A little rant on VNs route structure

[Thyndd]

Something we take for granted when reading a VN (unless it's a kinetic novel) is that it'll have several routes. The way the story splits and branches depends on the particular VN in question, so for example I've come across this recent thread about a "ladder structure" where at some points on the common route you decide whether to go for that heroine route or to stay in the common route until other chance presents itself for another heroine. When someone asks (or if someone asked you, if someone actually cared ) what is a VN and how is it different from reading a novel, you'd probably list some key features like: it has pictures and soundtrack, and sometimes voice acting; it's more focused on dialogue than prose... and most importantly, it has some interaction with the reader in that it allows you to pick some choices along the way that can dramatically change the outcome of the story, giving some videogame vibes to them. Is this last part really true though? I don't think so. Not in all the cases at least.

It's undeniably true that picking one option or another does take you through a different story, but what I've noticed with the little experience I have with VNs is that those differences are usually not a natural consequence of the options you chose, and therefore I don't think calling those multiple stories "routes" branching off a main story is the correct term to use. A visual novel that has "true" routes would be one for which the differences between routes are fully explained by the choices the MC/s make/s, so that every other event that is not affected by the choices would still happen in the same way, even if only behind the scenes. This gives the VN a puzzle feeling to it, because different routes can share events which are seen form different perspectives or not seen at all, and it's the reader who must make sense of what's going on. Therefore it's no surprise that mistery VNs make the biggest use of this labyrinth-like structure, such as Higurashi.

For other kinds of VNs however, this wouldn't even be practical. If every difference must logically follow from a choice, it'd leave very little room for big divergence, making all the routes very similar. That issue could be patched by having a huge number of possible choices, but that's not feasible from a production standpoint, not even for the big and mighty companies. For mistery VNs this isn't a problem at all though, since for the most part each route will be shrouded in mistery, being all the similarities among them the stepping stone to reconstruct the story, and the differences are either natural consequences of the different choices or a consequence of a change in perspective. It's just so perfect 

Obviously even if most VNs don't really have routes in the truest sense, the outcomes that don't logically follow from the choices are subtle enough that the reader won't even notice or even if they do, that it still feels like branches of the same story, rather than a collection of different stories that just happen to have the same setting and characters. How subtle they do this varies a lot though, and in some cases I've seen people complaining, like in g-senjou no maou's case for example. 

So let me open the discussion. Does it bother you whether there are or are not random changes among routes? Can you provide some examples of VNs that you believe have true routes and some that don't but do it well enough so it's almost imperceptible?

[Clephas]

Most VN choices are essentially meaningless, only existing to create an illusion of player agency.   90% of them just give 'koukando' or do nothing at all except switch out the next few lines.  Simply picking a picture of the heroine at the end of the common route would probably be less stressful.

[Stormwolf]

57 minutes ago, Clephas said:

Most VN choices are essentially meaningless, only existing to create an illusion of player agency.   90% of them just give 'koukando' or do nothing at all except switch out the next few lines.  Simply picking a picture of the heroine at the end of the common route would probably be less stressful.

Having choices during the common route is all fine, but not when they're like "enter the hallway", "stay and wait", "go back home" etc and it's all a gamble who the choices corresponds to. 

[Akshay]

I mean it depends.

Some VN's require you to get a certain amount of intimacy  (or flags as they say) with a character before starting her route. So while the choice itself doesn't matter, you need to have a certain number of events with that girl to progress.

Choices which are deterministic (Kill/don't kill) usually lead to different events/bad endings as the story can be different with the absence of characters (Nasu does this in his VN's)

You can kind of see where choices matter in something like Steins;Gate, as information given to the past can effect the future.

On the other hand, you have tons of stuff like in innocent gray VNs (Cartagra, KnS) where going to certain places triggers different routes or Clannad whose choice system is a convoluted mess and you really have no clue what your choices do.

Of course the only choice that really matters is,

Spoiler

 

That, and the obligatory

-> Cum inside

-> Cum Outside

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by Akshay

[Clephas]

45 minutes ago, Stormwolf said:

Having choices during the common route is all fine, but not when they're like "enter the hallway", "stay and wait", "go back home" etc and it's all a gamble who the choices corresponds to. 

About the only time I approve of choices is when they lead to bad endings, normal endings, or alternate endings.  Meaningless 'talk to a different person for a slightly different bit of SOL' choices got old to me years ago.

