Fatehaven

[Havenstone]

On another thread, I referred to Fatehaven as the “novel on rails” type of CoG. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it – in particular the twist ending is fantastic, beautifully meta like nothing else on the site – but like the Heroes Rise games, I felt Fatehaven prioritized plot and length over meaningful choice. The story was satisfyingly long, and that length means that the plot is very similar on repeat playthroughs. The author himself has been very clear about making this trade-off:

@MultipleChoice

As Grapefruit said, Fatehaven has a strong novel aspect. When writing a Choice Of, you must balance breadth or you will suffer from shallow depth. It all depends on what you as a writer want to write.

@MultipleChoice

I had always designed Fatehaven to be more of a personalized novel then a gamebook, which I realize is different then what many of the core-group of forum frequenters are used to. But it is because of its focus on narrative that players are able to build the attachments necessary for drama like Patch’s to be so meaningful. And I think this focus is what makes it a more memorable tale then most, even if it lacks much replayability after the second or third go-round.

Because the author knew the story he wanted, and wanted to get it done and published in reasonable time, he made some choices that limited the impact of player choice:

• The choices after the opening “demo” section don’t move your stats.
• The stats you set in the early game occasionally determine whether or not you fail at something you choose to do – but whether you succeed or fail those checks, the plot rolls ahead on the same course.
• If you try making a choice to do something which would send the plot in a significantly different direction, the impact does not last more than a paragraph or two. Your choices don’t unlock subplots.
• The “element” of your magic makes no significant difference in the story. Fire, air, water, earth… you get only quite small flavor text differences (and if I recall correctly, almost none after the first four chapters).

None of that means it’s a bad game. You’ll see a lot of reviews earlier in this thread from people who didn’t like it, and you’ll see a lot of rave reviews from people who did.

But it highlights how hard it is to combine length with real, meaningful choice. We’ve had conversations in the past about the trilemma that authors face – when it comes to CoGs, the story can be long, deep (in terms of “real” choices branching the plot), or economical, but not all three. Tin Star has length and depth like nothing else I’ve seen on the site… and it’s an obvious labor of love, which probably won’t come close to compensating Allen for the many, many hours that went into it.

If I’m wrong, I hope he lets me know, as that would encourage me in my own labor of love game, which has been taking literally years longer to write than I’d initially hoped!