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is there a thread for visual novels anywhere?
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Aug 26, 2013 03:25
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exquisite tea posted:In Gone Home 2 an industrial accident has left Katie Greenbriar a paraplegic with a hook for a hand who must perform sick-rear end trickshots in order to examine household objects. Man, if the Gone Home and Octodad teams got together...
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Aug 26, 2013 03:43
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A Major Fucker posted:is there a thread for visual novels anywhere? There's one in ADTRW, never read it though.
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Aug 26, 2013 03:47
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Just finished the game and loving loved it. I know I'm a little late to the party though and don't feel like reading through tons of pages of people being pedantic and angry so I'm just going to ask, is it possible to fill out all of the slots in your inventory? After completing the game the only thing I actually had to look up was how to get into the safe but I just want to make sure I didn't miss anything though I feel like I did a thorough job of exploring. e: also I don't know if the lightbulb was meant to pop when you picked up the crucifix but I held on to that thing for dear life for a while 
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Aug 26, 2013 04:10
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Yodzilla posted:is it possible to fill out all of the slots in your inventory? There are only six slots to be filled up in the inventory. There are also 23 notes in total and a 24th hidden note.
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Aug 26, 2013 04:21
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Yodzilla posted:Just finished the game and loving loved it. I know I'm a little late to the party though and don't feel like reading through tons of pages of people being pedantic and angry so I'm just going to ask, is it possible to fill out all of the slots in your inventory? After completing the game the only thing I actually had to look up was how to get into the safe but I just want to make sure I didn't miss anything though I feel like I did a thorough job of exploring. No, the items you hang on to don't matter. If you're going for a completion run, check your journal to make sure there are 23 journal entries. If you see a single missing entry, then you've found them all. The 24th is an easter egg.
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Aug 26, 2013 04:23
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Yodzilla posted:Just finished the game and loving loved it. I know I'm a little late to the party though and don't feel like reading through tons of pages of people being pedantic and angry so I'm just going to ask, is it possible to fill out all of the slots in your inventory? After completing the game the only thing I actually had to look up was how to get into the safe but I just want to make sure I didn't miss anything though I feel like I did a thorough job of exploring. e;fb
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Aug 26, 2013 04:24
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The Saddest Rhino posted:There are only six slots to be filled up in the inventory. There are also 23 notes in total and a 24th hidden note. Ah okay. Yeah for the inventory I just noticed the black slots that zoomed in when you hover over them but I guess that was just leftover from dev/not used. As for the notes (jounals?) I guess I missed three. Dang. TychoCelchuuu posted:No you can't fill out the slots. Yes that thing was supposed to happen. Unfortunately when you say "just finished the game and loving loved it" what you fail to realize is that for very important reasons it is impossible for you to have loved this as a game or something so really you should feel betrayed that you're posting about this in the "games" subforum and not in some "nongames" ghetto where all the nongames go to loving die so that true gamers like The Shortest Path don't have to have their hobby sullied by bullshit like Gone Home which tricks people into thinking it's a game by selling itself on Steam and being reviewed by game journalists. What a loving breach of trust. I feel so guilty on the part of the developers, to whom I previously felt a connection for a number of reasons, that I'm going to go slit my throats in a bathtub and, as I bleed out, I will write "Gone Home was a lovely game if it even was a game" on the wall, and the environmental storytelling my death will represent when my body is finally found will itself be a chilling reminder of how little Gone Home is a game, because life is not a game, and my life will be over. Well I'm learning Unity so give me your house's address and I'll make a 3D recreation of it so players can wander around and find clues about your death that lead them to this thread. And unlike Gone Home my game WILL have a ghost in it e: did i say game?? i meant twenty dollar scam Yodzilla fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 04:24
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Don't go for the 24th until you've completed everything else. Maybe you can't, anyway. But if you run across how to get it, just hold off. 
