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

Key Discussion
#21

Here are my thoughts.

The routes in a game do not need to contribute to a “main story” 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. Kano’s older sister acts as her mother, Minagi’s arc centers around her mother, Yukito is sent on a quest because of his mother, Kanna’s arc is about her meeting her mother, and the AIR route is about Misuzu and her aunt Haruko. They don’t 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 “community” but it’s there in the VN: how Nagisa’s health is tied to Akio’s special place, how the wishes of the town contribute to the light orbs for Tomoya, and special side arcs like Koumura’s IIRC.

Little Busters!: The arcs don’t have a central theme besides maybe friendship? But they are tied together by Refrain.

Rewrite I think is the weakest in this regard since there’s 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 don’t think the unity of canon of the story is quite as important as the exploration of the themes in the work as a whole

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General Visual Novel Topic
#22

Thank you. You put into words what I could not. lol

General Visual Novel Topic
#23

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.

(Wasn’t 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, I’m sticking to:

#24

In Clannad it actually didn’t 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 Lucia’s is one of my absolute favorites (Ryukishi07 <3).

#25

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 that’s a nice little connection.

My favorite heroine route. The ending was annoying, but the rest was perfect~

#26

Holy crap I didn’t even make that connection, but I love it. Makes me less annoyed that they changed the ending in the rereleases.

#27

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 doesn’t give the other routes much… significance

#28

The idea of multiple endings and a ‘true route’ is a concept that only truly exists in games. It’s 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 “complete” it by reaching an ending.
The same logic applies to the idea of “unlocking” 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, there’s the “Suikoden” 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 don’t need all of them. If you just go straight down the storyline, you’ll barely encounter even 40 of them. But the ending you’ll receive depends on the number of recruited characters. The normal endings always feel a bit sad and you can’t help but wish you could have do something about it. And indeed, if you manage to recruit all recruitable characters, you’ll 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 “true” or “main” route.

To me, “good” 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 “not so good” ones are just “more stuff to read”. This also means that I also like side routes that don’t contribute to the plot of the main route if they are pleasant to read and especially if I didn’t like the main route in the first place.
The “not so good” side routes would be those of “G-Senjou no Maou” 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 route’s one.
“Good” 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 “good” are those of Rewrite. Why? Because they do a wonderful job of introducing the characters and establish the setting in detail (and they’re pleasant to read) while I dislike the main route, partially for not letting those characters play any meaningful roles in it.

Therefore I’d say what matters most is whether the individual routes contribute positively to your overall experience of the game or not.

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#29

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 doesn’t matter to me, because the side routes had their own stories that were great. It’s 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 it’s downfall. Just stepping stones on the way to the ending. It didn’t 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 wouldn’t 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.

#30

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, isn’t 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

#31

If you’re going the extra trouble of playing sidequests, then you’re either a perfectionist who won’t consider the game completed until he’s 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 wouldn’t mind it. The trick to creating a good game, however, is to not let the player get the feeling “ah, this is a sidequest” in the first place. They, too, need to be enjoyable. If you’re only making them to stall for time, you’re doing it wrong.

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#32

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.

#33

I’d like to bring G-Senjou No Maou to the stand.

Looking at the main route and side stories, you really aren’t needed to read them for the main story. Tsubaki’s route literally ditches the main plot at the end, Kanon’s actually has some relevance to the main story but in the end ditches it, and don’t get me started on Mizuha.

But, it all depends on the reader himself. If you didn’t like the Chapter and how it focused on that one character, don’t read her route. If you did, read it. It’s simple.

Regarding Little Busters!, the anime showed us how much the routes mean to Riki and Rin and how it strengthens them to fight back and save their friends. That is one way of having the routes bear significant importance to the plot.

Rewrite not so much since the world ends in practically half of them.

I’m not sure what my point is now.

#34

Or they force you to play side-quests in order to unlock the main quest :stuck_out_tongue:

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#35

I got some theories about little busters individual routes having a lot to do with the main story, plz tell me if i´m being too crazy with it…
**komari’s route:riki had to learn about death and how hard could it be to deal with it.
**haruka’s route: riki had to learn about isolation and how hard could society be.
**mio’s route: he had to learn about the cold society can be in regards to oue dreams, creativity and imagination and how hard could it be to deny our own desires and dreams ( I think it is a very deep route so I’d have to work more on this part of the theory):
kurugaya: riki had to face the cruelty arround love and how our dreams not always come true(got to work all bit on this too)
**kud: riki had to learn how awful and vicious may society be when it comes to political issues
**rin’s route: riki had to learn to face people (even his loved ones) in order to achieve his own goals and stay true to himself…

so that is all about it, I know this is an old thread but I found it triying to spend my idle time and I really feel like I had to share my theory :slight_smile:

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#36

Just think about Air’s anime adaption :open_mouth: would have been so much better without those irrelevant routes and characters being adapted into it.

For Air, I think the individual routes don’t help much, since they don’t even appear much, other than in their own routes.

For Kanon, I think the individual routes actually helped the story. Each route made him remember his time in the town 7 years ago, unlocking his memories, which ultimately lead and build up towards the true end.

