On Games w/ Multiple Paths, But Only One Ending

[risingbamboobanana]

Hypothetically. I was just wondering, would any of you guys play a game like this? Or would the prospect be too much of a turn-off?

(i.e. You're given a certain number of days to interact with a characer, but they must leave in the end regardless of what you do.)

Opinions?

[papillon]

Depends on whether the story is such that I can feel like I've achieved anything?

If, for instance, the game is about "the last month before the girl you have a crush on moves to another country with her family" and she'll leave at the end no matter what, you can still have a lot of meaningful things happen before that ending, and the ending can be written in a vague enough way for the player to imagine the possibility of different things happening afterwards... if you two found love during that final month, you can at least imagine she might come back someday.

A more definite ending (the girl always dies at the end) will probably put off a few people who don't like Sad but as long as it tells good stories of how you get there, I think people will still accept it.

[Wintermoon]

At first glance, the question seems to vague to answer in any meaningful way. However, it's really quite simple:

• You don't need to give the player the power to change every event in the game.
• If you hint that the player is able to change an event, then they should be able to do so.
• If you give the player any choices at all, then those choices should have meaningful consequences.
• Multiple endings are not required.

[musical74]

My main problem with this is *what happens if you do choice B instead of choice A*...in other words, so long as there is relevance for the choices, I don't mind the solo ending. So long choice A has some different actions than choice B, and choice C has different actions, but they all eventually end up at the finish...so long as it is interesting, and there are differences between the choices I won't have issues with it.

[Seihn]

In my experience, games with multiple endings, while complicated, can allow for a more varied story and a wider audience. That being said, when people play a visual novel/dating sim/galge the most important part is, as has been said, the effectiveness of decisions on the story.

I would be interested in a game about enjoying the time you have with one other person... but you would need to either turn this into a novel like Narcissu or you'd need to give full control of the entire plot to the player (or the illusion of such). A single ending game can't afford to have meaningless choices; you have ones that make all the difference or none at all. Mind you I think some of that will depend on the game's length, but as a general rule players get frustrated when they can't mold their own end... Players' hearts go into games that they can make choices in so the choices need to mean something or you break their hearts... or something... O///O A-Anyway! There's an audience for these games but you need to treat them carefully. Make it a book or make it our book. Wait, does that make sense? :3

[N0UGHTS]

The prospect of there being only one ending is a little awkward to me, but I'd still play the game if the replay value still has its merit, and the other aspects of the game has to be good as well. As in, all the multiple paths have to be fun to play through, the art is nice to look at, the writing isn't garbage, you know, all the usual stuff.

If (I'm not saying you are) you're only making one definite ending (the scene will stay exactly the same no matter what) because you think multiple endings or branching out is a bit hard, well, you're right, branching out is hard. But in the end, you get to say, "[INSERT GAME TITLE HERE] has [# of ENDINGS] and I'm proud of it!"