Point of View Questions
Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2012 3:32 pm
I had a couple of questions about a game I'm working on, all pertaining to PoV. My first question is about what point of view is best for a visual novel. I'm considering writing it in third person, but I don't know if that would seem too awkward for a video game. My worry is that having things in third person and still being able to choose what decisions the character makes asks for too much suspension of disbelief. At the same time, I'd like to have the freedom to show things that the protagonist wouldn't have seen directly. For example, one of the first scenes I'm writing is when the main character, Lazarus transfers into a new class (cliched, I know, but the story isn't quite the slice of life high school days tale you might be expecting.) Here's one example of narration I use in the scene: "Lazarus moves to his desk and sits down. To his left is a tall girl with dark blue hair, purple eyes, and glasses. She nods at him and turns her gaze back out the window. The girl to his right has auburn hair in braided pigtails. She smiles broadly at him and quietly introduces herself while Miss Tanaka calls roll." What do you think, does that sound too awkward? I'm also unsure if I should put it in present tense. I know it's what's usually done in these type of games and it adds an immediacy to the writing, but I much prefer past tense. I don't know if I'd be crossing too many lines by putting it in third person and past tense or if it would actually make the writing better to be past tense if I'm going to be in third person anyway. Another reason that I like third person is that, as I said earlier, it allows me to show more than just what the character sees. For example, this particular scene starts with two girls in the class having a conversation while Lazarus is still outside the classroom.
Which brings me to my second set of questions. I want this story to have three main protagonists (its a new story based on Sailor Moon and has the three villains as the main characters who are infiltrating schools in Crystal Tokyo to try and find the Sailor Senshi), but I'm not sure what would be the best way to tell it with three different interrelated storylines like that. Should I switch between their points of view multiple times throughout the story? This has a lot of advantages because it would allow the stories to be even more interconnected and let you see how things are beginning to come together. On the other hand, I worry that doing it like that might make the game too long and/or tedious and might get confusing. The other option is to allow the player to choose their protagonist at the beginning of the game and stay on their "path" until you reach the end. This would be less confusing in some ways, but I worry that it might be more confusing in the long run if you only get word-of-mouth reports about what is going on elsewhere and it will mean you don't know all the characters as well when the various storylines start to converge. Another worry is that since I don't plan to allow you to pick the school each character goes to for the first release (only because allowing people to pick literally triples the amount of script I have to write and even though this is an ambitious project anyway, making it even bigger in the beginning might mean it would never get released) and only one of the schools has Chibi-Usa and other characters familiar to fans of the series, people might feel jipped if they choose the storyline of one of the protagonists not going to Chibi-Usa's school and end up not seeing actual Sailor Moon characters until about halfway through the game.
So I would love to know your opinion on both of these questions. Also, if you do think that I should switch between main characters during gameplay, do you have any suggestions for how I should go about that? How long do you think I should stay on one main character before switching? How do you think I should handle the (inevitable) times where events take place at the same time? I'd like to not make it seem like it's taking three times as long to do anything, if at all possible.
Please let me know what you think. I'd appreciate your thoughts on anything I've brought up. Thank you so much in advance for taking the time to consider my questions and I'm sorry this went on for so long. I really do write too much.
Which brings me to my second set of questions. I want this story to have three main protagonists (its a new story based on Sailor Moon and has the three villains as the main characters who are infiltrating schools in Crystal Tokyo to try and find the Sailor Senshi), but I'm not sure what would be the best way to tell it with three different interrelated storylines like that. Should I switch between their points of view multiple times throughout the story? This has a lot of advantages because it would allow the stories to be even more interconnected and let you see how things are beginning to come together. On the other hand, I worry that doing it like that might make the game too long and/or tedious and might get confusing. The other option is to allow the player to choose their protagonist at the beginning of the game and stay on their "path" until you reach the end. This would be less confusing in some ways, but I worry that it might be more confusing in the long run if you only get word-of-mouth reports about what is going on elsewhere and it will mean you don't know all the characters as well when the various storylines start to converge. Another worry is that since I don't plan to allow you to pick the school each character goes to for the first release (only because allowing people to pick literally triples the amount of script I have to write and even though this is an ambitious project anyway, making it even bigger in the beginning might mean it would never get released) and only one of the schools has Chibi-Usa and other characters familiar to fans of the series, people might feel jipped if they choose the storyline of one of the protagonists not going to Chibi-Usa's school and end up not seeing actual Sailor Moon characters until about halfway through the game.
So I would love to know your opinion on both of these questions. Also, if you do think that I should switch between main characters during gameplay, do you have any suggestions for how I should go about that? How long do you think I should stay on one main character before switching? How do you think I should handle the (inevitable) times where events take place at the same time? I'd like to not make it seem like it's taking three times as long to do anything, if at all possible.
Please let me know what you think. I'd appreciate your thoughts on anything I've brought up. Thank you so much in advance for taking the time to consider my questions and I'm sorry this went on for so long. I really do write too much.