I just finished the GFL2 Aphelion event story as of an hour ago. Since I talked about another GFL2 event earlier in the year, I figured I'd do it again. I missed out on the Centauressi event in March (I think), so I have a bit of a gap in the event stories. Aside from that, I've been pretty consistent. GFL2 is not my main game so it's taken me a bit of time to finish. My main game is NIKKE and I can typically get away with doing daillies at work. However, I do a lot of events at home on my PC. As I've said many times over the last few posts, March/April has been really busy so I missed out on the last couple of banners. I'll have to pick up 416/Klukai at another time. I'm glad the events last the entire month, though! Since I'm working on a visual novel, I'm interested in learning what I can about storytelling from games I already like to play.
Background
As a reminder, I think I just barely make the qualifications to call myself a "veteran" GFL player. I played the original in the Summer of 2019 when the game was running the VA-11 HALL-A event for the first time. As a new player, I think I was struggling to do some of the harder content from the event and I ended up missing 1 or 2 units. While I'm not necessarily in endgame in GFL, it's lived in my mind for the last few years.
There's something about anthropomorphizing objects like guns or naval ships that is very alluring. Even racehorse girls are starting to become very popular! What's next? Car girls? Bug girls? The possibilities are endless!
Focusing back on GFL2, I was really excited for the release of the global version of the game. I read a very long Google Doc that explained the lore and world of Girls' Frontline and another game called Operation Bakery which is set in the same universe, but decades after GFL1&2. I would like to say that I'm fairly informed of stuff, but a lot of the deeper technicalities about what happens to each individual doll is lot on me.
Aphelion Story - General Thoughts on Story and Writing for Mobile Games
The GFL2 event stories are really awesome because they happen in parallel with the main story. The main story follows the commander (you) and picks up nearly 10 years after the end of the first game. Long story short, a very formidable organization that the commander though they had wiped out is back and they're following the breadcrumb trail to figure out what they're up to this time around.
The event stories happen in between certain gaps in the main story. So for example, in an event earlier this year, the commander is surrounded by an enemy force, but rescued by old colleagues and their new friend. There's an event story that follows the trio days before they come to rescue the commander. I really like this shift in perspective as it gives the girls and their personalities a time to shine.
NIKKE recently began their 2.5 anniversary event last week and I was reading a player's opinion on the story and the bond interactions for the game. I read the comments as well and realized that a lot of players felt unsatisfied that the protagonist (typically a self-insert in many gacha games) was not directly talking to the new character in the bond interactions.
For context, NIKKE has a bond system where you can build your relationship with your individual units. On top of getting additional dialogue between "you" and your favorite characters, you can boost their stats as the bond strengthens in level. Many of these interactions are done 1-on-1 with the player character and the NIKKE under the pretense of it being a counseling session.
Unfortunately the newest character, Little Mermaid, has not technically met the player in the main story yet. Shift Up, the developer behind NIKKE, decided that these interactions should happen with Little Mermaid alone and it's kind of awkward. She's just talking to herself. This isn't the only outlier in the bond system, but the other ones make a little bit more sense. Certain units represent a version of an existing character, but in the past. When you build your relationship with this "past" version, it begins with the "modern" unit reminiscing about an interaction she had in the past.
After reading more comments, I realized that a lot of people replying felt very strongly about including the player character in everything. While I don't agree with how Shift Up handled the Little Mermaid bond interaction, it's not the end of the world and I hope they learn based on the feedback that players have provided. However, I don't really agree that the player character has to be the one in the spotlight every single time.
Around this time last year, NIKKE had their 1.5 anniversary event, Lost Kingdom. To this day, I think it's my favorite event, yet, the player character had NO involvement whatsoever. There was a lot of good character development as well!
Similarly to GFL2 events, Lost Kingdom did a good job at giving each NIKKE a bit of time to steal the spotlight. Not only do we learn more about our beloved characters, but we learn about the lives they have outside of their interactions with the player character. I really like seeing how my favorite characters resolve issues on their own.
So in a roundabout way, yeah, I really like GFL2 events because I get to peek into the lives of some of my favorite characters.
