Recently I’ve been reading/playing Fate/stay night, a Japanese visual novel. (A “visual novel” is basically an illustrated choose-your-own-adventure, albeit with a much higher ratio of plot to choices). It’s interesting from an LW perspective because Eliezer is a fan (eg quoting it here, and apparently there’s a reference in HPMOR) and there are philosophical similarities with HPMOR and Eliezer’s work in general on topics like heroism and making an extraordinary effort, the notion of “something to protect”, etc.
Plot-wise, it’s an urban-fantasy-slash-romance story where ancient heroes are summoned to help mages like our reluctant hero fight a battle for the Holy Grail, which promises unlimited power. Like apparently a lot of VNs there are 3 “routes” where the main plot works out differently depending on an early choice. I’m halfway through the 2nd one right now.
Positives:
Fun setting.
Fun characters and interactions, good comedy at times.
Good art.
Excellent voice acting in the patched version.
Often gripping during the dramatic parts.
The secret identity of one of the main characters is pretty much maximally absurd and maximally awesome at the same time. Edit: having gotten further into Unlimited Blade Works, make that two of the main characters.
Good character development for the main character who starts out a bit chumpy and annoying in some aspects (“surely this woman who is 10x more powerful than me needs my protection”) but grows well.
Negatives:
Extremely long and long-winded. The narrative style during scenes is often repetitive, as is the overall story—you get similar exposition multiple times and I’ve gone through at least 15 breakfast scenes already.
The sex scenes (2 in the first route) were overly pornographic for my taste.
Some combat scenes are overly drawn out—plus the main character has been beaten/chopped half to death probably 10 times at least so far.
The background music is bad (but can be turned off).
It seems to be the default setting in the anime-related cluster of stories, but there’s really no good reason for this to have a high-school setting.
Depending on your taste:
Follows the “relatively normal guy somehow gets to choose between multiple attractive women” ‘harem’ structure.
I’d say it’s worth reading if the concept sounds interesting to you and you have the time to spare.
Note that the patch which removes the content also adds in PS2 specific content, like voices and CGs, the CGs are mostly on the final route. You can pick an option which only adds content and doesn’t remove any.
I know—as I said I was already halfway through UBW when I wrote that (just finished it now). It’s not that he survives that bothered me, more that it kept happening so much.
A few weeks ago I began reading the visual novel Umineko no Naku Koro ni, partially because I enjoyed the Higurashi anime and partially because Tuxedage said it was a mindfuck; I’m up to 3 of 8, and it’s becoming clear that this VN is going to take a while, to say the least. (I’ve never read any visual novels before, so I was not sure what to expect.)
The cramped window and tedium of having to constantly hit the spacebar to advance lines aside (I wish I could just tell it ‘my reading speed is 400WPM, please advance at that rate automatically except for dialogue’; visual novels seem to have the worst of both worlds of novels & anime, where they show as little information as a screen of an anime yet still force you to choose your own pacing without interaction being as easy as a novel where you read an entire page before needing to take any physical action), I’m enjoying it. It’s an interesting mystery setup, I was able to beat the protagonist to some of the solutions which gratifies my ego, and recently it showed off the best use ever of Hempel’s Raven which pleased the heck out of me.
On the downside, I happened to read ANN’s review of the second volume of the manga and apparently the author Ryukishi07 remarks that most readers will be convinced that it’s all supernatural and inexplicable (implying that it’ll turn out to be like Higurashi, with naturalistic explanations for all the events) - which makes me angry since in the dozens of hours I’ve spent reading this, I was pretty sure that we were being shown all the events from third-person omniscient perspective, and one of the narrative rules of third-person omniscient is that you don’t lie to the reader, and we see plenty of supernatural events from this perspective.
You’re on the third game. You’ve seen the same series of events, multiple times—but they’re not the same events, are they?
What you see may be true, without being what you think it is. Consider Battler’s position. Give it some thought. There are multiple layers of mystery in here.
Sure, but it’s one thing to show a true event and let the reader infer the wrong things, and another thing to simply lie entirely:
An example of the former: in episode 2, IIRC, there’s a nice bit where Beatrice tries to set up a locked room by granting as axiom both that the only key to the room was in someone’s possession the day before and also after the murder in that room, which is so suspiciously worded an affirmation that I instantly thought ‘oh, so someone could’ve taken and replaced the key at any time in between’, and sure enough, that’s what Battler then argued.
