Hey all
Noticed sekaiproject seems to be pushing out visual novels via KS like there is no tomorrow. While im backing for physical copies most times (drm free) i am wondering if there is any chance of them coming to GOG one day (i have zero interest in evil empire of crumble store) ? (seems to be a fair few VN fans out there) - anyone else asked? (i just did).

cheers.

I'd honestly be more thrilled for AudioBooks than Visual novels... As those you can listen to while you carport or if you are a trucker you can make use of them on nearly a daily basis and always need more.


Games you play
Movies you watch
Music you listen to
Books you read
Comic books you read & glaze over the visual appeal, between 4 colors and full color spectrum and possibly adore the busts of females
Visual novels are comic books that require a computer and you push left & right to change pages, and may as well be PDF's you can use on your tablet... (Or that's my impression of them).

Sure i suppose it's a niche genre that might be good... But I honestly don't see the point.

I haven't asked myself but I'd love to see them come to GOG. I just backed CLANNAD for the physical copy earlier this week so I'll have to bring it up in the comments section next time I log into Kickstarter. It depends on the VN. Some are straight forward, single plot stories with the possible addition of animation, sound effects, music and voice acting. Those would certainly work as comics. There are others though that incorporate skills systems, branching story lines and gameplay elements that are a bit less straightforward than that. Of course, plenty of VNs should work on a tablet anyway.

In many ways Beyond Two Souls is a Visual Novel, or a cinematic experience. Why they couldn't just make it a video and let you just watch it from beginning to end with breaks every hour so you can do it in bite-sized chunks or all at once like a full season of Naruto, i couldn't tell you.

Sorta reminds me of Bioware and making me wonder why there is even dialog choices since they all equate to the same result no matter what you choose, the only difference is in the menu you might glow red, blue, white or some other color.

I don't know... if they were tablet titles i wouldn't complain as the low tech level required to run what is otherwise a pick up & play distraction while you're waiting at the doctor's office vs games you would sit down and expect to play for 3 hours sneaking, looting, assassinating, fighting, puzzle solving, etc.

From my point of view, a visual novel is a novel (book) that you read, except it also comes with music, a few images, sound effects and possibly voices; plus whatever gameplay elements it may have. But deep down, it's a book to read on my computer and I have no problem with that.

I know people who have tried to read a visual novel I liked a lot on a tablet, muting all sounds, and he had a far worse impression of it. So I'd say all those additions are important to the experience. I won't say it's better or worse to a traditional novel, it's just different.

I've never played Beyond: Two Souls, but I'm sure someone has done just that on YouTube. I'm fully okay with that. Adaptations of cinematic experiences or visual novels as TV series or movies just pick a path and do that anyway. Like I said, it kind of depends on the VN. I've played some that certainly fall into that group. There's probably a number of equivalents to the Mass Effect 3 endings somewhere as well...

I certainly don't see why audio can't come with a book. Years ago with Learn another language, they included a audio cassette with audio samples for you to listen to, easily from 1990 and on it could have been on CD for background noise, music or whatever and you could change the track selection in order to keep the vibe of certain environments much better. Yeah talking about how this song was hypnotic and caused an old woman to weep in an event that took an hour to read in a chapter of a book definitely couldn't hurt from having that music present that you could listen to so long as it doesn't require events in order to toggle anything.


I'm suddenly reminded of listening to a fan made audio reading from The Hobbit where he read the first three chapters and even got into singing the sections, to which i transferred to the animated hobbit to listen to some of them to see how much they were different or if it kept with the story, which it curiously did with little fuss. Yet in the story the dwarves did this low hypnotic singing for supposedly a dozen minutes to a half hour telling the story of the entire group to that point; The more recent movie remake cut it short after 15 seconds or so making me felt cheated as it had started to sound really really good... Safe to say the remake and it's second half both failed to impress me...

I'd say there's an important difference from having some kind of background music related to a book and the OST of a visual novel, that will have the tracks set to specific sections of the story and will change accordingly. I guess the book could say "now listen to track 13" at specific points, but it's still quite different from a visual novel experience.

