- Mar 3, 2020
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It's unlikely to need changes except after Flora- or Jo-focused updates, and sometimes not even then.
Ren'Py Another Chance [v1.46.1] [TimeWizardStudios]
- Thread starter Crazygamer43
- Start date
- Jul 1, 2022
- 911
- 2,392
Oh man, guess another update without Lindsey, next time then.
please, kate's pegging
One of the best updates ever, Mrs.L really the GOAT, it's a crime we had to wait for so long for anythign with her
- Jan 27, 2020
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Items (v1.44):
- mc.add_item("fifth_note_from_mrsl", x)
- mc.add_item("fourth_note_from_mrsl", x)
- mc.add_item("fourth_note_to_mrsl", x)
- mc.add_item("message_box", x)
- mc.add_item("note_from_flora", x)
- mc.add_item("note_from_maxine", x)
- mc.add_item("note_from_maya", x)
- mc.add_item("note_from_mrsl", x)
- mc.add_item("note_to_mrsl", x)
- mc.add_item("second_note_from_maya", x)
- mc.add_item("second_note_from_mrsl", x)
- mc.add_item("second_note_to_mrsl", x)
- mc.add_item("shoebox", x)
- mc.add_item("third_note_from_mrsl", x)
- mc.add_item("third_note_to_mrsl", x)
Not looking for spoilers or anything, but is there an explanation for Jacklyn's "particular" speech patterns planned, or it is just her being weird for the sake of standing out/being rebellious? It's clear she's not totally unrelated to whatever the hell is going on, most things that make the MC go "wait, that wasn't like that/that person wasn't there/this never happened" seem to be tied to a deeper story, but it's unclear whether her talking like someone out of Planescape is a hint to it, or just random weirdness like the stuff with the beavers.
Either way, it's been really interesting so far (I just got to That Scene, holy fucking shit I didn't expect the game to go that route), and the characters are very well written with great foreshadowing (Isabelle's underlying instability and obsession with revenge was laid out so gradually that by the time you had to actively call her out, you could see the pattern of prior behavior). I particularly like the way the game kind of makes it clear that the MC's incel/fatalist attitudes are bullshit and his loserdom was because he never made any effort at self-improvement, even if some people like Kate would have sucked either way. So long as the mystery doesn't end up being a coma/dying dream or some DDLC-esque fourth-wall breaking thing, I'm loving this.
Either way, it's been really interesting so far (I just got to That Scene, holy fucking shit I didn't expect the game to go that route), and the characters are very well written with great foreshadowing (Isabelle's underlying instability and obsession with revenge was laid out so gradually that by the time you had to actively call her out, you could see the pattern of prior behavior). I particularly like the way the game kind of makes it clear that the MC's incel/fatalist attitudes are bullshit and his loserdom was because he never made any effort at self-improvement, even if some people like Kate would have sucked either way. So long as the mystery doesn't end up being a coma/dying dream or some DDLC-esque fourth-wall breaking thing, I'm loving this.
- Oct 9, 2017
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I don't think think it makes this clear at all. The timelines are not identical and there is no real reason for MC to have instantaneously changed his personality so drastically when he was still coming to terms with the notion that the second chance was real. And even if were to assume that he did just turn his personality around overnight, it still wouldn't explain why almost everyone liked him so much on day 1. A bad rep would not be fixed in minutes after starting a school day.
On the first day, there's a lot of dialogue with him confused as to why everyone's so much nicer than in his first childhood. Maybe I'm reading too much into it but it gave me the opposite impression. It seems like something else shifted in the timelines that made it much easier for him to socialize with everyone. And it is because everyone is so approachable this time that he slowly changes his preconceived notions and attitude over the course of the game. Whereas the first time, everyone but the janitor treated him like dirt. Which is why he resented everyone enough to become an incel. And why the powers that be thought a second chance in an alternate reality could fix his life.
Mind you, if he was such an inexplicably irredeemable prick to otherwise good people the first time around it would probably be odd for the janitor to be nice to him. If anything, it would be the other way around. The janitor would hate him but he would have some group of jerk friends that reinforced his behavior. Moreover, the whole plot kinda wouldn't make much sense as giving him a second chance without first giving him some kind of corrective intervention would probably just make him worse than the first time. What with all that extra resentment and baggage from his future self.
