I love a good sci-fi dystopia, so The Blind of the New World caught my eye. This original Korean language visual novel from TALESSHOP promises a romantic story set in a future with dystopian themes. It also explores interesting ideas about perception, reality, and connection. But does this story deliver? To find out we’ll have to brave the new world.
A World of Illusions
The Blind of the New World is set in a future where augmented reality pervades every aspect of life. People wear identical tracksuits and decorate them with holograms as we do virtual avatars. Buildings change their facades at the click of a button. Anything you could ever want to do, see, or know can be in front of your eyes in an instant, all in the form of holographic data.
Everyone is given optical implants at birth that allow them to interface with augmented reality. And from birth, augmented reality is used for everything: work, school, recreation, and even art. That is, for everyone except “the blind.” For reasons science doesn’t fully understand, a rare few are unable to see and interface with the ubiquitous holograms. In a sense, the blind see the world for what it really is. The immutable laws of the universe are freed from the holographic glamer keeping them at bay. But these individuals can’t see the functional reality of society. As a result, the blind are isolated.
It’s a fascinating setting that pushes our own world’s increasing emphasis on digital spaces and personas to a plausible extreme. And The Blind of the New World boldly imagines how augmented reality might radically reshape society and existence. The new world feels dystopian. Many of the things that define ours have been replaced with artificial substitutes. But it’s difficult to escape the niggling question of perspective. In the end, what is more real: the reality one has spent their entire life experiencing and believing in, or some lines in a physics text? If holograms have always governed your life and actions, are they truly fake? Perhaps I am the noble savage looking in on my future.
The setting does require some patience on the part of the reader. There’s lots of lore, particularly if you read the encyclopedia entries in the Tips menu, but the implications are explored piecemeal rather than thrust upon you all at once. Early on, I thought characters sometimes did or thought things that stretched belief. But we as readers are blind from the perspective of this new world. And as the story unfolded, I realized more fully the differences in what I and the characters could see. I was surprised how much I came to re-evaluate things I originally viewed as unrealistic. It made the new world unsettling and thought-provoking, and I found myself pulled deeper the more I pondered.
Whose Eyes are Those Eyes?
The Blind of the New World follows Seejay, a high school student who is one of the blind. His blindness is not just a hindrance in a practical sense. No one else can see the world as he does: a featureless wasteland devoid of color and life. Those aware of his condition view him as an aberration to be fixed or at least swept out of view. Seejay is frustrated and isolated, and as a result feels the world is built on a foundation of lies. To live in this world, Seejay must also embrace deceit. He hides his blindness and stumbles alone in the darkness.
Seejay avoids most human interaction and lives his school days in a formless blur. But when he sees a girl wearing a traditional school uniform standing at the gates—something that should be impossible for someone blind like him—the vision calls out to him, a beacon of color in his world of grays. While she is recruiting students for an art club, Seejay sees her as a chance to escape from his dead world. If he can understand what makes her different, maybe he won’t have to suffer alone surrounded by lies. But getting close to her means risking his secrets.
Chohyun, the girl in the uniform, plays the lead opposite Seejay. She’s lively and eccentric, not afraid to stand out and chase dreams only she seems to understand. Yet there’s something ineffable hiding behind her smile. Is she a kindred spirit or stark contrast for Seejay? The answer feels just out of reach. Chohyun is a compelling character, but she never quite escapes existing in the service of Seejay’s story. She is her own person with plenty of depth and backstory. But The Blind of the New World mostly explores these as they relate to Seejay rather than on her terms.
The only other person Seejay interacts with is his doctor, Yoojin. The two have regular check-ins and have known each other for some time. Yoojin is blunt and caustic, but perhaps this is why Seejay seems to trust her. She’s the only person willing to look at him without fear or pity. Yoojin is the closest thing Seejay has to a mentor, and she also plays the role of an explanatory device. Over the course of events, she shares new information and theories about the blindness with Seejay and the reader.
Hearts Across Worlds
The Blind of the New World tells a poignant story about what we might decide to look at and hold onto. Can two people the world has left behind look out with different eyes and see the same thing, if only for a moment? What might happen if they do? We can’t control what we see, but perhaps we can control the angle from which we look. And there’s deceptive power in perspective. Change your field of view and you might change yourself or even the world. But is this enough to build connections across worlds? And will you hold on when you finally gaze upon the reality you have wrought?