Personally, when I'm reading a book I'm reading and that's it. It's bad enough that I associate the lord of the rings to the spice girls because my sister kept listening to them next to me back when I read it for the first time.

True... But i think Bjorn Lynne got around that by making a cd track that went with the book and the titles of the songs strongly tied to the names of each chapter. I think it was Wolves of the Gods; Of course Thief of Walaria and Spirit Rider were the songs that introduced me to his awesome music... Course i think i downloaded them as high quality mp3 samples when MP3 was first becoming a big thing back in 1996-ish?

As for associating music to something, i know exactly how you feel. Although perhaps worse is if it's not music, i can't concentrate. I've tried where someone has a TV show on and for an hour i try to reread the last 2 paragraphs and failing before just slamming the book shut and waiting for it to be turned off or company to leave...

Just want to comment on this a bit.

Visual novels have varying levels of gameplay/interactivity. What you're describing is the least interactive form: Kinetic Novels. They're basically just books with visuals and music, plus perhaps the occasional animation and/or voice acting.

The level above that would be VNs that have simple branching story paths decided by your dialogue/action choices, much like a "create your own adventure" book.

Some VNs actually incorporate gameplay, though, from building up skills and making complicated decisions to progress your character (as in The Yawhg or Long Live the Queen) to having fully fledged rpg/dungeon dwelling segments (like Loren: the Amazon Princess).

While the defining characteristic of a VN is its comic book/manga styled storytelling, the variability of form in the genre is what allows it to stand uniquely from comics or audiobooks.

Oh, when I read, I tend to ignore the rest of the world. I can still get disturbed if my environment is too annoying, but as a homeless wandering pineapple I've learnt to deal with that for the most part. It's also true that I don't read as often anymore, part of the reason being that anything involving sounds and the use of earphones in general helps ignore my surrounding.

Anyway, I've never read a traditional book that is meant to go with specific music, and I'm kind of curious about how that would go. I still think that linking an entire chapter to a single song is lacking, without having tried it I wouldn't really know but I'd rather have dramatic music on the dramatic paragraph and action music on the action paragraph. A sudden change of background just as you go read the next line of text can be really powerful.

Granted, you may be able to do the same thing with an audio book, but I never tried any of those either. I'm of the opinion that the original is better unless proven otherwise, so I only consume adaptations when the originals are not available to me. I much rather read a book than have the same book read to me. Now, if there was some kind of audio entertainment, kind of like a native radio storytelling... something, I'd be interested in that.

True and i agree... But if i was a trucker, i could live with books being read to me, probably is about at half the speed of reading myself but 8 hours on the road is still 8 hours you can't look down at paper and read text and imagine while there's chances of pedestrians or other cars becoming merged with your vehicle, or your face merging with the wind-shield.

Regardless. If the visual novels make their way here, fine, i won't hamper them, nor will i urge them along. But audio books and albums not too unlike iTunes i certainly wouldn't turn away from.

If I was a trucker... well, I just wouldn't be a trucker, I really don't like driving (neither in real life nor in games). I'd much rather take a bus, thank you very much, and a big reason for that is precisely that I can read while on a bus. I can see how an audiobook can be useful there, and I also know people that listen to those while they go for a run. I'm in no way against audio books' existance, and in principle I wouldn't be opposed to them being sold here either. The more choice the better.

That said, if I have to choose between a distinct genre with many native works that play to that genre's strength and one whose main components are adaptations from a different one, I'm choosing the first one. I see much more of a point in visual novels than I see in audio books, which was the point I wanted to address from the beginning. Even more so in a store originally oriented towards videogames.

Trucking is suppose to pay pretty well... But i don't think i can submit myself to 8 hours of driving a day either...

Hey, I'm underpayed because I refuse to go to an office in a suit every day. In fact, the one time I wore a suit at work, it was expressly bought for me by my boss as office material. Now try to find enough money to make me do something I hate for 8 hours a day. Hint: you'll need a LOT.