![]() ![]() Then there are films like Blade Runner 2042… really, the arts are filled with warnings about what happens when we retreat to worlds of our own construction.Īll of this comes back to the idea of The Social Construction of Reality, as posited by sociologists, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann back in 1967. Roughly the same time, Japanese visual artist, Sugimoto Hiroshi, created an exhibition of possible doomsday scenarios for humanity, and “constructed realities” was one of those. ![]() Just a few years ago, a Japanese film artist created Hyper-Reality, a short dystopian film that suggests that a future in which we can use digital media to “paint over” anything about reality that we don’t find pleasing or useful might not be the utopia that certain Silicon Valley organisations would have us believe that it is. However, it’s the themes of this game that really strike a chord because, again, they’re so relevant to our society, today. Anonymous Code features a massive number of key art CGs, animation, comic-book style sequences and more to make for an engrossingly “active” visual novel, filled with aesthetic and UI energy that help to back up the game’s near break-neck pacing at times. I realise just how utterly strange all of that sounds, but it’s truly riveting to watch play out, supported as it is by this series’ characteristic ultra-high presentation values. From that point, you (the player) are led on a mind-trip whirlwind of an adventure where you need to outright leverage the fourth wall as a game mechanic, and help Pollon navigate through the story by helping him determine when to “Load” and change the future. Pollon develops the ability to “save” and “reload” reality, just like in a video game. Pollon thinks that that’s it, he’s failed at protecting the girl, but then something very strange happens. They capture the girl, beat Pollon to within an inch of his life, and take her away. ![]() Shortly thereafter, however, Pollon and this girl fi nd themselves being chased by the military. She has an AR tattoo mark, suggesting that she shouldn’t exist as she does in the real world, and yet she lives a totally technology-free existence and is very real to the eye. Then the protagonist, Pollon, meets a girl who is dressed in a strange cat costume. But, if you press the “B” button on your Switch (usually, in visual novels, the command to make the interface disappear and allow you to admire the art in full-screen glory), the veneer disappears and you realise that all those beautiful women are actually old, saggy men that are “cosplaying” via AR to the delight of the patrons. The first clue of Anonymous Code is about comes early, when the protagonist wanders into an “AR café”, where he sees an assortment of beautiful women. Quite possibly the most fascinating of all this series of visual novels, precisely because it is so relevant to modern society and very real trends that are going on out there. ![]() Anonymous Code, the latest in the series that has brought us Steins Gate, Robotics Notes and Chaos Head, is a play on this idea, and it, too, is fascinating. Reality is increasingly uncertain, and this is fascinating. ![]()
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