Characters or story - Whats more important?

[MarcoCorvus21]

How about the art everybody :v ? 

[Clephas]

lol... Marco, it is pretty easy to tell if you've played enough VNs... but ones made in a given period tend to have the same styles and almost identical levels of quality (for commercial ones) with a few exceptions, where a big budget is put in for a particular game and it gets more and higher quality CGs and tachie with more expression and pose variation.  Honestly, it isn't an area where you see enough quality variation to make much of a difference, for the most part.  Standouts like Hapymaher are pretty rare... say five or six VNs a year that stray above the 'average belt' of VNs in terms of visual quality.

Actually, the same goes for music... most VN companies draw from the same group of composers and use alter-versions of the same tracks for the same types of scene.  VNs that really do have a unique soundtrack with mostly completely newly-composed tracks number maybe one in twenty in a given year... and sometimes less.  High quality VNs will generally have two or three completely unique tracks, and the highest-budget ones are the ones that can afford to have scratch-composed music as bgms in their games.  Most companies do anything they can to cut expenses. 

[Chronopolis]

I agree that a lot of story comes from characters and vice versa. You got to break things apart a bit finer.

Looking some odd cases: there are stories with unique/cool characters, who get developed and act consistently during the novel. However those novels may have problems, like many plot holes, pacing, not dramatic enough, nothing really happened.

Those are the stories I would call good characters, bad story.

Good story, bad characters would be...the plot has good twists, or the dramaticness/writing/pacing/development is really good, but the characters are annoyingly shallow or stupid at times.

If we are talking about character development and events whose significance hinges on the character's nature, then yeah, character/story it's either both or none. But there are other areas that fall under the blanket of "story".

[castor212]

I see it like this: plot twist happens because a certain enemy character did X to the main character, and this enemy character did X because he is a good character.

If this enemy character is a shallow character, he will not do X, but instead Y, and the plot twist will become less relevant.

So I think that story is how you make the characters do something according to the "deepness" or inherent nature, in order to push forward the event itself.

 

But hey, maybe that's just me.

 

Edited November 29, 2015 by castor212

[Scorp]

Strong plot could excuse shallow characters for me.

But no strong characters could excuse stupid alogical plot.

So I choose story over characters, that's why I always enjoy Urobuchi Gen novels, while we usually get quite fleshless characters, who just used as plot devices. But I am ok with that.

[VirginSmasher]

I think the story matters more. I can really hate a character but if the story is amazing for that character, I will still enjoy the route.

[Darklord Rooke]

Generally speaking, the characters are the most important aspect of character driven stories, and the plot is the most important aspect of plot driven stories. You can have great characters in a plot driven story, but that just makes things even better.

Character driven stories are stories that are focused on the inner conflicts of characters and their relationships, so obviously strong character development is a must here. The decisions of the characters drive the story forward. A lot of literature and romance fall into this category. In plot driven stories, twists and action take centre stage and the action tends to drive the story forward. Obviously Star Wars tends to fall into this category, and also all of David Eddings novels.

[Clephas]

Most urban fantasy in the US would qualify as character-driven story.  While there is a background story, it is usually more about the characters and their experiences.  Charage are the most extreme form of this I've encountered in otaku media, incidentally... so extreme that it frequently goes too far, lol.  This is opposed to military science fiction, like Honor Harrington, which is much about the wider implications of what is going as the characters. 

[Clowsama]

I say the characters are the most important. Let's be honest, most of the stories have been told again and again, Joseph Campbell's monomyth theory as a proof, so originality is really rare and some VN tries too hard to have a complicated plot and end up being confusing. With good characters, even simple plots are enjoyable, especially humorous stories, because characters interaction are funny, not the plot. And for the drama, you need good characters to emotionally involve the reader, otherwise you just don't care what happens to them.

But of course, as a picky reader, I want good characters AND story... and voice acting, music, design, H-scenes, etc. ^^

[Dergonu]

I say the characters are the most important. Let's be honest, most of the stories have been told again and again, Joseph Campbell's monomyth theory as a proof, so originality is really rare and some VN tries too hard to have a complicated plot and end up being confusing. With good characters, even simple plots are enjoyable, especially humorous stories, because characters interaction are funny, not the plot. And for the drama, you need good characters to emotionally involve the reader, otherwise you just don't care what happens to them.

But of course, as a picky reader, I want good characters AND story... and voice acting, music, design, H-scenes, etc. ^^

What a great answer! This is really well articulated.