Story Overhaul (Patreon)

Hello, my name is Blue Bishop. I’m your most recent addition to the writing staff, and I’ve been contributing to what will be the overhaul of Identity’s story.

With the departure of the original writer, we’re at something of an impasse, and nothing short of a radical overhaul will be acceptable.

Before we begin, however, I want to show you something. This is a general web of Identity’s original story structure:

This is considerably reduced – it doesn’t include the digressions at the mid segment – but you get the jist of it. The red Xs are bad ends. The blue lines are story threads where you don’t encounter Garreth. The red lines are where you don’t encounter Brymror or Cedrik, the black X is an incomplete story path.

So… Well, if we’re being positive, this certainly does create the fantasy of being completely lost and confused in an unfamiliar space; however… This is a pretty clear example of how you shouldn’t write a VN.

It’s just too much. Digital media isn’t like a game of D&D; you cannot simply let the player do whatever and expect to explore the consequences of those actions in an affordable manner. A setup with this many diverging points could only be doable across the span of three days, maybe; it’s just too much to juggle.

I think it may be important to underline suspension of disbelief, for aspiring VN writers.

In static media, suspension of disbelief is the agreement, by the audience, that what they are observing is real. In interactive media, it’s the agreement that the player character’s actions are also the player’s, even if – in reality – the player might not act quite the same way, or even that way at all.

With this understanding of suspension of disbelief for an interactive medium, it then becomes reasonable to limit player interactions significantly, especially early on, and as long as those interactions feel internally consistent. We’re here to tell a story, not make a playground.

And sure, choice is great, but there’s another problem with the old story: Choices are only interesting when you understand their consequences. The first choice in the game is so absurdly substantial that it borders on parody, and it’s literally a decision on where you should nap.

There’s also a problem of invisible modifiers. You act certain ways to certain characters and you develop a sub/dom stat. Nevermind that this isn’t how sub/doms actually behave (Who’s never heard of a bratty sub?), it’s switch erasure.

So our first problem is that we have to put a torch to about 4/5ths the game’s original plot structure, by getting rid of all the byzantine choices and stat systems... But we have a second problem: We can’t use the original writer’s writing. Not one word of it.

This is more of an ethical issue, rather than legal – we technically can use the original writer’s writing, but it’d be gauche to do so, even (and perhaps especially) in a heavily edited form.

The story can be mostly similar, but a lot of details need to be tweaked, either because we new writers want to do something different, or simply because we have no idea what the original writer was planning to do.

So, that sounds like a lot of work, and it was, and I say was because… It’s already done. Yep. First day has been completely rewritten.

Here’s what the story structure looks like now:

This structure is primarily based on the “Tree” arc, but the differences start cropping up almost immediately. Bailing at the door scene no longer results in a bad end; instead, you transition into a highly modified version of the pool scene from the “Cliff” arc, which is the major branch you see early on.

Overall, the experience is much more consistent; you end the day seeing as many possible characters (And maybe a new one or two) – no more going into day 2 talking to people you’ve never actually met as if you had.

There are a lot of other little changes that might throw some veteran patrons a bit off-guard. The writing style has shifted from first person to second – though there’s still an internal dialogue from the protagonist. The game’s also a little less thirsty upfront – no faceplanting into people’s crotches – and you’re no longer getting accosted by supernatural shenanigans every ten seconds.

That isn’t to say we’re toning down the horny overall, quite the opposite, it’s just that we’re more concerned with asking if the player is up for it beforehand.

Of course, we still want players to have some substantive player choice, which they’ll be able to experience on day 2, once the dust has settled.

Between a morning preamble and an evening plot event, players are given “Free Time” slots to interact with certain NPCs. Here, you can choose to get closer with most of the cast, eventually culminating in sexy shenanigans during the “Late Night” slot, after the evening plot event.

You can expect to see this overhaul Soon™, our plan is to release it along with a completed day 2 and a prototyped dateable arc (Which will be its own thing, for now, since there aren’t enough days to complete an arc for a character).

That’s all for now, thank you for your patience as we deal with all these changes!