Katawa Shoujo Forums

I'm lucky enough to have my hands on a VR headset and with this I downloaded Google Earth VR. And my immediate thought was to visit the gates from Katawa Shoujo. So I did. In the attachment included, I have a (dodgy) picture of the gates of Brown University, Rhode Island taken from what I presume is a satellite portrayal. After seeing the gates in the polygon form right in front of me, my thoughts quickly turned to VR visual novels. Slightly off of the Katawa Shoujo topic, but imagine playing/reading a visual novel in the virtual reality. I myself, would give everything to read in the virtual world, with all the characters and scenery surrounding you. Maybe that's just my mind running off away from me but, would you guys like to see VR VNs? Better still, Katawa Shoujo in VR?

That ... is a really really big image.

Could you shrink it down a little?

As for KS in VR, NO. Most of the time I find anime designs look weird when converted to real life, plus you'd loose the music.

Sorry about that, was posting while on the phone. Note for next time: bad idea.
I understand where you're coming from though. Perhaps just a 360 tour of the landscapes of VN?
This is just dreaming at the end of the day however.

Well that would require you to actually make the environments, characters, animation would be needed etc to avoid it feeling like you're stuck in time. Then you'd probably need to do voices because text in VR would just be weird.
At that point it's not really a VN anymore, it's a walking simulator or a point and click or just a plain animation.

VR is great, but I really don't think adapting the VN format would really be worthwhile, VR needs to have custom designed things that play to it's strong suits and visual novels really don't do that.
Maybe odd fan projects that capture moments from a VN would work though. I'd love to see a small program that lets you sit in the dandelion field with Rin or play chess with hanako in the library.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0t8L972HzY

apackofbadgers wrote:Well that would require you to actually make the environments, characters, animation would be needed etc to avoid it feeling like you're stuck in time. Then you'd probably need to do voices because text in VR would just be weird.
At that point it's not really a VN anymore, it's a walking simulator or a point and click or just a plain animation.

VR is great, but I really don't think adapting the VN format would really be worthwhile, VR needs to have custom designed things that play to it's strong suits and visual novels really don't do that.
Maybe odd fan projects that capture moments from a VN would work though. I'd love to see a small program that lets you sit in the dandelion field with Rin or play chess with hanako in the library.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0t8L972HzY

"Eating Oranges Beneath The Worry Tree: A Virtual Reality Experience"

Should've done my research: there is a visual novel in VR on Steam. To keep it as focused on KS as possible I won't dwell on it however when I have the time I must try it out.

After having a go at the VR VN I've come to find some flaws and some pros to having a visual novel in the virtual world.

How you play:
Within the novel I played you pretty much had to stand up at all times. Despite having the obvious downsides such as leg fatigue if you're craning your neck at a block of text for hours without sitting down, I don't really see much to complain about, apart from if the scene is generally uneventful. Adding a sitting function would be easy or even a hybrid of sitting and standing (think Hisao + Lilly in the tea room, then moving out onto the corridor where you'd be standing) however I see that being a pain having to grab a chair every 10 minutes.
Using motion controllers is also a possible immersion deal-breaker. Just having hands or some way to interact with the environment would possibly either immerse you further or defeat the purpose of a visual novel for you. It really depends on who you are and what you'd like.

Characters:
Being in a 3D world pretty much requires you to have 3D companions too. The game had 3D models instead of 2D drawings and I feel like this is where I'd maybe draw the line between Katawa Shoujo and VR. KS has a certain charming art style that I think would be lost within the art style and model style it'd have to adapt to. Perhaps it may work for other VNs, but perhaps not for KS. Visiting the environments may be quite cool however.

After playing the VRVN, it's made me think about whether or not it'd be a good idea to revive KS from a completely different perspective. In conclusion, maybe just give virtual reality a few years before delving into the unknown waters that is visual novels.

Any thoughts on whether or not visual novels will get (respectively) on virtual reality?