Visual novels. They hold some infamy among internet culture. Not really games, more computer novel. The vast majority of them come from the Japanese market and very few have gained notice outside of Japan, and even less have gotten attention off the fact that there is, more often then not, a lot of sexual situations in them. Copulation! How scandalous. While some games like the Phoenix Wright series, Hotel Dusk, and Trace Memory are all great examples of enjoyable, funny, and genuinely interesting, these are the exceptions I'm talking about. This is a big assumption from someone pretty ignorant on the subject, but a vast majority of visual novels shown around tend to not be more then a lot of blatant smut.

I have, however, plated through one. Melty Blood is a fighting game series spun off from Tsukihime. I played Tsukihime because I had genuine interest in where the characters were from. The story was cool and I got a good novel out it, something that I felt the adult content only impeded. I enjoyed it as a novel, which made me thing at the time that there were some of these that really tried to tell a good story, but this was years ago and I didn't consider it since.

There is a forum I go to on a regular basis that...isn't exactly the height of intelligent conversation. I've been on it for five years tho and it's hard to leave when so many things get talked about. About four weeks ago in the video game section, someone brought up a visual novel they played called Yume Miru Kusuri. The thread bombed pretty hard. Check it here (NSFW). The first response sealed it's fate pretty well. For a few pages it became a breeding ground for trolls. Then a few people who decided to play the game came out and started to talk about it in a positive light, saying that it was pretty good storytelling and, like I said about Tsukihime, the adult content tended to detract from it. I don't know this, I didn't play it. While I did argue for the idea that it could be a good story (I'm "Banned?" in that thread), I also really did not want the trolls and flamers to win that conversation.

This is not what I'm talking about...

So...could visual novels actually be an output for great story? Sure. I enjoyed Tsukihime as a novel. People claimed that Yume Miru Kusuri was good. Fate/Stay Night was a visual novel that got turned into an anime, so it had to do something right. I remember a few of my friends showing genuine interest in finding out more about Fate/Stay Night. And when I ask that question, it's more in concern with visual novels that have adult content and scenes.

This is not what I'm talking about!

And then, two days ago, someone posted about another (NSFW) visual novel. Called Katawa Shoujo, the origination of this was from 4chan. I can hear you sighing from here. Because that seemed like such a selling point for the OP, the thread quickly deteriorated into nothing but "Hey, we can have sex right?" over and over and over. It didn't get the same defense as Yume Miru Kusuri. Dispite all this, I checked out it's website (SFW). I don't know why. I'll blame 2 A.M. curiosity. While I didn't go in with high expectations (this is 4chan after all), I was pretty taken aback at how well the people who were working on this presented themselves. It dosen't look like an amateur production in the least. Reading the history of development until now, it's amazing it even got off the ground and is what it is today. (I recommend reading that.)

The game is about a high schooler named Hisao Nakai who suffers from a chronic heart condition (one that I had myself in a much more minor form). He didn't know about it and has a heart attack one day, putting him in the hospital for four months. Because of his condition, his parents deem it necessary that he switch school to one more suited to his needs, one that specializes in kids in school with disabilities. When he gets out of the hospital and changes environments, he deals with some serious culture shock.

So, they have demo out which contains Act 1 of Katawa Shoujo. It's acceptable content, nothing anyone here can't take, SFW and the like. I downloaded and installed it and played for three hours. I can't remember the last time I sat down and read a book for three hours. I can't say that the writing was totally gripping and had me by the balls, but it was interesting enough and most of all, I was still amazed that this as an amateur team doing something like this. While I only have one experience to go off of in terms of what is professional and what isn't in the VN world, I was impressed. The art and writing were great and I didn't see any real flaws in what was going on. It was really good, and the complete opposite of everything you'd come to expect from a VN if you've been on the internet long enough.

This is what I'm talking about.

So...

Could visual novels actually be an output for great story?


Sure.

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I would have totally posted this on Japanator is it had a blog section, as it really has little to do with video games, but I assume we can still get some kind of interesting conversation out of it.


EDIT: Hidden and reposted because I actually started writing it four hours ago and that bumped it down as soon as it was made viewable.