So, my feeling is that we’re rehashing the same ground as we did with Psy High 2. (Its Coming Soon thread). Notable there was @Animelover’s remark that you either address all the endings or you don’t do a sequel. We felt it was better to do that, however unsatisfyingly (though I think it was done in a very “in-world” fashion that works,) than to simply straight up not allow any import for people who destroyed the school in GAFV, as we did with Psy High 2 where if you destroy the Nexus, you don’t get a save game you can carry. . This way, you’re able to retain a lot of important things about the PC: monsterhood, relationships, your nemesis, your RO, etc.
I’m not saying it’s not a legitimate complaint, I’m saying: look we get it, and we tried to do something to help. So when an extra effort is made to make people happy and the reaction is still “You’re lazy,” it feels kind of…bad!
Also, I put the following to you. We can’t plan sequels very well. Generally speaking, we’re not going to give an unsuccessful game a sequel, or plan for a sequel with a first time author. Should we be in the business of continually hedging our commercial and literary bets by not having branchy endings?
I hadn’t read that one, although a remark like that seems pretty severe. No sense leaving a popular property to rot just because it had too many loose ends.
Your solution doesn’t seem like a great one, and the reactions bear that out. That being said, it also seems like perhaps the best one possible given the situation, a situation where no universally satisfactory option seems to exist. It was a Kobayashi Maru to be sure. It doesn’t strike me as lazy; as you said, at least their character gets to continue on in the second story. Their ending, while it has been retconned into not having as much significance as the reader might like, is not rendered completely noncanonical. Almost certainly a better method than the Psy High one.
That depends on who the ‘we’ is in that sentence. I realize as a HG writer I don’t have a lot of experience with the level of input and direction y’all give CoG scribes. But in my mind I would say it falls on the author. If they are writing a story they want to continue, they may want to consider making it where it can be continued in a satisfactory and reasonable fashion. If they’d rather sacrifice ease of continuance for properly high-stakes and varied conclusions in round 1, then they can do so. It could be what makes their story great, the very thing to push it to a realm where a sequel is worthwhile. But it could also be what makes their followup poorly judged by comparison. And I’m not sure if the reader satisfaction gain of having drastic variations in endings is worth the jarring nature of undoing them later on; the only way to tell that would be to look at stories written both ways and see how they had sold, and even that would be muddy given how many other factors might be at play in sales performance (or the lack thereof).
Well, another comparison to make is the nightmare that writing and debugging Exile of the Gods ended up being for that author and editor. Because it does pick up a lot of disparate endings, and it is lengthy, etc. But anyway, yeah. I’m glad you see where I’m coming from and I appreciate you always raising the level of discourse here, even when I’m being cranky.
I am definitly of the “If you can’t do it properly don’t do a sequel” camp. Or at least in this case, don’t do a direct sequel. The setting has potential and could have worked with a new cast.
It is not even the big picture but the little ones. The hit on the stats at the start for no in story reason feels bad and I can’t get the balance right again, so I can remake my character.
And I know that not many had follower villains, but the fact that my main villain suddenly wants leadership turned me off. (The in game ‘excuse’ given pissed me off even more because it felt like the game was flat out saying you played wrong).
I avoided psy high 2 because of this and I will absolutle not be getting champion of the gods 2.
Listen, sequels are difficult and you are never going to make everyone happy. (Which you must know?). These kind of things run on nostaliga and emotions and when those don’t match up the whole thing fall flat, but people have different investment level.
You are right now speaking to the gamer who refused to even play the SWOTR expansions, because I youtubed them and figured out that any story which took my Sith warrior and Jedi consular in the same direction was not word playing. I am very thin-skinned when it comes to this.
You have to understand it was never my story picked for the sequels. Back in the days when RPGS or games with choices had sequels. It was never the story beats which I cared about that continued. The characters I liked never got cameos. The dangling plot thread left by my playthrough never got picked up. I never managed to hit canon. And I am pretty much done with it.
And this game is this way too. It might sound silly to get hung up on, but I cared about the fact that my MC was 70% follower in the first game. It was a huge part of hir charactization. I cared about the commandor/minion split and that was mostly ignored. I didn’t have a nemesis (because the one I tried to pick refused) and suddenly this games was “Nemesis this. Nemesis that.”
I know that you can’t cater to everyone. But I am almost never catered to, so forgive me for being highly sceptical of your the next time will be satisfactory. In my experience sequels almost never are and if a game as meta as this cannot pull it off, how can a high fantasy game?
If, and that is a big if, I buy champions 2 I will be playing with a new character.
Continuing in this vein, I’ll note that a couple of future games are going to be the exception to how we’ve done the three/four sequels mentioned above. Pon Para was planned as a trilogy, and @gower’s new Cakes and Ale is as well–which is in the world of Tally Ho, but not a direct set of sequels.
Man I remember playing the first game- whoch was strangely the first choicescript game I’d ever properly bought, and playing this game, I can say that I definitely like that it feels more plot focused compared to the first, which I completely loved. I also really loved the ending, though I’m not really sure whats so important about being the schools biggest weakness! I think the only complaint I would have was that I wished we had gotten more interactions with the characters besides Val. I was always fond of the first game, and the second game only increased my love fpr this series! Thank you so much for going theougj the effort of writing it!
I’m not exactly sure how it works, but I romanced Phil in the first game. Does he really not show up (aside from a couple of pages) in this sequel? Did I do something wrong with my previous playthrough?
Shameless self-plug: Also my sequel/s to Werewolves: Haven Rising Plot points for the third installment have already been floated, though it might take a while to get there what with the other unnamed CoG project I’m also working on at the moment.
But yeah, I really feel for this author, because I’ve had a similar difficulty in Werewolves 2, namely for the ending thread where the player joins Williams. It’s created a counter-narrative that I’ve had to add into every aspect of Werewolves 2 which is a huge pain in the ass, but I’m dedicated to making it work as best I can. Live and learn?
I romanced Kinistra last game and it acts like MC doesn’t care that they were even dating, already looking for a someone new on the dating app, does she really barely show up at all?
I was really excited for this game, but I’m kinda bummed out about the returning characters from the first game, or more specifically the returning romance options. Aurion was the only one who seemed to have a real presence. Phil is gone after the first chapter, until near the end of the game and it seems like your relationship with him in the original game, whether it was romantic or a minion/commander type thing, doesn’t really have an impact on the dialogue/text. Kinstra is mentioned briefly but from what I’ve gathered, you can’t actually talk to her. And Xi does come up a few times, but as someone who really liked them in the first game, I was kind of left unsatisfied with the sequel. None of the new romance options really caught my eye, as romance options or as characters in general. I still really like the game though, outside of it’s characters, it seems like there’s more to do here than in the original.
Plot points for the third installment have already been floated, though it might take a while to get there what with the other unnamed CoG project I’m also working on at the moment. 
