this is actually one argument why some other devs prefer a kinetic novel type of story rather than one having branch decisions, as things can become unwieldy very fast for every significant branch that is made.
still though, for 100% picture completionists, finally having a back/undo button will probably make things more tolerable.
The problem is mostly down to word volume. People inexperienced in writing can be very surprised by how fast things can balloon when you start to add variation.
Let say that you have a 20.000 thousand words kinetic novel with no choice at all from start to finish. Which is around 1 hour of "reading" and I'd say pretty decent when it come to a completed VN
Let say now that you add illusory choice that do not impact the ending but momentarely change dialogue, let's say 20 of those. Good you just added at least 2.000 words up to 4.000 words.
22.000 to 24.000
Now imagine you add 1 major variation with a completely new ending mid way through? Well you'll be lucky to reuse much content above the 10.000 original mark, and you still have ten illusory variation to write too! So that add what? anywhere between 9.000 and 12.000?
31.000 to 36.000
But how you want to add another variation on both path for a good and bad ending at the middle point of the divergent paths now! So that way you got four ending! You can add just another 9.000 to 12.000 words!
40.000 up to 48.000 words
Now let's go absolutely mad and say you want to add another main branch with the same bad and good ending ? That's 18.000 to 24.000 more words!
You're game is now ranging from 58.000 up to 72.000 words !
If you're in the upper range?
Congratulation, you're 6k away from having written the equivalent of
Harry potter the philosopher stone.
And from start to finish on any one path you're game is STILL one hour long. You merely added hours of replayability.
This ballooning is in part WHY there's a LOT of dev that only update one or two path at once, especially as their game reach their middle to late stage.
Writing 2k words for one path per update, per month is decently easy for someone with no to little experience in addition to everything else. write 2k words for all 6 paths? That's
12k per update on TOP of everything else.
