VN Ren'Py Shattered [v0.22] [Yeda Games]

[DaClown]

I believe, I should bump this message, so that people would see the update.

And on the unrelated note, here’s the latest results of my Discord poll. It feels strange to me that Iris’s route is the least popular, since she has a lot of really vocal fans, but it is what it is. Bree being second in popularity is almost as shocking.

Apparently, I am playing either Bree or No Route because every other character on that list I try to pick choices to remain distanced from them. Especially Melinda, Vanessa, and Samuel. Melinda is precluded because there is practically no situation imagined within the scenario that would make a consensual relationship between Blake and Melinda possible even in principle; the power discrepancy between the two is such that no real relationship of trust or respect or proper power exchange can result for me. Samuel is just so many ways not my type and not a character I would ever voluntarily interact with. Vanessa is fundamentally dangerous and untrustworthy on account of her authoritarian status as basically a slave patrol; this ends up precluding Iris from consideration due to the closeness of their relationships.

Also, I don't think I have ever successfully gotten on or stayed on the bimbo route.

The interactions of Blake with Rebecca fundamentally inform my disconnects with the decision-relation matrix of the interactive narrative. There are a variety of choices presented in those interactions where no response is actually something that I want to express or use or accept.

I can understand Blake's hostility to Rebecca, but the relationship and evolving psychology of Blake with respect to Melinda completely undermines the notion that Blake's hostility has to be fundamental. There is a choice where the game asks the player's essential view of Rebecca and distills it into one of two options: pity or anger. I neither pity Rebecca nor am I particularly angry at her; what I want to express in that specific moment is compassion, empathy, and understanding; if anything I am angry at her situation and the abuses that she endures.

My perspective and desired relationship with Rebecca is compassion and trying to role model healthy boundaries and relationships. I neither want to dominate her nor want to be dominated by her. I want to be kinder to her regardless of how she treats me. I am not interested in a romantic/erotic relationship with her as she is presented throughout the story so far, nor am I interested in acting as some kind of savior to her; I regard her as sibling or as someone that wants to be her friend but understands that the rampant abuses of her life and the coercive conditions of Blake's life makes that perhaps impossible.

Rebecca tries to impose a cishet sort of sexual orientation on Blake; she refuses in some sense to see Blake as a man or even particularly as male, but she also refuses to relinquish the view that Blake's sexual relationship with other people can be anything other than gay-male-masculine or woman-as-utility-to-a-man. Repeatedly when choices are offered to the player, you do not get the opportunity to express in one way or another to her that you want femininity and would gladly be her doll or sister or feminine role model or feminine pupil, but you are queer/a-trans-lesbian and like specifically girls or at least not cis men.

The story of Rebecca's femininity appears to me to be a foil of an idealized cis femininity. The identification of her femininity with her abusive relationships is very important to me and my own expression of femininity in the character of Blake.

This all ties into my conflict with the bimbo routes as they have been formulated and presented. I do not see naivety or personal endangerment or sacrificing personal autonomy or identity as essential elements of bimbofication; however, the descision-matrix of the game does implicitly assert these as mutually exclusive conditions. If you are cautious and unwilling to accept entanglements with people who are engaged in lethal or abusive games (like enslavement) then the bimbo route seems entirely impossible to either get on or remain on.

Likewise, I am somewhat interested in the mind games that are presented, but there is no character as presented currently that I would trust to mind control Blake or would trust not to be trapped in some devious web of mind control effecting their person and compromising them ultimately. Maybe Bree could someday be an exception when she's worked through some of her trauma. Maybe Zoey.

