On a separate note. As much as I love how involved you guys have been, especially this update, in figuring out who is the gold digger, and whether certain individuals could be an accomplice or if Elaine is sincere or manipulative...
I might make a some slight suggestions in your lines of hypothesis and commentary if only to keep things rolling and see what you think. Feel free to pick and choose.
1) Assuming any particular theory of yours is more or less correct. How do you think things will end up when the cat is out of the bag? How would you like them to end up? (This is not a harem question...)
Let's be realistic here, Ace. You've been around these forums long enough to know that
everything is an incest question.
At any rate, my assumption is that the gold digger will turn out to be Bella, probably with Jolina being her friend (with benefits) that Bella roped into helping her. I still expect Bella's motives to be less malevolent than has been implied (at least assuming the MC didn't cheat on her), though she'll only be friendly towards the MC if he's pursued her. Beyond that I can't really speculate because it will depend on details I just don't know enough about.
As far as what I want to happen, I'd like it if the MC gets to take some active role in how the will plays out. To date, we've mostly been a passive observer. Settling who would keep the main house was our first real decision, and it was made largely in ignorance of the final consequences. It would be nice if we eventually not only had some level of influence over what happens with the others, but also had the chance to articulate why we make our decision and then see the fallout of that decision play out.
We'll presumably get a simple version of that based on whether we keep seeing Monica and the girls, but that's a very binary decision that will be lopsided one way or the other on most runs. I'd be more interested in decisions like planning to avoid the girls for 1 year to get some money then reuniting, or making a deal with one of the other heirs to help them fulfill their own conditions (though obviously that would depend on knowing what their conditions are).
Basically, I'd like it if the MC started proactively planning for his future. It's all well and good to spend our days banging hot chicks, but that's not a long term strategy. I think we're at the point where the MC can start taking the long view without it disrupting his booty calls too much, especially as the parallel paths start to trim themselves down.
If the ending is just a series of reveals followed by the MC pressing a button to decide who gets what, I worry it will feel a bit underwhelming after all this buildup. We need to feel like we've *earned* whatever ending we get, even if that ending winds up as (for example) turning down $5 million to be with the girl we love. Emphasizing both our agency and our mindset seems like the best way to counter that risk.
2) Also something I wanted to touch on is plenty of games like ours have angles of betrayal or areas of grey when it comes to actions of friends or love interests we have spent a lot of time with in these games. Needless to say sometimes the emotional response of the player can be... extreme, even if they did anticipate the twists. I don't expect people to end up in more disappointment from the reveal than enjoyment from the mystery (I hope), but feel free to share your thoughts on this too.
It really depends on what the betrayal is and why it was done. If, say, Monica has been deceiving the MC this whole time because she wants to get his share of the money, that's going to be a
massive scarlet letter for the character and completely reshape how I feel about much of the game. If Bella has avoided telling the MC because this inheritance is her only means of survival and he might inadvertently jeopardize it if he knew too much, that's a lot less damaging and could potentially make Bella sympathetic depending on how exactly it's handled.
At a minimum, I'd like everyone's actions to make sense both before and after we learn the twist. Beyond that, I think it would be cool if the degree of betrayal could change based on our actions (either because the gold digger doesn't want to hurt an MC she's fond of, or because of how closely her own goals align with the MC's). Granted, that would be a lot of work from you to make everything fit together, but that's what you get for asking.
3) While our course has been set in many regards which we have been open about. We actually did see some pushback this Ep in regard to a lot of "forced" breakups. Although it is actually possible to maintain every relationship (though not without major danger signs), there will come a point sooner than later where this won't be possible. Hence why the difficulty of continuing to juggle or lie is becoming harder, and the suspicion variables (yes, we have those) have been far more active in causing breakups even when you could have lied your way through before. Anyway, my question is do you think we have been too hard when the axes have came down? Do you want to see more when the drama goes full bore? Do you enjoy the continued tension when sleeping around?
I'm pretty sure you know my take on this; if anything, you should have started the fallout sooner so it was less jarring when the axes started to fall.
Now that it's started, I've enjoyed seeing the axes fall because I think it conveys a sense of progress and ups the stakes a bit for the romances you care about. Then again, I don't usually play manwhore runs, so I may be atypical. And I don't have much of an opinion on how much fun sneaking around can be.
I do think that when we are caught red-handed, it's better if we see at least the initial explosion play out. IMHO, Angel's onscreen breakup with the MC when she caught him kissing Wanda in Episode 21 was much more effective than the quick fade to black we got if Jenna and Katie simultaneously declared they were dating the MC.
4) Tying somewhat into #1... I like to think we have properly treaded the line to keep you guessing, but also not come out of nowhere with the big reveal when it happens. We also have certain angles/outcomes covered and options not yet unveiled that will allow the players to deal with certain individuals in unexpected ways. (No murder though!) But what do you want/expect when it comes to this?
As I said for the first question, I'd like the MC to start planning for the future before it arrives. This will obviously require us to learn things sufficiently in advance that we can react to them, which may or may not be easy depending on how you've planned your reveals.
Beyond that, I hope that the endings will show us more than just how the MC and his chosen girl(s) fair. There are a lot of girls in the game, and most of them have a relationship with the MC even if he isn't sleeping with them. I sincerely hope we'll also get a sense of how those platonic relationships (or burned out remains of doomed romantic relationships for the unchaste) will extend into the epilogs.
