trooper6 wrote:I feel like the difference between KN and VN sometimes is a bit loose. I also feel like what counts as "gaming aspects" is really loose. I've seen VN lovers say that KNs don't have any gaming aspects, unlike VNs. But then I've see first person shooter fans say that VNs don't have any gaming aspects. So...I suppose I'm a bit philosophical on "gameplay aspects."
Some of this discussion of branching makes me think of the debates around JRPGs and WRPGs. JRPGs tend to have more linear storylines while WRPGs tend to have more branching storylines...and people argue left and right which is better--and which one is a "real" RPG. I find the arguments tiresome. Both can be RPGs, just different types...you know?
I thought that the difference between KN and VN are pretty clear to me, since it is just a matter of technical details. A completely linear VN can still be not KN if there are fake choices. So inserting a menu in the middle of nowhere that do absolutely nothing is enough to change from a KN into a VN. For example, let's say in your story, the MC get captured, and have to wait for outside rescue. If the game just say that is what happened, then it is a KN. If the game give you a menu with a bunch of options for the MC to escape, where clicking on anything will just repeat the menu again, until you clicked 10 times before the rescue scene come, then it is a VN. Same thing happened, just difference in technical details.
Now regarding the issue of gameplay element. One important element of gaming is that: you get to make meaningful decision, and it is because you aim to achieve a goal. And of course, there is the challenge aspect: it might be difficult to make the correct choice to achieve the goal. Meaningful choice is of course is in contrast to illusory choice, which appear to make a difference but is not.
So this is why people think that a VN is more of a game than KN, and a RPG is more of a game than VN:
-In KN, there is no goal. Really, you are just reading a story. And of course, there is absolutely no meaningful choices (or any illusory choices either), since there is no choices in the first place, and so there is also no challenge. Hence KN is pretty much a computer version of a book.
-In VN, there might be some goals, there might be not. What type of goal you get are very varied. "Get that guy's ending" is a very common goal. "Avoid bad ending until the end" is another, though people might want it anyway if it is interesting enough (which is why some games distinguish between a "bad ending" and a "game over", by making the bad ending very elaborated and the game over a boring standard scene, just so people know which one is supposedly there for player to try to get, and which one is just there as an obstacle to make the game harder). Then there are subgoal such as "figure out the backstory" or "unlock this romantic scene". Once there are goals, and there are choice that logically linked to the goals, then you have meaningful decision. And these could be very challenging, by the sheer amount of combinatorial explosion once the player is presented with enough choice. I think some people think there are little gameplay aspect in a VN is because the typical VN have too few meaningful choices, hence less decision making, and further more, there are not enough possibilities to try, so if you want to get some goals, you can usually get it.
-In a RPG, the player tend to be overwhelmed by the amount of choices. Even though lots of those choices are illusory as long as that illusion is strong enough player would think that a RPG is more of a game than a VN. That is not helped by the fact that a lot of VN have lots of illusory choice too.
And I do not think that WRPG have more branching storyline than JRPG at all, that is just another illusion by overwhelming people with choices. Mainly true branching in WRPG would come in the form of angel vs devil morality system which is hardly sophisticated at all, and I am pretty sure that there are JRPG that do the same.
In the end, branching boil down to cost problem.
Adding more branches means:
-Logical logistic nightmare (ie. figuring out which event, which choices, should logically trigger what event later, at what time, such that they are all interesting) is already a big problem in any storyline with branching (which is why many VN have the same try-and-true method of affection point+single branching point), but at least this one plague RPG and VN the same way.
-Content: notice how VN are tended to be advertised by the total game play time and the complexity of the stories, while RPG tend to be advertised by the single playthrough time and the amount of choices? In a VN, more branch usually means a few more dozen BG, CG, a few more sprite and BGM+SFX, and says a hundred thousand word worth of a decent story. In a RPG, this means a whole lots of new enemies design (from stats, to sprite, to animation, and of course testing), a few more line of dialogue, and perhaps some new maps. It is hard to see which one cost more (and it really depends on a lot of other factors), so let's assume that the cost is the same on each side now, but now that we look at the player's point of view things change. In a VN, the player can easily skip quickly over the lines they already read and only go to something new. In a RPG, the player might end up going through dozen of hours of the same old content doing grinding and leveling up just to try out a different branch. Needless to say, a RPG player is much less interested in playing the same game multiple time than a VN player. However, adding more branch still add more cost, and thus price, to the game. If RPG player have to pay for the price of a 5 branches but is only playing 2 branches, they lose money, so of course, they are less likely to buy the game, so subsequently creator have to cut down cost, but cutting out the branch. On the other hand, a VN of the size of War & Peace can be completed in less time than a medium size RPG, so it is expected that VN player pay for all the branches.
) but I do know a bit already. And I do know that the main theme in visual novels is that all your choices have heavy consequences in the future, which leads to the various endings that anyone can obtain.
