if you die in dream daddy the game will give you an achievement and send you back to the choice you made that caused you to die. It's also quite hard to make this choice by accident, the game throws hints at you few times (with the characters advising you against it and it's very neatly done). I find it as the most neat solution ever
The zero escape series (or at least, the last two games of the trilogy) has a flow-chart each mapping out the different branch paths of the story. I think this would solve (or at least help) many of the problems you mentioned in this video. (and if spoilers are a worry, you could always make it so that the flow-chart gets revealed and filled out as you go through the story.)
Yes, the Zero Escape games does this so well. In general, the games made by Spike Chunsoft does a lot of things right when talking about choices, either by making bad ends quick, or by giving flow charts that help you find the places where you made an mistake.
Raging loop did a good job of not only dealing with Bad Ends, but integrating them into the core of the story (time looping that resets on death but memories are preserved). Coupled with clearly showing you where a choice you need to check again having gotten a key from a death makes so that the act of playing a doomed run through to the end a core part of the larger story, not just an annoying set back where you need to load a save.
I have a few disagreements on the topic of decisions and "dead ends". And it seems it all stems from our very different views on what the purpose of a visual novel is. Of course I'm certainly not an expert on visual novels with my experience being limited to Katawa Shoujo, DDLC and Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius (which is actually a hybrid). But I know what I expect from one. I have played other decision-making games though, most Telltale titles, Detroit: Become Human, Life is Strange, and so on. When I play any decision-making game, I want to live a journey, this journey will have an end, good or bad, and my decisions might or might not have the power to decide it, but that's not too important for me. As long as I enjoyed the journey I will accept the ending I got. I also have never 100% any game. After I got my ending, I might fiddle around with it a bit out of curiosity, try a few paths that catch my attention for a particular reason but that's it. I love there being choices and paths, because they give me the feeling that I earned whatever journey I got, but, as in life, I don't need to see absolutely every single possibility. Some of your complaints seem aimed at making it easier to course correct and better get that 100%. My take on this is: I hate decisions like the first example with the "crab monster" fight, so I agree with you there. Those I call coin toss decisions. "Choose your own adventure" books are guilty of this crime. Decisions that give absolutely no input and rely on luck to decide if you keep playing or the game abruptly ends are terrible. If there absolutely must be a decision that results in instant death for some reason, at the very least I expect a good description of the situation so I can make an educated guess with a very reasonable chance of success. Death should be the end of the journey, because realoding breaks the immersion. So the only "bad endings" that I consider bad design are those that happen too early or too randomly. But on the other example you give, "the arbitrary puzzle", I have some disagreements. I agree that the puzzle itself is badly designed, for the same reason stated above, being too random. I agree with your suggestion to fix it, I feel that your approach is a million times more interesting. But I disagree on your take on the impact of failure. I am totally ok with a failed decision hurting me much later on, as long as it makes sense why it did. In life, the consequences of your actions aren't always instantaneous. This reminds me of the recently released Doki Doki Blue Skies mod, which is very good by the way. In one of the paths you can mess up, and the game will continue for a good while afterwards, and it makes sense why this is. However it was very clever that along the way you get a choice that can allow you to course correct. Which I found amazing. Sometimes in VNs it feels like decisions are unnaturally set in stone. Life doesn't work that way. In life you can think things through, get a revelation, or simply change your mind. There's a lot of nuance other than making harder to fail, or making it easier to reaload and change course. I think it comes down to me being more the "get sucked into a story" guy, and you being the more "meta" kind of guy. EDIT: Editted out a line because I rushed my post as I sometimes do and the concern was clarified near the end.
About automatically reloading to the previous choice after a bad end, Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc does something like this. While there is technically no end screen, you get to see how the wrong choice plays out, then are transported back to the moment you make the choice.
I quite enjoy the DDLC music running throughout your trilogy of videos. I also respect the thoroughness put into the first two videos. Look forward to watching the third...
