So after taking the time to
pay attention, my view on this rework has changed quite a bit. It's still a downgrade in some areas, but not nearly as much as some people here make it out to be.
- Judging the rework itself, most of its errors are centred around the dialogue and scene changes. Marla was introduced as the tour guide and should have noticed MC then. Although there was a crowd there. Maybe that's the reason she didn't notice him. Cool... seems realistic enough. There are many points throughout Chapter 1 where I was like, "real people don't speak like that," but everyone here should remember that Oceans isn't a native English speaker. It's hard to translate dialogue from one language to the next whilst maintaining the same amount of emotion conveyed in the former.
- That's another thing. Emotion. The whole reason many of the audience flocked to Bella was because of her interactions with the MC. It was somewhat obvious that she was putting up a front and wasn't really a bad person. Her interactions and dialogue in the previous version did a good job of showing that. Her interactions with the MC in this new version... don't carry the same emotional weight as the previous version. In the previous version, their interactions functioned as a buildup to her confrontation with MC at the mention of her sister. You could feel the pain and raw emotion in her dialogue, and when she choked MC, we, as the audience, knew how unstable she was. Now, in this rework, the overall feel of that scene is not there. The confrontation changed too much, and not in a way that benefits their subplot. The old scene showed everyone that maybe this girl is a little unstable. The new scene didn't do as good of a job conveying that. Oceans should have just upgraded the renders/art and fixed the grammar within the dialogue. All of those changes weren't needed. At least when it comes to that scene.
- Ok, last critique. Character writing. There... aren't that many believable characters here. That's it. It wasn't as noticeable before the rework but is more noticeable now. At several points in the story, I was like, "Who does that? Why is she doing that? Why is he initiating this conversation in the shower? Did she really call him a school shooter 5 seconds after meeting him??" This is different from it being just a dialogue issue... it's more of a character issue. Some of the social interactions were just... weird. Every time I replay this game, I spot something else that's wrong or a bit odd lol. I still love it, but I can't ignore its shortcomings.
To close this off, this game has quite a few issues. The rework made some things worse and a lot of things better. Fortunately, none of these problems are unfixable. I hope that
Oceanlab sees some of the constructive criticism posted here, and works on fixing some of these issues(and hopefully not committing the same mistakes in the future)ღ
P.S: To anyone that doesn't like the rework and has something to say...
please don't go overboard. Some of you guys are straight-up rude when it comes to criticism. Don't expect Oceans to listen to you or acknowledge your points if you're being a complete a-hole about it. It's all about knowing how to talk to people. Until next timeღ
