u/CrowbarDoop

As the title says, I often think about certain endings or routes as filler to get the game to 100 endings, so that got me interested in the opposite mission: what could we pare the game down to without losing its best moments or identity? Obviously, this is a super subjective task, as different people are going to value different parts of the game (e.g. there's an obvious and reasonable argument that a core part of the game's identity is having exactly 100 endings). The idea still interests me, though, so I'll be giving it my own attempt and I'm curious to see what other people think.

Going to be explaining my thoughts route-by-route, going to try to be willing to kill my favorite endings as well, though I'm certainly still going to play favorites. I'm also going to be operating under the rule of not changing the game to facilitate cutting the routes, you just get to the decision as written and then don't actually get to make a decision. Also, to be clear, I am absolutely not trying to say that this version of the game would be better, I like that there are 100 endings even though many of them are bad or unremarkable, I'm just interested by the thought experiment.

>!Conspiracy: This route is stupid, chop it off immediately and move on. I will miss the 5 minutes of good Kurara characterization, but I can live without it for the sake of reaching The Minimum Line. We could've gotten almost that exact same characterization if this route didn't exist and she just got to survive in 2nd Scenario, but my self-imposed rules don't allow for that, so oh well. Eight endings cut.!<

>!Serial Battles: I think this route is overhated, but it adds nothing besides a single interesting fight, get it out of here. Two endings cut.!<

>!Casual: I do actually like this route, but it serves the same function as Comedy, and if I'm gonna cut one, it will be this one. Never let it be said that I'm too soft. Two endings cut.!<

>!Comedy: I am going to choose to keep this one, but at the same time, I think we can get the gist in only two endings. I choose to keep the one with the infamous clown car line because that's the one that preserves my favorite jokes (Gaku spelling like shit on his phone and getting sent 27 cursed messages), and the route where Nozomi rates you unnecessarily harshly, solely because the Meat vs. Fish joke necessitates there being an actual decision to make. Six endings cut.!<

>!Romance: We ARE keeping this one I do NOT care what you say. The characterization is great and I love it and we're losing a lot without it, AND I think a romance route demands you be able to choose who to date. Therefore, we're keeping one ending for each of the three chapters (sorry Kurara no mask for you) and the ending where you date no one, as I like that ending and want to respect the player's rejections. Four endings cut.!<

>!V'ehxness: Honestly. Honestly? I get nothing from this route that I don't get from other routes. I know what V'ehxness' deal is, I know that her commanders don't get along with her, I don't care about her relationship with Takumi here, Tsubasa has other routes where she grows out of her passivity. Chop it all. Two endings cut.!<

>!Cult of Takumi: Love it or hate it, Hundred Line is not the same game without both of these endings. Not much to say here, neither ending is even under consideration for the chopping block. Zero endings cut.!<

>!Multiple Eitos: Part of me thinks I could get away with chopping the entire thing, but I do think it is important for 2nd Scenario to double down on having mercy on Eito, and that means giving the player another chance not to. We certainly don't need every single ending here, though, and my favorite by a long shot is the endurance match ending. Three endings cut.!<

>!Eva: I'm keeping this one too, there needs to be a choice to properly take mercy on Eva, even if the route itself is unpopular. I am also going to only be keeping the ending where Takumi and Eva run away from the war together, as I think it's necessary for this route to have an ending that actually saves her. One ending cut.!<

>!Post-Truth: Lumping all these together so I'm not writing paragraphs on individual endings. 2nd Scenario is obviously load-bearing, Reset is necessary to prop up the weight of the final decision. I am going to make the call to cut Goodbye Eito, as I think Multiple Eitos covers the decision to accept Eito, and 2nd Scenario covers his redemption. I'm going to keep a single Rebellion ending, the one where you sacrifice Nozomi. Part of me wants to cut it entirely, as I think it does make a kind of sense for Takumi to feel put on-rails by the truth until the final decision of 2nd Scenario, but that's really me rewriting the game by cutting the route, and that's exactly what this thought experiment is trying to avoid. Three endings cut.!<

