Hey, game devs! Here to say that overall, I'm really digging the game. Definitely became one of those "Came to see some tits, stuck around for the story" affairs for me.
But. There's something that really bothers me about the story, or rather its premise.
I'll start by describing how it would go if the shipwreck, as shown in the opening cinematic, happened in real life: In this modern day and age, any boat bigger than a rowboat has a GPS transmitter, which allows, well, virtually everyone to know its exact location at any given minute. And while I might be exaggerating a bit with the rowboat part, a vessel such as the Moby Dick would certainly have one.
And what would happen as soon as someone notices that the Moby Dick's not transmitting any more? Which would happen within hours since the shipwreck. The first course of action would naturally be to try and call the ship, as they may simply have a malfunctioning transmitter. But if nobody answers... welp. Then it's time to assume that something very bad has happened.
The next course of action is send a plane to the ship's last known location. Which, by the way, is right next to this island on the map. (If Tuvatuva has manmade structures, it could still conceivably be abandoned, uninhabited, but no way it's uncharted.)
The plane reaches the location, looking for signs of survivors... maybe life rafts in the water, anything. And... there's no way they miss the big white boat washed up on the shore. And if the plane can't land, the next step is to dispatch a ship to the scene. The ship then picks up the survivors. And all this happens in the course of a few days, at most.
Of course, we wouldn't have much of a story then.
And since it's fiction, not real life, there could be any number of reasons preventing this from happening - aliens, supernatural entities, a secret government project, some kind of carefully engineered social experiment... you name it. And it's all fair game in fiction.
The real problem is that the story doesn't indicate that the world outside Tuvatuva operates on rules that are wildly different from our own. So, even if there's some fictional construct on the island that prevents the survivors from leaving, the characters should not be so oblivious to its presence - especially since the wait for rescue seems to drag on. Or, at least some characters shouldn't. Sure, the ship's bartender might think, "Ass-end of nowhere, ocean big. Will take time."
But, if I was someone who knew the ship's systems intimately, say... the ship's mechanic... and if I also was ex-Coast Guard, and thus very well versed in how maritime rescue works... I'd be freaked out of my mind in about a week. Certainly not just chilling about, trying to get 1. the AC working and 2. into the pants of the hot cheerleader - and not necessarily in that order of importance. If I was that character, I'd be the driving force in trying to figure out what the fuck exactly is still holding us in here.
What we need, at minimum, is a narrative handwave that explains why the mechanic isn't freaking out about it. (And, by extension, the rest of the island.) Perhaps... near the beginning of the game, Jack tells Cath: "Don't know much about boats. But we had GPS, right? So, sooner or later a plane will check out its last known location... which was right outside the island. Should be no more than a few days." And it's something Jack could very plausibly know, considering that his brother was the ship's captain. But, then Cath looks at him uncomfortably and says, "Uh... actually, the GPS is busted. Was busted even before we left Fiji." Jack: "That's gotta be against regulations!" Cath: "It was. But Erik Cruz didn't give a shit about that, and told us to get the boat moving, so we got the boat moving. After all, what's the worst that could have happened?" This basically sets the scenario to: "Ocean big. Will take time."
Note: In real life, the ship's captain would have told the guy with money that the ship isn't moving an inch before the GPS is fixed. But the guy with money overriding the captain is an acceptable break from reality in fiction.
And, another question: What's the narrative justification for the girls not suffering any... unwanted consequences of all the (seemingly) unprotected sex they have? I noticed some debates about implementing pregnacy in the game while browsing the thread - and I'm cool without that feature. But, yeah, it's not like they have a pharmacy on the island that keeps supplying them with pills or anything. (Or does the storage room carry a hefty stock of those, too?) I mean, I guess, "It's porn. Just go with it," kinda works... but since it's a game that actually attempts to provide narrative justifications for many of the porn tropes at play (or at least lampshades them), you kinda start noticing the ones the story just ignores.
Perhaps I'm picking the nits here... But, on the other hand, I'd never have paid attention to this stuff if I wasn't a fan.
