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364

Hi, a little late into the party but I have just finished my second playthrough and have a few questions.

First, excellent read, the roleplay and variety is amazing, the sim really had me going and I felt like my character, like a cadet and later on like a captain more so than in any other game. The game is crazy ambitious imo, maybe even a bit too much as it does feel rushed in certain areas, especially after the half point or so, but overall it was a great experience.

Now, my question is in regards to the romances. I was planning a third playthrough but after doing some reloading (with the editor app) I feel like I discovered mostly everything I wanted in these two playthroughs (not gonna be firends with the mobster or purits sorry :D). And I noticed that the relationships are very uniform, especiially after the school chapter. Is this the case for everyone? I did Kyle first and Luum second, also trying Rachel’s romance for a bit and while she at least has some dialogue when we get stranded on the planet, nobody else seems to have anything unique to say really.

Second question is in regards to Luum specifically. On my first run I romanced Kyle and it was very nice, untill she killed my crew and grew a giant army of synths, it felt rather jarring to not be able to use our marriage and having a child as even a conversation option in that moment, even weirder when people suddenly started refering to her as my friend afterwards.
But what put me off the most is probably the “dating” with Luum in high school.
I liked her from the off, being a childhood friend is always good in my books and she is overall very pleasant, which led me to be very surprised by the turn the relationship takes if you try to make it romantic.

So, you make your move at the party, tho its reciprocated only partially, later on you can ask her if you are dating and she is very casual in saying that maybe you do, she is also hesitant to offer any physical intimacy, even such as holding hands unless you initiate it, kissing or passionate kissing is entirely off the books for the whole 4 years of school. Our character is clearly confused and hurt by her seemingly not being interested and when you talk to her about it, she just asks you to be patient, which would be all fine and dandy, but it doesnt lead anywhere as its simply never adressed or talked about again.

There is also the two weird facts of her dancing with several people on your graduation day, despite you dating and that if you do stop trying to be with her romantically, not breaking up, just stop trying yourself, as the relationship is very cold from what I understood, she finds someone to date almost immidiately and has no issue being publically intimate with them, holding hands, which she was reluctant with our character.

We also later find out that she never told her parents about your 9 year of relationship, if you keep dating long distance so we know there is nothing coming from their side that would make her be this cold and clearly the intimacy issue is more or less only aimed at us.
When you reunite there is no more of that, despite not seeing each other for 5 years or so, she is suddenly fine kissing you even infront of people, but her distant behavior is never adressed.

I understand that she is royalty, I think the issue here is supposed to be that she cant be intimate with you because she is affraid you will find out about her tattoo outing her as royalty possibly, but that doesnt really make sense as she is unwilling to even kiss passionately or hold hands, it simply comes across as her not actually having interest in you and simply humoring you because you are her oldest friend.
Speaking of being oldest friends, there is absolutely no reason for you to not know or have been told by know about her backround, Klk and Kyle know and she has known them less time, hell Kyle even met her parents, it especially doesnt make sense considering you were dating all throghout the school days, not to mention it doesnt make any difference to your relationship whatsoever.

Her explanation as to why she never told you as “too busy” is also rather curt and nonsensical and shows she didnt really care all that much about it.

So really, what was the reason for this? It did lave me decidedly soured on her romance as during the latter half of the game there is very little unique dialogue with your RO and since her behavior felt so out of character and wasnt explained it just put me off quite a bit to be honest.

Am I missing something here? Is it really just the royalty thing? Is she supposed to be noncomittal or flirtatious with others or something? Thats not the impression I got from her at all but Aurelians are very sensual so perhaps im missing something. I just really didnt know what to think so I would appreciate some explanation or someone’s point of view if you can provide it, thanks :slight_smile:

365

I suppose that’s what you get when trying to tell a story in just one book. We must also realise that, all games written by @Lucid, while having romance options, isn’t necessarily romance focused. Perhaps in games like the lost heir where there are sequels, there is more story to tell and thus, more room for romantic moments. If you play other games by this author, you will realise that he is generally more focused on the story itself, rather than The romance. Given the fact that this is a one book story, I’m afraid we will just have to fill in the gaps using our imagination on whatever we believe is left untold.