The issues of becoming aware of the abusive relationships and trauma of the characters with respect to their experience of femininity as well as confronting and resolving those issues is central to the relationship between Bree and Blake. Much of the issues of the empathic misses between Blake and Rebecca apply also to the issues of empathic misses or absent compassion for and with Bree.

not being loved by anyone

The issue isn't an absence of love. It is that each character has particular ways that they need to be loved, particular ways they want to be loved, and particular ways that love has been expressed toward or about or around them. These things are in fundamental conflict or even crisis for most of the characters, and Blake occupies a position where they can express the love that various characters need but often this is blocked by the characters having entirely dysfunction demands of how love is expressed to or about or around them. Shattered has great moments precisely because occassionally expressions of love meet briefly with the need to be love in moments of vulnerability and trust. Shattered could do better with allowing the player to undo the knots that bind and fix what is broken with care and compassion.

 

[YedaGames]

That was a very lengthy comment, and answering to it in its entirety will take hours, so I'll just pick out a couple of things that I feel obliged to correct, if you will.

First, that part where Blake has to choose between pity, and anger towards Rebecca, only refers to this specific situation in this specific moment. At this point in the story Blake is mostly just frustrated with Rebecca, and is relieved that he doesn't have to deal with her as much as before. It's also worth noting, that she's been abused by her plenty, and since this is a pretty early event, naturally, «understanding», and «compassion» towards Becca don't have any roots in Blake's mind yet.

I believe, you've skipped the entire storyline where Blake is allowed to change Rebecca in certain ways. There are several possible methods to start it. And Blake's influence on her life can get somewhat huge later in the game, especially when he gets a chance to essentially ruin her relationship.

As for the bimbo route, what you're describing is just the first stage of it, the entrance point. Blake does not become a bimbo by just sheer will, this character has to be planted inside Blake by other people, often having their own agenda. Which is why in order to progress towards something more desirable, you have to start it, then «upgrade» your Blake through other routes.

 

[DaClown]

It's also worth noting, that she's been abused by her plenty, and since this is a pretty early event, naturally, «understanding», and «compassion» towards Becca don't have any roots in Blake's mind yet.

What I am telling is not about factual correctness of the diagesis. It is about my identification or failure to identify with the player avatar that is Blake. This is metagame and feedback from the player to the developer about the game. Discard whatever is not useful from a design and playtest feedback perspective.

I believe, you've skipped the entire storyline where Blake is allowed to change Rebecca in certain ways.

I have played the game through at least a dozen different ways exploring what each decision does by meticulous saving before branching points, saving the branches, and exhausting combinations. I am aware that the player can to some degree change Rebecca near to the end of the current content, but what I am fundamentally talking about has less to do with the characterization of Rebecca and changes to her personality and far more to do with the establishment of variances of Blake's orientation and perspective of Rebecca and the situation that Blake finds themselves in from the start. Particularly, my comments almost totally concern how the player reflects their own views and opinions into the game world through the player-character of Blake.

The player is significantly restricted from establishing their relationship with Rebecca from the start. Blake is hostile to Rebecca in a way that they are not towards Melinda and can't be. They are uniquely hostile in fact compared to how they react to abuses from any of the other girls.

Narratively, Rebecca is the unlovable bitch and Blake has little to no sympathy for her. Even later when many of the positive, constructive options are taken their relationship ends up being one of a kind of tolerance. Bree is somewhat the mirror of this dynamic.

As for the bimbo route, what you're describing is just the first stage of it, the entrance point. Blake does not become a bimbo by just sheer will, this character has to be planted inside Blake by other people, often having their own agenda. Which is why in order to progress towards something more desirable, you have to start it, then «upgrade» your Blake through other routes.

I am aware of what is required mechanically to get on and stay on the bimbo route. I am aware of that because I test mechanically and extensively in these "CYOA" games, so I end up finding the options which are non-intuitive, counter-intuitive, easter-eggs, not-meant-to-be-found, developmental deadends, etc. I also end up learning a lot about the structure, implicit models, and implicit biases of the game design and narrative.

In my organic playthroughs where I make choices according to my emotional desires and needs for my personal edification, I never end up either entering onto the bimbo route or I invariably make significant choices not to allow certain characters near me which bumps me from the route.