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I think it's just a way to make her dialogue unique. A lot of characters have a certain way of speaking to make them stand out, Jacklyn as you mentioned, there's Maxine's weirdness, Maya's sarcasm, Isabelle's British inflections, and the more subtle ones form the other characters. That's one of the things I really like about this game, a lot of amateur vns have the characters speak in a very homogeneous way for 80% of the dialogue, so much so you could replace a line said by one character and put it in another and nothing would change, but here every line is filled with personality.
For real. Isabelle is one of the best written characters in the whole WEG sphere, and she only gets better as we see how differently she acts depending on if she has the upper hand in a situation or not. I don't even particularly care for her as a love interest, I'm just invested in her arc.
Fair enough to a point, but even with the alternate timelines and obvious changes like Ms. L's wardrobe/personality shift, I kind of chalked at least some of that up to something of a self-serving memory. He believes that everyone spat on him, but people generally aren't that monolithic. Some people were probably just as vile as he claims (Kate and her posse in particular), maybe the people he most wanted attention from rejected him, but literally everyone but the janitor? More likely he was so busy wallowing in pity and resentment that he didn't notice the people who did try to reach out. Besides, much is also made of the fact that he never made any effort to study and physical exertion was anathema to him, his own mother and sister are shocked when he's not a complete asshole and pervert, incidental text like inspecting a trophy cabinet has him sour-grapes-dismissing success as being genetic (even when the case is full of his sister's trophies), it took a literal cosmic reboot for him to work on starting over, and he was convinced his life was over in his mid-20s. Hell, when we see a partial shot of him in CGs, he's even not nearly as bad-looking as he claims. All of it comes together to suggest that maybe his prior status wasn't as cut-and-dried, and that a lot of his woes were self-inflicted.
Let's wait and see on that one. Name of the game aside, I'm still not 100% on what's going on here. Is it a second chance? There's a lot more going on than a simple reboot, especially with the timeline changes. There are seemingly at least three-four outside entities running around (the person texting you, Ms. L, whoever Ms. L is talking to if they're not the phone person, and Mer if they're neither the phone person nor the person Ms. L is talking to), and maybe more than that depending on what the deal is with the entirely new people. Based on the conversations between Ms. L and her counterpart about Ms. L putting her thumb on the scale, it feels less like a second chance, more like a test or bet, like they're trying to see what you'll do. Easy answer so far seems to be that Ms. L is trying to lead you into temptation, her counterpart is (seemingly) more benevolent, the texting person is benevolent, and Mer... Yeah, fuck Mer. The question is, who's running the game? I might need to go back and do Maxine's route. I doubt her answers will make any sense if she finds them, but at least she's asking questions.
It's wild how you can look back and see how clear her issues were from the beginning.
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This seems like the most correct choice. All we know of the first time are the MC recounting what happened, but we do see a clearer picture of the past at the end of season 1, granted, this is also a memory he purposefully misremembers at times, but he also comments on things that did happen which he forgot. For one, it's not that everyone was an asshole to him all the time, some people he just never bothered to talk to. Lindsey, for instance, he just never even tried interacting with since she seemed so above him, and the one time he did talk to her they had a friendly conversation.
In this scene we also have him admitting to being an asshole on purpose, like finding his own mother crying in the bathroom, feeling insecure about herself and him just making fun of her. So he wasn't just a lazy, perverted good for nothing, but also a dick.
We can also see a stark difference between Flora here in school and what we are told happens later in life, though it's impossible to tell how much of Flora is the MC's wishful thinking, we know they were at least on friendly enough terms to work together. It's only after school that she convinces Jo to write him out of her will. Flora in specific is an interesting case since there are small hints which make me inclined to believe she already loved or lusted after her brother for a while before, later losing her feelings as he grew older and more pathetic.
So I see this:
As him still holding onto the notions that everyone was an asshole, when he was the one at fault for either bad behavior or, in Lindsey's case, not even trying.
