Innovation

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

Otometeki Koi Kakumei Love Revo!!
Your a fat girl trying to lose weight, and at the same time get a partner…
So you need to manage your weight loss and partner finding…
Especially when dates put more weight on :wink:
Also includes actual Blood-related incest ( You can end up with your brother )

Storyline wise, pretty much…
Your a fat girl ( 100KG to be exact ) and some good looking boys move in near you. But they are all cold to you when u meet them. Your brother tells you that you can get thin again and win their love. So that’s what you decide to do, with the support of your Brother.
The true ending is…[size=10]Incest ending with your brother[/size]

I’v noticed that otome games normally have more then just a ‘pick a choice’ storyline.
Normally they include mini games or choosing locations to visit.

#2

Gun Katana by Black Cyc is the only FPS based eroge out there, it may not be a high end system but it’s something new. As for stuff not seen in the English market, just look to Alicesoft and Eushully. Both companies are known for making games that have a strong focus on actual gameplay. Chief among these would be Sengoku Rance, which is a conquest/rpg style game, for Alicesoft and Ikusa Megami Zero, which is a rpg/strategy game, by Eushully.

#3

Speaking of innovation, they should make a game using technology like Project Natal (specifically Lionhead’s Milo). Combine that with something like Love Plus and I think real girls would be obsolete for some people. :lol:

#4

That is defiantly the next leap forward in interactivity…not quite holodeck material, but it definatly would be nice to have something like that.

Problem is, that demo probably cost them more than even the most successful eroge could hope to make, plus I have a feeling that if you weren’t good at spoken Japanese (ie most of the English market), it would be worthless without an instant translator (which they haven’t quite gotten for Japanese/English yet, though it is within the possibilities of reality.

#5

I wouldnt even say that I want innovative games,
just some games with actual gameplay that give me a small change of pace
from the usual visual novels.

You can combine an adult and mature content with good gameplay and succeed,
as games like The Witcher prove.

Illusion.jp also shows that you can combine the story of a visual novel with full 3D-gameplay,
granting the player a certain degree of freedom instead of just reading walls of text.

I would like more games where you can move around on your own, and where it switches to the front-view-visual-novel-conversation
when you encounter a certain person/location/situation.

#6

I’m still of the mind that when looking for actual game play, go play a real game and not a story driven/sex romp type.

It’s like going in and demanding Mario Brothers be changed into a visual novel.

#7

Technology has been used for some time for medical training like with heart surgery as it allows a doctor learn without having to have someone real to be the patient.

The fact the auto industry found it practical means that the technology is slowly spreading.

#8

Yeah! Or an RPG! That would never work!

Seriously, games have to evolve in this regard, and they can. Some games have good stories even though the story-to-gameplay ratio is very low. Mario games do not. In 30 years, are you really going to want to play a game about Bowser and Peach and Mario? Even if the core game is still badass, it will get old eventually just because the story is weak.

Twilight Princess proved – for the first third of the game, at least – that Zelda could have a story better than what it became known for. Then it fell apart. They’re trying, though, and that’s key.

Hybrid visual novels have worked with other genres before. Even an FPS. Why not a Mario game?

#9

But some people don’t give a toss about story.

Experimentation is great, cool new hybrids are great, but don’t underestimate the appeal of doing ONE thing and doing it well. Not everything has to have the best sound AND the best story AND the best art AND the best gameplay AND famous hollywood actors voicing AND realtime blowjobs. :slight_smile:

#10

It sounds like you want to play western adventure games.

#11

The problem is not necessarily that it’s a bad thing to have some gameplay, but rather, the western market in and of itself is already filled with games that combine story aspects with different gameplay types. Although you could say Japanese companies could use a little more variation in their own market, compared with western tastes/lineups, the fact that a “game” puts 99.9999999999% of its focus on its story instead of gameplay is already a massively radical innovation in and of itself.

