Virginia is the Work of an Auteur
From the start, it’s clear that Virginia is confident in the story it wants to tell.
Throughout its 2-hour-ish playtime, Virginia’s plot, locales, pacing are all colored with tools that would seem more natural in other forms of media. The few things I read about Virginia before playing were full of references to Twin Peaks and the X-Files — atmosphere-heavy shows that have surreal twists on the classic procedural.
These comparisons are easy to make when you look at how the game’s sudden jump cuts and disorienting dream sequences reflect the strong directorial vision that David Lynch infused into Twin Peaks, or look at how Virginia partially emulates the balance Scully and Mulder constantly struck between the bureaucratic and the supernatural.
Virginia succeeds in using the borrowed language of film auteurs to tell a compelling story.
Drawing inspiration from other sources, most of the game’s motifs are open for interpretation in a way reminiscent of some of the metaphors scattered throughout the literature taught in college English courses — keys and locks, caged birds, out-of-place colors… all symbols that are used throughout Virginia’s story to reference familiar themes.
Though these sources of inspiration don’t necessarily sound innovative on paper, Virginia succeeds in using its borrowed language to tell a compelling story, relying on the player to piece together its disjointed vignettes and fill in some of the blanks that arise through the game’s pacing.
What really works to set Virginia apart from many other games, movies, and books, however, is its total lack of dialogue.
The same weekend I sat down to play Virginia was the weekend after I bought Hyper Light Drifter. Hyper Light Drifter is more of a traditional game compared to Virginia, sporting a greater focus on gameplay, progression, and consistent pacing, but these two very different games shared a similarity I didn’t know about beforehand: a complete lack of traditional dialogue. Instead, both games rely on universally understandable visuals, communicating in ways that can evoke emotional responses by showing, not telling.
Hyper Light Drifter’s characters communicate with gorgeous pixel art tableaus — just a handful per interaction — that tell vivid stories through imagery. Without words, the game’s visuals, colors, and character’s expressions have to do the heavy lifting to characterize the world. Virginia strikes a balance between scenes similar to the rapid-fire exposition of Hyper Light Drifter’s tableaus and atmospheric storytelling utilized in games such as Gone Home and even Bioshock. This balance makes the story somewhat harder to follow, but it results in an engaging and rewarding experience that is open to personal interpretation.
Though this focus on nonverbal storytelling results in a few clunky segments that rely on the player quickly reading multiple pages of text, one of Virginia’s most impressive accomplishments is in how sparingly it uses text as a storytelling crutch given the complexity of its plot. Though, to be honest, it seems fitting that the player has to sift through a few pages of archived information and paperwork when a major aspect of Virginia’s plot is that the main character is employed in an impersonal bureaucracy.
With a predetermined plot that, for the most part, moves at a pace of its own, Virginia almost intends to be a polarizing experience — it’s hard to imagine that Variable State didn’t know they would alienate some players given the game’s commitment to its nontraditional gameplay and storytelling.
Virginia almost intends to be a polarizing experience.
The game can border on frustrating in how it limits player control over the speed and direction of the story. In the handful of film classes I took in college during my academic rumspringa, I learned about how auteurs are directors who take total creative control over their movies, directing every aspect within the frame to give it their unique touch. Though this is Variable State’s first game, it has this same auteurism, a comparison that’s easy to make when the game so clearly mirrors some of David Lynch’s own artistic flairs to the point that it’s hard to read anything about Virginia without seeing Twin Peaks referenced.
Virginia is undeniably a cinematic experience, though it’s one that involves players in a way that the vast majority of movies don’t afford. These interactions may be limited, but they let the player connect with the game in ways that are unique compared to the constant plot progression and movement found in movies and books.
I’ll admit that I have a soft spot for well-executed art styles in games, and style is where Virginia’s art direction and pacing shine brightest. Virginia is a rewarding experience, though it’s one that can be off-putting in how it intentionally subverts traditional storytelling and gameplay. It’s a game that I would earnestly recommend, but the combination of its quirks easily establishes Virginia as something that isn’t for everyone, using the language of cinema over the more established rules of game development.