Man, it's gonna be so sad if the game gets abandoned after I spent so much time thinking about the plot of a WEG I heard about through
- May 10, 2019
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- Oct 9, 2017
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I agree it's not 100% clear but I will say to this that he in fact can still be a complete pervert and all around pretty jerky and they still react not that horribly to it. A lot of those choices even just give them lust. Imo I'm sure his attitude does somewhat factor into his better social results as the relationships develop, but it does seem like his starting point there's already a strong change affecting everyone's general disposition.
Honestly, I just cannot fathom it being purely him. If that turns out to be true, that would be a rather cheesy cop out for a game this carefully written. That would mean not only did the game gloss over all the real character development that lead to his reform, it would also be an unrealistic background for how he ended up that way. Young people are malleable and highly subject to peer pressure. If life was already beating him down that hard that early for merely mouthing off, he almost certainly would have adapted before adulthood. Even if that meant faking all his social interactions to fit in. And if he is one of the few that just can't adapt, then it would be indicative of a social disorder that prevents him from changing. Hence he could not so easily be reformed by a mere text message telling him to do better this time.
And are we to believe he was also acting like a dick to the janitor as he did to everyone else, but she liked him anyway? Or did he shit on everyone but the janitor? Both are implausible. Janitors are usually the most disrespected staff members by such students for their "dirty" job. And the common janitor-student friendship trope almost always involves the janitor taking an unfortunate social outcast type under their wing. Reason being janitors relate to being unfairly looked down on for their work. It would not make writing sense for that type of character to take pity on a jerk that does it to himself.
Imo, if I had to try to profile him it's far more likely that he is not all wrong about what happened. He obviously made things worse for himself as time went on. But he obviously somewhat fell through the social cracks and got bullied at school, which created the initial behavior. And whereas he sought comfort hanging with the janitor, hanging around with the janitor all the time probably didn't score him any social points even with the nicer kids. Meanwhile back at home, his always working single mom played favorites because of his sister's exceptional academic competence. Neglecting the fact that flora was mistreating him with all the "pranks" which he likely always got blamed for given the parental favoritism.
Easy to see how such a person could shut himself from the world. And it wouldn't take many changes to help him find social footing the second time before he enters the hate spiral that killed off all his relationships.
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I mean, as well written as it is, there's still a fair bit of stuff you need to gloss over. This alternate reality or whatever it is seems to operate pretty heavily on dream logic. Sometimes that's game mechanic stuff like random $20 bills strewn everywhere that replenish every morning, water bottles costing $100, or adventure game-style item combination puzzles. Sometimes it's stuff that's technically possible, but unlikely-to-unthinkable outside of porn, like the previously shy, insecure teacher also having a history of making erotic workout/BDSM tapes (admittedly some supernatural bullshit's involved with her) or the school nurse secretly being the head cheerleader's semi-willing sex slave. Sometimes it's stuff that only works in porn, like aphrodisiacs that instantly make the consumer uncontrollably horny with no side effects. And sometimes it's random stuff that wouldn't even make sense in porn, like a bonsai turning into a tentacle rape tree overnight because you sprayed it with soda or semi-sapient malicious beavers.
Don't get me wrong, it's awesome, but there are some things that don't have total internal consistency no matter how you look at them. It makes me a little nervous that the dev might go for one of the classic cop-out "none of this was real" endings (dream/dying delusion, purgatory/divine test, or fourth wall break/it's a game all along). The writing's good enough that I'm hoping they can come up with something better, but I'm not sure how to stick the landing there. In the meantime, I'm just trying to come up with the most reasonable explanation that requires the least additional explanation.
It being him also explains why he continued to suck so badly after high school, rather than even making a token effort to make something of himself once out of the toxic environment. Don't get me wrong, I've dealt with depression, unemployment, and the ensuing doom spiral, I get the lack of motivation, but I draw the line at blaming everything in the world except yourself for it. Having gone through that kind of depression in my mid-20s, I also take issue with the idea he repeatedly seems to espouse (at least in the prologue) that his life was over and ruined at the ripe old age of 25. I get that it's not easy, and depression makes it way harder, but you have to start somewhere, and the real "Another Chance" is the next day.
- Oct 9, 2017
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Of course, but it's one thing to gloss over inconsequential things to facilitate gameplay mechanics. It's another entirely to gloss over the entire character development arc of the main character. I doubt the writer would have done that.
