Return to Zemia (WIP - updated 25 March)

Oh god she wants to feed them doesn’t she

Also ima be real with you I had an idea for what to do there but I am exhausted. So here is one I made up just then!
Since my only problem with those options is that none of them particularly show off my MCs complete and unrelenting fury.
Like maybe an option that shows their determination to return home and how little of a fuck they give about any of this? Or maybe an option like “I can only rely on myself” or something edgy like that to show how the MC does not reaaaallly trust the people that nothing short of drugged and kidnaped him and didn’t even bother to give us a TV or a game boy.

Also on the topic of the sparring match and leaving the room i mainly did that since the MC kept whining at me about how bored he was so I was like “Fiiiine we will give them a chance to redeem themselves” and then I was gonna make my MC hit them with some truth bombs like
Lady: “Why are you being such a moody prick? We have been rather accommodating”
MC: “you drugged and kidnapped me, go fuck yourself”
Lady: “But! S P A C E!”
MC: Apparently space can’t afford a fucking TV.

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I will keep this in mind and consider adding it as an option for that choice!

Funny but unfortunately out of character for your shipmates :frowning: they may think the MC is a moody prick if they’re acting like one, but they would never say that, at least not at the beginning. What do they have to gain by pissing this person (who will soon be in a position of authority over them) off?

But fear not, there will be plenty of opportunities to engage with them more deeply–if the MC is willing to engage

I know I was just memeing.
It would more be I imagine them trying to be nice and I just make my MC glare at them or something and if they go “Uh is something wrong?” Then the truth bombs would happen

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I love the story so far and think it’s amazing. But sometimes in the game I feel like I loose the control over the MC. For example, in the scene with Yusra with the tablet, maybe some players are fine accepting her gift but others would like to take that tablet and smash it against the floor (“you kidnapped me and now you try to bribe me with this, like a child?”). Same for the scene with Lia, why the MC accepts so flatly sparring with their kidnapper? Why there are no more options in this point like “insult her”, “punch her in the face”, “go outside and slam the door behind”…? :sob:

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Spoilers? Let’s go with yes

That’s a good point, but she doesn’t give the tablet to everyone. In order to see that, you actually have to trip two different flags, meaning you have to have had a positive interaction with both Hasan and Yusra–not just indifferent but actively positive. Basically, the NPCs will take note of the way you behave not only to themselves but also to the other characters. If you only treat Yusra well, she won’t trust/like you enough to give you a gift, and I think I can extend the logic to say that an MC who trips those two flags isn’t likely to purposefully break the tablet. I’d love to know, since it appears that you tripped those flags, if your MC is angry/hostile, why did you choose to respond positively to H and Y? Or are you just speaking hypothetically about people who might want to break Yusra’s tablet?

Having said that, there are no such flags for the Lia scene (except within the scene itself), and since you’re the second person to bring up the point, I will consider adding an option to refuse Lia’s invitation.

It’s really not any extra work to add an option like that, but I feel like I should add a disclaimer: when a player opts to refuse to interact with a character, they’re choosing to skip content, and hey–if you want to do that, go for it! But after a certain point, you’re kind of just skipping the game

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Well it seems that the only way to truly make you character an angry vengeful person is to LITERALLY only pick answers that would start a fight which is a nice thing to do in theory but there should be more passive aggressive stuff I think, since sometimes even if you despise someone it is not always a good idea to try and start a fight and what not and go ape shit to their face. Especially if you got kidnapped and by people who have guns and can just drug you. So sometimes it only makes sense for our extremely upset characters to be slightly tactful.

And that skipping content thing is why I believe that there should be some passive aggressive stuff when you go out on the ship since by sitting in your room the whole time it makes sence why but I feel that all Im doing is skipping stuff and the characters wont interact with me in a different way weather I stay in my room or not.

And despite what it sounds I don’t want to be a vengeful person the whole game I don’t mind making my character gradually come to terms with things, its just that I would like that to be a slow process.

Also I may be rambling I am really tired so I barely know what the fuck Im saying.

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Agree… but what if you fight them and get a chance to… I don’t know… kill them? :grinning:… it could be fun!!!

Just speaking hypothetically, thinking in the MC’s possible reactions, from one extreme to another. Personally, I find positive the interaction with Hassan and Yusra because they are nice and at least they feel sorry for what they did (and that works for me!). But Lia… Lia (before the sparring scene) seems that she doesn’t care, not sorry, no apologies, so adding an option to refuse her invitation that will be really releasing :slightly_smiling_face:
Sorry for the spoilers.

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I think she does though when you talk with her I’m pretty sure she says sorry. Also when you go with her instead of Hassan she’ll say something about how they took her to and won’t let the Rebels do anything to you.

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Before the sparring, she doesn’t say sorry so maybe the MC should have the decision to stay or leave.

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I agree, just saying that’s she is and does say sorry though when you talk to her after.

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That’s what the indifferent responses fill, no? And sometimes the hostile response is more passive than outright angry (initial meeting with Colonel Volk comes to mind).

I think now is a good time to explain the dialogue system for anyone who wants more information. I summarized it earlier, but here is a more detailed description.

Dialogue guide

Every initial dialogue interaction has 6 choices. The first two are always polite/friendly/positive. If you pick one of them, you will raise a character’s trust.

The third option is always indifferent. If you pick this option, none of the character’s relationship stats will be affected

The fourth option is always hostile. Picking this option will raise a hidden stat called rivalry. In the beginning it will also end the interaction with that character on negative terms.

The last two options are romantic (though not always flirty). Shy, then bold. If you select either of these options, you will raise a character’s trust as well as their hidden romance stat. Your choice also affects the hidden direct/indirect stat.

The way you interact with characters will affect what you can do later, so, for example, a character with no trust in you will treat you differently from an MC they trust.

