Katawa Shoujo Forums

First of all, I gotta say the idea of the game is really good. Having to feel even in an imaginary world what they feel is nice.

Secondly, unfortunately, the game will lack two important aspects which as follows:
> Lack of animated scenes
> Lack of voices

These two aspects are part if not the main influence of games which partially connect the imaginary field with the normal one. I did read about the idea of not having voices but in my opinion as a frequent h-games player all voiceless games FAIL big time.

Hopefully, you find my humble opinion of any good and thanks for your time.

Guest1215225 wrote:First of all, I gotta say the idea of the game is really good. Having to feel even in an imaginary world what they feel is nice.

Secondly, unfortunately, the game will lack two important aspects which as follows:
> Lack of animated scenes
> Lack of voices

These two aspects are part if not the main influence of games which partially connect the imaginary field with the normal one. I did read about the idea of not having voices but in my opinion as a frequent h-games player all voiceless games FAIL big time.

Hopefully, you find my humble opinion of any good and thanks for your time.

Well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Do VNs typically have actual animated sequences? I've only played 3, including KS, and the ones I played didn't. This isn't an anime, you know. And the dev team has no animators to my knowledge (Pimmy, you're awesome, but the work load shouldn't be thrown on you). So they'd have to bring people in, or try to learn it. Which will take either money, or precious time. Probably both. All in all, it is unecessary.

As for voices, the game doesn't really need them. The game is excellent on it's own. Aside from that, not only would voices be a LOT more work for the dev team, it would also be hard for them convey a performance worthy of the writing in the game. If the devs were to do voices, first off, they'd have to pick from us/friends who are willing to do it for free. This probably won't work as the quality will most likely be amatuerish. Or they'd have to hire people as actual voice actors. Two problems with this, hiring people costs money, and KS is a freely developed game. I don't think the devs want to spend more than what they have to. Also, the really good voice actors are expensive, making the first problem worse, and relating to the quality issue. And personally, I don't want to hear this game in english. English dubs normally aren't that great, with few exceptions.

So perhaps the devs would try to voice the game in Japanese. There are even more problems with this. First off, the game is developed as an OELVN, so the connections with Japan are extremely limited. And the same actor pool problems occur again, except this time, they don't even have enough forum amatuers fluent in Japanese to choose from. And they can't hire the appropriate voice talent for the same reasons above. And even if they did, the logistical problems of coordinating the effort accross languages makes this idea ridiculous.

Captain Niggawatts wrote:Well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Guest1215225 wrote:I did read about the idea of not having voices but in my opinion as a frequent h-games player all voiceless games FAIL big time.

Fail how? People are still gonna enjoy it. If people still play the game and like what they play, how could it ever be a failure? It's not like 4LS has any financial investment to recoup or anything like that.

There are pluses to having no voices. If the sound is limited to just music, you don't have to explain to people around you why your computer is squealing like a little Japanese girl being buggered. It'd be cool to see voices and animation in KS but I don't think they're needed and I'm totally okay with there being none. Besides, if you're really into the story, your imagination can come up with voices for the characters.

Guest1215225 wrote:all voiceless games FAIL big time.

This is, like, the dumbest opinion I've read this month. But this is, like, my own opinion, man.
Do voices help? yeah. Do they always help? One word, Shenmue. I love the shit that comes out of that game... except the voices. Getting Ryo's retarder "I see" in Shenmue I was unbearable to the point that it became a kind of running joke. Can't remember a phrase in Shenmue II that got me like "I see" did, but the voices didn't get better at all.
KS is good without voices and I would hate to get MS Sam quality voices. In short, don't fix it if it ain't broken.

G3n wrote:Do VNs typically have actual animated sequences?

I've played more than 3, but can't call myself a "big VN reader," but yeah, from my experience, they tend to have them most of the time. Recent ones, that is (2000-today more or less).

I would only play a VN with voice acting if it were at least as professional and emotion-filled as this.

Frankly, the OP seems to be getting the idea of KS back-assward. KS is not just another fap-fest of an h-game consisting of 85% fap fodder and 15% of filler; KS is expected to be a VN that includes some H-scenes as part of the story. For anyone who has played the demo that should be pretty obvious, but I can understand missing that point when their rating system is decided by how much hand lotion and Kleenex they use watching it.

Frankly, I can't even begin to imagine the retardation that has brought upon this thread to litter my already shitty forum. I just spent about three and a half minutes contemplating the most concise way of illustrating the issue from our point of view to the OP (and anyone else in this thread who missed the point), and I feel largely disappointed in myself as I not only failed to come up with something adequately witty but also wasted three and change minutes of my life, which I could've better used to make myself a nice cup of steaming hot battery acid.

I refrain from commenting on what is the "main influence of games which partially connect the imaginary field with the normal one" because just copypasting that phrase made me dry heave twice. So, I assume that the key issue here is that OP never considered where animation keyframes and atrociously hammed voice acting actually come from? From the magical land of rainbow-farting unicorns of course, as most other things on the Internet. It's not that we are TOO GOOD to have either in our game or that it's an oversight, to be honest we'd fucking love to have KS fully animated and voiced. The problem lies in that we are, in fact, not unicorns; we are a bunch of fags on the internet. Stringing words, bits of scripting or pictures together in a way that fakes pro quality decently is not beyond our capabilities; orchestrating a professional-quality voicing of a story the length of Lord of the Rings or spending a year or two animating a few odd cutscenes are.

tl;dr it's impossible, you are delusional. If it's any consolation, you can imagine Shizune is voiced.

Aura wrote:If it's any consolation, you can imagine Shizune is voiced.

yea, that's precisely the thing I wanted to mention. Shizune is voiced already

I don't know what you're talking about, the game's already going to be voiced.

Guest1215225 wrote: These two aspects are part if not the main influence of games which partially connect the imaginary field with the normal one. I did read about the idea of not having voices but in my opinion as a frequent h-games player all voiceless games FAIL big time.

Fate/Stay Night didn't really have voice until the PS2 version if I recall correctly. That's all I think I need to say.

-abscess wrote:Can't remember a phrase in Shenmue II that got me like "I see" did

"Where can I find some sailors?"

Aura wrote:RAEG

Apart from that, most of those "all" games with animations just play 10-frame animated gif-like loops of jamming it in during H scenes. Not only do I find this aesthetically unpleasing and severely clashing with the look of the rest of the game in the general case, in the specific case of KS it would also emphasize the wrong part of the game. And while it would be borderline feasible, it still would be a metric shitton of work, highly unproportionally so - I'd rather put the same effort into making the rest of the game look better.

PLUS: In general KS is already more animated than most low-budget VNs, just done with movement animation instead of frame animation. That's all you can ask for. If you want to see School Days here, kindly raise a million dollars and make your own damn game.