Whatever the game wants to say about mental illness, it all goes down the toilet once it is used for shock value. Really disappointing.
I can definitely respect that opinion. Personally, I feel that the game is difficult to summarise as treating mental illness in one way and that it has its ups and its downs, but with how deeply personal and affecting mental illness can be for people, I understand anyone becoming soured on the whole game for using mental illness as a means to generate gore.
I enjoyed the game very much; but it was the first dating sim I've ever played and it seems I didn't get nearly as much out of it as you did.
I suppose I didn't think too much about it at the time, but I wonder if you give the developer too much credit for their insight on these issues, I really just felt when I was playing that they did it for the shock value; your take is certainly more interesting.
Thank you. I think that if you're familiar with certain anime/VN archetypes you're probably more likely to be able to pick up on the subversion and commentary the game provides, but creator Dan Salvato has also talked about how he designed the game to be appealing even to those who don't normally play dating sims. A few of the moments in the game do just serve the purpose of providing shock, but Salvato has also spoken repeatedly about how he created this game to make players think about uncomfortable topics, including mental illness. Ultimately though, I'm less interested in what Salvato intended to communicate through the game (and I don't think we can really tell what he was trying to say just by looking at the game), and I'm more interested in what the game as a piece of media in itself says. For example, whether or not Salvato meant Monika to be a critique of possessive attitudes in dating sims and romance fiction, by making her simultaneously act like a dating sim protagonist and a controlling partner, the game sends the message that the two roles are interlinked.
Yeah I'll definitely agree that knowing the genre made a huge difference to me. To the point where I originally thought it wouldn't have much appeal outside of the "very" niche audience of genre enthusiasts with enough self reflection to roll with it. But having seen the amount of people who played this as their first VN/dating sim and really enjoyed it speaks to how much work they put into making sure it could stand on it's own. Happy to see it working out!
I think that any story that effectively makes you empathise with fully-formed characters can be compelling, even if you don't know the genre. I've actually seen a lot of gate-keeping surrounding this game from people who are more hardcore about their visual novels and it's sad. Not only do I think this has been an attempt to unnecessarily exclude a lot of players who could have an engaging experience with the game, but it's also not as if the people most "dedicated" to the genre have always had the best takes on DDLC. That's actually where I've seen a lot of the insensitive opinions on the game's topics coming from.
What a fascinating essay, thank you for writing this! I agree with a lot of your points, while I think the title used love and care when handling Sayori and her story line in the first run, a lot of Yuri's story was uncomfortable and seemed to undermine what they were going for.
The one place where my opinion differed was your thoughts on the "True" ending (although I would maybe think of it as more of an Easter Egg), I was not as put off by it as you. But, I think this may come from the way I personally approach visual novels. As a girl who is more hetero-leaning, I play Visual Novels for the stories. My favorite novels have gangs of girls that I love, and I love spending time with them in their world. I have no romantic attraction to them, and sometimes more sex-heavy VNs make me uncomfortable! I see these girls as my friends, with interesting stories that I get joy out of exploring from a first-person perspective.
In that vein, while the story of DDLC was relatively simple, I still found myself caring about these girls. My heart broke reading the letter that Natsuki wrote when she was concerned about Yuri. I wanted to reach through the screen and give Sayori a hug when she talked about her struggle with depression. As I read Yuri's poems, I sympathized her struggle in understanding her sexuality. I cared about these girls, and at the end of the game, it made me sad to think that there was no world where they could just be together, and be friends (even if it's all fictional).
So, in that viewpoint, Sayori giving me a special message at the end was sweet. An acknowledgement reflecting how I felt about these girls. Sure, the in-game main character had selfish goals, but I played all the routes because I just wanted to spend a bit more time in the world where they were alive, friends, and had hope that they could help each other with the safe space that the literature club provided.
Granted, this is a highly personal interpretation, and I agree with your overall point-- the "good" ending does seem to be at odds with the overall message that the story was trying to tell. But, just wanted to throw in my two cents.
Thank you. I think that both Sayori and Yuri's runs are uncomfortable in their own ways, but that those discomforts work to different ends. For Sayori, the game wants to make you uncomfortable inhabiting a character who's not been a good friend to her during her depression and it wants to make you understand how destructive depression can be for many people. Yuri's line starts down a similar path, making you uncomfortable in the shame that she feels over her cutting habit, but in the end what it wants to say is "Wow, look how crazy this lady is" and that's the opposite of empathetic.
I appreciate your take on the "good" ending and I hadn't really thought about it from that angle. DDLC does at least subvert the classic "sex as reward" trope of the format. Even if the protagonist goes in expecting to be able to just press the club members' buttons well enough for personal reward, he has to see them as people, and so at the end treats them as people. I also wish more visual novel games could do this, but I still feel that DDLC is not the game for it.