>!All remaining routes have some sort of relevance to the S.F. storyline, which is absolutely load-bearing. Therefore, with the remaining routes, we're going to have to consider how their information interacts with each other as well as how they serve as self-contained stories. I am also worried that I'm going to get some factual information incorrect here, so feel free to correct me if I say something wrong or pass over something important.!<

>!Retsnom: This route just needs to exist, which is fine, as I wanted to keep it anyway. I think both endings off the final decision are important to the route, though the two random bad endings halfway through can go. Two endings cut.!<

>!Coming-of-Age: Same deal as Retsnom, I was never going to cut this route. I do, however, think we only have to keep the good ending here. Three endings cut.!<

>!Killing Game: We need the kill the baby ending in particular here for S.F. I'm also keeping the good ending, it would be another case of rewriting by subtraction to lock the player into a bad ending just by picking the route. I am ALSO going to keep the ending where Takumi tries to run away from Tsubasa's loss, partially because it's my favorite ending in the route, partially because it's important for the player to have to make a cutthroat decision in this route. Still gonna be weird that it happens so late into the route, but ah well. Five endings cut.!<

>!Boxes of Blessings: I'm lumping this route in with this group because the actual, in-lore Boxes of Blessings and Calamity are obviously connected, but... we kinda don't need this story? I don't think it's that much of a problem for Eva to explain the Boxes to us, Kako kills her, and everything immediately goes to shit. If this route was missing, it would be a story people asked for in DLC, but nothing's load-bearing here, and no one's gonna be sad to see it go. Eight endings cut.!<

>!Boxes of Calamity: This route, however, is unfortunately required. Endings 34 and 36 are completely necessary, and that is all I am willing to concede. Argue for keeping the remainder of the route if you want to, I'm open to the idea that my distaste for this route is pushing me to get rid of valuable storylines, but I'm not going to be the one to convince myself of that, my favorite storyline here is already covered by what we have to keep. Six endings cut.!<

>!Slasher: Endings 72 and 76 are required by S.F. Ending 72, killing Nozomi over Hiruko, does require being able to make the opposite choice in order to properly land. Everything else can go, the two main stories here are covered by what we already needed. Sorry again, Kurara, you'll always have Romance. Five endings cut.!<

>!Mystery: Ending 100 required by S.F. I am going to slightly cheat my rule here, you do need to have to hand-pick the killers for this route to work, but I'll let it work like picking the mastermind in 2nd Scenario, where the game just makes you pick again if you get it wrong. It'll hurt to not have endings associated with wrong choices, but I'd argue the existing endings don't do a particularly great job under that lens. I'm open to people arguing with me on this one, but I think the loss is minor enough to justify cutting three endings. Cutting all the other endings besides 100 as well, don't really know why this of all routes was stretched to eight endings in the first place. Seven endings cut.!<

>!S.F.: Oh, man, this one's a mess. To make a long story short, I think most of the story here is required by the other branches of the story. We don't have to either not chase after Kako-G or have sick Takumi join the final battle, and I have no issue with cutting either of those endings. The ending where Takumi goes to Slasher and gets killed by Takumi-G is required by Slasher, but we actually cut that part of Slasher already, so we're cutting it here, too. Finally, we get to choose between the ending where the loop supposedly breaks and the one where Eva crashes out on the Artificial Satellite; you may be surprised to learn that I choose to keep the ending that this entire storyline has been building to. So shockingly, even though so much of this route is load-bearing, we're only forced to keep half the endings. Four endings cut.!<

So, by my count, I was able to get us down to The >!Twenty-Nine!< Line -Last Defense Academy-. As I said, I much prefer the game we actually got, but it is interesting that, by my subjective judgment, we could cut >!over 70!< endings and still end up with a game with a wide variety of genres and compelling stories, where it still feels like your choices matter. Again, feel free to tell me how dumb I am for not understanding how important X ending or choice is to the game, or how you'd go about handling this thought experiment.

