Sunday, November 17, 2024
Reinventing The Familiar
Ever
since the beginning of video games there have been adaptations taken from a
variety of other media such as movie tie-ins or those based on books.
Broadly this trends as died down due to the increasing cost and time
of development, yet it still clings on in visual novels. This is
helped by their relatively cheap and quick nature when compared to
more graphically intense games. Taking on the role of an adaptation
results in some interesting and fundamental changes how a visual
novel has to engage with its material. Having to transition a story
from a more free-form medium into a static one presents a challenge
and demands roundabout ways to replicate this motion. If it is a
tie-in produced to cash in on the popularity of a recent IP then the
game has to tread the line matching the player’s recent memories of
the IP while still being its own self contained entity. Beyond the
concrete changes to the visual novel format there is the idea of
translating the essence of a title into a new space in a way that
feels natural for both. Let’s embrace the spin off and find out how
adaptation influence visual novels.
From Dynamic To Static
Reshaping
an existing series from another medium into a visual novel often
presents a sizeable shift in how motion is shown and scenes composed.
This creates an issue of meeting these expectations inherited from
the original work which might be difficult to achieve in this
restrictive format. Every adaptation tries to tackle it in their own
way, yet there are several recurring tricks they all use to smooth
over this transition. The first being the way they try to keep the
same ratios when it comes to the over all balance of action and downtime
found in the original. In creating a similar structure the title
hopes to invoke the player’s memories of the series in order to
bring the perception of the two closer even if it might not be able to
exactly match it. As such titles focused on drama and mystery are
favoured by visual novels since they are often fairly static in
nature even before their transition to their new format. Looking at
Psycho-Pass Mandatory Happiness showcases how this refection of the
original work is often handled. Psycho-Pass as a series is inherently
a thriller at its core so thrives of long periods of tension
punctuated with intense bouts of violence and it is this pattern
Mandatory Happiness makes its core method for adapting the feel of the
series. It presents this through the sci-fi police investigations,
which are the main feature of the original, while slowly ramping up
into the use of the dominators and the extreme gore that follows.
This structure allows the game to overlap with the elements player’s
has come to expect from the series and place itself firmly within the
domain of the familiar.
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| All the important elements of the original have to be here for an adaptation |
Another
trick often employed relates to original works containing a large
amount of action or frequent dynamic movement. Due to the static
nature of a visual novel it cannot match the flexibility and range of
other mediums so it instead uses the motions it has available
in intense bursts. Surrounding these action scenes with the normal
ones allows for them to be framed by that contrast and remind the
player of the dynamic range of the original work even if these moments are not
able to match it. This is important for keeping the player firmly
immersed in this new lens on familiar material without expecting
unreasonable feats beyond what a visual novel could possibly offer.
Angel Beats is a series brimming with expression and motion in its
every moment so its visual novel adaptation, 1st Beat, had
to translate this into something decidedly more static. This
expressiveness is mimicked through a targeted use of larger than life
CGs and creative use of character portrait movement. In addition when
the dramatic action scenes come around the game pulls out all the
tricks to create a sharp increase in the dynamic feelings for each
character. Both of these are used to contrast with the more
static moments and with each other since they tend to focus on
different types of motion. What this achieves is the creation of
moments that strongly invoke the motion filled nature of the
original work without needed to bend over backwards to try and change
the game’s nature as a visual novel.
