April 5, 2006
"Ever17" an interactive novel with the most stunning story I have ever seen
"If you want to tell a story in video game, how can you tell it better than other traditional media like novels and films?" As a game designer and artist, I have had this question for a long time. I couldn't find any strong examples to prove that till I played Ever 17.
Ever 17 was first published on Play Station at August 2002, then on PC and DC at 2003. Theoretically, it falls under Japan's Dating-Sim games. In Japan, fully 25% of computer software published belong to a unique genre of game called "bishoujo games" ("pretty girl games"), which are usually a kind of love simulation game in which you try to become romantically involved with beautiful anime characters as the object of the game. As a rule, you have different girls you interact with as the story develops, with many different endings, one or several with each girl. They're very challenging and very interactive, with everything from lovable, goofy anime characters to romantic love and heartbreak to very erotic sex. In Japanese these games sell tens of thousands of copies at $88 per copy, despite the fact that they're censored with a mosaic.
However, Ever 17 doesn't have any uncensored content, yet still stayed on top of the selling list for a long time. The reason behind is its mind twisting story. It generates such enlightenment after player play though the game.
The first time experience feels like a well written escape love story (like Titanic). The second time you go through the story again but choose different branches, it ends up like the movie A.I.. The third & fourth time the story seems altered. Player will play through another character's perspective. Each time player plays through, more and more questions rise. Then the fifth time, everything become clear. I don't want to expose the story, but it's something related to 4-D life form. Unlike Matrix, it's so well thought that there is no logical flaw in it.
If you are interested in interactive narrative, or have the time to enjoy a 12 hours mind tricking experience. Give Ever 17 a try. It's highly recommended...
Posted by Jenova at April 5, 2006 1:50 AM
Comments
Very cool -- your description of the layered storytelling experiences correlated with playthroughs really caught my attention.
Unfortunately, I'm a broke college kid who's been reduced to selling his old games for food money. Would you mind if I borrowed this from you?
Posted by: JMiao ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://interactive.usc.edu/members/jchen/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 5, 2006 10:15 AM
The version I have is in traditional chinese. Not sure if you read chinese. Otherwise I may give it to you: )
Posted by: Jenova at April 5, 2006 5:28 PM
It probably won't be feasible for me to play this since I only speak english, but I'm glad you brought it to my attention.
It sounds like your take on this game is similar to my impression of Planescape: Torment, a dodecehedron that unravels in a variety of patterns, each of them meaningfully recombinant. Maybe Ever 17 has more causal breadth, and Planescape more causal depth or more naunce along a constrained situation. Either way, I can feel your enthusiasm, the 4-D, unwrappable, tesseract approach to interactive narrative can work, it just requires lots of writing, at least a novel's worth.
Posted by: Patrick Dugan at April 5, 2006 8:39 PM
The link I put up in the article leads to a website where they sell English version of this game. It does worth a novel's weight, 2,500,000 Kongji. I'm not sure how much does it take for English translation.
Posted by: Jenova at April 6, 2006 12:58 AM
It's got an ESRB rating on it. Therefore, there's definitely an English version. Check out the website that Jenova posted. That's the English version. :P
Posted by: Josh Green at April 6, 2006 6:44 PM
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