@sweep: I think there are reasons to have bad endings. For example, it can let a player choose whether they want a tragic plotline or not, or if you're building a game that's imparting a message you can show you acting one way in the world leads to a bad outcome and one way leads to a good income. I think what's more corrosive is when games arbitrarily break themselves down into "good" and "bad" endings. It might work for some games, but happy and sad are not the only two tones you can have, and a lot of themes exist beyond "good" and "bad". It feels somewhat intertwined with the black and white morality of early moral choice systems in games.
In Late Shift's case, it does go beyond the "Good/neutral/bad" framework you see for game endings a lot, but not to any great effect. I think the reason they make the most logical path the one that also leads you to a downer ending is so you're encouraged to jump back in and really work towards a good ending, but I think you discourage players from doing that by heavily punishing them for making intuitive, rational choices.
@pezen: This is probably subjective, but I felt in many cases the game was trying to tell us that Matt was going along with the heist for his own preservation. Still, you do get a few chances to try and mess with it. E.g. You can run from the shooter, you can try to leave after you drive the car to the house, you can take the lift up instead of down, you can try to sabotage the escape from underneath the auction house. The game does eventually give a reason (even if a bad reason) why he can't go to the police though, and once you know there are mobsters who'd kill you to get that bowl, it becomes clear why you have to follow the game through to the end. Also, I really appreciate you checking in on these articles regularly.
@eccentrix: It would be easy to do that. A quick look is usually at least 30 minutes and an average playthrough of Late Shift seems to be 90 minutes so you've probably seen most of a single run of the game.
@sweep: This is absolutely what happened to me the first time through. Even the "good" ending is based on information that Matt knows but you don't. You end up having to make educated guesses towards what the character you're controlling is already aware of. It's bizarre. In my opinion the way to get the good ending is obtuse and would probably take most people 3-4 cracks to figure out, most of that just based on trial and error. There's no shame in using a guide if you want to see it.
@extintor: I am very impressed with some aspects of Fallout 4 and with its DLC, but at the same time, I don't think that the DLC does, or in a lot of cases, could address the problems I have with the main game. Like a lot of people, I think that turning this RPG into more of a straight shooter reduced the variety in the play and the ability of players to create a character who they felt was unique. That sort of issue is to do with the base gameplay that DLC can only do so much to edit. Something they can change in the DLC, however, is the quality of the story. The base Fallout 4's faction branches vary wildly in quality and in their strengths and weaknesses. The DLC either dials back its ambitions for that story, or in the case of Nuka World, just comes out as kind of a mess. Still, I do think that Nuka World and Far Harbor had some of the most imaginative and vivid settings of any media in the Fallout series. The realisation of their environments is top-notch. Thanks for the comment.
Gotta say that I expected PUBG to end up higher but I can also understand a lot of users feeling like that game is more fun to watch than it is to play. Not surprised to see Breath of the Wild in the number one spot, although I am pleasantly surprised to see that a game as thinky as Nier: Automata did so well this year.
@diz: I do like how candidly they're talking about the finances of their company in this video, which is rare, and I do appreciate that they saw the story let a lot of people down. I still believe that they could have done something more with it in less than a year though, which is not what they suggest in the video. Obviously, it would take that long to add cutscenes/VO, remake levels around a narrative, and so on, but even with just the text pop-ups they use, I believe a decent writer could have fairly quickly turned out something that would have been at least passable. Anyway, thank you for the kind comment.
@bybeach: Glad I could have that much of an effect. It's only about ninety minutes to play so it works as a fun little diversion in between other things. That's how I played it.
@gundamguru: I can understand how the way the Creation Club launched would really turn someone off. Considering that Bethesda became the poster child for bad microtransactions when the concept was first entering the market, I'm kind of surprised they were fine being seen pricing and distributing content the way they were, but not that surprised. What worries me even more than the paid mod stuff going ahead though, is how much Fallout is becoming an action game, and almost certainly that also has to do with financial interests for Bethesda. Part of the reason that the play feels stale by Nuka World is that in 3 and New Vegas, the combat was propped up by more non-combat tasks which were possible because of the RPG mechanics. With fewer RPG mechanics and so many other shooters on the market these days, Fallout 4 may be potentially more popular than previous entries, but also has less variation in play.
I got Prey for Christmas and I'm eager to get into it. I've loved big world-driven first-person games like Half-Life 2 and Bioshock, but it feels like they've been making those games less and less. I want to experience that again. On the back of this, I think I should also check out afterHours. It sounds interesting.
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