Yeah, when you turn off your PC and realise
you didn't really fuck any of them, it hurts.
Also, sex with some girls is mutually exclusive.
Why would you trade Michael Jackson in for two HOT babes!?
I feel really bad that I can't remember what his old avatar looks like - total mind blank!
Yep, the mc handles it well enough, either acknowledges they were too different (i.e. he's a DIK, she doesn't like DIKs), or he understands that he didn't pay her enough attention, 'cause ignoring the threat of a lawsuit and climbing up to her balcony to see her, and saving her from public humiliation by putting himself in the spotlight at the risk of his own humiliation, counts for shit - if he didn't ditch a sick Sage and go on her picnic, it means he didn't try hard enough....
Ahem.. sorry.. ranting again...
Anyway, if you select Jill and she dumps the mc, he goes on the "others" path:
mc: "It sucked and hurt, but it wasn't the end of the world."
mc: "It meant I had to keep trying to find love."
Not sure how many people got to play through that whole scene. Imagine putting all your eggs in the Jill basket, but not the actual picnic basket, only to have her turn you down after 8 episodes of blue balling!
Technically, I don't think you can select Jill at the crossroads if you didn't go on the picnic with her. So she won't turn you down to your face.
She'll just mutter some passive-aggressive comments about how things could be different if only you cared about her enough to pick up her slack and notice all the hints she's been hiding from you.
So theoretically, if I wanted to try a new Sage run, what is the best route to take with her (for both lewds and relationship)? I dumped my Sage playthrough after rebound guy and never even played it on ep 8. I actually only finished a dual Bella/Jill run (saved right before the choice) and more recently a Maya speed run so I could unlock orange dress lewd scene. I think I'm still back at ep. 5 or 6 with Josy. My Others path is stuck at ep. 8 beginning. Lost interest in all of it for a while.
I'm thinking of getting back into the game, but at this point I should probably start over from scratch and try to get better results with the main girls. I'm rather certain I've fucked things up with all of the them.
It really depends on what you want out of the game. The fuck buddy path obviously gives a lot more lewd time with Sage, and it generally has a much better build up of the intimacy between them, particularly with the extended scene of the MC nursing her back to health in Episode 6. But the price for that is that technically you are cheating and (more importantly) it's
really hard to overstate how
*stupid* the Rebound Guy speech is.
The friendship path avoids the cheating and the MC's temporary bout of insanity, which is good. And IMHO the game does a very nice job kindling a platonic friendship between them in Episodes 5 and 6. The downside here is that the platonic friendship is suddenly forced onto the exact same path as the fuck buddy relationship during the HOT party, and it just wasn't quite ready for that yet.
So to sum up: the fuck buddy path has higher overall quality but hits some disastrous lows, whereas the friendship path is more consistent but a bit underwhelming in comparison. Personally I went with the friendship path when I finally replayed the game for my Sage path just prior to Episode 8, but then I'm about as far on the CHICK side as you're likely to find in this thread so YMMV.
Have none of you guys been married? A couple of weeks with your LI of choice, you'll be begging for something fresh!
Well hello Zoey!
I expected DPC to throw us some curveballs, but I figured he'd at least let us get into the batter's box first. We haven't even informed M&J yet and we've already had to sit through the Interlude!
No one is talking about forcing anyone. I don’t think there is a single point in the game where you’re forced in to a relationship scene. I don’t think that will change now. Instead, i imagine, she will come on to the MC he’ll have to reject her (Or not). MC might get caught with her coming on to him and have to explain it to his girl, that sort of melodrama that the game has done constantly since the start.
Actually, there is one forced relationship in the game and by a funny coincidence, it's with Zoey in flashbacks.
But to be serious, I agree we're not going to be forced to cheat with Zoey. But while DPC has never forced the (contemporary) MC to pursue a girl, he sure has forced him to stop pursing girls temporarily - most obviously in Episode 4, and the resolution to the Maya/Josy crisis is not exactly the highwater mark of the game. Rather the opposite.
