I'm not sure about that. I always thought that was the gist of the story, how a basically good and a bit naive guy turned into a crime boss, sometimes cruel and ruthless, who is capable of using even those close to him to achieve his goals.
The Dana plot may have been a bit uncalled with this sharing/whoring, but if you took away everything after the prologue, what would it be? It seemed like the plot was going as expected, with mature and experienced MC trying to finally destroy Jackie and find out what happened to Rachel. If you take that away, where should the story skyrocket to?
Yeah, but I think that's natural behavior for a chaotic MC. It's hard to go through what the MC went through and not change. Again, it's the player's choice, so if the MC orders Shorty to kill the reverend's wife, that's on the player. Many games offer dark and light paths, the choice is yours.
I understand what the dev did, I know where the story was going, but my contention is that it was a bad one. Clearly, not everyone was in love with how it went. It takes away everything the prologue set up. Just cause the dev intended it, doesn’t mean it was the best move.
He could have been brutal and cruel without completely abandoning the things that made it sing. In this case we trade a well established prologue for a dull world of crime and edginess.
As to your last point about the options. What’s the point of an option if it’s inconsequential to the story? I’m not talking about optional dialogues that don’t change, just the text, I mean what would the personality change of Dana show except be a fancy fetish filter.
But that wasn’t even my main problem. If they want to tell their dark story, cool. But the story didn’t treat the whoring as something incredibly inhumane/immoral (which it was) it was a simple fetish toggle. There was a massive disconnect with me on that front.
If bad options are shown, they should at least be properly contextualized. At least in my opinion and it wasn’t. Which is also my problem with the perv protagonist from every MC from games between 2016-18. They would love their family members, then at night he would rape them. There is a big disconnect to how the dev presents them and what is actually happening.
Which is why I think it doesn’t fit. You can disagree and say it’s simply “an option man, your choice.” But the way I see it, if you give someone an option that involves selling your girlfriend to another man like someone subhuman, at least present it that way, not as a cheeky little option.