As I stated before, I know this is because of mutual exclusivity conditions in the decision-matrix of the game. Not hard to verify by trauling the Ren'py scripts for the specific conditions that must be satisfied to enter or stay on the bimbo route.

Sum total of my feedback on this point: I have to consciously play against my own model of bimboism and bimbofication and deliberately take actions that I know that you as a developer have required by fiat to have any hope to walk that particular balance, and I have to tolerate a bunch of characters and situations that I do not feel are necessary for the realization of my player character as a bimbo.

That was a very lengthy comment, and answering to it in its entirety will take hours, so I'll just pick out a couple of things that I feel obliged to correct, if you will.

So.
1) my comment is for you to read and is to inform you strictly of my subjective experience and some of my objective observations. It is a playtest report in response to the results of that poll and in response to my experience of playtesting the last few months of versions of the game/story. Something of a personal explanation or testimony of why and how some of the implications of that poll reflect my own particular opinions and experiences of the game.
2) I am informing you; I do not particularly want you to reply to my commentary and report; if you are to provide feedback to me then I want to see it reflected in the game design and development in future patches.
3) I don't particular care about a forum post response from you. I am not here to argue with you, and I am not here to be corrected. If you feel that my perspective, experience, or opinion is somehow objectively and factually incorrect then you have not understood the type of communication that I have provided to you as a game design and a developer.
4) You are welcome to disregard everything I have to say, and I will no longer provide you with playtest feedback or narrative design critique.

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

Speaking a bit about, this is one of the main reasons why i never tried a relationship with Melinda or Samuel in this game. I can't get past my anger for what they forced onto Blake at the start of the game. And everytime i restart to play a new route i am reminded of this.
I sure was glad when choices for Blake to start thinking about getting away from Melinda started to pop up in the latest chapter.


By the way, how much votes Melinda has on the discord poll suprised me. I wonder if here the results would be different.

 

[okokok]

Minor inconsistency. On the first visit to dr lowe blake mentions having gone on a date with vanessa even though I turned vanessa down

 

[gregers]

Speaking a bit about, this is one of the main reasons why i never tried a relationship with Melinda or Samuel in this game. I can't get past my anger for what they forced onto Blake at the start of the game. And everytime i restart to play a new route i am reminded of this.
I sure was glad when choices for Blake to start thinking about getting away from Melinda started to pop up in the latest chapter.


By the way, how much votes Melinda has on the discord poll suprised me. I wonder if here the results would be different.

Despite my own deep distaste for Melinda, if you want to play Blake as a sub/slave type, she's the first introduced and probably the most obvious choice as his original enslaver. If on the other hand you prefer to play Blake as an independent-ish type, she's a clear enemy. I can't imagine any playthrough being lukewarm about Melinda, whatever your preferences.

As for Vanessa, she's a cop and complicit in the system that enslaved Blake. She can get in the sea.

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

Despite my own deep distaste for Melinda, if you want to play Blake as a sub/slave type, she's the first introduced and probably the most obvious choice as his original enslaver. If on the other hand you prefer to play Blake as an independent-ish type, she's a clear enemy. I can't imagine any playthrough being lukewarm about Melinda, whatever your preferences.

As for Vanessa, she's a cop and complicit in the system that enslaved Blake. She can get in the sea.

Yeah i also tought that being the first possible route presented in the game plays a role on Melinda's popularity.

Haven't tried playing Vanessa's route yet. People say it is good.

 

[DaClown]

Speaking a bit about, this is one of the main reasons why i never tried a relationship with Melinda or Samuel in this game. I can't get past my anger for what they forced onto Blake at the start of the game. And everytime i restart to play a new route i am reminded of this.

This is a really good point.

Something I am taking as a given is that Blake suffers a tremendous trauma and abuse. The specific person that is the manifest agent of that abuse and trauma is Melinda. Yet Blake somehow can among the options choose almost immediately to view Melinda in positive, sympathetic, compassionate, romantic, or erotic terms despite the fact that the situation would be wholly unforgiveable and intolerable to many if not most real people put into that situation.

