VN Ren'Py Onhold My New Memories [v0.4] [Killer7]

[buttfan]

Just started playing this, and the MC is coming off as a total dick.

"They are my family? I don't remember them, tell them all to take a hike."

Uh... yeah, about that...
Okay first, total dick move. Remember them or not, they are still family and you should at least try to reach out to them. Especially your own kids.

Second, your family will most likely try and support you even if no one else does. So perhaps you might want to explore that.
Yeah, okay, not all families will help when someone in the family is in need, but most do, to at least *some* extent.

Third, that's how you get memories back, dumbass! You immerse yourself in your old life and in time most of it will come back. For pity sake, its not rocket surgery!

Fourth, when you do get your memories back, if you had been acting like a dick until then and suddenly go "Hey, I remember my kids! Wow! I should go see them!" They will probably be a little irritated that you didn't even try before then.

I don't know if the MC is supposed to be a selfish prick, or what, but it is a real off-putting start.

 

[The Pie Rat]

Just started playing this, and the MC is coming off as a total dick.

"They are my family? I don't remember them, tell them all to take a hike."

Uh... yeah, about that...
Okay first, total dick move. Remember them or not, they are still family and you should at least try to reach out to them. Especially your own kids.

Second, your family will most likely try and support you even if no one else does. So perhaps you might want to explore that.
Yeah, okay, not all families will help when someone in the family is in need, but most do, to at least *some* extent.

Third, that's how you get memories back, dumbass! You immerse yourself in your old life and in time most of it will come back. For pity sake, its not rocket surgery!

Fourth, when you do get your memories back, if you had been acting like a dick until then and suddenly go "Hey, I remember my kids! Wow! I should go see them!" They will probably be a little irritated that you didn't even try before then.

I don't know if the MC is supposed to be a selfish prick, or what, but it is a real off-putting start.

Ok, so you're making your own game in your own perfect world, with the perfect story that forms to your own ideas of how mental illnesses should work when?5

 

[ClockworkGnome]

Just started playing this, and the MC is coming off as a total dick.

"They are my family? I don't remember them, tell them all to take a hike."

To be fair, he starts out completely disoriented and with no memory whatsoever, and pretty much one of the first things the doctor tells him is that he's keeping the family from seeing him and suggests he thinks about whether or not he wants to completely abandon them and start his life over. Aside from being incredibly unethical (and borderline criminal), the doctor putting that in his head almost immediately is a large part of why the MC considers it at all in the first place. Not helped by the fact that you meet with your sister who more or less suggests the same thing, that everyone would be better off if you just left. That's more other people taking advantage of MC's memory loss than it is him being an instinctive dick. The fact that he basically shakes it off fairly quickly implies it was never really a strong motivation on his part in the first place.

To be perfectly honest, with as hard as the game seemed to be pushing a bit of a "trust no one"/"maybe it's better if you don't remember" theme early on, and with how the description on the main page says "hope the people who know you can help", I half-expected the twist to be that his family isn't actually his family at all, and that they're just gaslighting him into thinking they are for sinister reasons. Or you'd turn out to be a total monster who is better off dead/gone.

 

[Brannon]

Well technically you don't know.
The story pretty much is only ~ 10% complete/visible to players so there still is some room for your apparently desired outcome to happen

Just started playing this, and the MC is coming off as a total dick.

"They are my family? I don't remember them, tell them all to take a hike."

Uh... yeah, about that...
Okay first, total dick move. Remember them or not, they are still family and you should at least try to reach out to them. Especially your own kids.

Second, your family will most likely try and support you even if no one else does. So perhaps you might want to explore that.
Yeah, okay, not all families will help when someone in the family is in need, but most do, to at least *some* extent.

Third, that's how you get memories back, dumbass! You immerse yourself in your old life and in time most of it will come back. For pity sake, its not rocket surgery!

Fourth, when you do get your memories back, if you had been acting like a dick until then and suddenly go "Hey, I remember my kids! Wow! I should go see them!" They will probably be a little irritated that you didn't even try before then.

