Community Visual Novel Book Club - Eliza

[Exzyleph]

Welcome to the 7th MetaCouncil visual novel book club!

For the 7th MetaCouncil visual novel book club we will be reading Eliza, a visual novel about an AI counseling program, the people who developed it, and the people using it. Eliza was released in 2019 by Zachtronics, a company that was until then known mainly for making crazy, open-ended puzzle-games. The novel is approximately 50k words in English and is expected to take around 8½ hours to complete according to HLTB, assuming that you don't spend all your time playing solitaire. Bookclub participants can obtain Eliza on Steam, GOG, Itch.io, and on the Nintendo Switch.

This is an informal book club, so there is no fixed schedule; you simply read the novel at your own pace, and share your thoughts along the way or when you are done reading. Just remember to use spoiler tags liberally. For general information and past and future book clubs, please see the main MetaCouncil Book Club thread; the main thread includes a preliminary schedule for 2020, but suggestions are very welcome for 2020 and beyond.

The currently scheduled visual novel for April is Seabed (VNDB), a mystery visual novel told from three perspectives, all with the same goal: To separate truth from illusion. To make sense of their own lives.
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The Story

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"After abandoning her high-powered tech career and a mysterious three-year absence, Evelyn Ishino-Aubrey resurfaces working as a proxy for a virtual counseling app called Eliza. Her job consists solely of reading a script provided to her in real-time by an AI, leaving her no autonomy over what she says. Is Eliza a technological marvel that brings therapy to those who otherwise couldn’t access it? Or is it an ineffective replacement and another vector for technology companies to gain control over our lives and humanity?

As she reconnects with people from her past and gets to know the ordinary people of Seattle who use Eliza for counseling, Evelyn finds herself caught in the middle between differing sides of the argument— and as she begins to question everything about her past life and future purpose in the world, it becomes clear she must confront the turmoil and darkness inside."

[Taken from the Steam store page]​

Walkthrough

A walkthrough should not be necessary for Eliza, but a comprehensive flow-chart of branching points can be found here.​

Extras

• Road to the IGF: Zachtronics' Eliza
• Chat with Zachtronics' Matthew Burns about the making of Eliza at 4PM EST

 

[Ascheroth]

Bookclub participants can obtain Eliza on Steam, GOG, Itch.io, and on the Nintendo Switch.

To add to this, Eliza is also currently in the Humble Choice, which is still available until this Friday.

 

[Ge0force]

I've played Eliza last week. Great visual novel with a fascinating story that makes you think about lots of things in life.

 

[beep boop]

Ooh. I wanted to play this soon. Guess this is as good an excuse as any. Glad to see it isn’t too long either. Around 5-7 hrs according to HLTB.

 

[Wibblewozzer]

I played a few rounds of Solitaire and finished it in 3.8 hours on Steam. I am a fairly quick reader but not speed reading or anything. So maybe plan on it being a bit shorter than you're thinking it'll be?

 

[C-Dub]

I actually just finished this today. It has some lofty themes that will reinforce your suspicions about Silicon Valley companies. It also goes into some interesting psychological questions, thinks about future human-brain interface and talks about depression.

I actually think it's a pretty well-written novel, from Zachtronics of all companies. You wouldn't think of them as a heavy story-driven developer, but they went the whole hog by doing a VN. And you can definitely see their style emanating from it in its themes and subject matter.

 

[Exzyleph]

I played a few rounds of Solitaire and finished it in 3.8 hours on Steam. I am a fairly quick reader but not speed reading or anything. So maybe plan on it being a bit shorter than you're thinking it'll be?

That seems about right based on the script size and my own reading speed.

The current plan is to alternate between shorter and longer visual novels, and I picked Eliza for this month exactly because it was on the shorter side (and because it seemed to have broad appeal). That way there should be something for everyone and that way I'll also have time for other games and VNs that are not suited for the book club

 

[Exzyleph]

Eliza is currently 50% off for those who were considering reading it this month:

More discounts for future book-club titles are listed in the main thread.

