well said. i also dont want to come off as a negative nancy, but i think i was slightly disappointed with the episode overall. there were some good things for sure, but im not too excited about future episodes after this one. im worried this was ultimately too many steps back for DPC in terms of narrative pacing, and this is only exacerbated because he takes so long in between updates that if the episode ends up a "flop" it feels like you just lose more than you gain.
also i know that Acting Lessons put him on the map, mainly from the twists that nobody could have predicted (since stuff like that isnt common in this genre of game, nobody had any reason to suspect it would get so grim-dark). but im kinda personally growing tired of the "necessary bombs" DPC thinks we have to have every single time. sometimes it works, but most times it comes of as either contrived or kinda lame (many of them arent even "twists" since id seen them predicted here loooong ago). He doesnt need to be like M. Night and constantly overuse the "crazy twists" angle. every now and then some soap opera moments to heighten the drama are good, but i wish he would just spend some time actually developing our MC and the other characters without just spoonfeeding us development little by little so he can "shock" us with something when he thinks he has the most opportune time.
so i dont have crazy expectations for this game, but sometimes i think about what it could potentially be. idk how much money he makes buts its clearly quite a bit at this point. if he hired a team and could storyboard tons of stuff for other people to be working on simultaneously, imagine what we could get. this is ultimately a dating sim, but its been years and we still know next to nothing about so many of the characters. like just for a dumb example, we just learn Maya and Derek's last name in this episode. for how "realistic" DPC tries to make this with all his attention to little details, it seems dumb that our MC would be having an existential crisis over any of these people when in reality he/we dont even really know them in the slightest.
i just wish we could have more legitimate character development, but i feel like the cast is too big and there just isnt enough time to come close to what we could/should be at. i feel like the scope of this game is maybe too big and idk if he can focus enough to keep it all together, and its worse considering it will be his only project for likely a few more years.
