What does this medium of a visual novel give me that no other medium does ?

[erdelf]

I am an outsider in this place. I never played a visual novel and I don't really get why I should.

I mean the story is available as a manga (and a debatable anime series) which I can see positive aspects of. But I actually only see negative aspects of visual novels.
From this point on I will give my major complaints about the medium along with examples how other mediums could resolve that.


The characters are mostly static and placed in front of a background where it mostly doesn't make any sense that they would be there and sometimes even the artstyle is different. The expression only changes every few sentences and I get the exact same sprites a hundred times in the same novel. And the sprites mostly have to overact so you can actually notice the difference.

A manga can actually place the characters in the world and let them face each other while changing their reactions.


The direction couldn't get worse. You always have the same angle and see the characters always from the same side.
A manga can show us dozens of angles and pov's in the same discussion.


The price is extremely high compared to the content. Given that the story (in length) is comparable to that of an actual novel, even for main characters there aren't that much sprites (50 for rena in higurashi 1 I heard) and these sprites don't differ that much from each other... the price is way too much. Especially considering the low quality of most sprites. Still it costs more than the average big novel (in digital format of course)

A manga has to do a different shot for each (part of a) sentence and focuses on different parts of the scene during each shot. The characters are constantly drawn with new reactions, emotions etc. and have to have a consistent quality.


All of that together results (at least for me) in a really bad experience for me. Most of that completely breaks immersion and prevents any emotional connection to any of the characters.

If you want to argue that it should be taken more like a novel than a manga then I have to ask why the visual part is taken away. The point of the novel medium is too create the visuals with your fantasy and therefore you can make everything that is not pointed out exactly how you want. You can do it however you want.
In a visual novel I can't. That is taken away from me for a bad visual presentation that reduces everything you could have imagined to a blank slate with two cardboards talking in front of a poster.

If anyone could present me a positive aspect of a visual novel, maybe I will even buy this one. The story the anime hinted at was promising enough.

[kilicool64]

Complaining that VNs have too little to offer in terms of visuals would be similar to complaining about the lack of visuals in books. Yet nobody does that because detailed enough text can offer a perfectly acceptable substitute to visuals. Unlike books, VNs do still depict some of their content visually though (the amount varies depending on the budget), so they don't leave quite as much to the imagination.

And unlike books and manga, they can still offer just as much in the sound department as more visual media. Admittedly, this VN doesn't have voice-acting, but it's often considered to have one of the best soundtracks ever. You won't get any of that in the manga version.

Plus, VNs can still have highly detailed text. Umineko in particular has very detailed narration that would probably be very hard to losslessly adapt in most other media.

[remotecatalyst]

The soundtrack, that is what it has to offer. The most beautiful music you have ever heard!

[inexangel]

You could say a visual novel is a sort of compromise between a novel, a manga and an anime.
If I'm to use umineko tho, over a thousand sprites (of each art) are included in this game and it has a word count comparable to the bible. It was originally 4 different visual novels.
Thinking only of the price aspect 25$ for a compilation of four novels is dirt cheap. If you get the equivalent in manga it'd be many mangas for each arcs. The cost would rapidly become very huge.

While the manga can excel in the things you mentioned, you have to understand that each medium has things that are composed within the frame of that medium and excels within it. The same is true for visual novels, but it may be hard to understand for someone who has not experienced it. In some case this may not be very exploited by the author, but for Umineko it's definitively that way. It's a story that was made to be a visual novel and cannot be adapted to any other medium without losing much of what it has to offer.

[Ellixer]

It's the space between a manga and a novel to me. You find it difficult to fill in the blank due to the existence of the visual presentation but those of us used to the medium don't have that problem. The presentation is such that I can fill in the exact details in my head while the sprites and background are there to show the character expressions and settings without overlong exposition. When dramatic shots are needed we have CGs and when it's a mundane scene it's mostly protag's monologue and dialogue between characters, with the descriptive texts from a novel greatly reduced (mostly), making for a brisk pace. On the other hand visual novels are a bit heavy on the monologue side, which helps to bring the tone across in ways that a manga may not be able to (it could put all those monologue in but in that format that would just feel clunky). As for anime, even leaving aside the fact that the adaptation we do have is bloody awful, there are just things that can't make the transition. Umineko is particularly abstract and incredibly long and in an anime format any attempt to bring across everything would just slow the pace to a crawl. In addition to that the narration and character profiles are used to ♥♥♥♥ with you and that just can't happen with the anime where you are used to an omniscient and objective perspective.

If you think the price is too steep I bought the volumes covering the episodes included in this release (which costs around 25 bucks) for over 100 bucks and that does not include the wonderful soundtrack the game comes with and has somewhat less texts than the visual novel. But that's for Umineko specifically and probably doesn't speak for the medium as a whole.

