Community College Hero 2: Knowledge is Power (Would a Game Guide for CCH1 & 2 be helpful? post 1941)

I´m sure whatever the ending is, you´ll be able to tie it together beautifully, no need to get anxious! plus i´m sure that if there´s any issue the beta testers will point it out immediately.
I AM expecting some kind of plot twist though, something connecting Dr. Stench, Savior and the Dozen, I have a feeling BookSmart knows a lot more than we think and MC´s dad got involved way too deep in crimes we have yet to know about.
I missed the live chat last Tuesday, how did that go?

@Rinnegato, yes I need more side projects!! :slight_smile: But if I ever had a chance to “re do” CCH, I would definitely have it take place in the late 80s, early 90s.

@Phiality, BookSmart knows a lot more than anyone thinks. And yes, Dr. Stench might be a bit more relevant than it would appear. Thanks so much for the vote of confidence! I’m working on some scenes this beautiful morning.

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Soon, I will post the CCH3 demo on my Patreon page. For now, the demo will be a Patreon exclusive, but this will likely change down the road, so if you’re not in a position to support my Patreon page, you’ll still get to help beta test/bug smash CCH3 later if you’re so inclined!

For now, it will be available to everyone at the Booksmart level and up. The demo won’t be huge, but it will greatly excite me to take this first small step into the final Issues of the trilogy.

Then, from October on, I’ll update the demo monthly. Some updates will be small, and others large, but I absolutely must make progress monthly to get it published in a reasonable period of time.

I am devoting much of my time to StarStreakers! at the moment, so please be patient with me if progress on CCH3 isn’t quite as fast as you would prefer. I’ll give you all my best effort, I promise!

As always, I think you folks are Specktacular, and I am forever grateful for your engagement and support!

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I was convinced the Wyvern was just testing us, considering he bothered to explain the keypad at all, and he just happened to capture someone who could beat the time limit (which isn’t even necessary. why program the lock that way?). Add to that the fact that he seemed to deliberately miss Dirty Girl with his cannon, and the Combat Enhancer Maguffin is never explained, it seemed like a bunch of nonsense made up as an excuse to test the MC.

I’d argue one can write it off as an a**hole with a severe superiority complex.
The whole “i could kill you but won’t” spiel.

Same reason the Manipulator doesn’t use the explosives against the students if Hedonist isn’t present:
She thinks herself too superior and “it would be boring”. She is that kind of arse and so’s the Wyvern

I loaded my level 3 soldier from part 1, and I went for powers. Maybe if I went along with one of the schools’ bullshit, I would have had more interesting things happen. After the Prestige visit, I was pretty disappointed with the story.

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If you were disappointed in the climax, then I don’t know what to tell you.

I put everything I had creatively into Issue 8, with what I thought was a good number of twists, revelations, escalating stakes, and seeds sown for the MC’s path in Part 3.

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Thing is, you can’t have revelations and “just as planned” moments. Issue 8 with the fights against the Wyvern/Manipulator were fairly straight compared to the previous ones who were more about worldbuilding. I personally think putting more revelations would have slowed the pace of the action based chapters.

Please keep in mind these are only complaints about the game. I could list many things I liked as well. I played CCH1 probably 20 times.

My biggest complaint is the Wyvern storyline. I never got to choose to go with Crook, but I figured hey maybe he convinced me, I’ll live with it. Then I’m forced to keep the laptop to myself. Btw, I kept hoping maybe there would be a scene where I investigate the laptop and find out about the Wyvern being connected to the school(s) somehow (because I thought he was just testing me), but it turns out I have no idea what’s on the laptop until right before the fight. I’m also forced to go after the Wyvern one on one. The story decided I have some kind of vendetta against him. I never would have done these things if I had the choice.

My main gripes with the Manipulator are relatively minor compared to the above. It just seemed like she could have used her power so much more effectively. I don’t really get why she wouldn’t attack from hiding places. Police snipers could have taken her out if necessary.

