@fairygodfeather
Going through, doing what you said, I couldn’t find the scene. I may have messed up at the confession scene (I think that’s where I went wrong) could you clarify that bit for me? I’m not 100%sure which scene you mean.
Are you playing as male or female?
If you’re playing as male you might be encountering a bug. There’s a bug in the kayfabe face path which means that the game sets you to being in a fake relationship with Madison and then doesn’t set it back to none. One of the prerequisites to the Ecstasy scene is having your relationship set to none. Which means that that scene with Ecstasy is going to be inaccessible if you’re playing as male, at least until the bug’s fixed.
It should be possible as female.
The confession scene I meant was the one in the hotel where Ecstasy confesses to being in love with you. However it may be that it’s that bug that’s interfering with things.
How far along did you get? Did you get the scene where you could ask Ecstasy to wait?
Overall, it was definitely a fun game. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did, as someone who couldn’t care less about professional wrestling, but it made it feel personal and interesting.
One issue I could raise with the narrative is that it doesn’t seem quite right to make the resolution of the feud with JJ be an exclusive choice you have to make. Throughout the game, the conflict between those two characters is built up as something that has to be settled; there are a few cases towards the beginning where you can present your character as not really caring about JJ, but these largely disappear after the frame-up. The protagonist definitely wants to settle things in some fashion with his or her old friend. But in two of the three choices you can make, this is left undone, and the story therefore feels incomplete. It’s fine to make certain material be exclusive to one choice or another - in fact, this is precisely how a game gains replayability. But if content is locked away like this, the rest of the story probably shouldn’t be written to be dependent on it. Basically, if you have to sacrifice something else to pursue the final confrontation with JJ, then the rest of the story should allow you to decide how important that confrontation actually is to you, rather than determine on its own that you’re committed to it.
There are a couple bugs. It’s quite possible for your MWWR ranking to drop below zero, for example. The code when you team up with JJ (for the first time) includes the possibility to pick a full nelson finisher if your first mentor was Mr. Awesome, but this doesn’t actually work in game because of a punctuation error - being mentored by Awesome sets the variable to “Mr. Awesome.” when the later check is for “Mr. Awesome” without the second period. And there were a couple places here and there where genders got screwed up if you had a female wrestler, as has been mentioned before.
Speaking of, most of the gender work was good. It’s certainly a satisfying scene for a female protagonist to knock out Prototype in one hit at the final fight. 
And there were just enough nods and differences to make it feel like a substantive difference for the main character to be a woman instead of a man. Though one oddity did jump out at me, going through the code - in doing dueling promos with Sagramore, a male face fan promo gives +10 promo ability and favor, while a female face fan promo only gives +7.
The secondary stats are also a bit confusingly named. Some of this, I’m sure, is due to my own unfamiliarity with pro wrestling. Kayfabe vs reality gets explained quickly enough, and though I thought for a while that favor vs. heat was a measure of how well I was playing ball with what the people in charge wanted, I eventually figured out that it was my character’s perception as a face or heel in the ring. But “ring awareness” vs “ring flash” just baffled me until I spent some time going through the code to see what exactly affected it, eventually deciding that “ring awareness” measures your focus on putting on a good, ‘fair,’ and entertaining fight for the audience, while “ring flash” is your focus on out-of-the-ring machinations, or just winning regardless of other factors.
Also: the True Villain ending? Disturbingly awesome. Or maybe awesomely disturbing. Definitely memorable.
@Dominic Can you post those bugs to http://www.choiceofgames.com/forum/discussion/2273/slammed-typos-and-bugs-thread It’ll keep all of the bugs in the same place and make it easier for people to check and see if bugs have already been mentioned or not. That’s a good catch on those.
@Dominic
The way I saw it if you didn’t settle up with JJ when you had your chance, he would just go to ground again like he did after the accident. He seems pretty good at disappearing. That lack of closure is the explicit price you pay for a shot at the title belt.
That said, first time I went through and fought JJ I ignored him completely after winning. Aaah, vindication. Who needs closure.
Reclaimer:
You’re talking from the perspective of the characters; I’m talking from the perspective of the narrative. It’s clearly the case, yes, that the character sacrifices their chance at closure by going for the title belt. My objection is that the story that results from doing so is structurally flawed, because of the inescapable significance which previous events attach to that closure.
Essentially, since you can’t meaningfully decide that JJ isn’t important to you, you shouldn’t be able to choose not to pursue it.