That's what makes the relationship of Blake and Rebecca so jarring to me and makes the absences of options conspicuous in the earliest parts of the game which then makes even more conspicuous absences in the Blake and Rebecca relationship following from all that. It feels to me like there should be options representing an evolution of a parallel kind of relationship between Blake and Rebecca; this extends to conspicuous absences of options with Bree or Suja or Kira. A lack of compassion on the part of Blake for the abuse of others leads to a reflected lack of compassion on the part of the player for the character of Blake; in many games like this, it results in players quitting the game and walking away or taking a perverse delight in the abuse and destruction of the player character because they are so entirely unlikeable and unsympathetic. Anti-identification is generally an anti-pattern of game design, and this game does not seem to me to be designed around player dissociation from the player-character/player-avatar, so this becomes unpleasant or undesireable cognitive dissonance and damages immersion.

We are supposed to suspend our disbelief about Blake forgiving Melinda and even being endeared to her and even being able to see her as a hopeful source of love and affection and care and warmth, but it is unbelievable and totally out of character for Blake to care about Rebecca and to understand her in terms of someone who has been abused by Melinda in similar ways? To see her as someone who was born to the abuser and grew up with them and was wholly and deliberately shaped by them? To do this despite her worst impulses and habits? To see and treat her as worthy of love and care and liberation from suffering on her terms or in the terms she needs?

And even if we forgo the extreme that Blake in the first chapter (or ever) would be able to experience such empathy and compassion, we're supposed to believe that Blake wouldn't be the type to beg Rebecca to step on him/her and thank her for abuses but totally would be willing to do that almost immediately for her mom? Rebecca may view herself or act as antagonistic to Blake but that does not mean that Blake has to or will reciprocate that.

There are a myriad of incongruities or inconsistencies of Blake's character in Chapter 1 which are revealed by the network of relationships of Blake to other characters, other characters to each other, and by our ability to peek at what the counterfactual response will have been if we had made the other choice(s).

If we can believe that Blake would happily lick the feet of Melinda, reveal intimate personal information within days of meeting her, and otherwise submit to her dominance gleefully and coyly and only after a few interactions with her then why is it so unbelievable that Blake might see Melinda's daughter through a similar lens?

If there is a genuine route where Blake achieves some kind of liberation that does not amount to reveling in destruction by the evil and malice then I think that route deeply depends upon the liberation of the other characters, and I'm not talking about the "Resistance" in the diagesis. An ending in which Blake is liberated but no one else is, in which Blake grows as a character but no one else fundamentally changes or Blake's view of people does not significantly change, in which Blake is the only person in the society to have significantly changed without the society diverting at all from the presented status quo is a tragic ending at best. Most likely a horrific and dystopian one and not in the sexy or interesting way.

My least favorite show of all time at this point is Lost. Lost introduces a plethora of characters. Builds elaborate relationships between them. Layers rich detailed histories upon each of them that outlines their motivations and methods. Yet not one of the characters is capable of genuine compassion or connection with another person. At the end of it, there is not a single character that I ultimately cared about and would trust with my vulnerabilities; they are all liars and deceivers incapable of authentic being or sincerity; they are all fundamentally incapable of even authenticity for and with themselves. The premise that all those characters disappeared from the world is the only thing I end up rejoicing, and the ending in which they are not in fact absolutely lost to the rest of us is the most disappointing ending I can imagine. The fact that they can't or won't stay fucking dead and gone ends up being galling and upsetting. I wish I knew less than nothing about Lost and its Characters, and I was absolutely furious to learn that there were 2 more seasons than I watched. The whole thing was such a huge waste of my time and so disrespectful of the viewers and all the people involved in the production. Game of Thrones came close to outdoing Lost.

