WARNING: CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE ZERO ESCAPE SERIES, THE DANGANRONPA SERIES, THE STEINS;GATE SERIES AND CHAOS;CHILD
Last weekend, I finally finished my playthrough of all six endings to 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, as part of the PS4 Nonary Games collection. Hopping backwards and forwards to piece together a coherent story and find out why Junpei and co are trapped in this massive building was riveting, and despite being busy during the week, it still only took me two weekends to check out all dialogue and all possible finales to the story. And I think I feel confident in saying it is one of my favourite puzzle/VN games, surpassing titles such as Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney and almost bumping Steins;Gate from the top spot.
I’ve been considering, as I get started with Virtue’s Last Reward, why I was so taken with the story of 999. It seemed refreshing and special to me, unfolding in a way I had rarely experienced with games in both of the genres it straddles. I have heard opinions to the contrary, but I felt that the story was a neat little package, devoid of extra frills and story beats that detracted from the central purpose of discovering why they were all there and escaping the building. It was lean. It cut the crap.
Honestly, I feel like a lot of VNs lately could gain from cutting the crap. My very recent experience of trying to slog through Chaos;Child is a stark contrast. And as much as I love Danganronpa, Spike Chunsoft’s sister mystery novel series, I could see some areas where it also fell foul of bombarding me with information that did nothing to endear me to the story.
Source: Destructoid How video game narratives should keep more information behind closed doors