danganronpa 1st IMPRESSIONS

I remember someone on twitter recommended dangan ronpa on the basis it had the best story in any video game they'd played, and at first I scoffed, until I realised I was judging it by its cover, and assuming anime had nothing to say, because I'm pretentious. Which is true. So, I figured I'd try it out as soon as it arrived on steam.

The story is clearly the main hook, which is strange cause the story is so WEIRD. From the intro where a teddy bear stuffs a guy into a rocket and incinerates him, to the point the game is fully underway, it expects you to take in a huge density of concepts so outlandish I'd be lost with just one of them. Somehow, this game just kept bringing in new things that I was having to stretch my disbelief to massive lengths to understand.

(for example- 1. you're in a school of the world's most "ultimate" elite students (fairly easy to understand) 2. You all fall asleep simultaneously and wake up in a parrallel version of the school (medium) 3. the school is run by a teddy bear with two faces (medium) 4. the bear explodes (I was willing to believe anything at this point) 5. the bear comes back, 6. The bear is behind a reality-show-esque setup where students have to kill eachother to escape 7. The overly confusing, overly-decorated HUD that also makes loads of noise is always distracting)

Okay, okay, it's just my natural tendency to want to compare things to things I've experienced before, and this game was hard for me to categorise as I was going. This game is somewhat alien to me and I think it's because you need to know a lot of the history of high-school visual novels/ TV dramas/ porny snuff films, in order to enter the game from a position where anything is in any way relatable. (for example, there's lots of genres that have borrowed from their predecessors to the point that what they are now is unrecognisable in comparison to what they were in the past. new ideas iterated on top of old ideas- for example: zombie movies.)

HOWEVER, a few days ago I went on a long filibuster about how outlandish & inunderstandable concepts were actually good, so, I'd be a hypocrite to criticise it for that- instead, I'll criticise it on the basis I had to force myself to suspend my disbelief constantly during the first hour or so. Once it was underway, I was able to get used to it- (the way characters are all "This is so messed up!" "This has to be a joke!" Kind of did more to break my suspension of disbelief than keep it, and I don't know why)

That said, I know I was into it. I couldn't stop thinking about it even after I'd stopped, probably because of a combination of what I thought were its flaws, and what I liked about it. I tweeted that the game was "a load of rubbish. ...I'm obsessed with it" which I think sums up my thoughts better than anything in this paste does.

So far the story feels a bit patchworky, like the writers couldn't decide if they wanted to write high school drama, romance, battle royale, or murder mystery, so just wrote all of them at once, and I was also able to guess who would die first from several miles off (although I did everything I could to prevent it, the game does seem to lead you down a very specific path with not much control over it.)

Speaking of which, it would be really interesting if the game-show concept driving the plot also drove the gameplay. As soon as that element was introduced, my mind was racing around like "okay, who do I kill? And if I can't kill them, who would be my second choice? Who would I befriend?" I think this was what was intended. But it seems you don't play the game with that level of agency. You sort of click through it waiting for other people to do things- which, I mean, makes sense, otherwise there'd be no story if I just killed someone and left straight away.)

Instead of killing, I wanted to start making friends/relationships, because if I can be good in a game, I will usually be good. Sayaka showed an interest in Makoto straight away, so I made an effort to get them together. She's the character who's going to die, by the way. I kept wanting to yell at the screen, "you guys need to sleep together NOW, or you'll never get another chance, hint hint" but unfortunatley, it didn't work, and she died. I tried to get to know Junko as backup. She wasn't interested. Then she died as well. It wasn't my day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Junko's death, unlike Sayaka's, took me by surprise. I figured she'd die too at some point (since girls who wear make-up and act trashy always die in horror movies for some reason) but not that early. Also, she went down fighting, so... That's something......

As of right now I'm drifting off because mystery-solving is not very interesting to me. I'm going to try completing it, still. There's lots of up-close, lingering violence in this game and I'm not really into that anymore. Moving around feels a little tedious. I have a backup plan. I will get with that red haired dude and kill the fanfic writer. It will probably go disasterously. I don't know why I'm playing this