I’m sure there are. In fact, isn’t “The Eagle’s Heir” like that too? You play the bodyguard of Napoleon’s son or something like that.
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Thanks for this, Abby! What you describe is what I’ve seen, from knowing a few CoG authors. Day 1 DLC that I’ve seen isn’t a “rip out a chunk of the game and make em pay more for it.” It’s often more like:
Author: Hey, CoG! I have an idea for a great story that’ll involve apples, oranges, and pears.
CoG: Awesome, we love it! But wouldn’t it be cool if you had bananas, grapes, and peaches, too?
A: I mean, yeah, that’d be cool, but that’s at least twice the complexity and size for an already kind of huge, complex game. I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.
C: What if we paid you more and made it DLC so those who want the extra content can have it without inflating the cost for those who don’t?
A: Deal.
It’s an attempt to provide ever-more-spectacular games with staggering levels of content while compensating writers for the extra work and not pushing the base price (for a complete, satisfying and worthy story) into unaffordable territory.
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When my character has short hair and someone “tucks his hair behind his ear”. As in, he has a masculine haircut. Bruh his hair isn’t long enough. Immersion g o n e. :catcry:
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I’m gonna try to keep my message only talking about stories and the ideas as tropes (because there’s underlying politics to this and I figure naming any of it would be not good or welcome here, leading to arguments/getting shunted to the Politics thread, and technically it’s off-topic)
Not gonna name the story I stopped following because it fell into this, but I was catching up on one and, now that I got to the actual conflict, I realize it is a trope I hate. It’s the sort of thing where a minority (who is typically powered in some fashion to make it “justifiable”) gets genocided or otherwise heavily oppressed and the villains are people, part of aforementioned minority, that try to not be oppressed, typically by going “too far”. I really hate the politics behind that trope (again, not gonna get into it any further than that), and it’s really not helped by how overplayed it is. For an example, Magneto in X-Men is this trope, and his case is so much more egregious because he was literally fucked over by actual Nazis.
Vaguely related (if it’s good to put two here) since it kinda falls into the same ideas and was also in the story: the idea of the cop who gets away with doing whatever (killing people, violating privacy, ignoring warrants [the one thing keeping a cop from busting into your home], etc), and like the only justification is “but he’s cool”. I’d be fine with covering that subject in theory but it’s so rarely done with any criticism beyond maybe a slight acknowledgement that he’s an asshole. Just very frustrating. Also the lack of any criticism towards cops in all the many stories with detective (read, cop) MCs and ROs in COG stuff and okay I’ll shut up we’ve veered into politics
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In regards to detective or police member point, I think it depends on the country writer is in and their personal viewpoints. Not everyone is from US and not everyone from there unanimously supports the movement I won’t name. Cultural sensibilities can vary wildly.
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Huuuuuge disagree there. Shepard always felt like the main character to me. I found those more like being there for a friend and really built the characters up. Also I liked the story well enough
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Personally, I don’t like redundant or underused mechanics. Eg, Character stats which don’t do anything or which seem to double up.
I also don’t like when character creation happens straight away. I prefer it when something fun happens to hook me before I have to pick hair colour, eye colour, etc.
But this stuff is subjective.
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One thing that has always irked me is when a ChoiceScript game has those sliding-bar stats, but the game doesn’t recognize the middle bit as representing the middle ground of that stat - it just forces one extreme or the other.
For example, if you had a Lawful-Chaotic sliding stat, but as soon as you get 51% Chaotic you’re an anarchist, and you’ll fail any Lawful stat-checks. Or maybe you can be “neutral”, but you have to be 50/50 exactly.
That was one thing I appreciated about Fernweh Saga: if it checked one of those stats, you got five options for different weights.
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Definitely agree with the first point, not necessarily with your political reasons(cause you didn’t name them) but mostly cause I feel it’s so overdone? Extremist operators from an underclass who “take things too far” are present in basically any story set in a world that has an explicitly definied underclass. Like, I get why it’s used so often, but the messaging and the purpose of the trope rarely ever feels that different no matter how many times it’s iterated upon. The point of such a faction in a story feels so diluted now to me, the impact and “moral questions” they’re supposed to raise are almost non-existent.
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I mean yeah, i don’t think every story with cops in it needs to be inherently critical. That seems a bit silly.
I do agree with the first bit though. Especially when no one gives any alternatives. Like, whelp, we stopped the BBEG, guess we don’t need to do anything about the racism now. There HAVE been good stories where the good guys also address the issue. Rwby for example has ex members of the extremist group decide to start a NEW group focused more on the original cause.
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I also dislike when you get the option of which NPC to bring with you for a scene, but the only difference it makes is the pronouns/name of the NPC. I’m gonna write a short example to show what I mean. Like if you go on a date scene or something.
Adam sits at the end of the table, enjoying his Crab Rangoon. He looks breathtaking with his formal attire on.
vs
Eve sits at the end of the table, enjoying her Crab Rangoon. She looks breathtaking with her formal attire on.
And then they also proceed to say almost the exact same lines of dialogue, the only one being different is if you get an option to ask about their backstories. But every “automatic” dialogue, like if the waiter asks them about something, they say the exact same lines of dialogue.
