Yeah, I know~ But after getting all the Taiga Dojo things I couldnât really be bothered to continue, so I just beelined for the end. As I saidâŚ
(I could have sworn I wrote âand sets itâs self apartâ after âon itâs ownâ though @.@)
But yeah, most of the time Iâll just go for what the people around me consider the best route. Having to go through a bunch of sub-par routes before it is just a pain.
Ah, I see the difference between us. I am a completionist, you just want to read the best parts. If there are routes I donât think Iâm going to like, I read them first and save the best for last. So for me, those routes being important to the main story make them much more interesting, and for you, its a pain.
âŚHow did you skip to Heavenâs Feel? The route is literally locked until you complete the first two, and for good reason.
See, my notion of a good VN is one where there are no âsub-parâ routes, haha.
The PC version of Realta Nua released the routes separately so you can technically play them in any order, even though thats a really bad idea
Sorry for the late reply on this topic 
How so? Care to refresh my memory?
Well I didnât exactly mean a true end. Kanon has a true end (which is the Ayu route) and that doesnât need the other routes to have any bearing. When you have a âtrueâ end, that also implies that you can have âfalseâ ends.
The example I want to try to point out here is that there is a main story. Neither true end nor false end, but all routes are part of the main story⌠Or not, in the case of AIR >_<
But yeah letâs set things straight:
True end: a specific characterâs route which is supposedly the correct canonical ending.
Main story: a separate story from any specific characterâs route, which is also the correct canonical ending.
Both can have bearing on the main story. Ever17 doesnât have a main story, but the alternate routes have a bearing. (or it could be argues that Coco route is the main story⌠This is starting to get confusing hahaha)
They were all outcomes that Kagari had gone through in order to find as close to a happy ending as possible.
And yeah, this main route thing is getting confusing. If you mean a main story, like the whole girl in the sky thing from Air, then the other routes could be considered part of the story⌠Even in things like G-Senjou, the routes that completely drop the main plot can still be considered part of the main story.
But she did find that happy ending, and that kind of invalidates the other routes, doesnât it? Of course their value as standalone stories still have meaning, but on the main story, they donât
And I guess Iâm not the best person to talk about AIR as I havenât even played the VN >_< I am honestly not sure how the Air route works
Here are my thoughts.
The routes in a game do not need to contribute to a âmain storyâ in order to be good, I think. All of the routes usually share some theme.
Kanon: The central theme is miracles, promises, and wishes as power
AIR: All of the routes have to do with motherly love in different forms. Kanoâs older sister acts as her mother, Minagiâs arc centers around her mother, Yukito is sent on a quest because of his mother, Kannaâs arc is about her meeting her mother, and the AIR route is about Misuzu and her aunt Haruko. They donât form one narrative, but they are a collection of stories that explores a certain theme.
CLANNAD: This is sort of the same way. All of the arcs either focus on family, or community as family. Those are the central themes of the VN. The light orbs unify them in canon.
The anime sort of leaves out the parts about âcommunityâ but itâs there in the VN: how Nagisaâs health is tied to Akioâs special place, how the wishes of the town contribute to the light orbs for Tomoya, and special side arcs like Koumuraâs IIRC.
Little Busters!: The arcs donât have a central theme besides maybe friendship? But they are tied together by Refrain.
Rewrite I think is the weakest in this regard since thereâs no real connection besides "lol Kagari needed to see the routes happen to make Terra route happen, no central themes, and the tone is all over the place
TL;DR: I donât think the unity of canon of the story is quite as important as the exploration of the themes in the work as a whole
I would say not just the the community but even more the town that encompasses that community, which encompasses the families. At the beginning, Tomoya hates his family, which makes him hate the town. Through the story, he learns to love the community and about how special the town is, which makes him learn to love his family.
(Wasnât sure how much to put in spoiler since you put all yours in spoiler)
But yeah, totally agree, themes. However, consistent and even exceptional themes do not make up for bad routes, so yeah, Iâm sticking to:
In Clannad it actually didnât bother me at all. I consider Nagisa + After Story essentially separate from all others, even if there is a loose connection. And even accepting the connection, it does make the other arcs feel significant.
Little Busters did this really well. At least I thought so. The way completing the routes affected the common route was a stroke of genius, and made everything you did in previous arcs feel meaningful.
Now with Rewrite it actually did bother me. When the whole possibility tree thing is shown I felt like what I played was just one in uncountably many scenarios, that ultimately boil down to not much more than a failed experiment. At least in the grand scheme of things. Individually most of the routes were great, and Luciaâs is one of my absolute favorites (Ryukishi07 <3).