The writing is evocative and explores complex ideas about perception and relationships with thoughtfulness and fluidity. Stifling melancholy and paranoia interspersed with gasps of longing and courage pull you in at every turn. Patient unveiling of the world and characters pushes you to rethink what once seemed obvious. The pacing is excellent too. Seejay’s thoughts immerse you in his mind and emotions without overstaying their welcome. Approaching the climactic moments feels like slowly turning your gaze in a new direction, and seeing something new always carries an undercurrent of anticipation. When your vision settles, will it lead you to heart-warming beauty or a chilling realization?
The Blind of the New World isn’t afraid to leave things unsaid and doesn’t hold your hand. Even with copious lore, understanding the world and characters requires thinking about perspective and reading between the lines. Sometimes the story leaves you to decide for yourself exactly what you are seeing as ideas and events blur together. Seejay and Chohyun dance around one another, uncertain of themselves, and much of their communication unfolds in the space between words and actions. While it won’t please everyone, I loved this embrace of subtext and open-endedness. It complements the themes of perspective and connection and adds depth and immersion to the experience. I constantly felt pulled to look through the characters’ eyes and contemplate what they might feel but choose not or not know how to voice.
There are occasional inconsistencies and errors in the writing. Concepts that seem like they were meant to be subtly different are sometimes conflated in ways that cause characters to contradict themselves if taken at face value. I found it possible to reconstruct coherent interpretations using context, but this doesn’t excuse the imprecision. There are also occasional grammar errors and awkward phrasings, often related to English’s more unusual and complicated verb tenses. This leads me to suspect that the localization might be responsible for many of the inconsistencies as well.
The Blind of the New World asks you to make several choices, ultimately leading you to one of four endings. Ending 4 feels like the main ending to the story while the others branch off at earlier points. Each ending sees Seejay and Chohyun find different answers to their central questions. I found each one had something worth saying, although the earlier endings do have the disadvantage of leaving some ideas and plot threads unexplored. After clearing each of the first three endings, you can view an associated epilogue in the extra features. These aren’t essential, but tie in nicely with the themes of their respective endings.
It took me just under 10 hours to see all the endings. However, some of this is due to The Blind of the New World’s poorly designed skip function. You can force-skip with Ctrl or skip entire scenes with a button, but neither prevents you from skipping unread text. As a result, I often had to reread scenes to make sure I wasn’t missing new content.
Through Different Eyes
There’s not a huge amount of art, but the CGs, especially the landscapes, are effective. They largely show the world as Seejay sees it: an unholy combination of monotony, brutalism, and decay. But there are fleeting glimpses of beauty as well: a patch of grass hidden behind a holographic wall, the peaceful relics of a lost world, and of course Chohyun.
The presentation further builds on the idea of looking through Seejay’s eyes. The normal CG window is narrow. In Seejay’s monochrome vision, the world is oppressive and best viewed as little as possible. Even Chohyun is often drawn leaning down to meet the gaze of this boy who looks at nothing. But sitting with his doctor where he feels at ease to be himself, seeing Chohyun at the gates in her uniform, and other important moments are displayed in CGs that occupy a much larger portion of the screen. These are the moments where Seejay decides to truly look at what is in front of him. Sometimes he simply feels comfortable enough to drop his guard. Other times, a vision calls out so strongly that he can’t look away. The Blind of the New World has other tricks too, but I’ll leave those for you to discover.
I greatly enjoyed the sound design as well. Chohyun and Yoojin’s lines are voiced in Korean, and Chohyun in particular is understated compared to what I’ve experienced in Japanese visual novels, but this fits her fragile relationship with Seejay. The outstanding music is capable of both hopeful beauty and unnerving dissonance and adds a continual emotional undercurrent to the experience. I was especially impressed considering The Blind of the New World is not a big-budget production. The game wastes not and employs its limited audiovisual resources to great effect.
Verdict
The Blind of the New World captivated me with a beautiful and moving story about the struggle to look out and build connections across different worlds. Exploring the strange and vivid setting through the characters’ eyes as I followed them on their journey was memorable and thought-provoking. The writing is often open-ended, which may not appeal to everyone, and there are occasional errors and inconsistencies. But I felt these paled in comparison to everything the game does well. The Blind of the New World is an experience well worth having, and I highly recommend it.
THE BLIND OF THE NEW WORLD IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Want to see more Visual Novels? How about our review of the Musicius?
Many thanks go to TALESHOP for a PC review code for this title.
A veteran of Oregon Trail and Battletoads, Wes has been playing and talking about games for as long as he can remember. He’s down to try almost anything, and he especially enjoys games with gripping narrative experiences.