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366

Let me be honest, it’s kinda hard to remember exactly my train of thoughts from nearly a year ago.
But yeah, for me it gave impression of Nate/Luum being unsure at what future exactly waiting them until little bit later in the story.
Regarding them dancing, dating and socialising with others, for me it seemed exactly like the point - they are extremely social and natural at closely interacting with others (including fling-like short term relationships), but when there is actual feelings invoved, Nate/Luum starting to overhink their future and position, and become hesitant regarding how to proceed.
Well, that’s as much as I can remember my own interpretation at that time.

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367

Have to say, thats not how she came across to me at all. She seemed quite nonchalant about being the center of attention. She is polite of course and doesnt send anyone rudely away but she directly states that most people are simply interested in her because they never saw and Aurellian so she is patient.

In vacuum the dancing with other people at the afterparty means nothing, she is friendly and patient, of course she would want to say goodbye and it seems rude to just refuse everyone who wants to dance with her.
But coupled with everything else, her reluctance to be intimate, to commit, the fact that she will immidiately start dating someone if you stop actively pursuing her (not even break up, just stop being romantic) to whom the same issues do not seem to apply, the fact that the MC still feels unsure whether she actually likes them even after 4 years of dating etc., it all feels rather damning for the relationship. Out of character and very unpleasant too.

As for the issues being created by overthinking and inexperience with actual feelings and relationship. I dont know, this may have been the intention, one other person mentioned that it was meant to show that she is unfamiliar with concepts such as deep love or relationship and that the player was meant to take her out of her comfort zone, but if truly that was the intention, than it is a spectacular fail.

You only have two options with her in regards to the relationship, doesnt matter your reputation or disposition, you either take it at her speed, which is to say nothing changes, or you break up with her because you want more commitment, take it to the next step, there is no middle ground, no actual development and it goes absolutely nowhere. There is alsos no indication that Aurelians see relationships differently than us or that they are promiscuous or have issues with commitment, thats never shown anywhere, on the contrary we see two indicators of even life long commitment with the king and queen and the spy couple.

Again, if this was the intention, it was seriously shafted and simply cut, but the innitial stage was somehow left in the game and on its own it really hurts the relationship because after the school chapter you have 5 years timeskip, during which you could seemingly comfortably keep your relationship going long distance and when you see her again she has no issues with anything immidiately and its never adressed again.

That being said, all the relationships are homogenized at this point, you meet again, resume the relationship, or continue it, go to the planet, get stranded, get married, have kids with barely a unique dialogue in between that. After the school arc the development is essentially done, and this development wasnt anywhere close to done, it just stops and you never know if she actually liked you, why she chose to date you but keep you at arms length, what was her reasoning for all that. Its frankly very frustrating.

The only indicator we have that more is going on between the two of us is the mention of coloring she has during our interactions, but we dont really know what and how much that means, otherwise she tries to be intentionally cool and calm, like if you talk to her before starting to date and compliment her she takes it like it doesnt mean anything, just the coloring is mentioned.

And if you tell her that you are ok with taking things slow after trying to kiss her more patiently, its stated that she seems frustrated, possibly wanting to do more but being unable or unsure about herself for some reason. If you do try to kiss her outside the classroom one day, she will be very embarassed and refuse to do it, which again indicates that this simply isnt something she is used to, hanging out is one thing but anything more is new and embarassing.

But all of this has other, less pleasant explanations and implications if you chose to look for them as well, again the biggest doom factor is the fact she finds someone else very quickly and with them she is seemingly more okay, at least as far as public holding of hands goes, there isnt anything more to read into but still, even this was an issue with the MC. Its possible that she is forcing herself after messing up with the MC or that this is a lot more surface relationship so she doesnt care as much, but its not as tho the MC was closed off to her or anything, she just left, but this would be reading too much into what is really just two sentences.

