Sunday, April 20, 2025
Fiddling With Your Phone
Almost
everyone in the modern world uses some kind of messaging service each
day from their text to email to old fashioned letters. Of course it
was only a matter of time until this method of communication found
its way into storytelling techniques and visual novels have started
to experiment with this avenue. It trends a line between being
distant yet deeply personal to great effect. The almost trivial
nature of these messaging systems makes even a heart felt emotional
plea come across as distant and cold text rather than seeing the living
person behind it. At the same time it has unique elements of comic
timing and connection to the mundane world which lend it a
believability and flexibility to be able to fit a variety of
narrative needs. When it is takes centre stage it can craft a visual
novel which utilises the contrasting feelings of distance and
humanity to deal with strong and emotive themes. It can also be
second fiddle to the main means of story presentation in order to add
an in-universe excuses for extra character nuggets. Let’s check our
phones and find out how messages can tell their own stories.
So Close Yet So Distant
Every
form of message based communication has some restriction of their
length be that an artificial limit such as with a social media
platform like Twitter, their conversational nature or simply space on
the piece of paper. This feature means they can never fully express
the complex emotions and intent present in a face to face
conversation and it inherently lends them a slightly detached feeling. Of course humans naturally fill in this gap with what they
think the other party is trying to express through their words, yet
language is a tricky thing filled with double meanings or vague
insinuations so it is hard to know for certain what the writer is
thinking. Visual novels can take advantage of this ambiguity when
using such messages as part of their narrative in order to tread a
line between the personal and abstract which would not be possible in
a traditional structure. Using them allows the game to shape an
experience where the player unknowingly distances themselves from
either their actions or surrounding events through a mixture of their
assumptions based on they believe the character is saying and a
general sense of watching something from afar provided by the lack of
a standard personal presentation. Resulting from this basis can be a
variety of different thematic and narrative tricks depending on what
the developer is aiming for. It can be anything from pulling the rug
from under the player by undermining the assumptions they made
throughout the game to encouraging an almost archaeological
examination of the actions of people from the distant past.
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| A lot of this game comes down to messages and they hold a lot of power over how things turn out |
Take
NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE as an example, here the players interactions with
the main character Ame-chan takes place over a pseudo-LINE messaging app and
they see more of her feelings through her multiple social media
feeds. The player is tasked with managing her life and streaming
career and this stat based gameplay helps the messages distance the
player from their own actions. As a result they will experiment with activities which are evidently self destructive since they have
unknowingly reduced Ame-chan to the sum of her texts so when things go
wrong it comes as a shock. Despite these repeated disasters, the
message system will lure them back into a daze where they will
continue to dive into other problematic situations. Later the game
makes more direct use of this distance to address the nature of the
player’s relationship with Ame-chan and how it might not be healthy
for either participant. This is a style of storytelling which NEEDY
GIRL OVERDOSE could not have effectively achieved through a more
traditional narrative presentation as it helps Ame-chan be someone
the player is familiar with yet also someone they make do
damaging things to in the name of curiosity.
Messages As Secondary Narrative
When
the messages are not in the spotlight, their role gains a
flexibility which makes them perfect to slot alongside the ongoing
story. In most cases this takes the form of some supplementary
messaging system, such a mobile phone or email inbox, which regularly
shows communications from characters not present in a scene. These
have no plot importance and instead aim to flesh out the cast while
providing a few laughs and humanising them. It is the space where all
the smaller events go so they will not interfere with the pacing of
the overall narrative and this makes them an excellent place to
explore their character quirks while keeping the player firmly in
control of the experience. Over the long term they can still have
their own minor plot threads covering a series of incidents from the
character’s everyday lives crafted in such a way as to provide a
sense of them not simply disappearing from existence the moment they
are off screen. An approach like this one places an emphasis on the
messages’ personal qualities since their distant feeling nature
merges into their role as background elements which helps highlight the
contrasting aspect. They are chatty and low stakes back and forths
between two or more friends who are not expecting their words to be
considered in depth and are just having a good time.
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| Each character has a distinct style of messaging which makes them more memorable |
Perhaps the most
well know example of such a system is the text messages from Steins
Gate. At regular intervals the player will receive texts from the
cast and they can choose to reply to them by selecting a highlighted
word from the text. These are
entirely optional and filled with jokes and easter eggs for the
player to discover alongside the various outcomes to the
conversations. None of them have any form of tension and they are
instead a catalogue of their everyday lives as each intersects with
Okabe’s. This gives the game a sense of the greater world outside
of all of the time travelling drama and how the mundane continues to
march on. Due to the importance of the phone to the plot this message
system occasionally gets hijacked by the story which feels like an
invasion of a private space and helps underscore its significance.
Telling A Story Through Snippets
Encouraging
an archaeological approach to engaging with the narrative is another
way message systems can be used to engineer a unique visual novel
experience. Through giving the player a series of written items covering a span of time for the fictional setting, the game can
create the feeling of having uncovered the truth about what is going
on as the player reads between the lines, even if in reality they are being
lead by the nose. Promoting a sense of narrative exploration is
important for games which aim to get the player to see a bigger
picture where there is no clear cut person to mark as an antagonist
and instead the problem is more inherent to the world they inhabit. The feeling of distance
offered from these messages is put next to their often deeply
personal perspectives on what is happening around them in order to
form a patchwork of clashing facts and beliefs alongside the results
of their interactions. It can also exist alongside more direct storytelling with characters
on screen so long as they react in time with the player and promote
the same overall themes as the messages.
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| If a game gives you a family tree then you know what you are in for |
Analogue: A Hate Story perfectly embodies this
use of messages as an archaeological expedition into a selection of
themes and ideas. It puts the player into the role of someone sent to
investigate the fate of the generation ship Mugunghwa and they must
examine the dead crew’s logs to determine how things went wrong.
These logs are the most intimate thoughts and recordings of these
people which they never imagined anyone else would view. As such they
contain snippets of their lives without context since the person who
wrote it would not have needed it to understand what was going on at the
time since they were there. This is cleverly used by the game to control the player’s
perspective on events and quietly guide them through this tragic
journey. Having a setting which is vaguely historical in the way it
resembles classical Korea helps sell this feeling of the messages
as a form of archaeology by placing it within a sense of the past
despite the sci-fi setting. Accompanying the player on this
expedition are a pair of AIs *Hyun-ae and *Mute who offer their
contrasting opinions on what the player uncovers. *Hyun-ae has a
modern perspective on the world and one the player is likely going to
immediately identify with while *Mute is much more traditional in her
sentiment, in particular when it comes to a woman’s role, yet still
displays a sympathetic angle to the suffering of others even if she
disagrees with them. They are a living manifestation of the themes
presented through the dead’s messages and work to coherently
present the core ideas of the work.
Conclusion
Adopting
a message system as a means of presenting the narrative offers visual
novels a great deal of flexibility with how they play with feelings
of distance and intimacy. It can contort the player’s perspective
on people and lead them to perform actions they might not otherwise
only to be confronted with the consequence of their disasters. An
archaeological approach to the messages can be encouraged in order to
give the player the thrill of uncovering something new under their
own steam while witnessing events from different angles. When the
messages are a side element they can be a fun distraction which feeds
the player all kinds of entertaining nuggets and character moments.
Overall if you are looking for a strong and immediately
understandable framework to add some distinctive avenues for
expression which naturally flow into a visual novel then a message
system might well be what you are looking for.