[Dreamysyu]

To be honest, if it's very obvious from the way the story is written that the difference between routes doesn't follow from what choice you make at all, especially if it changes the things that happened before the choice was made, then I'm probably going to consider this a plot hole. For example, I still don't understand how exactly the choice between the Near and the Far side of the Moon changed so many things in Tsukihime. I don't even remember what exactly this choice was, but I'm pretty sure it was very insignificant. On the other hand, as long as the difference between routes can be explained with the butterfly effect, then I don't particularly care. Fate would make a good example, but it's also true for most romance-based VNs. In some other cases, like Rewrite or Tokyo Babel, I still don't understand if some difference between routes follow from some unexplained plot points, or if the writers just got lazy to keep things consistent.

 

[Akshay]

10 minutes ago, Dreamysyu said:

To be honest, if it's very obvious from the way the story is written that the difference between routes doesn't follow from what choice you make at all, especially if it changes the things that happened before the choice was made, then I'm probably going to consider this a plot hole. For example, I still don't understand how exactly the choice between the Near and the Far side of the Moon changed so many things in Tsukihime. I don't even remember what exactly this choice was, but I'm pretty sure it was very insignificant. On the other hand, as long as the difference between routes can be explained with the butterfly effect, then I don't particularly care. Fate would make a good example, but it's also true for most romance-based VNs. In some other cases, like Rewrite or Tokyo Babel, I still don't understand if some difference between routes follow from some unexplained plot points, or if the writers just got lazy to keep things consistent.

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

The choice in Tsukihime that determined whether you went to near/far side of the moon route is whether you go investigate when you hear the noises outside, or go to sleep. If you investigate it shifts you to Arc/Ciels route where you understand who/what is roaming around and if you ignore it you focus on family/internal problems. And tsukihime had lots of choices that led to super interesting bad endings. Like if you kill Ciel in her route. In Tsukihime at least, choices had higher value than the majority of VNs I read.

Double spoiler just incase you are tempted. Dont read unless you finished Tsukihime.

 

[Dreamysyu]

13 minutes ago, Akshay said:

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The choice in Tsukihime that determined whether you went to near/far side of the moon route is whether you go investigate when you hear the noises outside, or go to sleep. If you investigate it shifts you to Arc/Ciels route where you understand who/what is roaming around and if you ignore it you focus on family/internal problems. And tsukihime had lots of choices that led to super interesting bad endings. Like if you kill Ciel in her route. In Tsukihime at least, choices had higher value than the majority of VNs I read.

Double spoiler just incase you are tempted. Dont read unless you finished Tsukihime.

 

Ah, yeah, thank you for reminding me. I mean, I agree, Tsukihime has a lot of interesting choices, and my overall impression about its route system was very favorable, but sometimes the changes from these choices seemed  very random. Well, the explanations for some things probably exist in Nasu's head or even in one of the many fandisks that I didn't read.

[\Spoiler]

[alpacaman]

The only choice readers should get to make in VNs is whose bento you want to eat.

In all seriousness: Certain villains not showing up at all or completely switching their plans without you having made any choice that could have led there obviously is a plot hole, but one that imo is usually acceptable if there is something like a true route. In these cases you can consider the other routes as a different story that could have happened. Most VNs don't aim for a cause-and-effect narrative, so it's kind of harsh to judge them based on that imo.

That being said, choices that don't chang anything relevant or ones where it's impossible to judge what direction the story takes you (except when that's the point the story wants to make) are  pretty annoying.

[Silvz]

On 30/08/2018 at 4:40 PM, Dreamysyu said:

To be honest, if it's very obvious from the way the story is written that the difference between routes doesn't follow from what choice you make at all, especially if it changes the things that happened before the choice was made, then I'm probably going to consider this a plot hole. For example, I still don't understand how exactly the choice between the Near and the Far side of the Moon changed so many things in Tsukihime. I don't even remember what exactly this choice was, but I'm pretty sure it was very insignificant. On the other hand, as long as the difference between routes can be explained with the butterfly effect, then I don't particularly care. Fate would make a good example, but it's also true for most romance-based VNs. In some other cases, like Rewrite or Tokyo Babel, I still don't understand if some difference between routes follow from some unexplained plot points, or if the writers just got lazy to keep things consistent.

 

In the case of Rewrite, there were three different writers to the five routes, being Ryukishi07 Lucia's writer and only hers. Besides that, and this is a spoiler for those who did not get to the moon route

Spoiler

each route happens in a different timeline, so it is possible to all of them to happen without interfering with eachother at all