Individual routes having bearing on main story: significant or not?

[Pepe]

Sorry for the late reply on this topic

You’re focusing too much on Kotarou there.

How so? Care to refresh my memory?

By main story, I think Pepe meant something like a “true end.” Lots of VNs have a true route, and then a bunch of other routes. G-Senjou, Steins;Gate, Ever17, and Kara no Shoujo are popular examples~

Well I didn’t exactly mean a true end. Kanon has a true end (which is the Ayu route) and that doesn’t need the other routes to have any bearing. When you have a “true” end, that also implies that you can have “false” 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 let’s set things straight:
True end: a specific character’s route which is supposedly the correct canonical ending.
Main story: a separate story from any specific character’s route, which is also the correct canonical ending.

Both can have bearing on the main story. Ever17 doesn’t 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)