I'm aware there are a lot of issues with this route lol but wanted to bring up something I haven't seen here before.

>!I wish the route actually challenged you to figure out the prime number solution on your own. As I was playing through, I felt that the mystery of which boxes to open was just as important as the challenge of actually collecting them, and could actually streamline that process if the SDU figured out that they already had all the boxes they needed. I was also waiting for more clues to actually try and solve the mystery, but as Day 100 approached with no new clues in sight, I actually sat down and tried to figure it out, and I did! It's not exactly 100% solvable like a proper puzzle is, but once you realize it, it's clearly correct. First off, the only differences between the boxes are the number of moons on them and where you find them, and the latter wouldn't make sense as a puzzle solution even if the SDU kept track of which box was found where. As for the moons, you have the first seven primes, and the first six composites, the best way to explain why there are some boxes that randomly have way more moons than the others. Prime numbers are also a fitting solution from the Futuran angle: demonstrating knowledge of prime numbers are among the best ways we can demonstrate intelligence to an alien species, as their significance is mathematical, not cultural, and should be recognizable to any advanced society. That doesn't make it the only answer that makes sense for the Futurans to use, but it does make it the answer that makes the most sense for the Futurans to use that the SDU could solve. (It also actually does make sense for the Futurans to use, considering what's inside them, though that can't really be used as part of the mystery-solving). Overall, I think it's actually a really neat solution... so you can imagine my disappointment when I was prepared to solve the puzzle when the time actually came, and it just asked me between "prime or even".!<

>!The way this is handled is so, so dumb. If you had no idea what the answer was going in, here, now you know it's one of these two possibilities, guaranteed. If you get it wrong, you get like a minute and a half of a bad ending you were going to grab anyway, and then you just pick the right answer and are rewarded according. It becomes even easier to see that primes are correct when you only have to consider two possibilities, and even if you don't see any of it, most people are going to guess the more sophisticated solution over the less sophisticated one. There's no "choice" to be made here. There is one correct answer, Takumi is not considering intentionally opening the Boxes of Calamity. The intrigue of the decision comes in the challenge of knowing which boxes to open, but there is no challenge here (for either the player or the SDU), and there is no meaningful punishment to the player for not finding the correct answer.!<

>!The superior way to do this, of course, would be for the player to have to actually select which boxes to open. The obvious downside, of course, would be that not every player is going to be able to figure it out on their own, and brute-forcing 7 correct boxes from 13 available won't be feasible either. So how do we make the mystery solvable for every player without dumbing it down for players who can figure it out naturally? First, I think we should assume that any player old enough to play Hundred Line should know what a prime number is and can identify whether a small number is prime or composite. Second, I think we should build in a failsafe to that assumption and have one of the math books in the library explain them (including the alien communication thing for good measure) instead of whatever nonsense they have now. Third, the characters should actually discuss the mystery during the route, establishing things like that the moons are the only difference between the boxes, and that there are gaps in which numbers the boxes represent. Fourth, there should be more information to piece together on the "side" routes (I believe the Kako variation is the one with the prime/even decision, I'll call that the "main" branch) until it's basically spelt out for the player, the wrong ending on main branch should hint towards checking out the other paths for hints, and the player should be pushed down main branch first so it's clear that this is the central branch/mystery of the route. Fifth and finally, if the player just absolutely cannot figure it out, the branch where Eito wants to open the boxes should come with a CG where you can see which boxes he opened. Off in the corner, subtle enough to not flashbang you if you're trying to figure it out on your own, obvious enough that it will immediately catch your attention if you're looking for any clue you can get.!<

Ultimately I think that failing to take opportunities to meaningfully challenge the player is a problem that the entire game has, not just Boxes of Blessings, but this is a specific and actionable example that I wanted to rant about because I haven't seen anyone else here do it yet. Interested to see if people care half as much about this as I do, or if my proposed solution isn't as smart as I think it is.