The day isn't too packed, too much isn't going on and you could easily argue there would be more time in the day assuming most tasks take 1-2hrs each. The problem is 3yrs, 5 updates, and what have we got? We don't need a unique render for every line of dialogue. An animation can be as few as 2 frames. We don't need arms waving all over to signify a discussion when you could literally just have a render with the characters mouth open and another with it shut. You could use the same two mouth open/closed renders for 80% of most conversations instead of spending additional days to weeks on the renders for one scene. We also don't need to spend 3-400 renders per scene looking every character up and down. The first time they're introduced, sure, give us a few additional renders. Scenes that are intimate, sure, go crazy.
I'd legitimately argue that the current sex scenes get a fraction of the renders as generic conversations do. I'd much rather see that reversed. Far too often during general conversations we'll get multiple renders per single line of dialogue. Even one render for every 2 lines of dialogue is excessive if every new render is going to be unique.
There's one stretch where we're given like 20 unique renders as we survey the scene, which then goes into an animation that's nearly 10sec long and does the exact same thing, all before a single line of dialogue is spoken. That's like a week of work based on what most devs say all for a single line of dialogue. It's cinematic as fuck, but THAT'S THE INTRODUCTION TO THE SCENE. It's not even the hottest part of that scene with Bree. I'd have less of an issue if that were done during the part after she wraps her legs around the MC and does a sit up. I'm an ass guy, and all that work was wasted on scene with her laying down ass up in baggy, crumpled up jogging pants. Where as the part of the scene that would have actually shown off her body got like 1/3 of the renders as well as no animation. That is INCREDIBLY poor planning. That suggests the intent was to go balls to the wall on that one scene and then they ejected once they realized how long it was taking. That's not the only example of that sort of behavior though.
If you had a team busting out 2-300 renders per day, be my fucking guest. When you're a two man operation, you gotta learn your lesson and start planning better.
And when we start looking at games like this, I'm definitely a bit concerned how the workload and overhead is being broken down. I've seen these partnerships break down and its easy to understand bc 99% of the expense ends up on the artist as well as north of 70% of the manhours spent on development. If its a two man team like this, you REALLY need both people working together on the renders. Especially if you're making enough money to justify the hardware costs, as they are.
