Would you play a VN with forced playing order

[dmasterxd]

Would you play a game with forced playing order like Fate/stay night? I'm asking this because to me it seems like a good idea but also a little iffy. Yet FSN is fairly popular and I've never heard anyone complain about having to play in a specific order. But I wanted to ask more VN fans rather than just people on youtube. So what do you think?

[chocojax]

I'm pretty lax about most stuff, so I don't really mind a forced playing order, especially for something that heavily focuses on plot like F/SN. (Forced playing order for an ordinary gxb/bxg/etc VN? Really strange, and most likely annoying for most people.)

F/SN is really nice too, for something that has a sort of "neat" => "pretty cool" => "what the fuck" reveal for the story, in my opinion. Also, I haven't played The Royal Trap, but from what I heard it was a forced route-line which had the big reveal at the very end. I haven't seen many people complaining about that so far, so.

All in all, I'd play a game with forced playing order as long as new and relevant information is introduced relating to the plot, or a new perspective is shown (and thus giving new and relevant info), etc.

[Asceai]

I've played VNs that had locked routes for no apparent reason whatsoever, and it is a little weird, but still a lot better than allowing an optional order if the player can choose an order that does themselves a serious disservice.

The two basic reasons are:

• Introductions to characters and concepts, typically if the trunk is either short or nonexistent. In something like Killer Queen (a murder game story, think Battle Royale) the design is perfect because you can introduce concepts and rules and show how things 'typically' play out, then in a later route you can mess around with things and draw on the player's existing knowledge to let you just skip explaining things or showing the base case and just get to the interesting stuff.
• For reasons of suspense. If there's a big reveal, you might want to make a big deal of it in route A and then just get it out of the way in route B to get on with route B's story, but if the player plays route B things could suck. It can also work the other way round- there might be a really significant character in route A, and then you can casually introduce them in a different context in route B to a protagonist that has no idea that anything is amiss and you can create a great effect from this. In both cases, the route order needs to be restricted for the story to work well

EDIT: In terms of the 'locking routes' thing I mentioned, it's not actually a binary thing. There's different levels to which the play order can be restricted, so it makes sense to pick one that works for your story. The ones I tend to see are:

• Unrestricted; nothing is blocked off from the start, you can get to any ending from a fresh game
• Grand route; there's a bunch of routes, once you explore them all, the final / true / grand route is unlocked and that's what the author has decided is the final impression of the game players will be left with.
• Locked routes; multiple routes are locked, there's sometimes extra endings that are locked and there can be multiple layers of locking- you might need to complete routes A and B to unlock route C and routes C and D to unlock route E.
• Complicated; think YU-NO, where there's a multitude of locking conditions and you sometimes need to take a pretty convoluted path around the game flow to play the game. Probably better to avoid if it's not justified by narrative.
• Restricted: finish route A, then route B opens up. Finish route B, then route C opens up. Not quite a kinetic novel, but honestly pretty close at this point.

[2dt]

I think forced playing order is a good idea if the story is extremely expansive, and certain routes build on top of information that you would only gain from previous routes, but may not be relevant to the current route's story. So basically like what F/SN does, or what Asceai said.

[Eiliya]

I would absolutely play a forced-order story if the new story/stories rely on information having been obtained in the previous playthroughs. F/SN has been mentioned, as well as a few others games I have yet to play. My contribution to the list would be Muv-Luv, which starts out as a regular VN where you have some freedom in regards to which girl you end up with, and then once you have scored (sorry for the strange choice of word) with both main heroinnes, the game opens up a whole new route in a post-apocalyptic scenario that basically serves as a sequel to the original story.

[papillon]

IAlso, I haven't played The Royal Trap, but from what I heard it was a forced route-line which had the big reveal at the very end. I haven't seen many people complaining about that so far, so..

Actually it's the exact opposite - there is no forced routeline, so it's possible to get te big reveal first and then have the rest of the game feel like a bit of a letdown afterwards (The other routes do provide new information, but a much smaller amount). I wrote it like that as an experiment to see if it worked for people who say that they only want to play a game ONCE instead of collecting routes, but I have gotten complaints from people who feel that the route with the most information should have been locked until others were completed.

I'm still pondering releasing an update to do that.

[dmasterxd]

So what I'm hearing is as long as the story/plot is expansive, it's not a problem for anyone. If so that's good because it's definitely expansive and could focus on so many different things.

[dreamy]

It depends on the plot really. Usually, I am quite annoyed with forced playing order but it can be settled if there are reasons to do so. If the plot is quite huge and different routes reveal different things well I'm alright with it so it also doesn't depend on whether the plot is expansive, it also depends on what is revealed on each path, maybe the same information but from a different perspective?

[EightHeadedDragon]

Judging from games like the ones mentioned audiences usually will forgive a forced playing order if the depth and structure of the story will make it worth the reader's time. In particular what comes to mind is the way each arc in Tsukihime builds upon details revealed in the previous one. By comparison, for a VN in which each arc is mostly identical save for a few specific scenes I would probably try to skip over the stuff I'd already been through rushing to the particular parts that I'm hoping will be different.