So I think it's entirely fair to worry about just what Zoey is going to do to the narrative.
Does the confession scene with Sage change if she was your fuck buddy or not? Might be a clue if there was a flag for it.
I'm not sure what you're asking about. If you mean the scene where she confronts Chad about cheating on him (assuming you told her about Troy), AFAICT the game only cares if you're on her path. Even if you waited until Episode 7 to hook up with her (i.e. after Chad dumped her), she'll still say she cheated on him. Whereas if you aren't on her path at all, she'll only say she tried to cheat on him.
I do think the game stores the variables necessary to tell the difference (her Bio entry will say you didn't kiss her during the music lesson, for example). But so far the actual onscreen relationship is the same regardless of how you got there, which is disappointing.
What I don't get, it up until now people wanted the Branching,
now we not even touched the surface of it, but the folks already wants to able to get out of it
I'm not sure how many people were really calling for more branching, much less how many of those are the ones currently whining about Zoey.
But speaking as someone who DID want more branching and has done more than my fair share of whining about Zoey, I can say that my concern is all about the timing. The point of more branching is to reflect how much of a difference our choices make to the outcome of the game. Adding Zoey into the mix on all branches when the ink hasn't even dried on the new relationships (indeed, it hasn't even been put to paper for M&J) screams of short-circuiting the very branches I wanted to see in action. What difference does my branch make if the MC spends most of his time worrying about Zoey?
I will be very happy to be proven wrong, but the time and effort spent on Zoey in the Interlude (without actually establishing just what she wants from the MC going forward) do nothing but reinforce my fears.
No, I'm saying it wont happen 5 minutes after the biggest choice in the game yet. There is no indication that the EP08 choice is final for the entire game, but I also dont believe that players who've just chosen a girl, will be able to stick their dick into Zoey in Ep09 or Ep10 for that matter.
Maybe there will be an end of Season 3 decision with a choice of equal consequences as at the end of Season 2.
Now, will there be a cheating MC in BaDIK ? We don't know yet, maybe thats where affinity will finally kick in and be meaningful.
But if you objectively look at how DPC set the decision and the consequences up, it leans towards no cheating.
Lets take an example, lets say you picked any girl but Sage, the following convo is forced.
And, as you know, the MC lets every choice he didnt pick (except the MJ path) know, and thats forced too.
Actually, he doesn't inform Jill if he chooses someone else, either (hence the infamous scene where she sees him fucking Bella). So that's a solid 60% of the LIs the MC can't inform when he 'dumps' them. Great follow through on that crossroads.
Finally, lets look at how the MC himself confirms his choice to himself, its always something along the lines of.
It seems to me, that there will be at least a decent amount of efford to make the relationship the MC has choosen work. And at least the door to LI jump seems to be closed as of now. Of course there are many other candidates to have sex with around B&R, and ... man I really dont know, there
should be an option for players who want to go the relationship path and still fuck around to do so, but the way DPC set all of it up makes me doubt it's gonna be a given.
Maybe the girl you choose opens up a new or old rival girl ? A friend of Jill, Cathy returns on Bella path, Quinn for Sage and MJ has 2 girls build in by default, but it seems unlikely too.
I think, we're at a point in the game, where the big decisions will mostly be used to lock content and as long as there is an alternative choice to avoid the lock out of content, like 'others' in this case, it should promote the path/multiple saves system further.
Maybe 'others' can still lead to a main LI's ending down the line, as you said, we're at 50% right now, so 'others' could serve as the 'keep your options open but dont close the door just yet' option.
There are just soooooo many possibilities, we really need EP09 to get a better idea of what's up with the EP08 choice.
I agree it should be an episode or two before the MC is ready to discard his "big decision." Then again, I'd have argued we should wait an episode after the big party in Episode 7 before we got the next one; instead we not only got a bigger party in Episode 8, we're getting the Halloween party in Episode 9. And as I've said too many times, we're stuck catching up on Zoey's background before we've even finished picking a girl. So you'll forgive me if I have less than lively faith in DPC's sense of timing.