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Aug 26, 2013 04:25
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TychoCelchuuu posted:She didn't go to the concert. The ticket is unripped. OH poo poo! That makes me so happy. It makes the story that much better. Like, she chose, at that moment to be with her husband. Awesome. It seems more meaningful since it is a conscious choice, than, a meandering back to reconciliation.
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Aug 26, 2013 04:31
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EMILY BLUNTS posted:Don't go for the 24th until you've completed everything else. Maybe you can't, anyway. But if you run across how to get it, just hold off. What? I finished the game, but what?
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Aug 26, 2013 04:32
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There are few bigger wastes of time than trying to definitively, categorically claim that a creative work doesn't belong in a specific genre or classification. The creator of a work can say something about what they think about their work, critics can say what they want, and the audience can say what they want, and they can all disagree, but nobody's going to be right, so everyone should probably just drop a pair of their favorite deal w/it shades and go on with their lives. If you don't like a game butting up against your favorite games, cool good on you. Obviously other people DO like it, and it's not because they're confused sheep and you are the lord and savior of video games and their unsullied sanctity ... you just have different tastes. (Eg: I don't think huge bombastic single player corridor shooters are really any different than Gone Home. From a raw "number of designed systems actively colliding with each other and the player to produce interesting results" standpoint, they're pretty comparable with the marked difference that your cursor shoots out pictures of bullets instead of an invisible physics hand into the world. I'm not going to go on some screed about it though because I think they're all games, just some of them are games that aren't for me because I find them dumb.)
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Aug 26, 2013 04:36
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TychoCelchuuu posted:She didn't go to the concert. The ticket is unripped. Oh well dang, I didn't pick up on that. Thanks.
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Aug 26, 2013 04:36
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Yodzilla posted:Well I'm learning Unity so give me your house's address and I'll make a 3D recreation of it so players can wander around and find clues about your death that lead them to this thread. And unlike Gone Home my game WILL have a ghost in it You know, you say you just finished Gone Home, but clearly you didn't see everything... ja2ke posted:There are few bigger wastes of time than trying to definitively, categorically claim that a creative work doesn't belong in a specific genre or classification. Regardless of how he felt about it, David Foster Wallace's "Westward the Course of Empire" not only flicked on but basically blew the lightbulb in my brain that has to do with genre and poo poo like that. People waste so much loving time and text arguing in the most superficial possible way about what to call things. I feel vaguely embarrassed by my own contribution to the argument about Gone Home, even if I still think I was on the right side of it. Oh, and re the perception of Gone Home as a horror game: I know the Fullbright Company didn't take any deliberate steps to advertise the game as that or deceive people about it, but there's still an atmosphere of dread and tension involved in Gone Home and rooms/information/gags clearly designed to play with that expectation and the notion that the solution to the central puzzle or outcome of the exploration may be fantastic or macabre. To wit, I don't think artists do have an obligation to give people what they expect or want, but in this specific case I do agree that Fullbright wasn't trying to sell the game under a false pretense. Baku fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 04:38
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Sometimes just sometimes, a story has a gun and it isn't fired. Usually, that makes it a better story.
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Aug 26, 2013 05:08
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HOTLANTA
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Zombies' Downfall posted:Oh, and re the perception of Gone Home as a horror game: I know the Fullbright Company didn't take any deliberate steps to advertise the game as that or deceive people about it, but there's still an atmosphere of dread and tension involved in Gone Home and rooms/information/gags clearly designed to play with that expectation and the notion that the solution to the central puzzle or outcome of the exploration may be fantastic or macabre. To wit, I don't think artists do have an obligation to give people what they expect or want, but in this specific case I do agree that Fullbright wasn't trying to sell the game under a false pretense. I thought they overdid it a bit with the random footsteps and ghost whisperings because otherwise everything else that made the game spooky had a perfectly reasonable explanation or could just be coincidence. If you're gonna go that far just go all the way and have Oscar's giant, disembodied head come at you when you pick up the toy horse a la White Face. How great would it have been reading the reactions to that?