Side note, I also edited in a character profile you may have missed since I didn't think you'd reply that quick. I think it better explains his probable situation and why he never bothered trying.
Of course you can always say pull yourself from your bootstraps, but imo I don't think he ever got the opportunity to leave that toxic environment the first time. The barrage of jokes kinda mask the severity, but without Mer's utilitarian interference and/or the speculated looks buff I severely doubt many would pull themselves out of that situation. He didn't even have one relationship he could rely on. Add the bullying we see in the second chance just from kate (literally tied up for days), it's already a fucked situation. And that happens after he self improves and makes friends. Imagine that happening and having no one to go to or even untie you. It's not an exaggeration to say some kids wouldn't have even made it to adulthood in his situation.
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I think we're misunderstanding each other a bit and we're actually in agreement. I didn't mean to say that it was all a hundred percent his fault, like you say, it's more a feedback loop where he does something "weird", gets socially isolated, grows more bitter as time goes one and acts worse, all going until he ends up where he was at the intro.
Now, whether this is true:
It's really just up to personal opinion, like you said. For what it's worth, the game does seem to be going in the direction that Kate's power over the MC was due to his own cowardice, considering one of the Moments of Glory required for Kate's love route is obtained by the MC just not going along with her games and walking away, and if he doesn't ignore her, then the most severe case of bullying, that being the ropes, happens - side note but I find it funny how even at her worst, Kate still has some decency in leaving you a phone in case you get in serious danger, while Isabelle ignores you after her white whale is mentioned without checking on you to see if you're okay. Isabelle is
Here's where the game's tone sorta harms the narrative, as it's unclear how much of things that happened in the past are meant to be jokes, porn logic or serious. Is Flora justified in her actions because her brother put a slug in her milk that made her sick, or is it a joke? Is Kate's true extent of bullying supposed to be horrible, or is it a setup for femdom, or even a joke at how weak the MC was that he could get held down by a bunch of girls. Personally, I don't think school was THAT actually bad for MC considering how in the flashback he gets along well enough with people, only later in life do things truly get out of control. I doubt these questions would get answered any time soon, so eh, it's anyone's guess.
I mean, a magic cake is the actual, canon reason MC gets written out of the will, so the world was already pretty weird beforehand. I think we just have to accept the more silly aspects of the game and not give them much though.
I don't disagree with you by any means. I think it's a mix of factors. He underwent a lot of genuine bullying, and while it probably didn't have the psychosexual components seen in the game, it was probably brutal. If anything, it might have been worse than what we see in the game, given that conservation of detail means we never actually see any male students like the jocks who were involved in a lot of it. It probably also happened on a regular basis for years, not just the couple of one-off events you trigger when you choose to approach a known bully. No surprise at all that fucked him up.
I just don't buy the MC's claim that the bullying was universal. Rather, it's more likely he responded to the bullying by retreating into his shell, and ignored or didn't see the people who were decent or neutral toward him because he was too wrapped up in his own problems to notice. If we're assuming his prior life resembles the real world, most non-bullies probably didn't pay much attention to him one way or the other unless he did something to actively draw their attention. They were too wrapped up in their own stresses and hardships too (top of my head, his teacher probably really was insecure and Lindsey probably had a ton of pressure to excel on her, for example). If he'd applied himself or made an effort to reach out socially (and not just sexually), even to people he wasn't trying to sleep with, he would probably have found at least a couple of likeable people, but he'd become afraid to and didn't realize the faceless masses had faces of their own. Separately and in addition to that, he fell down the incel rabbit hole, also a common thing in real life, and that convinced him of all sorts of bullshit. He latched onto it because it let him reassure himself that the shit he was dealing with wasn't his fault. Unfortunately, it also enabled his worst behavior, shittiest personality traits, and perverted attitudes toward women, which only amplified his problems by kicking off worse retaliatory bullying and made previously-neutral people more likely to actively avoid/dislike him.
