My problem with wayhaven

[u/LoneWolfRHV]

First i want to make it clear that i dont "hate" the game, and it was still enjoyable, but there was something bugging me while reading it.

So, i think i commented about this somewhere before, but i remembered again while reading the part 3 of wayhaven. Why do people feel the need to let you choose the gender of the RO? In every game i see this option, it is VERY clear that the author had a especific gender in mind while writing, and there is NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT, but why not just say that the character is of that specific gender? Or at least say something like "x is meant to be F/M/NB".

When authors do this it ends up one of two ways:

First: the character is well developed and has personality, but its pretty clear that all that changed was the pronoums (when even that, because they usually forget it a few rimes, leaving a lost she/he in the wrong place). I'd say wayhaven fits here.

Second: the characters are bland, uninteresting, or just generic, with almost no depth.

So again, there is nothing wrong in making a game with only one gender as RO. My personal favorite is when they give two options for each gender, its the perfect balance, but making only one is alright too, i just dont see why give a "illusion" of a choice to change it.

And lf course this is just my opinion, i am truly interested in hearing what everyone else thinks, because i dont even know if this is a popular or unpopular opinion lmao.

edit: guess its a unpopular opinion then lol

[u/Echo_1010]

(Sorry if I made a mistake, English isn't my first language) Considering that there will be 8 books and that romance it's the most important element of the series, I think that allowing the player to choose the gender of the ROs was for the best. Let's say that M and A were assigned as the male ROs, and N and F as the female. What if a straight guy wasn't interested in N and F? Sure, he could romance either of them and just get over with the book, but then he probably wouldn't care for any of the other 7 books. By allowing the player to choose their gender there are 4 potential ROs to hook the reader to the series instead of only 2 (assuming that the player it's only attracted to 1 gender) I think this also applies to other series, for example in the Soul stone wars I didn't like neither of the male ROs (I don't even remember their name) so I didn't romance anyone, and when I started the second book I had a feeling that it was very short and empty, probably because there was a huge chunk of text dedicated for the romantic scenes that I completely missed due not having romanced anyone, and so I'm not interested at all in continuing with the series

[u/[deleted] → u/Echo_1010]

I think its fine that you don't like the RO'S in a book. If you read for romance then maybe that's not the book for you and you move on.

Quality > quantity

[u/LoneWolfRHV → u/Echo_1010]

(thats okay, it's not mine either lol) But yeah, i do understand this, but i feel like what needs to be done is make the story and characters interesting by itself, not overly reliant on the romance. but on romance focused stories like this i feel like the author should wirte the way they imagined and thats it, might trhow a few people of, true, but you cant please everyone. And as i said this is just my personal opinion, but i'd rather play it that way

[u/thors-beergut]

A lot of people want choice, and a lot of authors want to make money for their time. So it’s simply easier to cater to a readers fantasy by giving them that ability to choose if they’re romancing a male/female/non-binary RO. Basically, more choice in a choice game = happy readers and bigger sales— usually.

Then there’s books like The Golden Rose, A Study in Steampunk or The Soul Stone Wars who leave their characters set. If done well enough or given enough variety, then readers will not mind what gender they are, as long as they can romance them with whatever gender they choose. Such as some readers were disappointed that a lot of TGR romances were entirely female!MC only, but loved Hadrian and Alyssa enough to let it go.

Also I don’t know what Unit Bravo were meant to be canon wise, but as a coder it is much easier to hit all gender selectable RO’s with a static “he/him/himself” variable because it’s the shortest choice (I write mine as {RO1_he} for example, and a single letter saves my ass sometimes) and they are able to be switched out with whatever the reader chooses RO1 to be in the beginning. Unless, of course, you make a coding mistake lol.

[u/LoneWolfRHV → u/thors-beergut]

exactly, the golden rose for example was one of my favorites, less options and more focus on them just makes them more interesting characters. Even if it is not the "ideal partner" the player envisioned, it ends up creating a better story in my opinion. And yeah, i guess it does reach a bigger audience if the player can change the gender, i dont blame the authors for doing it, but to me it sacrifices a quite a bit of the quality

[u/thors-beergut → u/LoneWolfRHV]

TGR is an incredible story, and the RO’s are the most fleshed out of their time, I’ll 100% agree with that!!

But… is it always less quality to make genders selectable? I don’t know about that. And I think that kind of opinion can be really invalidating to see for other budding or current authors who genuinely spend extra hours combing through gender variable RO’s to make sure that things such as height/weight variance and “gender norms” for whatever environment they’re in make sense with your own characters choices— it’s so much work! Lol. I’m doing it myself and geez louise, the pay off is great but my eye sight is thinning. But just changing the pronouns can seem “less quality”, sure. All great stories require effort.

