See, that’s funny because while I agree with basically everything you wrote, I would absolutely not call Book 1 a masterpiece. It’s good, yes, and I really enjoyed it, but… I remember playing it for the very first time, years ago. I started it and got so confused about the first scenes (literal voices in the dark, very little context), I quit the game. I didn’t play again for months and then tried again only because I had nothing else to read and everybody kept mentioning Wayhaven.
Seriously, I think a lot of the issues people list here were already present in Book 1, but it was new, the author was among the few at the time who followed through on her plan and actually wrote her story (still is), so I think people, me among them, were more than willing to overlook the flaws of Book 1.
These days though? The bar has been raised. There are more CoG / HG finished games and WIPs out for us to read. We have a luxury of choice we didn’t have back when Book 1 came out. And also, we had the hope that Wayhaven would improve with each book, what with the amount of feedback it got.
So yeah, I have fond (nostalgic?) memories of Book 1, Book 2 was fun and had progress with the LI, but boy oh boy was Book 3 a complete disaster to me. I’m hoping Book 4 will be better but if it’s not, I’m done with the series.
To make losing this four-person team actually mean something to the MC (to some extent), b4 could’ve started with MC training with them. They are the ones who have been training the MC extensively throughout the last few weeks they’ve been away from UB. Hell, even have the LI mention it when they finally meet up, talking about how MC is spending all their time with this lot.
Doing this way, and having the MC “power” Li-sar also shifts the focus to the MC being hounded constantly and, more importantly, shows another way the MC’s blood can be used (instead of it being a McGuffin to set up the LIs being tormented and having to pull away in b5).
I want to steal this now for my fanfic.
Exactly. We still point out the things that work and are good (M’s shower scene in b3, for example). We just want to be able to discuss the issues, and the fact that they will never be addressed.
Same. If I didn’t enjoy the series at all, I wouldn’t waste so much time discussing it and writing fanfic for it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see the glaring problems.
Exactly. And no one was “complaining” that this hasn’t been used, just questioning why it hasn’t been used in a series that seems to come up with, let’s be honest, idiotic reasons for drama. Why use forced drama when you have a plethora of real and understandable reasons for drama that could be used?
Agreed. I think they have grown exponentially with each installment, though. I also think the issues were less glaring in b1 because the plot was more contained. B1 was fairly simple plotwise–Murphy was after the MC (because of their blood) and UB was obstructing the MC from finding the truth to the two murders (one of which resulted from Murphy being after someone who had blood just like the MCs and the other because Murphy was hungry and didn’t give a crap if he made a mess with his dinner). It was tighter, and made sense. It still blew its proverbial wad at the start of the game by spoiling the plot, giving you all the surprises before MC found out, etc., but at least it actually took the plot thread to its natural conclusion, something that didn’t happen at all in b3.
But yeah, the bar has been raised. We now have FH and other games with romances that progress naturally and aren’t retconned five minutes later. And that makes the problems with Wayhaven a hell of a lot more obvious. I’ve said it before, if the romances were actually satisfying, I’d probably ignore a lot of the problems with the games. But the romances are not satisfying and, after being promised we’d be in relationships with the LIs “way before the end”, we’re at the halfway point and have no relationship with two of the vampires and have been told on tumblr it won’t happen in this book either. My definition of “way before the end” isn’t getting less than half of the series. But I guess maybe she was talking about real time… so maybe we’ll have a relationship with A (and possibly M, if we get one at all) by 2030, five or ten years before the series ends.
There’s I think ONE line in the voices in the dark scene that I don’t know who’s saying it, but I figured, at the time, that that was on purpose. It’s, well, dark, these are people who can move VERY fast, and the Detective has to keep their head moving like a satellite dish to keep track of them as they fan out. “Not knowing who’s saying what” seems appropriate for the situation.
I still maintain that the best romance scene in IFs so far is one in Book of Hungry Names with Nin ( ), and that’s not even a romance-focused game.
if you like the idea, please have it I would so love to read your fanfic in the future
Oh, this one is amazing. I really love the way you think, it would be way more heartbreaking to lose the four members we made a deep connection while training, chatting and laughing with each other. maybe they tell stories about our vamps, funny and embarrassing stories. afterwards MC is so much more angry with Rebecca and the vamps for not doing their job with sealing Lisar way sooner, so the other team would be still alive. So MC is so much between hard places. MC is so sad and heartbroken that Lisar has better access to MC’s heart.
LOL I felt the whole (from book 2 to now) time like a McGuffin xD it’s really sad sighs and I would have loved to have more police missions and not so boring ideas…
The thing about the writing imo is that it was never fantastic, but it didn’t have to be because book one was fun enough to read from start to finish.
The quality started to become a problem when we got book two (and later book three) and other issues piled up on top of the simplistic, to use a nice term, writing. The plot going nowhere, the lack of meaningful character interactions, repetitive bs etc etc only fueled people’s frustrations and now they dogpile on the foundation of the story itself. Which was always its weakest point.
I think we discussed this before, but I’ll say it again: I would take a fun story with mediocre writing over a boring literary masterpiece any day of the week, but sadly wayhaven has been going downhill for a long time now. Which isn’t a surprise, when you ignore feedback from fans who genuinely want to book to thrive but get branded as meanies because they don’t shower you with compliments.
