who says what is in isn't degenerate
this is still porn game, and not everyone wants death and gore in their porn
not everyone wants animal fucking pissing or impregnation and implied lolicon/shotacon content but ignore it anyway because the game mechanics allows you to forget those aspects and fetishes exist in game, and whats wrong with wanting a darker life sandbox?
I mean in real life if your in that dire straits you can choose to submit or join a gang, get in a rough crowd and be defiant. defiant in this game is really toothless because it depends on someone engaging in combat with you which 50 percent of fights are like this, what about the teens who aren't right due to circumstance who join gangs and peddle drugs and beat the shit out of people looking at them funny? maybe even shoot them if their on a rival gang? Whitney bullies you and its implied at some point she's a victim of circumstance as well. her mere existence as a bully to the pc, indicates to me there's room for the pc to be more active.
the point is it feels so one sided, yes some people if placed in dire straits would roll over and give up the fact the other option actually fucking rebelling and maybe adding ways to end opponents in a deadly manner makes the game limited in feeling.
its like the dev looked at one side of trauma and dealing with it and thought that is how every victim of trauma deals with trauma by taking the freeze option. when that isn't the case, some people become traumatized and turn around dish out more trauma to others.
if your running a sandbox game based on human misery its very important to give options for to player to deal with that misery, even if the other option is spreading it around. people have expressed wanting to be more dominant in certain interactions and while by default the game is a rape simulator and the dev said that he tried to emulate what a rape victim might feel in terms of game mechanics, he refuses to entertain the possibilities for alternative options. there fore I feel like his approach to it is shallow and fetishized, it can only really be balanced by adding the ability to instigate shit. other wise just stop saying your trying to emulate trauma in a way that is comparable to what might happen in real life.
simply call it a rape simulator and be done with it. It'd be a less of an issue if it wasn't a virtue signal by the dev to say "my game mechanics try to represent how a traumatized person might deal with the same situation." no full stop because I would be literally going to baileys office beating the shit out of bailey until they're a bloody pulp daily, selling drugs to school kids on oxford street and trying to undermine both the police and briar after getting stronk enough if you chose to represent trauma accurately.