And then, obviously, if some fight breaks out, you’ll get the same end result no matter if you brought Adam or Eve. Or if you went alone, if you didn’t have the needed approval to invite either of them. Despite the odds being better with an ally there.
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Annoys me when authors try to make ROs attractive and interesting to the reader (for example, they are some rare species, have unique skills, mysterious past) but at the same time the most boring character in a game is MC.
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Im always annoyed when everyone else is a cool race, backstory, superpower, and I’m stuck as the average joe. I get it, its kind of a wish fulfillment to have powerful, interesting people who fall for an ordinary person since most of us are rather banal, but I’d prefer to be able to play something with more… well… character. Individuality. A character as compelling as the rest of the cast.
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Yeah! That’s why some people play IF games - to escape from being “common mortal” for a while. There’s nothing wrong with it 
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they’re so clearly coded as a sub.
I mean, sub RO’s are kinda cute too, But you know what’s better then a sub RO? A sub RO who actually tries to Dom a sub MC 
(I know it’s been 14 days, but still lol)
On serious notes though, I do agree with the thing where “If you have a dominant personality, You can’t show a submissive side to others” At this point, that would mean switch (People who have both sides depending on their mood) don’t really exist
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Just goes with the standard where everything is a clear and simple binary in interactive fiction (you’re an emotionless asshole or you’re a jubilant child, you’re a pathological liar or you’ve never lied in your entire life, etc), which I acknowledged is likely mostly for ease of coding but it still can get very frustrating. At least it means I can always appreciate when something has greater depth and nuance, like Conspiracy in Emerson where how you present yourself doesn’t have to line up with how you are internally, for example.
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They are! But I like to play sub MCs, and almost all the caring ROs are subs themselves, which makes the relationship awkward more often than not. Contrary to popular belief, you can be a caring person and dominant at the same time. You don’t have to be an asshole to qualify… lol.
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It always annoys me when the romance doesn’t seem to progress, when each romantic interaction is pretty much the same (both characters instantly being attracted to each other but not actually doing anything about it for god knows how long), until they randomly kiss and boom now they’re together. Imo the romance should have a certain flow to it, you should be slowly getting to know the RO better, let the feels grow until confession - instead of blushing and stammering during every single interaction in the exact same way without actually getting closer.
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I just had to quote your entire message. That’s exactly how I feel about it, and it seems to be the norm for “romances” because everyone salivates over slow-burn. Unfortunately, slow-burn usually means it’s dragged on to the point where I’m left rolling my eyes at how stupid both my MC and the LI are forced to behave, because no one can be adult enough to say what they want and actually stop jerking each other’s chains.
I get that some people want the blushing and stammering to last forever and not actually have a relationship with the LI until the end (because they, apparently, see “romance” as the build-up to getting together), but it’d be nice to have the romances where they could be played at a speed that flows better and quicker for people who don’t need to flirt and angst for so long to know they actually want to be with the person.
And I hate it when authors tell me the romance can be played “differently” but, ultimately, it happens at the same speed no matter what your MC does.
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Romance is just so incredibly difficult to do right. It’s so easy for it to end up rushed, shallow, or dragging on forever.
It’s funny because I guess it’s just because there is that many ways for it to go wrong. Honestly though, the amount of times I have an RO stick out in my mind and stay there? I can count them on one hand if we are only counting the positive ones. I’ve played… a decent chunk of the library. A lot of ROs are fun, but it feels like they are rather one dimensional, like once you are introduced to them within a scene you more or less know what is going on with them. [Hence my infatuation with FH series I guess, everyone seems one way but in reality is a lot more complicated.]
It’s too easy to play into archetypes I guess. You don’t want to mislead the readers, but oftentimes that comes at the sacrifice of blowing a reader away.
Response to @vera :
You know what’s, eugh, angsty? Realising you ultimately do not work together and are people too different to be happy in a pair. Sacrificing everything for someone you love or not being willing to abandon everything for love alone.
I do love the idea of being able to ‘break up’ with an RO, even if it means going on a romanceless path, sometimes I just want to see the ‘what if.’ Though it’s pretty unreasonable to ask from anything other than a solely romance focused game [which is something generally out of my interests anyway] so I don’t know how soon I’m going to get a chance to see it. [Outside of a specific beloved series earlier mentioned.]
Situations that mainly work with established strong connection that isn’t some dumbasses being unable to spit it out for several damn books. Situations that use actual ties between characters as a source of drama, not some cheap longing glances and prolonging misery for several books at worst.
I’d love to see more games where the ‘longing’ period is for a good reason, makes sense. Like Obren, or Ortega, where there is attraction but there is risk and both of you are too intimidated to even attempt to label things at the start. I love that kind of thing. [If there is to be a longing period at all, I’d prefer it be due to in character reasons rather than merely circumstance.]
Honestly though, overall I’m kind of annoyed at how much ‘longing’ there is all the time. I wish there was more ‘yo wanna go out’ and you don’t even know if you like eachother but you spend time together, enjoy the company and eventually end up in that unlabeled awkward stage. That isn’t really ‘longing,’ but I love that kind of unspoken thing, assuming the reader can choose to voice if they want to. It just feels very genuine to life. No weird contrivance preventing a relationship other than a mutual disinterest in clarifying it.
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