So, some video gamers in Venezuela who really liked anime got together,
made a prototype game for a game jam, and figured they could make
something more out of it. Their idea was VA-11 Hall-A, referred
to lovingly by them as “Waifu Bartending” for a time, a cyberpunk themed
visual novel revolving around a corrupt order of private police called
the White Knights, human augmentation, artificial intelligence, and
corrupt companies. The twist was that, unlike Read Only Memories,
you wouldn’t be playing as someone central to the story changing this
world, but as a lowly bartender hearing stories from her customers. The
game was released around the same time as other narrative heavy indie
games, and ones that included equally diverse casts and queer
characters. Despite that, the down-to-Earth premise in a very
fantastical setting did a lot for the game.
Billed as a “waifu bartending” game, I expected the romance elements of visual novel VA-11 HALL-A to be the major component of the game, with all choices consciously driven toward guiding the player toward one of the waifus.
I got nothing against waifus, let me say. But I was delighted to find the game a lot more subtle about those choices, instead letting me act much more naturally in the presence of virtual friends, colleagues, and customers, and influence the direction of the story in other ways.
Though it is clear at all times that the characters in VA-11 HALL-A are designed to appeal to various types, that isn’t really how the game plays out moment-to-moment, instead setting you into the day-to-day groove of a fairly normal person in a reasonably normal bar in the middle of cyberpunk land.
