On a personal note: (speaking as Nicholai the VN player) I also love when VNs give me the opportunity to befriend the characters throughout the story, and it's not necessarily a romance-only pipeline. <3 It's why I was pretty invested in the idea of close friendships/comraderies being an option in TIS if you choose not to pursue romance.
For the latter question (speaking as Nicholai the writer/artist haha) I think the most that can be said about this for now is that there is only one path to the bottom of the Spire, but multiple ways of traversing it. In others words, the locations will remain the same, but character interactions and development will change significantly. The consequences of allying with one character over another start to pile up fast the deeper you go. What you learn about other characters and how they develop will different. Your methods and options at your disposal will be different. Even the areas of a location the mc sees/focuses on, and the world lore that's revealed will be different. And of course, there is the eventual possibility of character death. There is even a "hidden" character you may encounter in different ways depending on what you do, but that's all I'm going to reveal about that ; )
On character dynamics in TIS, and designing relationship-building mechanics a little outside the box~ » Comments