I don't know if the MC is supposed to be a selfish prick, or what, but it is a real off-putting start.

If you don't remember your family and close ones your solution is to snuggle up to those essentially strangers?
Really?


Rocket surgery ... err ... no you're right it isn't.

 

[HornyyPussy]

Well technically you don't know.
The story pretty much is only ~ 10% complete/visible to players so there still is some room for your apparently desired outcome to happen



If you don't remember your family and close ones your solution is to snuggle up to those essentially strangers?
Really?


Rocket surgery ... err ... no you're right it isn't.

While I agree 100% with what you are saying here I just gotta ask, what in tarnation is "Rocket surgery"???

 

[Kytronix]

You must be registered to see the links

Hello there you extremely cute and wholesome people!

Another week, another progress update!

Let's start a little different this time. The Pre-release for My New Memories went live on the weekend for qualified patrons and if you want to give Chapter I a try ( and if you are pledged ) then head over to the discord! The feedback so far has been amazing so I'm even more excited for wednesday now. The update will release everywhere at the same time ( Steam,

You must be registered to see the links

, discord etc ). So wherever you got the game, you will get the update on time!

Working on this update has been a lot of fun. Even though it took longer than I wanted it to take I'm pretty happy with the overall result. The amount of renders and animations is pretty good for the time I took, at least I think so. And don't forget, I released two MNF updates during my work on this update before I fully focused on My New Memories.

This also means that I will focus on My New Family again now. I'm not sure if I will take a few days off after the release of Chapter I for My New Memories, but I'm already working slowly but surely on 0.22 again. After the pretty hectic last week where I had to finish a lot of animations for My New Memories it should be a bit easier to just focus on writing. Like I said in a few other progress updates, I plan to upgrade my writing for My New Family as well, putting some of the things I started to do in My New Memories into MNF as well ( in regards to the lewd stuff, for example ). I think once you play the update on wednesday you will know what I mean. Don't have that much to share yet but I will most likely next week.

So this progress is a rather short one. I can't wait to hear the feedback from you guys regarding Chapter I for My New Memories. I read the comments on the trailer post ( and on youtube as well ) and I will probably do something like this for every major update. Making this trailer was actually a lot of fun and thankfully I could use the template droidproductions gave me.

You must be registered to see the links

 

[Brannon]

While I agree 100% with what you are saying here I just gotta ask, what in tarnation is "Rocket surgery"???

That was my question as well.
I understand "rocket science" and "brain/heart surgery" being used as a means to transport how difficult something is. But "rocket surgery"?

 

[NoStepOnSnek]

That was my question as well.
I understand "rocket science" and "brain/heart surgery" being used as a means to transport how difficult something is. But "rocket surgery"?

Same thing, it's just crossing the original two because it's funny.

 

[Deleted member 929426]

That was my question as well.
I understand "rocket science" and "brain/heart surgery" being used as a means to transport how difficult something is. But "rocket surgery"?

I dunno about you, but I'd think trying to give a rocket an appendectomy wouldn't be very easy. Try getting a Saturn V rocket to turn its head and cough while you're grabbing its "Blue Origin."

 

[finndem]

While I agree 100% with what you are saying here I just gotta ask, what in tarnation is "Rocket surgery"???

That was my question as well.
I understand "rocket science" and "brain/heart surgery" being used as a means to transport how difficult something is. But "rocket surgery"?

It's a closely related field to torpedo surgery, which you may remember being depicted in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

 

[Dragon1982]

It's been a while since I commented on anything related to Killer7 but I want to say not only am I a huge fan of his work mainly due to genuine romance and wholesome family togetherness, also because I love the kind of positive attitude Killer7 displays every time he posts and comments to the community. I may not be 100% German but I have enough of that side of me to know how he feels about his games and how he treats the community. He is definitely one of the good ones in this world and I believe we can have more like him to make this world a better place in my opinion.

