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Virginia |OT| The truth is out there in a small town

Warning: "chapter select" doesn't remember what you've done up until that point.

Some trophies require you to collect stuff across multiple chapters.
If you miss an item, you're fucked... Back to square one.
 
Just finished the game. Loved it.
Great analysis Dusk. I think
the main character's dad was in the FBI himself, and that was evidence of his corruption he gave her to destroy. This is why she has become an FBI agent in the first place. She looks up to her dad, but does not want to become corrupted like him (or the current chief). That's her dilemma. The bison represents innocence. That's why you "kill" it when you burn that evidence package in the furnace. Bison-innocence binary also fits the Lucas situation. He was an innocent kid who was killed because he wanted to reveal the priest's corruption. He is killed to cover the evidence just like the way the main character "kills" the bison after covering the evidence of her dad's corruption. The bird is more of a puzzle for me. I think it represents freedom through LSD. Don't know where the "locket woman" fits into this picture yet. Need to play the game again to find out more.
What I love the most about the game is that we could all be right or wrong at the same time!
 
That was amazing. Friendship, betrayal, social justice, diversity, personas, identity, existence, all wrapped up in one. Unforgettable experience.
 
Just finished. Not sure what that was about. Overdosed on ambiguous symbolism.

I didn't have any particular emotional response to the game. It was more like curiosity, an intellectual puzzle. There were times that the music would rise, as if something dramatic was happening, but I just wouldn't feel it. I think the lack of dialog and the way the game intentionally obfuscated everything made it hard to connect emotionally, but maybe that's not what they were aiming for.

It seemed like an interesting experimental piece. I'm glad I played it. I don't think it was entirely successful -- I think they overdid the symbolism and ended up making it feel too abstract. But I'm glad they made it, and I'll look forward to their next game.

I'll probably go through it again at some point, after reading other people's thoughts about it. I need some help in figuring out what the heck it was all about.
 
The graphics and especially the soundtrack were amazing.

Every other aspect of the game was just terrible.

Sad to say because I was excited about this game.

I am not going to go into the specifics, because if you want to take this trip, it is best to go in with an open mind.

It has a ton of interesting ideas, especially the narrative style that I will not spoil for you. But wow that was a dissapoinnting experience.

Destructiod I feel has been overly harsh on the "walking simulator," genre, but I have to agree with them on this one.
 
Just started playing. Why are the controls and framerate so atrocious ugh (PS4). I felt so far that Thirty Flights did the transitions better too, they feel more haphazard here, like it cuts away while it's still telling a story. Love the setting though.
 
This, KRZ, and INSIDE are some of the best storytelling I've encountered in a game this year, and they accomplished it without dialogue but leave it to visuals. The montage of
investigating PoC FBI agents
and the
multiple character PoV scenes
were brilliant.
 
Where on the Firewatch to Everybody's Gone to the Rapture walking-sim-line does this fall? It sounds interesting, but I'd like to be more than just a camera ala Firewatch (even if the choices you make are only for the story in your head, it felt like a personal playthrough) rather than the Rapture/Dear Esther style that leaves me wondering why there needed to be any form of interaction at all.
 
ghostjoke said:
Where on the Firewatch to Everybody's Gone to the Rapture walking-sim-line does this fall? It sounds interesting, but I'd like to be more than just a camera ala Firewatch (even if the choices you make are only for the story in your head, it felt like a personal playthrough) rather than the Rapture/Dear Esther style that leaves me wondering why there needed to be any form of interaction at all.
Click to expand...
It's the everybody's gone to rapture side of the spectrum
Edit: well to clarify I felt like more of a character in this then in rapture but it's definitely on a very set path with minor interactions.
 
kitschykitty said:
It's the everybody's gone to rapture side of the spectrum
Edit: well to clarify I felt like more of a character in this then in rapture but it's definitely on a very set path with minor interactions.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Disappointing, but I might still check it out. The price isn't as steep as normal and the comments here on the story/ending have me intrigued that there is something in here that could give a similar kick to Firewatch's way of experiencing a story instead of just being told about it while I hold W - bleh, this is hard to explain.
 
I played about 45 mins last night. I wish I could play it all in one sitting but it was too late. I absolutely love the use of jump cuts.
 
Finished this earlier. It's certainly a very interesting game, although I'm unsure what to make of it overall. It's definitely going to require a second playthrough, as it seems quite easy to miss certain visual cues that could help make sense of the story.

I definitely can't fault the soundtrack, though. I thought Furi's soundtrack wouldn't be beaten this year, but this might have pipped it. It puts most recent film scores to shame.
 
kitschykitty said:
It's the everybody's gone to rapture side of the spectrum
Edit: well to clarify I felt like more of a character in this then in rapture but it's definitely on a very set path with minor interactions.
Click to expand...

I'd actually say it has significantly less interactivity than Rapture as that is still a fully explorable open-ish world. It's basically 30 Flights of Loving if that was a feature film rather than a short film. I loved the hell out of it, but this about as extreme a minimization of traditional interactivity as you'll see in a video game.
 
Just finished. Amazing atmosphere and music. Unfortunately had trouble following the story in the last stretch, as I was too tired and fell asleep a few times. Read some of the spoiler summaries here and it makes sense now.
 
Just been watching some footage for this on YouTube. Looks interesting. I don't have time for it right now, but it might be one to add to my Wishlist.
 