If I were her, I would have also teleported away as soon as I saw the Wyvern jets. It was hard to believe that was enough of a distraction that she just ran straight into the Hedonist.

Regarding the Hedonist’s death, I’m guessing the explosion weakened his body enough that dropping him from height was enough to injure him? I wish that had been made a little clearer.

I also had to assume she can’t use her power if she’s woozy, since she is talking to us and not teleporting away after we beat her. The plan was to knock her unconscious, but apparently that wasn’t necessary.

After that, it’s not clear why Monstrosity X and Lady Ash behaved as they did. Why only eat her arm? Was it supposed to be merely punishment with the expectation that she would take it without retaliating? And I guess Lady Ash was legitimately threatened by the Manipulator, since she left instead of just killing everyone. Maybe she would have no defense against a car being dropped on her?

Lastly, what use could the Manipulator have for the MC? I don’t see why she would need the help of a non-Zenith.

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When examining/talking about the Wyvern plot-line, remember this was a contest that boxed Eric’s creativity into a bit of a railed experience. The experience here and the one in ZE:SH with Sifer has convinced me never to offer such a prize in my works.

Even though they are for a good cause, such additions seem to do more damage than good.

On the other hand, writing short stories and comics and such as both @JimD and @Eric_Moser are doing on Patreon seem to work much better.

ymmv.

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Now that the Wyvern is being mentioned again… I think that the thing that bothered me the most about him was the reveal of his identity: random guy with no clear motivations. And after giving it a little though I think I had an idea that could have worked a little bit better.

Do you remember how in the middle of issue 6 we met this random woman named Sadie? It’s been a while since I’ve played the game but I don’t remember seeing her again after that, she just seems like a very superfluous character.

At first I though that maybe she should have been a hostage of the Wyvern at the end of issue 7 to rise up the stakes, but maybe… she should have been the Wyvern’s real identity.

Think about it: at first we gave her a ride but maybe this was a part of her plan, perhaps when we were distracted she did something to hack our phones and that was how we got the fake message. Also, when we met her Quickie didn’t want to help her but Dirty Girl insisted and gave us no choice in the matter like this was a plot relevant moment that needed to happen and this could have lead to a moment of “see Quickie was right all along” too. Also, the questions she was making about Zeniths could be made in order to seem sympathetic but maybe she was also hoping to obtain some personal information to exploit some weakness, like when she was asking about dates and Origami. Perhaps Dirty Girl could have mentioned something about the party and that’s why The Wyvern appeared there.

She also could have had some nice motivation: maybe her admiration for zeniths hide a secret jealousy, maybe she wanted to have powers and be a hero and she tried to compensate that with advanced technology, she could have wanted to replace the heroes or prove they were useless or something… kinda like the villain from The Incredibles. I know that the Wyvern is male, but it isn’t too hard to imagine her designing a device to hide her voice and choosing a male persona in order to not become a suspect.

Yeah, maybe it’s not the best idea either but seems like a nice reveal and at least it would have been an established character.

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@Seer, you make good points re: the Wyvern. I had planned to do more with his plot, but midway through I realized that he was taking over Part 2, and that really wasn’t my goal. That’s what I get for doing only a very loose outline. So I had to dial it back, which admittedly left a lot of gaps in that particular arc.

And yes, Manipulator could have hidden in a car blocks away, but we could say the same for many other comic book villains. Yes, it’s logical, but it’s also cowardly and not very exciting. Can you imagine a battle between villains and heroes if everyone adopted that approach?

Blue Morpho: hides in a Volkswagon and changes reality

Streetsmart: hides in a Prius and anticipates Blue Morpho’s move and warns Booksmart, whose consciousness is hidden in one of 1,000 robots in a huge robot army, all of whom are hidden in different locations.

Lady Ash: starts trying to burn robots from a half mile away, while hiding in a McDonalds restroom.

