The Most Anticipated VNs of 2018
3) Fault – Silence the Pedant (Alice in Dissonance/Sekai Project)
My relationship with Alice in Dissonance has been tempestuous to say the least. Many have praised their presentation and, credit where its due, it is praiseworthy. However, this site has been critical of both its character and general narrative writing. I barely remember the stories of Fault Milestone One and Fault Milestone Side: Above and what I remember has a massive glaring hole where one Ritona Rheignvhasta should be: considering she’s the literal mascot of the franchise and the POV character for the majority of both games, with Rune taking the rest of the time. This is vital for the narrative because each game requires an emotional connection which the audience usually forms through the reactions of the POV character and each time it went for the heartstrings, Ritona got pushed aside.
So who is this woman? Why should we care about her other than she’s seemingly an unstoppable badass (because that trope works so well in anime and isn’t mocked at all these days)? That’s what Silence the Pedant hopes to explore and, fingers crossed, it’s on its way to being a success. The demo we got showed much stronger narrative focus than the past two games and clear lines are drawn from the outset of why the external events affecting the Kingdom of Rughzenhaide affects her as an individual. Even the normal prequel trap of knowing how things end is averted here because this is a character we know NOTHING about. So, even though we know Ritona will end up as Selphine’s guardian, watching her go through her rebellion and mourn her grandfather gives us new dimensions to her character that we didn’t have beforehand.
I still have some qualms about the game, especially with AiD’s habit of frontloading all of the exciting content in the demo’s time-space and kicking back for the rest of the game, I’m hopefully this will be the giant step forward the series and developer has needed. Also if you haven’t seen it, check out my playthrough of the demo here.
