Nothing is Forever
Q&A There is a lot of branching in this story, do you think you'll be able to manage all of it?
The complexity of managing all paths and branching is also something that worries me. But I think it’ll be manageable for several reasons.
I am careful to try to not bite off more than you can chew. This means that, whenever possible, the choices provided are more about giving the “illusion” of choice, than actually creating parallel narrative paths. That would be impossible to handle. This is nothing new, it’s the way many of these kinds of “choose your adventure” games work. Especially if they are made by a single person in their spare time.
In practice, this means there are huge chunks of the narrative that are common. The choices made just temporarily deviate from that path before merging with it again.
These merging nodes can be a bit complicated to handle, and there were already some examples of these in Chapter 3 like with Kim, Jen, Emma and even Lea. But it’s mostly about being creative with words, they even use the same renders. And words are cheap. Of course, depending on the route taken, this “forced merging” into the common path might feel more natural or more forced but the idea is that you aren’t even aware that this is a point of convergence. It also involves a lot of little dialogue changes here and there to refer to past choices that you have made or not. But that’s not too complicated to handle.
This game seems to promise lots of choices, but then I can’t really choose not to do this thing that I don’t like. Why?
From time to time, I get questions like this. The reason is that the game branching is not as complicated as you may think. And I really can’t complicated it more than to a certain degree. As an exercise, let’s talk about some events of Chapter 1 and 2 (spoilers ahead).
When we meet Jen, it’s obvious that she will be a “temptation” and the player has to choose if they want to be completely professional around her or… not. And yet, throughout the game there are lots of mandatory “unprofessional” events.
Wouldn’t it be better to let the player choose if they *really* want to be professional or not with Jen? Yes, it would be better. But the changes between both choices would be too many for me to handle.
For example: what if we don’t invite Jen to go to the pub with everyone else during chapter 1? Then Emma wouldn’t get mad/jealous because of that and the whole scene and the next phone call would have to be different.
What if you don’t invite Jen (or you yourself don’t go) to Jamie’s party to celebrate Jen’s victory in the blitz tournament? Then all sequence of events with Emma would be different. You might not even get mad at each other. Heck, why don’t I let people choose if they get mad at her or not? Then, the whole chapter 2 would be different, I’d have to basically write 2 different versions of that chapter. You get the idea.
The truth is, there really aren't that many "true" branches because I wouldn’t be able to handle it all. That’s also the reason why you’ll have to keep being friends with all of the characters whether you like them or not. The more content that is common to all paths, the easier it is for me to handle.
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
If the MC have to do something at some point why give the option then? It's really frustating when you make a choice and the character does the exact opposite of what you expect. Of course, in this example of the professionalism, she's a temptation and a slip up is acceptable (storywise).
I agree with you, that's why in those cases there is no option, the visual novel story just progresses without prompting the player to make a choice to go to a event or not.
I was referring to comments from some players that have asked why can't they just skip some scenes if they aren't interested in some character. They can still "skip" the scene and not read it, it's just that the story will progress as if that had happened. I can't allow players to choose if they want to take part in any scene and then adjust all of the following story to take into account if they were or not present in any given event. That's why most scenes just take place without asking the player if he wants to be there or not.
Of course then, all the scenes contain choices that the player can take with different outcomes.
EDIT: also, for that particular case of professionalism, there is a combination of choices the player makes that leads to the mc being professional and not fall in temperatation, or not. It's just not a single choice, and some events that could be considered unprofessional (ex: a patient being in a pub with a group of people including her psychologist) take place regardless of the player choices.
But, when there are choices, they do have consequences for the pursuit of that romance with that girl or to remain professional without any romantic interaction.