So this is the power of a billion dollar budget and twenty years of anime novel writing experience

>waaaaaah high budgets = bad

didn't Muv Luv beat them to the punch?

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FSN has better QoL features than most modern VNs

Alternative did, but it came out several years after FSN.

so visual novels are like picture books but on a computer?

That's absolutely not true. They were standard for VNs of that time.

Well, yeah. With voice acting, soundtrack and choices.

so picture books where you don't even have to read

youtube.com/watch?v=WIleGzHQSXc&t=6591

I agree, this is pretty based

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Source? This is cute Fortnite Saber

Not quite, you have to read. Unless you speak Japanese and even then there's a lot of narration without voice acting.

What an absolute non-argument. The strength of VNs lies in their visual and audio components, which allows them to do things books can't do. I don't think VNs are better than novels, but there's no point in using the medium if you're not going to make use of everything it offers.

If you're not going to make good use of visuals and sound, you may as well make a light novel or regular novel.

Has there been much evolution since then? I'm really surprised I haven't seen things like animated backgrounds and interesting typography/text animation in VNs.
Seems like a little of that could go a long way into highlighting certain scenes

I'm so glad one-dimensionally minded retards like you don't get to influence art

Muv Luv Alternative is probably the top tier in this regard, but there must have been tonnes of better shit that also does it, I just have entry level knowledge on the subject.

Mahoyo was pretty damn impressive
youtube.com/watch?v=fU-27H4XNAc

As much as I love ML, they are already surpassed by a bunch of things using Live2D.
Look at NekoPara for an example.

I'm starting to be convinced that VNs actually have the potential to be a more expressive art form than the regular novel. It's hard to imagine anything in a regular novel that a VN couldn't do, whereas the use and combination of sound, animation, timing and typography put in the right hands could really allow for some cool forms of expression.

I feel you. I'm really interested in seeing more of this but I'm really not sure where to even look. Steins;Gate did some really nice stuff with it's cell phone that really made it engaging.

Oh damn, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Might be a bit much, but even without reading the plot you can tell the tension and build up are fantastic.

Rondo, Biman series, Senshinkan series, Maitetsu etc

428 has a substory written by Nasu that is all told using many CGs instead of sprites
Not exactly what you wanted but it's an unique enough idea
youtu.be/ZERkacCfzSY

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damn when's the translation coming out

This year bro. Wait a little bro.

Pic related was what actually got me into finally reading the VN after lurking threads cause I liked the cute loli Sakura and Rin and EMIYA pictures.

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I mean, what evolution? Like there really might not be much to be added. You obviously want the art to be as high quality/resolution as possible, so things like using vector graphics might be the ultimate endpoint, yet it's not something that would realistically benefit most people, so I'm not sure what else would be considered an evolution, since it doesn't necessarily enhances the core gameplay at all. Due to the fact that VN's are basically picture books with audio and I'm not sure what is there to evolve in these three areas. There's obviously the technical aspect of giving decent options/galeries, but that's also pretty basic.

You can then try to innovate in terms of adding animations, proper lipsynch, perspective, but I don't think they are necessarily an evolution, though it might be preferable for me personally. You can evolve in terms of gameplay, but gameplay in VN's self is not really essential, nor is it necessarily possitive.

>billion dollar
user Nasu was working with a budget of Takeuchi's basement.

They are akin, yet kind of different? The inclusion of CG's itself is a device that shapes the narration to same degree, though it's mostly not that massive, so they're pretty alike. I find the VN format in general being way more digestable, since you don't really need to do that much setting as you can show quite a lot. It maybe shows my lack of sophistication, but I can almost never fully pay attention or taken in when something's described in a book. Like I can try to imagine it in my mind if I tried, but it feels like such a chore for an uncertain result that I'd rather just skip it. It's also way easier to follow characters and the conversation has much better flow, due to the fact that voice acting, color coding and the way the lines are presented make it obvious who's saying what.

Other than that it gives you obviously way more options, but you can still do pretty much anything you'd do in a novel, which is what makes it great. I find the pacing and narration much better than that of a film or anime. I'd say that only manga or maybe videogames can compare, but that'd be going a bit too far.

The best example I can think of is something like Steins;Gate's cell phone mechanic which allowed you to talk to the characters and learn plot relevant information while you were in the middle of other parts of the story in a way that felt realistic and endearing without being forced, or things like where movement and programing are used to frame the narrative or create suspense, or even Saya no Uta where the imagery used is a whole narrative in itself.

Yeah, conversation in particular is so much more engaging in VNs than it is in regular novels. However, I gotta say that anything that many situations and places are much better left to the imagination, and that the visual elements can distract from some of the more intricate literary elements, but the latter's more of a human failure than a failure of the medium. I really agree with you on pacing though. The pacing and narration that a VN allows is so excellent, being able to break the story up into segments like that really makes VNs a nice marriage of all of the mediums you mentioned and it's why I think there's so much potential there.
As an aside, learning to visualize and wrap yourself in the space of a story can take some practice but lord is it worth it if you get the hang of it.

The things is that while things like glossary is nice and giving your VN a flair by introducing different kinds of gameplay elements is nice, it's kind of difficult to describe it as evolution. I guess in scientific terms it should just describe change, but what I mean by that is some improvement, which just doesn't describe it properly. I think the best would be something like innovation or iteration, but that's just semantics.

I'm not really that much in the left to imagination camp when it comes to setting and characters. I guess it's okay if you want to build some sort of tension/mystery and it's used for that purpose, but you can still do that in VN's. When you're just trying to show something and you're describing it only because that's the only way you can convey how it looks due to the nature of the written media, then I'd take being showed what you're trying to describe every day of the week. Picture sometimes really conveys a thousand words and I'd rather be shown Mona Lisa than it being described to me.

I suppose evolution implies iterative permanent changes so innovations would have been better. The imagination thing is usually only important for large things, not the small and benign like the place a conversation is being held in. Especially in fantastic works there are concepts and objects that would need to be shown in a VN context that couldn't possibly exist or be conveyed to the same effectiveness as letting the imagination fill in the blanks. Like for instance, for all the artsy love for Lovecradt, I'd imagine cosmic horror would be much more difficult in a VN than in a novel