Where the Water Tastes Like Wine
I’m going to say something now that I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to say; Where the Water Tastes Like Wine? I don’t like it. I don’t like it and I feel that it is one of those games that I should like. Stories in video games is sorta like my sthick, after all. But I can’t get myself to liking this game. Granted, there are parts of the game that I love and adore. Presentation, feel, voice acting; all top notch. Not to mention the soundtrack and the premise of it all.
For those who need a tldr; The game feels like an empty shell. Like a pretty pretty Easter Egg, with nothing inside.
Stay a while and listen
The premise of the game is to collect stories and let them evolve, like a narrative Pokémon trainer, set to the backdrop of Americana. This is such a wonderful premise for a game that I squealed the first time I heard of it.
It all starts out with you losing a hand of poker with the Devil (at least that is my take on the wolf-headed card shark), upon which you are stripped of your flesh and sent out into America to collect her stories. You’ll need to collect the stories of 16 people for the Devil before he is happy, and you’ll do that by telling them your own stories around the campfire. Tell them enough stories that they like and they’ll open up more of their own. They will tell you stories to other people and eventually you come across those stories again, in forms that you can “hardly recognize”. On paper, this all sounds interesting, but in practice it grows boring.
The first encounter with a story, where you experience what becomes the story, is somewhat interesting and as the player you have a small amount of agency here; your actions change what kind of story this will become (which might be why all my stories are dark and scary). But after that? You don’t have any impact on the story after that, you can’t tell a story in a certain way to enhance the amusing aspect of a tragicomedic situation. All you get to do is tell the story and see if it matches what the listener wanted to hear, and wait until you come across the story from someone else who tells it better, making “your” story level up.
The hassle
These are the core concepts of Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, though what you’ll be spending the most amount of time doing is laboriously traversing the map, which I honest to god hate. An interesting gimmick for the first five minutes, which then outstays its welcome.
It is unnecessary big for what it contains, it looks horrible (even more so compared to the very nice art in the other parts of the game), and, worst of all, it is boring. The map offers a lot of freedom to walk about as you please, but there is nothing little to nothing there. Nothing to motivate you to head in a direction, other than to head to this or that place marked with an icon. And these places are few and far between in this wast map, and utterly boring. The icon tells you what kind of place you’re coming to, and there is no reward for exploration. Just plain travelling to a destination is a chore, and trying to explore for something…anything…of interesting both a dull chore and a repetitive hassle.
Visual Novel
I have seen Where the Water Tastes Like Wine described as a visual novel rather than a game, but I find that to be a cheap excuse. Yes, the stories, the art-style, the voiceacting, it is all wonderful. But the game mechanics are a mountain blocking the view of El Dorado. No, they might even be Mount Everest blocking the view of a 7-11.
The stories in Where the Water Tastes Like Wine ARE great, though they are merely the smallest of story hooks, more evocative than telling. They are interesting in and of themselves, but the game does little to nothing with them. Yes, they change in the telling, but that has nothing to do with you. The only connection you have with them is that you tell them to someone, and then wait until they’ve reached level 2 and care more effective. The gameplay needs to engage and interest the player/reader, to make them want to continue. The opposite is the case with Where the Water Tastes Like Win; the play of the game is a chore, it is boring , and it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart because there is so much potential in this game, in both the theme and the actual stories in the game. Potential that could have been fulfilled with either just letting it be a visual novel and getting rid of the game mechanics, or by make mechanics that actually engage and interest.
As it is, Where the WaterTastes Like Wine is a poor game about stories, that could have been a great story-driven game.
***
Still a storytelling bastard