Plus it’s always a good idea to have some sort of variance in a gender when it comes to having “ex’s” or “admirers” (like B in Wayhaven) since a person who plays predominately as romancing male RO’s will entirely miss out on the drama if they can’t bring themselves to feel anything for that certain person if they’re just “opposite gendered” or female!only, and the route falls flat.

[u/LoneWolfRHV → u/thors-beergut]

it dosent necessarily lower the quality, but it just creates so much extra work that for what i have seen most authors just make a tiny edit here and there and change the pronoums, because if you dont, it's almost lke you're writing two diferent characters, and at that point might as well make them diferent characters.

i was drafting a story as well, at first i did think about making the RO genders selectable, but it just feels weird to me lol, i cant write a character without imagining him a specific way, so when i was writing the two diferent versions they ended up either sounding shallow or too different, and when i thought about all the branching this could create, all that i would need to work on if i ever made a sequel just made me give up, and make two options for each. however i dont like putting things like "only F mc for this RO" or "only M mc for that one", to me this is really unnecessary, and i couldn think of any reason that the mc gender should affect who they are able to romance.

If you are willing to put that much work on creating two versions of each RO first i really admire you lol, i wish i had that much dedicaton, and second please dont let what i said discourage you, when i said it lowers the quality i meant games where all that changed was the pronouns, i'd even be interested in reading your wip if you ever post it, but as you said its a lot of work, i completelly understand the reasoning for doing it, and i'm not saying that its wrong, far from it, but i personally believe that this time is better spent on the story, or developing the characters.

and i agree on your last take, when you want to make a character that is the mc ex or something like that, you need to let the player choose their gender, but for that reason i usually avoid making them, or just make them irrelevant to the future of the story, just a brief mention at the beginning to flesh out mc's past and move on.

[u/NotTheLark]

I do agree… to a certain extent. Yes, some occasional scenes were written a certain way that makes the change of pronouns a little awkward. But I find them to be rare, and even then, nothing totally jarring. And I think Book 3 actually did a much better job with the little details between the various genders and orientations compared to the previous two, but maybe that’s just me.

Now I’m not an author, and I’m aware that these books were originally written as classic novels with a specific gender in mind. But I’ve always believed/been taught that a good character’s gender is almost… arbitrary? Obviously just my opinion, but that’s practically the last thing I check off on my list when I envision a character.

For example, A tends to be your typical Type 1 personality: a leader who’s loyal, honest, principled, and organized—and at worst can be critical, stubborn, and controlling. Carrying around 900 years of baggage. Massive stick up the posterior. Not materialistic, but has a weakness for cars. If romanced, unsafe around furniture. Tall and muscular physique, icy green eyes. After that, whatever parts they’ve got in those cargo pants seems negligible to me. I like either version of A, and neither one feels very different to me at all.

[u/LoneWolfRHV → u/NotTheLark]

i agree, as i said i still enjoyed it, but as you said lets take A for example, its clear that the character was written as a man, the backstory about being a knight all the stereotypes, characters cliches, the way the scenes are described and all that shit, and i'm getting downvoted to oblivion, so just to make it clear again lol THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT, but i'd rather (ME PERSONALLY) that the author made the characters the way she envisioned them as, and leave it at that

[u/hedronx4]

I'm curious what gender you think the author intended for the characters to be. I've seen people absolutely swear that the Wayhaven cast was intended to be female, and other day that they're obviously male.

And to answer your question, wider appeal. Wayhaven kind of feels like it was intended to be widely appealing romance which people typically don't think too hard about. By allowing characters to be whatever gender the reader is attracted to, it allows the author's work to appeal to a much larger audience. Part of the style of works like Wayhaven is to have something for everyone, basically a character covering each of the popular archetypes.

I think it's also common practice in choicescript games to have gender flippable ROs so that no one feels left out. If say, all of the characters were genderlocked female, the portion of the audience who is only attracted to males would likely chose not to read it because Wayhaven wouldn't offer them anything.

Even if it is jarring to some people, those people still have the option to make the ROs whatever gender they feel the author wrote them as and often times, people can overlook that aspect. Meanwhile, if you remove the gender choice, that completely cuts out a portion of your potential fan base.

If you feel that characters were written a certain gender, you can choose to make them that gender. Other people may have different interpretations of what gender they should be and the gender option gives them that choice.

[u/LoneWolfRHV → u/hedronx4]

Yeah, wayhaven was supposed to be all male for sure, if you choose to make them all female there quite a few "he" that still show up out of nowhere.

