Visual Novel Point of View
Added 2025-08-22 16:00:20 +0000 UTCI asked about this on Discord, so I thought I'd ask here as well!
You might end up seeing a lot more polls from me in the future as I get ideas about what I want to do for my next project.
Do you have a preference in what kind of point of view your visual novels are told in?
ExcA, for example, is second person. "You saw Darius and grabbed his butt." as opposed to first person, "I saw Darius and grabbed his butt." or the third person "He saw Darius and grabbed the lion's butt."
Each brings its own merits to the story, but I'm curious to hear with PoV is your favorite!
Don't take these polls as defining definite results, as it's to gauge interest and see what folks have to say.
Comments
Second person makes the most sense to me for a visual novel, personally. The other two feel enforced. In first-person I feel like my imagination must be on rails; and in third person it's too far removed to be invigorating. That's just me. I prefer literary novels in tight third-person omniscient (or even strictly objective, at times) but for the visual novel, I think second person works best.
Arthur Charles
2025-08-25 16:53:00 +0000 UTCHooo boy, here we go! I doubt you remember this, but yeeears ago I wrote feedback to a Patreon post of yours, but unfortunately it did not make it through for some reason. I think I promised to you then that I would recreate it, but the length and rambling nature of my attempts just kept getting out of hand. This write-up is going to be something of a mutant mixture of that feedback and my personal thoughts on this subject. Take the following criticisms with a grain of salt; while I very much have my own dreams of making FVN-adjacent content myself, my head is quite decidedly in the clouds in regards to the technical limitations—especially of this game engine—in delivering heavily branching fiction. I am merely airing out the thoughts I have had while playing ExcA, and I would not dedicate this much thought and effort into doing so if I did not mean well with it. I wish nothing but the best for you and your wonderful work! It has been a while since I last played the content that animated the most, so I may be remembering things wrong or missed some changes. Also, as of writing I have still only fully finished Darius's core route so far (which I did in Feb 2023). Some Darius route spoilers are included. ——— Anyway, one of the biggest things that consistently frustrated me—especially in Darius's route—was the protagonist. Why? Because he keeps fighting against me. Indeed, choosing the second person POV is very risky, because one either needs to write a very nondescript PC and/or give the player practically full control of self-expression agency through choices in order to not cause frustration in some parts of the ever diverse player base. Basically nothing character-defining can be done or expressed through the avatar without the player's permission or the illusion cracks. Personally, while there definitely is ample freedom available in parts, I did not feel like ExcA offered quite enough control over the character's demeanor in choices ("wrong" choices leading to unambiguous bad outcomes/endings do not count) to really satisfy the ideal conditions for the second person POV choice. Eric comes off as a very preset character to me. He is a cripplingly shy and doggedly romantic. I am sure this hits home for a lot of people, and having much of your control limited by shyness seems a relatively fair choice in a largely conflict-free slice-of-life dating narrative that probably does not have a lot of ways to pace its buildup otherwise (still annoying, but I get it). Eric, however, also came across as an entitled possessive prick who has and defends some very strong opinions and values of his own that the player has no control over. Long story short, I very much struggled to connect with Eric due to disagreeing with his behavior and takes on a lot of things, so the second person POV in writing was like a constantly repeating insult. This lead to a lot of frustration, as well as a severe feeling of being railroaded. This was at its worst in Darius's route, which hurts because Darius himself has long been my favorite of the cast character-wise. I found the prospect of a potentially aromantic FWB route as pretty interesting and unique as far as FVNs go, so I wanted to support that. Sadly, the game does not allow you to do this. Eric has feelings over which you have no control, and the infuriating day 8 fight happens regardless of your choices. Post-fight you do get to make more no-strings type choices, but they are all a trap, because committing to just being best friends with benefits will eventually slap you in the face with an unambiguous downer ending instead. Eric, refusing to accept Darius as he is, manipulates the latter into changing for him just so he can get what he wants. That is what it all ended up feeling like for me. I loved Darius, and the activities you get to enjoy with him were great, but by the end of the route I hated Eric so much that I felt irreparably detached, robbing me of all satisfaction. The lion deserves someone so much better. Now, me being disappointed by my own ambitious expectations is absolutely on me and me alone. But it does highlight the contrast between me as a player and Eric. He is a preset character, and unless one also happens to align with his views, they cannot impose themselves onto him. Thus, the second person narration just felt uncomfortable. While a switch in POV would have been unlikely to influence my overall dissatisfaction with the amount of player agency in ExcA, I am sure I would have been less animated about it had it been narrated in first person instead. ——— Which POV, then, would I consider the best choice if I had to choose only one? That depends. First person POV I feel strikes the perfect balance in preset protagonist stories. Close enough to allow the player to feel engaged in the role, but still detached enough to remind them that the character is still their own person and can thus surprise us with their actions. An ideal second person POV would in my opinion require either a very boring protagonist or a massive commitment to player agency, since you really want to avoid puppeting the player around too much. It potentially is the most rewarding POV when it comes to engaging players directly, though. Finally, the third person POV is perfectly serviceable and definitely the safest, but it might make some players feel a bit detached, and would probably feel a bit awkward in the dating sim format... but I do feel a bit blind on this style, honestly. I will need to research more works using it before I can say anything more confident. On the other hand, something I have personally thought about is letting the player themselves choose the POV through a setting, much like how gender/pronouns are usually handled in games that give you the choice. No idea how arduous that would be to code, but it could be a fun thing to try. ——— Adding to the topic of endings, I regret missing out on the related feedback post you did a while back, since that is another thing that I have had strong opinions on. The presence of a "good" and a "bad" ending runs a very high risk of turning all meaningful choices into either "right vs wrong", nullifying much of the player agency and emotional investment with it, distancing the player from the experience. Mind you, choices that lead into drama, hurt, rejection and game-overs definitely do serve an important psychological purpose as well. Only the threat of failure makes success mean something; only by allowing the player to choose a selfish alternative will one give an altruistic choice weight. But if it is just a binary choice of good/right/reward vs evil/wrong/no-gain, it will typically just make a player stop choosing for themselves or their character and turn to a guide instead, and that to me as an interactive fiction developer would feel like a failure. I feel like with dating sims specifically, we tend to know what our target audience wants and what it does not. Nobody actually wants the typical bad ending, because there is no reward in it. The solution, I would then propose, could be to have multiple endings, each of which acts as a validation reward for the choices the player has made, for good or ill. Maybe some arguably good but thought-provoking endings, maybe some bittersweet ones with worthy sacrifices, maybe some amicably sad ones that still allow for optimism for the future. The fully bad punishment endings could instead be more short-form, relegated to non-standard game-overs throughout gameplay. Something that usually happens only if you do not pay attention, and only sends you back a bit. Take the special bad endings in the Ace Attorney games for example. Just my personal naive take. ——— Thank you for reading! I hope it provoked thought without hurt! It is about all I can do with my hypotheses until I have interactive works of my own to embolden them. Who knows, maybe everyone will hate my works and I will be the clown for having bothered you with all this! There, you have my two cents. And ~9 hours of my time. Thank you so much for Extracurricular Activities! Grab Darius's butt for me! <3
Zurice
2025-08-24 17:27:42 +0000 UTCI enjoyed First or Second because I feel more involved in the story, compared to Third because then it's them in the story doing those actions.
Owenn Thomas
2025-08-24 03:36:52 +0000 UTC
