by
Evan Norris
, posted 14 hours ago / 584 Views
If you finished Never 7 – The End of Infinity and still found yourself craving more mystery, more science fiction, and more romantic entanglements, all nestled in a visual novel format, you’re in luck. The Infinity series continues with perhaps its most beloved entry, Ever 17 – The Out of Infinity. Thanks to publisher Spike Chunsoft and developer Mages, a remastered version of the game is now available for a worldwide audience. Similar in many respects to its Never 7, on mechanical, audiovisual, and thematic levels, Ever 17 manages to top its predecessor in some ways and fall behind it in others.
The game follows two protagonists, the young man Takeshi Kuranari and an unnamed boy suffering from amnesia, who find themselves stuck in LeMU, a state-of-the-art underwater facility that has experienced a catastrophic event. Surrounded by flooding hallways, deadly electrical discharges, and other dangers, the two characters, along with several other survivors, work together to escape the facility before it’s due to implode — in just 119 hours.
Don’t mistake the game for just another disaster story in the vein of The Poseidon Adventure, though. While Ever 17 has its share of thrills and spills, it’s a much more cerebral, intellectual experiment, one that’s incredibly heavy with speculative ideas about technology, mind-bending twists, heartbreaking moments, and memorable characters. Indeed, just as he did with Never 7, visionary writer Kotaro Uchikoshi nails the narrative. Well, mostly.
While Ever 17 surpasses its predecessor in the boldness and density of its science-fiction notions and recurring themes — an aspiring academic could write an entire thesis on the ideas that pervade the game — it struggles to match its relatively crisp pacing and sense of foreboding. Before you head into underwater LeMU, understand that the adventure is a very slow burn. While many of the twists, resolutions, and endings are worth the investment, it’s undeniable that Ever 17 takes a long time to get going. It also, weirdly, demonstrates an almost leisurely attitude toward the life-or-death situation facing its survivors, at least in the beginning. In fact, at times there’s a greater sense of urgency in Never 7, a game about a college retreat on an idyllic island, than there is in its sequel, a game about being trapped 51 meters under the ocean.
As is the case with Never 7, it’s good that Ever 17 is so thematically rich, with so many meaningful moments and unforgettable characters, because the game is more or less on auto-pilot. As with the majority of visual novels, the gameplay consists of progressing through the story by pressing a button. At several intervals, you must make a decision that affects the trajectory of your journey and leads to one of nine possible endings. However, and unlike its precursor, there are long, uninterrupted stretches without any choices to make. There are times when it feels like you’re doing more watching than interacting.
Because of all the branching paths and endings, and the reality that you must “beat” the game several times, with two different protagonists no less, to see each and every answer, twist, and revelation, Ever 17 is a very substantial game. You probably need 30-40 hours to witness everything. Of course, this all comes with one drawback: repetition. Although subsequent playthroughs branch off in meaningful ways, introducing new interactions and conclusions, you will have to sit through familiar scenes and dialogue. It’s just the nature of the beast. Luckily, there’s a fast-forward option.
You might not always opt to speed through every scene, however, because the artwork is so fetching. Mages, the development team behind this new international release, created a brand new aesthetic based on the character sprites from the PlayStation 2/Dreamcast original and the 3D backgrounds from the Xbox 360 remake, creating something that’s the best of both worlds. It looks great. The CGI cut-scenes, which are used sparingly, also impress.
Mages also deployed a brand new translation which, for the most part, works quite well. There are fewer typographical errors than in Never 7, although it’s clear a few things slipped through the cracks. In one scene, a note from the copy editor appears within the dialogue: “No edit needed but all right is used here, but alright seems more commonly used.” One thing to note for purists: the translation is based on the Xbox 360 script, which is generally considered inferior to the original.
As for the audio side of the equation, it’s once again brilliant. The vocal performances by Hiroko Kasahara, Yuu Asakawa, Noriko Shitaya, and Hisayo Mochizuki are simply exceptional. These voice actors truly bring their characters to life.
Then there’s the soundtrack, composed by Takeshi Abo. It’s one of his finest works, which is saying something. “Karma” is sad, mournful, and tender. “Drittestock” has a mechanical, industrial, apprehensive vibe to it. “Qualle” is a dreamy, unknowable track. Once you complete one of the game’s many endings, you’ll unlock a music player, so you can listen to the expressive tunes to your heart’s content.
In some ways, Ever 17 is an upgrade over its predecessor Never 7. It looks and sounds better, and its futuristic ideas and themes are more powerful. In other ways, it’s less impressive. Its middle hours tend to drag and it lacks the charming slice-of-life elements that made the previous game so lovable. Still, if you’re looking for a mysterious visual novel with shocking twists and provocative ideas about science, technology, and what it means to be human, you can’t go wrong with Ever 17.
This review is based on a digital copy of Ever 17 – The Out of Infinity for the NS, provided by the publisher.
More Articles