For the medium as a whole, visual novels also come with the interactive factor. Obviously there's the (perfect, in this case) soundtrack that the manga version can't have. Most visual novels also have you make decisions that influence the plot. Umineko doesn't have that factor but makes up to it by playing with the medium by having a list of character profiles that get updated as they die off, peppered with the unsettling texts that don't seem to be on the protagonist's side.

[erdelf]

Originally posted by inexangel:

You could say a visual novel is a sort of compromise between a novel, a manga and an anime.
If I'm to use umineko tho, over a thousand sprites (of each art) are included in this game and it has a word count comparable to the bible. It was originally 4 different visual novels.
Thinking only of the price aspect 25$ for a compilation of four novels is dirt cheap. If you get the equivalent in manga it'd be many mangas for each arcs. The cost would rapidly become very huge.

But I would have all the things a manga makes better than a Visual novel

Originally posted by inexangel:

While the manga can excel in the things you mentioned, you have to understand that each medium has things that are composed within the frame of that medium and excels within it. The same is true for visual novels[...] It's a story that was made to be a visual novel and cannot be adapted to any other medium without losing much of what it has to offer.

care to explain your vague point ?

Originally posted by Ellixer:

The presentation is such that I can fill in the exact details in my head while the sprites and background are there to show the character expressions and settings without overlong exposition. When dramatic shots are needed we have CGs and when it's a mundane scene it's mostly protag's monologue and dialogue between characters, with the descriptive texts from a novel greatly reduced (mostly), making for a brisk pace.

Visual Novels have no real pace because it is entirely decided by the "player". If I am given the entire visual of the character cardbord with his reaction... why the heck should I fill in any details ? That is extremely counterintuitive and relies heavily on beeing used to the medium.

Originally posted by Ellixer:

As for anime, even leaving aside the fact that the adaptation we do have is bloody awful, there are just things that can't make the transition. Umineko is particularly abstract and incredibly long and in an anime format any attempt to bring across everything would just slow the pace to a crawl.

There are a few good anime out there that are mostly dialogue based. Death Note is a good example beeing praised as one of the best animes out there.

Originally posted by Ellixer:

In addition to that the narration and character profiles are used to ♥♥♥♥ with you and that just can't happen with the anime where you are used to an omniscient and objective perspective.

There are lots of animes with different perspectives and it is extremely rare that you are omiscient.

Originally posted by Ellixer:

For the medium as a whole, visual novels also come with the interactive factor. [...] Most visual novels also have you make decisions that influence the plot.

Every few hours and that is not really good interaction.



So does anyone have reason now except too much text ?
Because that is a sh*tty reason.

[Mythril]

Just a comment about the amount of content -- Umineko's billed as a sound novel, so there not a lot of different or high-quality art, but this first half of the story is roughly the same length as War and Peace, and has 70-odd songs in the soundtrack.

If you'd rather take in the story in a more detailed visual format, that's fine too. The manga adaptation is supposed to be quite good. I think you'd be missing out on the atmosphere and music though.

[Veltharis]

To put it a little bluntly in regards to your concerns over the graphics, I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle. First and foremost, you should consider this series (and its predecessor, Higurashi) to be a work of literature - the vast majority of the content is detailed and explored through text narration and everything else is designed to support that.

Basic as they may be, the character graphics are used to help you keep track of who's talking, what they look like, to get a rough idea of what kind of mood they're in based on their facial expression, and little else. The background images likewise exist solely to distinguish one location from another. They are not intended to create an all-encompassing visual depiction of what is going on in any given scene, but rather to simply aid the narrative as a guide for your imagination. You will find, with Higurashi and Umineko in particular, that using your imagination to envision the story is very much a part of the experience, far more so than may be apparent by looking at screenshots.

A second thing to consider is sound design. Higurashi and Umineko were originally billed not as “visual novels”, but rather as “sound novels” and this is due to great attention being given to the games' sound assets. The effect of audio cues to help set the scene – be it in the form of the chiming of a clock, the ringing of a telephone, the dripping of water (or blood), and more – cannot be overstated. Furthermore, the soundtrack is absolutely incredible.

Finally, the matter of cost: Umineko is made up of eight “Episodes”, of which this release contains the first four. Each is essentially a self-contained story that also builds upon the ones that came before it, so to say you are paying $25 for one “novel” is not entirely accurate. You're paying $25 for four – or $6.25 per Episode, which I think is quite reasonable. And each one is lengthy. It depends on your reading speed, but playing through EP I just recently took me a bit more than 16 hours of solid reading, and EP II-IV are comparable, if not longer. There is a LOT of material here.

[Ellixer]

@erdelf

Your point on pacing is a tad baffling to me. So if it's a medium that you read, pacing doesn't exist? Of course it's dependent on the reader. The pace is bloody fast if you're just flipping through the lines and it's painfully slow if you stop reading after every sentence to contemplate everything. But saying there is "no real pace" is just absurd. If the events move along quickly in relation to the number of texts required, it's fast-paced. If a character starts on one side of the room on page 1 and end up on the other side of the room on page 10 (presumably philosophical musing and tons of imagery in between) it is slow-paced. I'm not sure what your point is here, unless you are making the claim that any text-based medium has no "real pace", which would be kind of absurd.

