- Mar 15, 2019
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- 858
In CoC1 you have the Kangaroo clan and you meet Shelia. Now at first she completely distrust you and depending on choices you make, she can turn hostile or be friendly with you. She doesn't immediately sleep with you and the process to get her to join your camp ( which rather tedious imo) is tide to the games lore. Kangaroo's like many other races (dragons and salamanders) are on the verge of going extinct. So, she can't immediately leave due to her personal beliefs and how the game works. She only gets approval later because her captain believes her being with you will replenish their population, while Shelia goes with you because you show that you care.Similarly, if TOBs had included a sequence where the MC could choose to say "daughter dearest, I think you should marry the racist samurai who holds me in deep contempt" (or something similar) and Kinu could reply "thank you for your insight, papa/mama but I think I wish to marry the aggressively inoffensive farmer man instead", he could have disarmed the 'your allegedly-loving family does not care what you have to say about your child's marriage' criticism. The result, that hime would marry a racist and that inari would marry a very bland person, could still be exactly the same regardless of player input if for some reason TOBs was really committed to that dynamic, but the game wouldn't have had to actively tell the player "no shut up sit down you don't matter right now".
My point for bringing this up is if you're a slightly competent writer you can have these culture clashes or conflicts in a porn game without it being to dark or taking away the players iteractions with characters. The kitsunes have their own culture and if Tobs gave the player choices like you pointed out it could greatly improve the gameplay of this game. He could include dead ends like Kinu's choice in partner, just to show how certain characters feel or that you're not always going to be able to change peoples mind. But then give other areas where you can more freely interact with other characters, such as do you help the kitsune be self-sufficent leading to them becoming more isolasionist and more racist/cautious of outsiders. Or do you help the ones who want to explore and interact with the locals. Each choice could lead to a new problem and branching quest. Depending on how you interacted with Kinu and Kiyoko while they were trapped in the mirror could change whether they back you up in these choices or whether they distance themselves from you.
You can also have dark things in this game if you set it up properly. In CoC1 you have Kiha a lizard girl who was turned into a dragon by the demons in one scene after she fed up with you trying to be nice to her all the time she decides to go and attack the demon base by herself. When you next see her its clear she's been raped by the demons. (kind sucks you can't prevent the rape of her) Will say this CoC1's world seems harsher than CoC2's so this probably why the darker elements can work themselves into that game without being jarring. I honestly just think Tob's need to get out of their own way. The kitsune stuff was the stuff I most enjoyed as I "thought" it would be the most dynamic part of the game, but it really falls flat in the second act. It has the potential to be a good story line.The problem with this of course would be that it wouldn't allow TOBs to write about serious, adult, intellectual things like weirdos who want to inflict grievous bodily harm on others for poorly-explained reasons and families that are falling apart because no one knows how to talk to each other. Most of the (thematic) problems I have with TOBs as a writer is that he appears to be of the school of thought that "more dark = more gooder" and the more violence and contrived 'dilemmas' (hmmm should I murder these prisoners of war for no real reason or not? What to do, what to do) he can put in the better a writer he is. This is very obviously not only false in and of itself but it often leads to situations where his writing strongly clashes with the tones most of the other authors have adopted for CoC2.
P.S
I think beyond the first encounter Tobs shouldn't be hyper focusing on Rindo's scars. The thing that made me like Rindo was she was the only one who didn't treat you like dog shit. While she does uphold a lot of the Kitsunes values, it doesn't stop her from being civil with you. Her, Kohaku, and the milf fox are the best part of the kitsune den (when spending time with a freed Kiyoko and Kinu should be.) The beauty isn't in the scars its in her personality for me. I'm assuming that's what their going for, but once again the writing kinda makes it weird like the PC has a fetish for burn ward victims.Yes tobs did refer to that concept at least once that I recall in Rindo's dialogue so I presume that was the exciting new Japanese concept he had just now learned of. The problem is that that's kind of a fucked up thing to apply to another person. And I think even tobs knows this because you get like three options on first meeting Rindo, to 1) sympathise, 2) not react any special way and 3) to call her ugly or something similarly dumb and I'm pretty sure the 'best' option (in terms of not upsetting her) is to not react. So he knows that you probably shouldn't be calling people with extensive scarring sexy because they got the scars but also he didn't know how else to make the whole 'repair with gold' concept work so he just did it anyway.
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