- Jan 9, 2019
- 452
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GTA 7 will come sooner than this game will be finishedOkay...
I usually just lurk and eat popcorn while all the "fans" fight among themselves about the state of the game.
I hadn't bothered to try the first WIP of 0.21 since Debbie and Jenny were just super old content that I didn't really care about anymore.
However, upon the new update -- I was curious to check it out. I started following SS back during the "teacher" update, so since it was reimplemented I thought maybe I could get a fair impression of DC's ambitions, and a sense of nostalgia because that's where it all started for me. I wanted to try to compare how I felt back then and where the state of the game is now...
I know that there is a lot of content missing... and I believe during the original "teacher" update there was already a lot of other side routes implemented -- so as far content is concerned, it will already start off lacking compared to the original "teacher" update.
I don't want to defend DC's work ethic. Some things seem very minor adjustments on the front end. But even from the intro screen. The game felt much smoother. I remember a delay in all previous versions when accepting the 18+ disclaimer. And there always felt some kind of latency when on the menu screen.
This could be because there's a lot less content to load, or it could also be attributed to something they did in the backend. So that's a bonus.
The only other thing I wanted to address, is that while there is a sure lack of content and minimal cookie jar scenes. I want to appreciate that there are a lot of additional scenes when introducing characters. These mini-cutscenes iirc were not in the any of the old versions. And I want to praise DC's team for trying to increase the quality of their storytelling.
Again, I'm not trying to defend DC just because a lot of these minor things might not feel much and usually shouldn't take a long time to code in... For all I know, they rewrote all the backend code... so effectively the only thing they could copy and paste from implementations were the dialogue. They may have wanted to do this so that reimplementing future cutscenes would be streamlined. It's always very annoying to have different parts of a game run on different code logic.
But not even 5 minutes into the demo... did I "feel" DC's ambition of making SS a much more well-rounded GAME. Not just another RenPy game with high quality art. We always praised SS for its art... and even its depth for its open world in comparison to others in its style. I think DC just wants SS to be lightyears away from any other open world VN.
I also think, lucky new players will still really enjoy SS. And they won't even know what they've missed. But they will feel the difference in quality of SS compared to any other generic VN...
I was just wow'd by Jenny's, Debbie's, and Mrs. Johnson's opening cutscene... and if every character gets this kind of treatment. I am excited! It's definitely not worth 2 years of waiting for something like that... but there's a lot of other things trying to be added. And I'm all for it.
I hope and wish DC continues his pursuits and eventually finishes this game.