The Multiple Route Mystery genre disscusion

[Guest]

This...

It is a somewhat of a polarizing genre, some really like It (i.e me, @VirginSmasher), but, I also heard a lot of negative comments about. 

Per example, one time I was reading a VNDB thread about Comyu, and one of the users got genuinely mad at the fact that they had to read through the other heroines Path (which they weren't interested) just to get to the Arc he wanted to read in the first place.

So I decided to make this Thread for us to discuss about this... You think routes should support one another (Nurse Love Addiction)? Should Enforced Playing Order be very strict in these games?  Should paths build off one another (Fate, Tsukihime)? Should alternate routes purpose be to glorify the "True" route (G-senjou, Ley-line)? should it be only used if the protagonist remember the info from previous paths?

[Dergonu]

I loved Nurse Love Addiction's way of doing it, where you can play the routes in any order, but you have to do them all to get the full picture. It really made me want to keep reading until the very end, even after finishing a route, whereas "normal" games that has a unique story for each route can leave me feeling like I'm done with the game after finishing a route. I just don't have the same motivation to keep going in those games, I guess.

I do hate enforced route orders, though. I prefer to be able to choose for myself what route I want to do first.

[VirginSmasher]

I think my opinions are obvious on this considering my top 5 VNs are all multiple route mysteries.

[MaggieROBOT]

Well, I'm indifferent towards this tag. Don't love nor hate, it's just there.

And about Comyu, people aren't pleased because Kagome is the only remotely interesting heroine (I loved Hisoka in the end, but you can't have any opinion about her in the common route since she barely appears there) and her route is locked by the other 4, 2 of them are filler-infested and add nothing to the mystery.

Like Derg, I loved the way Nurse Love treated its routes, more games should do like that. But my favorite is the way Shingakkou's routes work. You only need a single playthrough to find the answer to the mystery, but the other routes add a lot of detail to the whole thing just by changing your main ally (in this case, the hero you choose), making it so worth to read all of them.

Enforced order is a pain, but I think that the True Route should be locked at least until you finish one route.

[PiggiesGoMoo]

I love mystery VNs, but my top 2 were both single route (Higurashi, Fata Morgana). I really, really hate it when different routes have too many similarities. Ever17 annoyed me when I had to backtrack 4 times to finally get to Coco's route, and had to rewatch scenes that I had already seen 4 times.  In some cases you only had to rewatch a scene twice, and were allowed to skip the other three times. But there were many other cases where you had to rewatch a scene 4-5 times because there were minor differences, and the "skip already read" feature would be disabled.  Of course you could always "Force skip", but I greatly dislike doing that in a mystery novel where you ought to have some attention to detail. 

[Plk_Lesiak]

The one thing I dislike is indeed heroine romance routes being effectively restricted by the need to follow the right playing order. I know that, for example, the only route I really care about in Dies Irae is the second or third one story-wise, so when I finally get to that game I won't be able to start with it, without risking confusion and maybe even ruining my experience to some extent.

It's only a slight annoyance though and not something I would even get mad about - while I might prefer having more freedom when choosing my playing order, but I know why this is done and can appreciate the intricate storytelling techniques that go into building these epic intrigues. If it's done well enough, I can forgive not completely bending to my waifu-related wishes.

[Dreamysyu]

Yeah, I definitely like VNs that have MRM. Actually, this is one of my favorite VN tropes, I think, and one of those that typically don't work if you try to adapt VNs to any other media. Also, it's one of the reasons that I became interested in playing more VNs in the first place.

1 hour ago, SeniorBlitz said:

So I decided to make this Thread for us to discuss about this... You think routes should support one another (Nurse Love Addiction)? Should Enforced Playing Order be very strict in these games?  Should paths build off one another (Fate, Tsukihime)? Should alternate routes purpose be to glorify the "True" route (G-senjou, Ley-line)? should it be only used if the protagonist remember the info from previous paths?

Well, it depends on what you want to do with with the VN, really. Pretty much all of these can work equally well. What I noticed, on the other hand, is that in story-focused VNs you pretty much always need some connections between the routes to make it work as a whole. The main disadvantage of any route system compared to linear stories is that they are basically separate stories, each with their own theme and intrigue, and many types of stories simply don't work that way. MRM, on the other hand, allows the author to add some overarching story element which unites the routes, or, in case that we have a true route, make the side routes actually matter.

1 hour ago, Dergonu said:

I loved Nurse Love Addiction's way of doing it, where you can play the routes in any order, but you have to do them all to get the full picture.

