Non-linear VNs: choices, branches, and player importance

[JinzouTamashii]

Usually, when playing a VN, there's a narrative agency at war with the story being told vis a vis the author vs. the player, and there are certain constraints upon which locations, branches, or characters you can meet at any given moment, whether we speak of Choose Your Own Adventure narratives, Dating Sim Engine, or the typical visual "novel." For now, I'll omit kinetic novels from the discussion as they are illustrated sound storybooks, for the most part.

I wanted to open up a discussion on these elements that comprise visual novels, and what we loosely call a "VN":

1) Should a story have encapsulated scenarios? (Like a Dating Sim)
2) How much should simulated randomness play a part?
3) How do we feel about distinct narratives with similar threads and characters, telling the same story differently?
4) How do we, as a community, react to stories where player choice drastically changes the game into a different genre or tells a completely different tale? (Go left: fantasy world, straight: modern world, right: fantasy)
5) Should a thread be linear (events move in one direction—forward) or nonlinear? (events can be shuffled without too much decay of the story)

Obviously, stories have to be written with constraints in mind, of one kind of another, I just wanted to hear the different ideas and reception to them. Reading the reviews of the IF competition reminded of why I stated writing multiple-choice stories in the first place, but I realized that stories don't necessarily need to be constrained to the same genre, characters, time, or even setting when dealing with player choice and player agency vs. the role of "protagonist."

For instance, in many traditional role-playing games with figurines and dice, there is a big distinction between the character and the person playing them and what knowledge is shared between them. What can a player honestly expect? How much should they be surprised by? What is "fair" and "unfair"?

[jack_norton]

I don't think there's any "right" way to do it. PERSONALLY (just my preference) I like VN who have many plot/subplots and endings. When I did Bionic Heart in practice I laid out a basic "main plot", and then started making several subplot out of it. Some subplot would just deviate from the main one and then reconnect later; others would simply show the same event from different perspective; and so on.
I think is cool to see the same event from two very different point of view for example. I also like dating sim and plot affected by stats, as long as they aren't too hard (like getting a very particular amount of a certain skill that forces you trying several times).

[Samu-kun]

I think you're kind of missing the point here. It's clear that there are multiple ways to tell a story and that each of the possible options that you have outlined present their own benefits and challenges. To use an analogy, imagine that you're trying to decide whether to live in a house or an apartment. There's nothing inherently wrong with either a house or an apartment on a general picture by themselves, but there can be things wrong in a specific house or an apartment that may impact their quality, eg. one house has a leaky faucet or the one apartment hasn't been renovated for 90 years.

Similarly, I think that there is nothing inherently wrong with each of the options that you have presented, but there are specific things that you do with an option that may negatively or positively impact the overall experience. A better question may be, "What can you do/not do in an encapsulated scenario to make it better?" or something along those lines.

[Wintermoon]

Text can be interesting the first time it is encountered, but rapidly becomes less interesting as it is repeatedly encountered. Text can be skipped, but this takes the reader out of the flow of the story. For this reason, VNs should make full completion as easy and painless as possible. In other words:

• No randomness.
• No attempts to "challenge" the player.
• The effect of a decision should be immediately apparent. If a decision early in the game affects the ending, it should also affect the path to that ending.
• Ideally, little or no text should be shared between different paths.

[JinzouTamashii]

Some interesting discussion already. No one way is right or wrong (did I use that word?), but some players will feel something is fair or unfair and that's what I want to explore: the mode of the author and the goals of the players and how they interact.

I find Dating Sim engines to be rather interesting as well with routes, because with stats and locations determining that or time of the year, it divorces some of the story from "choices" you'd find in a visual novel and into the territory of something aping a world in very controlled circumstances.

I've also never seen a VN yet which changes genres or characters or settings completely by option selection, going from serious drama, to comedy, romance, or horror and all written by one author.

Does anyone else ever feel a very deep connection with (for me, Narcissu) or no connection at all (Chaos; Head) with the protagonist you're supposed to be playing?

Here, if Wintermoon was our player, he or she strongly expects something:

• No randomness.
• No attempts to "challenge" the player.
• The effect of a decision should be immediately apparent. If a decision early in the game affects the ending, it should also affect the path to that ending.
• Ideally, little or no text should be shared between different paths.

So a game that branches out into completely different genres where all the choices are very simple would probably appeal to Wintermoon. But a Dating Sim Engine that is forced to recycle some of the text might not appeal. (I'm making some broad generalizations here with you so we can meaningfully discuss not "you" but the concept of a player like you: "Wintermoon2")

I'm going to pretend that "Wintermoon2" doesn't like roguelike or dungeon crawlers or anything like Nethack but greatly enjoys sandbox-style games like Grand Theft Auto and Oblivion. In Visual Novel, the author has many choices to make on how to deliver the story. How would you make a game to please "Wintermoon2"?

[Voight-Kampff]

Text can be interesting the first time it is encountered, but rapidly becomes less interesting as it is repeatedly encountered. Text can be skipped, but this takes the reader out of the flow of the story. For this reason, VNs should make full completion as easy and painless as possible. In other words:

• No randomness.
• No attempts to "challenge" the player.
• The effect of a decision should be immediately apparent. If a decision early in the game affects the ending, it should also affect the path to that ending.
• Ideally, little or no text should be shared between different paths.

Now those are some interesting points. And I can say from first-hand experience that something like Kagetsu Tohya - while insanely complex in it's branching - was far less engaging of a story to me than Tsukihime.

Oh, don't get me wrong - it was entertaining. But when one spends the whole "day" just skipping past a dozen scenes that have already been experienced a dozen times in order to find one new scene, the immersion, the suspension of disbelief flies right out the window.

Which is why I'm a firm believer in the integrity of the story over multiple branching paths. As an author, I believe it's my duty to craft a compelling story that will pull the reader into my fictional world, make them sympathize with the characters, etc. If - IF - interesting alternative paths reveal themselves during the course of writing, and they add something to the experience, then I'll gladly consider adding them. But personally, I don't like the idea of adding choices and complexity just for the sake of giving the reader more choices.

I think Fate Stay Night and Saya no Uta are good examples of compelling stories that don't rely on much branching.

[Tsundere Lightning]

Ever heard of Topic Oriented Scripting?

(As opposed to dialog trees?)

It's where a script consists of a bunch of "topics" that NPC's will remember, and bring up later with no input from the player. Mind, you can then keep talking to them. It's a more dynamic, realistic way of tracking what you've already spoken about.

Might be worth looking at and investigating; and Python is already object-based. It's just applying object-based programming to scripting, only the objects are topics of conversation.

[JinzouTamashii]

Hmm, never even heard of it before.

[Taroku]

Hmm, interesting... I was wondering if that was possible in Ren'py.

[Counter Arts]

It's possible in ren'py. To program it is not too hard. It can just make a lot of work writing if you go crazy with it. Create something like a MemoryCollection class for each character or maintain a list of topics for each character.