In terms of soundtrack, framing and (especially) lighting, this thing is really top notch. Ocean has a cinematic standard he adheres to seemingly religiously and it really shows. Unfortunately, he might be too big of a fan of the old "show, don't tell" adage. That, to me, is the project's biggest problem.
One solution would be to have a more comprehensive 1st person narrator, in the form of the MC's internal dialogue. It's there (somewhat? Sometimes it seems to change between 1st and 3rd but I can't be sure without replaying the game and really paying attention), but it could stand to have a bigger presence. Should, really, considering how taciturn and prone to self-reflection the MC is. The main benefit to this would be curtailing scenes/moments that the MC doesn't consider all that relevant or interesting but still give the audience bullet points to what's happened. A good example would be the whole DnD session, but the applications would be manifold when it comes to reducing the amount of renders needed to complete any given scene by describing what's happened instead of showing. And it'd pair well with a character that doesn't seem to initially care for much but is attempting to open up as he goes along. Yes, it's telling instead of showing but hell, even Star Wars needed a title crawl.
Replaying the whole thing also made me aware of a number of odd turns of phrase (as if the words themselves were directly translated rather than the meaning of the expression), typos and just some really unnatural dialogue.
TL;DR- Get a writer, Ocean. It doesn't mean giving up creative control and it would help bring the text up to par with the visuals and save you time best spent on moving the plot forward so you can manage to finish this before the heat death of the universe.
One solution would be to have a more comprehensive 1st person narrator, in the form of the MC's internal dialogue. It's there (somewhat? Sometimes it seems to change between 1st and 3rd but I can't be sure without replaying the game and really paying attention), but it could stand to have a bigger presence. Should, really, considering how taciturn and prone to self-reflection the MC is. The main benefit to this would be curtailing scenes/moments that the MC doesn't consider all that relevant or interesting but still give the audience bullet points to what's happened. A good example would be the whole DnD session, but the applications would be manifold when it comes to reducing the amount of renders needed to complete any given scene by describing what's happened instead of showing. And it'd pair well with a character that doesn't seem to initially care for much but is attempting to open up as he goes along. Yes, it's telling instead of showing but hell, even Star Wars needed a title crawl.
Replaying the whole thing also made me aware of a number of odd turns of phrase (as if the words themselves were directly translated rather than the meaning of the expression), typos and just some really unnatural dialogue.
TL;DR- Get a writer, Ocean. It doesn't mean giving up creative control and it would help bring the text up to par with the visuals and save you time best spent on moving the plot forward so you can manage to finish this before the heat death of the universe.
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