Visual-Novels: The Games that Break Conventional Reading

It’s been a few years since I’ve read a book to just… read. I have had so much trouble just sitting down and reading text on a page without putting it down to do something else instead. One of the biggest problems for me is immersion. While I used to be able to draw all sorts of descriptive images in my head about the words on the page, that’s just not easy for me anymore, and I begin to lose interest quickly. This is why over the past few years, many of the stories I’ve read are from digital media. More specifically, a genre of game called the visual-novel.

At it’s most basic level, a visual-novel is, well, a novel you can see. Instead of just being words on the page or screen, you can also see and hear what is happening from scene to scene. But these senses are not added to draw away from the story, but to enhance the narrative being told. A book as a visual-novel would not work because the stories being told wouldn’t translate as well. They are both stories, but tell those stories drastically different.

Visual-novels use a few main methods to convey their narratives differently from books. First, the art gives you a visual representation of what would be represented on the page. Secondly, the music and sound design give you a clear auditory representation of what the world might be like and how these characters would sound. The voice acting especially for some visual-novels truly tie the narratives together. Third, the unique gameplay granted by a visual-novel allows for different scenarios you wouldn’t see from books or even video games like them.

However, the most important part of visual-novels to me is the choices presented to the player. In fact, at the end of the day, visual-novels can be closely compared to choose-your-own-adventure books. They are little “what-ifs?” that tie back into the narrative as a whole. And they aren’t used as a cliché either. Some visual-novels that I have played such as Slay the Princess use dialogue-based choices to guide the player. Others such as the Zero Escape Trilogy use defined branching paths to lead their players certain ways. The methods of choice utilized by visual-novels gives players and readers the hooks to keep playing and reading, as they make the hard decisions and defining moments of the game.

But “Isn’t that just playing a video-game?” Yes, it is. But it’s not any less of an experience than reading a book to me. Visual-novels are roughly 90% text, and the other 10% is the auditory, visual, and choice-based gameplay that create the immersion your mind would draw instead. It’s a medium that allows this day and age to experience stories in a different way. And these experiences are why I still share my thoughts to friends and others years after I’ve put them down.