This was something that was off-handedly mentioned in Baba’s start-of-year column, outlining his plans for the year. I don’t have the quote on hand, but he mentions how they would like to utilise E-mote (moving 2D) and VR (Virtual Reality) in future projects. Personally I’m all for seeing Key embrace new technologies, as they’ve been pretty loyal to the whole 2D unanimated visual novel thing for a long time now. Would love to see them shake it up a bit, considering there’s so many other prettier-looking VNs these days. What do you think? Or do you just want a Kud VR game?
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Baba just loves to jump on board with anything that is boppin, doesnt he 
Personally, I think E-mote is kinda stupid. At least the way the system is being used now. We know the Siglus engine is already powerful enough to do animation, though, so I’d love to see that.
I dont really think Key VNs would benefit at all from VR either. Or any VNs really. Some action stuff could be cool with it, yeah, but in the end, youre still just reading. I think you’d have to change what a VN is drastically to make it actually interesting in VR.
EDIT: I guess it cooooould be used for H-scenes… VR porn is already kinda an industry. And VisualArt’s certainly does a bunch of stuff that, uh, focuses on that. But again, youre still reading!
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I agree more or less, but I would love to see more animated sprites, 2D or 3D.
I actually really like the E-mote system. With Key I would buy a game either way, but with some companies I consider it a selling point - especially with more vapid. Its a small touch that helps the sprites feel alive to me.
VR…I was actually trying to think of how I would apply that VNs yesterday. I can’t think of a great way to have VR enhance something that still feels like a visual novel, but I am open to seeing what comes from people try.
I think Orito also talked about VR at some point. Not sure what it could be used for since I don’t have a lot of experience with the tech. I’ve talked about spacial awareness before, and I suppose VR could help with that, but it’s not like you can’t do it without as well. Harmonia showed us a use for animation, but one instance isn’t really much to go off of. It could be amazing or awful depending on the usage.
Hmm, curious to see what they’ll make of these systems. They both have quite a bit of potential to them.
E-mote thing I wouldn’t mind either way. I’m personally used to just the unanimated 2D characters.
One of the things that I actually really enjoyed a while back was when I first started playing the Hyperdimension Neptunia series and the characters had a breathing motion. That I really enjoyed for some reason even though it was simple thing.
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Hmm, VR being used for VNs, I wonder if that would be similar in a way to the more tame stories in Star Trek that involved the Holo Deck. They did call those Holonovels after all.
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Well, Tsunako’s characters are designed so that they move well.
Fairy Fencer F was also rather enjoyable… and iirc, they had e-mote in one of Date-A-Live games as well.
I won’t mind seeing VA 3D, but I hope they won’t go Illusion-way on it.
I have yet to see a VN with the E-mote system that doesn’t excessively exploit the more attractive features of female characters. If Key can actually use E-mote to enhance the stories they tell instead of simply using it because it looks cool and bouncing boobies and crap, I’d love to see that. Heck, I’d love to see a tech demo of Kanon or AIR using the E-mote system! 
As for VR, I don’t have any hands-on experience with it, but it might be interesting to see some Key projects on there. Maybe a LB-themed game where you play hide-and-seek or baseball or something…the sky’s the limit! ^^
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Oooh! When done well, E-MOTE is a very aesthetically pleasing system that does bring a lot more immersion in the game than still sprites, I find myself enjoying it quite a fair bit so having E-MOTE on an all-ages game that isn’t just there to accentuate chest sizes, as Eisen said, sounds quite lovely.
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One thing I think would be cool but not too far out is if they animated transitions between poses. Basically just like we have now with sprites but more elaborate than simple fades. With still poses and animations in between, you avoid the sometimes awkward idle loops and such.
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It’ll be interesting to see how character designs would change if they went through with E-mote.
I quite like the idea of utilizing the Emote as it can make the characters more lively instead of looking like they are standing still and it can enhance some of the comedic moments and dramatic moments too. VR on the other hand, I’m not sure what they are going to do with that, but I’m curious. It would be neat to actually be in the virtual world of a Key series; that is if they’re going to go in that direction.
Personally I can never see VR being used for a VN. More likely, it would be employed for smaller side projects.
…like a Kud simulator.
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Well, it would end up as interactive movies, rather than VN, I guess?
But… Kud simulator? Lets not even joke about that, okay?
As far as e-mote itself goes, there are more or less okay examples of its use and just outright awful. The worst part about e-mote is that pretty much everyone started to inject it anywhere and everywhere just because its popular.
As for VR, well. There is that one… game? Where you tutor a girl at summer (the one that is SFW). Something like that is probably possible. Still, I find that “talking” with her by moving your head around is just kinda retarded.
Kud simuator
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VR VNs would just be a blurry mess. I can’t imagine how frustrating it’d be to try and read it + navigate menus.
Something like Summer Lesson though would be cool.
While I agree that it would be very likely to turn out to be a bad idea, I also see possibilities for VR in places like the action that takes place in Angel Beats! It could also be a relaxing experience to just walk to school with Nayuki in Kanon, and see her go after every cat that she sees.
I think VNs with VRs are a high risk high reward thing. If anything I guess they’d turn out to be more like AB First Beat, where you get to choose where you want to go inside the school complex and you are given freedom to walk wherever you want and interact with people that are hanging around. Then, when you get to the location, everything occurs as if it was a cutscene with subtitles. You would also be given the opportunity to rewind if you missed a line.
Of course, all this would require perfect animations and it could get to a point where you no longer know if you are playing a VN or watching a 3D anime. If we are talking about our regular VN with its text box and character sprite, then I think VR doesn’t have a place in the genre.
All in all, this is the conclusion I came to.
I’m not a particular fan of E-mote for static poses (breathing and the obnoxious “chest physics”), but I’d like to see it in transitions between sprites and some particular actions (like Rin kicking Masato, for instance).
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Subtitles would be very awkward in VR.
You could make VR experiences set in VN worlds, but I don’t think VNs will be a thing for VR at least until we get higher res headsets.
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