With that out of the way, I’m open to modifying this system, but I’m not willing to go back and add a 7th specifically passive aggressive option to every dialogue tree. So what that means is, I’m willing to tone down the outright hostile responses to make them less aggressive, but I won’t change the indifferent response (I think it’s important to have a neutral option). So how about a poll?

  • Make the hostile options less aggressive
  • Leave the hostile options the way they are
  • I’ll tell you what I think in the comments
0 voters

The hostile dialogue options are also likely to change over time as the MC’s situation changes, regardless of whether I modify what’s there already or not

As for being passive aggressive outside of the dialogue options, I’m not sure it’s possible without a ton of extra work. In situations where the player can’t choose what the MC is going to say to other characters, I’ve tried to keep their dialogue as neutral as possible so that everyone can project their MC’s emotions. Once the player chooses a dialogue option, I can customize the emotional response, but I don’t want to assume that every MC is going to respond negatively before that happens, and even if I used personality stats to customize every bit of dialogue (impossible), it’s too early in the game for personalities to be developed

This is my reasoning but not necessarily my defense! If anyone sees a way that I can improve the system, please speak up!

Can you explain what you mean by this? I think what you’re saying is that skipping scene A doesn’t lead to a different scene (scene B?), but I don’t want to make assumptions. However, choosing to skip those interactions does have an effect. Besides all the stat points, the scene ends differently depending on what you did on the ship, and for those of you who interacted some with the crew, you saw different things depending on how you handled those interactions

Character deaths may be a thing (???), but certainly not this way!

You are both right!

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Hey! So I played through the Demo again and found a few mistakes (and some things I was just a bit confused by).

Typos, missing "the"s and other small stuff

Zem2

I also noticed several sentences starting with MC’s chosen pronouns didn’t capitalize those pronouns. I’m not sure whether that’s because of your implementation (aka you haven’t bothered with separate variables for capitalized pronouns yet) or whether you just missed those, so I didn’t screenshot them.

Things I was a bit confused by


Here, MC refers to the language they learned from Hasan as “Zemian” despite him calling it Seyvian (and the prior explanation that there are several languages spoken on Zemia). Is this on purpose, to highlight that MC hasn’t quite gotten that yet or did you miss this?

In the scene just before the MC’s translator is activated, Hasan says this:


He had spoken to Yusra via some intercom before, but this sentence sounds like she is in the room with us now (or at least it does to me). Yet she only enters in the next scene:

And one last thing that I only realized after reading your explanation of the way your choices are ordered:

I thought this was supposed to be a flirty option, with the MC saying they’ve got a great ass :sweat_smile:
I only got that it was supposed to be MC calling the Colonel an ass after reading your dialogue guide. That misunderstanding might just be me though :flushed:

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This is very helpful feedback, thank you! I’ve actually gone through and fixed many typos already (just haven’t updated the demo), but I will go through to make sure that these have been addressed.

I wish I was this clever :sob:

Also good catch on the rivalry score one, that was practice code to make sure everything was working properly! Looks like I forgot to take it out :upside_down_face:

Hmmm–maybe I’ll change the verb. I almost always use quip negatively, but perhaps something like bark/growl/hiss/etc will better convey the hostility

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I think changing the verb is a great idea! I don’t personally associate anything negative with “quip” (actually “She quipped light-heartedly” is the first sentence that springs to mind when I see the word) and I think a more hostile verb would clarify the intended implication :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m not a native speaker though, so it might really just be me :sweat_smile:

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Not at all! People use quip positively all the time! I just meant that I had been using it (consistently) negatively in the game (I think)

This is actually interesting because this was one of the less aggressive hostile responses, but it looks like I’m going to have to make it more aggressive in order for the hostility to come through :thinking:

Not many people have responded to the poll yet, so I’m definitely going to give it time, but for those of you (@idonotlikeusernames @tmmanques @LordNanachi) who voted for or expressed interest in less aggressive hostility, I’d love to hear your thoughts directly if you don’t mind sharing–so far not changing the dialogue options is winning the poll, which I have to admit I’m rooting for since it’s less work for me, but do you see other solutions that could address the issue?

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@sviyagin
I dunno man.
Just during the experience it felt a bit difficult to really role play the angry or upset personality properly since it appears like the game would prefer it if you accept or begrudgingly accept what happened.
To give you and updated opinion I’ll need to do another play through.
But for now do what you want if you don’t want to overtly change anything that’s fine if you do change things that’s also cool.
Do whatcha want lad.

Also on the topic of staying in the room what I mean is, I haven’t tested it but, after spending almost 2 full weeks in my room and going out once it did not feel like my character or the lady thought anything was out of the norm. My character wasn’t particularly nervous or cautious it seemed and the lady didn’t seem to think it was strange, good, or anything about how my character has only just now willingly left his room for something that wasn’t food.

Maybe if they were to check in on you if you stay in long enough or make comments when you first meet them if you stayed in your room for X amount of time. But yeah I feel like them checking in on you if you stay in your room 3 choices in a row should happen and this could give the MC a chance to see that these kidnappers maybe aren’t raging assholes as they seem genuinely worried and maybe remorseful about how they didn’t give you a fucking TV kidnapped you.

Also I believe there is a difference between passive aggressive and indifference. When you are indifferent you are neutral, don’t particularly care, don’t wanna take sides. When your passive aggressive you are upset and want to be noticed that you are upset but you don’t want to have a fist fight or directly tell someone to “Eat shit and die”

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On further reflection it wouldn’t overly bother me if you left the dialogues the way they are, as they are much improved from the first draft.

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This is a really good suggestion, I’ll consider it!

Thank you so much! Your extensive feedback has really helped me :grin:

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Yay.