Shattered is doing a bunch of remarkable things, and I currently hold the game in high esteem. I recommend it as a model for visual novels to various people. The decision-matrix is robust in many ways and the whole thing is quite promising. I would hate to see it turn out as Lost and Game of Thrones did with the creators baffled at why it all collapsed.

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

I have to agree with Zoey's assessment of the situation after she learned what happened to Blake, that he has stockholm syndrome.
After spending weeks suffering because of the situation he was forced into Blake started developing some positive associations each time Melinda treated him with the bare minimum of kindness or simply didn't subjected Blake to humiliating tasks.

 

[Ghoseh]

while i think that would make sense. i have played about 94% of all routes and in no routes does blake show any type of resentment towards melinda or rebecca later in the game which would have made sense for a pure dom route but since the force feminization is locked into the story mode that's kinda of a "charge it to the game" type of situation.

 

[DaClown]

I have to agree with Zoey's assessment of the situation after she learned what happened to Blake, that he has stockholm syndrome.

It is important to understand the

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and its roots as misogyny from authoritarians and cops. But even if we accept the premises of stockholm syndrome, we have to accept a fundamental requirement for the development of the condition. Stockholm syndrome arises precisely because the captives and abused have compassion for each other and for their abusers. It isn't just or even primarily that the hostages are rewarded for compliance and develop classical conditioning that compels them to cooperate with their abusers; it is that the social relationships of compassion, gratitude, and the desire to cooperate create solidarity between the hostages and the hostage takers. The presence of the armed police force trying to escalate the situation to lethal shootouts in a coercive capitalist system exemplified by the banking institution itself provides necessary pressure for that solidarity and spontaneous empathic cooperation in resistance to the authoritarian forces and the abuse culture.

If the hostages treat the abusers as antagonists and act hostile to them or reciprocate their abuses then the situation often escalates towards greater violence. You get murder-suicide pacts from that and situations like Jonestown and the suicide cult or outright warfare breaks out until one or both sides are dead.

Saying Blake developed stockholm syndrome while held hostage in Melinda and Rebecca's home implies the precondition of Blake's capacity for compassion and empathy from the start. To respond to repeated abuse with kindness.

Zoey's one of the few characters I genuinely care about and might even trust to some degree. Her relationship with and to Tanya puts her in a similar but significantly less problematic position as compared to Iris to Vanessa though the proximity of Zoey and Tanya to Claude and Troy is disquieting.

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

What the hell did i just read.

I will just leave this

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here and i am not touching that comment above.

 

[DaClown]

What the hell did i just read.

I will just leave this

You must be registered to see the links

here and i am not touching that comment above.

Yeah. Nothing in your link contradicts anything that I said.

I'm a survivor of childhood abuse and was held effectively hostage by a father that beat me repeatedly for years. I've studied this phenomena as well as lived it over decades along side psychological professionals and in group therapy for years with others that suffered similar traumas.

Denial, ‘frozen fright’, ‘psychological infantilism’ and ‘learned helplessness’ are not age-specific. Children may also display: school refusal, loss of interest in studies, dependent and regressed behaviour, preoccupation with the event, playing at being the ‘rescuer’, stubborn and oppositional behaviour, and risk-taking. The impact can be particularly serious if the children have been detained over an extended period and if the incident entailed a breach of trust.

The article you linked concerns particularly the psychology of the hostages and is scoped within a very broad definition of hostage taking. Situations like Blake's concern a specific type where murder of the hostage or hostage takers is not the forgone conclusion or the intended outcome. Blake is the subject of human trafficking where a living Blake is far preferable to a dead Blake or a Blake that can not function in society or who is catatonic.

Most hostage taking conditions that can occur result in the death of the hostages. They are not the objective of the hostage taking activity but collateral for other objectives and often entirely expendable. Even within those conditions, the hostages that don't die often survive because they specifically do not antagonize the hostage takers and because they find something the hostage takers want or need that is more important than killing or harming the hostage.

