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Old 05-11-2015, 11:14 AM   #1
Doppleganger
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Return to Ever17

In summer of 2007, a summer of technology, evening strolls and science fiction, I played Ever17 for the first time. You couldn't have done a cleaner job blowing my mind with a Glock 17. I spent a good week or so trying to convey the level of passion I'd developed for the novel and it's one of the few surviving posts on UPN from before the Al-Qaeda board wipe. Let the record stand, that topic can be found here, broken text and all (the characters I used are not support online anymore). I'll try not to rehash that discussion here, this is mostly a retrospective.

Ever17 was a particularly important milestone in my personal history of entertainment. I was at the right age to be receptive to a lot of the ideas presented in it. It raised my standards for anime appreciation. As a visual novel, it opened my eyes to the presentation style of visual novels and the feeling of interpersonal immersion. 'immersion' is a big theme in the video game industry these days as many gamers want another world to escape from given the drab and mundane nature of their own, but that objective is frequently sabotaged by "suspension of disbelief" breaking attitudes.

Like, the inability to role-play. MMORPGs use meta slang and approach conflicts in-universe with a meta attitude, beyond the understanding the game world. They're too attached to their own egos, so they can't detach themselves and get the full escapism they crave. It's a major conflict of identity problem, where people are not willing to abandon the life they dislike, but crave change and a fresh start.

The characters in Ever17 managed to strike a blend between anime stereotype and real-life normalcy. They felt like real people with personality, the kind of people most love to hang out with, not fictional characters. So convincing were they that I felt legitimately interested in what they had to say. When Tsugumi acts condescending because I don't know the Archimedes Principle (something I learned in elementary...sort of) like the back of my hand, I felt honestly slighted. When LeMU started to implode I felt honest despair along with him and everyone else.

Similarly, the setting for Ever17 is a great balance between real and un-real. I'll bring in a comparison with Jurassic Park - JP basically combined cloning extinct animals, a real fervent idea in the '90s, with Disneyland. It fed into the '80s mentality of corporations as money hungry, morally bankrupt with cautionary nonchalance. It's a fairy tale that came out of the '90s, and could only come out of that decade, and I'd say the idea of LeMU as a sort of high-tech, underwater Tomorrowland definitely feeds into that sense of believability.

Humans also have, I feel, an instinctive fear of the water. We're not built to handle environments where we lack free motion, such as outer space or under the sea, so being in that element, essentially at the mercy of nature's oppressive grip, is a natural place to kindle a fear. Ever17 takes full advantage of that, with the mood of calm and terror ebbing in the story like the tide on a seashore.

I've played Ever17 a couple times since 2007, although I firmly believe in the magic of the 'first experience' and tend to not re-play things only if they're exceptional. It did not hold up completely during my most recent re-play, especially when we consider where technology has come since 2002, and where it hasn't. But I was still able to see most of the original magic that captivated me. I'll definitely be using it as a reference for when I write my own visual novel.
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Old 05-12-2015, 11:55 PM   #2
Talon87
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My, how the time flies! I was just listening to "Karma" the other day, enjoying the cheeky comments made by commenters on YouTube. ("good night, sweet washing machine princess" for the win!) I thought to post about my personally-amusing experience in the Ever17 thread ... and was shocked to discover that the last time it was posted in was in 2010, some 4˝ years ago! The timing of this new thread couldn't be more perfect.

First off, I want to promote this game to a new generation of UPNers. Several of their number have been leading the charge in a willingness to play and to explore visual novels, whether that's Fate/stay night or Katawa Shoujo. Others of them have shown a strong interest in playing fun games, even if they're hidden behind a language barrier, such as the Kantai Collection crew. So I thought to myself, what better time than now to introduce these gamers to Ever17?

Second, I was thinking about replaying a couple of the routes from this game. (Probably just Tsugumi's and Coco's, but maybe I'll go ahead and do everyone's again, who knows. I would if time wasn't such an issue!) I don't know whether I'll do this next month or next year, but generally speaking the intent is there to give this game a much-deserved revisit. It doesn't feel like it's been five years since I last played it last talked to someone else on UPN playing it, but apparently it has been. Man. How the time flies ...

Finally, inspired by your own retrospective, I'd like to offer some of my own thoughts. Ever17 was never for me something that had the same powerful effect that it had on Doppelganger. It took three different playthroughs, separated by months to years, for me to complete the entire game. I don't know that I ever rated the plot or characters a 10 out of 10, although I suppose a quick look back at the Ever17 thread could shed light on that subject. It was, for me, a very good game but not a life-changing masterpiece.

And yet ... in many ways Ever17 was life-changing. It set the bar for what I would come to expect out of an A-grade visual novel. It provided me with the clearest example yet in my life of a story whose author asked the question, "How best can I take advantage of this particular medium? What sort of story can I tell via this medium that I can't tell as well in any other format?" and answered it. It was one of my earliest shared experiences with a dear friend of mine, Yuki, in that she played this game relatively early to us becoming friends. And it paved the way for a later shared experience between Yuki, bbb, and I when the three of us all played Remember11 together, a game by the same development team. Ever17 provided me with one of my favorite fictional characters in all of anime-esque media, Komachi Tsugumi. It gave me some real musical gems in "Karma" and "LeMU ~ Harukanaru Lemuria Tairiku," the latter its opening theme song, the former its perhaps single-most iconic piece.

So Ever17 was life-changing for me, I suppose you could say, in many noticeable ways. And I think its potential to have just a great impact on your life as it did mine -- if not greater -- is all the reason in the world for you to play through it yourself, from start to finish.
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Old 05-13-2015, 02:47 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
It was one of my earliest shared experiences with a dear friend of mine, Yuki, in that she played this game relatively early to us becoming friends. And it paved the way for a later shared experience between Yuki, bbb, and I when the three of us all played Remember11 together, a game by the same development team.
We played R11 before I experienced Ever17 actually as I recall, which made my exposure a bit different. I can't say I really grew attached to any of the characters, but Ever17 is still my favorite VN for its emotional impact and clever use of storytelling medium. Definitely recommend people to play it.
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Old 05-13-2015, 07:04 AM   #4
Talon87
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Whoops! Been a while. Guess I got them backwards.
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Old 05-13-2015, 02:14 PM   #5
Crys
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Oh hey this is actually pretty cool. Thanks for posting this thread.

I'll see about either buying a PC copy or finding a Dreamcast one, as the latter would give me a reason to actually turn on the DC outside of the every so often Time Stalkers.
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Old 06-08-2016, 11:37 PM   #6
Doppleganger
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So it'll be about 9 months before the events of Ever17 take place.

Certain people really want to make that deadline.

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