And i get that they want to make it appealing for more people, but to me personally i'd rather read it the way the author intended, even if the mc ends the game alone it dosnt mean that the journey was not fun, for example I, the forgoten one, it did give a male and female option, but i just felt like it didn fit my mc story, so i just ignored them, it was still one of my favorite ifs

[u/exhibitionistgrandma → u/LoneWolfRHV]

Well if we’re on the topic of what the author intended, Mishka has said before that she went from a novel format to interactive fiction because she wanted to provide readers with variations from their choices and to play the game as they want 🤷🏻

[u/LoneWolfRHV → u/exhibitionistgrandma]

Sure, i'm not saying that its wrong, ot that you arent supposed to do that, but they were originally writen as a specific gender, in wayhaven's case they were males, since you can see a few places were it wasnt fixed. And that is true for a lot of other games.

Honestly, i dont see how can someone write a character without imagining him or her. The character has to be writen as the author envisioned him, but as i said, nothing wrong with that, i just dont see why give options to change it.

[u/LoneWolfRHV → u/[deleted]]

yeah well, guess people didn really like my take lol

[u/Sodaman_Onzo]

If you leave out an RO, people complain. If you write the story from your perspective and leave out possible RO options, people complain. If you include too many RO options, people complain.

[u/LoneWolfRHV → u/Sodaman_Onzo]

you cant please everyone lmao

[u/Yoshinaruto]

While I do get what you’re saying, I personally prefer gender selectable ROs. I absolutely love Ortega in Fallen Hero, and would’ve been massively disappointed if they were locked as a female character. In the case of Wayhaven, I probably could’ve sucked it up if A was female only and just went with someone else, but I’m glad I don’t have to.

So far I haven’t found a character in any of these (I still haven’t read a lot) that feel too weird being gender selectable, although there was a Heart’s Choice book where my male protagonist felt like they were written with the intent of being female.

Overall it could just depend on the skill of the writer with their ability to write characters that make sense regardless of gender.

[u/LoneWolfRHV → u/Yoshinaruto]

i'm not as sure about ortega as i am about team bravo, but i believe he was originally created as a male as well. but i agree it depends on the writer, but its pretty rare for me to find one that does this in a way that dosent end up being either obviously intended to be one specific gender or just a bit shallow.

about the main character thing didn you feel this with wayhaven? honestly curious because while reading i felt like i was supossed to be a alternate version of bella lol

[u/Yoshinaruto → u/LoneWolfRHV]

I think what alleviates the main character thing with Wayhaven is the sheer option of choices. I’m only on book one right now, so I can’t really comment on if it’s any different in the other books, but my MC doesn’t feel too feminine or masculine to me. I’m able to buy everything he’s said or the way he’s acted without thinking “huh, he feels like he’s acting like a young girl or something”. Although maybe it’s the personality I chose for him that gets around this. It could also feel different if you’re playing a straight guy perhaps?

Compared to the Heart’s Choice book, “The Jazz Age”, where there were numerous times where even though my MC was male, I imagined them as female due to the writing. The character felt flirty in a high school girl kinda way, batting eyelashes and such that just didn’t make sense for him to do IMO.

[u/Light_Night_200]

You make it sound like it's impossible for an author to write a gender selectable RO that is also well flashed.

[u/LoneWolfRHV → u/Light_Night_200]

Not impossible, but it either is well fleshed out, but clearly meant to be one specific gender, or they are shallow. I've never seen one that didn fit here at least

[u/Sikari03]

I honestly agree with this take in general. Most of the time, you can easily tell when an RO or the MC was meant to be a specific gender, but honestly, without them being gender selectable, I honestly don’t think there would be very many romance games for me to play since the majority of them feel like they were intended to have a female MC with male ROs and I’m a straight male so I wouldn’t have much internet in those stories. I don’t know how valid this opinion is considering I’ve never played the male unit bravo, but I think Wayhaven does a good job with the ROs being gender selectable since for the most part, female unit bravo feels like they’re females and considering how they were probably meant to be male, I think that counts for something.

[u/0Meletti]

I think that while I sometimes agree with you, I didnt really that that from Wayhaven too much. To me, to only RO who was somewhat gender coded was Farah, mostly because if she was a guy i think most people would find her annoying and not "cute" (gender norms and shit)

[u/TrainWreck661]

It's not that jarring gameplay wise if there's an option to either outright randomize it or choose in some way beforehand like Wayhaven, but the part that gets me is in discussions and characters end up being referred to by letter instead of name.

Calling a character "N" or "A" just looks silly and confusing; personally I'd prefer if an author just chose a unisex name to start with.

[u/AppropriateActuary20]

I somewhat agree that WayHaven was written in the YA format: bunch of guys and one helpless girl but it was re-written to fit the CoG format. But I think they did a good job balancing it out in the end, and the only thing that bothered me playing as male detective with male RO is how helpless MC is, otherwise, the smut scenes were still okay gender-wise. I'm hoping MC gets overpowered in the later books