As a follow up to the Clannad thing, while not an individual route as such, in Tomoyo After after Tomoya passes, Tomoyo goes on to help people find the treasure of life. This is important because TA is in the Clannad universe. Once she grants enough wishes, she too will have gathered enough light orbs to unknowingly reset everything. I think thatâs a nice little connection.
My favorite heroine route. The ending was annoying, but the rest was perfect~
Holy crap I didnât even make that connection, but I love it. Makes me less annoyed that they changed the ending in the rereleases.
Yeah, I feel exactly the same way with Rewrite. Although I guess it has been established that those failed experiments, along with many others, were needed to find the true ending, it still doesnât give the other routes much⌠significance
The idea of multiple endings and a âtrue routeâ is a concept that only truly exists in games. Itâs based on the thought that the player deserves a reward for playing especially well and exploring the game more than he actually needed to in order technically âcompleteâ it by reaching an ending.
The same logic applies to the idea of âunlockingâ content by completing certain tasks and mastering challenges.
VNs are not the only games with multiple endings. Many other games also have them. For example, thereâs the âSuikodenâ RPG series. In that game, you can recruit OVER 100 CHARACTERS for your cause and freely choose party members from that pool. But in order to complete the game, you donât need all of them. If you just go straight down the storyline, youâll barely encounter even 40 of them. But the ending youâll receive depends on the number of recruited characters. The normal endings always feel a bit sad and you canât help but wish you could have do something about it. And indeed, if you manage to recruit all recruitable characters, youâll get the perfect ending.
Aside from the function of a task you need to complete in order to unlock the true route, side routes in VNs also have the purpose of expanding the universe of the game, giving more depth to characters and develop them individually. If a game only had one route, it would have to skip over certain characters and events, making them shallow and less significant. Key does an especially good job here because their strategy is based on getting the reader emotionally attached to the characters. Therefore, side routes are supposed to make the game better as a whole and make various preparations for the âtrueâ or âmainâ route.
To me, âgoodâ side routes are those that have either a canonical or emotional bearing on the final route and/or make you feel better about the game as a whole while the ânot so goodâ ones are just âmore stuff to readâ. This also means that I also like side routes that donât contribute to the plot of the main route if they are pleasant to read and especially if I didnât like the main route in the first place.
The ânot so goodâ side routes would be those of âG-Senjou no Maouâ where neither the side heroines nor their stories contribute much to the main route and their emotionial impact and plot is nowhere near the main routeâs one.
âGoodâ side stories would be those of Little Busters, because they make you grow attached to all its characters and the main story introduces a conflict that involves ALL of those characters.
A somewhat weird example of side routes I consider âgoodâ are those of Rewrite. Why? Because they do a wonderful job of introducing the characters and establish the setting in detail (and theyâre pleasant to read) while I dislike the main route, partially for not letting those characters play any meaningful roles in it.
Therefore Iâd say what matters most is whether the individual routes contribute positively to your overall experience of the game or not.
I agreed with you up until the examples~ ^^;
In G-Senjou I liked the side routes. Sure, they pretty much abandoned all connection with the main story, but that doesnât matter to me, because the side routes had their own stories that were great. Itâs nice to see how everything could end up, and at the end of the VN, I felt like the memories of the side routes came back to impact me during the final scenes.
As for Litbus I felt that the side routes were itâs downfall. Just stepping stones on the way to the ending. It didnât make me care for characters more than before I read the VN (it actually made me dislike most of them) and the heroines were tossed aside as an afterthought in Refrain. Refrain probably wouldnât have been as good without the side routes, but with the way it was done, the side routes actually made me think less of it overall.
Wow, lots of differing opinions here. Makes for a pretty interesting read!
I like how @naoki_saten views it as a game reward; VNs are games after all. But in games, isnât it kind of troublesome sometimes to go through sidequests to get the true ending?
I think we all agree though that if those sidequests are great stories, they are their own reward
If youâre going the extra trouble of playing sidequests, then youâre either a perfectionist who wonât consider the game completed until heâs seen all of it (or at least the true ending), or you enjoy the game so much you just want to keep playing it as long as there are new things to discover, so you normally wouldnât mind it. The trick to creating a good game, however, is to not let the player get the feeling âah, this is a sidequestâ in the first place. They, too, need to be enjoyable. If youâre only making them to stall for time, youâre doing it wrong.
Yes! I recently said something about this in the Planetarian discussion. That world is HUGE, but we only get to experience a fraction of it. Hoshi no Hito helps, but I think Planetarian could have actually been even better if there had been other routes exploring other Junkers, or villages, or the backstory of the war.
