Perhaps you should reread those posts; What I was saying was that there would be, essentially, two different sections, a "common" section, where you make choices whose immediate effects are minor changes in text, but which accrue points to one path or another, and then a "branched" section at the very end, where the choices you make split the path into different types of relationships, again, mirroring the way in which choices you make early on make relatively minor changes in the game, but wind up branching the path along which girl you have decided upon late in the game (around act 5, as I had said).Mirage_GSM wrote:I'm not. That's exactly what I argued against in my reply to your first post:Mirage_GSM wrote:The problem is, that having a different personality also changes how people react to you, so you'd basically have to have multiple versions of each scene, which would make the amount of text grow exponentially without any significant increase in story content.
I'd rather have one good long story than five short ones that are basically the same anyway.
EDIT: Because this might need further clarification, perhaps I should specify exactly why I had said that many of the choices would have little immediate impact: When I had first suggested this branching path based upon Hisao personality/player preference/relationship dynamic, the argument against it had been that "it would multiply the required volume of text by 5", and that is why, rebutting that claim, I had pointed to the way in which the game already works, as far as the demo goes, where many of the choices you make have little immediate impact, as well. The difference between the Lilly and the Hanako paths in the Demo is basically only the last choice and the last couple scenes. The differnce between having two or only one of those paths is not doubling the amount of text, it is only increasing the amount of text by (in a total hip-shot estimation, no need to correct this) 5-10%. The Rin path, as well, is basically the path you fall into if you don't follow any other paths, and it recycles about 80% of its text from the other paths. That is, I was arguing against the notion that adding these choices, and adding distinctly different endings would not cause the amount of writing the game would need to rise at a geometric growth rate, not that this would involve making insubstantial choices for the player to pursue.
Because of this, regarding what G3n0c1de said, I don't think this would require a game where you only pursue one girl, because one could do this as easily as any other number of branches. I do, however, fully understand if the devs simply declare that something that would require re-storyboarding some parts of the game to accomidate the changes would simply be too much to do this late in the game, but if it were done from the start of the storyboarding process, there would not be a detriment to taking this sort of path.