Hi. Not a ton of progress this week unfortunately but I'm really finding the rhythm in this game. I'm about 7 hours into The Silver Case.

Here's the thing. I had a sort of epiphany while playing The Silver Case this week. Before I explain, I want to preface that it's sort of this deliberate choice that I'm leaning into my ignorance with regard to video games as a whole but also video game critique. The Silver Case is probably working on so many different levels that I can't even comprehend, It's almost assured that I am missing so many pieces of context that help me get this game and what it's doing. So why even bother talking about it? or better yet why not do the homework and try to develop the understanding? One reason is that I'm reading pretty heavily already so it eats into the game playing time to do extra reading on top of that; Sometimes I do read though. The second reason is that it's kind of fun to build an understanding from like base principles. Maybe I'll come to similar conclusions that other people have come to already, or maybe I'll come to some sort of new idea. It's fun!

Ok back to my awesome epiphany, As I was playing through episode(?) Spectrum, you are asked to navigate this apartment complex, and it's a little tedious and often you're going to the same exact apartment over and over. And, I was thinking like "why is this here?" I mentioned in the last update that I was kind of finding these moments of pacing odd because I'm so accustomed to visual novels giving you a steady flow of narrative to chew on and these moments like interrupt that flow. And so I'm thinking about it and I'm like "oh! this is movies". Like the moments of interfacing with the environment and moving around and the way dialogue is spread out in physcial space take cues from movies. Which isn't to say that Suda51 is making a movie, but I can see a way that thinking about film help inform the decisions the game is making.
So when you're navigating this mall and it's kind of weird and closed off and meandering: thats movies! thats tension and pacing. These kind of "horror" moments also kind of play out similarly in horror games so it's not the strongest argument. Investigating this apartment complex actually did really like engage my brain in this way though, the way you kind of employ this interview and investigate tactic feels like it's paced directly out of a film but it kind of plays around with that in some interesting ways. The way that you as a player basically have to communte to the apartment complex every day is drawn out in a way that wouldnt quite play out in a movie but I just get this overwhelming impression that it's a twist on like montage in film. It's possible that I am stupid.

Ok, before you come to any kind of conclusion about my thinking. The chapter itself seemed to kind of chllenge this conclusion. I won't spoil it in case people who don't know, but something happens in this chapter that could only happen in a video game and it blew my mind and honestly it wasn't even that cool but it freaked me tf out for the game to like immediately switch up on me like that.

Anyways, next week there will be more and maybe I'll also understand how videogames work finally. Bye.