Virginia, Three Fourths Home, Abzu, and Non-Traditional Story Telling

Welcome back to Weekend with Indies, where I play through the weird and wacky titles that come out alongside the AAA monsters. We're a bit late this month, but nevertheless this week, I’m looking at three titles that follow similar design choices: none of these games like to tell stories in a traditional way.

(CAUTION: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.)

Let’s start with probably the most complex of the three; Virginia. I love this game. I love it because it gave me a headache and after playing it through five times now I still don’t totally understand what’s going on in its weird Twin Peaks­-esque narrative, and that is because of Variable State’s decision to not include any dialogue or text-based communication in the game, aside from the main menu. Instead the game relies on the player intrinsically understanding how a game should work: you know how to use the analogue sticks to move a character because that is how you have always moved a character. You understand that you need to interact with the environment and characters to progress through the story.

Except in Virginia that is not the case, because the story is wholly implied. It may not even mean the same thing to every player, because without language to guide them the player has to interpret the actions and facial expressions of the characters and decide what the narrative means for them. Even the lead designer Jonathan Burroughs won’t share the true narrative of the game, only suggesting that he sees it as being “terribly sad”.

I also enjoyed the way that music fills in for dialogue in setting the tone of the game. Not enough love is given to music in gaming because a good soundtrack normally winds up being tertiary to gameplay and narrative. Thankfully, games like DOOM, Life is Strange and now Virginia, I think, are changing that discussion. Just as DOOM’s soundtrack reacts to the player’s actions, Virginia’s soundtrack enhances the more dreamlike sequences and ramps up the tension and foreboding atmosphere in others.

Variable State, 2016

Onto the second indie title I played – well not played, more watched. Three Fourths Home is a visual novel by Bracket Games about a college age girl, Kelly, talking to her family on the phone as she drives home through rural Nebraska. The novel is about dealing with personal struggles, and in the extended edition there is a greater theme of survivor guilt.

Despite being a visual novel, there is some player interaction. The player needs to hold down a button to get the car moving, which I personally think is a bit of design flaw when you need to hold it down for the whole 45 minutes, and there are branching dialogue trees. This affords the player a bit of agency and the ability to project their own fears onto Kelly, making the story more personal. In the end though the ending is the same: Kelly’s family is implied to have died down the phone, darkly raising the question whether some things in life can or can’t be changed.

The epilogue of the extended edition adds to this, in a flashback where Kelly is again talking to her mother on the phone, but the player can chose some darker responses in the dialogue trees. These lead to conversations that revolve around the idea of survivor guilt, betrayal, and depression. Is this an insight in Kelly’s Post Traumatic Stress and own feelings of guilt? The way the narrative is presented is quite dreamlike, so I could certainly subscribe to this idea. Three Fourths Home is an interesting little title, and is definitely one to check out if you’re interested in narrative design.

Bracket Games, 2015

Lastly, let’s talk about Abzu. The bright, colourful, optimistic game created by Giant Squid and several developers who made the quintessential PlayStation title Journey. And boy does the Journey influence carry over. Once again the game has no dialogue or written text explaining the story, and again relies on the player’s implicit understanding of how a game works. However, it is the most traditional in terms of gameplay and narrative. The player character is a scuba diver, swimming around the ruins of an ancient civilisation and solving puzzles in order to progress through the levels.

It is basically Journey, but wet.

Not that I’m saying that in a negative way, I actually think Abzu is my favourite of the three games I played this weekend. And that is because it does something the other two simply can’t: it can educate.

Ok, maybe not like a textbook or a teacher, but it certainly could be a useful tool. As the player swims around the world, they will encounter a whole host of sea life, and can perch on top of statues to meditate and watch the fish, turtles, and sea mammals, swim and interact with one another. The games even tells you the name of the species you are watching, and allows you to change between all the different varieties you can find in one area. I even watched a giant grouper fish eat other smaller fish. You could even argue that the game has a conservationist element to it, as many of the species depicted are on the endangered species list, or live in declining habitats.

Giant Squid, 2016

But that was my weekend with smaller indie titles. I highly recommend these three titles, they are some of the most interesting games I have played in a while. Stay tuned for more!