Yeah, that’s one of the things that really bother me about the CoG Style.
The other being that they are supposed to make choices as morally grey-tone ‘none is more Good or Evil than the others’ (I can’t remember the exact wording for it). It has led me to drop newer CoG’s within the first few choices on so many occasions, from pure choice paralysis, because my poor autistic mind get stuck trying to figure out what is the ‘right’ choice.
I also just like the choices to not be equal. I like being able to roleplay my character as the Moral Martyr with a Saviour Complex, when I want to, or intentionally have them make bad choices, because it fits their fatal flaws…
While I understand the idea behind it, that it’s supposed to add replay value and more viable gameplay styles, it usually ends up making the games blander for me, if not actually unplayable.
Which is probably a big part of why I’ve been buying fewer and fewer CoG games over the last few years.
I don’t think the guidance as I recall it is “none more Good/Evil” – if there’s a trend toward moral greyness, it’s probably more a widespread literary preference by authors rather than any CoG guidance. I’ve certainly never had a steer to make the choices I write morally neutral. (Which is good, because as we speak, I’m writing the option to brutally murder a refugee.)
The guidance as I understand it is more about not having an obviously inferior or blah choice in a block. So for example,
You spend the afternoon:
*choice
#Learning swordplay.
#Learning new magic spells.
#Watching paint dry.
That’s why I said a question mark, not a hard no. If the author has an actual skill-free path in mind, in my experience, CoG will let them run with it. But if it turns out the author just couldn’t think of a third option, the editor will probably make some suggestions for alternatives.
Turns out later in the story learning swordplay gets you lynched by the local mob, since swordplay is the domain of the currently unpopular nobility. And learning magic gets you the attention of daemonic entities since magic is what they feed on
I have had something like this come up before, like:
You decide to hang out with:
*choice
#Omar.
#Libby.
#Reece.
#I don't want to hang out with anyone right now.
In my case the fourth option didn’t have much of interest in it so my editor said something like “can this include something more sparky for the player than just not bothering to do anything” (I paraphrase: she was more polite than that!) so I expanded that option a little so it didn’t feel like “here is some interesting stuff to do, and here is an afterthought option” and more “here are some social things to do and a less social thing that’s still interesting”.
Yeah, I’m not currently writing very violent stuff but no one batted an eye at all the murder options in Blood Money.
This is interesting to me: it feels like the flipside of the complaint of “my choices didn’t matter / when I replayed it felt too samey” which gets seen a lot. Is it that you don’t mind engaging with the same plots on replaying, or that you prefer smaller branches where you can deal with the same story beats in different ways? There is always a balance to be had - I like a sense of being able to go “yeah I’m going to focus on this storyline/character this time round and get more into a different route next time” and when I write my games I tend to write for replayability and variation, which will include mutually exclusive stuff. One of my favourite examples of this is A Study in Steampunk, which very explicitly branches towards the end into very different stories and you can’t engage with everything on one playthrough.
I would be really interested in examples of when you’ve enjoyed a more linear plotline, if you were happy to share.
So to give the direct example of what I had in mind, I played through Werewolves finally. Adored them by and large, with one of the only negatives being it left me wanting in real life as I can’t be a twelve foot tall monster. But, particularly in book two, there was like a dozen things going on at any given time. You had the elders and the history of the packs, you had the pro-wolf humans arc, you had whatever the fuck Maker was doing in the background, you had the mainline fight with the military and also the human supremacists (who each had subfactions within), you had whatever was making the ferals and how that tied into everything else, you had the wolf military, and I think I’m missing some stuff. It was so overwhelming and I couldn’t focus in on anything beyond hanging with my girlfriend (which directly came at the cost of helping Tiva with her withdrawal and grief as well as any of the subplots). I felt extremely unsatisfied when I finished because it felt like I learned almost nothing about all of it. Usually there’s a management thing going on as well in CoG stories, like keeping a business running or something, as a subplot I remember seeing a bunch. It just gets a lot to me.
Perhaps Werewolves is an extreme example, but in any case I don’t enjoy replaying IFs for different paths as I find it hard to focus. Like, I’ll fall into skimming really badly and will inevitably miss a ton of what’s different, making it so not worth it for me. If I replay and it’s different, it’s because I’m playing like months or years later (so I’ll be properly reading it, mostly) and by happenstance make different choices as I’m a different person ('cause I self insert so my choices are my choices), though that goes for traditional video games as well. I just enjoy being able to see all of the game, shy of plot choices changing what happens, in one go, personally, and the very locked out way it primarily ends up in CoG prevents that. I get it promotes replayability which some like, but as I said it’s not for me.
I think, at least the first one (haven’t done the sequel quite yet beyond the WIP demo but I know it’s way more complicated), Fallen Hero is good and quite linear to my understanding. I think The Passenger also fits that, though haven’t played all of the fully released version yet. There’s also different WIPs, like I’d say The Exile as one. Hell, even Forgotten One, as a released game, has a linear story that just happens to have a bunch of variation. It’s not like you’re missing different subplots because you focused on something else; if you missed stuff it was because your main plot went somewhere else for one reason or another, and that I’m totally fine with.
I think the crux of it is that I prefer my IFs to be more of a very interactive book than something mimicking a game. Not to say that’s bad at all, of course, there’s gamey ones I like, but in those you often miss out on shit because much of it is exclusive and requires you to focus on it and nothing else, and that’s not my preference with how I play games.
As I’m reading it currently, I so far think Keepers of Sun and Moon clearly has some subplots going on but, despite not knowing at all why, I got locked into one and I’m clearly focused on on that, so I’m not really worried about the other stuff. So I think that’s perhaps a good example of the idea done in a way I’m good with. I’m clearly doing this one and that’s it, not having to constantly pick between different ones at every interlude and worrying I’m not picking one enough to actually get anywhere.