This is kinda related to the Recursive Search Backwards (used in my VN, which is in development) from the last video, but when dealing with ending-changing choices, I highlight the question in yellow to indicate an important choice. The RSB also serves as an autoload. Non-important choices often add optional/alternate dialogue, but nothing else. This, combined with the RSB, makes the game playable with just one file. When reaching an ending that relies on multiple choices made before, the game will perform a RSB and then call isolated versions of the choices to influence the ending, before putting you on track.
Not a visual novel, but I actually really liked how the game misao handled having a lot of dead ends. Didn't hold anyone up too much, just start back in the start of the room,. It's short and sweet,
Just getting rid of bad endings makes players choices meaningless. Interaction has to be meaningful and the game has to have stakes, even if those stakes are as simple as winning or losing. Yes, games like Mass Effect use meaningless choices all the time, and everyone got pissed when they learned that 3 games worth of choices amounted to a color change. How bad endings are done have many ways to be improved, but bad endings are not "bad".
Nah. Dead ends should only be used extremely sparingly. You can track stats like health. And instead of giving bad ends you just subtract some health. That way its still an important choice without being overtly annoying af
One question is how to deal with cumulative choices - like, if you have to have 5 affection points with a character to get their “good” ending, and it was a series of bad choices that led to the bad ending rather than a single choice.
The Tiger Dojo option I think there was something similar in Shadow of Destiny, when you die you would talk to homonculus and they would help you see where you messed up
I totally agree that each dead ends could be different and that would make the game a better experience than showing the exact same screen like 120 times. I also agree that not having dead ends could be a good choice, but I think that the rest of the video was just about ways to justify why the player went wrong instead of accepting the fact that you went wrong. That's like taking an exam and then giving the answers to those who failed, there is no point in doing it if you while make things easy for everyone at the end. If you reward those who failed and those who approved then how much value the reward actually had?
I feel like the visual novel "428: Shibuya Scramble" does dead ends pretty well. For one, each dead end is unique, and can offer humor or sometimes foreshadowing, or other unique scenes. Second, the game gives you a small hint afterward on what you should do to avoid the bad end. Plus, the game gives you the ability to easily revisit scenes you've already read to redo certain choices. However, it can sometimes be a bit frustrating to avoid a dead end, especially if doing so requires multiple choices, and the hints can sometimes be a bit vague.
Great video but in my opinion I think that figuring out what you choose wrongly between the options and even sometimes getting random bad endings of pointlessly choices are part of the fun :P In the small amount of 'gameplay' that we have in visual novels, things like that do not take my immersion, they just make me feel even more motivated to find out what I did wrong! Even getting bad endings! I sincerely love them and hate the false illusion of freedom that games like Telltales games gives. (Just smack that bad ending in my face and we are good, don't fool me into thinking that I actually have influence in the story while I don't in reality) I am against hand holding players too much because then more experienced players will be bored or feel like the novel is treating them as kids... Using the skip option is not that bad and you can and should always save before every choice~ (And be organized about your saves, damn!)
Is there some people on earth that would read until any type of ending they get and just stops there ? It's "the end" no matter what after all ! I'm just having fun picturing someone quitting the game after the first game over because they dodge left against the Giant Crab monster huhu
@@Ashadow700 Thanks! I quickly went through the songs in the song list in the end but didn't realize that particular part starts midway through the song!
5:31 As you said yourself in the previous video you aren't a game programmer and it really shows here. By"simply" you say - you have no idea it seems, how absolutely not simple it is 5:53 Now, I 'm sorry, but do you seriously not realize how stupid it is? Obviously you haven't heard of any devs who'd do that - It is part of the VN as a game to let a player figure out where did they mess up 7:58 Talked about it in the previous video's comment - those are meaningless choices and it is extremely frustrating to make a choice and then realize that it didn't matter 8:45 mass effect doesn't count since it's great with actually making different endings and have choices that affect the story, while games from TellTale are quite actually shit, presicely because those do not matter in their games in the least - in other words meaningless fake choices 9:00 Look at this another way - imagine you solved the puzzle incorrectly and then read 3 hours untill reaching a bad end - that's a 3 hour bad end for you - can you possibly imagine how people would react to THAT? There are also plenty of VNs that have a tag "bad endings with story" that have a large portion dedicated to a bad end (Steins;Gate, Chaos;Child, for two big ones)
SergeyKazak Wasn’t everybody pissed off at Mass Effect 3 because there were only three endings made from a decision right at the very end and one of the only significant differences was the color palette? Lol You can criticize Telltale games, but don’t act like Mass Effect didn’t do a similar thing. XD
I agree with your first 3 points, but Mass Effect 3s endings are not great at allllll, although the games do a great job making your choices matter before that point. And having bad ends with unique story portions is a great idea. People would react well to it because it would be extra content, and they stand on their own as endings just like the 2 games you mentioned.
