VN Talk: even if Tempest - Part 1: Overview

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: Switch
Release: 2022

I was originally skeptical about playing even if Tempest because writer/director Ayane Ushio is the same person who wrote and directed Norn9: Var Commons, which struggled with its overly ambitious narrative, so I didn't pick it up until it was on sale. Now that I've finished it, I have to say it may well be one of my favorite visual novels of all time, with the caveat that I can still see signs of what were likely aborted plot threads.

Thankfully most of those are easy to overlook due to the strong central narrative, so I'll save the bulk of them for another post. For now, I'll just leave it at this: The story definitely changed during production, and the signs are there if you look, with the biggest indication being the fact that the title screen prominently depicts a monster holding Anatasia that never appears during the game itself. This is the title screen which you will see every time you start up the game, and a heck of a thing to leave in if it was never supposed to play a role.

But despite whatever changes may have been made, even if Tempest is an excellent dark fantasy of revenge, sacrifice, and discovering the truth no matter the cost. Though Anatasia's ability to rewind time by dying is occasionally played for a dark laugh, the deaths of others are never taken lightly, even if she theoretically can revive them if she rewinds far enough. In fact one of the burdens she carries is making sure that any sacrifices made can be corrected by the time she finally pulls free of the meat grinder she's trapped inside.

Why Unpacking Didn't Work for Me

I finished Unpacking recently. It was an indie and critical darling, wearing so many awards on its Steam page it'd rival a military general. I'd wanted to play it for a while, but found the list price too steep for a 3-4 hour game, no matter how well reviewed.

Still, I really liked what I'd heard about it. I'd read reviews where journalists were impressed by the game's subtle storytelling and how the player would learn about this girl/woman's life from the things she unpacked as she moved to different places in her life.

I like good storytelling. I'm a writer after all. And I like seeing novel forms of storytelling in games that can't be accomplished through conventional fiction. Learning this woman's story through her possessions sounded up my alley.

When I started the game, I quickly realized that the person whose belongings I unpacked was clearly a person of her own and not me. Though you can turn it off, by default there are only certain locations an item can be accepted. So you can't leave a book under your bed's pillow even though the game will physically allow you to put one there. (I can't be the only kid who slept with a book under their pillow…)

It was a little jarring at first. Since I was unpacking a child's belongings I figured I'd unpack it as I probably would when I was a kid, but the game's demands made it clear this was not me.

Though this is a "cozy" game I actually found it rather stressful as the game increasingly has this unnamed person move to ever larger habitations with more rooms and a more complex set of belongings. I didn't like to end a play session in the middle of unpacking. I wanted to finish.

And I think that's where Unpacking started breaking down for me.

The act of unpacking dozens of rooms, the actual moment to moment gameplay, wasn't that appealing. You open a box and you can't see what's inside of it. Items come out one at a time and you have no idea if there are ten books in there or one, because our unnamed woman accidentally packed something in the wrong box. It annoyed me finding something in the wrong box. I'd be unpacking living room items and suddenly find something for the bathroom. It'd make some logical sense if it was at the top of the box, maybe she forgot to pack it and needed to find a place for it really quick, but lots of these mispacked items would show up in the middle.

As a result I found the unpacking tedious instead of relaxing. By the end I was trying to optimize my placement time rather than trying to put things away based on aesthetics, so the only thing that held my interest was the story and the novelty regarding how the story was told.

One of the things that really got my attention in an early review was a scenario when the woman moves in with a boyfriend after graduation. It's clearly his apartment when she moves in, because his stuff is already in place and the dresser drawers are haphazardly used. At first glance, there's not much space for her belongings, but with some work you can get everything to fit sensibly. Except for her college degree.

There is no wall space. Her boyfriend has used up all of it and you are not allowed to take down his things. You can rearrange, but 100% full is still 100% full even if the game did allow you to pick up and swap items. There are, in fact, only two places the degree can be hung; over the toilet in the bathroom (which the game will tell you is not an acceptable location) or under the bed.

It's probably not surprising that the relationship doesn't work out, and the next move is back into her childhood home.

I loved this. I loved seeing all the small details. The girl has dreidel toys, so I wondered if she was Jewish or had simply gotten them as part of a lesson in school, and then later in life I unpacked a menorah, confirming her religion. I know that she's an artist, but worked as a store clerk just out of school, and that she likes to add plush chicks to her chicken collection. She's a gamer with an affinity for Nintendo platforms, moving about with a GameCube when she's younger and adding a Wii when she ages up. When a new girlfriend moves in, I conclude she's Asian, likely Chinese. Those details are great.

But those are details. They're not a story.

When I got the game, I wondered how it would end. How long would we follow this woman? Would our final unpacking be a retirement home? Or would the final unpacking actually be a bookend to her life with perhaps her grandchildren packing up her belongings after she passes away?

Those are both end of life scenarios, but that's the problem. Where should Unpacking end? Since this isn't an endless game of randomized unpacking scenarios, it has to end at some point, and it does.

The problem is, the ending is not telegraphed. I finished a particularly long and complicated unpacking late at night, so I figured this was a good stopping point. The game transitioned to the photo album interface with the right arrow button highlighted to turn the page to the next unpacking, just as it always does, but I decided not to hit it and turned off my Switch.

I came back the next day, ready for another round, and clicked the arrow to continue. The credits rolled. It was one of the most anticlimactic starts to a play session I'd ever had.

In retrospect, I can see that the multi-story house with a baby on the way was clearly going to be a transition point in our woman's life, but all her moves have been transition points. Why was this move in particular the last one? Families move all the time. Is it because she's now a home owner and this is the place she intends to live out her days?

That would be fine if there was some inkling that was going to be the case. It would probably be difficult to telegraph that in the unpacking itself, but she always concludes each move with a note in her photo album, and she doesn't say anything that suggests that this is a final move. It's looking forward to the baby, which is appropriate, because it's another start for her, but for the player it doesn't signal an ending. So, I expected the story to continue, but it didn't.

And that has left me with a rather grumpy feeling.

The gameplay didn't do it for me, and because of that ending, the story left me unsatisfied as well. It wasn't horrible, just disappointing. That the mechanics didn't click with me wasn't really the issue. I knew this was a short game so I wasn't worried that I'd eventually chuck the game out of irritation. It was just how anticlimactic the ending was. Here are the credits! Here's a look at the backsides of the happy couple as they start their new life with a baby! But I thought I was going to do another unpacking…

Generally a game, or any creative work really, wants to go out on its best foot, to leave the audience with a favorable impression. Surprise credits isn't the way to go, and the way I came back to my final "play" session is an impression of Unpacking that is never going to leave.