I've played a lot of games with optional characters, and this hasn't really been the case for any of them. Or at least there's not a case where if you reject the love interest, they kill themselves. Sometimes the game gives you an option asking if you want to avoid the content, and then you never see the character at all. Other times they hang around, but you don't interact with them (at least with your penis). But we've had this lengthy intro to Nea and multiple interactions with her before her untimely demise in the friendship path. There's also multiple places where you're expected to tell the game "no, I still don't want the romance route", although the latest one was after you already see Nea naked, which again is pretty unusual for an optional character where some may not like the content. You generally don't expose them to said content before giving them the choice to avoid it in the future. But that's part of Luxee's thinking of "if I just show them enough of who Nea is, they have to love her". That's why the game isn't really designed to exist without her, since Luxee couldn't envision anyone wanting that after they met her.
Well, after "starting the friendship route" with Nea which doesn't seem to end very well, there is one more scene where the MC should continue her story and what appears is a message that says something like this: "I don't remember what It happened, what a horror."
Why should anyone feel guilty? It's a fictional character in a fictional story, which the author decided to write out it in a slightly overdramatic way and which I was not interested at all in. I really could not care less.
Because there is a whole page of comments right before yours arguing about her being a core character, and how unfortunate this is for those like me who are not interested in her?
I already know that, but why a friendship route? If you reject her, she disappears from the game, what else do you want
Because I want her story, I just don't want the MCs dick in her ass.
Of course you can do it in many more or less dramatic ways (she disappears without saying anything after rejecting her, she runs off to another city, she locks herself in her house to eat ice cream all day...), but possibly the one that the LI in question jump off a rooftop is pretty drastic.
Exactly, I mean whether you reject her or accept a romantic relationship she is still in the game for the ones who went the romantic route, suicide, like you said, was an overly dramatic way to reject her.
As indicated when you start A69, the entire story is made of memories you're re-telling to that guy at the café, about how you met your girlfriend (who already went to the bathroom in that intro, so we don't yet know who that person ends up to be). The entire game is essentially a flashback to your story from the point where you move out to your own apartment until the time when you meet up with that old friend at the café.
It's an interesting premise, although I don't think the setup necessarily precludes there being more of a story there to bridge things together either. A sandbox game is difficult to pull off as it is, with just that factor being an instant turnoff to some people because of how often it is poorly executed. I think it's unnecessary in this game because ultimately, it's just a visual novel with a few different paths that didn't need to be a sandbox, and probably shouldn't have been. There's no grinding like in so many other sandbox games, although a little bit of that could have at least given the illusion of more content and story. As it is, it just kind of feels cold and detached to me because it feels like I'm standing outside of the real world and only pop into it for these memories. I'm also not a fan of flashbacks in erotic games in general. That opening and the gameplay turns *everything* into a flashback. So a lot of this is personal preference.
When Luxee started A69, he explained that the game is not supposed to be a classical sandbox. He uses the sandbox elements present because he felt they were a (not necessarily the best, but the one he came up with feeling comfortable with) solution for him writing the story in a way that kept him in the loop.
I recall Luxee talking about his brain not really taking a linear approach to creating a game. You could see that in some places in PL when he told some parts of the story in a strange order. People were concerned when he came out with an update, and Ava lost her virginity as part of drunken scene the MC barely remembered. Then an update or so later the "optimal" scene appeared which was from a different storyline.
I'm with you in the concern, Luxee might deem content that would be nice for character development as unworthy of a memory - but then I feel like most girls besides Nea haven't enough content to really judge that and in Neas' case, I didn't really feel like there was content missing - besides me wanting more content.
My personal theory is that the harassment and constant insults Luxee was subject to, because of their love for trans characters, led to them snapping. I've seen some of the drivel people will say and honestly, there's no surprise Luxee doesn't come to this site anymore. People are fucking vile.
On a side note, the way Nea is written makes it actually quite logical. Her life pre-MC is extremely abusive, and trust me you have no idea how heavily that kind of environment affect trans people. So since she was written in such a broken and vulnerable state, the simple hope of someone loving her has absurdly high effects on her mental state, and understandably it's revealed she has a huge fear of abandonment.
I have no issues with her being in the game, just woulda been nice to have a friend route option, no one else should have any issues with her either, but you know, people get angry over fictional characters in a game
