But honestly, turning down Sophia and Allison wasn't hard. Sophia never offered (we have a terrible rapport since my MC doesn't trust her and she's some flavor of insane), and the Allison scene couldn't be skeevier if Jim interrupted it to do more coke off Allison's ass halfway through. That's not what I'm looking for in a sex scene.
I do hope, that after telling Edwin she never wants to see him again, she says something like "I wish we could have met under different circumstances" later in her route. She really is showing the best route if you want to be a romantic.
Sorry, Turret, but I gotta go with Occam's Razor here: the simplest answer that covers the facts is usually the best. I don't know exactly what is going on with Sophia, but she is not right in the head.
Hi ename144!
While Wilhelm von Occam´s idea is a nifty tool, your use of it here fall s prey to not available to you important info. Since you have bad relations with Sophia, your Edwin does not gain some insights other Edwins do.
That some black ops sh... like mental imprints was done on Sophia, be it volunteered or ordered to is currently unclear, is very obvious if you chose her path. Also that Sophia is adapting to it, starting to throw her weight around. As I mentioned in former posts, I theorise that Sophia was honed to be Abel´s right hand, sword and successor, added to it secret service level mental work and spec training to be able to function in the club without too much undue attention.
Given that Sophia remembers alot of time with Abel fondly, I think she volunteered to help bring down the Club and esp. Chuck. But she, probably even Abel, underestimated what a mental workover of an already eccentric genius-level mind would bring about. You cannot force a mind continously to do things he never had inclinations of, stuff compatible with the core personality
will merge, incompatible things will be rejected/erased over time. This is what happens here, because with Sophia in a few year becoming Abel´s successor leads to her start stretching her own wings. Currently she and her imprints function like they should, but Sophia is injecting her own spin. She wants to win, but her own designs are beginning to take shape.
I estimate that the mind work and special traning done with/for/on Sophia has the reason to "round out" some of her skill sets, enable her to do things she does not like/want to do and shield her from suspicion/work undercover in the club. That something was done can be seen here.
Step by step we get more info about what really goes on with Chuck/Club and Abel/Sophia. It is a shadow war to the end, both sides willing to do what "has to be done". More later.
Took me a few days, but I finally replayed this game from the beginning up to the latest update and damn, it just keeps getting better every time. I absolutely love diving into the finer details, whether it's reading the dialogue or watching the subtle animations.
TD’s writing is on another level. The characters, the wit, the drama, the dialogue it’s all so cinematic. It had me laughing and anxious at 3 a.m., man.
And GIL’s art? Pure chef’s kiss. The subtle details and the way everything moves bring the characters and scenes to life in such a natural, immersive way.
Honestly, I don’t even know what more I can add that hasn’t already been said about this masterpiece. Looking at Ch4 up 5, and up 6… it feels like we’re heading toward the peak of what a PC experience can be and it's not even the climax yet.
Kinda wild that this is one of my first AVNs, because now I’m totally spoiled by greatness. My standards are way too high now, lol.
Only thing I've drank in my youth as bad as malt liquor 40s is Mad Dog (MD) 20/20. If I see some of this in Pale Carnations I'm going to bust a gut. Be funny to find out it's Katherine's favorite drink.
Ha! I have some Mad Dog memories too! I think one of my best friends described it best: "Delightfully chemical-flavored with a subtle note of asphalt in the finish."
Happy Chapter 4 Update 6 everyone! I've played through a solid chunk of the game now (though it's sufficiently varied that I don't I've seen everything), so it's time to figure out how I feel about it. I think on a narrative level, it's extremely good. There are a lot of moving parts here, but they fit together well and more importantly they come together to sell a pivotal moment of the story in unmistakable style. And as I all to often fail to mention, the art is fantastic, always highlighting the feelings of the various characters and finding clever ways to frame the action.
