Alright, I’m going to be pushing out an update on the hour, so be prepared for that.
I’ve fixed the name issue, as well as the typos.
I have also played around some with how you’re referred to throughout to make it less masculine, and added more variety in names to make it a clear mix of male, female, and genderless names.
I’ve also added an option to quickly get back to the choice before your death at the hands of the assassin in Greece, and made it clearer that that’s certain doom.
Oh, and you can get in Brandon Ides’ pants now too.
@Eiwynn It probably could be, but I don’t really have plans to expand this into the kind of epic I usually do. To be perfectly honest, I wanted to go back to a more action-oriented and fast-paced genre after Best of Us and figure out whether or not I can do that sort of thing. In many ways this is just that, and I’m more than happy to leave this on the tier of a short story.
As long as it doesn’t end up feeling too hasty with the story and thus too short. If the consensus is that the pace and rhythm of the story works in its current form, then it can stand as is for the most part.
Joking aside, I’m impressed that you can do alll these kinds of updates with the quality of your WIP. It would probably take me a week to do the things you’re doing in one day .
I can totally understand and accept this. I just wanted you to know (imo) that the foundation you have made with this story justifies you revisiting and expanding on it in the future. Perhaps a pure expansion or instead a companion story in the same time-frame and related to this short-story.
Some of the most popular series in writing started out in the way of this experimental piece - this definitely has the structure to join their ranks.
The update is done and has been up for about half an hour now. I added a variable for Brandon’s romance, so if you were in the middle of it when the update happened you might have to start over. Not as big of a deal as usual with my stuff, but even so. Letting you know.
@Silhuetta Well, updates are not a big deal. It’s usually really quick once your identify the problem, whether that’s typos or code. It takes much longer when I have to rewrite whole sections just because some small details change somewhere else. I could probably be updating this constantly with new fixes and refinements, but I don’t want people complaining that I broke the game by pushing an update, which happened quite a bit when I worked straight from Dropbox.
That sounded way too much like a humblebrag. Ah, screw it. I’m not rephrasing that. Too much work.
@Eiwynn Aye, that can very well be if I end up feeling like going into spy fiction again, which is likely. However, I am contemplating on whether this is something I should send to HG or not. It’s definitely on the short side with an average read-through only around 20k - 25k words.
Ya - as far as this bit goes, I’d recommend not sending it in by itself. If you want to have a series of vignettes involving our French spy; that might work. As is, too many immature, knee-jerk reactions will hit you and cause problems with the “this is too short” and “this should be free” idiots coming out of the woodwork.
If you really want to send it in for publication, I’d say you are going to have to expand it one way or another.
I feel like that happens whenever an average read-through amounts to anything less than 50k words, and even then it just happens less. It isn’t completely eliminated.
If this is too much in the way of coding that’s fine, but I was wondering if there was something to track how many people you kill throughout the story.
Enjoying the story so far, just one nitpick - NKVD was abolished in 1946, therefore it would be impossible to encounter NKVD guards. After the war, the Internal Troops (which were tasked with safeguarding infrastructure amongst other things), previously falling under NKVD, were transferred to the Ministry for Internal Affairs (MVD). The counterintelligence section of NKVD later became the KGB in 1954. Yeah, I am a stickler for details xD Keep up the great work, really enjoyed the Golden Eagle and the Best of Us.
Skimmed the thread and didn’t see it mentioned–I’m very consistently (just clicked through the game about five times I think and haven’t managed to get around it) getting an error when talking to Titos in Istanbul. After I ask about Remi, it doesn’t matter what dialogue option I pick, it pops up with an error that says no selectable choices and I can’t move forward. I’ve been playing it on my phone, so I’m gonna try it on my laptop and see if it works there
@Yard1 Huh. Serves me right for not checking the states, it seems. Thank you for letting me know!
I was going off of details I found about the border guards and internal troops but never went to check if NKVD was still a thing by the time the story takes place in, even if the detailed timeline is certainly fuzzy. I did find that KGB did not run the security for closed cities, which first led me on the trail of the NKVD. I suppose I’ll have to make a substitution then.
@HomingPidgeon It won’t. If that happens, it will be an error in the way I’ve coded the conversation. I’ll make a fix and update it.
Thanks! I’m really enjoying what I’ve read so far, and I like the work-around of just not mentioning gender. A couple other games have done it and I’ve always thought it was a neat way to just make it a non-issue
Soviet security agencies and the whole executive part of the government was a mess in constant reorganization after the war, and it has only stabilized in late 50’s. For the time period the game is set in, KGB are the scary plain clothes agents that make you disappear, MVD (Internal) Troops are paramilitary guards guarding infrastructure, and Militsya are regular cops. Also uniformed border guards were a part of the KGB, not MVD. Confusing, I know! The decentralization was supposed to prevent from any of the agencies, or the regular military, from becoming too powerful and potentially able to stage a coup.
I’ve updated the files just now. The story is now around 73,000 words altogether. Not sure about what the average read-through is at this point. Couldn’t run the randomests on the laptop right now. It should still hover near the 25k point.
As a point of professional curiosity - since it came up and I already know Eiwynn’s stance - would that be something you would consider buying as far as a value prospect goes? Hypothetically, If you were to see this suddenly pop up as a new HG release, would you find there’s enough bang for your buck? I already know that there will be the occasional folks who will say it’s too short in reviews, but pushing that fact aside, I’m interested in what the rest of you think.
@Yard1 Not just after the war, methinks. Stalin’s era was full of purges and paranoia. That certainly didn’t get any better after his death, especially when it came to the intelligence and security organizations.
if i was to see it i probably would buy it (since i buy any choice game anyways) i mean playing WIP i fell in love with it But im just one person so get some more opinions maybe start a poll but my vote is a yes
True that. Well, that’s how dictatorships tend to turn out after the dictator kicks the bucket.
As for the game, I would be willing to buy it, if you had fleshed the story out a bit more (perhaps some more character/romance interest interactions?), and made the gender choossable with differences in scenes. I understand your approach, but I couldn’t really identify with the MC with this middle-of-the-lane approach. I feel that having slight differences depending on the chosen gender (eg. the bad guy saying he usually doesn’t hit women, but makes an exception for MC, or whatever xD ) would allow for a more immersive experience. The current way of narration could be used for the “third” gender option (which I personally never use). I understand that would mean more work for you, but that’s why I would buy the game in that case. And besides, it would increase the word count.
^ I agree. I think I can see what you’re going for making the PC so ambiguous but I can’t say I like this approach very much. Makes it harder to identify with them.
Yo, spotted this duplication : this has been a trap to catch whoever Remi was working with it will be the KGB or KGB - depending on who got their people into place first
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