After a lot of time away, I just recently began skimming through the forum again, and I’d say I really like the community and how the discussions are well handled here. Though I have to admit: The only Visual Novel I’ve ever read from Key was Rewrite, and I only watched the anime versions of the other titles (I did love Air and cried at the end of Clannad like a little girl).
I planned on starting a topic about Umineko, since it’s pretty much my favorite novel/story ever, but I’m not sure if it’s okay to create an off-topic thread so specific here (don’t even know if it’s okay to create this one, so the admins can feel free to reprimand me), so I started this one.
So? Has anyone here ever played the Infinity Series or, by extent, any of the other titles created by the same main writers? (999 and Virtue’s Last Reward are examples). What are your thoughts on it?
Lemnisca translations did release I/O recently, which I thought was the most convoluted and borderline insane sci-fi story I’ve ever read.
Feel free to reference any Kotaro Uchikoshi/Takumi Nakazawa works without [spoiler] tags. You have been warned!
While the general VN thread is necessary, I’m willing to allow the occasional discussion thread for non-key works. I wouldn’t want the discussion here to get too stale by limiting ourselves to just Key stuff. As for an Umineko thread, be my guest.
I haven’t tried the infinity series yet, it’s been on my to-read list for a long time, but I’m a huge fan of the Zero Escape series (999 and VLR). I wasn’t expecting much from them, but the story blew me away and projected themselves right into my perhaps my all time favorite science fiction series. And the way Virtue’s Last Reward cleverly used the interactive medium to tell it’s story was brilliant.
you say it like that, but we all know you’ve been wanting an Umineko thread around here ever since the forums were up. Heads up though, I’ll probably take advantage of “allow[ing] the occasional discussion thread for non-Key works” when/if I find another VN that I’d like to write about; assuming you don’t mind.
while I personally didn’t like Ever 17, its still something I would recommend to someone looking for that genre, so make that 2 votes if you’re looking for something to play. I haven’t played Remember11 or Steins;Gate, but the latter is high up on my list of VNs to play.
I’ve played the infinity series, specifically Never7, Ever17 and Remember11. Haven’t started on I/O nor 12Riven though. Ever17 was indeed quite epic, the other games not much so. Remember11 was sort of confusing and felt rushed, whereas Never7 was still bordering on dating-sim type (they were probably trying to spin off from Memories Off at this point).
Since the title includes his name, though, to what extent was Kotaro Uchikoshi involved in the Infinity Series? I know he was the main writer of Ever17, but not sure how he participated in the other games. I’m a big fan of his, though I do hope he gets Zero Escape 3 up and running somehow
The main writers for the Infinity series were Takumi Nakazawa and Kotaro Uchikoshi, though if memory serves me right Uchikoshi was credited for main concept planning in Never7 and Ever17, so it’s safe to assume at least most of the story was his on those titles. Though I suspect Nakazawa was probably the one responsible for the “mindf**kery” included in all of the iterations, since he is the crazy one of the duo, even having more control over Remember11 (explaining why it is the most confusing of all three).
Actually the story goes a bit like this: Uchikoshi and Nakazawa worked together at the Infinity trilogy, with Uchikoshi having more control over Never7 and Ever17, and Nakazawa got responsible for Remember11 (my favorite by far). By the time of Remember11, KID was having financial problems (the reason why the entire third and final route of R11 was scrapped) and Nakazawa left the company soon after, whilist Uchikoshi stayed and wrote 12Riven. However, during 12Riven’s production time KID went bankrupt, and the rights for the infinity series and 12Riven were bought by Cyberfront, which allowed the project to come to an end, but 12Riven was actually planned to be the first game on a new “Infinity Trilogy”, something that never came to fruition.
So Uchikoshi moved on to become a writer for Chunsoft, in which he wrote 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward. Nakazawa on the other hand co-founded a new company called Regista, which gave birth to I/O (Tanaka Romeo even participated in this one’s planning) and most recently Root Double.
I know what twists you’re talking about, and most of them were pretty much the same from Ever17 and Remember11 (mostly the former). I did enjoy the story of VLR, but I had already predicted most of the major twists coming from a mile away. I was actually much more impressed by 999, where the DS’s dual screen architecture was used as a major plot point for the key twist. I really couldn’t see that coming, and it was awesome.