However, as good as the story and character work is, I do feel like the gameplay lets it down a bit because for all the choices available to us, the update is unavoidably about the cruel hedonism that is the Carnation Club. That's not to say there are no moments of levity or sincere tenderness; there are, and some of them are quite good. But those moments are short, isolated, and all too often restricted to very specific paths. Most importantly, though, almost none of those moments do anything to second guess Kathleen's attitude in her moment of triumph, and that definitely stings.
The end result is a good update that I didn't enjoy playing. Of course, given my laughably vanilla tastes I think it's fair to say I was never going to find this update fun. But even in comparison to previous Exhibitions, it didn't feel like my actions made much difference this time, at least not within the Exhibition. I don't know if that's a result of splitting the Exhibition into two parts or me wanting to get the "belly of the whale" portion over as soon as possible - or maybe I've been misreading where the story was going the whole time. We'll have to see what happens next. For now, I'd say I liked the update, but not as much as I was hoping.
So much for the generalities, let's get down to brass tacks.
Okay, I think that does it for this update. Hopefully we'll be back again before too long to wrap up Chapter 4.
tl;dr A good update with lots of plot progression and plenty of lewd content, but not a lot of variety for those who don't like the Club's brand of entertainment
As always, this is a fantastic debrief and reaction post! Thank you for taking so much time to write out your thoughts and feelings on the update. I always like reading these in-depth analyses and comparing your reactions to my own.
Hi ename144!
Brushing up the on the holy shine, aren´t you? Taking the white path through the orgy.
Well, you never developed a rapport with her, that starts to change quite a bit of what is happening now. Sophia is the most important non-Main LI character going forward. By the way, our lovely bundle of contradictions is NOT insane. Part is her eccentrism, which I expected to show, hats up for TD1900 who wrote it nicely, if fitting it to the storyline with a dark bend by personality imprints and special training from the secret service sphere andI the mentioned imprints/training done so Sophia can function to full extend in Kath and Chucks diabolical den.
Personally I know a couple eccentrics, so some behaviour of Sophia is no biggie for me and we can see in game that Sophia is a cute, nice woman in an extremly problematic position, who should still not be underestimated. I theorise both Abel and Sophia have imprints done to stave off the influence of Kath, Chuck and the others. I think TD has some surprises more for us in his bag. I estimate Abel and Sophia underestimated what these imprints and training would do to them longterm. They might win this war with Chuck, Kath and the Club, but at what personal cost?More tomorrow, because it is really late where I live.
It's been said before, but I agree with it: Even assuming you're right about what's going on with Sophia, I feel like "artificial personality imprints" is really just one particular flavor of insane. Normal, sane people don't have those, y'know? That's the whole reason for the term "brainwashing."
BTW, since we're nearing exhibition 3 what do you guys think about this problem I've mentioned over 3 years ago:
Now that we know from Sophia that Allison might have won not only because she was the best but also (or mainly) because of her future use for the club it sheds new light on this issue.
I wonder if the game is built in such a way that each Exhibition has a Carnation who just can't win that week? For example, it is (at this moment) kind of hard to picture Felicia winning this week, given the absolute pummeling her emotions took.
But that being said, I admit I haven't played through multiple times trying to test this theory.
Yeah, Felicia is my favourite too and I completely agree that she looks just adorable here. I wanted her to win from the start but learning about the art school made me convinced even more, especially this part:
Felicia:"I could crack open a thesaurus and put it a million different ways, but I'll never be able to articulate just how much that place truly meant to a poor little girl whose mother could only afford colored pencils for her 8th birthday."
Yeah, Felicia absolutely melts my heart. I first started this game a long time back after seeing a picture of her, and even now I still think she's the hottest/sexiest character in the game. But that being said, she's really well written so far as a character and the scenes you get with her and the time you spend with her are really precious, the nighttime scene on the rooftop being the most memorable and impactful, to me anyway.
It's very rare that I find a character in a game where the girl I think is the hottest is not only a main LI, but also has, at least to me, the best overall personality. Combine that with an interesting story and setting? I'm simply over the moon!