I really don’t think the OP is looking for “innovation”, so to speak. I’d say he’s looking for familiarity with the non-visual novel games he’s played.

#12

H-games like this exist: Teatime’s LoveDeath series for example.

Which really gets at the point I wanted to make–the English eroge market needs some 3D games. The 3D could be semi-realistic (many Illusion games), or cel-shaded and anime-like (most Teatime games). I’m not even saying I prefer this type of game; I find it interesting, but personally I’m more interested in story and gameplay. But 3D, regardless of the other game aspects, as long as the graphics are good…will sell. I can almost guarantee it. An Illusion game in English would sell like hotcakes compared to what’s currently available…too bad Illusion has absolutely no interest in having their games localized.

As for my preferences, I want to see gameplay that’s actual fun. Princess Waltz was definitely a step in the right direction in that regard. I prefer RPGs, but any fun gameplay at all is a bonus. Eushully and Alicesoft make some very fun RPGs, as Vardest mentioned. Eushully games in particular are very plot-driven rather than dialogue-driven, which is a nice change of pace in terms of story presentation. My latest fetish has been ero fighting games, which amazingly are rare even in Japanese. Battle Raper is the best example of this genre, but even there the concept was only partially realized. Just imagine a Soul Calibur-style game with a focus on story battles and H-scenes with a particular heroine at the end of each “route.” The Western audience would eat this up, particularly if it was in 3D. And then of course there’s the potential for “game over rape” should the developer choose to go down that path…

#13

I don’t really give a toss about the story in a Mario action title either. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important.

Perfect example: a show called Whose Line Is It Anyway. By far, most of the important parts of the show are the improvisational comedy. The host is gravy, maybe ten percent of what goes on in an average episode. But that 10% is enough to make the British version way better than the American one: the British host, Clive Anderson, is an asset – he very much improves the quality of the show by acting as a kind of bookending straight man. When the show was brought over to America, Drew Carey hosted the American version of the show. And he is a liability; I just don’t find him funny at all.

Even though it has a relatively low impact overall, turning a postitive into a negative harms the overall product.

In this way, even if no gameplay had been changed about Twilight Princess – if all you did was change the story – it can still have a huge impact. If you made the rest of the game as cool as the beginning part, it would have pushed the game up a notch. Likewise, if you had replaced the cutscenes with stick figure drawings and broken English, it would have hurt the game a lot, even though the core gameplay itself is unaffected.

#14

Adding something great is generally a positive. But I feel it’s silly to say that people will eventually not want to play the original Mario games just because their story went no further than ‘Your princess is in another castle.’ Do you refuse to read books because they don’t come with soundtracks? :slight_smile:

#15

No, but when I was a kid, I quit reading the Hardy Boys after reading a few of them, and noticing they were all essentially the same book, just with a couple of props and details swapped around. Few years back, my mom got into this mystery series about a newspaperman and his cat, and read a few of those before noticing the same kind of flaw.

People are already getting turned off to perfectly fine games because of trappings like you describe. See: Psychonauts. Myself, I don’t know … I like the gameplay, a lot, but the stories are getting kinda repetitive. I couldn’t say how I’ll react to them in 30 years, if they aren’t terribly much changed from the way they are now.

#16

Actually, the long-term impact of tighter regulations on an already over saturated market may eventually have some companies change their minds in an effort to have a more dominant market share and the general drive for higher profits. Of course they’ll likely look to China before the US.

#17

I think it all boils down to why we play games. Some games are just entertaining on a low mental level, like movies or television. But the truly unique games that make you lose sleep or miss work, the truly great games, are the ones that suspend your reality or emulate an alternate reality. With VNs it’s just as with a novel, it requires imagination and high level mental activity to be entertained by a story. But if you could combine the low level with the high level, you get a much better suspension or emersion. The problem is the amount of production a game like this would require. It would need vast amounts of content and creation, on par with a office box blockbuster. That’s if you truly want something innovative, I would be satisfied with a more diverse assortment of dialogue and effects upon the story from those choices, so as to allow me to role play more rather than make a few black and white decisions.