For CLANNAD, each route was very Family-Themed, okay, at least over 98% of them, plus, you needed the Light orbs in each route from the happy ending to unlock the true ending. The character routes itself was not as relevant to After Story, but shared the message, also helping to actually unlock the true end.

For Little Busters, I think the character routes were beneficial to the main story, but didn’t exactly carry the theme of “friendship” that was supposed to be shown in this VN. The routes weren’t beneficial to the true route/true ending though. It’s like saying Refrain doesn’t involve those routes being beneficial to the story, but Refrain can’t be unlocked without completing the heroine’s routes and fulfilling the regrets that they have, since the main purpose of the artificial world (for the individual heroines), was to fulfill the regrets they had. I guess you can say that Refrain caused the character routes to happen, instead of the character routes helping Refrain. There are messages in each route that help the true end, but you can say the same thing about Rewrite.

For Angel Beats!, it was honestly the only Key-creation where the routes are actually beneficial to the story. The routes actually help with the things and events that happen in Angel Beats. The events that happen in Angel Beats causes the routes to be beneficial and having a bearing on the story. I guess that going into 18-21 back stories is really lame though, when most of us don’t even care for all the characters. With Angel Beats, the individual stories and backgrounds help the main story, and helps the ending to a certain extent. I guess you can say that the ending could still happen even if the individual routes weren’t there, but you could argue that they needed to be there if the characters were there, not to mention Yuzuru’s idea of what he needs to do. Which was to Obliterate everyone, so they wouldn’t be turned into NPC’s, and also so they could finally accept their brutal lives that they lived when they were alive

For Rewrite, I guess you can say that those certain routes helped the true route. I won’t say anything much about Rewrite, since my opinion on it is really biased, since I do love Rewrite.

For CLANNAD and LB, I guess you can say LB and CLANNAD is quite different. After Story and Refrain is basically the main purpose to the routes before those events. But the only difference is that in After Story You cannot unlock it without having the light orbs from each routes happy ending. The light orbs makes the route relevant. but with Refrain, there’s really nothing but foreshadowing, so the individual routes don’t exactly have the same importance as CLANNAD. In individual routes in LB build up for Refrain, yet can be taken out, and the story wouldn’t be much different. Riki would probably be the only different thing/person that changes… The individual routes in CLANNAD don’t build up to After Story, but can’t be taken out if you want to unlock the true ending.

#37

I don’t really think individual routes having substantial bearing on the “main story” is really all that significant provided the route itself is actually good.

Most of the routes in CLANNAD are completely irrelevant to the main story (that is, Nagisa route + After Story). You could just reduce the number of light orbs needed for After Story, delete most of the school arc routes, and lose no narrative value in Nagisa’s route. The only routes in CLANNAD that actually contribute to the main narrative are really Kotomi’s (explains the parallel worlds) and Misae’s (explains and demonstrates that the light orbs really do grant wishes), and the rest are just kind of fluff. It’s good fluff for the most part, but fluff nonetheless. The routes are all united by common themes, but that doesn’t make them relevant to the main story.

This is slightly less true for Little Busters because of all the common route alterations that happen as you progress, but the overall narrative of Rin’s routes + Refrain wouldn’t really be all that negatively impacted by the simple deletion of most of other routes. Of course, there IS the fact that you need a certain number of people for a baseball team, so the common route wouldn’t really be a thing if there were less characters.

In short: I don’t think it’s significant that each individual route contributes to the larger narrative. If the routes themselves are good, they add awesome touches where there would be none (see: CLANNAD having one of the most well developed casts of side characters of just about everything ever).

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#38

I mean, the ‘main story’ of both CLANNAD and LB pretty much don’t exist without the other routes; Im not sure how you could even argue otherwise.

As I’ve read more VNs, I’ve found that I really tend to enjoy the medium more when the routes that in some way culminate in some ‘main story’ or ‘true end.’ Its a really brilliant way to use the unique mechanics of the medium. I don’t know, maybe I was just spoiled by the way Little Busters! used it perfectly.

[quote=“Totoro_Futaki, post:36, topic:423”]
I guess that going into 18-21 back stories is really lame though, when most of us don’t even care for all the characters
[/quote]Still cant figure out why people would say this. Many people, in fact, are extremely interested in all of them. I dont think its lame or boring at all. Speak for yourself.

Also @ThePlasticSpork be careful, try to use highest discretion when treading into spoiler territory.

#39

After Story and Refrain could exist without the individual routes though. The only difference is that the endings would be different, and the plot would differ not that much, but slightly.

Now about Angel Beats, it’s not that people aren’t interested. Everyone’s interested in the back stories, but it seems like overkill wasting much time on all of those members. Think about Angel Beats!'s plot itself. Going into all those routes is beneficial to the story, but also seems pointless at the same time. I actually think their routes and back stories would be the most interesting out of any Key VN/anime. But over 18 routes ? That’s not exactly delightful.

Angel Beats! - General Discussion
#40

If it would have to change without them, that makes them significant lol