Thursday, September 13, 2012

I am like a dog chasing its own tail...

So, I have done the changes to the way you meet Piper I talked about. The way it is now, makes more sense to me, and allows people to get to the Titty Twister as soon as they want, BUT! It also forces the players to make a decision early on, that ends up with Piper either staying at the Titty Twister forever, or sneaking in your ship later on, and the decision can be made only once, so, be careful!

I am almost completely done with all the variations on the scene/showdown with Malena and whoever is your other love interest at the time (or no showdown at all, if you are only paired with Malena), but I might close down on the options, because I want to have a closed beta as soon as I finish doing some basic testing on my own. This isn't because I made this amazing progress in the meantime (au contraire :p), but rather I feel the need to get a second opinion on what I have done so far with the relationships.

I am not completely satisfied with how things are coming together, especially because I feel like I might ruin Jane's character development, if I keep her as a love interest. Also, I am unsure how I should handle a really bad break-up, like the one that should happen if you decided to pick Malena over her if you are outed on your actions.

I might decide to treat Malena's relationship as a long bad end, with no way out if you stick with it, and cause all sorts of big bad things to happen in Celeste's life because of her, without any fear of the fallout, as I wouldn't need to care about the ramifications, but I am not 100% sure. The alternative would be (as someone suggested to me once) to make the relationship almost completely gameplay-free, something similar to Mass Effect (you talk to them, and new dialogues unlock over time. If you decide to court someone, things move forward on that path, otherwise the romance doesn't start. The romance would also need to be locked, or it would become too messy).

All in all, I am sure I'll never try to add a relationship/dating system onto a game if I haven't planned it carefully at the get-go, because unless you keep the love interests outside of the main narrative, too many things can go wrong, unless I make the romances really railroaded.

So, I could sum this post up like this: I am confused, and I will seek advise from my testers soon to fix that.

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