Sunday, June 16, 2024
Until There Is Nothing Left
As
a species we have a strange obsession with the inevitable demise of
everything we have build in the face of sudden and uncontrollable
disasters. There is a kind of catharsis at seeing this scenario play
out in a fictional setting and witnessing how the characters attempt to
adapt to the end of the world as they know it. This genre of
Apocalypse stories covers everything from the collapse itself to the
survival immediately afterwards to the world rebuilt from the ashes.
Many visual novels like to take this genre as a kind of background element
to a greater narrative while others make it the primary focus, but
both sides still share the ruin which echoes through every aspect of
the game from visuals to character motivations. It is easier for this
medium to lean into the personal tales of the end times than many
more mechanically complex games due to its much more grounded and
direct presentation which interacts in various ways with these tales
of demise. Let’s watch the world burn and find out exactly how
visual novels play with this genre.
At The Heart Of The Maelstrom
From
the angle of dramatic tension, there are few settings more potent
than having the end of the world happening around the cast. Nothing is
quite able to get the pulse pounding like watching the things we hold
affection for be torn apart by the uncaring march of an unstoppable
force. It is the immediacy of the conflict that visual novels can
take advantage of in order create an action or thriller narrative.
They present the apocalypse as a personal story of people swept along
as they try to deal with the calamity any way they can. Often this
involves a large amount of interpersonal conflict or disputes between
groups who cannot see eye to eye even as everything around them
burns. Taking an angle like this is necessary in an apocalypse story
as the actual disaster itself is normally inhuman in nature and so
does not make for an interesting focus for a long form game. Visual
novels lean heavily into this through the importance they place of
the protagonist’s reaction to the events and people they interact
with during this decline and in doing so they can easily keep things
in on a personal level the player can understand. It also gives them
room to comment on the themes and ideas tied up in the nature of
their apocalypse, such as an environmental disaster, through what the
characters witness from their small slice of this much larger event.
 |
| In general Alternative loves to push the bleakness of its setting |
Perhaps the most iconic visual novel featuring an ongoing apocalypse
is Muv-Luv Alternative and its Beta invasion pushing humanity to the
edge. Here the Beta themselves are a constant threat and yet act as a
motivator rather than the central focus due to their monstrous nature
making them incompatible with any form of narrative complexity. This mantle is taken up by the political and personal conflicts with
the alternative universe versions of characters the protagonist
knows. Each one has their own agendas and even in the face of their demise they cannot let go of their desire and differences. This
reveals them to the player at their purest, where the end of the world causes them to drop the masks they wear and be true to
themselves regardless of the consequences for everyone else.
Alternative pushes this as the main angle for its drama and uses it
to put pressure on the protagonist and have something for them to
overcome on the moment to moment level since the Beta exist beyond
the scope of what one individual can hope to challenge. This way the
inevitable threat of the Beta can hang over the events of the game
and provide a tension as they creep ever closer to overwhelming
humanity.
After The End
Another
common kind of apocalypse story is one set in the immediate aftermath of
the destruction and follows those people who remain. For visual novels there
is a common trend to instil a sense of quiet and a calm after the
storm in which the characters pick through the remnants of their old
lives, literally or metaphorically, and try to find some kind of
meaning from the chaos. Leaning into this angle is how they manage to
make this style of narrative distinct from those similar to it since
the emphasis becomes a dual one of personal struggle and a greater
sense of the world around them. Now there are so few human spaces
left it adds an extra layer of importance to those that remain or those
created by the characters afterwards and these places often represent the trauma
of the disaster and the longing for those past days which echoes
through the people. This makes for an engaging feedback loop
where in order to move on from their pain and accept what happened
they must reshape the spaces around them or abandon those that
symbolise their past. From a visual angle this allows for the game to
play with dramatic shifts in colour and tone for those places
alongside scenes of exodus framed with the importance they embody for
the characters.
 |
| The ending of every world is a massive scale calamity |
In Tokyo Babel the remnants of humanity from various
different universes, demon and angles have all lost their homes and
gather together in the last place left to them where they reside in a
school as if attempting to recapture the spirit of what they have
lost. While they do not use the buildings for its intended purpose,
there is an underlying sense of trying to relive a lost youth be that
either one stolen from them by this apocalypse or the memories of one
which provide a comfortable space to retreat into. It is telling then
that the characters must leave behind the school in
order to reach for the promise of a new future. They shed the place
symbolising their past as well as the place of temporary calm to find
the will to overcome their collective trauma and move beyond the
event which has upended their lives. While the seemly safe and warm
locations and memories of the world now gone might seem enticing, it
is ultimately clinging onto a phantom which no longer holds value and
the people within it slowly decay in their pain rather than trying to
build something of their own.
Into Tomorrow
The
final type of apocalypse setting is that of the world rebuilt after the event and yet still fundamentally shaped by it. While on the
surface the people of this new age might seem to have returned to a
state of normality, there is still an undercurrent of instability
present as the scars of disaster live just out of sight and threaten
to return if given the chance. Such worlds often remain mostly
uninhabitable with humanity living in limited, but prosperous safe
zone they have constructed and this makes their existence a tenuous
one surrounded by danger. In the context of visual novels these
elements manifest as an underlying tension where the player and
characters are both made intensely aware of how much of balancing act
the current peace is to maintain. As such when this existence is
threatened there is an immediate sense of danger provided to the
situation to help fuel exciting plot twists as the context of what is
at stake has been established. There are less humans in these
settings adding weight to every life lost as a serious blow to
humanity and this allows for a more personal narrative
since the cast hold a greater significance to each other’s survival
than in a modern day setting.
 |
| What might seem happy always sits on the edge after an apocalypse |
We can look to Blazblue for a post
apocalypse where these traits can be seen through how the game
interacts with the elements of its setting. The world of Blazblue is
defined by how toxic the surface of the planet has become after
humanity defeated a world ending monster and this has force humanity
on only the highest peaks to build their sanctuaries. As such while
the culture and people are bright and lively, there is always an
undertone that this exists as they are right next door to death and decay in a
way the characters can never quite reconcile. When the antagonists
enact plans which threaten to bring about the same calamity which
befell the world, the player has knows the proper context and danger
this threat will bring as they have been living its shadow all game
long so feel the same sense of urgency the cast do to resolve this
tension.
Conclusion
Nothing
else carries the same power over the human imagination quite like an
apocalypse and visual novels love taking advantage of this trait to
push their stories in interesting directions. By placing the player in
the heart of an ongoing world ending situation they can lean into the
protagonist’s reaction to events and push characters to extremes in
order to reveal their true colours. In a world rebuilt after the
apocalypse visual novels present the scars of the calamity and juxtapose this
new world’s brilliance against its precarious existence to create
an underlying tension. Those using the immediate aftermath tend to
present the calm after the storm and a clinging onto the past of
places now in ruin while showing how the characters need to move on
to truly rebuild. Leveraging such an emotionally resonant genre can
offer a developer a variety of different tones and themes even within
a similar design space and this is something worth keeping in mind as
you create your own titles.