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Aug 26, 2013 05:13
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I think someone pointed out earlier in this thread (or maybe just somewhere else on the Internet) that there's a divide between gamers and non-gamers when it comes to how much horror they expected from Gone Home. Gamers seem to expect a monster or a ghost or something at any moment, even to the point of getting pissed off at the false advertising when it's not a horror game (even though it doesn't really advertise itself like Amnesia or any other horror game). The Ouija board and stuff are seen as misleading hints to keep on edge. Non-gamers, meanwhile, who go into the game with no reason to believe a monster is going to try to eat them (because monsters don't exist) never even seem to mention that they thought it might be a horror game. I mean, it's night and the house is dark, and there's stuff like the cross jump scare and the hair dye fakeout, but it's not like there's a constant sense of "am I going to be attacked" for them. Whoever originally pointed this out said (I think) that this is probably because gamers have been conditioned by all this horrible stuff in games - there are never any simple games where you're just in a house peacefully picking stuff up and reading notes.
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Aug 26, 2013 05:14
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Republicans posted:I thought they overdid it a bit with the random footsteps and ghost whisperings because otherwise everything else that made the game spooky had a perfectly reasonable explanation or could just be coincidence. If you're gonna go that far just go all the way and have Oscar's giant, disembodied head come at you when you pick up the toy horse a la White Face. How great would it have been reading the reactions to that? I feel like every time I've walked around in a big dark old house I've heard whispers/footsteps that weren't there. I think that's just the natural ambiance to a place like that.
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Aug 26, 2013 05:17
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I mean where else would stealth games get the phrase "maybe it was just the wind."
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Aug 26, 2013 05:18
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My point is there's plenty of spooky old house noises in the game as it is that make the presence of a ghost ambiguous, but they couldn't help but add a couple things that make it much less ambiguous. That place is haunted.
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Aug 26, 2013 05:24
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I had a very active imagination as a kid and I still do and having grown up in an old house was stressful as hell at times. I think if mine were as big and horrible as the one in Gone Home I would have gone insane from fear.
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Aug 26, 2013 05:28
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Your parents ever make you take the trash out after dark and the trash can was kept at the creepiest part of outside your house? Mine did that on purpose and one time there was a raccoon but all I could see were its eyes looking at me from the darkness. 
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Aug 26, 2013 05:49
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TychoCelchuuu posted:I think someone pointed out earlier in this thread (or maybe just somewhere else on the Internet) that there's a divide between gamers and non-gamers when it comes to how much horror they expected from Gone Home. Gamers seem to expect a monster or a ghost or something at any moment, even to the point of getting pissed off at the false advertising when it's not a horror game (even though it doesn't really advertise itself like Amnesia or any other horror game). The Ouija board and stuff are seen as misleading hints to keep on edge. Non-gamers, meanwhile, who go into the game with no reason to believe a monster is going to try to eat them (because monsters don't exist) never even seem to mention that they thought it might be a horror game. I mean, it's night and the house is dark, and there's stuff like the cross jump scare and the hair dye fakeout, but it's not like there's a constant sense of "am I going to be attacked" for them. Whoever originally pointed this out said (I think) that this is probably because gamers have been conditioned by all this horrible stuff in games - there are never any simple games where you're just in a house peacefully picking stuff up and reading notes. I was talking with people on the Steam Forums for GH tonight and did end up going back through and looking at the promotional material for the game. It's a common complaint that the game did a bait and switch with the horror elements (which is apparently bad and not awesome  ).Really, the only thing that implies "scary" is the fact that it's an old house and it's poorly lit. That one thing is so drilled into our minds that it overrides all the other evidence against it. So I think your point about gamers vs non-gamers is interesting, because that is exactly what I figured was going on as well.
