| Allison W |
08-19-2013 10:05 PM |
So a visual novel/video game called Hate Plus just got released today. (Heads-up: I bought and downloaded it already, but have not yet played it.)
In order to tell you what Hate Plus is, I first have to tell you about a game called Analogue: A Hate Story (which I did play, and completed). Analogue was/is a visual novel/video game by Christine Love, released on Steam on April 27 of last year. In it, you are an investigator, in space, investigating an ancient space ship, built to house a reproduction-capable-sized population for several generations, that went missing some time after its launch and has only now been found, uninhabited. You do so by interacting with the two artificial intelligences--who can definitely be called people, complete with personalities and emotions and such baggage--still active on the ship's computers: one named *Hyun-ae, and the security AI, named *Mute (the asterisks are silent), who can tell you what they know and help you retrieve data stored on the ship's computers. The story turns out to be that of a bizarrely, terrifyingly patriarchal neo-Confucian society based upon the real-world-historical Joseon Dynasty of Korea, and a young woman who was put in suspended animation due to chronic illness before the ship's fall to patriarchy in Year 0, only to be brought out of it between Year 0 and the mysterious disappearance of life aboard the ship.
To keep spoilers to a minimum, in Analogue, you do learn how the Mugungwha--the ship in question--ended. But you do not learn what happened between the ship's launch and Year 0 or how that neo-Confucian patriarchy came to be, which was the burning question left after learning how it all came to an end.
That is where Hate Plus comes in. Christine Love was overwhelmed by the positive response to Analogue, and so began work on a DLC expansion pack for the game--which was intended to answer those questions about what happened between the Mugungwha's launch and its fall to patriarchy in Year 0. It ended up becoming even bigger than the original game, to the point that she scratched plans to make it DLC, and upgraded it to a full-blown sequel/prequel, named Hate Plus, in which the records from prior to Year 0 are found and explored.
Considering what it's a prequel to, though, I'm going to ask you folks to send me your Prozac. Please and thank you.
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