 

[HornyyPussy]

It's a closely related field to torpedo surgery, which you may remember being depicted in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
View attachment 1513646

 

[ClockworkGnome]

While I agree 100% with what you are saying here I just gotta ask, what in tarnation is "Rocket surgery"???

It's an old joke.

"It's not brain surgery"/"It's not rocket science" are the usual go to idioms for saying something is easy. Crossing the two (so saying either "It's not brain science"/"It's not rocket surgery") is basically implying you're stupid and confused, which implies the thing in question is even easier, because even an idiot understands it.

 

[Brannon]

It's an old joke.

"It's not brain surgery"/"It's not rocket science" are the usual go to idioms for saying something is easy. Crossing the two (so saying either "It's not brain science"/"It's not rocket surgery") is basically implying you're stupid and confused, which implies the thing in question is even easier, because even an idiot understands it.

And with that explanation making the originally quoted post even more cringe ...

 

[buttfan]

If you don't remember your family and close ones your solution is to snuggle up to those essentially strangers?
Really?

For fuck sake, I knew someone was going to say something stupid like this. But I gave the benefit of the doubt anyway...

There is a pretty wide gap between "I don't remember you, fuck off" and "let's act like nothing has changed".

Trying to reconnect while keeping in mind that the person has no memory is what you are supposed to do. Walking away from your old life like it didn't exist is going to make recovering memories a whole lot harder, and is a completely dick thing to do to the people who remember *you*. And even if you don't know about your children, you still have an obligation - that's the entire basis behind paternity suits.

My father had Alzheimer's, and yes it was tough on everyone, by the time he died he had forgotten everyone, but in the middle years the process was to remind him of who people were, show him pictures and things tell him about them, and so on. Sometimes it came back to him, sometimes it didn't. But neither side just walks away.

Ok, so you're making your own game in your own perfect world, with the perfect story that forms to your own ideas of how mental illnesses should work when?5

Oh wow, the apologist brigade is out in force. "I like this game, how DARE you say something bad about it! I like it, therefore it is perfect, and anyone who says anything bad about it is attacking me personally!"

Fuckin' fanbois...

I am quite aware of how mental illness does and doesn't work, unlike apparently the apologist brigade. Yes, he may act like an idiot, but it is the job of the doctor and psychiatrist to tell him to get his head out of his ass, and actually talk to these people to see if he can remember anything, and perhaps go to his old home and see if anything triggers a memory. Especially photographs. He already had a memory of the one photograph, and his wife, it was not at all unreasonable to assume more could be triggered.

On top of that, this is a guy who remembers nothing about himself or anyone else, and his first inclination is to throw away the people who actually may want to support him? That is beyond idiotic, that's practically suicidal.

However, with that said, we do have a useful counterpoint:

To be fair, he starts out completely disoriented and with no memory whatsoever, and pretty much one of the first things the doctor tells him is that he's keeping the family from seeing him and suggests he thinks about whether or not he wants to completely abandon them and start his life over. Aside from being incredibly unethical (and borderline criminal), the doctor putting that in his head almost immediately is a large part of why the MC considers it at all in the first place.

Finally, someone makes an intelligent observation.
It is a fair comment that the doctor bears a lot of responsibility for this, I do mention above that it is the Doctor and Psychiatrists job to set him on the right path, so perhaps I should say their actions are the most unbelievable, instead of the brain damaged MC's.

The fact that he basically shakes it off fairly quickly implies it was never really a strong motivation on his part in the first place.

I haven't got that far. So that reinforces the above statement then that the problem is the questionable behavior of the professionals, more than the MC's.

Not sure if the writer just has a really dim view of the medical profession, or wasn't too concerned about it in the name of their story, But as was pointed out to me by Belle (of Long Live the Princess, the dev, not the character, obviously) when I had a discussion with them, something in a story doesn't need to be realistic, otherwise you can't have fantasy and science fiction. But it does need to be believable, or at least reasonably believable.

Remains to be seen if there are other parts of the story that push the suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.