In circumstances like when the planes were hijacked during 9/11 in the US, there was no situation in which the hostages could make such appeals to the hostage takers because the whole thing was a deeply conditioned suicide run from the beginning and not even the hostage takers considered themselves as anything other than expendable.

Under the section Coping and survival strategies

It was noted that, despite being subject to a life-threatening situation by the raiders, the hostages (three women and one man) forged positive relationships with their captors even to the point of helping to finance their defence after their apprehension. Conversely, the hostage-takers began to bond with their captives. This paradoxical reaction has been noted in many other incidents.

And this reinforces my assertion that "even if we accept the premises of stockholm syndrome, we have to accept a fundamental requirement for the development of the condition. Stockholm syndrome arises precisely because the captives and abused have compassion for each other and for their abusers."

However, certain conditions do increase the likelihood of the Stockholm reaction. These include:

• an extended and emotionally charged environment;
• an adverse environment shared by hostages and hostage-takers (e.g. poor diet and physical discomfort);
• when threats to life are not carried out (e.g. ‘mock executions’);
• when there has to be a marked dependence by the hostages on the hostage-takers for even the most basic needs;
• when there are opportunities for bonding between captives and their captors in circumstances in which the former have not been ‘dehumanized’. (Some hostage-takers aim to dehumanize hostages by hooding them, depriving them of their names, any identifying details and possessions, treating them as ‘animals’ and changing regularly their guards – as did Saddam Hussein with his ‘human shields’ in Kuwait.)

Again, when the captives engage in combat, the relationship between the captive and the captive taker becomes hostile. The progression of that statistically is escalation of violence. The arms race that results in such combative relations particularly in life-or-death situations produces a highly predictable calculus. Either one side dies and the other lives or both sides die fighting each other. This was examined during the cold war extensively under the term Mutually Assured Destruction or Unilateral Destruction, and it was modeled and studied extensively in game theory in zero-sum games and games of conflict. The simple model of Tic-Tac-Toe typifies the zero-sum, winner-takes-all, us-vs-them conflict; the single optimal strategy results in a cats game everytime for both players unless one player is an imperfect player or does not play optimally in which case they lose.

It is specifically in the conditions in which there are not only two sides to a conflict or in which various sub-games are presented where players can cooperate with each other for at least short term, immediate, or local win-win conditions that you get things that resemble Stockholm Syndrome. Non-zero sum games are sufficient for the development of Stockholm Syndrome. The way that works psychologically and sociologically is empathy and compassion between the hostage takers and the hostages.

further under coping and survival strategies

The validity of the concept has been challenged by Namnyak et al.,

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and they suggest that its features lack rigorous empirical evaluation, as well as validated diagnostic criteria, but owes much to the bias of personal and media reporting.

That is the position argued in the article I linked to which this article was linked in reply.

Other individual methods of coping with extended captivity include: use of distraction (e.g. mental arithmetic, reading and fantasy); regular discipline (e.g. with regard to personal hygiene and exercise); taking one day at a time; and trying to find something positive in the situation (e.g. Terry Waite began preparing in his mind his autobiography). Jacobsen describes how a group of adolescents, following a skyjacking, viewed their experience initially with a sense of excitement and adventure and were particularly helpful to young mothers with children on the aircraft.

Note again the presence of empathy and compassion in the coping strategies here.

 

[pilgrim2003]

It seems that a new function in threads would became handy. Besides reviews and posts also a special posting area for long stories, huh?

 

[Lillen B.]

I'm just gonna swoop into this hot zone to say Trish is bangin' and inhabits a very interesting social space. I would totally be down if there came an opportunity to hang out with/get jiggy with her. Maybe it already exists, and I just missed it in my hasty but honest loyalty to the resident African goddess. I really should try exploring some other paths, huh?...

 

[Danny Manning]

They have made this game damn near impossible to download

 

[FoxlordKurama]

Although I personally enjoy this fetish I find the style of the plot quite lazy and so devoid of any fighting back on the part of the MC it renders the entire thing completely unbelievable and throws you out of any semblance of immersion. Completely forgetting the random 4th wall break because their wasn't enough background and it just had to be shoehorned in randomly out of nowhere.

