That is one of the reasons why David Lynch is such a devoted filmmaker, he is able to put a white horse in a room or a few dwarfs appearing under the door and that this will impact his audience in some way. But if it does it is because it does not stay in the form, but it handles the subtlest strands that can touch our subconscious.
That is why when Virginia roughly shoves you into scenes like a bison in a room, we can not help but smile, because, more than an intention, we see an attempt to get the attention of one of the modern fathers of Surrealism . And it
‘s not that Virginia is not smart, she does an exercise in a way rarely explored in video games. Eliminate any type of dialogue , reinforcing what we see on the screen and making the player stay more focused, and therefore, more interested in what is intended to tell. His film cuts Spacers flee from those castings to black so characterist
ic in any production to disguise the charges of stage and defends the philosophy that going down three floors of stairs is a bore and that the cut is made precisely to reach the important, like the cinema, to that the footage is adjusted to the approximate two hours.
It is therefore difficult to classify Virginia as a simple Walking Simulator . Because even walking seems like too much video game mec
hanics. The result is a series of short corridors, divided into scenes, in which to look for the element to interact so that the story advances, and do not look for more feet to the cat because there are none. Here you came for this style of telling a story, for this design that finds beauty in simplicity and if not, you have made a mistake of playing.
The game is divided into short scenes that happen almost automatically. We are only offered some moments to interact.
But although we accept its form (we even accept its imperious recommendation not to change the 30 frames per second for artistic d
ecisions and its aspect ratio 21: 9, bless our monitor), Virginia does not stop being a narrative experiment . A thesis in the form of a video game that wants to capture and try to replicate what it idolizes. But the nature (and beaut
y) of Dadaism is that it is, in itself, provocative, while Virginia is lost among the desire to claim issues such as labor, sexual inequality or sentimental and parent-child relationships; and the imperative need to get a bison in a room, because that’s what the author has drunk.
The bases and structure of Virginia are interesting and even transgressive for the medium of the videogame
Perhaps what Virginia does not understand is that with Lynch, the most dreamlike manifestations of her filmography are always at the service of the work and not of artistic masturbation (well, some are there). It is about leaving the spectat
The artistic design is very careful. A pity that we can hardly stop to appreciate all that it has to offer.
Virginia is a good experiment , but it is still that. The same as a writer would do while trying to find his own voice or that of a short filmmaker trying to find his own style. The bases and the structure, however, are interesting and even transgressiv
e for the medium of the game and we value this technique a lot because it becomes revolutionary at certain moments, but Variab
le State forgets the most important thing: that all language and narrative technique is always at the service of the plot, to tell human stories. And if the work does not make you feel anything, you simply have not achieved your goal.
