Key’s works have been very influential in establishing the formula of galge/nakige, but sticking to a formula also discourages innovation within the medium. As visual novels, Key’s works have access to all kinds of tools like visuals, sounds and choices to enhance the experience, and they have made use of quite a few devices throughout the years.
The idea with this topic is for people to share ideas for things Key haven’t done yet but it would be cool if they did in the future. Alternatively, maybe you have some idea of how an existing Key work could have been improved through some clever device.
Note that I’m not talking about you wanting to see a specific plot or like a heroine with glasses (though that would be great thx). Focus on innovative or artistic usages of the medium from other visual novels, movies or whatever. Also tag any and all spoilers like this: (spoiler context)[spoiler] placeholder [/spoiler]
In general, I want Key to emphasize a three dimensional space more in their visuals and audio. It kinda bugs me how characters almost always face the screen and by extension the narrator. If two characters are having a conversation, they would logically face each other, but the presentation makes it look like they’re next to each other facing the narrator. One VN I always liked for it’s presentation and blocking is a little thing called Juniper’s Knot. It’s a short first person narrative, yet it’s almost entirely presented laterally like this. The character look at each other, away from each other and also move around along the X-axis. Key have done stuff like inserting characters into backgrounds and having the characters look away from the screen, but I just want them to do it more because a 3D space is cooler than flat sprites on flat BGs. In term of the audio, you can do some really cool stuff with 3D sound. This video is kinda lewd, but it’s a good example. With headphones you can hear how the girl’s voice comes from behind you, and she also switches which ear she talks into all the time. Sounds in VNs are pretty much always normal speech from straight ahead: there is so much room to innovate here. If the narrator walks up to some characters talking, the voice lines can fade in as if they’re getting closer, or you can have one character talking in each ear. Not playing around with this stuff is just restrictive for no real reason.
Of all of the binaural ASMR videos on Youtube you had to choose that one…
Has binaural audio in a VN ever been done before? I feel like it would be tough to implement well. Recording wouldn’t be all that more difficult, although you need a special microphone
I have always been curious as to how quick-time events would work in VN’s. Little Busters! kind of did this with the cafeteria minigame but iirc how well you did didn’t effect to story.
When I say quick time events what I really mean is choices where you have a limited time to choose or it will default on something. A VN with them would engage the reader a bit more, although at that point you are kind of skirting the edge of what can be considered a “Visual Novel.”
I’m thinking of something “Until Dawn” or “Heavy Rain” esque.
…I just went on reddit and took one that seemed okay.
Yeah, none of the minigames in LB! affect the story in any significant way. Quick time choices are problematic because you have to read all your options first. That’s what makes the tsukkomi game so awful. The Oreimo VN has a thing where you go into these QT conversations and are given options occasionally. As long as there’s an appropriate amount of time and the player is prepared for it, QT events can definitely work; LB! just failed at those things.
I remember that in the Steins;Gate VN, their mouths would move as they talked, rather than the still character sprites. Seeing that would be nice, as long as there would be an option to turn it off. (I’m assuming, for some people at least, this would be annoying)
Also, some small idle animations for the character sprites, maybe looking around the room, some hair effects and the like could be interesting. I know it’s a bit of a weird example, but I remember how Nekopara used some of those little movements during normal conversation to make things a little more interesting. (Although, in this case I felt it was to distract from the lack of story, rather than add to it, :kgoha:)
I feel like Angel Beats! First Beat could have improved a lot with this. There are many group conversations where two or three people may appear on screen, while everyone is talking from different places. Also, there is Yusa, who always appears unexpectedly and talks to you from your back.
You can kiiinda do this stuff with mods, but it’s not elegant. They clearly didn’t intend to use those features when they added it in to reallive.
Well, I’m peripherally aware that there are some H-games that use QT events, and how exactly they utilise the mechanic shouldn’t need explaining.
On a more serious note, I can think of a far less lewd application of the mechanic, and I come bearing examples:
Clannad had the iconic running gag of an onscreen counter for every time Youhei was hit by Tomoyo; seven years later, Angel Beats! had not only the hit-counter for Noda in Departure, but also the Tension Meter in Stairway to Heaven.
Surely, a QT event would be a great way to depict scenes like these in a VN, as well as a way to break up the monotony of flipping through dialogue and only making choices about what to say. Maybe you could even add a button on the main menu to just play these segments arcade-style and try to rack up points.
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A gimmick in Muv-Luv that I was fond of was, in non-action scenes, how the series’ visual assets are actually projected onto a 3D sphere instead of the traditional plane. The protagonist sometimes rotates his head and it simply performs a rotation around the center of the sphere instead of using 2D trickery. This kind of model, besides coming off as sophisticated, subtly attaches specific significance to the world Takeru lives in. The fact that the display of images is radically different than other VNs forces us to separate ourselves from the familiar “VN setting”, an effect which is amplified by actual narrative choices.
It’s more or less of a gimmick, but I personally would love to see Key incorporate the “E-mote” system into their game(s). If you don’t know what it is, basically technology has advanced so far to where we can see our best girls(and boys) animated in visual novels to demonstrate emotions, actions, mouth movements, blinking etc.
IN ACTION
@stevenharryw mentioned this, and yes series like Nekopara and Go! Go! Nippon 2015 added this feature to their games.
I personally adore this feature and as weird as it gets, seeing characters on screen react and emote so fluidly creates a new dimension of attachment.
I would love to see Key create an animated music video, or more broadly, I’d love to see key create a short visual and audio text and see if they can successfully envoke a powerful emotional response. The reason being is that Key is reknown for making people cry, or atlease (for me), get pretty damn close, however, this is done over a long period of character development and other elements. But could they successful create the same response, or something close, in such a short amount of time? Love to see Key try.
You mean like this?
Drama CDs are also close if given visuals like the Clannad side stories.
Animated videos aren’t really games though, and Key is still a game company.
I quite enjoyed that, and yeah that’s the sort of thing I was talking about.
But I thought Key did other works as well, such as their anime, or is that not actually produced or written by them?
The anime are made by animation studios like Kyoani, P.A. Works and JC Staff. Key participate but the animators and designers and whatnot aren’t employed by them.
You’re right, but for the sake of clarity, I want to offer a more detailed explanation:
Sometimes, animation studios will buy the rights to adapt VNs and light novels into TVAs or movies.
It’s the same as the Warner Brothers’ Harry Potter adaptations–Jo Rowling wrote the books, just as Maeda Jun et al write Key stories, and Warner Brothers studios hire their own producers, writers and directors to adapt those stories into films, just as Kyoto, TOEI, PA Works, and JC Staff hire their own producers, writers and directors to adapt Key stories into the TV series and films we see.
However, starting back in 2009 with the early development of Angel Beats!, Key started a new practice of just creating stories as joint projects with animation studios right from the start. That’s why Angel Beats! was first shown on TV and is only now being published as a VN (which probably won’t be finished until well after the show’s tenth anniversary if they keep going at this rate), it’s the same way with Charlotte, and I’m sure it’ll be the same with more projects yet to come.
Why was this flagged?
Probably because people ignore this
All points are either peripheral or off topic.
I’m not even sure what this means. Rewrite obviously tried to keep the general look of the older games but in 16:9. It’s easy to say now that the sprite maybe shouldn’t have been so wide, but you wouldn’t know that before Rewrite. We talked about that in the design topic. Would Rewrite have been better with more choices? Maybe, I don’t know. Elaborate and I might consider it. However, routes in both Rewrite and AB! are completely static, so if you’re pointing out things that AB! did better there’s no point in mentioning that.
I wouldn’t mind seeing this one day as well, along with;