Didn't read it, but this sounds great. This type of mystery is not very easy to make, on the other hand. I tried making my own VN-inspired mystery RPG Maker game once (though I didn't even come close to finishing it), and, even though I didn't want to do it originally, I decided to make the route order enforced in the end. I noticed that when you make a mystery story, it's very difficult to make it so that the order in which the hints are presented doesn't matter. It can be seen in Ever17, actually. The order in which you read the routes highly affects that you are more likely to get, that's why I had to reread one route twice.

The same is often true for more plot-focused VN's. Fate Stay Night, for example, simply wouldn't work if the route order wasn't enforced. Each new route is essentially a new story, but each one relies on the ideas presented in the previous routes and goes deeper. It basically combines advantages of both linear and branching stories: on one hand, the story has a clear direction and can develop in it, on the other hand, it shows multiple possibilities of things that can happen and isn't forced to develop all the characters in the same story, allowing some of them to shine in different routes. That's why I don't dislike enforced route order.

Edited March 8, 2018 by Dreamysyu

[VirginSmasher]

I personally never got the point of getting angry that you couldn't read a certain heroine's route until later. To me, if a certain heroine's route is locked off, it makes me more excited to get to it and see what it reveals. Hell, Coco never interested me a character and even then, her route was my most anticipated because of the order.

[Norleas]

That type of structure is hit or miss to me, most of the time miss to speak the truth. The big point is the writer ability here, if he is good enough to make a interesting story that captivate you even on routes were you don't like the heroine, and principally, make every route be meaningful to the total, nothing is worse in that type of game that have some routes be totally neglected, is really clear when some authors don't even try to put effort on some parts, just throwing some shitty fillers, it's ok to make some routes deviate from the central plot, but at least put some content on them, to make the time used on them not be a complete waste.

[VirginSmasher]

5 hours ago, Dreamysyu said:

Yeah, I definitely like VNs that have MRM. Actually, this is one of my favorite VN tropes, I think, and one of those that typically don't work if you try to adapt VNs to any other media. Also, it's one of the reasons that I became interested in playing more VNs in the first place.

This is a major reason why I love the genre so much. It's quite unique to VNs and as I said earlier, my top 5 VNs are multiple route mysteries. There's just something about using multiple routes to expand an overall plot that really hooks me.

[Sparteh]

Personally, I love this genre.  This type of VNs probably the best represent the unique points of VNs as a medium. Take Balrd Sky Dive 1 and 2 for example. 2 VNs x 50+ hours long for a single multi route mystery. It was so good, that I didn't even notice how fast I read it. Considering that it took me 3 weeks, that is a huge achievement. Then we have Dies Irae. I don't think that I need to comment much. The fact remains, multi route mystery genre allows supreme world building experience. 

 

19 hours ago, SeniorBlitz said:

This...

It is a somewhat of a polarizing genre, some really like It (i.e me, @VirginSmasher), but, I also heard a lot of negative comments about. 

Per example, one time I was reading a VNDB thread about Comyu, and one of the users got genuinely mad at the fact that they had to read through the other heroines Path (which they weren't interested) just to get to the Arc he wanted to read in the first place.

So I decided to make this Thread for us to discuss about this... You think routes should support one another (Nurse Love Addiction)? Should Enforced Playing Order be very strict in these games?  Should paths build off one another (Fate, Tsukihime)? Should alternate routes purpose be to glorify the "True" route (G-senjou, Ley-line)? should it be only used if the protagonist remember the info from previous paths?

The problem with enforced playing order is that many people confuse it with multi route mystery when they are 2 different things. While both are connected, they are not the same. Mostly people complain about playing unwanted routes to unlock the one way want. This is not the problem of multiple route mysteries, but rather of enforced playing order and terribly written characters

[VirginSmasher]

2 hours ago, Sparteh said:

The problem with enforced playing order is that many people confuse it with multi route mystery when they are 2 different things. While both are connected, they are not the same. Mostly people complain about playing unwanted routes to unlock the one way want. This is not the problem of multiple route mysteries, but rather of enforced playing order and terribly written characters

That's definitely true in a sense. Comyu had this problem a lot. I didn't like a lot of the characters who had routes besides Mayu and Kagome. Playing through Benio's route was the worst. 

[Sparteh]

14 minutes ago, VirginSmasher said:

That's definitely true in a sense. Comyu had this problem a lot. I didn't like a lot of the characters who had routes besides Mayu and Kagome. Playing through Benio's route was the worst. 

