Anyways... I'm done with it, so let me just gather my thoughts a bit, but there's a few things I'll say outright:
I'm not exactly sure which songs he's trying to not lose, because like half the songs in there I've heard in BaDIK and other big games, so it's clearly not those... either way, after doing a full PT I can say with the utmost confidence that it just wasn't worth removing all the erotic moments just for a few songs that could've been replaced.
I understand the game is designed as a slow burn and it's fine, however, it only worked because Ocean had the good sense of inserting very erotic moments when needed... and some random nudity too, which by the way, is still present... it's in fact a bit puzzling as to why he chose to remove certain nude shots, but left some others... kinda feels random. Specially Bella removing her top in Ch5 all of a sudden for no reason (or rather, because he obviously removed something else in that scene)... like why even do that?
It's not surprising that Steam didn't fall for that half-assed attempt at trying to avoid the nudity/adult tag, and at that point you have to wonder why even censor anything at all... yeah, yeah, the music, whatever, it's easier to replace a track than to re-render all of those images he decided to change... I mean, whatever, that was his choice, but imo it was the wrong choice, specially considering that he's most likely not out of the hot water with the whole music thing, I suspect.
I'm gonna be honest, it felt like at least 3 or 4 erotic moments were cut out from the script in ch5 too... what I mean is that it really felt that some scenes were leading to a whole lot more and then it just doesn't happen, and it just felt odd and the scenes felt truncated, like something was missing.
Besides that, some of the reworks also resulted in narrative & visual discrepancies that SHOULD'VE been ironed-out BEFORE it got released... he'll still need to do more work on S1 as a result (or leave it as is with those mistakes, but knowing Ocean... yeah =/)... Some of the more noticeable ones were how some characters shift their appearance constantly (banana girl looks chubby at times, then thin at others... wut? I need that sudden weight-loss secret!) and of course how they reference stuff that never happens in the reworked version.
Oh, speaking of pointless changes... the 1st therapy session: Why? Dr. Mommy is still dressed inappropriately... sure, her shirt is not VERY slightly transparent anymore, now she has a huge ass cleavage that looks even sluttier that her previous shirt... soooo...
The dialogues in Ch1 and 2 also needed A LOT of polish... somewhere around ch3 they start not reading like attrocious mistranslations, but everything before that just doesn't read like proper english AT ALL... I won't comment on the extreme cringyness of the dialogues 'cause that's more of a personal taste kind of thing, but yeah, some of those dialogues between Bella & Nika are "edgy" to a point of ridiculousness... oh and by the way, repeating the word "cunt" every two seconds is NOT gonna help your game with getting a non 18+ rating... that should be obvious to anyone with any working brain-cells.
I also noticed that he removed a bunch of choices... I'm not exactly sure if those choices were all that impactful, tbh, but the problem is it feels even more Kinetic-y than before and I really don't see the point of removing those choices.
Anyways, all that to say that between all these things and the ones I mentioned before, IMO this wasn't "launch ready", or at least not how he was painting the picture. S1 is still gonna need more work, mainly to fix things that shouldn't have been changed in the first place, so the whole thing is starting to feel a bit stupid... like an excercise in futility.
And the last thing I need to ponder is: Is this even an AVN anymore? Should I just remove from my recommendation list? I mean, sure, he gutted it to shit for no reason, but there IS still a fair amount of random nudity and a whole lot of sexual talk... I mean, holy shit did he really think
that was gonna fool Steam? lol... And the worst part is, there's still very much a possibility that he will end up losing his precious music rights anyways, because even IF he managed to fool everyone with S1, well S2 is supposed to be a fully R-rated game, right? Do you think the licensing companies are gonna be okay to have their songs associated with a porn "franchise" just because season 1 doesn't have hardcore sex scenes? I don't know Rick...
Imma be real, it just feels like a half-measure and half-measures are a really bad move, you need to commit one way or the other, but instead, Ocean just butchered his own game stupidly (as in he really didn't put much thought into HOW to censor it correctly once he decided to do so and just half-assed it), and in the end, pointlessly (because he clearly didn't achieve his goal... except for the music licensing thing, and again, I'm not sure he's completely avoided that problem yet)... so uhm... good job I guess?