Just finished it, but don't really know how I feel about the game experience.

Music was superb and it had some nice things, but the story was messy.
 
Last day was pretty sublime. Yeah the storytelling was great, after 30 Flights I wondered why we didn't get games in that vein. Glad to see them capitalize on it. Though the story, if I understood it correctly, could perhaps have been a bit more interesting to warrant such a looping narrative.
 
Wow, what a disappointment, I was expecting some sort of murder mystery set in 90s and instead I got pretentious Lynch-like "experience", that was full of ambiguous symbols. I enjoy "walking simulators" to a certain degree (I liked TVoEC and Rapture) but this was massive letdown.

One thing I have to say, music was superb.
 
Moreche said:
Hard to recommend on PS4 as he frame rate is awful. Really distracting.
Click to expand...

I don't know if it's just me but it doesn't seem any better on PC. Never had an issue with a Unity game before and again this could just be an isolated incident but I feel like this game has really poor framerate and controls very sluggish.

Anyone else experiencing this?
 
joms5 said:
I don't know if it's just me but it doesn't seem any better on PC. Never had an issue with a Unity game before and again this could just be an isolated incident but I feel like this game has really poor framerate and controls very sluggish.

Anyone else experiencing this?
Click to expand...

Yeah on PC the controls seem very floaty and weird - I tried on both 30 and 60 fps and it was kinda the same.
 
Matush said:
Wow, what a disappointment, I was expecting some sort of murder mystery set in 90s and instead I got pretentious Lynch-like "experience", that was full of ambiguous symbols. I enjoy "walking simulators" to a certain degree (I liked TVoEC and Rapture) but this was massive letdown.

One thing I have to say, music was superb.
Click to expand...
The further you think and replay segments about the symbols, the more they make sense. That's what the spoiler thread is also for. Even if the details aren't understood, it's still a well told story about universal themes like I mentioned above.
 
Nabbed this over the weekend, will sit down and take my time one evening to play it.

Really excited! These types of games are such a nice palette cleanser from the routine gaming 'experience.'
 
joms5 said:
I don't know if it's just me but it doesn't seem any better on PC. Never had an issue with a Unity game before and again this could just be an isolated incident but I feel like this game has really poor framerate and controls very sluggish.

Anyone else experiencing this?
Click to expand...

It's a very demanding game. Deceivingly so. I guess it's the engine struggling, rather than your hardware.
 
ugh im torn on whether to get this.

i love what im seeing in the atmosphere and the premise, but the no dialogue and how some are the story is unclear with too much symbolism...........i don't know man.
 
Played through it last night. Really enjoyed it, t'was quite the experience, even if I'm not exactly sure what happened in the end or what it all means. But since it was pretty short, I'm gonna replay it.

My one real complaint is that I wish it didn't have collectibles. I don't know why developers of linear, story-driven games continue to do this, especially one as directed as Virginia. All they do is get in the way and disrupt the experience.

Because otherwise, I prefer "walking simulators" like Virginia to more open-ended ones like Rapture or Firewatch. I appreciated that Virginia trimmed out a lot of the fat of exploring environments unnecessary to the story, and if there were no collectibles there to sidetrack me, they would have nailed it. For some games, such as this, I don't really want or need more agency over what happens.

I love the way it looks, the music is fantastic, and they did an awesome job of making a pretty emotional experience without the use of dialogue. There are just so many moments that stand out for me, as just being brilliant. Even as the ending left me more confused than anything else, the way in which I got there was really something else.
 
Messofanego said:
Virginia is brutally edited and it's better for it (spoiler-free)
by Johnny Chiodini (Eurogamer)

Totally agreed.

Also makes an important point that you never lose control of the character, unlike say in other games where a cutscene plays out and you lose control of your character who's doing other things that you wish were doing or contradict your actions during gameplay or make your character to be different from the one you were playing.
Click to expand...

But you do lose control of your character multiple times in Virginia 🤔🤔
 
I thought it was...okay. Very heavy-handed on the symbolism. The music was marvelous. I also give the game props for running with its own distinct art style. It felt super cinematic, which was neat.

I'm not sure why I wasn't in love with the game. Collectibles in this type of game really bug me, but that's not the only reason I'm kind of lukewarm on this game. Maybe I just need time to digest.
 
Messofanego said:
Virginia is brutally edited and it's better for it (spoiler-free)
by Johnny Chiodini (Eurogamer)

Totally agreed.

Also makes an important point that you never lose control of the character, unlike say in other games where a cutscene plays out and you lose control of your character who's doing other things that you wish were doing or contradict your actions during gameplay or make your character to be different from the one you were playing.
Click to expand...

Yup I loooove the cuts in this game. It's stylistic and functional.
 
I really liked this. I'm happy it was a lot more coherent (if open ended) than I expected early on. It was pretty subtle in how it grew on me and those last few sequences really sell it; I was enjoying it at first but it took a bit to really click, especially as I spent a lot of the first 20 minutes or so fiddling with mouse sensitivity.
I definitely felt the Blendo Games influence so I smiled when that was the first things in the credit.
Also, my Macbook Pro had some issues during the scenes in the field, but thankfully that was about it.

And now, off to buy the soundtrack and hang out in the spoiler thread.
 
Oh man the song in the bar scene, in fact the whole bar scene when you're dancing with your friend, just lovely, was worth buying the game for that one moment.
 
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