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[Staimh]

Although I personally enjoy this fetish I find the style of the plot quite lazy and so devoid of any fighting back on the part of the MC it renders the entire thing completely unbelievable and throws you out of any semblance of immersion. Completely forgetting the random 4th wall break because their wasn't enough background and it just had to be shoehorned in randomly out of nowhere.

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I have to disagree
Firstly the game description is quite clear
From the OP in bold text "While the feminisation aspect of the game is unavoidable"
So the feminisation is going to happen.
Beyond that however the MC, Blake, gets to choose
1) from a number of potential sex partners (and there are a few) and/or love interests (some intertwine some don't)
2) sexual preferences of the MC (certain NPCs are only available dependent on this - which makes sense)
3) level of submissiveness / dominance (again - certain NPCs ...)
4) level of sexual promiscuity (again - certain NPCs ...)

What's more it does this in a more fully developed way than any other game (particularly of this genre) I can think of.

And incidentally the MC is introduced to "Forthwall" early on and can reject any further interaction with him at that point so my feeling is this is a useful and fully configurable tool the player can control.

Subsequent edit: PS - YedaGames has provided walkthroughs so players can plan their way towards paths they prefer due to the number of players who were having understandable difficulty with the plethora of interlaced options available

 

[FoxlordKurama]

I couldn't disagree more with your entire chain of thought.

Firstly the game description is quite clear
From the OP in bold text "While the feminisation aspect of the game is unavoidable"
So the feminisation is going to happen.

Yeah, again I as the reader have no problem with forced feminization, but the manner it was done here is lazy imo and completely devoid of any immersion imo. Just because it's forced that doesn't mean the MC has to like it from the get go. That doesn't mean the MC can't fight against it in his words, which ultimately are futile, like I said in original post. Literally to fix this all they had to do was make a couple more scenes, the outcome would be the same but it wouldn't have been as rushed and it would have flowed nicely.

And incidentally the MC is introduced to "Forthwall" early on and can reject any further interaction with him at that point so my feeling is this is a useful and fully configurable tool the player can control.

Nah, imo, anytime you have to break the fourth wall, it's bad. It doesn't matter that you don't have to interact with him, the fact that it's even an option is what's bad and lazy imo. Why can't they introduce seemingly important information through another mechanism that doesn't do that is beyond me. Literally just give [insert random character here] a couple extra dialogue lines hell you could even give it to the cop when we first meet him.

"Hey kid the world out there is a lot bigger than you know...[introduce forthwall info here]"
Dumb counter argument: "But Kurama then you wouldn't be able to skip it..."
Then just add the skip option there.


"But you get your choice of partners!!!!"

I mean that just more firmly solidifies the story more-so in the category of kinetic novel for me. The game is incomplete so it can't be clear what outcome not picking anyone has on the major storyline.



Ultimately if I were to review the game 3/5 for me. You can like it, you can like the things you like about it, but it doesn't remove or detract from my points about the plot. Personally for me if the beginning plot was more fleshed out and believable I would feel more invested in what happens to the character and the story as a whole. I'm not saying it's lazy to be mean, I'm saying it's lazy because that's the term in writing for what happened. Lazy writing is what happens when the author makes assumptions and doesn't give the reader more info because they're already so entrenched in the world they created. That it isn't clear to them that the reader needs more information.

Dumb counter argument: "OH but Kurama you said you hated forthwall a character that gives info, hypocrite! J'accuse!"
No incorrect, I don't dislike the information, I just dislike the mechanism chosen to convey that information.

 

[YedaGames]

I have said many times in the past, that I don’t like the first chapters, and that’s why I slowly keep remaking them.
Your problem, however, is that you simply don’t understand Blake’s character, and his motivations. Which, I guess, is my fault as well.