Haha this is so true, the Interactive Fiction community is full of fans who will defend an author and their work, giving negative feedback gets you so much hate in this space in my experience so for the majority of people to agree Wayhaven 2-3 are mediocre due to bad repetitive writing is pretty wild.
I don’t know why the author just doesn’t change the writing, it’s not that hard. Explore the 4 characters more in their backstories, cut all these new characters, explore the MCs family and backstory, put a proper villain, put more drama and action, maybe even more romance scenes.
Why do we have so many filler/sub quest story content. Honestly if most IF Authors just copy Fallen Hero’s formula which has everything needed for a proper story they’ll be fine tbh.
Why does Wayhaven 2 and 3 keep introducing all these side characters who we don’t care about? Why is there a side plot involving Douglas and your ex who’s name I don’t remember smh.
I believe the reason this isn’t done is because, if it was, the author wouldn’t be able to stretch it to seven books. More an more I get the distinct impression that we won’t ever get the MC in an actual relationship with the MC, where we get MC and LI against the world and all those who mean to tear them apart. Instead, the LIs are the damned problem. All the drama and angst is due to the LIs and their mental/emotional trauma or memory loss, in M’s case. The bloodlust for the MC’s blood isn’t from an outside source, it’s from the LI, while no one else seems the least bit bothered (which is fucking stupid, if you want to be blunt about it).
So yeah, actually focusing on the romances and letting them progress would mean not dragging them out for seven books.
I don’t think anyone has to copy a formula. I like stories where there are different approaches. But pacing matters, and the pacing in Wayhaven is slower then frozen snot.
And I agree, to an extent, about the side characters. Side characters serve a purpose–when used well, they make the fictional world richer and can be used to complement the main characters. That doesn’t hold here, where the side characters are team of the week with four new supernaturals we won’t see until we get a poorly executed rendition of Avengers: End Game in b7.
I am choosing to ignore the other FH discussion. That disturbs the hell out of me.
When the author was growing up, as a pre-teen and early teen, most cheap novels aimed at that age group were of supernaturals fighting for good. There were romances, long stretched out ones, but the LI was just background noise as they helped the heroes do their work. That trope is still very present in novellas for that age-group, mainly because nobody dare sell soft and hard porn to them, so it shouldn’t really be too surprising that Wayhaven is unfolding sort of like that. AFAIK, she conceived of this story about UB as a 14 year old, or there-abouts and perhaps she never investigated the steamier side of things, apart from the pool table and the car seat, because thats the age group she aims for. Judging by the comments on Patreon she has scored a direct hit, because those of us on here are all adults from the way the discussion is going.
Yes. And that explains why the MC behaves like a blushing UwU tweener and why the LIs–the youngest of which is, what, 60ish?–behave like teenagers when it comes to relating to the MC.
I suppose it may explain why the plots are so poorly executed, too. Is that a common thing for these tweener novels? I’ve never been into reading those things. The closest I came was Sarah J. Maas and the second book made me want to vomit every time I tried to read it. And it killed me, because Rhysand was such an awesome character and she just completely blew it. Not to mention how much I utterly loathed Feyre. What an annoying fucking bitch of a character. Anyway… after I forced myself to finish book 2, I refused to read the rest of that series. Blech.
But yeah, I don’t think we’re her target group of readers here. Which explains why our opinions don’t matter, lol.
I’m pretty sure, for some reason, she does not want her characters to actually be grown-up, its a child’s interpretation of grown-ups, even Rebecca as the mother “who neglects/doesn’t understand me” trope. Plus those novellas for young teens tend to come in series, regardless of the actual size of each story, so Mischka may have had no idea how big a task she had taken on when deciding to make her stories into IF games. At least she decided to stop at 7! And I haven’t dared try Sarah J Maas!
Spot on comment, I definitely think most authors in the hosted game sphere just release fan fiction level of content and not professional level quality writing, Wayhaven is a great example. FH is professional level writing and a legit tv show/movie adaptation would be solid. Wayhaven as a work of art would basically be a 1 season vampire CW tv show and get cancelled lol.
I think people misunderstand when I say just use the FH formula, I don’t mean copy everything but what I meant was introduce a good story, a good backstory for the characters, in depth character writing, events that happen to the world, have complex themes, angst, drama, romance, a bit of comedy and proper pacing in addition to the character development so it feels like a proper world.
This is a solid all around formula that works for every work of art. Wayhaven has zero plot, its always the detective getting beaten by random villain of the week, kidnapped and rescued. Then some side story and side character interaction. The love interests carry this series and thats why 90% of IFs I’ve read is always generic MC joining a group of 4 love interests with supernatural powers.
Difference is most WIPs on COG and Twine dies after 1 or 2 chapters despite having potential to be a better version of Wayhaven. I’m just waiting for someone to make a better version of Wayhaven because its essentially “human meets 4 hot supernaturals and romance drama happens”.
I could understand some of those points but at the same time why would one who fears strong supernaturals not use your power? I mean thi k about it, we dont really get told what the power boost limit is neither is anyone else, and anyone who doesnt want supernaturals to get stronger would just use you as a fly trap if they are smart. I could def see the i cant have you no one can piint working for the new li but at the same time they are probably strong enough to just stokholm syndrome you so who knows on that front
), and that’s not even a romance-focused game.
I would so love to read your fanfic in the future 