In my opinion, this is not an intentional choice, but rather a glaringly big (and equally worrying) bug in the scene-writing part of the previous update.
I don't know how it occurs to you, but in my playthrough, it only occurs if at this point of the game I choose to "Forgive Logan":
View attachment 1831442
This is because at the end of every possible option, I am redirected to scenes (day20_Sophia_meets_with_Aiden_at_his_hangout or day20_Sophia_meets_with_Aiden_at_his_hangout) that don't take into the slightest consideration the value of the key variable to see the scene of Don Morello's henchmen's intervention (day20_Sophia_asked_Don_Morello_for_help = True). If, on the other hand, I choose "Don't forgive him" the problem doesn't arise and my eventual choice to ask Don Morello for help is realized with the scene of his henchmen's visit to Aiden and his friends.
I hope the script will be fixed before the release of the next update, because otherwise playing this latest version of the game is compromising for its future development (if the player wants to close Aiden's path and cannot do so because of a script bug, it can be a big problem for other game paths as well).
Yes someone already reported that and I think
Bibifoc already fixed for the next release.
It is part of the problem I was mentioning at the very beginning of my post, in the previous version Sophia was supposed to visit Aiden no matter the choice about Morello, which led us to come up with the "chivalry" theory and so on. And since this branching was repeated many times through the code it's only natural that one of them might have slipped through during the fixing. Here is the example for those interested
(v0.160 on the left and v0.161 on the right)
this branching was repeated in many places in the code. I don't know if it could be easily refactor in a function that does the job so that it can be easily maintained since it is repeated so many times. I never saw that in other games but also I'm not an expert in renpy, what do you think
Bibifoc ?
The variables introduced by L&P in his game often serve to define, rather than future plot developments, parts of the dialogue between the characters involved in the scenes. Take, for example, Aiden's fourth task for Sophia.
Sophia chooses Zac as the beneficiary of her show for:
- a practical reason: he is positioned in the center of the classroom and is therefore perfectly visible to both Aiden and Andre,
- a sentimental reason: she already has some familiarity with him (as her son Dylan's teammate she has also frequented him outside of school).
However, there is no relevant reference in the code to his counter value (zac_price):
- neither as a possible limiting factor for choosing him ( there is no if zac_price >= x) and thus performing the task,
- nor as an increment at the end of the task itself (there is no $ zac_price += 1), despite the obvious progress made by Zac as Sophia's LI.
The only reference to such a counter is to determine, based on the "close experiences" Sophia had with Zac, certain parts of Sophia's inner dialogue during the selection of the "right student" and other parts of dialogue between the two once the task is completed. When the task is completed, a new variable is introduced (day20_Sophia_fulfilled_Aidens_4th_task = True) which, while not (by its name) directly correlating with Zac, is nonetheless closely related to his character and therefore I believe will be placed side by side with his counter as an indicator of Sophia's advancements toward Zac.
Probably the same thing will happen with the variables you mentioned in this last update, and L&P will use them, as an index of the progressive humiliation Sophia has suffered toward Aiden, in future dialogue scenes between the two.
Yes I see your point.
What I was getting at is that even for the example you mention you have the variable
day20_Sophia_fulfilled_Aidens_4th_task set to true if you go on with Zac, so that in any future event you will able to test that variable to know that the player went down that path. And automatically you will also know that Zac was involved and so on.
In this meeting I would have expected at least a e.g.
day20_Sophia_decides_meeting_Aiden to True or False whether she decides to meet Aiden or not once she saw that the other members were there.
Suppose that they meet at school again on Monday (or Aiden call her for what matters) and there is a dialogue between Sophia and Aiden. How does he check that she drove home immediately so that Aiden can say something like "What the hell happened on Friday, why did you leave, you were supposed...."? There is no way to do it at the moment. Unless it starts to count all the possible FW she can get with Aiden but as I said they are mixed with other events. And somehow this has to be addressed in the next event because it was something important, one way or the other. It's difficult to think that Aiden will let it pass that she didn't show up. He can for sure make some nasty comments about the breast show or the groping with the two variables that are set, but it's not the case for Sophia not showing up.
That's why it feels like that this event was kind of "irrelevant" to the whole story if not to have Sophia humiliate more. Which now that he updated the online walk through is even explicitly written: "
Aiden’s only goal here is to humiliate Sophia even more".
It could be a bug. That's the simplest explanation. But then let me then say that since this animation thing the attention to the code (bugs) has decreased as it would be the n-th of the list of the last 2-3 updates.
