428: Shibuya Scramble (2008)

Something cool I just learned about this game.

The game is filmed entirely in Shibuya.... It's illegal to film in Shibuya. Meaning, the entire filming of the game's various still and motion shots, with nearly 100 cast and crew, was done by a film crew setting up, shooting before the cops arrived, and fleeing.

Over 120,000 still images were taken over several months of filming.

I'm in the final act of this game, but I'm having a fun meta-game spotting all the Twin Peaks references. There's a ton of them:

• A foreign professor named Leland Palmer.
• A CIA agent's superior named Gordon.
• A hostess club called The Log Lady.
• A night club called The Black Lodge.

I imagine Twin Peaks must have been extremely popular in Japan, because I've seen it referenced a ton in Japanese games. Hell, Deadly Premonition is literally just "We have Twin Peaks at home".

So last year I played a game called Otogirisou, a 1992 CYOA visual novel that I actually wound up really loving.

I've been playing through 428 - the final game in the Sound Novel series to which both games belong - and although the stories of these two games are completely unrelated, I enjoy them for a lot of the same reasons. I'm still working away at 428, but I'm really surprised at just how hooked I am on the game's story. It starts out feeling kinda cheap and campy, but as the game starts to reveal its hand, you're just kinda here like, "Oh wait, this is actually really good."

I think I'm going to resolve to play all the Sound Novel games - all the ones that have translation patches, anyway. These games seem to have a common through line of "simple premise belies interesting and well-written story", and although 428 is a little more guided than Otogirisou - that game is pure CYOA, with no real clues or hints to point you toward a specific ending, and it really excels in that regard - I'm loving the heck out of it.

I wanted to love this, but I had to give up on it. Just wasn't clicking with me at all. I'm sure "it gets better later," but I can't be bothered.

Shibuya Scramble is a visual novel with a very unique presentation, using live-action photographs rather than manga artwork for the characters and backdrops. It is impressive how much effort was put into its stage shots. Now, here's something you have to keep in mind in order to keep your expectations in check: Just because it's using real people, does not mean the story will attempt to be more realistic than other visual novels at all. This is a very zany series of events filled with wacky characters who often act over-the-top while a kidnapping-thriller type story slowly unfolds. It is not a serious mystery that you have to work out. All you do is keep reading to find out what nonsense will happen next.

Perhaps what I disliked most was how the story is set up. You follow five different characters at the start, and progress through their interweaving stories bit by bit by tiny little bit. You pick a character, read some of their story, and then something like this happens: The character is being chased! You run down an alley... Oh no, one of the bad guys with a gun appears ahead of you! He shoots you dead. BAD END. "Gee, wouldn't it have been great if (Other Character) had been nearby at that exact moment, doing the Fortnite Dance, distracting the bad guy?" So now you have to go select the other character and read a bit of story, and at some point select "Do the Fortnite Dance" because that is precisely what the plot calls for at that point in the game's timeline. It's stupid. Sometimes you don't even get a BAD END, and the story just stops in the middle of a scene for no reason. You are forced to go read another character's story now, right when you might have started to get slightly interested in what was happening with the character you were working on.

You also can't skip previously read text in this game, which makes no sense since you have to go back to past characters' stories repeatedly to select the "right" choice for every single decision the game gives you. And, for whatever reason, there's no voice acting in the game. They went all-out with the visuals and presentation, but couldn't be arsed to have the actors read their lines? It's a really bizarre choice they made, to give a game the silent treatment, when it is practically begging for voice acting that goes full-ham.