Prevalence of other girls in the paths

[Guest Poster]

One thing I noticed in Act 1 was that the presence of the "unrelated girls" (the girls not paired with the girl whose path you're following) in the various paths tended to vary. In Shizune's path, you spent just about all your time with "..." and "Whahaha" and got to see very little of the other girls besides their introduction scenes. The other girls' paths had more variety in who you interacted with, presumably since you were still in the process of picking what road to take. (Shizune's path starts fairly close to the beginning)

What I wondered was how prevalent the rest of the main cast will be in the various paths in the full version, besides the girl with whom the path girl is paired. In other words, when the player follows Hanako's path, will he still get caught up in Rin's antics every now and then? Will the player still get to deal with Shizune on a regular basis while pursuing Miss Poplar? Or will the paths of the various girls drift further apart after the end of Act 1 with characters like Akira or Hideaki taking a more active role and replacing or pushing the other female leads towards the background more as the story goes on?

[Climatic]

you will never have a cripple harem ;_;

[SirMax]

Well, the main reason you seemed to not run into anyone else in Shizune's path is you tended to either be in the student council room or out of school, whereas in the other paths you actually end up in the more normal places for students to be. Additionally, no matter what Hisao's actions Shizune and Misha seem to initiate interaction with him until he directly scares them off, whereas Lilly is in a totally different class and Hanako obviously doesn't have any interest in socializing. If you keep up with Emi and her training, you're automatically on her path, and Rin is just... Rin. So I suspect that the interaction will mostly dwindle outside of the "pair", especially if you take isolating options.

[Csihar]

I've been wondering about this too. On one hand, it would be a shame to have access to so many great characters and then ignore them for most of the story. On the other, you don't want to have something like occasionally happened with Clannad (the anime that is, since I haven't played the VN), where sometimes it seemed like the writers were shoehorning the other girls into Nagisa's story just to justify having them in the OP. I imagine it would be a tough balance to strike.

[Smoku]

Well...
We have no idea if you'll run into other girls after choosing one. Maybe there will be some special issues, like, let's say, when you happily go on Rin path, Emi gets another car accident or something.
No idea. Devs will make the magic and won't say a thing cause it would be spoiling

[G3n0c1de]

I was wondering about this as well. Maybe it will be similar to YMK in that after a certain point you never see any of the other girls again. Then again... you could go through 3 h-scenes on one path before getting locked into another depending on how you played the game. I remember some dev stating that while the paths will be focused on one girl, certain events in the story will be universal to all paths. You will occasionally run into the other girls, but you mostly experience things from your chosen girl's point of view.

[Snicket]

Well not i don't feel so weird not being the only one that thought this. It wouldn't make much seance to phase out all the other girls all together, once you've been locked in to a path. I'm not saying have them only present to remind you 'of what you missed out on.'


Also to take it a step further, what about 'pared choices' meaning since all the 'possible' lover interests have a friend.What going to happen to them? Like what will happen to Rin if you choose Emi, what will Hanako do if you choose Lilly, will Misha stop being friends with Shizune or vise-versa. (Except for Misah, since she has no path.) Are they going to become the 'friend' and slowly phase out or are they going to a part of the path and either try to take there friend back or still try for Hisao?

[Guest Poster]

I purposefully kept the "paired girl" an exception since I don't expect Misha to be put on a bus in Shizune's path and the same would apply to Lilly in Hanako's path. I don't see Rin playing a pivotal role in Hanako's path though, which is why I was asking. It's perfectly possible that the acts following Act 1 have some sort of shared events that involve several of the female leads.

I was reminded of this issue when reading the latest blog update about the 2nd draft of Lilly's path being completed. "Shared scenes" are probably just a little harder to create since for optimal results they require closer cooperation between two writers than a scene with just Hisao (who's a semi-blank slate to begin with and changes subtly depending on what girl he socialises with) and the path girl.

[G3n0c1de]

Well, when you choose a girl, the only other girl who will get a decent amount of screen time is the other girl in the pair. There will probably a ton of things that could happen to your girl's friend. Ranging from being abandoned, to having some sort of breakdown. Things I can think of at the moment include:

If you choose Lilly, you'll probably spend a fair amount of time helping Hanako. Or helping Lilly help Hanako. Same thing if you choose Hanako, only this time, you'll do a lot of Lilly's job in helping Hanako. Lilly will be there to help you help her.

If you choose either Rin or Emi, I think the dynamic of their friendship will stay the same. No offense, but I think that of the three friendship pairings, these two are not the closest friends. Don't get me wrong though, they are very close, after all, Emi has to dress Rin and all that. It's just that the other two bonds are much deeper than them. If anything, when you choose a girl from this pairing, their friend won't play too big a role. They'll just be 'there'.

If you choose Shizune, Misha will still play an important role. After all, she is Shizune's ears and mouth. Even when Hisao learns sign language, I think Misha will still be around. Regardless as to what that other thread says, I think Misha and Shizune will remain best friends. Hisao probably can't compete for the actual translator job, if anything, he'll be a novice for some time.

This all assumes that no major drama occurs to shake up these friendships, which will probably happen.

[LiquidOcelot]

Well I think the whole four act breakdown gives a good indication of what to expect.
I remember reading (correct me if I'm wrong) Act 2 is your chance to clarify your relationship with
the lead characters and narrow down your pursuits to a specific character:
(i.e jumping off the "poplar" path you unintentionally stumbled into),
so I'm guessing you'll have the about the same frequency of run in's with the cast as in Act 1.

After that well I suppose any guess is as good as the next.
Dev's mentioned multiple endings so I don't think it'd be unreasonable to consider a few scenarios:

-Helping lead girl with her friend
-Dumping lead girl for her friend
-Lead girl dumping you for her friend
-Lead girl dumping her friend for you
+The usual repertoire of soap opera plot twists etc.

you will never have a cripple harem ;_;

Two words bro: Coma fantasies
There's still a chance!

[EternalLurker]

Shizune and Misha will jealously barge into each path and make a mess of Hisao's relationship to make him join the Student Council.

It's what they do.

[Csihar]

Well I think the whole four act breakdown gives a good indication of what to expect.
I remember reading (correct me if I'm wrong) Act 2 is your chance to clarify your relationship with
the lead characters and narrow down your pursuits to a specific character:
(i.e jumping off the "poplar" path you unintentionally stumbled into),
so I'm guessing you'll have the about the same frequency of run in's with the cast as in Act 1.

I'm pretty sure you're locked into your path by the end of act 1 and can't switch after that, iirc. It makes sense from a technical standpoint since when you go to the scene select menu, there's a category for "Act 1" and then one for each of the girls, which only have their respective endings listed so far.

I also seem to remember hearing that each path is written by only one writer without collaboration from the others when other characters are involved, although of course everyone reads comments on everyone else's scenes.

[LiquidOcelot]

Redacted by author for Uninformed speculation

Meh

[G3n0c1de]

If you see the girl's festival then you're locked to her route. Act 1 sets the route you follow for the rest of the game.

[LiquidOcelot]

If you see the girl's festival then you're locked to her route. Act 1 sets the route you follow for the rest of the game.

Guess that settles it nicely.
I must have been lurking random bullshit.
Suppose that will work out for the better, more development of said route etc.