I liked Ever17 a lot, but I thought it had A LOT of boring parts before you could get into the meat of the routes, mostly because of all the dating-sim elements. When Coco’s route came along though, I had nothing but respect for the story haha.
Never7 marked the beggining of the series, so it’s mostly just a dating-sim with some sci-fi/darker elements. I find it very intriguing that the series evolved to become a hard sci-fi story.
Remember11 is my favorite one by far. I just loved almost everything about it, but the lack of a proper ending (that, as I explained, was scrapped later in production) did piss me off. Outside of that, I think Remember11 is pretty much the work of a genius, really.
I plan on giving it a chance in the future. People also really like the anime adaptation, but I personally dropped it after watching 7 episodes (too boring, also the protagonist irritates me a lot). It also doesn’t help that I completely hated the Chaos;Head anime and reviews for the original VN are mostly not very favorable. There’s also that other one, Robotics;Notes, but I don’t know if it’s any good.
Chaos;Head anime is just terrible compared to the VN, though Steins;Gate trumps it on all fields (though I guess C;H has more gore)
And thanks for the info, @Funchal99 I never really was aware of Takumi Nakazawa’s involvement. Now that’s probably gonna drive me to play I/O ASAP (the announcement of translation being completed totally flew over my head, it seems)
And I just found out the music in I/O was composed by onoken holyshitholyshitholyshit
If you didn’t like R11 too much, maybe you won’t dig into I/O. I mean, I did enjoy it and it has an awful lot of clever ideas, but Nakazawa just went batshit crazy in this one. Seriously, if you don’t read in the recommended route order, you’re gonna have a VERY confusing start, and the plot just gets more and more multiverse/symbolic kind of crazy. I seriously don’t think I’ve ever read anything that convoluted, and that’s saying something for anyone that’s a general fan of japanese storytelling XD. All in all, it was mostly a pleasant read though, especially Route B. But I really can’t understand what happens at the very end of the final route. I mean…not at all.
I’d say you should skip Never7. Sure, there’s references to it in Ever17 and all, but I didn’t really like it. Too much dating sim focus instead of the actual cool stuff. At least it is all ages.
What I hated the most about Remember11 were the unanswered questions. I can accept convolution as long as it is explained sooner or later. And I guess that wasn’t the writer’s fault, but rather, the lack of budget
In the case of I/O, yeah, it’s all explained…just in a very, VERY confusing and roundabout way. Except maybe for the “last true end” (if you read it, you’ll see what I mean by that)…I seriously can’t even begin to rationalize what the hell happened there.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention: Pepe, did you by any chance got 100% completion (I personally just dowloaded a complete save file) and saw the “Yukidoh Plan Fail” bad end? I think Nakazawa went out of his way to add more hints after he had to scrap the last route, and after you get 100% the last tips are unlocked, some which give a bit more insight into the whole thing. This particular bad end I mentioned is the starting point to actually begin reasoning, and when it’s all said and done there’s a fair amount of clues for you to theorize what they left open.
Yup I got 100% completion, including the tips (with the help of a walkthrough lol). But it still left me confused. Like how the hell was that experiment supposed to save his sister anyway? The most I can get out of is he was trying to summon Blick Winkel or somesort but that seems like a pretty cheap shot.
The Visual Novel is pretty great, but if you were irritated by the protag you may need to put up with it for a biiit longer. He doesn’t come out of his shell until the separate routes kick in… then he is great~
The Chaos;Head anime is universally considered as being horrible, but the VN is pretty good. I think you have to be a certain type of person to get through it though. The protagonist is pretty pathetic, and the actual viewpoints he expresses will make you incredibly cynical about life for a few days after finishing it, but the story and the mystery is great~ It is meant to portray a world where nothing is certain - where you never know if something really happened, or if it was just created by the protagonist’s schizophrenia. Kinda creepy really~
The Robotics;Notes anime wasn’t great, but I can imagine it being a good VN. It has all the material it needs to be great anyway.
I do hope he gets Zero Escape 3 up and running somehow