What I’m worried about is that we’re going to be told that the goats, the lightsabers, the parties at the end, the tea parties in another dimension, Rosa being fed her siblings—all the supernatural events we are shown, not told about, in which there’s no need for misleading inference or mistaken assumptions or interpretations—will be somehow waved away like ‘it was all a dream!’ and I’ll be mocked by the author for being so gullible as to believe what I saw on the screen. As Beatrice might say, there have to be some ground rules that both players follow or otherwise there can be no game. And going back on what was shown like that would definitely not be cricket.
What you see may be true, without being what you think it is. Consider Battler’s position. Give it some thought.
I certainly hope that there will be some satisfying resolution, given how much time I’ve already invested in reading Umineko, yes.
Re. 2: I’m pretty sure red text has been brought up already. I’m also pretty sure those battles happen, in the sense that someone experiences them, but they aren’t necessarily what Battler and Beatrice are arguing about.
Unfortunately (?), there are multiple possible interpretations of what happened in Umineko. I’m inclined to take it all literally, but bear in mind that if you do that, you cannot also assume simple causality on a single timeline.
If you haven’t already, this would be a good time to watch through Higurashi, Higurashi Kai and Higurashi Rei. Especially that last one.
Well, we’ll see what I think by the end of episode 8. I’m less than halfway through, if the episodes are all similarly-sized. I was just posting an interim review because it’s so darn long and arguably should be considered multiple works, some of which I’ve now finished.
What I’m worried about is that we’re going to be told that the goats, the lightsabers, the parties at the end, the tea parties in another dimension, Rosa being fed her siblings—all the supernatural events we are shown, not told about, in which there’s no need for misleading inference or mistaken assumptions or interpretations—will be somehow waved away like ‘it was all a dream!’ and I’ll be mocked by the author for being so gullible as to believe what I saw on the screen.
Update: this is exactly what happens. It even quasi-breaks the fourth wall to mock you. I had no words that day (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
...And then we get mocked some more in the final episode.
I will happily agree with you that certain bits of of the narrative are… decidedly not kosher in that regard.
Nevertheless, Beatrice does spell out the rules of the game, though she’s subtle about it—so once you know it’s a game, you do have somewhere to stand. And I at least ended up enjoying it anyway.
(You’re lucky. I didn’t realize it was supposed to be a soluble mystery until after it had been solved in-plot, which means I’ll never know if I could’ve solved it.)
The software is open-source. I had a look at it some time ago, and it’s also pretty hard to understand, but modifying it to your [gwern’s] specifications should be doable.
Umineko runs on Nscripter, which is closed source according to wiki. Fate/Stay Night runs on Kirikiri2, which is, indeed open source.
I’m not sure if the Umineko translation worked like the Tsukihime one, where they ported it over to the open source ONscripter, but AFAIK there is no way to change the text scroll behavior.
Just so you’re aware, it’s fairly easy to dump the script files from Umineko if you’d prefer to read it that way. There’s also an auto mode, which is irritatingly slow, and a skip mode, which I used to skim through the art after reading the script file.
You might prefer the story of the Higurashi visual novels to the anime, and the English release has a configurable (and pleasantly fast) auto mode.
Katawa Shouju. It’s a visual novel about a guy with a heart condition transferring to a school for the disabled. I’m not the biggest fan of the genre, but made an exception for this one.
I should probably plaster a gigantic trigger warning for this one, since, well, the big redeeming quality of this one is the ability to hit a lot of your emotions. I had a lonely childhood and adolescence, and I managed to mostly repress it until Hanako’s story arc triggered me pretty badly. If you’re particularly empathetic or have a history of loneliness, I wouldn’t dive into this one unless you’re willing to spend some time processing your emotions and having a good cathartic crying session.
Other Media Thread
Recently I’ve been reading/playing Fate/stay night, a Japanese visual novel. (A “visual novel” is basically an illustrated choose-your-own-adventure, albeit with a much higher ratio of plot to choices). It’s interesting from an LW perspective because Eliezer is a fan (eg quoting it here, and apparently there’s a reference in HPMOR) and there are philosophical similarities with HPMOR and Eliezer’s work in general on topics like heroism and making an extraordinary effort, the notion of “something to protect”, etc.
