There are simply a waste of time that don't add nothing of value to the game and could easily be made with interpolation.
Has he addressed why he doesn't want to that? Interpolation is the first thing I thought about when I saw all the hooplah about increasing the FPS for animations.
However, I can't say the same about minigames since those are a part of the game since the beggining and it's clear that DPC loves doing them.
I know I'm one of the few when I say this but I actually like most of the mini-games. The party planning one in Ep 9 was actually pretty creative and was the highlight for me. But the word-finding mini-games are just tedious.
That's not an attack on Chansing Sunsets in any way, but the difference in size cannot be denied, we are getting 3x times the amount of static renders and god knows how many times more in animations seconds
I think I disagree with this but I have to think about it some more. I just don't think render count is a good indication for amount of content. I think it comes down to more of those renders are allocated.
It also feels more like a unique problem for BADIK because of the amount of balls DPC has to juggle and the fact that he's designed his game in a way that you have to replay it at least 5 times to see most everything. But in the end, I think it comes down striking a correct balance between ... maybe something like scene variations and overarching parts of the game you see regardless of any choices.
I'm more inclined to believe DPC needs that amount of renders to barely
cover everything each episode whereas other VNs either switch off focusing on a few each episode while moving the MC around/moving the story along or just have a smaller number of branching paths. You're either not going to have to replay that many times or it's going to have a lot more unique path content while not at the expense of the overarching parts of the game.
Ep 9's Halloween party had over 2700 renders alone. There are alternate renders depending on variables mixed in there as well but for the most part, you're going to see the same stuff at least 5 times in a row. It may be a lot the first time around but people's impression of the game after the initial playthrough is going to be "A bunch of stuff I have to run through in order to get to something new". It's not that it immediately gets stale if you're at least going around different locations (library, class, retirement home, mansion, etc.) but in this case, you're stuck at the mansion for most of the game and it's only like 4 - 5 hours on endless loop.
On the flipside, Ep 8 felt kind of empty. I think it's mostly because a good amount of it had a lot of individual content for the branches. It's great if you're playing all 5 branches but each episode is just going to feel kind of short because those other renders are reserved for other branches. It becomes kind of barebones and feels like you're stuck on a track: Go to work, come home, sleep, go to work, come home, sleep, go to work, come home, drown yourself in alcoho- (sike, nah lol)
In hindsight, maybe Ep 8 and Ep 9 were DPC kind of experimenting how to juggle all of this. Seeing what works and what doesn't. At any rate, I think BADIK is a case where the render count doesn't impress me anymore and it's more of a given that there'd be that many to at least somewhat cover everything each episode. I don't think it quite works as a good indication for content post-Ep 8 and it's more about how he's chosen to allocate those renders.
Maybe in the long run and once it's all complete, it'll feel like a crap ton of content. Although, I'm not too sure about that either because no matter how much he stalls the stories, in-game time is still passing so the window is starting to close on opportunities he could take with the story/characters. But I think that's just me worrying and each branch will feel pretty full and complete at the end of it.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading all that. If not, I don't blame you.