But it’s not just in the VN realm that I would like to see more innovation. I enjoy FPS and other 3d based worlds to explore, but with the exception of 2 or 3 titles, nothing has been on par with games such as Deus Ex (2000) or STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl (2004).

Deus Ex combined a great detailed story with VN type dialogue options, character building and FPS action, with the ability to approach the objectives in a variety of ways.

STALKER:SoC embodies the heart of a FPS and the skin of a post apocolyptic, horror survival game. But what sets it apart from other FPS, is the wonderful (though sometimes buggy) A-life engine. A-life gives all entities in the game world slightly randomized objectives that are continually processing even when the player character is no where near them. The end result is a living breathng world that fells totally random at times, giving you a different experience every time you play. With the addition of some very awesome mods (many to choose from), the game offers almost endless depth of gameplay features and playtime. The only drawback to SoC is the almost total lack of storyline, there a few cut scenes and PDA entries that piece together a patchwork tale without much depth. The overall concept of story is quite unique though, and what little there is, is presented well enough.

Overall, the industry is sorely lacking in innovation in all genre on all platforms. Maybe just another sign of the overall dumbing down of society, the video game market is more about low level brain activity and making a quick buck, than making great games.

#18

Another title I would add to your list vick1000 is Thief: The Dark Project. It practically invented the idea of sneaking around in a computer game instead of just using force. Combined with an extremely detailed world, this is still a game I occasionally play over ten years after it was released (even with all the technical obstacles that have to be overcome to get it to run properly on modern hardware).

#19

First off, the Mario RPG sucked.(My opinion of course.) Nor am I a real fan of the milk factory that is Mario. It just made for a good example of a game that’s tried to be ‘innovative’ on far too many levels, and to answer your question, yes, I’m almost 100% positive there will still be people playing a game about Bowser, Peach, and Mario in 30 years. What I’m getting at is that people choose to play certain types of games because they enjoy those types(obviously), so when others come in and demand it become something it’s not just to appease their own needs, they’re obviously playing the wrong game when there are countless others out there that fill those needs already. Let’s face it, there are very few eroge/VN’s that incorporate gameplay elements and actually turn out to be enjoyable titles in both gameplay and story. The gameplay itself is always not as good as it could have been, and no where near the quality offered in other games gears to those elements, and the story tends to take damage as well because more time and funding had to be shifted over to the coding of those same half assed gameplay elements. I’m all for a VN-ish game that has good gameplay, hence why I love RPG’s. But when an eroge tries to be something that is already out there and of better quality, it just makes more sense to go the other direction and offer something that isn’t already out there. VN types are just that, they’re meant to be read with some interactivity, which is a type of game that isn’t widely available in the English market, as apposed to say RPG(even those are starting to dwindle out because of “innovation”, FF12 for example) or FPS. Innovation tends to grind up everything in it’s path only to create a lesser amount of quality, and far too much left over garbage.(Still getting used to the pain meds, so here’s hoping any of this was coherent.)

#20

hehehe, I take it you know of the Super Mario RPGs and this was sarcasm.

Uhhh… it got really good reviews, but it wasnt exactly my favorite either.
Papermario however is a Mario/RPG hybrid that was fantastic.
But this discussion is not about Mario, Mario being probably the most idiotic character to bring up when talking
about Visual Novels including gameplay.

I wasnt saying that I want to change mainstream games into Visual Novels.
The point is that gaming has evolved a lot, while Visual Novels have not yet explored all the possibilities they have now.

I see Project Natal as a great opportunity for Visual Novels, where characters react to voice and expression during play,
but I also fear that this will remain exclusive to japan and japanese language input (and although I talk 5 languages fluently,
I cant really talk any japanese, which I think is the case for most english gamers aswell).