Detroit Become Human & Ohter vs Visual Novel game

[ravensep]

So people (and also among those who might be on the fbi list) Really wanted to discuss the whole aspect of branching narrative games in the west.

 

Now I only played 2 visual novels in my life...steins gate and trashy voltage games. But I think that visual novels tend to be more successful at branching narrative. But looking at the flow chart of School Days...looks like you can end up with same heroine in different ways. I mean it is still binary in the way that you are either winning or failing to get your waifu/husbando. (Again I haven't played it, just making derivation)

 

Contrast to game like Walking Dead and Life is Strange, I think they don't really succeed at being a branching narrative game (they have good story, but they don't really follow through choices matter).

I am not surprised, the fact that it is episodic, has multiple seasons...there is no way they are able to carry it through out the game.

 

I think the only game that succeeds at branching is Detroit Become human. It doesn't have an amazing story. But some of your choices, your failure really leaves tiny details that feels as though the narrative really mutated from what it could have been. It is still binary in a way but I think it succeeds more than other game. What do you guys think?

 

(Also uhmm....recommend me a VN? something with branching narrative and/or the girl going with a good husbandos? or do you guys only know waifus?)

 

edit 2: sorry I really didnt know if I should have posted this in general talk or in here....my bad if its in the wrong section

Edited August 23, 2018 by ravensep
audience targeting

[Decay]

I have a feeling you're misunderstanding both visual novels as a medium and Telltale's style of adventure games. School Days is an exception. I could point out that in School Days, the end states are not binary like you suggest and actually branch even more, but that's besides the point. That game exists on an extreme end of the spectrum when it comes to branching stories (and itself doesn't actually quality as a VN, truthfully). The vast majority of VNs have limited branching, especially modern VNs. In the modern VN, you make a series of choices that maybe change a few lines of text for each one, and through those choices it determines which "route" you end up on, which themselves are linear stories. Older VNs like Clannad have far more choices, but still ultimately have a route system where the game simply tells a series of linear stories to you. VNs that are like School Days are exceptionally rare.

Telltale's adventure games, meanwhile, aren't really supposed to have substantially different endings/routes. That's not really the point of those games. Maybe six years ago there was some confusion as to what kind of games these were meant to be, but there shouldn't be any now. When I first played it in 2012, I found Telltale's TWD brilliant. The thing it did was that it told a single specific story with a single outcome whose progression was heavily influenced by the player. Its story beats were custom-delivered for every player based on their actions, which enhanced the emotional impact without compromising the authored experience. By contrast, I find that David Cage's games overreach and end up with incredibly sloppy narratives as a result.

Too bad Telltale peaked with TWD season 1. The minds behind that game left the company soon after its completion, and telltale's been chasing after that success ever since.

Anyway, for VN recommendations, check out our recommendations forum. Perhaps you can find a thread there suited to your own tastes, or you could make a new one. I'm guessing you're probably not going to want to jump straight into moe romance hell. If you enjoyed Steins;Gate, then I'll recommend Chaos;Child to you, another game set in the same world. Or for something structured more like the kind of typical PC VNs that are popular around here, and something much more action-oriented, Dies irae.

Edited August 24, 2018 by Decay

[Yuuko]

Visual novel branching exists more in the doujin scene where they can do whatever they want rather than in the commercial one