Man... i want to like this game, i really do, but god is it sloooow, i don't mind a slow burn game, but this one is glacial and it's not like there's a lot to get through, most of it is just hum drum daily life for some guy and the people who he sees regularly... i feel like it has a good shot at being a good game when it finally gets to the point where shit is actually occurring, but getting there is such a slog with no real reward and it feels like it's going to take at least a few years to finally get through it...
Dissonance is objectively subpar to conventional literacy in general and for a very specific reason. It isn't the story or the characters or even the slower-than-slow progression of events, but the
sheer abundance of circular conversation.
In the first hour alone there are multiple, and I'm talking, at least half a dozen instances of:
Person A: "You could've called me if you wanted to talk quickly"
Person B: "I wanted to talk quickly, which is why I didn't call."
Person A: "But if you wanted to talk quickly, you might as well have called."
Person B: "But then we wouldn't really be talking, and I just wanted to talk quickly"
And this ouroboros continues needlessly long.
This is
horrible for so many reasons, but what makes it so much worse is that these circular conversations are triggered by unimportant aspects unrelated to the basic narrative level -- in short;
"word salad".
To distinguish this feeling from other contemporary works, I can take LiL as an example. The reason it is easier to read Selebus' narrative tangents is because of just that; they are tangents
related to the narrative. Even if the essays are long-winded and wordy, they are still narratively intertwined with the overarching plot, and thus provides perspective on stuff that matters to the story, which keeps the reader's interest. However, when Dissonance goes off on a tangent, it holds up and stalls the narrative we are looking to pursue.
If anyone is wondering why they feel tired when reading Dissonance, why even though they feel like they are hooked on the narrative itself, but still get the dreaded feeling of reading this to be a chore, redundancy in conversation is why. Dissonance makes every conversation feel like a slog because of poor dialogue that falls beneath the otherwise good narrative level.
I noticed the author actually liked the replied critique and seems to be responsive to his audience (which is more than can be said for others...). If this is the case,
please recruit an editor or two who will just verbally read the script aloud, point out unnatural instances of redundancy in conversation, and cut them out. I
promise that if this is done, the whole story will feel a lot faster and smoother in flow, and the people who are wondering why they feel as though they have to force themselves to read this otherwise great work of literature will feel far more liberated in doing so.