The tabletop game sequence? It's pretty clear that is the path for Nadia and possibly Sonya romance, no? Doubt that there is or ever will be more to it than that.
But since those routes are not yet developed, as of right now, it is a pointless detour that adds nothing to the story. Unlike the book club one that adds quite a bit, imo.
Despite how much I enjoy Ocean's world building, I have to agree with you. The tabletop sequence is a bit of Ocean's fan service for table top games, and goes on way longer than necessary to introduce Nadia, Nancy and Sonya's characters, well mainly Nadia's. The only way I can see it being value for the time spent is Ocean setting up the world that they game in, leading to lewd encounters with the devil cards, that spill over into real life. I'm guessing it'll progress much the same as the movie night, but going further, as we can already tell Nadia and Nancy are 100% okay with being perverted
But it doesn't need as much of a setup as it got.
I appreciate the detailed comments, and I will have to think about them a bit. Please do not misunderstand, Summer's Gone has been my favorite game on this site since it first dropped and still is. The detailed storytelling, renders and multi-dimensional character are really well done.
I guess I didn't read into things like you did. For example, for me Noji just didn't want the MC to go because of all the cougars and the worry he might no be in the right mental state to deal with all the attention... and he did have a serious panic attack at the end of it. For Amber, she's a therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist so perhaps Noji saw Amber professionally for a while. Amber was just being respectful of her clients privacy. I had a dermatologist who I ran into socially and she politely acted like she did not know me to respect my privacy. And the discussion with Charlie, IMO, was a little self-indulgent; just the MC trying to challenge the pecking order of the group and while he may have been right, was not necessary.
Regardless, you brought up some valid points so I will have to go back through it and read it from a fresh perspective to see if I view it differently. Part of my challenge, I think, is I felt we were already pretty well into the story and suddenly, we were introduced to a bunch of new characters, which just adds additional delays with character development. For example, with Victoria, she was kind of a big part of the story initially, but even f the MC agrees to go on a date with her, you barely see her. So now we are adding a bunch of characters all at once when I though more time could have been spent with some of the other characters. Sonya is another example... hardly spent any significant time with her. It could even be argued Mila has been neglected as well. For that matter, what about Jeff? He has had almost zero interactions with any of the dudes.
I would probably not be complaining about screen time if it wasn't for the book club. Again... this is my favorite VN on this site, but the book club kind of came out of no where and I question it's significance. Regardless, several people here have made some good points so I will go back and look at it again with a fresh pair of eyes.
Thanks for the discussion.
As people have already pointed out, there is a requirement to read between the lines, and looking in the out of focus areas, noticing what Ocean zooms in on - in the pizza shop there's a moment when Nami says something and the scene focuses on a background character who pays attention. Or noticing Katie's car driving past the university, noticing Sasha's bodyguard hovering around, Sasha's friends dying their hair white, the teddy bear, all sorts of things.
I think a lot of players see it on this site and assume it's a porn game, despite the disclaimer that it is a visual novel with adult elements, not a porn game. That implies that the method of story telling will not follow the usual porn logic that exists in 95% of games here. I think one of the reasons that people find the slow burn hard to deal with is they are not used to actually being resisted in a porn game - everything is served pretty quickly following porn logic. Love interests can't resist sex is a rule that doesn't apply here. I'm suspecting people will be angry when playing out their harem logic leads to getting slapped down by ALL the LI's.
In the meantime, I've done many replys just finding out the supposedly unimportant details in each render. The story is being told in many different ways. One of the anti porn game logics used is that you can miss information by making different choices, so there are actual consequences for actions, not just getting slapped down, but also being kept in the dark and missing connections. People who don't enjoy plots won't enjoy the level of detail, but there's more for us to dig into I guess.
Whether or not the digging is worthwhile is of course a personal choice.
Wow
Everyone still is here with their higher purpose in a porn game with no sex yet but good plot, teasing and bodies.
Dev notes on first page -
"This isn't a porn game! This is a
story-focused game with
adult elements.
If you just want to fap, this is certainly the wrong game for you."
Keep insisting it's a porn novel though, keep doing it and maybe Ocean will change his mind about what kind of story he's telling. It's like you're ordering a vegan patty in your burger and complaining that it's not meat. The fact this game is here with a thread doesn't mean that it is a porn game, only that it is popular on a pirate site.
