The .Hack franchise

...It's something that I decided to take a look at tonight, and holy HELL am I immediately drawn in. Growing up I'd always been vaguely aware of .hack, I have quite a few memories of catching one of its animes on cartoon network and seeing clips of it on like, youtube and stuff! But beyond those fleeting interactions I kinda knew (and still know) relatively nothing about it. I knew it was very much considered the grandfather of MMO/Video Game Isekai, but like really that's it.

I can't really say I have a fully formed opinion on its story or anything of the matter, but what I can say is this: it is OOZING digital charm, I fucking adore the metanarrative angle, and flipping back and forth on between your desktop and "The World"'s client has been really captivating to me! I love that there's in game emails you exchange with players, love the mock up game forum that you have to browse, the little news flash updates you get by checking websites!! It is just, SO up my alley in that it really feels like a living internet! I'm probably only like 2.5-ish hours into the first game but MAN am I absolutely excited to see what this franchise has to offer!

This is turning into a reaction thread oopsies

But holy FUCK I am so charmed by this game, I love the experience of going through this series, I love sifting through the mock in-game forum boars for tutorials and tips on story progression, I like that sometimes shit gets hard enough that I have to step outside BOTH layers of the game to my own PC to actually look up dinky 2003 neoseekers guides, it's aged so interestingly that like even when I am looking up these walkthroughs it makes the jank feel almost diagetic in a way?

I am so enamored with the characters, I love that their dialogue is delivered with like these unique typing quirks, I love that sometimes your party members will send you emails out-of-game to chatter and have conversations, I love that sometimes they're busy with irl shit and can't join your party, I love that they can log in and level grind independently of you, this game is such a labor of love in really selling you on the MMO setting and I really do feel it in like every moment of gameplay, it rules so hard

.Hack//Iinfection COMPLETED, on to //Mutation!

The story doesn't really blow me away but I"ll be honest I didn't really expect it to? (That and I'm on game 1 of 4, it's clear this is a slowburn so who knows!)

I think what's really had me hooked is the suspension of disbelief and the lengths the games go to really make you feel like you are truly playing in an MMO. I know I've harped on it before but I really do love it so it bears repeating! the character work is really fun and you get such a wide range of people: the dipshit 9th grader who accidentally put her character name as her real irl name and is really embarassed about it, the 30 something RP junkie who's really in it to play out the fantasy of being a great hero, the 20something housewife who just wants something to do while she's cooking dinner, the party members you meet truly do feel like their own people with their own lives. The little glimpses into those you get is what really draws me in! it's this beautiful breakdown of what it's like to engage with people online, the weird and wonderful connections we can build through the frivolity of tha net