I'm obviously missing something here. When are you forced into having a relationship?
If I'm reading what you wrote right, you're saying you are forced into a relationship because you have to split paths earlier than you wanted to. That's the very opposite of kinetic.
What I was trying to say, was a game where you can do everything the same and when you get to a certain point pick AB or C to finish it off. That's kinetic adjacent and boring to me.
Whereas, a game where if you pick A now, then C is off the table or D is going to happen, at a later point is much more interesting and adds more replayability to it.
Well... First... Clarifications: I know BaDIK is not a
purely kinetic novel. I'm talking about
degrees of kineticness/
interactivity; thus every time we have a choice, it's
interactive; every time the dev forces actions/words into our character, it's
kinetic. And I don't care about the words and I'm not interested in semantic debates, so, if you don't like either both of my uses of
interactive or
kinetic here or just one of them, you can substitute them in your head. What matters is that you understand the concepts because, even if you don't like the words, you gotta admit that this distinction exists, right?
I also know that, like, 99.99% of the devs always mix this
kineticness/
interactivity, (saving this 0.001% just in case there's an exception, but I never saw it). Most of the time, when it's just chit-chat or meaningless interactions, I don't care... But there are key moments when I think having a choice is essential for the
interactive character of the game, novel, or whatever you wanna call it. Thus, not only the fact I was deprived of the choice of choosing
the others in some paths, but this whole situation in this goddamned breakfast was one of those moments. Because this was not one of those moments when something out of your control happens—like, for instance, a guy puts a gun in your face and you are forced to react—whether you like it or not. No... This was one of those moments when Mr. DPC forces an issue into my character's head—the character I'm supposed to
self-insert—, an issue that was never there in the first place, and he pulled out of his ass.
That's what I was talking about...
you seems to not pay much attention to the narrative either, but ironically you somehow pointing out the logic what you don't see.
" I'm pursuing a specific girl,"
those specific girls having specific path and narrative, from the get go, that is different than an another specific girls . Josy x Maya, and Jill, have a different narrative than Bella and Sage .
Oh.. Of course, because BaDIK is so complex, so full of subtexts, symbolism, hidden meanings, and metanarratives, that's so hard to follow. I even think Mr. DPC is the new James Joyce. So, please, Mr. Genius, enlighten me about the intricacies of this super work of art...
But not... If I miss something, it's because my mind wanders due to boredom in some moments Mr. DPC lets his literary genius to flourish. But, BaDIK is a Pareto 80/20 case—you just need 20% of it to grasp its fundamental 80%.
But I can see the point you're trying to make: the game has a
narrative, which must play differently according to each girl; and this also transforms the
character of my character; thus, I must abide because it was the genius of Mr. DPC who made it so, and he knows what's best for me.
Well... Almost all I could say about this, I already said to Mr. Powers.
It's the interactivity that matters. I can play up to this part in many combinations. In some, it would make sense to choose a girl, but in others, don't—even less dumping them. For instance, I can be pursuing Jill but, at the same time, Bella, and be a motherfucker who forces her to see me fucking her best friend and mentor. Would that guy really care about choosing a girlfriend in this goddamn breakfast just because he had some kind of epiphany?
Yeah... One can like it or not, but I think it was objectively bad because it was cheap; it was badly implemented; it was sudden while it could have developed organically; it may work for some paths, but it plays really bad in others—when you're a DIK either
de jure or
de facto (like in Jill/Bella's case—you're usually a bigger dick when you're a
de facto one). Moreover, I think it acted just as an excuse so he could buy development time because the game was now bRaNcHiNg (as if it weren't like that since the beginning).
