Sunday, May 18, 2025
A Window Into The World
Every
story needs someone to tell it and often this role is given to the tale's
protagonists so they can paint an intimate picture of their journey.
Visual novels love to play with perspective due to their tendency
towards first person narratives where it can help the player better
understand events or trick them with smoke and mirrors. This
regularly involves entire large sections from the different points of
view among its cast, each of which provide new information to help
construct a complete picture of what is going on. Not every use of
perspectives needs to grand with many titles jumping POV for only
small periods of time to create an emphasis on key emotional moments.
Of course the simplest use of this technique is the bait and switch
protagonist where it looks like one character is going to the
protagonist only for something to change and another
character to raise up in their place. There is a great deal of
expression available for a developer through showcasing multiple
perspectives and opening the player up to new experiences. Let’s
swap characters and find out how this all works in practice.
Differing Perspectives
Having
multiple POV characters opens a lot a possibilities in how a
narrative can present itself and what information the player will be
given and by whom. It allows for its characters to show the same
events through different eyes in order to slowly reveal the complete
picture as the game goes on. Choosing to structure a visual novel in
this way means adopting a non-linear formatting to progression either
directly within the story flow or in an episodic fashion due to how
much jumping back and forth it will be doing. It is also rarely a
simple duel protagonist set up and there can instead be as many as
five competing perspectives on the same events which can be a
challenge for the player to keep track of, so it is key for the game
to make it clear who is currently the POV and what they stand for as
fast as possible. The main advantage of having so many POV characters
is how it offers a natural way to recontextualise what the player
believes to be true without stopping the story to do a big plot
reveal. What happens instead is the characters just give out what
information on what they are seeing and feeling and it is only from
the player’s perspective that they have this additional layer of
meaning. To someone within the story their world view seems normal
and it is only from a higher angle it can be revealed to full of
holes. There is an important development cost angle to this use of
multiple characters since the repeated revisiting of the same places
and times means the assets created for it can be reused with each
return. As such there are generally less overall assets to create and
this leads to a freeing of resources for the key narrative moments or
to keep the project within budget.
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| VNs with lots of POVs often have some sort of chart to help track them all |
Looking
at Wonderful Everyday and 428: Shibuya Scramble as examples of visual
novels using this structure we can see the two contrasting visions of
how it can be implemented. Wonderful Everyday has an
episodic take on the multiple protagonists approach with it swapping
to an entirely new perspective at the start of each episode. The
events and time period of every episode are mostly the same with
a few outliers and showcase how they looked for another angle as well
as showing things the other protagonists could not have seen since
they were not present. What forms is a slowly expanding picture of
these events where the player is constantly having to reevaluate
their prior knowledge as people they thought were reliable turn out
not to be and vice-versa. Its constant stream of new protagonists
helps create a broad and empathetic cast where previously minor
characters get a chance to shine and demonstrate how their relevancy
to the overarching narrative. This leads to the plot feeling like the
natural conclusion of various people’s actions rather than a
contrived plot structure. On the opposite side of this embracing
multiple perspectives sits 428: Shibuya Scramble and the way it
constantly pushes the player between different protagonists. Its
structure is decidedly non-linear with it not being possible to
complete one perspective without having finished parts of various
others in order to progress. Adopting this approach allows the game
to lean into the interconnectivity of the characters’ lives and
provide the player with different options of what to experience next
without giving away control of how and when major plot beats are
experienced. Rather than making the player question the reliability
of its POV characters, Shibuya Scramble uses this differing
perspectives to give each a piece of the picture which only makes
sense when placed alongside those from other characters to give the
narrative a jigsaw like feeling.
Creating Emphasis
Not
all uses of different perspectives need to be extensive and instead
they can function as short pacing and information controllers. These
manifest in the form of quick switches of POV from the main character
into the head of another in order to get their viewpoint of
events before returning back to the protagonist. By quickly providing
a new angle on the emotions and events of a scene they can highlight
these moments as significant in a broader sense and makes them stick
out in the player’s mind. Each acts as a widening of the player’s
appreciation for their consequences and opens the window to the
feelings evolving in characters beyond just the protagonist. Unlike a
more extensive multiple POV structure, these small tangents are
intense bubbles of emotion which aim to create drama and suspense
rather than feed into some greater picture. As you might expect they
are somewhat contrived in nature and can be a little nonsensical if
the player ever stops to think about them hence why they are so short
so there is no time to give them serious consideration before the
game moves on to the next plot beat. They are also used sparingly
over the course of a visual novel so they do not become invasive and
take the player out of the protagonist’s head space which many
titles rely heavily on in order to create an impactful experience. The infrequent use of perspective changes does not create
this friction while also countering any potential sense that the
world revolves completely around the protagonist.
