This thread truly turned into a massive compilation of hot takes after what seemed to be one of the best updates for this game.
- People being surprised by 'twists' in the cliffhangers? (Even though countless times such a technique has been used in the past in the same game, and most didn't even give two cents about them but decided to this time albeit it not being convoluted?) Check
- People being surprised by 'unexpected twists?' Even when many predicted it some time ago as it was with ep. 7's ending 'twist'? So if you have predicted before, you came to that conclusion by using the game's material which led you to believe in such a possibility, so how is that 'unexpected' then? Even so, if a 'twist' is completely 'out of the left field' (even when it actually isn't), it's 'bad' because it's convoluted and was not hinted at all by the story or the clues given before? Check
- People being surprised that the choice to actually choose a LI out of the main LIs is actually there at the end of this episode? It was built up possibly not perfectly, but definitely logically by the events of the game: the MC consistently thinking about dating his behavior when dating multiple girls at the same time, second-guessing himself, and then maturing over the course of the events of the game. Meeting and seeing most of the main girls together was the final straw that broke the camel's back in terms of continuing to play with the main girls' feelings for the rest of the game? The choice didn't come out of nowhere, and if your MC has been completely faithful to a single main LI throughout the whole game, that is depicted in the final choice and montage. Most are salty about this because they thought that everyone's going to be expendable for the whole game. Even with the choice at the end of 8, we don't know exactly how the relationships will actually develop. What if you choose 'Others' but then you actually 'come to your senses' and decide that it's better to finally settle down with someone. What if you start being serious with a main LI, but then you cheat or get caught cheating? We don't know what will follow after this big choice, so we can't act as if we do. Of course, there is an argument that DPC just might not give that big choice again to us later on in the game, and undoubtedly, it heavily depends on the developer's own design and choice (as this whole game or any other on this forum), but to say that it's 'set in stone' and we know what will happen with the game in the future would be too early and unjustifiable as we simply can't say that without knowing the rest of the game. Check
- People pointlessly saying again that DPC is 'milking' and should hire a team to help him speed up the development process because it's 'taking too long'. This is quite valid, however, as it was repeated on this and other game threads multiple times before, it brings much more risks with itself rather than keep working as is now, especially if the present arrangement 'works'. I don't want to mention other games here to not get the post deleted, but there are quite a few developers who either hired actual assistance or even had full-fledged teams for working on the game(-s), and in most cases the quality goes down or the team runs a risk of breaking up at any moment because some member of the team might leave, get seriously ill, etc., etc. There are too many extra variables to be added when you involve actual additional people (coding, rendering, writing; not additional art commissioning or beta-testing as here), and most of the time those don't work out, only a handful of projects have actual functioning teams that deliver a successful game. Check
There always will be some questions or complaints with a game or an update, that's normal and to be expected, plot devices and conveniences exist in every possible medium, you can’t satisfy everyone with every bit of something, but to prematurely say after an update that it 'should be the last one', or DPC is 'losing interest', or he should 'write some events differently', whilst all fair concerns, are mostly unjustified by the actual content and events of this update which followed after Season 1 and 3 episodes of Season 2
