I greatly enjoy how well-written this game is, but word usage matters a great deal. A thesaurus and dictionary is key to good writing, or one hell of an expansive vocabulary. One word I see misused a lot, is "bemused." It does NOT mean amused, as in finding humor with. Bemused means bewildered, confused. Great work otherwise.
Ack! I'll be honest, I have a habit of that. I was a voracious reader as a kid/teenager, and absorbed a big vocabulary, but didn't always have the means to figure out what some words meant, except via context. So, what it meant to me as a kid, persists in my head. However, Merriam-Webster does list one possible use of bemused to mean, "showing feelings of wry amusement especially from something that is surprising or perplexing," which is how I typically use it. I have to imagine this is one of those things where the use of the word evolved over time.
Out of curiosity, I did do a word-search to see how many times 'bemused' popped up in the game - three times, all in Chapter Four. :'D This is another thing I do, where I use a word once, and then it seems like I can't stop using it. I decided to change one instance of the word, but I felt it fit in the other two.
Heroes getting beaten down in the middle of their journey is fine. More than fine if properly set up. It happens in some of my favourite movies too, particularly in classic Kung Fu movies like Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, and Drunken Master, which launched Jakie Chan's career. But in those movies its clearly needed for character growth. This didn't feel like growth. The main character starts the game off as a sad pathetic loser. He's not an arrogant kid who needs something to knock him down in order to learn humility and to realize what matters the most in life.
I don't need him to be Batman, but he does at least need to be fairly intelligent. He was incredibly stupid, reckless, and inconsiderate this past update. At least when it came to Gabby. Offering to help the new girl in the diner and having it blow up in your face was a reasonable mistake of someone who was too eager to help and overstepped some boundaries. But if you are playing the game with the intent to romance Gabby, then there is no reason for him to be anywhere near Brittani.
Seriously, this poor girl is in tears about how hurt she was that her boyfriend left her for some blonde girl with big tits, and the MC's next move is to set up a fake photoshoot to get close to the blonde bimbo because she's hot? Is that it? Fuck that. I don't care about her, so why risk upsetting Gabby?
So when I see the MC mention a famous tale of revenge, I had hopes that he wasn't simply your standard porn game protagonist who thinks with his dick. Maybe he was a plotting something elaborate. But instead it just seems to be another case of an author getting enamoured with a new character and leaving an established favourite behind as an afterthought.
What is the best path through this update for someone who is exclusively interested in Gabby? What are we going to tell her the next time you see her? Do you think Gabby wanted us to seduce, abuse, or help Brittany? I'm guessing that she isn't going to want us anywhere near her and that each of those options are clearly going to anger her.
I disagree that MC doesn't need character development. If we're not watching him develop, then what's the point of telling th story? The whole game is him changing and growing, no matter what path he's on. Regarding
the punch, I felt it served a couple of ends. For one thing, I do feel like MC has kind of been on God-mode for the last three chapters. Intentionally so. He's every porn game protagonist, and things just work out for him. He can physically dominate anyone he needs to, he can outwit anyone he needs to, and he has the power to fling money at his problems to get whatever he wants. But,
getting socked by Jamie is a reminder he's human, and a solid punch can still put him on his knees. Realizing that he's now a public face in his hot tub chat with Nicki, warns him to be cautious about being too much of a jerk. Having his charity shoved back in his face by Pepper, tells him that his shtick won't work on everyone. That's all part of the theme of this chapter - MC can't always win.
As for Gabby purists, I'd hope that players would trust me not to fuck up their route with one girl, due to something purely outside their control.
With Brittani, my intent was to introduce her as someone easy to objectify or demonize, by both the player and MC. She's literally just a pair of tits on a screen, and it's easy to accept Gabby's opinion of her - which is being driven by fresh heartbreak. But, over the course of a few chapters, we learn that she needs just as much help as Gabby. That makes it considerably easier to spin MC's photoshoot as less a perverted endeavor, and more one designed to help a talented young woman struggling to gain recognition with her craft.
I have every intention of making it possible to have a happy ending with Gabby, despite the Brittani event. I think that once it's laid out, it'll be easy to see how Gabby could be okay with the photoshoot.
Finally, just a little note on why I don't allow for huge story divergences, based on preference. For instance, would it have made sense to provide an alternative for MC to the photoshoot with Brittani? Like.. I don't know, MC encounters Mason and takes him to lunch, and learns all about his history. Easy enough! Oh, but Brittani's scene is kind of the main sex content for the update, so now I need to wedge some sex into Mason's scene. Oh well, just an extra 100+ renders. 100 x 7 minutes it takes to render an image, I'm looking at an extra 12 hours of rendering time, not counting what it takes to pose.. And then there's images to correct due to clipping, lighting issues, etc.. Call it 25 hours, and now I've added an extra week or more of development time.
Ah, but I could just let people bypass Brittani's scene. Bam! Simple. Those people just miss a huge chunk of content. Oh well, sucks for them. But wait, MC is able to
gain possession/get rid of Gabby's photos during Brittani's event, which could be important.. And it's where he meets Jamie, which could matter for Gabby's path, since he could pop up there.. Well shit, and if Jamie and Brittani don't go through this event together, then their relationship is different.. Oh, and MC doesn't have
a black eye, and doesn't get home late so he never meets Risa, and and and..
Pretty soon, something that's already kind of complicated (gabby happy x brittani sad, brittani sad x gabby sad, brittani happy x brittani happy, etc.) becomes even more complicated due to giant tracts of the game changing.
I did originally have the plan to make the photoshoot non-nude as an option, with Jamie getting irritated at MC more because Brittani's fawning over his photos/direction, but when I looked at what it'd take to make that relatively minor change, it still would've been several hours of work, for a path a lot of people would never play.
