So... Epsiode Title is Episode 10 - Calm Before The Snow
Huhm...
You can make different things out of this word-play. There is the saying "quiet before the storm" i certainly hope this will not be the case, cause we already have that with episode 9, where pretty much everything was on hold and nothing gets going on... we dont need another filler episode. DPCs goal cant be to press every plot progress into the last 2 episodes of the season. Of course there has to be room for fun and breathers, but not an entire episode... he lost the balance with episode 9 completly.
On the other hand, calm before the snow, could be a teaser for an upcoming winter/christmas episode... so far there was no christmas in the game, so why not? Iam not a fan of that... cause... well, fuck christmas. But could be a very good opportunity for the next step in the relationships, bonding time with family of the LI and of course with MCs dad Neil... at some point the girlfriend has to meet with Neil, and of course the MC has to meet the family of the girl too... why not on christmas? Could be very heart warming moments here...
Or snow... well... means drugs. Cocaine is coming in for Quinn, the drug dealing is getting more serious, or bigger at least.
I have a bad feeling for Riona in the last 3 episodes, and with each episode it grows more and more... my gut tells me, Quinn gets into heavy coke dealing, and Riona is in it too, in some way. And at the end of season 3 the whole thing will blow up and Riona has to pay the price somehow. I dont think that it gets too dark here, but maybe she gets busted and arrestet, or just expelled. I would bet on the latter. College didnt mean that much to her, she thaught she couldnt make it anyway... but she realized in the last episodes that she is wrong about that. She is a decent student, doesnt need Quinns drugs and prostitution to get by, and she has good friend too, with cammy and of course the MC too. She is going for a good path now... or at least is trying. But iam afraid, a really good happy path is not meant to be for her yet... Maybe she gets busted and will be turned into an informant, but so far... the whole drug dealing was way to "little" so the cops wouldnt really pay attention to it... but with higher stakes this will change. And Riona will be on the loosing end for now i think...
Well either way... hopefully many things in the new episode will get going again.
For the release date... again not many numbers, added even more animations thought... arent we already at about 250 animations now? Last episode got a little more than 300, DPC is reaching for 400 or more i think. He has way too much fun creatring them, even if they are pointless, and with the new rigs he will be even more tempted to do so... cause lets face it, to post more static renders he didnt need the 4090ers. 2 or 3 DEV reports in the past the render queue was even empty.
Dont know if its a good thing that everything will renders faster, or maybe even a bad thing... its obvious that DPC wants to do more and more animations. He was thrilled by the amount and quality of the animations out of episode 9 (i not so much, most of them were pointless) And he wants to do more and more. But other things fall a little behind i think... he is clearly doing more work on animations than on other things. But... animations doesnt get the story going.
Well lets hope my gut feeling are wrong... and we will get an awesome episode with a lot of progress in many different things, its very much needed.
No prediction possible for the release date though, cause no real hard numbers again... still hope for early july, but feels a little optimistic to me. would be going with august now. which is too late. 8 months dev-shedule is just too much.