And as a person who always just picks generally whoever I find is the hottest (even in harem games I only go for my favorite), I find it quite welcoming that she's my absolute favorite in just about every aspect. It's one of the many reasons why this is probably my current overall favorite ongoing game.
It's been said before, but I agree with it: Even assuming you're right about what's going on with Sophia, I feel like "artificial personality imprints" is really just one particular flavor of insane. Normal, sane people don't have those, y'know? That's the whole reason for the term "brainwashing."
Hi Ozymandias!
Artifical personality imprints are not a flavour of insanity (even if it is possible to see it so), but a form of strong coercion! The imprint does not make you insane, it strongly urges you to do or not do something, your core personality does not change just so. Working on the mind is a difficile and imperfect thing to do.
TD has ratched up the Darkness of the PC storylines consistently so far, I think I do not lie too far away from what is going on. I estimate since both Abel and Sophia are more or less undercover in the club, most probably both have some mental work and special training done. Abel less, since he is more rarely at the club, Sophia more to shield against influence of the club and it´s members and to be able to do some things they normally would not be able to.
That might have been not such a bad idea on paper on pure effectiveness, but I think the side effects over time have been underestimated by them or win at all costs was king.
We can see that with Abel who has started to showboat in certain clubsituations and orders Sophia to do things he did not do before. That is info we get during a Sophia/Chuck talk, where Chuck states that Abel is as frivolous as he himself is. Since this clashes with his sterling reputation as a proven humanitarian and Sophia´s recollections of great times with Abel, I theorise he is either influenced by the Club atmosphere or an imprint "helping" him behave like the typical as... VIP member.
In Sophia´s case it was a bad idea to do mind work and special training on an already naturally eccentric genius person, who is the chosen successor of a CEO. Like Hypnosis, artificial personality imprints cannot make you do things you would not do otherwise in perpetuety. Imprints compatible with the underlying core personality will be incorporated, those which are not get rejected and dismantled over time, especially if the core personality is the driving force of the person.
Sophia knows and experiences what the (probably extensive) special training and mind work did and does to her, in addition to being in the club and around people she despices, I doubt she thought it would become as bad as this. Which is probably the reason she has started to hate Abel too in the deepest recesses of her mind, additionally to the PC club. It is possible it was just an explosion of frustration comment, but it can also be meant earnestly.
On possible example of how she knows there are changes in her, which might never go away afterwards, is that she becomes aroused seeing what her inventions are able to do, when she dislikes the persons using them.
I was trying to old out for the regular release but failed... but then all my saves are gone except for the quick and auto saves... is this some BS the whole annoying sync thing can do? Gutted.
Wow! Sophia has fully embraced her duck persona. She only thinks of Abel as her mom as long as he can provide for her. And now that Edwin is feeding her delicious bread she's conflicted about who to embrace. If he only knew that peas is the healthier option.
I liked getting to see Sofia again, I want to get to know more about her. Alison is kinda of a hotty when all dolled up, but still not quite a Felicia, I did enjoy what a bitch she was at least.
So when this happened
I actually wrote out "I do enjoy that little cup of poison, and I wanted to get to indulge then. Not even having to go that far, just like make out a bit, catch her off guard with some mushy shit or something."... and then got basically exactly that later haha.
Though hard choices to make. I could happily pass on Hana and Lucy... but really wanted to give my favourite blonde a sorta heads up so I could act innocent and like a good guy when she inevitably spirals... buuuuut, possibly starting something more with my favourite lil' viper, uuugh, too hard to resist.
Allison vs Sofia was a harder choice than I would have thought too. Sofia intrigues me a ton, but Allison had the better scene and I guess you wouldn't get a chance with again.
Funnily enough I was planning on using Ian's deal to try and fuck his mother, very gentlemanly of him to be the one to offer it up.
Only thing I didn't like was Harper (another favourite of mine's) new fucked up haircut.