The game calls the innovation NOVEL mode, and it's a nov--er, it's a creative idea: your input is moved up to a status line and most of the program's output occupies the main part of the screen. Parser messages ("there's no such object here" and such) are also on the status line. The paragraphing on the main part of the screen is handled fairly well--most of the breaks are logical--so the output does, in most respects, actually resemble a story written in the first person. It seems, however, that the main effect would be on the appearance of the transcript, rather than on the player's experience: the player is still getting the parser messages, and if they're illogical or indicate bad programming (failing to recognize a seemingly important object or failing to understand a logical action), the effect on the player is still to wrench him or her out of the flow of the story. Put another way, it appears that another well-done game that strives to accommodate all logical approaches would work just as well if given a similar treatment--the point is to minimize those parser messages. (I've certainly never heard anyone complain that having the input lines right there in the middle of the output breaks the feel of the story, but maybe I haven't been listening.) There's also a distraction factor--whenever you do get a parser message and no output appears at the bottom of the main screen, you need to look back up at the status line, which takes some adjustment. (To be fair, the game also gives the option of NORMAL mode, in which the output is standard alternating-input-and-output, so if the looking back and forth drives you nuts, you're not required to put up with it.) I suspect that, eventually, it wouldn't feel any less unnatural than having the input lines and parser messages right in the middle of everything, but it's fairly jarring at first. The point isn't that NOVEL mode is a bad idea--it's clever in its way. I'm just not convinced that it advances the state of the art much, if at all.
There's more to My Angel than the formatting, fortunately, and the reason it works as a story has very little to do with the appearance of the transcript. The story flips back and forth between the main thread and some flashback sequences in a reasonably seamless way, and you can actually interact with the characters and objects in the flashback sequences. Technically, of course, that has the potential to make no sense, but the game manages to limit your options to assure that it controls what actually happens in the flashback sequences while still providing more interactivity than a simple cut scene. Moreover, since you only get a few moves in each flashback sequence, and there's more than a few moves' worth of exploration in each one, there's some replay potential here. The one aspect of the story that suffers, however, is that it's easy to get confused about what exactly happened in the flashbacks--the game throws several names and relationships at you and essentially expects you to keep them straight (if you want to understand what really happened at the end). The flashback approach can, in fact, work well in IF, but there's also an inherent disadvantage that static fiction doesn't pose--it's harder to flip back to an earlier moment to check on details that you missed the first time around. Simplicity is key, and the flashbacks in My Angel are complex enough to push the envelope. (Babel, by way of contrast, solves this problem by allowing the player to access the flashbacks repeatedly and at will.)
The relationship at the core of the story is also nicely done with an interesting innovation: you and your companion are telepaths, it seems, and THINK ABOUT object lets you know her take on that object and often triggers a series of brief communications about the object or associated ideas. The effect is sometimes akin to having two PCs rather than one, all the more so because the character of the main PC isn't especially well developed--you don't get much of his personality, just his experiences. The PC's thoughts tend to be bound up with his companion's thoughts, in other words, so the player rarely sees either person thinking or acting independently. As a result, most of the game unfolds as if there were one mind in two bodies, and when the two are apart--as they are for roughly the last half of the story--the PC and, consequently, the player feel bereft, incomplete. The telepathic interactions don't only come when invited by THINK ABOUT, of course--they're interjected at all sorts of moments, and the two characters comment back and forth on the other's thoughts. It's a trick that works particularly well in IF, since the player isn't necessarily expecting to find a PC with a persona that's distinct from the player's. The indistinctness is here, but it's on another front.
The game aspect isn't a total success, however. Some of the puzzles reflect the story well--your telepathy plays into them in more or less logical ways--but others just feel like puzzles. The game refers to them as "optional," but I'm not sure why--it appears to me that the story won't progress to its ending if the puzzles aren't solved. They're not fiendishly difficult, but they're not blindingly obvious either, and one in particular seems rather improbable (or turns on a object property that's inadequately described). More importantly, they make the flow of the story feel uneven, since large chunks of the story go by independent of your input. For instance, there are several sequences of moves where you're traveling, and while you can interact with the scenery as you go by, you can't stop the movement. This actually works fairly well--it's a good balance between keeping the story moving and letting you poke and prod things--but when you get to the points where the story stops until you solve the puzzle, the story loses some of its pace. Usually, it's not so bad--since the first several puzzles aren't all that hard--but the more difficult puzzles break the mood by bringing everything to a halt.
The writing, for its part, is solid, good enough not to get in the way, though it does occasionally lurch into total abstraction at times when the player simply wants to know what's going on. I suppose that fits the telepathy theme--thoughts don't lend themselves to description, and experiences whose most important features are the shared thoughts between you and your companion will inevitably be a little abstract--but it's also frustrating. A sample:
The centre of the stone twists around, and it flares with a pulsing light - or does it, maybe I see this only in my head, my eyes seem nothing to do with it. It is talking to me, gibbering, squawking. No - the speech goes beyond me, beyond her, it is talking to the distance, to the air. There is a shriek that tells us "HEAR-SPEAK" and then my eyes cease to function totally and all I am aware of is the black, and Angela there in my mind like an aura. Unbidden, shapes loom up from the blackness; things I have blotted and forgotten pull at me, whispering.This is called synesthesia--using sensory language, but associated with the "wrong" sense--and while it's a good attention-getting device, only the most determined readers will actually manage to feel like they're still in the character's shoes; the rest are relegated to observer status. After a brief flashback, you get this:
Then slowly, fades light back in. The clearing still, we inside are - my mind still spins - the clearing. By the stone, as though a fruit dangling from the elm-tree's bent branch, is a darkness. Darkness is made an object. Darkness is present, as a - gap - in what is. A rift, as though the wind itself were riven. Light falls into it and will not return. Angela pictures a passage, passage itself.This is nicely poetic writing, but it comes at an unfortunate point; Something Has Happened, and the player (this player, at least) doesn't want to hear about how the darkness is like a fruit dangling from an elm-tree. The effect is murkiness to no real purpose--at least, no purpose that I could discern, because what's there is very much there; it's not as if the abstract language refers to something that only exists in the abstract. Much of the game avoids this sort of thing--the shared thoughts are usually exchanged in terms of images that the player can grapple with--but there are some unfortunate moments at the end when the game loses some of its grip, so to speak.
Still, in a competition well-populated by games with flaws much more significant than insufficiently concrete writing, it's not exactly fair to criticize My Angel too harshly on those terms. It's a well-told story that manages to keep the player involved, mostly, and I gave it an 8.