> The more effort you make to integrate player actions, the less resources you have to make a compelling story. In the most obvious case: story branching, you h

> The more effort you make to integrate player actions, the less resources you have to make a compelling story. In the most obvious case: story branching, you have double the work for each branch, some of them may be hard to make interesting. That's very true, you don't have infinite resources. > Some Japanese visual novels may have great stories, but they are games in name only. For example the "when they cry" series are literally visual novels (or sound novels as they like to call them), there are zero gameplay elements, and no branching, you are basically reading a book with a few illustrations and (very good) background music. True, but you also have others like Hollow Ataraxia where you have way more gameplay. Still not as much as a "classic" game, especially these days, but this wouldn't be possible in another format, which I think is key. Same thing with the when they cry series, the music is very important and they wouldn't work as well as book.