Plot-wise, it’s an urban-fantasy-slash-romance story where ancient heroes are summoned to help mages like our reluctant hero fight a battle for the Holy Grail, which promises unlimited power. Like apparently a lot of VNs there are 3 “routes” where the main plot works out differently depending on an early choice. I’m halfway through the 2nd one right now.
Positives:
Fun setting.
Fun characters and interactions, good comedy at times.
Good art.
Excellent voice acting in the patched version.
Often gripping during the dramatic parts.
The secret identity of one of the main characters is pretty much maximally absurd and maximally awesome at the same time. Edit: having gotten further into Unlimited Blade Works, make that two of the main characters.
Good character development for the main character who starts out a bit chumpy and annoying in some aspects (“surely this woman who is 10x more powerful than me needs my protection”) but grows well.
Negatives:
Extremely long and long-winded. The narrative style during scenes is often repetitive, as is the overall story—you get similar exposition multiple times and I’ve gone through at least 15 breakfast scenes already.
The sex scenes (2 in the first route) were overly pornographic for my taste.
Some combat scenes are overly drawn out—plus the main character has been beaten/chopped half to death probably 10 times at least so far.
The background music is bad (but can be turned off).
It seems to be the default setting in the anime-related cluster of stories, but there’s really no good reason for this to have a high-school setting.
Depending on your taste:
Follows the “relatively normal guy somehow gets to choose between multiple attractive women” ‘harem’ structure.
I’d say it’s worth reading if the concept sounds interesting to you and you have the time to spare.
Note that there’s a sex-less edition available, if you prefer.
It doesn’t bother me that much, I just wish it was a little more realistic rather than like something out of a porno.
Note that the patch which removes the content also adds in PS2 specific content, like voices and CGs, the CGs are mostly on the final route. You can pick an option which only adds content and doesn’t remove any.
This gets explained.
I know—as I said I was already halfway through UBW when I wrote that (just finished it now). It’s not that he survives that bothered me, more that it kept happening so much.
How are you reading it? (Platform)
PC.
A few weeks ago I began reading the visual novel Umineko no Naku Koro ni, partially because I enjoyed the Higurashi anime and partially because Tuxedage said it was a mindfuck; I’m up to 3 of 8, and it’s becoming clear that this VN is going to take a while, to say the least. (I’ve never read any visual novels before, so I was not sure what to expect.)
The cramped window and tedium of having to constantly hit the spacebar to advance lines aside (I wish I could just tell it ‘my reading speed is 400WPM, please advance at that rate automatically except for dialogue’; visual novels seem to have the worst of both worlds of novels & anime, where they show as little information as a screen of an anime yet still force you to choose your own pacing without interaction being as easy as a novel where you read an entire page before needing to take any physical action), I’m enjoying it. It’s an interesting mystery setup, I was able to beat the protagonist to some of the solutions which gratifies my ego, and recently it showed off the best use ever of Hempel’s Raven which pleased the heck out of me.
On the downside, I happened to read ANN’s review of the second volume of the manga and apparently the author Ryukishi07 remarks that most readers will be convinced that it’s all supernatural and inexplicable (implying that it’ll turn out to be like Higurashi, with naturalistic explanations for all the events) - which makes me angry since in the dozens of hours I’ve spent reading this, I was pretty sure that we were being shown all the events from third-person omniscient perspective, and one of the narrative rules of third-person omniscient is that you don’t lie to the reader, and we see plenty of supernatural events from this perspective.
EDIT: final thoughts in my review
There’s lying, and there’s lying.
You’re on the third game. You’ve seen the same series of events, multiple times—but they’re not the same events, are they?
What you see may be true, without being what you think it is. Consider Battler’s position. Give it some thought. There are multiple layers of mystery in here.
Sure, but it’s one thing to show a true event and let the reader infer the wrong things, and another thing to simply lie entirely:
An example of the former: in episode 2, IIRC, there’s a nice bit where Beatrice tries to set up a locked room by granting as axiom both that the only key to the room was in someone’s possession the day before and also after the murder in that room, which is so suspiciously worded an affirmation that I instantly thought ‘oh, so someone could’ve taken and replaced the key at any time in between’, and sure enough, that’s what Battler then argued.
