Anne of Green Cables

Adaptations are a fraught area of interactive fiction. How close do you stay to the original? Do you introduce choices by allowing people to select from previously existing scenes, or do you vary between the 'canon' story and your own selections?

This is a cyberpunk adaptation of Anne of Green Gables. It takes selected events from the book and replaces references to farm and country life to references to web connectivity, corporations, devices, and hacking.

In structure, it has long pages of text, usually with a 'next' button at the button, with larger choices happening a few times per chapter. The text per choice is much larger than is usual for Twine or Choicescript; for me, it was reminiscent of Chooseyourstory games, which often have the same 'several pages followed by a weighty choice' format.

I read Anne of Green Gables and watched shows about it a bit as a kid, but at the time I thought it was meant for even younger kids than me, so I didn't pay it much attention.

So, with vague memories of Anne of Green Gables, I read this interactive fiction game. At several points I thought, "How close is this to the original?" and looked up the Project Gutenberg copy. Reading through passages of it was a real delight. It's clear why this book has endured so long; the characterization and dialogue writing are exceptional, a generational talent. For my personal tastes, my favorite writer for voice and style has been Arthur Conan Doyle, but Anne of Green Gables compares very well with that. Other authors can have some mediocre 'local' writing that is supported by great global plot structure, but these two are great at the line by line writing.

This became a problem while playing the game, because while Brett is actually a good author (you should check out his other games!) I began comparing all of his additions directly to the real story, and they suffered by comparison. It's like having the star player of your local college play against MJ, or being tasked with adding a flying saucer and aliens to Van Gogh's Starry Night.

One example is when Anne meets Diana. In both versions, she declares that the two of them should be bosom friends and should declare their affection to each other by swearing an oath (all this after having exchanged less than five sentences with each other).

In this version, Anne says:
"We ought to make this vow over running water. I assume under the ground here are some water pipes. That'll do."

In the original, Anne says:
“We must join hands—so,” said Anne gravely. “It ought to be over running water. We’ll just imagine this path is running water."

The first one is amusing; taking a serious vow requirement and just halfway-ignoring it. The second is extremely amusing to me: Anne has just met this brand-new girl, instantly declared herself best friends, concocted a very elaborate oath, and then instantly says it's okay to ignore reality by using their imagination. This connects to the overall theme of a lot of the book, of Anne living in a realm of imagination and fantasy, being brought down to earth by Marilla. So this scene fulfills one useful narrative role in the game, but many roles in the book.

Similarly, other great passages from their book lose their weight in this world. Anne's flights of fancy in the original contrast with her mundane world; in this version, she's surrounded by the bizarre and fanciful at all times, with endless amounts of entertainment. In the original, Matthew's fate is a solemn capstone on the whole book, something that immediately and inescapably focuses Anne's life on reality. In this version, it's a somber event that is then succeeded by the 'true' finale, which is perhaps the most fanciful event of the story and teaches a different moral, that Anne does have agency against tragic events in life, that trying hard enough can overcome any obstacle, and that living in her fanciful realm is the true path.

When reading the directly adapted parts, I preferred looking up the original and reading that. When reading the newly-minted parts, I enjoyed learning more about the world and trying out the mechanics.

With all of this said, I still think this is one of the better adaptations of pre-existing text I've seen. All adaptations run into the issues I've mentioned; I wrote a Sherlock Holmes game with text from Arthur Conan Doyle, and I had the same issue of my own text contrasting poorly with Doyle's, and struggling to balance linearity/faithfulness with branching/new material. I think that Anne of Green Cables succeeds better than my own game, or than Graham Nelson's The Tempest. But its greatest effect on me was making me want to read through the whole book (or listen to audiobook; it seems like it would be great in that format).