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Aug 26, 2013 05:49
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The Shortest Path posted:See, this is exactly the problem I have with Gone Home and how it's being handled. Being "artistically impressive" and "accomplishing a narrative" have nothing whatsoever to do with being a good game. At all. People who like Gone Home for those qualities do not like it for being a good game, they like it for being artsy or whatever. Calling it a good game based on those qualities that have nothing to do with being a good game is ridiculous, and that is effectively why I went into getting this game with completely wrong expectations, because I assume that a good game has the elements of a good game and not art or a storybook. If it is good because of its narrative properties, then it's still a good game. A thing that is good and is also a game is a good game.
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Aug 26, 2013 06:19
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Windows came out with this one amazing game called MS Bob that has a ton in common with Gone Home. The house in MS Bob can be as big as you want it though and you can customize pretty much anything so it's basically a better version of Gone Home that was made like 20 years prior. I would make personal vaults and fill it with gold (which were really just gold colored Hanukkah coins but the game left it up for me to draw my own conclusions about their purpose) and then hide it behind a painting or something. But the cool part was that even though the hidden entrance was just like a small hole in the wall once you went through it the entire room was life-size. Blew my mind. If anyone likes Gone Home then I highly recommend MS Bob. Edit at 1:17 AM Central time, August 26th 2013 CE: I also forgot to mention that you could pick a companion to adventure with you. I ALWAYS picked the dog. RobTG fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 07:16
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DreamShipWrecked posted:I was talking with people on the Steam Forums for GH tonight and did end up going back through and looking at the promotional material for the game. It's a common complaint that the game did a bait and switch with the horror elements (which is apparently bad and not awesome I'll just spoiler all this, to be safe: I think one of the stronger points of the game (though I say this having gone into it without knowing anything about it beforehand) is that it plays a lot with horror elements to build its feeling of dread--well beyond just using an old, poorly-lit house. It's hard to list all the ways, but here are several: the severe weather warnings, the TVs left on and receiving only static, the creaks. The notes describing the house's original owner as having gone crazy. The basic set-up, where you're given Sam's note and know only that something serious has happened, but have no idea what. The messages on the answering machine. The red lights outside the attic, the warnings not to go in there. Sam's ghost hunts (and the pentagram, ouija board, etc). The lack of lights in the basement. The jump scare. Several rooms looking as if they have been ransacked with no explanation (until you piece it together at the end). At least for me, going into it blindly, it wasn't ever clear if any of this would lead up to what seemed an inevitable, horrific conclusion--which generated a sense of tension and dread that I think was necessary to sustain the game's narrative (that is, the game wouldn't be very interesting if you started it knowing that your parents were off at a retreat and your sister had run away). Though now that I think about it, planting red herrings is probably one the main things the game does with its narrative. You suspect for the majority of the game that the father is an alcoholic failed author without any real hope of turning things around, and that the mother has given up on her marriage entirely. You suspect the worst for Sam--probably the fake-foreshadowing that got me the most was the poster of Millais' Ophelia in Sam's room--even up to the very end, when you explore the last room in the attic. So it seems to me that the narrative builds these false expectations of the worst possibilities just in order to subvert them with the realities of the (relatively) mundane--and I would argue that it does this particularly because the standard in games is to always strive for the most exceptional, the most horrific things and it always relies on the protagonist to save the world. Here the protagonist is powerless except to understand, and here the story is well within the confines of the every-day (if a particularly dramatic day, maybe). It's an interesting inversion, and it's good to see a game make the argument that a game can be about more than the most epic of epic battles, or about more than the most unreal of unreal storylines. ...That being said, I think there are still a lot of problems with the game. What teenager leaves all sorts of revealing notes scattered all over the house, especially when she doesn't want anyone to know what happened? What kind of would-be adulteress leaves evidence in the same bedroom she shares with her husband, or outright incriminating letters sitting in the dining room? Why would Sam leave, begging her sister not to tell her parents where she went, without bothering to erase the messages on the answering machine from her girlfriend? Who locks the hallway to the kitchen? Who has that many radios, or that many 3-ring binders (or so many iterations of the other generic junk)? Basically, the constraints used to manage the flow of the narrative ended up seeming somewhat forced to me, and it took a lot away from what otherwise seemed to be a natural narrative progression. So, Gone Home isn't perfect at all, but I really hope we see more games building off what it's done.