For Aphelion, it focuses on Klukai and Mechy from a squad of T-Dolls called HIDE 404. I really liked the interactions between 404 because a couple of them have been in the same squad since GFL1, but in GFL2 we are now seeing Klukai take on a leadership role. In the previous game, she was often frustrated with her former squad leader and made it clear that she would take over as soon as she got the opportunity. Her leadership style is very strict and she expects the best out of her squad mates.
While Klukai might seem like a hard ass, I think she's very aware of her squad's capabilities despite the constant verbal abuse. Klukai is someone who doesn't tolerate slackers and can find faults in anything. She's not someone who will be satisfied with a positive outcome of a mission because chances are it could've been done more efficiently.
Despite her attitude, I think she's in her element. I was going to do a review of several characters I like from gacha games and analyze the character designs, but I think I'll save that for a separate post.
Mechty on the other hand has not changed much apparently. We get some insight of some of her hobbies, but even after all this time she's still the resident snoozer of the group. She really loves sleeping. I don't have much to say about Mechty in comparison because the event didn't focus on her as much as it did on Klukai. Mechty feels like she's more or less along for the ride and slacking wherever she can. I'm not as familiar with her, so there might be some backstory that I'm missing.
The action sequences in the GFL2 events are phenomenal and always hook me in. The combination of music, incredible artwork/CGs, and writing make the scenes come alive and get me invested. Aphelion was no different, but I started to realize that writing for gacha games is kinda ... ass.
I noticed this recently with NIKKE as well in the recent story update.
For many gacha games, the story is presented in a visual novel format using character sprites/art and text. However, a lot of the dialogue for a chapter has to be broken down to fit the gameplay. Let's say you write a chapter for the story. Without taking into account how it will fit with the gameplay, I would bet that it has a decent pace to it.
In gacha games like NIKKE or GFL2, the story is broken up into "nodes" or levels with gameplay. Personally, I believe this holds the story hostage and it has the potential to suffer if it's not managed correctly. For example, if your story is too short for the amount of "nodes" in a chapter, you might have to extend it with "fluff" dialogue. Dialogue that might not really impact the story significantly or maybe it's there for comedic relief in a tense situation. There are many things you can do to pad a story out, but I think I notice it subconsciously when it happens.
If a story's pace is kind of slow or I feel like the writers are stalling it for a few more nodes, I start to get impatient. Typically, I like letting the dialogue audio play out when I'm invested in a visual novel. If I think there are pacing issues or can more or less make out what's happening I will begin to speed-read. It happened to me a lot at the start of Aphelion. I don't think it needed to be a two-part event.
Personally, I think the set up was very slow and the setting didn't help at all. HIDE 404 and the soldiers they encountered were more or less lost and having trouble using communication equipment for the entirety of part 1 of the event story. It was frustrating because the antagonist and their intentions was being drip fed and I don't feel like anything substantial happened until part 2.
This bothers me with gacha writing specifically, especially if the events begin to follow a formula.
GFL2 tries to remedy this by including "story" nodes. So aside from the typical node that has gameplay followed by a bit of story, story nodes are entire chunks of dialogue and maybe include a cutscene. I think it's a decent idea, but I'd still prefer to have better pacing overall and NOT be time-gated. These are the trade-offs of playing a live service game, I guess. I'm also positive that the reason for splitting the story up like that is to keep the player as much as they can in the game.
Gacha games do what they can to keep you in the app for as long as possible. Simply putting it, the longer you're in-game, the more likely you are to purchase something from the shop. They do this deliberately, too. Next time you do your daillies in your favorite gacha, see how often they show you something with a price tag as you move through the menus.
Why do you think your daily claimable free gems are only available in the cash shop? Couldn't they send those to your mailbox? Give them to you when you log in?
This is just a thing I noticed more recently about the story-aspect of gacha games. I used to not care, but since I've been working on the VN this stuff has been more noticeable. Story pacing issues also exist outside of live-service games, but I think the responsibility for that falls under the author or just poor planning on the developer's end.
Anyway, the event was okay. It had a slow start until the action hooked me in towards the end. The writing for GFL2 is typically good, I just don't like how gacha games space out their stories.
The next event will feature one of my favorite guns, the Kriss Vector! The T-Doll who uses the Kriss Vector, also called Vector, will be debuting in May. I'm saving all of my tickets and resources for her and plan to get Klukai and Mechty whenever I'm able to. It's really tough playing multiple gacha games, but I'm glad GFL2 is a bit on the cheaper side.
