Romantic Routes, Time Loops, & Persistent In-Story Knowledge

[AllegroDiRossi]

Having an issue deciding how I want to structure my story: it’s a multiple route visual novel with multiple romantic endings as well as bad ends and a best end unlocked when you experience the good ends of each of six romantic partners.

The premise is a sci-fi thriller with romantic partner pursuit. Each pursuable character route has radically different directions that the story goes, and once you get onto someone’s path, there’s no way to switch to another path in-story. As you’re going through these routes that strongly focus on the story, the relationship is also playing out. The romance is secondary to that larger plot.

The caveat here is that each route is actually a groundhog day loop, and secrets the main character finds out about each pursuable character help to get the best end. I’m having a hard time deciding what to do with that information in-story as it is accumulated.

For example, if I structure the game from a definite start point and allow the reader to make choices pursuing whatever characters they want, I will invariably have a situation where the reader finds out in Route A that so-and-so is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and when playing Route C, that character will probably pop up. Writing a huge variable where the main character knows that character is a traitor vs doesn’t know can widely disrupt the story and cause a huge split.

Alternately, if I take what I call (for lack of a better term) the When They Cry approach, I can make a story that goes through each romantic route in turn and get full control of that information being revealed, building up, being used by the main character. But then I have effectively eradicated one of the biggest draws of the game (namely pursuing whatever character the reader wants) and force them to read content they may not want to read initially.

There’s a hybrid approach where I open more routes on consecutive playthroughs, but it runs into the drawbacks of both approaches: namely I have to create conditionals on what is or is not known between my two or three levels of routes vs my six pursuable character routes, and then also locking down a romantic option behind multiple playthroughs still feels underhanded.

Another option is blank slating my main character each time and keeping that information that is gathered locked up until the conditions for the best end are met. I was planning on the best end being an unlockable chapter that streamlines the narrative to that new point and proceeding through a new arc and denouncement as opposed to it being opened up as an in-story path that the reader has to play again to get to.

The in-story information isn’t just related to the characters, but also the setting (things like blueprints and passcodes to barriers and locations of escape routes, etc.), so it’s not necessarily the kind of information that I can have them discover in every route without it feeling artificial. That information is stored in a personal computer themed data storage that persists on each reset of the loop, so I thought of it being “partially encrypted” or “corrupted” and maybe only released certain kinds of data each loop while blank-slating my character?

If you have any suggestions, or have questions that I can answer to clarify anything that doesn’t make sense, I would love to hear them.

[psy_wombats]

I'm a little confused -- is the is the core problem that after playing through route A, the protagonist would know too much about the scenario for route B to be believable? Or that after reading route A, the player knows enough to spoil B? Or both? Like you said, they're not necessarily the same thing.

If the protagonist would know too much, blanking their memory between routes could work. Blanking the reader is a little bit harder. Plenty of games do this where certain events or choices don't appear until successive playthroughs. I don't necessarily think this requires a big forking variable provided that you plan the scenario carefully, but it's definitely not something I'd want to be doing haha. The other drawback is that I don't think anybody really enjoys playing back through just to see the lines hidden by if(_clearCount>1) flags. Personally I put on skip mode and then tune out until the new stuff. Your idea about presenting the final arc as a faster rewrite of already presented information sounds a lot better.

It's interesting that you bring up corrupted data -- I/O has a replay mechanic literally represented by defragging a hard disk to reveal hidden scenes. I think it accomplishes some of what you're looking for here: there are certain scenes that never show up in route A unless you clear route B, scenes in B that require D be complete, etc. But most of these scenes are pretty inconsequential, like not even spoilers, let alone something that could alter how an arc plays out. I wasn't very impressed by the system, either -- it faced the same drawbacks as above.

The most orthodox answer would probably be enforced playing order. I personally think it's fine because I intend to play through every route in the game regardless, not sure if others think the same. If you feel like being a bit cruel, you could always offer the player the /choice/ to take one of the later routes, only to have it eventually turn into a very bad end because the protagonist doesn't have the required information.

Oh and I don't think it's that big a deal to rediscover trivial info like passwords each route. For instance in Umineko, the first time a mystery is solved in an arc, it's played out as a biig deaal, and it's not particularly annoying in further arcs when that iteration of the cast solves the mystery again because the narrative doesn't dwell on it. Maybe consider variables for whether to treat an uncovered location/blueprint/whatever as a big narrative event or minor thing depending on whether the player's seen it before -- for the characters it's always a big deal, but the reader doesn't have to have the information presented the same way every time. Plus no gross forking.

[Parataxis]

I think that you could easily make an incredibly engaging play experience even if you strictly ordered the routes, but hmm...

If I am reading you correctly the issue is the protagonist carrying over the information not the player? If that's the case then having the memory transfer in time loops be incomplete... or even almost non existent could also be an interesting direction to go. Say, you have a flag that after playing route A, when character meets so-and-so they have an instinctual bout of nervousness, but eventually dismiss it or something.

The other thing you might consider is arranging the routes in tiers, where you have to complete routes A and B before going on to C and D and so on.

The Zero Escape series deals with these problems pretty well, especially Virtue's Last Reward if you want to look at a model.

[Kinjo]

What I would do here is give both the player and the protagonist persistent memory -- if you can't avoid it, then embrace it. In the situation where you go on Route C and encounter the wolf, do a variable check to see if the player has been on Route A, and if so have the protagonist react differently. As a reader I would find that interesting because it would acknowledge the information I gathered and would use it in a meaningful way. Similarly with the computer, if none of the characters realize the data on it is persisting over time then that's one less way of connecting to the reader.

When Umineko did time loops, they used the meta-world to discuss things with the reader, who knew things were going to repeat. Without the meta-world you'd just see things happening in the same but slightly different way, and it'd be harder to see how each separate world fits into the bigger picture. Having some sort of meta-world or meta-commentary helps the reader digest what's going on across all the different timelines. Even Steins;Gate had their protagonist remember things from the parallel world lines; it'd be a different story if nobody had any memory of the previous iterations.

Of course you'd run into some problems, like being able to save and load partway through. If it was me I'd force people to only keep one save file at a given time (or multiple files that each track progress independently of each other). And you'd have to write a lot more, in order to show that the main character still remembers things from the previously played routes (I would be upfront with this to the reader upon starting the second playthrough). Then again I don't know if the details of your story would really allow for this solution, but that's how I'd do it.