- Sep 20, 2018
- 3,208
- 13,378
I'm familiar with the way Bella's path works.So if Bella likes the mc, she's happy for him to call her Bella.
But if she doesn't like him, at her house after the mc has just worked a miracle with Cathy who was shitting bricks, Bella thanks the mc for helping Cathy:
mc: "Oh... Thanks, Bella."
mc: "Crap... I mean Isabella."
Bella: "Bella is fine."
It's clear to Bella that Jill really likes the mc. He's also just helped out Cathy when both Jill and Bella failed, and then he accidentally draws attention to the fact that she still won't let him call her Bella. She caves in, in front of Jill, because otherwise she'd look like a raging cunt. That all makes sense to me. If anything, at this point, she may have decided he's not all bad after all. Doesn't mean she wants to fuck him.
So that's the whole "Still gets to call her Bella" concern.
But where does he worry about his relationship with her when he's not on her path?
After the piano recital, he gets a little nervous when he suddenly realises he's surrounded by a bunch of friends who he has been making out with at a minimum. I don't think that's an unrealistic observation of the mc's.
And when he makes his big decision at the end of episode 8, he doesn't even consider Bella if he isn't on her path.
The problem isn't having to choose a girl at the crossroads, it's that the reason WHY the MC chooses a girl at the crossroads doesn't flow from the path that brought him there. An MC who embraces being Sage's fuckbuddy and likes sleeping around shouldn't care if he's a rebound guy. An MC who was fine making out with Bella after doubles tennis then fighting for Jill the same night shouldn't be phased by seeing the two of them hug after the concert. An MC who turned down both Maya and Josy shouldn't spend the entirety of Episode 4 moping about how they didn't cheat on each other with him.But is there a time when he's actually thinking about his relationship with Bella when there isn't one?
But your last point goes over my head: "...too many of the choices DPC gives us are ultimately decorative and not only never contribute to a larger picture, they actively obscure it."
I thought the choices were obvious. You choose to pursue a girl or not. This results in none, or many potential relationships. And then eventually you make one choice between the relationships you've been working on.
If you're suggesting the choices earlier on were meaningless since you've got to choose just one girl now, that doesn't ring true to me. The mc was getting to know different girls, he got to know the ones that appealed to him more than the ones that didn't. Then he decided it was time to make a choice, since he'd gone as far as he felt was appropriate, after which he would just be stringing the girls along.
If you're not suggesting that, then I really don't get your point and I feel retarded...![]()
Yet somehow all of that is possible. DPC goes out of his way to allow us to make choices that seem incompatible with later events, and at no point does he attempt to reconcile that dichotomy. It doesn't seem to occur to him that there ought to be a reason WHY the MC does whatever we tell him to do, and that said reason should color the way the MC behaves going forward. To DPC, our choices are always made in a vacuum; it's only his choices that are allowed to have deeper meaning.
I find it extremely frustrating because it guts one of the strongest aspects of the game for no justifiable reason. DPC clearly knows where the story is going in broad strokes, so why waste time developing side-paths that will only cause problems later?
Sure, the MC will automatically pick the chosen girl at the crossroads... but only after he spends the whole breakfast asking Elena and Tommy for advice on how to choose. Likewise he shouldn't have been concerned seeing the girls hug after the concert because there's nothing to feel awkward about: he's already broken things off with all but one (two for M/J) of them.EDIT: Also, if you've only chosen one girl all along, when it comes down to the big decision, there is no choice, the game jumps straight to choosing that girl for you. But at the same time, whether you wanted to or not, the mc was recently forming relationships with Jill, Maya and Josy (even if they ended), so being a little conflicted isn't ridiculous.
It just another symptom of the way DPC allows us to behave in ways that are incompatible with the way the MC will need to behave to advance the story. He knew he was going to have a big crossroad at the end of Season 2. He could have spent the season building up to that crossroad, but instead he allowed us to do more or less whatever we wanted; we could drop a girl's path if she didn't interest us. Yet rather than carry that philosophy through to its natural conclusion and make the crossroads itself optional, he just pulled rank and forced the MC suddenly resurect his old feelings for the girls long enough to start his big montage. Then, for good measure, he did it again when the MC learned who Sage's parents are.
Small wonder people aren't pleased to see Zoey after that performance.