I absolutely agree that the game takes too goddamn long to make.
I realize some of that is because of how complex it is—how many alternate timelines is DPC juggling by now?—and that’s legitimate; I have no beef about that; that’s a feature not a bug. I’ve played too many games where your “choices” are bullshit, with no consequences whether you say the nice thing or the rude thing, and you’re forced to fuck every girl the developer throws at you. DPC has fully embraced alternate paths, and that’s the only reason I’ll play this game dozens of times, whereas other games only need one runthrough—assuming I don’t quit first from frustration or boredom.
But some of that is because of three things that only DPC gives a shit about: detailed, high-quality renders, including 60fps video; minigames; and, increasingly, recording his own music for the game. (Though I get why he’s recording his own music—it’s hard to find quality community-commons stuff out there, and artists who don’t mind that their stuff is being used for a porn game.) This shit takes a lot of time! But some of you love the minigames, so that part’s your fault.
Also absolutely agree. I haven’t played ep 11 yet, but the spoilers make it clear Maya’s student-loan deal was resolved pretty damn quickly—whether Tremolo stole the documents or not. Pretty much every plot thread that we’ve been fretting over for years can be wrapped up just as easily. But isn’t that typically the case with mysteries?—they’re all annoyingly simple once they’re solved, and all fan speculation regularly blows it way out of proportion. These mysteries got stretched out over years now, so we falsely suspected it was something proportionally huge and dark… and no they’re not; none of em are. Shit, the game’s about college kids who think everything’s a big deal.
I haven’t. Zoey got added to the game in a big way—and just after Tremolo picked a girl! I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another one coming. Probably Yoga Girl. My wife thinks she’s gonna be like the Mother in How I Met Your Mother—she’s a big mystery for most of the show, Ted falls for her in the very last episode, and there’s your happy ending… till the producers fucked it up and killed her off, which I’m still annoyed at. Maybe she’s the potential happy ending in case Tremolo fucks it up with the other girls; maybe he’s destined to fuck it up, one way or another, with every last one of them. Don’t know yet! That should piss everyone off. But hey, it’s DPC’s game to fuck up… once he completes it in 2035 or so.
About things being solved pretty quickly and the mystery, the problem is, there is no "wow" factor. The dinner to solve maya's problem, when we faced the cliffranger everyone was hoping for something big to come out of that encounter and what happened? Nothing happened. Everyone spent 1 year creating theories, when it came out, there was nothing to talk about.
And the drama with Maya's problem got dragged out for too long when the problem was never that big. It was something that could be solved pretty quickly with very little information, specially when you have internet.
But many people was brought into this when there wasn't the need for all that in the first place. And many people who had no interest in that got stuck in it. I wonder people who never used the services of the girls, and are stuck on the chick path, did any of them got dragged into QUinn's stuff? I think no, right? But why many of us got stuck with Maya's situation?
I think, in writing, the problem and the fix they need to be both at the same lvl. You can not make a big deal about something then say, ok got the contract, it is all done. Reason why, when all this thing started I was one of the people who said it wasn't that big of a deal and it was something that could be fixed pretty simple, but look how many things happened and how many people got involved. She has a brother who is so smart and knowleadgeable and he couldn't figure anything out.
Then there is Quinn's situation, Riona, etc. He can even make it a big deal, but when he decides to skip someone's story nowadays you have to wait 3 years since the last time you had some progression. That goes for Riona. Riona from ep 10 to ep 12, will take 3 years to have some progression.
THe minigames does he needs to put all of these in every update? can't he make it 1 episode with mini games and another story only? Everytime he adds more. now there is a puzzle box, besides math test and science lab. Party planning, browler, free roams. in the future will come a fight competition, for those who decided to participate, eventually.
Also he is always adding new characters. I am not talking only Zoey. We had the vixens added recently, Nora aswell and now there is the new girl from science lab/Halloween party. The vixens had more progression in a short time than Sally had since the start of the game. And with this, more branches and decisions will be created, a new line in the timeline of the game is created and if he wants to deal with everything he adds everytime, we will see less of what really matters.
I understand that this game has higher quality when compared to any other and people feel like they will offend other players if they criticize it when not even the developer takes criticism well. I not only got kicked in patreon, as I also had a review mine deleted from steam and the reason he gave was that I was "spoiling", when I know well that it was for a different reason.
Anyway, lets see at this pace how many more years it will take to progress the stories, specially when minigames are being increased and taking more space in the overall time length gameplay of every update.
For me at least, in a personal opinion, it has become less interesting with every update. Specially like you said, it will probably only be completed in 10 years from now. lol.