As for his home life, I agree it was a hybrid. There was probably a measure of unintentional Golden Child/Dross Child treatment by his mother growing up, which when combined with plain old sibling rivalry, meant that he gave up on life at home too. When he stopped making any effort and retreated into the lowest expectations and worst behavior, though, that's when he actively became a disappointment and creep under their roof. Differences in ambition aside, no surprise his sister wanted nothing to do with the brother who'd perved on her and their mother throughout her teenage years.
I'm certainly not trying to spout a bunch of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" crap. Like I said, I've been where he was at the start of the game to an extent. Not quite the same, I had more education, a supportive family, and never fell into incel crap, but unable to find any work in the field I'd studied for, single, woefully out of shape, and dealing with the depression spiral of feeling like a complete failure, knowing I needed to change, and didn't have the wherewithal to actually act on it, which made me hate myself worse. I did eventually find a job (a crap job loading boxes, but it was some sort of job, it helped solve the "out of shape" problem really quick, and my education helped me move up to corporate in short order), and started getting my shit together. I'm not going to pretend for an instant it's easy to overcome, and I don't think less of him for struggling to do so, but it's necessary to at least try to do something, wallowing is the absolute least healthy option. If anything, his ability to afford his rig and the like is evidence that he had at least some support, presumably from his mother, even if she had written him out of the will.
Believe me, I'm very aware of that part. Suicide's one route he might have gone down (intentionally or through drug abuse), but not the only one. I've been trying to avoid saying this, but we're all presumably adults here, so I'm going to put this out there and trust people to understand I'm not making light of it: If the MC at the start of the game had been into guns as much as he is porn, he'd be a very likely school shooter. The history of extreme bullying, the social isolation, the self-loathing over not amounting to anything... Shit's complicated, but from a layman's perspective, he has "blaze of glory/be remembered for something/I'll show them all" written all over him. It's a piece of mercy that he grows out of that quickly in the new version of reality.
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- Oct 9, 2017
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I get that but I think it's a little bit backwards thinking. Of course if MC were in a different situation, he could have had a different outcome. The problem is he couldn't reasonably be expected to do that because his situation was already dire on paper from an early age. He explicitly states the closest he had to a friend was the janitor. That's not normal even for the jerkiest of jerks. Clearly the people at school had already began to ostracize him. And at home he had no father to teach him how to stand up for himself. No mother to do anything but blame him for everything that went wrong. No sister to ever act like anything but a prankster nuisance. So the idea that he should have just studied, worked out and stood up alone to all his bullies is a bit of an absurd ask.
As it is, there is an argument to be made how much is it really him changing or the second chance changing the scenarios enough to give him the tools to become a better person. If no one interfered and he was given a second chance with absolutely no variables changed, he almost certainly would have wound up in the exact same place. Imo, it's only because he for whatever reason now has entirely different social standing that he is able to achieve everything he is achieving. And that new footing seems to be given to him on day 1, not day 100.
For all the shade people throw onto Mer, it may very well end up being her plots that saved his life this time. If she did not manipulate everyone around him, he may not have formed the initial bonds necessary to break the cycle. After all, the two people that really warm up to MC immediately are isabelle and lindsey. And they are exactly the two people she manipulated the most.
I am curious though, what flashback are you speaking of? I've seen a lot of dream sequences but I don't really recall any proper flashbacks. Maybe I have overlooked a scene that reframes this conversation.
That's the thing, I don't really see how you expect him to realistically do any of the things you expect of him while still being a believable human. As you mentioned, there is a difference here of having a supportive family. In other words, a basic foundation we take for granted that he did not have. He doesn't appear to have a father figure in his life to teach him these things. And he had a largely absentee (at best) mother on top of all his other issues. What little family he had was anything but supportive, despite both being in a great position to help.
He had absolutely no basic footing to pull this rabbit out of the hat. It's only because the second chance basically changed his initial circumstances that he's able to do everything he's doing. And imo, the proof of this not really being his fault is that in fact his life does change on the second chance despite not having any real catalyst that would explain a change in his "incel" personality. It's not like someone took the time to teach him a lesson between life 1 and life 2. He went straight from life 1 to life 2. He was the exact same guy in a slightly altered circumstance. And the main alteration was indeed just a few people's general disposition towards him and that is what in turn changed his own personality. Which frankly, is pretty much exactly what he theorized was the problem in his first life.
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