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Aug 26, 2013 07:48
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Extortionist posted:I'll just spoiler all this, to be safe: As it pertains to people hiding stuff, I think there's actually something realistic about this for several reasons. Nobody is as good at hiding evidence as they like to imagine they are, sometimes people either consciously or subconsciously want their secrets to be found out, and a common thread through many of the families I've been close to is that they have an interesting way of selectively ignoring what's in plain sight - especially if it's inconvenient, scary, or disruptive to family life. The world is full of spouses who are the last to know their SO is cheating and gay kids who are really obviously gay or even literally out to everyone but their own family. Denial and desperation make people act funny. And poo poo, that doesn't even have to be dire, sad, or depressing. Love chooses to see less because it sees more, and all that.
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Aug 26, 2013 08:25
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With regards to the notes, the vast majority predate the past few days, so it's likely they were lying around the house for a while. Most are pretty innocuous in isolation, you need to consider them together to know what was going on. Sam's note probably related to the folder upstairs, which is the basis for the voiced bits. With regards to the doors being locked, that can apparently be turned off and you can experience the game absolutely any way you like. I think it's better to channel the player to some degree though, as there is a narrative arc to each character overall. Also, the house has that many radios because the father reviewed them for a living. It seems he was allowed to keep them, so it makes sense that the family would make use of them.
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Aug 26, 2013 08:41
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I played through this game twice this week and I really enjoyed it. I've always loved exploring detailed environments as well as environmental storytelling and piecing stories together, so this game just took all these elements I loved and shoved them into one package. I'm also happy that they managed to pull it all together and make a compelling game without throwing in prerequisite video game bullshit to pad it all out. The game isn't without issues but no game is perfect and this is still one of the most memorable games in recent memory. I really hope that this game stands as an inspiration to other developers to create new unique experiences like this. Now into the more spoilery chat: I never found the game creepy, even though I tried to go in as blind as possible I knew it wasn't going to turn into Amnesia and there was never any threat hiding in the shadows. That said, my name is also Sam, and the first thing I did when I walked into the empty house was what I would do if I was in Katie's shoes, I walked up to the answering machine to check the messages. When the machine started playing "Sam? Sam? Sam?" it gave me the willies a bit, especially the second message. After that I just found all the messages to Sam amusing every once in a while, especially on a meta level. SAM, STOP LEAVING THE LIGHTS ON. Okay, jeez. I must be an optimist because I never thought that the game was leading up toward a suicide at the end. After playing through the second time and trying to look at the final messages with that perspective I can certainly see where people are coming from, but things like the tire tracks and nametag in the garage, or some of the notes directly to Katie took me the other way. I completely missed the Oscar part of the story though, I forgot about the safe in the basement on my first run and never saw the hidden compartment in Terry's desk. One complaint with the game that I certainly agree with was about some of the things just lying out all over the house. Papers from months, even years ago just lying out in the open because? I understand why this is done as it was and it didn't detract from my enjoyment but when I started paying attention to exact dates on my second playthrough a few things just stuck out like that. I would be pretty interested to see someone create a timeline with all the material in the game in order to see how some events correlate. For example, I think the TV Guide excerpt about the de-gay camp was dated from before the parents found out about Sam, or that Terry's writing began to decline before he moved into the new house. I found the whole Allegra and the First Mate stories pretty neat in how they parallel Sam's growth, I didn't even connect the pirate flag above her bed until the second playthrough. It's also neat how both Sam and Terry use their creative writing to explore something personal. I guess it runs in the family. I noticed on the school slip where Lonnie was kicked out for the day where her father was contacted but never showed up. It paints a sad picture of her home life. I loved that the game ended where it did and lets you reflect on the events of the game and imagine where they lead, be it happily ever after or bittersweet fun while it lasts. I'm sad that it's time to close the book on this family and their stories, I'm impressed that I'm more attached to these characters after a 3 hour game than most characters in shows that last so many times longer. A great game that never needs a sequel, Gone Home 2: Wrong Address would likely feel tacked on and ruin the story we have now. However I wouldn't object to a "Director's Cut" like someone previously mentioned, perhaps one that adds a bit more variety in the objects around the house instead of the same binders and adds some more clues to the story. Sorry for adding to the spoiler wall this topic has become but this game has been rattling around in my brain every since I finished it and I love reading about it.
