What happened to the old style of eroge?

I recently restarted playing Nocturnal Illusion. That, combined with a post in the User Uploads sharing Love Potion, reminded me of a bunch of other old school eroge. One thing that struck me was that the hentai games now all seem to be incredibly long-winded, rambling and often emo stories that offer you about 6 choices throughout the entire game and each choice makes a pretty big difference, eventually (or sometimes immediately) taking you down a totally different path, even if the choice(s) may have seemed innocent enough at first.

By contrast, older hentai games usually gave you frequent choices, many of which would give you different scenes but wouldn't always dramatically change stuff. It's more realistic, I think. I mean, in real life if I decide to go into Asda rather than Tesco, it's not really going to change my day but in a modern hentai game, it'd not only change your day but your entire life. That's not all of it, either. The older classics seemed to give you more choices of where to go, Nocturnal Illusion even having a map that you move around as you like. Divi Dead had you exploring around a large school; you weren't just told "I thought I'd go here... I thought I'd go there..." for 5 hours.

There are quite a lot of other differences, like how nowadays you tend to start out as a generic student but then eventually some amazing shit comes out of nowhere but back in the day, the plot would start actually at the start of the game, but I'm already rambling on like the lead character of a modern hentai game. I'm just wondering why this shift occurred. It seems like they also rebranded eroge as VNs just to gloss over the fact that they are now about as interactive as a long fall from the top of a tower block. Or maybe I'm wrong and there's some other reason or something I'm missing?

Can you name some good modern games that have the spirit and relative non-linearity of older eroge? What older hentai games are you particularly fond of? Do you prefer the modern verbose, linear VNs or the older games that played more like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books, such as Fatal Relations, Divi Dead and Nocturnal Illusion?

Oh I do love Nocturnal Illusions, it has great music and the freedom you get of walking around is pretty sweet. The only thing that was kinda sad, was that it was impossible not to get all the endings. By the time you got to the last scene, all you had to do is save and you could see everyone's ending (Sari ftw), which made it seem silly that they gave you choices to begin with. Still, I do get what you are saying.

Times have changed, and so do games, and it often seems that we get a huge quantity of them as compared to quality. I'm not going to go into a lengthy rant here, but I can't even name one modern non-linear game at the moment. Of course, that's partially because I don't play unless it's translated, so I'm sure I'm missing out alot.

As for old favorites, I guess 'Chain' comes to mind. At least, I think it was called that. You were an old timey detective, a real trenchcoat wearing gumshoe type, and you had murders to solve. There was interrogation of witnesses, decisions regarding how to go about your day, and all around a pretty fun story. On a side note, I remember seeing screenshots of a game that looked surprisingly simliar (detective, or maybe police related game?), and if anyone has played it (and recognizes it by this vague description)...let me know!

Too bad my otaku self wasn't born earlier and didn't felt the gold and glory of those old games.

After playing almost like 200 titles of "modern" games, I can safely assume that modern games main point is the story, while Older games tends to use a interactive root model where everything you choose seems to affect the story.

The first game that I played was "Brave Soul" an Rpg eroge, with lots of missions and hidden quest, it's interactive enough that you can "control" the players life.

Recently I tried some VIPER games, but the whole "talk" "think" option is just a forceful option to make you read the story. True Love was good, till I realize I can actually make the girls fall in love with me in one try (precisely 2 tries, because there are 2 contradicting girls), after making them fall in love with me, it's just a matter of Save at the last point, and load to get all the endings.

What trigger the shift?
It's mostly likely that fans in this age prefer a long, deep story, rather than a game that is short and you must do a lot of repetition to complete the game. (This statement maybe biased, because the writer never conducted a survey)

Modern games that are "interactive", there's plenty of them, you just have to find a company that specializes at that "genre".

For Example
ALICE SOFT


LEAF


Illusion


In my case I prefer new games, just because of the story. Older games doesn't have a really deep story, and sometimes "I can already see the ending." just by looking at the pattern choices, while the modern games, sometimes have a twist that isn't affected by a pattern. (This statement maybe biased, because I've only played a handful of old games)

(wow, my longest wall of text in FAKKU :) )

true love gave you 3 choices a day for like a 2and a half month span with I thin 8 girls that would be places somedays and you basically controlled the guys life it was like beta sims

Did you ever play One ~To the radiant season~?

Most of those choices were stupidly innocent, and a lot were also redundant. I couldn't get more then one ending without needing a guide, because it seemed no matter how I changed my choices I kept ending up with the same girl.




Hah...Divi-Dead...You cannot, cannot say Divi-Dead was not fucking random. No way.

Divi-Dead was one of those semi-linear explorative games. I finished it, but the amount of time I spent on it is roughly divided into 2/3 story and 1/3 wandering around, lost and confused, stringing together every curse I know as I desperately look for that detail I missed before the story will progress.

I also find that, on rare occasions, a small choice CAN change your life.

I mean, imagine it this way: You have a choice of going into Asda or Tesco. In Asda, you would have seen a girl who you, for whatever reason, would befriend and eventually fall in love with. On the contrary, in Tesco, you would either find nobody special or just run into some friends from school/work, kill some time, and head home.

Sure, unlikely as hell freezing over, but it's possible. And the whole point of an entertaining fiction is chronicle those interesting but highly unlikely events.



Times change?

I dunno. I didn't really play that many of the older VNs, but the choices have always seemed innocent to me. I mean, take critical point. In one series of three choices, where you are out looking for someone, if you persist too long or give up to early or happen to have missed complimenting someone earlier, you take a power coupling to the crotch at mach 1 and die.

What the fuck, I ask?



Galaxy Angel. It's 50% space rts reminiscent of Homeworld, 50% exploratory VN. Tenka Seiha is doing a translation.

But I assume Galaxy Angel doesn't really count, since it's not a pure VN.

As for older games...let me think...Kanon, Critical Point, Crescendo, Divi-Dead, Little My Maid.

As for preference, I'm going to go with modern games. Classics are great and all, but I've never taken a pipe to the crotch while courting Saki in Snow Sakura, been torn asunder while chasing Aeka in Yume Miru Kusuri, or blown up in Edelweiss. And, if we can count non-H, Chaos Head may have been long winded, but the story was fucking awesome.

Very interesting responses, I must say. I think my main issue with modern VNs is that, while they do indeed focus more on story, the story is often overblown and melodramatic. If I want just a pure story, a fantastic story, there are countless books and films I could enjoy instead. I really can't see the story of something like Tsukihime as deep. It's really self-important emo crap that may have struck a chord with me when I was 15. That sort of story just doesn't click with me, so I'm spending hours and hours reading some juvenile fiction with lines like "KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL". Really, it's like Korn wrote a book.

Eh, I'm sort of getting off track here - what I really mean to say is that maybe the restrictively linear nature of modern hentai games would be less annoying if the genre had more variety to its stories and didn't just feel like it was playing wish-fulfilment for angry 15-year-olds. To give a counter-argument, the more modern game Edelweiss doesn't really have a strong overarching story but it certainly feels more realistic. You are a relatively happy teenager and you go around with your friends trying to get laid. Yes, an actually vaguely believable and reasonable storyline. For once you're not some nutjob with ISSUES and DEPTH.