![[FF14mod] [DRK] Oath of Wolf Blood](/img/n.gif)
if you die in dream daddy the game will give you an achievement and send you back to the choice you made that caused you to die. It's also quite hard to make this choice by accident, the game throws hints at you few times (with the characters advising you against it and it's very neatly done). I find it as the most neat solution ever
Had no idea you could die in that game lol I’ve only ever seen people talk about it so I’ve never played
The zero escape series (or at least, the last two games of the trilogy) has a flow-chart each mapping out the different branch paths of the story. I think this would solve (or at least help) many of the problems you mentioned in this video. (and if spoilers are a worry, you could always make it so that the flow-chart gets revealed and filled out as you go through the story.)
Yes, the Zero Escape games does this so well. In general, the games made by Spike Chunsoft does a lot of things right when talking about choices, either by making bad ends quick, or by giving flow charts that help you find the places where you made an mistake.
Late comment but I've been thinking about this since the start of these reviews, surprising it didn't come up as an example!
Raging loop did a good job of not only dealing with Bad Ends, but integrating them into the core of the story (time looping that resets on death but memories are preserved). Coupled with clearly showing you where a choice you need to check again having gotten a key from a death makes so that the act of playing a doomed run through to the end a core part of the larger story, not just an annoying set back where you need to load a save.
I can literally apply everything said in this to why ddlc and cinderella phenomenon is so good
I have a few disagreements on the topic of decisions and "dead ends". And it seems it all stems from our very different views on what the purpose of a visual novel is. Of course I'm certainly not an expert on visual novels with my experience being limited to Katawa Shoujo, DDLC and Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius (which is actually a hybrid). But I know what I expect from one. I have played other decision-making games though, most Telltale titles, Detroit: Become Human, Life is Strange, and so on.
When I play any decision-making game, I want to live a journey, this journey will have an end, good or bad, and my decisions might or might not have the power to decide it, but that's not too important for me. As long as I enjoyed the journey I will accept the ending I got.
I also have never 100% any game. After I got my ending, I might fiddle around with it a bit out of curiosity, try a few paths that catch my attention for a particular reason but that's it. I love there being choices and paths, because they give me the feeling that I earned whatever journey I got, but, as in life, I don't need to see absolutely every single possibility. Some of your complaints seem aimed at making it easier to course correct and better get that 100%.
My take on this is: I hate decisions like the first example with the "crab monster" fight, so I agree with you there. Those I call coin toss decisions. "Choose your own adventure" books are guilty of this crime. Decisions that give absolutely no input and rely on luck to decide if you keep playing or the game abruptly ends are terrible.
If there absolutely must be a decision that results in instant death for some reason, at the very least I expect a good description of the situation so I can make an educated guess with a very reasonable chance of success. Death should be the end of the journey, because realoding breaks the immersion. So the only "bad endings" that I consider bad design are those that happen too early or too randomly.
But on the other example you give, "the arbitrary puzzle", I have some disagreements. I agree that the puzzle itself is badly designed, for the same reason stated above, being too random. I agree with your suggestion to fix it, I feel that your approach is a million times more interesting. But I disagree on your take on the impact of failure.
