I was skimming through some older posts, because I was waiting for some other work to get done & wanted to see what people were saying, (as most of my interaction with this games community, up until it was passed on to me, was predominantly discussions directly with Saruh), & I wanted to say you nailed it square on the head. This was one of the biggest areas where we were struggling & was a major focal point of discussion for us.
I think the disconnect with some fans like
ehct2332 &
cruelintentions & other's is that the first game that never got finished, That game was intended to be exactly what they are thinking it is, which is your typical, NTR, cuck, tale of debauchery. That isn't what this game is though. From it's inception, yes, it was designed to appeal to a lot of the same appetites, as that was his core demographic, & well, while he still wanted to change things up creatively, he also still needed the Patreon money to help pay the bills too. So he wanted to keep his support base happy. However, from it's inception, this game was designed more to be about a group of fucked up people falling down fucked up rabbit holes. & the outcomes of it all was initially intended to be pretty universally dark & grim for everyone. It wasn't intended to be a typical NTR game where the designated losers suffer more & more while the "alphas" revel more & more in the increasing twistedness. It was designed to be more like.... How do I put this... Like a Junkie's journey with heroin. It starts off as heavenly bliss, until it's hooks are in so deep & shit's gone so sideways that it drags you screaming into the depths of the deepest pits of hell. THAT is what Saruh meant when he said he was taking this NTR stuff to the next level. He was saying "Let's see what happens when we keep the story going beyond where the others end & see the ascent into depravity turn into the runaway train of self immolation. One of the main reason why there are good endings at all is because I got him to understand that the darkness is meaningless without light to counterbalance it. It's like Warhammer 40K, where every single faction is an atrocity unto themselves, where it's constant mayhem & wholesale slaughter, & where all of it is meaningless because that's all there is to existence in that world. I mean, even for fans of the franchise, was the Horus Heresy or any other specific story arc particularly compelling? No, not really. Because when everything's horror, nothing is horror because horror is just baseline existence. When there's nothing else to contrast it against, it's just a normal Tuesday. THAT is why that balance is so critical. Not because of the balance point at the middle, but because of the polar ends vying for the upper hand.
The issue is, when Saruh set out to start writing this, he was still a new writer & was still learning. & one of the big errors was writing Henry in a way where he's pitiful, but the reasons for it are such where it makes hating the architects of it detestable. I mean let's look at a few areas. Mark chose to hook Henry up with Melinda AFTER things went bad right? & he KNEW Melinda well enough to know that she took great pleasure in tormenting, manipulating & abusing men like Henry. This was not the act of benevolence that Alice & other's see it as, this was clearly a calculated plan to damage Henry while also making him appear to be the "good guy", so that he could lure Alice in. Once you see that, you really can't unsee it, because it's not just about "the bull doing what it does to the cuck". We see a man systematically & sadistically abusing his "best friend" in a way that will severely affect the man he would develop into, especially given all the defects he already had. We also see a man manipulating & abusing one of his intended partners to deceive her into the role he wanted her to fill. You see how it ripples out.
So when it comes to a lot of the fetishes here, I want to go back to another quote made by another member.
Well, not really. See, I've been living the poly lifestyle for well over a decade. & there's a lot of people, couples & even parts of polycules where cuckholdry is commonplace. & yeah, sometimes, if the guy is bi, he might fluff the "bull", (which isn't always black by the way, I've known black cucks & white bulls too), but the only times you ever see it like how it's presented in the game is when it's being done by people that don't know what they are doing, whom have mental issues that might be in runaway, (such as a sadistic Bull & a wife that get's so swept up in mania that she disassociate's from reality), That when it DOES happen, it ALWAYS crashes & burns catastrophically for everyone involved.
I could go on & on, but I'll let the content of the story speak for itself as it unfolds. But I have to say, when Saruh first asked me to take this project over, seeing how most of the comments I saw were people that only seemed to be interested less in the story & more in how it fed their need for their fapping appetites, (a lot of it pretty damn homo-erotic too. I mean DAMN, a lot of you really want Mark & Henry to fuck. I mean, I ain't judging, but damn), when he asked, I was pretty reluctant, because why would I want to waste my time writing out fap material that, honestly, kinda pisses me off. But seeing comments like this & the response to some of the others I've left recently tells me that there are a lot of us that do care about the story & are in this for more than spank material. So I think this will come out nicely for everyone on that end.
