Thoughts On Va11s Setting Has Spoilers

25 10月 2023

va-11 is a likable game.

i don't mean this as a snide remark or anything, but i think this is a likable game that is doing something novel for many people including myself. instead of watching hacker protagonists and bounty hunters take on cyberpunk corporations, we're just watching jill pour out some nasty drinks for her customers. the setting of glitch city is captured in the microcosm of the pub. the limits of the pub are the limits of the world.

so my thoughts are related to this promise i assumed i got when i was starting my cyberpunk bartender adventure: i'll learn more about the setting through the characters i meet and serve.

many characters in va-11 are from all walks of life, but the ones that intrigue me the most are people like donovan who's an editor-in-chief of a tabloid paper and dorothy who's a sex worker lilim (the in-game term for sentient AI). these two characters have very distinctive social classes and we get the sense that they are adept at navigating their specific problems that only manifest in their specific ways. dorothy's sex anecdotes don't just provide entertainment but also give insight to how the sex work and lilim world work (the RNG build-a-sim model is amusing). donovan, on the other hand, suggests the only way to survive in a dog-eat-dog society is to blackmail; that's the kind of philosophy that will express itself as cynicism and even misogyny at times. i particularly like how sociological this game gets with these two characters since the title recognizes this is how they became, not through some elusive human nature but through their own development living in this society. it can be "infodumpy" in that the worldbuilding is clearly being written on-the-go and many digressions do end up being tangential, which is why the pacing of the first half is weird. but i think that's what makes the game charming -- reminds me of some doujin games i played where the pacing is hectic but there's still something there, like a rough diamond.

but the game is not always that. it's usually trying to subvert or actualize commonly seen archetypes in cyberpunk fiction or commenting on some contemporary (2016) phenomena. the bounty hunter guy whose name i'm forgetting is just a bounty hunter who has baggage and tells jill to avoid killing people. streaming-chan is a twitch streamer. there are YIIK cosplayers in this world. there's a dog who played too much mgs v. there's a hatsune miku lilim whose blog is unfortunately not that updated. gay tetsuo. many different modes of characterization that make glitch city multi-faceted and alive but also kinda making me wish there were more to these characters.

much of this may come from how undeveloped or predictable these characters can be and it doesn't have to be this way. alma ended up being an interesting character to me because, at first, she's presented as some bourgie hacker who suffers from the disease of terminal heterosexuality -- but she ends up having this experience that people in the global south (especially latin america) will relate to. the part about alma following an ex into politics but realizing everyone might not be that radicalized is obviously coming from a real source. what makes alma's character very different from the usual depiction of gray hat hackers is that the characterization feels specific to particular lived experiences, not more abstract cyberpunk tropes tinkering. i ended up learning a lot about the world through someone like her; she's a character who irritates me to some degree, but i realize this is the way she is raised and she's just doing her best. this is also why i think dorothy is a strong character too by the way.

what i find tragic about the second half of the game is that jill's arc is quite good, but it's executed at the expense of all this interesting setting exploration. not to diss on jill who i think is quite a funny redditor in a 4channer internet world, but i was disappointed that the story suddenly pivoted to her. i know that the story was going to explore who she was as a person (and the scene where alma interviews her through the bartending mechanic is quite good), but it came too quickly. and the endings/epilogues of the game anyway neatly resolve like almost every dangling thread, even the major conflicts in the background. i'm kinda shocked that the weird poet guy's story, for example, ended happily; his situation sounded rough and it's surprising he's able to settle down with a deus ex explanation. i guess i'm annoyed by how va-11 ended all modes of speculation on the setting for me and i'm supposed to be happy that every character, even anna, has a happy ending. people often criticize the game for being "unfinished" or a prologue to a larger setting, but my issue that it's too finished. jill's (and by extension, glitch city's) story has ended in this ten hour journey. it's weird.

at the same time, i think the game is very likable. in the end, these are all quibbles about setting and character potential not executed in a way i would've liked to see. i enjoyed my time with the game and the writing is miles ahead better than most indie games writing. it's also exploring some subject matter that's dear to my heart, which is probably why i would've liked to see more. but practically speaking, this is an awesome debut title coming out from the global south. there's so much good presentation, the writing is snappy (though too tangential and a few misplaced commas), and it's a polished work. if anything, it's good that a game makes me want more of what it's doing well -- it means it's done something to me and i like to see what sukeban games will do next.

someone asked me what my rating for the game is because all reviews need scores. so the score i'm giving is 7.8/10 -- as good as Party Babyz.