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| I'm sure she is completely reliable right? |
Using
multiple perspectives in this manner is most common in various slice
of life or romance visual novels where the aim is to use them to
underscore the blossoming love between the leads. One developer in
this genre who loves to regularly dip into different POV’s is
Yuzusoft and they have even experimented with more expansive
protagonist swapping. Their short dives into another character’s
mind are almost always into the head of the route heroine or story
relevant characters close to them. Focusing on the heroine is a way
through which the game can communicate the mutual nature of the
couple’s affections rather than making the heroine appear to exist
just for the protagonist’s desires. This is especially important
due to the erotic component in these titles since it could come
across as objectifying the heroine or be otherwise uncomfortable for
the player if it did not make their common feelings so clear. It also
serves a minor role in pushing the plot forward if the conflict is
placing the heroine in some kind of direct danger where the
protagonist may not be aware of it or simply cannot perceive it due
to it being internal in nature. However, Yuzusoft are careful to have
everything come back towards the protagonist so the romance can
remain front and centre in order to sell their relationship as a
seamless experience for the player.
Bait And Switch
Not
every visual novel immediately makes it clear if there are going to
be multiple protagonists within their story in order to trick the
player into believing they know how things will play out. This is
done purely for the sake of a twist reveal that the initial
protagonist was in fact not the main character of the story and the
role falls to another of the established characters. A bait and
switch like this regularly results in the first POV character being
removed from the story now they have fulfilled their purpose and all
the remaining play time is from the new POV. Narrative techniques of
this type are a once and done affair since the player is now aware of
the trick and any additional attempts to do the same thing will lack
impact. It acts as a means of grabbing the player’s attention in a
shocking manner and drawing them into a plot they thought they had
all figured out. One the notable risk to this approach is if the
player has bonded with the original protagonist they may not like it
when this character is taken away and they are forced onto another
one. This may leave a bad taste in their mouth and prevent them from
properly engaging with the new POV character as they now have a
bitter association between this protagonist and these negative
feelings. Hence most bait and switches of this type tend to take
place in the opening hours of a game to not give the player enough
time to get overly attached to the character who is about to be
thrown away.
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| Danganronpa can get away with a lot other titles cannot |
A
particularly famous example of this technique can be seen in
Danganronpa V3 at the climax of its first trial. Here the first
protagonist Akamatsu Kaede is shown to not be a reliable narrator to
the events of the chapter and is in fact the murderer they have been
attempting to uncover. The POV then swaps to reveal the real
protagonist to be Saihara Shuuichi someone who had been a major
character beforehand so the transition has a believable passing of
the torch quality. Since Kaede dies not long after Danganronpa
cleverly makes her existence and absence impactful for Shuuichi so
Kaede does not entirely disappear for the narrative the moment the
game is done with her, even if it is only in spirit. The reason for
the bait and switch is simple, shock value. As a franchise
Danganronpa lives on its over the top nature and this big twist fits
right in with its existing tone which helps smooth over the
transition between the two protagonists. Other visual novels would
have struggled to retain the player’s interest in quite the same
way after such a dramatic end to a likeable character.
Conclusion
The
eyes through which the player sees the story of a visual novel
control a lot about how they engage with it and so shifting between
multiple of them opens up a lot of possibilities. Through the use of a wide
range of POV characters the narrative takes on a patchwork quality
where competing perspectives offer pieces of the big picture for the
player to uncover. Performing a bait and switch with the protagonist
has the ability to create an impactful early experience which can
capture the attention of the player and help keep it for the long
term. Even the sprinkling in of infrequent POV swapping can be useful
when the story needs specific emotional moments and plot beats to have more
emphasis to help underscore their importance. There are few tools
available for visual novel developers which can have quite the impact
on the game’s overall structure and reception as multiple POV
characters so it is worth carefully considering how you use them when
making your own titles.