The Tie-In
Often
a visual novel adaptation is released in or around the same time as
the work it is basing itself off in order to capitalise on interest
generated by the original. This need to get the title out as soon
as possible coupled with the original still being fresh in people’s
minds results in these games having their own identity. Perhaps the
biggest aspect which influences these ‘tie-ins’ is the way they
cannot commit to anything of substance when it comes to narrative
progression or character growth. While this is common in most
adaptations, it is far more restrictive here due to the need to
emulate the specifics of the recent material the tie-in is based off
and the way it acts as a sort of heavily disposable media. An extremely
fine line has to be walked with these titles where they cannot just
repeat the original work verbatim yet must hit all of the same notes
in a new story. Lacking the ability to offer meaningful consequences
to the narrative, the tie-in instead pushes a constant stream of
references to immerse the player in their memories in order to
distract from the shortcoming it possesses. They also tend to reuse
character arcs from the original work and reframe them within the new
story so it can give them an injection of life and support the
overall familiar nature of the game. Attempting to be both new and
old while adhering to a fast development cycle produces a mixed
quality for these tie-ins and they tend to have a rather negative
reputation among consumers.
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| When the new is old |
Let’s look at one example of this type
of adaptation in the tie-in game for My Next Life as a Villainess:
All Routes Lead to Doom! callled Pirates of the Disturbance. This title is
not a recreation of the original plot and is instead its own story
which follows the original’s ideas closely in a slightly altered
setting. Throughout there is a definite sense that it is trying its
best to not step beyond the player’s expectations coming in and it
only leans into its own narrative beats as a means of emphasising
those familiar elements. Even its own original characters are more
reflections of existing personalities than they are their own people
and it is clear the old characters are the ones the game has focused
on to carry the experience. Their appearances and actions all
follow what they have previously done and this often involves
repeating some, if not all, of their character arcs or remaining
static. By doing this Pirates of the Disturbance can offer a game
which preserves the original within a new setting and yet never
committing to the changes for fear of alienating its audience.
Translating Its Essence
Sometimes
an adaptation wants to play around with the concepts of the original
in a way favourable to the nature of visual novels and this means
moving further away from the original’s form. This makes it
important for the game to be able to translate the essence of what
made the work so special into its new ideas. To accomplish this
nebulous feat these titles pick out a recurring theme or motif which
can be effectively integrated into the new narrative and place the
player in the same mindset without spelling it out for them. A common
form this takes is the invoking of specific character or story
moments that hold a lot of weight in order to play off them as a
source of tension for the new content. Sometimes structural elements
are also used such as multiple perspectives or styles of scene
framing and they operate on a more understated level while being
easier for a visual novel to utilise. Another even more abstract
feature brought into the adaptation is a simulation of the tone found
in the original. This hopes to capture the fundamentals of the title
through the game in its totality and create something memorable over
the long term.
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| Some worls lend themselves better to visual novels than others |
The Date A Live games can showcase these elements of
translating the essence. Its original material places repeated
importance on the idea of dating spirits through the framing of a
dating simulation so the adaptations bring this into their structure
through similar elements like the map selection screen to create
a nod to the title’s origins. Alongside this there is a lot of
effort put into presenting the new material with the same tone as the
original work which means emphasising comedy in the slice of life
sections and smoothly transitioning into superpowered drama when the
spirit of the day starts to use their magic. Major events that
occurred recently in the cannon timeline are also brought up in where they can sell the current state of a relationship matching the
original work without needing to spend too much time retreading
ground. In combination these create an experience that bring in the
key features of Date A Live into a visual novel format and not
getting in the way of the new story the games want to tell.
Conclusion
Creating
a convincing adaptation is not an easy task especially due to the
nature of transitioning from one medium to another and for visual
novels this creates some interesting challenges and benefits. The
move from a dynamic to a static medium requires some clever tricks to
invoke the same sense of motion which includes matching the
original’s pacing and creating contrast between action and
downtime. With this out of the way the game can focus on translating
the essence of the work into its new form through tone, structure and
important existing narrative moments. A tie-in release has to adhere
to an even stricter set of guidelines due to its reliance on a
recently released work and this being fresh in their memory it has to
repeat much of that work in a slightly altered form. The creation of
an adaptation is an odd process at the best of times and will always
struggle to copy the defining elements which are specific to its
original medium, but as shown the visual novel has developed way to
move around these issues as best it can manage.