There are specs here and there which really leads me to think that was supposed to be more and it was just not finished. Either that and imo in that case it should have been removed and replaced by something more easily closed, or its some sort of self insert by the writer to mess with us a bit because curiously if you do break up, the sentence about her dating someone else isnt there, it is there only if you chose to give up half way through :slight_smile:

But overall in the state it is, it was rather hurtful to my character and it took away any incentive I had at continuing this relationship. The worst kind of drama, one that doesnt lead to anything, hurts the character and doesnt account for any choice.

Saddest thing is that, this could have been fixed very easily, just write that during the 5 years of long distance relationship she cleared up her reluctance and explained it as being very affraid of having a deep relationship with her best friend and that she was affraid you liked her just because she was Aurellian as well, that she was testing you, unfairly as she would find out, something along those lines.

Or, when you meet again and she kisses you immidiately, have the MC be surprised and have her explain herself there, saying she thought about the two of you being together a lot and while she was reluctant to commit in the school so early in her life, she missed you and because your relationship kept being strong even long distance, that cleared up all her reluctance. It really wouldnt take a lot.

Sadly all we can do is speculate, I would love to have the writers input but I suppose thats impossible :frowning:

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368

Yes, I noticed that upon further replay.
Dont get me wrong, overall I enjoyed the game greatly, its just this particular part that left me sour.

Sadly its as you say, there is no closure to be had here, we just have to headcanon the crap out of it.

The game is crazy ambitious as I wrote above, it really surprised me by how much is included here, the roleplay and replay value is very high, its too bad it came at the cost of the relationships tho, but I noticed this being a bit of a trend with the choice of games I played, it feels like the relationships are tacked on because they are supposed to be there, instead because the writers wants them to be there.

A lot of things are interchangeable and very uniform, there are no particular routes or differences in outcome bar the endings available, it must be crazy hard to juggle all of this and I think that the experience overall would probably benefit from just having two romance options and them being expanded, at least for me it would.

Anyways, time to get over it, unless we get authors thoughts there isnt much else to do, I tried to dig through the game more and try out different outcomes, like breaking up with Luum after the planetside mission but everything is handled in a very emotionless one sentence way after the school chapter and I doubt there is anything to expand upon this as the writer was surely pressed to fit in everything he did by this time.

Anyway, thanks for answering :slight_smile:

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369

Having this thread pop up reminds me that the whole time I was playing this game and everyone kept talking about Luum, all I kept seeing was this…

Lum40
Lum40598×598 112 KB

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370

The archetypal alien princess love interest. Darling no baka!

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371

Elon Musk getting a space station named after him in this game is lame and leaves a gross tastes in my mouth when starting a new game. Everything else is good though.

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I named it in 2017. Never a good idea to name something after a living person. He does a lot of stupid stuff, but he’s also created some awesome things. If he beats everyone to Mars, I’ll keep the name. :slight_smile:

Glad you liked it. Thanks.

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373

That’s VR for her… Aurellians are much more colorful than that

374

Loved the game, but there was something I’m curious about. I noticed that there was a true/false variable for dating Alex/Rachel at the academy but upon further inspection, it wasn’t actually possible to date them.

Was the option to romance them earlier in the game removed?

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Coding wise, they do a lot of the same things, especially later, but I wanted them to stand out, so I removed the option to date and increased their bullying stories.

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376

About the Supreme Leader achievement; after winning all the duels, the admirals tell me at the start of the Future chapter that I can duel the Apogee, but I don’t get the option at any point. I can see that it comes after the Make_Big_Decision label in the game code, but not how to get to it. Does being the DSF President or building the gate cancel out whole Big Decision option?

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It seems the Supreme Leader ending, at least, is locked out even if you’ve completed all the conditions, UNLESS you’ve also unlocked the option to join the Orrok nation, although it may be that the Reticulan and Aurellian ending options could be substituted. Since these endings have nothing to do with the Supreme Leader ending this is a little frustrating, but otherwise the game is excellent.

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are there other ways to get cybernetics without disappointing our parent?

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I always headcanon that another fictional character did it first and coincidentally had the same last name xD.

Also is it possible to get more than one ending at the same time?

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Nope, You can meet the requirements for multiple endings, but you can only get one