 

[PrimeGuy]

I honestly think part of the reason the Doctor says that, and why the story starts out like that, is that people can easily be taken advantage of in similar situations. The MC is a well known person in the world, who is very well off, making that an even greater danger.

It may be more extreme than what would happen in real life, I don't know never having been witness to such a situation, but I don't think it reflects as poorly on the people involved as some people have taken it.

 

[Mommysbuttslut]

On top of that, this is a guy who remembers nothing about himself or anyone else, and his first inclination is to throw away the people who actually may want to support him? That is beyond idiotic, that's practically suicidal.

You realize you could trust your family in the case that you lost your memories because your memories reinforce the idea that they're trustworthy people to you. If you didn't have your memories then you'd have nothing reinforcing that perspective. It's a completely rational response to be put off seeing a complete stranger tearing up and getting all emotional over you and you not feeling the same way. It's uncomfortable and it's guilt inducing.

I haven't got that far. So that reinforces the above statement then that the problem is the questionable behavior of the professionals, more than the MC's.

I believe there's only a week of in game content. Maybe you should try getting to at least day 2 or 3 before you run to the forums to tell everyone how upset you are about it.

 

[Dragon1982]

At least he was given the choice to pursue or walk away, but considering I've seen some examples first hand I'd think the doctor was certain that the MC's curiosity about who he is would overwrite any doubt he may have about seeing the family he forgot for the sake of finding something familiar rather than fending for himself considering that even if memories go away, feelings most likely won't. He is a caring person by nature as shown from certain dialogue so he possibly in the deepest recesses of his mind feared more about hurting those that cared about him more than he cared about himself.

 

[ClockworkGnome]

I haven't got that far.

It's really only a thing very early on in the game, while you're still at the hospital. By the time you leave you're mostly past it and fully invested in trying to reconnect with your family. There are even multiple points where you basically ask yourself why you ever considered the idea in the first place.

It's relatively easy to just dismiss it as being a symptom of his total confusion due to the amnesia and not a huge part of the story overall.

something in a story doesn't need to be realistic, otherwise you can't have fantasy and science fiction. But it does need to be believable, or at least reasonably believable.

The usual words that come up in this context are verisimilitude or relateability.

A story doesn't need to be 100% accurate, but it needs to be internally consistent or it takes you out of the story. And you have to be able to relate to it on some level or you'll have a hard time caring. Which is why most alien races in sci-fi tend to act exactly like humans and most fantasy stories ignore 90% of the radical changes that magic would cause in any actual world. Because changing too much too far away from what is "real" makes it hard to relate to.

It's also why most settings with fantasy/sci-fi elements tend to change only a few things but keep the rest of the world more or less exactly the same. Because changing everything makes the world too unrecognizable, and the viewer stops caring about it.

On the flip side, at least some suspension of disbelief is necessary, otherwise you'd never be able to enjoy any entertainment media again. Just as an example, almost no story involving amnesia ever presents the amnesia correctly based on how it actually works in the real world. Because real amnesia wouldn't make for good stories. So we all sort of tacitly agree to pretend that the trope of amnesia as presented in tons of movies, shows, and books is an acceptable compromise.

I honestly think part of the reason the Doctor says that, and why the story starts out like that, is that people can easily be taken advantage of in similar situations. The MC is a well known person in the world, who is very well off, making that an even greater danger.

It's not entirely out of the question that it could be a concern - just because someone is family doesn't mean they're necessarily good people. I've actually informally disowned at least half my family, and I wouldn't want them anywhere near having access to my medical information or treatment decisions. I certainly wouldn't even remotely trust them to have access to me at a time when I was mentally impaired and potentially open to being manipulated or exploited.

That being said, the way it's presented in the story it is somewhat irresponsible on the part of the doctor, especially because he alludes to a lot of things but refuses to actually tell you anything straight out, in a deliberately and frustratingly obtuse way that is almost guaranteed to make things worse, not better. At a time when you are almost entirely helpless and confused, almost everything the hospital staff does seems calculated to confuse you even worse. Even the officially appointed therapist is absolutely terrible at her job.

