Virginia. The title gives you about as much of a clue as to the nature of the game as you need. And that is: none at all. I will preface this review with the statement that I feel that this game is one that is truly best left to be experienced first-hand, without any prior knowledge of what to expect. I will attempt to write this review with the utmost care in order to preserve that for anyone who reads this prior to purchasing the game.
Every once in a while, a piece of creative fiction will come along that will immediately resonate with me. It is rare, but it is such an amazing feeling when it happens. I knew, the moment that I booted up Virginia for the first time, that it was going to be something special. I knew it from the first notes of the opening score. I knew it from reading the heartfelt letter from the developers that is accessible from the main menu. The last lines of it read, “It’s been a strange and confounding experience making Virginia. We hope it’s resulted in a strange and confounding game.” I feel that this encapsulates the experience of Virginia better than my review could possibly explain. Strange and confounding indeed…
Like some of David Lynch’s best work, this game takes you on a trip both literally and figuratively through the conscious and subconscious mind of an FBI agent placed in a difficult position to solve not just one case, but two. One is the overt case of locating a missing child in a small town in Virginia. The other is an investigation into your partner. You will experience the life of this agent both on and off the clock, over the course of a week. The game itself can be completed in approximately three hours. I would normally say that this is entirely too short for a game, but this one is so well crafted and told that I feel that it was perfect in length. In fact, once I was done with it, my first thought was that I needed to go back and play it through again. Like a great movie that you keep going back to. During the final credits, the game thanks Thirty Flights of Loving as a direct inspiration, and though I have not yet experienced that game, I recall hearing similarly high praise for it at the time of its release.
One of the most amazing things about this game is that it is done using absolutely no dialogue whatsoever. Everything is conveyed through the music, and through the surprisingly emotive body language and facial expressions of the characters surrounding you. Especially considering the minimalistic art style the game employs, this is no small feat. It, somehow, is able to do more with no words than most games do with a full script. The music speaks for the game’s voiceless narrative, setting the tone and evoking the emotion of each scene. When I first realized that this was going to be how the entire game was going to play out, and not just a tone-setting gimmick for the opening of the game, I got a little nervous. I thought, there’s no way that they’re going to be able to tell a powerful, meaningful story without using dialogue. It just won’t be possible.
I was wrong.
The confusion and heartache of the task given to the main character is enough to bring forth tears at points along the way. But it isn’t all sad. There are parts that are whimsical, exciting, angering, and, not least of all, disorienting.
There are moments where the perspective feels almost claustrophobic. I cite it at the beginning of this review as being one of the only downsides to the game. I would say that at the beginning of the game the limited field of view and almost zoomed-in feeling was almost enough to give me a slight sense of vertigo. However, as I played the game, I felt myself getting drawn into the perspective. At times, I felt like I was playing a VR game without a headset. I was completely immersed. And there is nothing in the game to bring you out of it; nothing that breaks that spell. No HUD alerts pointing you in the “right” direction. No words floating across the screen to tell you what you’re thinking or feeling. It is you. Your feelings are hers and vice versa. Everything from the sound direction to the atmosphere, it just pulls you further and further into the warm embrace of the life that you, by the end of it, feel like you have lived. So, though I state the FOV as a downside, I feel like this was an intentional decision by the designers of the game. I feel like they knew it would create a sense of unease, and that’s what they wanted. And, because the game made me feel what I felt, and so strongly, I can’t argue that decision.
In the end, I can’t say that I totally understood everything about the game. In fact, if I did, that would be a total lie. But, like any good art, I felt something when I played this game. It told me a story in a new and interesting way that I had heretofore never experienced and I’m fairly certain will never experience again, at least not in the same way.
I’ll play it again. I’ll try to make different choices and see if I can affect the outcome at all. I’m not even sure that’s possible, but even if I can’t, I won’t care. Maybe I’ll see something I didn’t notice the first time, or understand something in a different light. I know that after completing the game, I only have about 45% of the achievements listed on Steam, so I know there are things that I didn’t discover. Things I have yet to do or see or feel. But I also know that the three or so hours that I spent playing Virginia were some of the best three hours I’ve ever spent playing any video game in my long history of gaming. It was refreshing and new and bold and creative. Virginia is the game that, I think, many independent game designers wish they could make, but are often not brave enough to take the leap. Thank goodness the creators of this game were brave enough, because they have added something to the world with Virginia.
