- Aug 4, 2020
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- 19,694
At this point, if DPC doesn't deviate from his own style as set out in the first 8 episodes, I don't see how he's at risk of alienating his audience.Now obviously that's going to be a judgement call and DPC is certainly in a position to make that call. For all the high gloss and professionalism DPC cultivates, at the end of the day BaDIK is a passion project; he's telling the story he wants to see. I can respect that even if I don't agree, but does make me worry about the future of this game. Creating art is always a delicate balancing act: focus too much on the audience and you have nothing to say worth hearing, but focus too little on the audience and no one will be able to understand the message you do have. If DPC is laser-focused on his own ideal to the exclusion of all else, the end result is likely to be extremely idiosyncratic.
As far as Episodes 10-12 being smaller than Episode 9, I'm afraid I'm going to have to be extremely cynical here. I get that DPC is really excited about the Halloween events, but from my point of view he's deluding himself. First, because DPC already undermined the Halloween party by making it the third giant party in a row; if he knew Episode 9 was going to have a heavy party focus, maybe do something else in Episode 8 to cleanse the palate. It's especially bad since several of the post-crossroads relationships are difficult to mesh with a big frat party: Jill is unlikely to attend, and Bella and Maya/Josy need to be kept secret. For those branches, the party feels more like a minefield than a celebration. That's an awkward place to stage such a massive set-piece.
His style of humor is, from what I gather, rather universal. His timing with scenes and music is very enjoyable, and the sex always integrates well (in AL I found it was very jarring, but BaDIK nails it - pun intended). His scene direction and dialogue is very engaging. So far, it's been a very fun ride, and this is all using his own intuition, not bending to client requests.
The Madame was the only misstep in my book, and that could just be me, not being into grotesque, aging, fetid, animated corpses, I don't know how well she rates on that scale.
The concern with parties: To me, there needed to be more. The DIKs are a party frat, and they've had a reason for putting the brakes on (the mansion being trashed and all), but they are back in business, and there needs to be parties all the time (well not all the time, but like every Friday and/or Saturday night if we're gonna use real world comparisons here).
This is college life, parties, drinking and sex are what it's all about (you might be looking to get a degree or something, but that's secondary
With the new party planning minigame, parties are sure to focus throughout season 3. This is exactly where I wanted the game to go. For me at that age, there were no fraternities and shit at out universities, but we'd go "clubbing" (going to night clubs/dance clubs) to hook up with girls (a few years before dating apps kinda fucked that scene up). Those were just legendary times. Screaming into some girl's ear who you've been dancing with for the last hour:
dude: Hey, wanna fuck?!
hot babe: WHAT?
dude: I SAID, WANNA GO FUCK SOMEWHERE?!
hot babe: I CAN'T HERE YOU!
dude: ...
hot babe: HEY, YOU WANNA GET LAID TONIGHT?!
dude: WHAT?! IT'S TOO FUCKING LOUD IN HERE!
Ahh, the good old days.
He's managed the intertwining paths so far without it feeling fucked up or out of place, mostly. Not sure why people are concerned he suddenly can't handle this. The only difference (and I guess it's quite significant) is that in the past, events with different LIs took place in different locations. In this case, it'll be the same location, with similar events but plotted around the LI of choice. It should be pretty cool to see things pan out differently, but similar, when replaying the scenes with different LIs.Not to rain on your parade, but as I said above, I'm not sure how well integrated this Halloween special is going to be. It's an awkward fit with 3 of the 5 branches, to say nothing of reintroducing Zoey. I feel like it's another victim of the way DPC mishandled the crossroads.
But we'll see. I appreciate you trying to keep my spirits up.![]()
Kinda makes me think about how if you're on Jill's path, you meet her friends, but if you're on Quinn's path, you see two of her friends fooling around with eachothers' partner. That was pretty cool.
If he had imposing deadlines, or he was getting paid for the job, not for the time it took, that'd be incentive to get a team in to speed things along. But alas Patreon's incentives are the complete opposite to that.There may be some crybabies out there, but I think the vast majority are just frustrated because building a team *IS* the proper response to a project that is beyond the scope of a single individual. Even in the world of art, visionaries still benefit from support. It took a lot of supervision by George Lucas for ILM to deliver the special effects that make the original Star Wars trilogy legendary, but I doubt we'd have been even better off waiting for Lucas to personally craft each of those effects himself. Indeed, the success of Empire suggests we might have benefitted from Lucas needing to work through the right intermediaries.
But at the end of the day, running a business is a very different thing than developing a game. George Lucas was comfortable becoming a businessman to make it easier to create movies; Dr Pink Cake isn't comfortable becoming a businessman to make it easier to produce games. It's a shame for us, but it is what it is.
So no, I don't think people wishing DPC would hire a team are being crybabies. I do think they're ultimately lamenting that we live in an imperfect world, so there's not much to be gained debating the matter. But they aren't being malicious or stupid, and it can be cathartic to vent about it once in a while. Cut them a little slack.![]()
Anyway, I'm not sure if I wanna cut those crybabies some slack.
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