Birthday Boy: is kept in a satellite in low orbit, monitoring everything below and using his ‘once a year’ powers to undo Blue Morpho’s reality shift and make the McDonalds invisible to expose Lady Ash.

(okay, the above has as much to do with the OP nature of these characters, but still my point is that I have to put them together in scenes for story purposes even if it would be smarter to hide)

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that would actualy be the most hilarious fight scene ever, you should do a short story about that with the MC in the middle going ‘well, here goes my participation to the story’ and leaving XD

i honestly want it now XD

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@Eiwynn, yes the Wyvern had a pre-determined name, background, etc. I wish I would have worked the actual man behind the armor into the story more, but again see my post above. It definitely does complicate things, whereas as you point out, doing some supplemental material in the form of short stories can really open up side characters and add layers of interest and depth, and just sort of confirm to the reader that more of the universe exists outside of what is mentioned in the HG apps.

@MockTurtle, I agree 100% with your post. However, as the Wyvern had a pre-determined identity, I couldn’t have gone the Sadie route. What I could have done was work in the Wyvern’s character as a new side character, maybe some sort of consultant for Speck, who helps upgrade technology for the school (something they desperately need) but ends up just taking the job to get closer to Captain California’s Savior tech. It could have been super fun, but would have added LOTS of scenes to the story to make it work.

But again, I love all of your ideas about Sadie. It would have all made sense, really.

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I understand having to incorporate certain things into the story, but the Wyvern storyline felt very much like fundamental choices were being made for my character in order to move it along a certain path.

I prefer the choices to be more like someone did x; what do you do in response?, rather than you did/are doing y; what’s the best strategy for y, how do you feel, etc..

In the first game, I never felt like choices were being made for me. Of course things happen that are out of my control, but I controlled everything my character did (unless someone wanted to leave Speck or something, I guess).

I hope that part three sticks more to the style of part one and avoids the above issues with part two.

I get attached to ideas, and sometimes I work backward to make sure that “Idea X” can work, regardless of prior choices, and that’s tough to pull off.

For example, I remember thinking, “It would be cool if the heroes distracted Manipulator with the Wyvern jet pack so that she’d think, just for a moment, it was Captain California.” I was doing my best to write a "both sides are making smart decisions, "which is the optimal way to write a show down between two competent sides, with the result being that one of them still has to lose of course.

Of course, for them to have the jet pack means that the Wyvern has to be beaten/captured. So yeah, I probably worked back from there. But more importantly, with the biggest complaint from Part 1 being “I feel so nerfed!”, I wanted to guarantee that every reader experienced at least a decent showing against the Wyvern, and yes a win against the Manipulator.

Yes, one can argue, “well if we’re guaranteed the victory, it’s not really a victory,” and yes I get that, but it was still my preferred choice over writing Part 2 in a way that allowed the MC to “fail” or put up a crappy showing against the Wyvern and/or the Manipulator. I feel like I would have lost many of the “I feel so nerfed” readers at that point.

The story is not a power fantasy, and I’ve made that clear over and over, but even still, I didn’t want to risk it.

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Honestly i really liked how we felt usefull in the second game, especialy how our equipement was actualy used in multiple scene, i mean we are still no Combat Wombat who just pull a goddamn Magneto during the fight against the manipulator in term of power but since the cast is more like X-mens rather than kryptonian, it’s still cool to feel usefull with our leadership and equipement without also feeling like it shouldn’t happen, so you did a really good job addressing those complains

well there is a difference between a power fantasy and the main character not being usefull / just a spectator, which quite a few other game didn’t really understand, though more recent game like the magician’s burden pulled it off quite well, the MC is a total underdog but doesn’t feel like a spectator to his own story

On a sidenote: can we adopt September 23rd as Hedy’s birthday?

why ? i don’t really see a reason for that

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Stuff like this doesn’t need a reason

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