Oh well, this could as well be the mediocre swan song of a once aspiring developer, who has fallen from grace. Remember, this used to be the biggest game on the entire site at some point.
There is no reason for the cut content from previous versions, they could have easily slapped another relationship on the characters in question or rewrite their dialogue, like they did with other characters, but they didn't.
There is no excuse for the state this game released in. This version is the same as the previous one with some content being cut and some being added, but for some nondisclosed reason they had to code the game from scratch? If we look at the the awfully long alpha testing stage, there are only two possibilities.
Either the programmer forgot how to code in the timespan of this and the last release, or they had to code the game from scratch (for some reason?!?) in the timespan of two weeks with no communications or direction. Which of these two are more plausible is up to you.
ICSTOR might be the biggest con developer I have ever seen.
He got a writer working for him, he also got a coder working for him and at some point there was even a discussion of outsourcing the rendering (which apparently even got finished) so it wouldn't surprise me if he was actually doing nothing at all. Because according to some statements from the writer and the coding disaster it's clear to me that he is not even directing the game in some significant way.
(I also just can't shake the feeling, that the new scenes feel like they haven't been made by the same person from the previous versions.)
It was also clearly communicated that the endings were scraped and the game would float in this non finished state, but all of a sudden there is a dlc announced. Yeah sure. I wouldn't get my hopes up for a release of these dlcs or the new game anytime soon, chances are he is already bored of the new game before he even started working on it.
I won't talk about his mentions of burn out and depression, because that isn't something to joke or judge about from an outsiders perspective. But scamming people for two years straight and then releasing this excuse of an update isn't helping anyone
Making fun of this game or it's development is like beating a dead horse. It should just be laid to rest. At this point it feels like music labels releasing posthumous albums. (There will be a third posthumous album from Juice WRLD coming out this year, which will be one more album than he released when he was still alive...wtf)
I seriously hope that we get a documentary of ICSTOR at some point, maybe he is the Eden Hazard or the Dj Khaled of the adult gaming industrie, but he also might be one of their biggest what ifs.