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GGGB vs ORS: Structure (Patreon)

Published:
2020-11-24 10:30:23
Imported:
2021-02

Content

GGGB and ORS follow a very similar structure, but have a couple key differences.

One that’s plain to see is the fact that having only one playable character in GGGB forced me to make Ashley one of the participants in almost every sex scene. I also noticed having a female MC caused the majority of the NPCs to be guys, even though Ash could have a few lesbian relationships with her friends. Having Ian and Lena as playable characters doesn’t only mean I can have way more variety when combining characters for hot and original sex scenes, but also allowed me to introduce more female NPCs in the cast, and I really love those new characters! (Holly, Alison, Cindy, Cherry, Emma...) But the major structural key element for both games lies in their status quo (yeah, I’m gonna use that word a lot from now on).

As I said before, with GGGB I wanted to push choice mechanics and branching possibilities to the extreme, to the point where it’s almost ridiculous (the thug route, for example). The fun was the exploration of how widely paths could vary, and you could end up with a very different status quo depending on your choices, affecting not only Ash but the surrounding characters. The downside to this kind of structure, other than the previously mentioned lack of profundity on its themes, was the lack of said status quo. Things could vary so much that the overall structure lost consistency and became an amalgam of “what if” scenarios, without a defined or conducting plotline.

This problem is intrinsic to all choice-based and open-ended games and stories, I think, and ORS faces the same conundrum. After all, if the story is set in stone, there’s no room for the player to make meaningful choices, and that’s what this is all about! But I wanted ORS to have a more solid structure and a better defined status quo that could serve as a frame for me as a writer and the player. That meant narrowing the possible outcomes, meaning, Ian and Lena’s possible permutations are more focused. Don’t get this wrong, this doesn’t mean there are less permutations than in GGGB: the difference lies in how the choices affect that status quo. While in GGGB your choices created different, varied and somewhat unconnected status quo, with ORS my goal is making your choices affect a single, deeply interconnected status quo. This is what I refer to when I talk about making a more focused and nuanced gaming experience. Hopefully this way your choices as both Ian and Lena will be even more meaningful, having a deeper impact on their environment and personal relationships, where connexions are more clear and explicit and well structured.

What do you think, you prefer the more wide-and-shallowstructure of GGGB or is ORS’s narrow-and-deepstructure gripping you more into the story?

Other posts on GGGB vs ORS series:

Gameplay

Main Characters

Themes 

Files

Comments

Jase C

I would say wide and shallow.

Cabot

Talking in general about games this is kind of a false dichotomy isn’t it? As you ideally would want both wide and deep, I mean. In some genres that’s easier to achieve than others, in most strategy games (yeah, I’ve been playing CK3 and Stellaris A LOT latlly, lol) you can build your empire wide or tall, you can focus on commerce and diplomacy or in warfare, in technology or religion, and so on; and every experience and mechanic (ideally) is unique and fully developed. Intricate narrative complicates things, of course, so usually strategy games get rid of most of it -although many try some kind of procedural storytelling where more or less timed events kind of shape a general narrative for the game- but for a game so focused in the story as ORS it’s trickier. But in the end it’s just a matter of resources, if a developer has and infinite amount of time and money he could make a game that has a lot of branches, some of them exclusive to each other, completely fleshed out. Skyrim, with its many faults, could be an example of that: beyond the main story of the campaign there were a lot of let’s call them oversized sidequest that allowed the player to become a vampire or a werewolf, a master assassin or… well, whatever. All of that with a fully fleshed out narrative, in some instances even more interesting than the main story, I’d dare say. That’s why (and given that we are not throwing at you and infinite amount of money, heh) I’m not particularly concerned about deadlines regarding ORS. I would rather have a product that follows your vision than a strictly “on time” one. So I guess what I’m saying is that if at some point you feel the need to make ORS wider while at the same time keeping its storytelling as deep as it is, but fear that this could be too time consuming, as far as I’m concerned by all means go for it.