You fill in details for the same reason you do so in novels. You can ask the same question about manga/comic books for example. Why am I looking at text bubbles when I could be hearing voices from actual voice actors? Why am I looking at still images when I can be looking at actual moving things? Because there's a benefit to the middle-ground. The visual aspects are there for you to work off but there's still something special about building the scene in your head. Visual Novels move closer to the novel part of the spectrum than manga, having a more minimalist presentation while not willing to discard the visuals entirely.

It's not just the dialogue (though those do come in spades), the narrations are integral to the mood as well. The manga has the narration greatly reduced but made up for it with creative use of imagery, which makes it good but good in a different way. Most of the texts in Umineko are not dialogue but rather the character's thoughts and perspectives on the events and cramming all that into another format would be very clunky. Imagine watching Jojo with the narrator having ten times more lines than he really does.

The narrator and character profiles part is specific to Umineko rather than visual novels and there's no point talking about that to someone who hasn't played it so I'll drop that.

In term of interaction, what if it's one every few hours? If you look at it as gameplay then yeah it's pretty lame. But from a visual novel reader's perspective it's just the ability to influence where the plot is going to go at key points. It's the equivalent of having two or three extra AU-ish story stapled on top of the story you got and we think it's kind of neat.

[Froltxa]

Well, you're either into visual novels or not. I personally like visual novels. I'm an avid reader of all kinds of books (that includes manga). What I like about visual novels in comparison to books, is that instead of just using text, you get sprites, backgrounds, CGs, an amazing soundtrack and sometimes even voice acting. That way, everything happening feels more "alive" in a sense.
It's kinda hard to explain, especially since you don't seem to enjoy these kind of games (which is perfectly fine of course).

[ffleader1]

Honestly, from your post, you have zero favor with Visual Novel anyway. So I don't get the point of this post?
- Do you want us, the Visual Novel reader, persuade you to play Visual Novel?
That is not gonna work with yout current view of Visual Novel. As long as you do not see anything nice in VN, and you believe it that way, them our effort will be futile.
- Do you want to make us not like VN too?
That is not gonna work either.
+ The characters are mostly static: true
+ Repeated sprites: true
+ Not many direction to look at: true
+ Mostly text: true
...
So what? Like I said, you are looking only at it bad sides.
You do realize that people also read books right? Now try comparing Novel to Visual Novel, you will see that is a big step up. I did not like reading story books, but I can pick up a VN no problem.
Sure, to lots of people, Manga is arguably more entertaining, compared to Visual Novel, because of many element. So how about book.By every single line you list here, book is probably the worst form of entertainment, and have you seen it died out any time in the history of mankind? Books have lots of advantage, compared to Manga, that I really don't want to dig into that, as the coment is quite long now.
So what puts Visual Novel: between both! It has its value.
Comparing it to something less entertaining in your preference will just make it bad.

[inexangel]

-Mangas are in white and black and have no music nor sound effects. They also cost a very high price compared for the given story length contained in a single volume.
-Anime has a mediocre and fast-forwarded version of any given story compared to it's original source. They also cost completely ridiculously high a price compared to the given story length contained in a single disk.
-Plain old novels has to generally spent too much time on descriptions, lack any visuals at all and have no music nor sound effects either.

Add to this that neither of these three mediums contain any sort of interactions from the reader/viewer. While Umineko is a kinetic novel, plenty of visual novels has interactions in the form of choices and/or puzzles.

These three mediums sure are bad aren't they?

This is what happens when you just find ways to easily dismiss an entire medium as bad by looking at it from a negative perspective.

[Malamasala]

Price of Umineko 1-4 Manga: 180 dollars.
Price of Umineko 1-4 VN: 20 dollars.
Umineko soundtrack: Priceless.

[erdelf]

so yeah... you aren't really good at discussing.. especially because reading is apparently not a strength of yours....

Yeah I'm out. Discussing with people that don't even read the other sites post is pointless.
If an admin sees it, delete or close this thread.

[ffleader1]

Originally posted by erdelf:

so yeah... you aren't really good at discussing.. especially because reading is apparently not a strength of yours....

Yeah I'm out. Discussing with people that don't even read the other sites post is pointless.
If an admin sees it, delete or close this thread.

"You" who?
All of us? lol
Out of the last 3 comments, two told you that you are judging it based on your preference on Manga. If you were a book lovers then we wouldn't even have this "discussion". And you told us that we "don't even read the other sites". Well, do you?
So who are you referring to as "not good at reading".
Cuz certainly reading Manga requires less skill than reading book.

[erdelf]

I don't like manga... and I like books. I already said that in my initial post. I said you are not good at reading because you always say things I already adressed in my initial or my second post here.