(part of what was reinforcing my early suspicions that they WERE doing it deliberately, and that the story was going to devolve into you being manipulated and lied to at every turn)

But it's obvious from most of the rest of the game that the point of the story isn't to deal with how the medical establishment handles severe amnesiac cases as much as to fast forward past the minor details so the story can get you back home and interacting with your family. So most of the early stuff is just glossed over and half-assed to explain why the hospital is letting you go rather than keeping you in some sort of facility, and then it's all mostly ignored once you get home and the real interaction starts.

 

[Dragon1982]

It's really only a thing very early on in the game, while you're still at the hospital. By the time you leave you're mostly past it and fully invested in trying to reconnect with your family. There are even multiple points where you basically ask yourself why you ever considered the idea in the first place.

It's relatively easy to just dismiss it as being a symptom of his total confusion due to the amnesia and not a huge part of the story overall.



The usual words that come up in this context are verisimilitude or relateability.

A story doesn't need to be 100% accurate, but it needs to be internally consistent or it takes you out of the story. And you have to be able to relate to it on some level or you'll have a hard time caring. Which is why most alien races in sci-fi tend to act exactly like humans and most fantasy stories ignore 90% of the radical changes that magic would cause in any actual world. Because changing too much too far away from what is "real" makes it hard to relate to.

It's also why most settings with fantasy/sci-fi elements tend to change only a few things but keep the rest of the world more or less exactly the same. Because changing everything makes the world too unrecognizable, and the viewer stops caring about it.

On the flip side, at least some suspension of disbelief is necessary, otherwise you'd never be able to enjoy any entertainment media again. Just as an example, almost no story involving amnesia ever presents the amnesia correctly based on how it actually works in the real world. Because real amnesia wouldn't make for good stories. So we all sort of tacitly agree to pretend that the trope of amnesia as presented in tons of movies, shows, and books is an acceptable compromise.



It's not entirely out of the question that it could be a concern - just because someone is family doesn't mean they're necessarily good people. I've actually informally disowned at least half my family, and I wouldn't want them anywhere near having access to my medical information or treatment decisions. I certainly wouldn't even remotely trust them to have access to me at a time when I was mentally impaired and potentially open to being manipulated or exploited.

That being said, the way it's presented in the story it is somewhat irresponsible on the part of the doctor, especially because he alludes to a lot of things but refuses to actually tell you anything straight out, in a deliberately and frustratingly obtuse way that is almost guaranteed to make things worse, not better. At a time when you are almost entirely helpless and confused, almost everything the hospital staff does seems calculated to confuse you even worse. Even the officially appointed therapist is absolutely terrible at her job.

(part of what was reinforcing my early suspicions that they WERE doing it deliberately, and that the story was going to devolve into you being manipulated and lied to at every turn)

But it's obvious from most of the rest of the game that the point of the story isn't to deal with how the medical establishment handles severe amnesiac cases as much as to fast forward past the minor details so the story can get you back home and interacting with your family. So most of the early stuff is just glossed over and half-assed to explain why the hospital is letting you go rather than keeping you in some sort of facility, and then it's all mostly ignored once you get home and the real interaction starts.

What about what I said in the comment before yours? I've heard of similar cases where just because an official says one thing to the amnesiac isn't really their intention, at least as far as decision making is concerned when presented by an unbiased person. In certain cases it's more of a test than anything else considering in this instance he had the option to talk to the concerned party members instead of being thrown into it before he was ready to meet them. I do see the early going it was a bit unfair to hold back info from the MC and the therapist could have done a little better, but in the grand scheme of things it was still the MC's decision alone to decide if he would take the chance, which he based more on feeling and instinct instead of what he was told. He was never forced by someone else. From a story standpoint it wasn't perfect but it is still a real feel good experience which I personally enjoyed greatly, not taking any shots at you, just curious about what you think of my personal view on things since I enjoy a good story, that's all.