WHAT IS IT?
Planetarian is a visual novel from Key/Visual Arts. It's only about 4 hours long, but at $9.99 it's both cheaper and longer than a movie so I was quite satisfied. I'm always down for things that aren't going to clog up my backlog. This game actually came out on Switch back at the end of January (2019) but never got an OT. It was originally released in 2004 for Japanese PCs, and has seen a few other releases through the years (PS2, iOS back in 2013 in English) but this version has updated visuals and full voice acting.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT?
After three decades of chemical and atomic warfare, humankind is almost entirely eradicated. And endless acidic rain falls from the sky. The warring factions are long gone, only the last remnants of their final desperate measure remain: autonomous and nearly unkillable war mechs patrolling strategic areas still fighting a pointless war long over.
A bitter and cynical former child soldier raised in this brutal world clings to life looting ruined cities, alcohol and cigarettes the greatest treasures. He ventures into an abandoned cordoned off dead city, whose environmental protection bubble has long since eroded from the acid rain. Mindless war mechs are its only remaining inhabitants.
He stumbles across what he hopes to be a military radar dome, but instead finds it to be the flooded ruin of an old department store...with a planetarium at the top.
Inside, he finds an android girl who is improbably still functional thanks to an old military emergency power conduit. She is just a cheap consumer model, made to welcome people and host shows at the planetarium. She has no understanding of what's been happening in the world outside. And she has been waiting 30 years to welcome their 2,500,000th customer. She knows she is malfunctioning, but all she wants in the world is to make people happy, and to show the special presentation they had prepared for that visitor.
Day after day, she stands at the entrance, hopefully and poetically beckoning to customers who will never come, in a polluted world without stars.
WHAT'S INTERESTING ABOUT IT?
Man.
I have never had a game make me feel like this. I'm a grown-ass man and I'm not ashamed to admit it had me bawling by the end. The only other times I can even remember a piece of media hitting me this hard was Safe Area Goražde and that time in grade 6 my teacher showed us an environmental film about a construction site where baby chicks got burned. Maybe Planetarian hit me a little harder because it resonated with some things in my life, but it legit took me a couple of days to fully recalibrate after finishing it.
I would have thought it was just some cheapo moe otaku thing from the cover, but a positive review on ladiesgamers.com assured me this wasn't some exploitative fanservicey thing. And what I found is they were right, it held some genuinely interesting themes about human consciousness, what it is to feel, what constitutes meaning, the nature of Heaven and the soul, the suffering and folly of war and environmental degredation, and most centrally, faith and hope. But mostly, it makes you really feel for the game's central character.
Hearing her call out for people so longingly again and again, knowing that there's no hope for her wishes to ever be fulfilled...
"Won't you come to the planetarium?
The beautiful twinkling of eternity that will never fade, no matter what.
All the stars in the sky are waiting for you."
It's at once lovely and heartbreaking, which pretty much describes the whole thing.
TBH I probably have to make it my GOTY, nothing else left this kind of impression.
Planetarian is a visual novel from Key/Visual Arts. It's only about 4 hours long, but at $9.99 it's both cheaper and longer than a movie so I was quite satisfied. I'm always down for things that aren't going to clog up my backlog. This game actually came out on Switch back at the end of January (2019) but never got an OT. It was originally released in 2004 for Japanese PCs, and has seen a few other releases through the years (PS2, iOS back in 2013 in English) but this version has updated visuals and full voice acting.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT?
After three decades of chemical and atomic warfare, humankind is almost entirely eradicated. And endless acidic rain falls from the sky. The warring factions are long gone, only the last remnants of their final desperate measure remain: autonomous and nearly unkillable war mechs patrolling strategic areas still fighting a pointless war long over.
A bitter and cynical former child soldier raised in this brutal world clings to life looting ruined cities, alcohol and cigarettes the greatest treasures. He ventures into an abandoned cordoned off dead city, whose environmental protection bubble has long since eroded from the acid rain. Mindless war mechs are its only remaining inhabitants.
He stumbles across what he hopes to be a military radar dome, but instead finds it to be the flooded ruin of an old department store...with a planetarium at the top.
Inside, he finds an android girl who is improbably still functional thanks to an old military emergency power conduit. She is just a cheap consumer model, made to welcome people and host shows at the planetarium. She has no understanding of what's been happening in the world outside. And she has been waiting 30 years to welcome their 2,500,000th customer. She knows she is malfunctioning, but all she wants in the world is to make people happy, and to show the special presentation they had prepared for that visitor.
Day after day, she stands at the entrance, hopefully and poetically beckoning to customers who will never come, in a polluted world without stars.
WHAT'S INTERESTING ABOUT IT?
Man.
I have never had a game make me feel like this. I'm a grown-ass man and I'm not ashamed to admit it had me bawling by the end. The only other times I can even remember a piece of media hitting me this hard was Safe Area Goražde and that time in grade 6 my teacher showed us an environmental film about a construction site where baby chicks got burned. Maybe Planetarian hit me a little harder because it resonated with some things in my life, but it legit took me a couple of days to fully recalibrate after finishing it.
I would have thought it was just some cheapo moe otaku thing from the cover, but a positive review on ladiesgamers.com assured me this wasn't some exploitative fanservicey thing. And what I found is they were right, it held some genuinely interesting themes about human consciousness, what it is to feel, what constitutes meaning, the nature of Heaven and the soul, the suffering and folly of war and environmental degredation, and most centrally, faith and hope. But mostly, it makes you really feel for the game's central character.
Hearing her call out for people so longingly again and again, knowing that there's no hope for her wishes to ever be fulfilled...
"Won't you come to the planetarium?
The beautiful twinkling of eternity that will never fade, no matter what.
All the stars in the sky are waiting for you."
It's at once lovely and heartbreaking, which pretty much describes the whole thing.
TBH I probably have to make it my GOTY, nothing else left this kind of impression.
