What defines a "visual novel" apart from other games?

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trooper6
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Re: What defines a "visual novel" apart from other games?

#31 Post by trooper6 »

Rossfellow wrote:The Tokyo Twilight example is a mistake on my behalf as well. It's not that it "Pretends to be a VN", because it actually is one. Just that the VN aspect of it is so shoddily done that its hard to acknowledge that it's there.
This quote made me laugh. I always like to say, "bad art is still art--it is just bad."
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Ozitiho
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Re: What defines a "visual novel" apart from other games?

#32 Post by Ozitiho »

I feel like people might frown on this opinion, but I think that the genre VN is defined by what the game looks like. Like Kailoto said earlier, genre is in part defined by what most people see as whatever fits in that box. The real question that I would be asking is what the faceless majority thinks is a VN. I think games get labeled as a VN when the dialogue is portrayed through a text box (Either ADV or NVL) and there are characters on the screen usually in the form of sprites. Though that second part is optional. I think that if the game has that, most people would agree that it is a VN.

Maybe such appeal to majority would negatively affect the boundaries of the genre. But honestly I don't worry about defining genre for a game too much. It's far too subjective. The only objective measure is the tags on the steam store page of the game that the creator decided to put up there.

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Re: What defines a "visual novel" apart from other games?

#33 Post by Amecha »

Ozitiho wrote: I think games get labeled as a VN when the dialogue is portrayed through a text box (Either ADV or NVL) and there are characters on the screen usually in the form of sprites. Though that second part is optional. I think that if the game has that, most people would agree...
And under those stipulations Pokemon is a visual novel, and so are most other games like harvest moon, monster hunter, etc. I think if the narration of a game, not just dialogue and inner questions are presented then we've got a slightly better definition but even then there will be VNs that don't fit this box and non VNs that do. This is an issue video games have when they try to define a video game's genre by its mechanics. Just the same way yeah technically portal is an fps but everyone knows it's a puzzle game. Mechanics shouldn't be a genre label but we really don't have a better method.

For me if a game contains a narration outside of dialogue that is displayed via text on the screen the game contains VN elements. If a game contains this plus other mechanics like turn base fighting or anything else those mechanics get tacked on to the tag of what base type game it is. If the game has narration text but no interactivity aside from clicking to move the text along its a KN. From there the genre can be tacked on.
RPG VN, romance adventure = mechanics, genre.
FPS, action war = Call of Duty.

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