Why Can't Other Games Draw Out Emotion?

 

We've analyzed why emotion emerges in visual novels. The reverse question follows naturally: why can't other games do the same?

Of course, "can't" is an overstatement. People have cried playing The Last of Us, felt their chest tighten in Final Fantasy. But those emotions mostly come from cutscenes or story events. It's rare for the gameplay itself to produce relationship emotions.

Why? AI and I dug deep into this topic.

Games' Basic Structure Clashes with Emotion

Most games are built on a challenge-reward structure. Defeat enemies for experience, complete quests for rewards, clear stages to progress. The emotions this produces are achievement, tension, thrill. Intense, but different in texture from relationship emotions.

Relationship emotions sit at the opposite end of efficiency. Liking someone is inefficient. Anxious, irrational, uncontrollable. The challenge-reward structure fundamentally conflicts with such feelings.

AI explained this using the term "ludonarrative dissonance" — when the behavior the gameplay demands conflicts with the emotion the narrative tries to convey. An RPG tells an urgent story about saving the world, while the player is leisurely fishing or doing side jobs. Emotional consistency shatters.

Visual novels have no such dissonance. The gameplay itself is the relationship, and the narrative is the relationship. Action and emotion align. This alignment creates depth of feeling.

What's interesting is that some games intentionally leverage this dissonance. Undertale transformed the RPG combat system itself into an emotional device. "You can kill or spare the enemy" is a choice embedded within combat, and that choice directly connects to relationships and emotions. It's a rare case of resolving ludonarrative dissonance, but even here, the same principle operates: alignment of system and emotion.

Combat Obstructs Relationships

Consider relationships with companion characters in RPGs. You travel together, fight together, talk together. There's room for relationships to form. You might genuinely grow fond of a companion.

But the depth of that relationship is limited. Because most time is spent in combat. Interactions with companions are just events wedged between battles. The relationship is a byproduct, not the purpose.

And combat systems clash with relationship emotions. In combat, companions are "units." You slot high-DPS characters into the party, bench inefficient ones. "I like this character but can't use them because their stats are low" — that's a collision between emotion and system.

Visual novels have no such collision. You like a character not for their stats but for who they are. The system doesn't obstruct the emotion.

The Open-World Paradox

Open-world games offer high freedom. Go anywhere, do anything. Yet this freedom actually hinders emotional depth.

The reason is simple. Too many things to do means you can't focus on one thing. Just as a relationship with an NPC begins, a quest notification pops up from across the map. Mid-conversation, unexplored regions on the map nag at your attention. Scattered attention can't deepen into emotion.

Visual novels intentionally restrict freedom. Where you can go is defined; what you can do is limited. This restriction creates focus. With nothing else to attend to, you give the character your full attention.

More freedom isn't always better. Emotional depth grows better in constrained spaces. This principle applies not just to games but to all narrative. Just as films condense emotion within a two-hour constraint, visual novels condense emotion within the limited interaction of choices.

AI made an interesting analogy when I raised this point: "The difference between a garden and wilderness." Open worlds are wilderness — flowers can bloom anywhere, but not as the gardener intended. Visual novels are gardens — flowers placed intentionally in limited space, designed to bloom on schedule. Both can be beautiful, but for precision emotional design, gardens have the advantage.

The Multiplayer Problem

Deep emotional relationships between players do form in online games. But those aren't emotions designed by the game — they're emotions that arose naturally between people.

Designed emotion and naturally occurring emotion are different. Designed emotion intentionally evokes specific feelings at specific moments. Natural emotion can't be controlled or predicted.

Visual novels are a genre that deals entirely in designed emotion. The scenario writer calculates where and what emotion should emerge, then arranges text and choices accordingly. This precision is possible because the other party isn't an unpredictable person but a predictable character.

Paradoxically, because the other party is fictional, emotional design becomes possible. With a real person, you can't control the response.

The Purity of Emotion

This led to an interesting discussion with AI. "So are visual novel emotions pure or manipulated?"

AI's answer: all narrative emotion is manipulation. Novelists manipulate readers' emotions, directors manipulate audiences' emotions, visual novel writers manipulate players' emotions. The difference is only in the tools of manipulation. Novels use sentences, films use imagery, visual novels use choices.

True, but one thing to add. The "manipulation" in visual novels involves deeper player participation than other media. Novel and film emotions are passively received. Visual novel emotions come as the result of active participation through choice. This sense of participation raises the purity of the emotion.

If I'm sad because of a choice I made, that sadness belongs to the writer but also to me. This duality is the essence of visual novel emotion.

What Other Games Can Learn

What can other genres learn from visual novels? Not that every game needs romance. The key:

Make gameplay and emotion point in the same direction. If you want emotion during combat, the combat system itself must support emotion. If you want relationships during exploration, the exploration structure itself must build relationships. Outsource emotion to cutscenes, and it's film emotion, not game emotion.

So Is This a Limitation of Games?

After this analysis, the answer to the original question becomes clear. Other games' failure to draw out emotion isn't a limitation of games as a medium. It's a matter of purpose and system design.

Most games don't aim for emotion. They aim for challenge, exploration, achievement, fun. Trying to graft emotion onto that feels forced. Visual novels aim for emotion from the start. Every system is aligned toward that purpose.

This isn't about superiority. The purposes are simply different. But if you've decided to design emotion, there's much to learn from visual novel structure. Alignment of gameplay and emotion, focus through constraint, participation through choice. These principles apply across genres.

In the next entry, I turn my gaze outside games. How do films and novels convey emotion? And what does a visual novel share with those methods, and where does it diverge?

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Next: What If It Were a Film or Novel? — Comparing Emotional Delivery Across Media