I haven't gotten to try it yet, but that sounds like a good endorsement. I'm just not sure if that makes me want to bump it up or down on the list. On the one hand I want to play good games, but on the other watching a good game fall apart is always so much more disappointing.
I just see so many pitfalls here. A bunch of characters alone means that attention is a scarce commodity that literally can't be optimal for any but a lucky few that happen to have their preferences line up exactly with what the dev does. It only gets worse as more characters are added, as there is less and less time for your favorites.
But the real problem is that many characters that may be avoided means many very significant choices. Unless you keep each character totally isolated (or in groups that have no overlap, and all choices with those characters are at the group level) you end up with a combinatorial explosion of results. The MC really should be counted here
Even assuming every character has only a single route and the only choice is to include them or not, it's still a crapload of possible combinations.
2^k, where
k is the number of characters specifically. With only five of these characters, you're looking at 32 different versions of a scene. (Okay possibly less one if you have to pick somebody but at this point it hardly matters and in a less contrived example it wouldn't be so inconceivable to pick nobody... or at least it wouldn't if this was a different genre.)
Now you have 32 versions of a scene to create. Not only is that a ton of work no matter how you do that, but... Each playthrough will only see one of them.
And here's the real kicker. That nice and easy one-route-per-character thing? That's gone. Each of those five characters now has 32 possible pasts. What was five characters to keep track of (in terms of their backstory, development, personality, etc) has become essentially 160. All because of a single scene with five choices.
Which means for the next scene... well you get the idea. Even if you never offer another choice and never introduce a new character the situation is already intractable. It won't get worse, but it's well past the point where it matters.
So how do you stop the story from bloating itself to death after the first handful of choices? Consolidation. You rip out as much meaning as possible from the choices until you end up with as few end results as possible if you and your players squint hard enough.
The damage increases exponentially every time the choice influences a character, so character interaction is a prime target. One choice, two (or god forbid, more) character influences... It's basically the epitome of a ticket straight to hell.
Now that my excessive rambling is over (kinda...), it's hopefully apparent why a game like this is so concerning.
* Many characters (and bragging of more to come
) - So many potential explosions, so much consolidation required.
* Avoidable characters - The only way to avoid a character not even being in a scene from changing character interaction is if there never was any in the first place.
* Sandbox elements - BOOM! This alone causes a huge explosion. Now the order you do things in becomes part of the combinatorial threat. Each independent segment has to be entirely separate from ever mattering to each other. If they couldn't be their own separate games/stories, then you're going to either explode or have continuity issues everywhere.
* A focus on a good story - Each of the points above is managed by ripping out the aspects that make a good story. Character interaction and character development are critical to good stories and also the prime causes of combinatorial explosions. The order of events and being able to see how independent events combine together to something great is also very often a big part of a good story, but it's also a major threat that must be managed ruthlessly.
There's just no way to make all of this work together.
Edit: Ooooh boy. I knew it was bad, but... then I saw it after I hit post. Uh, sorry? Sort of?
