- Mar 2, 2021
- 117
- 220
This was something I considered at length, even on the small scale, I just decided against it. In this case, it isn't the programming and work that is the problem, I've already put a ton of variables in for this type of stuff, like if you saved Jeffrey, you'll get a ton of extra thoughts and text about it. It is the fact that I didn't want to cut off content based on arbitrary choices about being a lesbian, bisexual or straight - it was easier to just leave it up to the player's imagination. If I put in the preference variable, but they fuck a dude, then it kind of breaks the immersion a little bit unless I talk about how she actually hates taking dick. But the thing is here, I'm treading on thin ice to keep the PC as close to how a person wants to play it as possible, so I went with giving the player choice and letting them act like they want, within a certain degree.I actually ran into the same problem in an unreleased game I was making and took a page from Alexis Kennedy about not needing to do a lot of callback to "player preferences and customization" in general, just enough to show you care.
So I started adding hidden variables in certain choices to keep track of some generic preferences, and after a "trigger point" added a small peppering of lines here and there to reference them, including gender preference. I saw it implemented much better in Disco Elysium with the copotypes, where there isn't actually a lot of content around them, but people notice when there is.
So, completely with you on keeping it as vague as possible to make writing and branching easier, and agree explicit gender-preference scoring is pretty iffy especially since the player knows what they want, but it's not that hard to give some mild references and it can have a lot of impact on players, even if it's just leaning the bisexuality slightly on one direction or another with a few well placed conditional paragraphs. Still, completely right in wanting to avoid going far down that path, content is hard and there is no reason to repeat yourself if you don't have to.
To be honest, I was even hesitant with the three choices at the start, but I couldn't see another way to do all these different storylines without the entire thing falling apart under the sheer weight. It also gives people their preference, some people just want MC/Hypno/TF and all that other stuff, so it falls under science, some people just want their character to be a slut who fucks her way to what she wants and some want some fairly violent rape. Character consistency is kind of important to me, as I said, this game is standing on the shoulders of the old RAGs games, the ones I liked had distinct and fairly consistent characters.
Thanks for the feedback, I do keep it all in mind and I'm gonna add two lesbian encounters to the diplomat path in the prologue with the Ch 1 release. I was hesitant to make Earth slutty for narrative and pacing reasons,(I've even removed the prostitutes' from the inn) which is why it is relatively light on the sexual content. I've added an encounter with an old school friend at the translink station and one of your mentors at the diplomatic corps for some more MILF action.