I am totally ok with a failed decision hurting me much later on, as long as it makes sense why it did. In life, the consequences of your actions aren't always instantaneous. This reminds me of the recently released Doki Doki Blue Skies mod, which is very good by the way. In one of the paths you can mess up, and the game will continue for a good while afterwards, and it makes sense why this is. However it was very clever that along the way you get a choice that can allow you to course correct. Which I found amazing. Sometimes in VNs it feels like decisions are unnaturally set in stone. Life doesn't work that way. In life you can think things through, get a revelation, or simply change your mind. There's a lot of nuance other than making harder to fail, or making it easier to reaload and change course.
I think it comes down to me being more the "get sucked into a story" guy, and you being the more "meta" kind of guy.
EDIT: Editted out a line because I rushed my post as I sometimes do and the concern was clarified near the end.
About automatically reloading to the previous choice after a bad end, Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc does something like this. While there is technically no end screen, you get to see how the wrong choice plays out, then are transported back to the moment you make the choice.
I quite enjoy the DDLC music running throughout your trilogy of videos. I also respect the thoroughness put into the first two videos. Look forward to watching the third...
I don't know any VN who did the branch choice but Detroit became human did it.
If the story is actually good, redoing stuff I already did before shouldn't be a problem at all.
I should also add a feature to only allow skip, only if you've already played a section.
I flipped a bloody switch when i heard ddlc thats how much i was obsessed and still love that game
6:40
Also Ciel-senpai lessons from Tsukihime.
really well-made series of videos. very informative
Man this guys really loves katawa shoujo XD
This is kinda related to the Recursive Search Backwards (used in my VN, which is in development) from the last video, but when dealing with ending-changing choices, I highlight the question in yellow to indicate an important choice. The RSB also serves as an autoload. Non-important choices often add optional/alternate dialogue, but nothing else. This, combined with the RSB, makes the game playable with just one file. When reaching an ending that relies on multiple choices made before, the game will perform a RSB and then call isolated versions of the choices to influence the ending, before putting you on track.
Not a visual novel, but I actually really liked how the game misao handled having a lot of dead ends.
Didn't hold anyone up too much, just start back in the start of the room,.
It's short and sweet,
Just getting rid of bad endings makes players choices meaningless. Interaction has to be meaningful and the game has to have stakes, even if those stakes are as simple as winning or losing. Yes, games like Mass Effect use meaningless choices all the time, and everyone got pissed when they learned that 3 games worth of choices amounted to a color change. How bad endings are done have many ways to be improved, but bad endings are not "bad".
Why do they have to necessarily have to be bad ends.
Nah. Dead ends should only be used extremely sparingly.
You can track stats like health. And instead of giving bad ends you just subtract some health. That way its still an important choice without being overtly annoying af
One question is how to deal with cumulative choices - like, if you have to have 5 affection points with a character to get their “good” ending, and it was a series of bad choices that led to the bad ending rather than a single choice.
I enjoy dead ends and believe they are an integral part of the game. That's like complaining about dieing in Dark Souls.
What makes you enjoy dead ends?
I playing a VN, i want to fap not die
Where can I get that awesome crab monster game?? :)
It's Rewrite and it is really awesome
The Tiger Dojo option I think there was something similar in Shadow of Destiny, when you die you would talk to homonculus and they would help you see where you messed up
2:09 lmao I was just reading ataraxia and just saw that cg
Rip =)
I totally agree that each dead ends could be different and that would make the game a better experience than showing the exact same screen like 120 times. I also agree that not having dead ends could be a good choice, but I think that the rest of the video was just about ways to justify why the player went wrong instead of accepting the fact that you went wrong. That's like taking an exam and then giving the answers to those who failed, there is no point in doing it if you while make things easy for everyone at the end. If you reward those who failed and those who approved then how much value the reward actually had?
2:54 *Doki Doki PTSD intensifies*
I feel like the visual novel "428: Shibuya Scramble" does dead ends pretty well. For one, each dead end is unique, and can offer humor or sometimes foreshadowing, or other unique scenes. Second, the game gives you a small hint afterward on what you should do to avoid the bad end. Plus, the game gives you the ability to easily revisit scenes you've already read to redo certain choices. However, it can sometimes be a bit frustrating to avoid a dead end, especially if doing so requires multiple choices, and the hints can sometimes be a bit vague.
