I realized what I like about the old sprites.
I like how artistically artificial they look. Their expressions, their poses - they are aimed directly at YOU, the viewer, the only real person here, whose act of witnessing the show makes it real.
When it's a one on one dialogue, your companion stands in the middle of the frame, staring right at you, unblinking, like they are a character in a Wes Anderson movie. His works exude the same artistic artificiality as the old Dawn Chorus sprites - everything is not just artificial, but draws attention to its artificial nature.
I always loved works of fiction that are not afraid to make a nod, or better yet, a full bow to their artificial nature. "Pathologic" is a great example - it has main characters, background characters, and then the extras that don't even get a costume, they are just wearing a black bodysuit and a mask to create the sense of scale and numbers.
But back to Dawn Chorus. It's not just the old sprites that have this artistically artificial nature, other aspects of the FVN share that quality.
The background extras are not even black-clad shadows, they straight up don't exist. There's several dozen people in the lodge, you only ever see less than a dozen.
A lot of the writing here is unnatural in an artistic fashion as well.
Every single OOC dialogue about ships at the sea the characters have is non-diegetic, it doesn't actually happen in the world of the VN.
Every single perspective change is just the omnipotent storyteller lifting the curtain only to you, the viewer.
Every single monologue is saturated with theatrical pathos, like there's a literal spotlight shining on the speaker. Especially the self-analyzational sermons you shouldn't hear, because they are happening inside another character's head, or even in another time. It's completely fake but also extremely awesome.
And the old sprites really add to that feel - they grasp your attention demanding you witness them.
And the best part is that it's all entirely accidental. The creators of this FVN did not intend this at all, it happened by completely improbable sheer cosmic occurrence. The universe just shuffled the deck of reality 14 billion years ago and a never-ending sequence of happenstances made it just so happen that the people behind Dawn Chorus had created this deeply artistic artificial feel to their work while just trying to tell a story.
I think it's fantastic.
