jennegatron

True Pigeon Love: Hatoful Boyfriend

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I don't know how many other people played/are interested in talking about this, but I bought Hatoful Boyfriend on a Humble sale a week or two ago, and I honestly can't stop thinking about how weird and dark this game got.

 

My first introduction to this game was via an episode of the youtube show (mini-series? there are only about 8 episode) called Metadating

 

 

These 3 guys went to USC together as grad students and like to talk about story telling in video games. If you want to play Hatoful unspoiled, I would play it before watching their video.

 

This was also the first introduction they had to Visual Novel Dating Sims, so they're very confused by the tropes/jokes that are made in Hatoful Boyfriend.

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I've gotten the impression that I need to play it more than once. I was just so bummed by the narrative dead-end I hit and felt slighted after my first playthrough.

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There's a lot of depth there, but yeah you need to play it multiple times, once for each prospective date, and some of them are really fun and others are lousy.

 

Edit: I played once, watched a few more on Youtube, and then just read the rest on a wiki.

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I've gotten the impression that I need to play it more than once. I was just so bummed by the narrative dead-end I hit and felt slighted after my first playthrough.

 

It's true, that it's really worth playing it multiple times for all the bird boyfriends.

The most interesting story in the game you can only unlock once you've seen the endings for a few specific birds, and that's the one that gets super dark. I played that last and is the ending I specifically can't stop thinking about.

 

I would use the skip chapter button quite a bit for getting to new content, but it is a weak skip function in comparison to ones I've used in other VNs. (It skips to the next choice to be made or the start of a new day rather than skips over only text you've previously seen, so it's possible to accidentally skip over new stuff that's in the middle of a previously read scene.)

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Holy shit, I played through like one and a half times, and have figured out at least some of the secret lore, but I had never actually gone and looked up all the endings.

 

That secret playthrough you get is really fucked up.  I wish that was something I could have experienced naturally, but realistically I never would have played through it enough times to get everything I needed. 

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I did about 7 playthroughs on my own without any help from a guide. There are some epilogue endings that you can only get if you make very specific choices which I needed help on, and I needed help knowing how to trigger the alternate path for the secret playthrough. I had already been spoiled on the Doctor Bird ending from that metadating episode + extreme curiosity.

 

SERIOUS HATOFUL BOYFRIEND SPOILERS

 

After the ghost bird playthrough I was pretty sad, but when that came back around in the secret playthrough I was devastated by that plus the unwitting murder of Jenna aka the human protagonist by her best bird friend. I am not one to cry very often, but it got me and it got me good.

 

I was so blindsided by the secret ending as something way way more serious than I was ready for given a game full of anime boy portraits and the obsessive use of "everybirdie"

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My only contact with this game was through this wonderful let's play from when let's plays were still screenshot-based and confined to forums:

 

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?67529-Hatoful-Boyfriend-A-dating-game-about-pigeons

 

I cannot recommend it enough.

 

This is the doctor ending that was spoiled for me and it is not even the most bananas ending you can get.

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Danny O'Dwyer did a few of the endings for Gamespot, and then also went and played a bunch of the Japan only follow-ups, all available on Giant Bomb Unarchived.

 

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If you were wondering, my true pigeon love is the narcoleptic professor

who was too principled to return my affections.

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I remember when the Idle Thumbs podcast said they would play it and talk about it the next week.... they never did.

 

Okosan is the obvious choice, for true love and pudding!

 

I wonder how many people just played it once and never got the true ending? I'm not sure, but I think it's almost a staple for VNs with multiple endings to have one that only unlocks if you've seen all the others.

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Yeah, Sean said he was going to play it and talk about it and I was so excited, but he never went back to it.

The moment that made me laugh the hardest in the whole game was Okosan's anime portrait.

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My only contact with this game was through this wonderful let's play from when let's plays were still screenshot-based and confined to forums:

 

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?67529-Hatoful-Boyfriend-A-dating-game-about-pigeons

 

I cannot recommend it enough.

 

I second this, it was how I first discovered Hatoful Boyfriend way back before it was on Steam when you had to purchase it through a dubious-looking Japanese site.  I'm kind of a sucker for the terrible silliness of dating sims in general, but this is really great commentary on the game which is a pretty great parody of the genre but also goes WAY deeper/more bananas than I ever assumed it could. 

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A brief piece about the author, kind of:

https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/116918

Hatoful Boyfriend is one of my flagship pieces when discussing how a lot of Japanese game/anime works can be both sincere and parody at the same time, and in approximately equal measure.

It also has a triple pun title, which is great (heartful, hateful, pigeon-ful).

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