Orginal fate had awesome bad ends from what I remember. I wanted to unlock all of them, with the post end scene with Taiga and Ilya.
6:09, Hi, im part of the game dev team called "team gravity". i am the lead programmer of weeb hackers. and i will for sure use that feature!
Cool. Happy to hear my ramblings were of some help. Good luck with your VN ^_^
Sacred pastries =D
VN Dev : HAHAHAHA TIME TO ADD 50 RANDOM DEAD END TO MY VISUAL NOVEL HAHAHAHAAH ! LOLLLLLOLLL !!!!
Great video but in my opinion I think that figuring out what you choose wrongly between the options and even sometimes getting random bad endings of pointlessly choices are part of the fun :P In the small amount of 'gameplay' that we have in visual novels, things like that do not take my immersion, they just make me feel even more motivated to find out what I did wrong! Even getting bad endings! I sincerely love them and hate the false illusion of freedom that games like Telltales games gives. (Just smack that bad ending in my face and we are good, don't fool me into thinking that I actually have influence in the story while I don't in reality)
I am against hand holding players too much because then more experienced players will be bored or feel like the novel is treating them as kids... Using the skip option is not that bad and you can and should always save before every choice~ (And be organized about your saves, damn!)
Is there some people on earth that would read until any type of ending they get and just stops there ? It's "the end" no matter what after all !
I'm just having fun picturing someone quitting the game after the first game over because they dodge left against the Giant Crab monster huhu
Visual novel from 10:15?( Not Katawa Shoujo)
That was G-Senjou no Maou =)
@@Ashadow700 i love you bro
What's the song that starts at 2:22?
That's "Waking up in the morning" from Little Busters =)
@@Ashadow700 Thanks! I quickly went through the songs in the song list in the end but didn't realize that particular part starts midway through the song!
@@kikojiko9488 No problem! ^_^
I don't like dead ends in VNs at all.
Every dead end should be a proper ending.
Oh my
Do you think that a narrator could be wheelchair bound and the story would still be readable and make sense?
I don't see why not. Is there any specific reason why you think it would not work?
Ashadow Reviews I was thinking maybe it wouldn’t work because he would be in a sitting position vs a standing position
@@octosimp1717 I would not worry about that. I'm sure your story will still work out just as well either way =)
5:31 As you said yourself in the previous video you aren't a game programmer and it really shows here. By"simply" you say - you have no idea it seems, how absolutely not simple it is
5:53 Now, I 'm sorry, but do you seriously not realize how stupid it is? Obviously you haven't heard of any devs who'd do that - It is part of the VN as a game to let a player figure out where did they mess up
7:58 Talked about it in the previous video's comment - those are meaningless choices and it is extremely frustrating to make a choice and then realize that it didn't matter
8:45 mass effect doesn't count since it's great with actually making different endings and have choices that affect the story, while games from TellTale are quite actually shit, presicely because those do not matter in their games in the least - in other words meaningless fake choices
9:00 Look at this another way - imagine you solved the puzzle incorrectly and then read 3 hours untill reaching a bad end - that's a 3 hour bad end for you - can you possibly imagine how people would react to THAT? There are also plenty of VNs that have a tag "bad endings with story" that have a large portion dedicated to a bad end (Steins;Gate, Chaos;Child, for two big ones)
SergeyKazak Wasn’t everybody pissed off at Mass Effect 3 because there were only three endings made from a decision right at the very end and one of the only significant differences was the color palette? Lol You can criticize Telltale games, but don’t act like Mass Effect didn’t do a similar thing. XD
I agree with your first 3 points, but Mass Effect 3s endings are not great at allllll, although the games do a great job making your choices matter before that point. And having bad ends with unique story portions is a great idea. People would react well to it because it would be extra content, and they stand on their own as endings just like the 2 games you mentioned.