What I’m worried about is that we’re going to be told that the goats, the lightsabers, the parties at the end, the tea parties in another dimension, Rosa being fed her siblings—all the supernatural events we are shown, not told about, in which there’s no need for misleading inference or mistaken assumptions or interpretations—will be somehow waved away like ‘it was all a dream!’ and I’ll be mocked by the author for being so gullible as to believe what I saw on the screen. As Beatrice might say, there have to be some ground rules that both players follow or otherwise there can be no game. And going back on what was shown like that would definitely not be cricket.
I certainly hope that there will be some satisfying resolution, given how much time I’ve already invested in reading Umineko, yes.
Re. 2: I’m pretty sure red text has been brought up already. I’m also pretty sure those battles happen, in the sense that someone experiences them, but they aren’t necessarily what Battler and Beatrice are arguing about.
Unfortunately (?), there are multiple possible interpretations of what happened in Umineko. I’m inclined to take it all literally, but bear in mind that if you do that, you cannot also assume simple causality on a single timeline.
If you haven’t already, this would be a good time to watch through Higurashi, Higurashi Kai and Higurashi Rei. Especially that last one.
Well, we’ll see what I think by the end of episode 8. I’m less than halfway through, if the episodes are all similarly-sized. I was just posting an interim review because it’s so darn long and arguably should be considered multiple works, some of which I’ve now finished.
Update: this is exactly what happens. It even quasi-breaks the fourth wall to mock you. I had no words that day (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
...And then we get mocked some more in the final episode.
Don’t worry, even if it doesn’t give you a satisfying resolution, it does give you a hafu or two for your list.
If it does, I will be a little disappointed in the comprehensiveness of http://vndb.org/ which I had already mined for hafu characters.
It’s very spoilery and not terribly straightforward, so I’m not surprised it’s missing.
Ah. Yeah, that was a little bit weird. I still think they should’ve included it, though...
I will happily agree with you that certain bits of of the narrative are… decidedly not kosher in that regard.
Nevertheless, Beatrice does spell out the rules of the game, though she’s subtle about it—so once you know it’s a game, you do have somewhere to stand. And I at least ended up enjoying it anyway.
(You’re lucky. I didn’t realize it was supposed to be a soluble mystery until after it had been solved in-plot, which means I’ll never know if I could’ve solved it.)
I don’t know if this uses the same software as Fate, but if so, try using your scroll wheel. I find it smoother than keys or clicking.
Alas, my trackball has no scroll wheel. Sounds like it’d be hard to know when to stop, too.
The software is open-source. I had a look at it some time ago, and it’s also pretty hard to understand, but modifying it to your [gwern’s] specifications should be doable.
Umineko runs on Nscripter, which is closed source according to wiki. Fate/Stay Night runs on Kirikiri2, which is, indeed open source.
I’m not sure if the Umineko translation worked like the Tsukihime one, where they ported it over to the open source ONscripter, but AFAIK there is no way to change the text scroll behavior.
They did indeed port it to ONscripter, so that’s the one I’m referring to.
I remember doing.. something.. to the text scroll behaviour, though not what. The source isn’t that impenetrable.
Just so you’re aware, it’s fairly easy to dump the script files from Umineko if you’d prefer to read it that way. There’s also an auto mode, which is irritatingly slow, and a skip mode, which I used to skim through the art after reading the script file.
You might prefer the story of the Higurashi visual novels to the anime, and the English release has a configurable (and pleasantly fast) auto mode.
Katawa Shouju. It’s a visual novel about a guy with a heart condition transferring to a school for the disabled. I’m not the biggest fan of the genre, but made an exception for this one.
I should probably plaster a gigantic trigger warning for this one, since, well, the big redeeming quality of this one is the ability to hit a lot of your emotions. I had a lonely childhood and adolescence, and I managed to mostly repress it until Hanako’s story arc triggered me pretty badly. If you’re particularly empathetic or have a history of loneliness, I wouldn’t dive into this one unless you’re willing to spend some time processing your emotions and having a good cathartic crying session.