From what I know, majority of readers only cared about Kagome from the heroines. Well, Comyu had a ton of wasted potential. For example, it had a concept of classes which turned out to be useless. Multiple people control system was reduced to number=power, while it could have been exploited much further etc.

To summarize, the problem lies not in the tags, but in trashy writing. 

[VirginSmasher]

1 minute ago, Sparteh said:

From what I know, majority of readers only cared about Kagome from the heroines. Well, Comyu had a ton of wasted potential. For example, it had a concept of classes which turned out to be useless. Multiple people control system was reduced to number=power, while it could have been exploited much further etc.

To summarize, the problem lies not in the tags, but in trashy writing. 

Hell, it could've had great writing in Japanese, but the translation was apparently very mediocre and it may not have conveyed the quality of the original VN. But still, even with a trashy TL, some of the writing decisions were...questionable.

[Sparteh]

1 hour ago, VirginSmasher said:

Hell, it could've had great writing in Japanese, but the translation was apparently very mediocre and it may not have conveyed the quality of the original VN. But still, even with a trashy TL, some of the writing decisions were...questionable.

Translation might have distorted things a bit, but routes were bad before it. For example, that hamster kouhai route. It was such a trash, that I don't even bothered to remember what it was about

[VirginSmasher]

4 minutes ago, Sparteh said:

Translation might have distorted things a bit, but routes were bad before it. For example, that hamster kouhai route. It was such a trash, that I don't even bothered to remember what it was about

Actually, I hated Hisoka's route more than hers, but yeah, Ayaya's route really contributed nothing to the overall plot.

[HMN]

1 hour ago, Sparteh said:

Translation might have distorted things a bit, but routes were bad before it. For example, that hamster kouhai route. It was such a trash, that I don't even bothered to remember what it was about

The only things I remember from comyu are "I can see the red", "So what?", and Benio's route ending at this point.

[solidbatman]

A true route should never ever be locked away behind completion of non-canon routes. If the author wants a true route included but feels the need to create character routes to develop characters more, then they need to find a way to write their characters better to make extra non-canon routes unnecessary. 

If the game does not have a true route then it really doesn't matter. 

[Dreamysyu]

30 minutes ago, solidbatman said:

A true route should never ever be locked away behind completion of non-canon routes. If the author wants a true route included but feels the need to create character routes to develop characters more, then they need to find a way to write their characters better to make extra non-canon routes unnecessary. 

I disagree. What about the situations where non-true routes serve dome different purpose? For example, in Ever 17, they present little hints about the mystery of the game, while the true route reveals the mystery. I don't know how it would work if the true route wasn't locked.

[solidbatman]

1 minute ago, Dreamysyu said:

I disagree. What about the situations where non-true routes serve dome different purpose? For example, in Ever 17, they present little hints about the mystery of the game, while the true route reveals the mystery. I don't know how it would work if the true route wasn't locked.

by being better at writing. The House in Fata Morgana managed to do it brilliantly without resorting to route branches and the locking of story behind completion of the routes. 

[Dreamysyu]

3 minutes ago, solidbatman said:

by being better at writing. The House in Fata Morgana managed to do it brilliantly without resorting to route branches and the locking of story behind completion of the routes. 

But isn't it just another way to write things? I like how Fata Morgana does things, but saying that every VN with a true route should be like it is basically the same as saying that all of them should be linear, which simply gives up a lot of potential VN's have.

[solidbatman]

11 minutes ago, Dreamysyu said:

But isn't it just another way to write things? I like how Fata Morgana does things, but saying that every VN with a true route should be like it is basically the same as saying that all of them should be linear, which simply gives up a lot of potential VN's have.

just my shitty opinion. in my perfect VN world, VNs with routes dont have true routes locked away. I don't care if there is a true route and other routes. Just don't lock that shit away from me and force me to complete usually wildly inconsistent routes 

[Guest]

29 minutes ago, Dreamysyu said:

I disagree. What about the situations where non-true routes serve dome different purpose? For example, in Ever 17, they present little hints about the mystery of the game, while the true route reveals the mystery. I don't know how it would work if the true route wasn't locked.

I heard some of Fata's alternate ends (non-dead ends) actually add to the story, is that true?

[Dreamysyu]

7 minutes ago, SeniorBlitz said:

I heard some of Fata's alternate ends (non-dead ends) actually add to the story, is that true?

Yeah, but it's nothing major. The story works perfectly well even if you miss them.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Dreamysyu said:

Yeah, but it's nothing major. The story works perfectly well even if you miss them.

I guess I'll tag it as MRM "1.0" on VNDB...