Xblaze: A VN without narration

[Tyrantauranox]

Xblaze- Code: Embryo launched in North America on June 24th. It took me awhile to realize it, but this VN has NO narration whatsoever. It's 100% voiced dialog, with a few bits of monologue slipped in. This approach seems to work quite well, but it's probably expensive on the development side, since you can't fall back on having scenes or characters that exist only as text descriptions.

Has anyone else played this one? I think the demo for the PS3 version is still up, though I'm not sure about the Vita version.

What do you think of the narration-less approach?

[gekiganwing]

The translated version of Xblaze is available in physical and digital form on both PS3 and Vita. I purchased the Vita version of Xblaze on the Playstation Store. Right now, I'm in the middle of chapter two. So far, it looks great, but the story hasn't surprised me much. I'd currently summarize it as "boy meets unusual girl, and they fight zombies."

One distinct thing about Xblaze: in its fictional universe, there's a program called "TOi" which is basically a news aggregator. Early on, the reader is told that using TOi can change the story's ending. I've checked it every scene or two and noticed routine updates, but I'm not sure why it matters at this point.

... It took me awhile to realize it, but this VN has NO narration whatsoever. It's 100% voiced dialog, with a few bits of monologue slipped in...

I didn't think about narration at all while reading. When I get back into Xblaze, I'll pay more attention to how the dialogue works, and how the story is conveyed.

A strange comparison: there was an interview back in the '90s with comics creator Jeff Smith about his series Bone, in which he stated that he intentionally avoided using narration boxes. I hadn't noticed that either until after I read the interview. If you ask me, the comic worked fine without them.

[Tyrantauranox]

I 100%'d it today. The story is quite wild, but I'll leave the details in Spoilerville