HOW is Clannad so long?

[Virtual Ocean Horizon]

Originally posted by Hainiryuun:

To give you word count:

Clannad : ~1.29 million English words
Grisaia no Kajitsu: ~1 million
The entire Harry Potter Series: ~1 million
4 book Twilight series: 591,434
4 book LotR series: 550,147
Witcher 3's script: ~450,000

http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_longest_video_game_scripts

Okay, how is this even possible? I knew Clannad was long, but THAT LONG? What the hell? Multiple book fantasy epics are shorter than a slice of life romance story... that a slice of life story is that long AT ALL... it sounds like its breaking the laws of casuality. Okay hyperbole aside, even after watching the beautiful anime I find it too hard to believe the word count given here, unless this thing is written like a charles dickens novel or something.

I mean, the wordcount alone scares the ♥♥♥♥ of me. My imagination is giving me vivid, wild images of a slice of life story that is nothing but utterly boring and repetitive. As a consumer who hates long, drawn outslice of life this scares me. Of course, I have no REAL idea, and people keep saying this is one of the HOLY GRAILS of Japanese media. Hense, confusion.

I can understand Grisia because supposedly thats action packed or whatever and broken up amongst a series. Or something, idk. Action is awesome and interesting! ...slice of life gets super hard to keep interesting after a while, I don't care who you are. I can see romance giving it the length but... yeah I'm still bewildered.

I want a detailed explanation of the how, I don't care about spoilers, I don't care about tl;drs.

How did a slice of life novel actually manage to attain this wordcount?


PS: okay wtf Witcher 3 was that long too??? aaaaaaah my head is hurting now.....

[Albion Hero]

Little Busters EX is even longer and its the next VN from Key/Jun Maeda. The whole point of Key games is to build up all the characters with lots of slice of life stuff and then have indepth character routes to give you feels

Also you watched the anime of Clannad, but there were a few routes that weren't animated as well. Hell, theres a character who got a route who never even appears in the anime because they were short on time.

[Virtual Ocean Horizon]

Originally posted by Albion Hero:

Little Busters EX is even longer and its the next VN from Key/Jun Maeda. The whole point of Key games is to build up all the characters with lots of slice of life stuff and then have indepth character routes to give you feels

Also you watched the anime of Clannad, but there were a few routes that weren't animated as well. Hell, theres a character who got a route who never even appears in the anime because they were short on time.

So, wait what you're telling me the entire anime was 1 bloody route? ...out of HOW MANY routes?

[Albion Hero]

Nah, the anime has a few of the routes. Then it has super condensed versions of the Kyon and Tomoyo routes in OVAs. But there are a few routes like the dorm manager and sick boy that weren't animated at all.

[Marik]

The writing is actually really easy to read. There is just a /lot/ happening in the game, with a /lot/ of choices. The anime tried to somewhat go into most of the routes, but they occasionally had to creatively write around the fact that Okazaki's fixed love interest is Nagisa in the anime.

[Virtual Ocean Horizon]

okay wtf that wiki has got to be wrong, choas head had 600 thousand words? My ass it did, I actually finished that linear thing within days

So I showed it to a friend and he agrees that wiki is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Clannad was long but not that long. Also apparently fate stay night is longer???

[messem10]

If you really want to show the length, the NIV Bible is ~740,000 words. (This includes both the Old and New Testaments)

[iFrame]

Its the norm for good VN which mostly are classics and quite old.

Tsukihime: 750,000 words
Fate/Stay Night: 1 million

Just a comparison, for western market:

Planescape Torment: 800,000 words
Baldur's Gate 2: 1 million

My point being, Visual Novels(VN) are kinda the japanese equivalent for western plot heavy cRPGs. Just like VNs, cRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape etc have stories for companions, different routes, alternate endings etc. What you see in animated versions or in books are just mere supplements to the games which only focus on a single set of decisions and plotline.

[Virtual Ocean Horizon]

I'm still utterly confounded how they managed to get a slice of life to be that long.

[iFrame]

Originally posted by Zeream:

I'm still utterly confounded how they managed to get a slice of life to be that long.

Haha, well that because it includes all the different branching stories for each female lead. If you only chose word count for 1 route like in the anime its Nagisa Furukawa then the word count will probably be around 100,000-200,000, probably lesser.

[Virtual Ocean Horizon]

Originally posted by Fi:

Originally posted by Zeream:

I'm still utterly confounded how they managed to get a slice of life to be that long.

Haha, well that because it includes all the different branching stories for each female lead. If you only chose word count for 1 route like in the anime its Nagisa Furukawa then the word count will probably be around 100,000-200,000, probably lesser.

Oh I get it, so the entire visual novel is like an entire combined romance slice of life anthology. That makes so much more sense. Thats... a lot of routes though. I was told that apparenlty a lot of the wording is also "fluff" because many routes share similar events?

[Marik]

Originally posted by Zeream:

Originally posted by Fi:

Haha, well that because it includes all the different branching stories for each female lead. If you only chose word count for 1 route like in the anime its Nagisa Furukawa then the word count will probably be around 100,000-200,000, probably lesser.

Oh I get it, so the entire visual novel is like an entire combined romance slice of life anthology. That makes so much more sense. Thats... a lot of routes though. I was told that apparenlty a lot of the wording is also "fluff" because many routes share similar events?

The game isn't really slice of life. It's more a drama with slice of life and romance elements?

And I remember checking this before. The word count on the wiki is mostly right. Lines you might read multiple times as a player is still in the game script only once.


And I checked the chaos;head entry, and it said it had a script file size of only 1.8MB when Clannad's is around 4MB? You may have misread it earlier.

[Virtual Ocean Horizon]

Are we looking at the same link? There is no entry for script file size lol. Its the one in the OP.

[TrickZZter]

Originally posted by Zeream:

Are we looking at the same link? There is no entry for script file size lol. Its the one in the OP.

Look at 'Japanese character count (KB)' column.

KB = KiloBytes

[Virtual Ocean Horizon]

Uh but we're reading this in english, so I was looking at the english word count... why are you looking at the japanese character count...?

[Marik]

Originally posted by Zeream:

Uh but we're reading this in english, so I was looking at the english word count... why are you looking at the japanese character count...?

To actually see how the two compare? If not, you can look at the line count instead for a true indication of how long the game really is... Chaos;head with 25k vs Clannad with 101k?