- May 8, 2017
- 572
- 3,433
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.We're gonna have months and months to pull ep. 8 apart and find things we love and maybe hate about it, but I gotta signal boost this post and agree very much with the tl;dr. I really didn't want to come out as negative overall on the episode because make no mistake there are some things that are good, and many things that could potentially be good that we just don't understand fully yet (I'm still not high enough IQ to understand how the path locks are gonna work, eagerly awaiting some big brain takes on it ) but I have to admit that when I finished the episode I wasn't really happy. This didn't change when I played the other paths either, although I can definitely see how solo Jill and solo Bella players would disagree because their wishes were finally answered for obvious reasons.
As I said I really don't wanna come out as negative on the episode or spoil it for others, and I definitely don't want to get into arguments about how good it was because at the end of the day different people who love different girls will have different opinions and experiences with the game. All that being said, as someone who is mostly concerned with the narrative of the game, I have some very serious issues with how this episode has changed the narrative pacing and the stakes of the story. I feel the LI path locks have come way too early and seemingly in a contrived and arbitrary fashion. I feel DPC has way too many guns on the table and threads to tie up while also introducing more and more cliffhanger bait moments. I feel that the threads that have been resolved do not live up to the impact and hype, like telling Sage about Chad and Troy which results in a few minor scenes and nothing more, despite being the final cliffhanger of episode 7. And lastly, I honestly felt pretty annoyed that the final screen of episode 8 is the Interlude screen with Zoey, which is something similar to finishing Mass Effect 3 and being confronted with a big message from the developer about the upcoming DLC.
So tl;dr I guess go read ename's post because mine is a retread of a lot of that and his tl;dr is better
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.