That makes a lot of sense - thank you for expanding on it! I have been turning over a particular part of a chapter I’m working on in which the PC needs to choose which character they want to help with a problem (which I think is probably OK because it’s a bit of a self-selection of “which of these characters are you more interested in”…but I still have some mulling over to do on it), so this sort of thing is on my mind at the moment.
I think part of what people have a problem with is when you end up with one fully completed subplot and then a half completed one that you never get resolution for.
At least in some earlier titles, I remember it being a trend to have interludes where you choose to spend time on your choice of a character or task, but there would be a choice here and there where your main task/character isn’t available, so you would have to spend that time doing something else. As a result, you’d make it all the way through one subplot, but maybe one conversation into a second one that just never comes up again.
Along similar lines, I dislike it when to pursue an entire subplot, you have to spend all of your allocated “free” time with one character. While you do get an in depth look into that character, it also means that your interactions with the rest of the cast are restricted solely to what you experience in the main story while one person is incredibly well fleshed out.
While it makes sense to limit the number of total subplots the player can experience for replayability and pacing issues, it would be nice to be able to see reasonable conclusions to multiple subplots in each playthrough. I don’t mind if its a less “good” resolution for things you don’t spend as much of the MC’s time on or a short bit about how that character finished the subplot without the MC and what happened, but it drives me nuts when a subplot just disappears. “Are we ever gonna come back to that major crisis…? No…? Everything is fine for that character…? Ok I guess”
Do not underestime the power of pingeresiccomancy, the most high art of doing nothing until your opponent gives up and goes away.
With regards to multiple subplots, I very rarely, if ever, replay games (heavens know my backlog is huge enough as it is), so my favourite is when I get to do EVERYTHING in a single playthrough, even if it means I have to reasonably (but not excessively) optimise said playthrough. In fact, pretty much the only reason I ever replay something is to optimise the playthrough, not “wander down a different plotline”.
I think a lot more people enjoy replaying the game if they are properly incentivized and a different subplot might not be enough. There needs to be a proper carrot on that stick. VN community has no issue replaying the game for different romance routes and endings (though these usually include a skip button, something that is… a bit impossible in choicescript) and to reach the ‘true ending’.
I enjoy it when replaying the game changes the game. I replayed Fernweh to get all the hints and the extra scene, it doesn’t have to be anything big. If it’s just ‘Sally doesn’t kick her drug addiction this time because you focused on saving the theatre’ too bad Sally. As shitty as that sounds doing things for npcs and causes must generate enough dopamine to justify replaying the game.
Honestly, over the weekend I spent some time going through my COG backlog - and even though I read and reread a ton of works under HG, I’ve never finished a complete COG game… so that was my goal. But I kept wishing the action stat systems and checks worked like they do in CTOS or Breach (where you can see the stat checks) the entire time.
Why must things be so vague? If the action stats are going to be checked so frequently, why not just say what option correlates to which stat? Or at least make it painfully clear. I hate having to make a choice and then go look to see what stat it added to or detracted from. Or getting to a check where I have absolutely no idea what stats are even being tested.
I like stats. CTOS and Breach are stat heavy games that are so fun to me and I love to min max in them. But stat systems where I’m guessing 70-80% of the time are not fun. It felt like I was playing a stat simulator rather than enjoying a story and eventually I gave up on caring about the stats in any of the 3 games I played (which in Tally Ho’s case was funny at times but still not ideal). I don’t mind failing checks, I’d just like to have an idea of what the check even is - without having to code dive.
Also - note that it may just be the stories I tried (Tally Ho, Jolly Good, Royal Affairs (primarily eloquent/entertaining were confusing to me)), so idk if this is typically the COG standard. I may have been unlucky where the games I played just didn’t mesh with me.
This is petty and probably only annoys me, but an incredibly common thing I’m not fond of is when games explicitly or implicitly prevent the PC from having the same eye color as their biological family members.
Aka the “you have your mother’s ${eye_color} eyes” cliché when you choose the PC’s eye color.
Bonus points if the PC’s mother doesn’t even show up in the game.
I don’t mind if it’s plot relevant, but typically it’s never mentioned again. Why not give the player the latitude to imagine their character comes from a family of entirely green-eyed or brown-eyed people?
Especially weird when a self-proclaimed “inclusive” game has “diverse” character creation options but doesn’t seem to consider how saying “you got your brown eyes from your mother” is kind of strange for a PC named Cindy Kim. Does Mr. Kim not have brown eyes? Are we playing 50 shades of brown?
Doesn’t just happen with eye color either. It’s fairly common with hair color and, in one especially memorable case, I’ve seen it done with hair type (straight/curly/wavy/coiled). At least when it comes to skin color, authors recognize why writing “you have pale skin, unlike your sister” would be restrictive.
In some cases, it’s done very explicitly. After you pick the PC’s eye/hair color/hair type, you have to pick for a biological family member and what you picked for the PC is un-selectable.
Unless it’s important for the plot (which would be cool!), I really don’t see the point of forcing the PC’s biological family to be phenotypically diverse.
If the author has an actual skill-free path in mind, in my experience, CoG will let them run with it. But if it turns out the author just couldn’t think of a third option, the editor will probably make some suggestions for alternatives.
Having a choice block that boils down to
and a different subplot might not be enough. There needs to be a proper carrot on that stick. VN community has no issue replaying the game for different romance routes and endings (though these usually include a skip button, something that is… a bit impossible in choicescript) and to reach the ‘true ending’.