Virginia ist certainly a unique game that sometimes provides a beautiful moment or a potentially interesting idea (use of editing in player-interactive sequences), but sadly never accomplishes it’s goal of telling a good story. One can’t fault the game for being not ambitious enough though: Virginia tries to tell it’s story using only the facial expressions and body language of ist cast und through the use of editing which is cool but rarely pays off because the non-verbal acting is held back by a limited budget that can’t produce facial animation that are subtle enough to convey the depth of the individual characters. Which is sad but not surprising, even AAA-Games struggle with this sometimes. What is more unfortunate is that the editing is honestly quite bad and fails the game at it’s most pivotal moments. This is especially a problem once the story gears towards a more non-linear and surreal direction that eventually becomes completely nonsensical. The biggest problem with the editing is mostly context: without layered performances or strong enough imagery the editing simply can’t elevate the material and so stacks scenes on top of each other without rhyme or reason. That way it fails on a fundamental level (creating meaning between two different images). Apropos images: The imagery throughout the game never becomes truly original and mostly regurgitates various motives from American mysticism. The only thing that truly stands out is the music that is sometimes a bit over the top but never feels phoned in or boring. Some sequences in this only work because the music almost convinces you to give a shit and try to see a meaning behind the randomness.

PS: it also runs pretty bad on my PS4, so if you feel compelled to give a try use the PC-Version.