Virginia

Fuck Virginia

I honestly don’t know where to start with Virginia.

I don’t like the term “walking simulator” because to me it implies a) no player agency, total rails and b) a chore or task akin to walking on a treadmill, some exercise that must be done for bodily health and not out of enjoyment. Most of the walking simulators I’ve played aren’t like that, and so I call them exploratory games. Virginia is really more of an interactive movie, but in this case, I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who calls it a walking simulator, because it does a great job of meeting both criteria.

The graphics are lovely, the music is nice, and the story starts out very promising with a nice Twin Peaks/The X-Files vibe. The main character, Anne, is a young FBI agent who has been assigned her first case, an internal investigation.

The protagonist’s movements are limited and the player figures out early-on you can’t really get off the rails, but there is a little wiggle room for exploration. There is some text in Virginia, but no dialogue. While this creates an interesting atmosphere, it also forces the writers to rely heavily on visual cues. I think, if the writers knew what they were doing, dialogue would have helped, but they clearly don’t know what they’re doing so not shelling out for voice actors was probably a good call. While the graphics are lovely, some of the environments end up feeling conspicuously empty. For example, several of the house interiors are filled with blank pictures. This breaks immersion and feels weird when the player is relying almost exclusively on the environments and models for storytelling.

Around the halfway point, Virginia stumbles because it descends into dreams and symbolism. It isn’t thought-provoking or interesting, just confusing. Things that sort-of worked before, like the quick-cut ending of scenes, now add to the confusion. The last 30 minutes or so were monotony.

If that wasn’t bad enough, this is another one of those fuck-you cheevos situations. At least one achievements requires two full playthroughs back-to-back, including sitting through the exorbitantly long credits. I made a point of trying to explore scenes as much as possible before they abruptly cut off and I only discovered 3 of the exploratory ones naturally. Boo.

So I’m at the end of this game, feeling pretty damn salty, and whooooooooooooo should pop up on my monitor but 505 Games, the publisher of Abzu. Thanks for reminding me! My Fuck Abzu post shall be forthcoming.

Edit: OH MY GOd it has a 15-card set. ooooh you bastards