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Aug 26, 2013 09:02
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Fina posted:One complaint with the game that I certainly agree with was about some of the things just lying out all over the house. Papers from months, even years ago just lying out in the open because? I understand why this is done as it was and it didn't detract from my enjoyment but when I started paying attention to exact dates on my second playthrough a few things just stuck out like that. I would be pretty interested to see someone create a timeline with all the material in the game in order to see how some events correlate. For example, I think the TV Guide excerpt about the de-gay camp was dated from before the parents found out about Sam, or that Terry's writing began to decline before he moved into the new house.
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Aug 26, 2013 15:47
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I'm really enjoying the "NO YOU SHUT THE gently caress UP DAD, YOU'RE THE ONE THAT'S ANGRY AND YELLING!" that's going on, it really ties the game together. (see: diary excerpt played in dining room) edit: oops the discussion moved on from that, sorry. Ein fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 15:48
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I absolutely loved this. I'm glad I saw it pop up on the Steam new releases, I almost wrote it off as another interesting but dry experimental game like The Path or The Graveyard, but I gave it a shot after seeing so much buzz about it. Dear Esther is another obvious comparison, but I found that game to be beautifully presented but really cold and sterile in narrative. I was happy to find Gone Home feels very alive and dynamic in a way that most of its type haven't been able to pull off. It also made me a little nostalgic for the 90s, which is something I never really thought of before. The 90s was sort of a forgotten decade in that sense, it's too recent for serious nostalgia and was overshadowed by the 80s (of which there is plenty of misplaced nostalgia) and the excitement of the year 2000. But I'm just old enough to be nostalgic about it, I think. I hope this becomes some sort of sub-genre, games with lots of exploration and a well told story. There's an old horror adventure game called Scratches that had an old house exploration aspect that I loved, but it was bogged down under the weight of its increasingly ridiculous puzzles and story.
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Aug 26, 2013 16:10
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TychoCelchuuu posted:She didn't go to the concert. The ticket is unripped. Man, I'm so used to barcode tickets that get scanned and not ripped that this went completely over my head
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Aug 26, 2013 16:11
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OatmealRaisin posted:Man, I'm so used to barcode tickets that get scanned and not ripped that this went completely over my head Yeah I missed that too. Has anyone put together a calendar or timeline of all the stuff in this game? I was thinking about doing a second playthrough for that purpose but I figured someone else has probably done it already.
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Aug 26, 2013 16:16
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Cicadalek posted:This is a really weird thing to say given your professed love for Myst. If you remove the art and narrative from Myst it's just a bunch of puzzles. Puzzles are gameplay though.
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Aug 26, 2013 20:56
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Scyther posted:Puzzles are gameplay though. So is exploration.
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Aug 26, 2013 21:03
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Also, "puzzles" aren't always about putting the moon key that you got from the lion fountain into the sun door while pushing blocks onto the corresponding animals in the Chinese zodiac.
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Aug 26, 2013 21:41
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The door is sealed shut but there is a Christmas Duck shaped indentation in the lock.
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Aug 26, 2013 21:44
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The hardest puzzle of all is figuring out why anyone needs to give a poo poo.
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Aug 26, 2013 21:45
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I was disappointed that attempting to open the front porch door and leave the house at the beginning didn't just reveal a huge monster that kills you instantly ala Alone in the Dark.
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Aug 26, 2013 21:50
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