, it would actually be on rails. Wandering around the poorly rendered 3d world with awkward controls is just not fun. They do give you the teleport map, so at least it’s not too, too painful. It also doesn’t help that for every mystery, they’re very clear that another character has already solved it, but refuses to tell you. That really invalidates a lot of the dramatic tension in a way that wasn’t present in, e.g. Phoenix Wright.
I mean, there are potentially more interesting things they could have done with non-linearity. You could make it so that each murder has several paths to solve it: a basic path that’s always available, and other “enhanced” paths that you unlock if you have the right social links or find the subset of clues out of a larger set of possible clues. These alternate paths could reveal more about the personality or the motives that isn’t explored in the basic path. Things like that.
spoiler talk
This is an awkward way to have a whole discussion about transgenderism, but:
“He’s a girl not because he wanted guys, but that he acts more like a girl himself.”
Are you confusing gender identity with sexual preference? They’re distinct. Feeling more comfortable “acting like a girl” is closer to a transgender experience.
Well, really, it has to do with identity, and a feeling that your body doesn’t represent your inner mental self, but we don’t hear anything about that in this case. We know that Chihiro felt that the pressures society assigned to him (to be “strong”) clashed with his identity. Although he expressed a desire to live as a boy if he could meet that expectation (becoming stronger), that doesn’t really tell us much about whether he “really” felt he was a boy or a girl. I.e. He may have been simply saying that because he knew that society did not accept him as a weak boy. More generally, the issue is simply toxically binary gender roles present in society: Chihiro should have had the ability to live as he pleased: either as a meek boy or as a girl.
Basically, we don’t know if his plans to get stronger and present as a boy were an expression of his true self, or simply meant that he would be planning on living in the closet in order to meet social expectations. We’re never told. The reading presented in the localization is likely broadly correct that he likely self-identified as a boy. Given a Japanese cultural context, there isn’t really a strong transgender trope, however, there is a strong transvestite trope, which this was likely enacting. I don’t think there’s a particularly strong argument either way, and, being dead, Chihiro wasn’t really in a position to be offended.
However, even given that understanding, every time they referred to Chihiro as “he” in the trial, I cringed a little bit, on account of knowing that proper pronouns are a very big deal in the American transgender community and having an acquaintance who recently transitioned.
I don’t think there’s necessarily anything that needs to have been done differently. It just made me a little uncomfortable.
As I mentioned, I did finish Danganronpa. Overall, it’s just ok. The ending was pretty stupid, in that the last mysteries were simultaneously obvious and utter bullshit (the killer? oh, it’s this character you didn’t know existed. Sorry.)
There’s a fundamental flaw in the premise that by having a set murder population, mysteries get inherently less interesting as you go, because there are less possible suspects. In theory, a better written game could get around that by having the later mysteries be more tied to character nuances, but nuance isn’t really something this team can handle.
I was wrong in my prediction for the big mystery at the end. I thought the entire thing was a simulation, where your memory is wiped because you keep repeating the scenario until you become the ultimate detective group and solve the mystery. I do like that the main character’s super power is, basically “ultimate ganbatte.” It’s all the Japanese-est thing ever, which, you know, that’s fine.
So, I’m not especially excited or enamored by it, but it’s a fine pulp-paperback I guess. I wouldn’t pay for it (I borrowed this one), but the friend I borrowed this from might have a copy of the second one around too, so I guess I might play the next one just to have something to do with my Vita on the train.
FWIW, the forum thread for the Danganronpa LP over on Somethingawful (which predated and possibly influenced the release of the English version) guessed the real killer well before the reveal. Well, sort of. They didn’t predict the exact explanation for that character even being eligible, but they did pick the character, despite skepticism that led to a lot of Danganronpa-adapted “I’m not saying it’s aliens, but it’s aliens” memes. And there is supporting evidence laid ahead of time.
Sorry CLWheelJack, I wanted to sit down and seriously think about what you wrote before replying, and other stuffs happened. I’ll try again tonight.
In the meantime, I loved the leadup to the last trial, but hated the actual last trial. I liked the ending, as least better than the Dallas ‘who shot JR’ ending that could have been used here.
Interestingly, I was really pumped about playing the 2nd game right away, but 2 days after finishing, I realised I don’t really want to ‘play’ the game. I came down to be only mildly interested in how the story can progress in the sequel. I’ll probably go read a wiki on this later.
One more thing. I picked up Stein;Gate for the Vita. I will get to it after Z.H.P.
Clannad is out on Steam on November 23rd. That is all.
I’ll probably end up waiting for my physical copy to arrive before trying it out.
LOL I didn’t get to Steins;Gate. I’m still playing ZHP, but started Fairy Fencer F instead. And then it’ll be Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky First Chapter restart…not sure yet…
I’ll chime in here when I start it.
I bought Steins;Gate the first time it got an English release, and still haven’t played it. The sealed LE box is sitting on my desk right now, taunting me. “Why won’t you play me, WarpRattler? You don’t even have to unwrap me because you have the bonus digital copy! You even installed it on both of your laptops!”
I’m also waiting for my physical copy of Clannad to arrive. It’s looking like that’ll be sometime in January or February, which is fine because I have plenty of other stuff to play in the meantime.
My daughter recently went through the Steins;Gate VN and loved it, ensuring she unlocked every alternate ending. I’m an anime troglodyte, so Steins;Gate was only the second anime I’ve actually watched and I didn’t even know visual novels existed prior. It was such a good show I may have to run through this myself.
You might have a problem I that the show and the VN are very very similar… I’m not sure how playing after watching the show is going to feel…
I/O too is an interesting one. Though it’s not available anymore through any “normal” mean.
Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness is coming to PS4/Vita. I thought the first season of the anime was pretty good and I hear this VN is a side story that takes place between episodes 1 & 6. I haven’t gotten around to watching season 2, but I heard it wasn’t too good.