Virginia is brutally edited and it's better for it
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- (Spoiler free!) Johnny takes a look at how the excellent Virginia uses cinematic editing to create a more streamlined experience.
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This game is amazing.
Also, good point made about never losing control of your character. Unlike say in other games where a cutscene plays out and you lose control of your character who's doing other things that you wish were doing or contradict your actions during gameplay or make your character to be different from the one you were playing.
Messofanego Trying to avoid spoilers for anyone else that comes across this, but there were a couple sequences in which the point of view is not your own, or it’s other people looking at you. It’s hard to tell exactly what was actually real in this game, and perhaps they were just part of a dream or something more, but I just wanted to point out that you do lose control of your character.
Make It make sense.....
That is absolutely brilliant. It's always refreshing to see developers considering games to be a form art and experiment with it's basics, instead of adding on gimmicks and seeing them as cash cows.
I agree with the reviewer up to a point. In a game set in an internally-consistent world (be it reality or a fantasy universe), this kind of editing does indeed remove a lot of tedium. But Virginia is a game whose story line shifts along alternative reality lines, as well as forward and back in time. For me, some of the travel editing (such as the corridors) were sensible, but in other cases my mind misinterpreted "fast travel" moments as if they were more of the story's reality transitions. The transitions were too similar in implementation to readily see when the game wanted to disorient me as part of the story, and when it was just moving in space to save time.
The point about not losing control, however, I support fully. In general, I really detest cut scenes except at the very beginning or very end of a game (to set the story context, or for an epilogue). I am glad Virginia doesn't resort to cut scenes for plot exposition.
I enjoyed this review 👍
Might pick this up
its a strange game
Hey Johnny! I am thinking about buying this game. It's got something that grabs my attention. However, I've heard it's extreeeemely short. My question is: Is there any replay value? Or it something like Journey, where you play it once and stays with you forever and a 2nd time is just not the same, since you already know its single awesome ending. Anyway, great vid as always. Cheers!!!
I'm not Johnny, but it's more like Journey
Intoxic Beheaded thanks for replying! Might just wait for a little while to buy it, then. Thanks again!
MusicRed You're welcome!
Hell no
I've played the demo, so I can't really judge Virginia as a complete game although the editing did leave an impression on me. The editing is quite choppy and I didn't like how silent and lifeless the game felt. However, all of the criticism aside I love when games attempt to experiment and Virginia is definitely experimental.
Jumpcuts? One of the most used methods in films, and one of the most fragile methods to use.
*You have to guarantee that every one of your audience understands how the scenes before and after the cut correlates to one another and what might've possibly filled the cut.*
Even Hollywood made a lot of films turned bad due to bad jumpcuts (an extension of "bad directing").
To be fair, I'm rather a fan of linearity. Say, Kojima's "One-Shot Method" in MGSV. Cuts are fine as long as they're smooth, which Virginia (shown by examples in the video) is not.
well that's the thing, the devs probably new that not everyone would like the game, it is a walking simulator type game after all, so i myself am glad that the devs are trying something different, although yeah, I'd probably want to know jump cuts were gonna happen, just so I knew what was going on.
Craig Kingdon Thing is, whether they did Virginia's jumpcuts good or not is arguable.
*In movies, any jumpcuts that led to the confusion/disorder of the viewers are treated as bad jumpcuts.*
What we can see in the video, *Johnny stated himself that he was "shocked" into the next scene.*
Normally, I'd say this is a "bad jumpcut" and call it a day. *But in Virginia, we can "adjust" the screen to ease our shock from the jumpcut, because it's a video game.*
So it really is debatable. *But were the jumpcuts seen as subjectively good and accepted by many? Not even close.*
TheRibbonRed not even close? who are these "subjects" then?
Bottomless Pit I would consider myself one, but you can give it to any movie fans and ask their opinion.
I imagine Jeremy from Cinemasins would be against this, as he is against any camera effects that is confusing the viewers.
Don't agree with this at all. What's the point of interactivity if it's just going to cut away from it?
Wanted to enjoy this and started it twice but the horrendous framerate on PS4 (not addressed in the reviews) was such a turn off. Like Firewatch it's a game where you want to scan the landscape but unfortunately it's headache inducing.
(re edit: I take it the clips of the game seen on this vid is the PC version as you don't get a migraine when the camera turns)
wow
The game frustrated me more than anything. And I spent the whole time playing just waiting for some sort of conclusion only to be left way more confused at the end than I ever was while playing. I don't understand one bit of what happened enough to even begin to craft my own theories about what it all means or anything. Just feels like a couple hours of nonsense to me