- Oct 24, 2021
- 41
- 171
To chime in another opinion about release frequency and story path complexity... I never even considered the fact that several years of development can have a detrimental effect on not only the players patience to hang around/keep supporting the project, but also the developers patience with the project itself. I'm not a huge creative myself, being more into the technical side of things, but I can appreciate the fact that working on a single project for 3+ years can be very mentally taxing, creatively. (Even though both Gil and TD remain confident in their attitude towards satisfactorily finishing the project)
While I appreciate the varied path options within PC, from an MC choice perspective, I also understand that each branch adds complexity (and thus time) to the overall development process. I agree with the sentiment that the detailed control over the destiny of the MC is one of the aspects that makes PC so amazing as a VN. However, I also don't replay the entire game each time a new update drops, nor do I have a half-dozen different save files on different paths/choices. This is of course a personal opinion, but I don't tend to grade VNs on their replayability. This might be because most A-tier VNs haven't yet "finished", narratively. I tend to play my MCs with an singular sequential strategy, and not stray from that linear strategy until I reach the end of the story (at which point I might replay the entire game using a different strategy). This style of consuming content tends to keep my MC perspective more focused and organized in how I experience the narrative and character arcs, instead of having all the unique pathways forming a jumbled mess in my head. eg. was I fucking this chick in this save? or was that my other save? do I have a save for that? etc. You'd almost need a damn spreadsheet to keep it all straight, as a player.
Im sure that I will be called lazy for this, but sometimes it can be a bit demoralizing as a player to read posts by others, in which they outline all the different saves they maintain and how each was progressed following every update. Naturally, I don't fault these players for this type of play style, but I also believe that a player shouldn't feel penalized in their experience because they chose to focus on one character over another, and not constantly maintain several different playstyle arcs. Perhaps this is just the inherent nature of the VN medium though... I think my own experiential view on VNs is more comparable to the idea that they should be customizable movies, rather than explicit video games (with 5 different unique paths/endings). I dunno, maybe this is what people love so much about VNs over more traditional forms of media...
All that being said, if given the choice between 1) ultra complex branching pathways and granular control over every MC decision OR 2) 3+ releases per year with less MC decision points (but still containing that guaranteed quality that TD and Gil exemplify
)...I'm going to pick the higher release frequency, every time.
All thanks and credit to TD and Gil! Looking forward to Ch4Up2!
While I appreciate the varied path options within PC, from an MC choice perspective, I also understand that each branch adds complexity (and thus time) to the overall development process. I agree with the sentiment that the detailed control over the destiny of the MC is one of the aspects that makes PC so amazing as a VN. However, I also don't replay the entire game each time a new update drops, nor do I have a half-dozen different save files on different paths/choices. This is of course a personal opinion, but I don't tend to grade VNs on their replayability. This might be because most A-tier VNs haven't yet "finished", narratively. I tend to play my MCs with an singular sequential strategy, and not stray from that linear strategy until I reach the end of the story (at which point I might replay the entire game using a different strategy). This style of consuming content tends to keep my MC perspective more focused and organized in how I experience the narrative and character arcs, instead of having all the unique pathways forming a jumbled mess in my head. eg. was I fucking this chick in this save? or was that my other save? do I have a save for that? etc. You'd almost need a damn spreadsheet to keep it all straight, as a player.
Im sure that I will be called lazy for this, but sometimes it can be a bit demoralizing as a player to read posts by others, in which they outline all the different saves they maintain and how each was progressed following every update. Naturally, I don't fault these players for this type of play style, but I also believe that a player shouldn't feel penalized in their experience because they chose to focus on one character over another, and not constantly maintain several different playstyle arcs. Perhaps this is just the inherent nature of the VN medium though... I think my own experiential view on VNs is more comparable to the idea that they should be customizable movies, rather than explicit video games (with 5 different unique paths/endings). I dunno, maybe this is what people love so much about VNs over more traditional forms of media...
All that being said, if given the choice between 1) ultra complex branching pathways and granular control over every MC decision OR 2) 3+ releases per year with less MC decision points (but still containing that guaranteed quality that TD and Gil exemplify
)...I'm going to pick the higher release frequency, every time.All thanks and credit to TD and Gil! Looking forward to Ch4Up2!
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