 

[beep boop]

Started reading this today now that I've finished FF12 (!). I'm taking it kinda slow, but I like it a lot so far. The voice acting is really top notch. Like, wow. And the art is gorgeous. First impressions are all positive. I'm looking forward to playing more of it over the next week.

 

[Ascheroth]

Started today and played through the first session.
Very interesting and very well made so far.

And then I unlocked solitaire

 

[beep boop]

I'm progressing very slowly. It's great so far, but it's a bit tough at times when the MC as well as the people you meet echo your own issues or insecurities! Basically doing just one or two scenes every other day. Well-written, that's for sure.

And then I unlocked solitaire

It's a very interesting style of solitaire. I've never played something like it before. I will definitely lose some time to this once I wrap up the game.

 

[Exzyleph]

So I also started on Eliza, after having procrastinated all month*, and I am really impressed after having read the first chapter. The art, writing, and voice-acting are all top notch, and the first Eliza session was harrowing, esp. with the fake breaking the script. I absolutely did not expect the game to hit so hard, so early, but it makes me eager to read more! The solitaire game is also fun, as per usual for a Zachtronics game, though the expert level difficulty is kicking my ass.


* Which ironically involved finishing several other VNs, including one that I first started on over a year ago. It's a bit too easy to keep putting off a short VN when I can just keep telling myself that I have plenty of time. I'll have to keep that in mind for the next short book-club title

 

[Exzyleph]

So I got side-tracked a bit by Doom Eternal, but did finish Elize earlier today.

Overall it was a really positive experience, though very different from previous games by Zachtronics. However, thinking back on it, the themes of Eliza does mirror issues touched upon in older Zachtronics games, such as in Shenzhen I/O. While some of the counseling sessions hit hard, especially with how human the characters felt, the meat of the novel was for me the discussions about the implications of technologies such as Eliza and how to grapple with it.

Spoiler

But despite saying that, the first session was probably what sold me on the story; it was surprisingly suspenseful and the "deviation" from the script was something that I didn't expect. The way everything is gamified also felt shocking, especially when Evelyn gets the "Persuader" achievement for getting somebody to hand over their personal data, with a cute icon to go along with it!

The rivalry between Soren and Reiner was interesting for the two perspectives that it offered, though their concerns ended up being somewhat orthogonal (ending human suffering vs creating a true AI). And while Soren was a complete sleazebag, he came off as a lot more sympathetic than Reiner, who comes off as as a straight up sociopath if not like an outright cartoon villain.

Most of the endings were also quite good, in part because I could see Evelyn making those choices after her journey, even the one that involved working for Soren again. The Reiner ending was, however, an outlier in this: Perhaps it was a reflection of the choices I had made through the novel shaping my thoughts, but that ending felt very out of character for Evelyn. The kind of Evelyn that would make that choice, and who could behave like Reiner, would never have had the struggles that the Evelyn of the rest of the story went through.

I was, however, a little bit disappointment that the potential of Eliza's future development was only ever hinted at. Because of the topics discussed, there was this sense of anticipation that Eliza would start acting outside of its expected boundaries during a session, but that never happened, not even in the singularity (Reiner) endings. Despite some clever tricks, and despite the analysis of private data suggesting greater capabilities, we never really see Eliza rise above chat-bot level in its interactions with clients.

As a last note, if you enjoyed the meditative app in Eliza, then you might also enjoy the pixel-art by waneella:


As a reminder, the next book-club thread will be going up in a few days, and this time we will be reading Seabed: (on Steam)

 

[Exzyleph]

The 8th VN Book Club thread is now up and this month we will be reading Seabed.

Thank you to everyone who joined in reading Eliza!
This thread will of course remain open, and I hope that you will still share your thoughts if you are not yet done reading Eliza or if you find this thread at a later date.