@fairygodfeather
I played through to the end. I’m guessing its the same bug, the kayfabe face path one, (was playing as male).
@Dominic I’m glad you seem to have liked the game, as a whole. With regard to the narrative emphasis placed on the player achieving some form of closure with JJ, it’s true that I put a lot of eggs in that basket, because JJ’s storyline is the engine I use to drive the story forward, in a manner that I believed would make the game accessible to the most number of people. I’m not sure if other pieces of interactive fiction adapt the “true path” mentality found in some other games, particularly visual novels, but it’s an attitude I adapted here. It’s a choice that allowed for a longer story, as opposed to a “broader” one with the same amount of text.
That being said, what I did try to provide was a way, not necessarily for the player to act like he/she does not consider JJ important, but to act like he/she cares about the championship more than about closure. I tried to provide instances where the player could emphasis the desire for the championship, or to live his/her dream of being in the GWA, instead of a desire for a showdown. I think that if a player consistently chooses those options, then the choice not to face JJ at the end acquires more of the narrative consistency you may be looking for.
But I decided against limiting the choice to fight Solitary/Prototype only to players who played a non-JJ obsessed character, because at that point I felt gameplay considerations outweighed those of story cohesion. So it became possible to play a character completely obsessed with fighting JJ who, all of a sudden, decides to go for the title instead, because that’s a choice I wanted as many people as possible to have (if you “win” the Scaffolds match), and because their (the players, not the player character) priorities may have changed after the Scaffolds fight. If the game were shorter, or had a save system, or what not, I may have made a different choice.
Nevertheless, if you have any suggestions about what would have allowed you to roleplay a more consistent non-JJ fighting character, do let me know, and I’ll certainly take it under consideration. (Likely not for the next update though, considering all the under the hood stuff I need to fix.)
Wow, really, because it bugs the ever loving crap out of me when the game tells the player how to feel, tries to force them to “stay in character.”
It bugs me that the game decides if I can turn into a heel, or if I’m allowed to tell the fans what the beef with JJ is, or if you’re allowed to tell the story about how you and JJ have been wrestling together since high school.
@stsword Ah, I’m sorry you feel that way. For me, to make player choice matter, some choices (or aggregates thereof, such as your kayfabe stat in the case of whether you can take the “real face” route) need to open or close off other paths. In some cases, I chose to give as many options as possible (the choice of who to fight, if you win the Scaffolds match) and in others, I chose to impose limitations. Balance is the ideal, but of course it’s rare to find one that’d work for everyone.
@stsword I think you’re being harsh, although I get where you’re coming from. I do dislike if certain options are greyed out. I found the real face route extremely difficult to access. I tried it over and over again and eventually gave up.
I’d thought that the aim for kayfabe was to keep it high, but I can’t remember if high kayfabe actually does anything good. Whereas having low kayfabe lets you play it real with JJ. But I thought that having low kayfabe meant I was a bad wrestler, that I couldn’t tell reality from stuff in the ring. So it took a fair bit of wrapping my head around it.
Also being unable to take the heel path because of Ecstasy. I’d have liked an option to dump Ecstasy, or be dumped by Ecstasy, (or their management) and take that path, not caring about the consequences. But, I can also see why it wasn’t implemented that way.
Slammed is made to be replayable. You do need to work out how to access certain branches of the game and figure out the right choices. I don’t think that that’s bad.
I have to say, the JJ issue is pretty deeply bound into the story as it’s written, to the point that I don’t think much could have been done to make choosing less emphasis on him/her without substantial changes. Anytime you have flashbacks about your history with a person, that person is inevitably pretty central to the story. Maybe another choice after the flashback could put a bandaid on it, either in addition to or replacing the choice at the end of c2amateurdays asking how you felt - you could have had something that asked essentially what the protagonist’s current feeling is about the whole JJ thing. “It’s all in the past now,” or “I wish we were still friends,” or “I wish I could have faced him fairly” or something, depending on the circumstances.
But the backstab is a bit of a sticking point. It’s hard to have a credible narrative in which the main character is betrayed by someone close to them and then just kind of forgets about it in order to pursue a title. I guess…I don’t know. Maybe if you had a chance at least to talk to JJ when the swerve happens, get some of the ideas there out in the open, but (s)he made it clear to you that things between you couldn’t be settled unless you had a final, fair, real match. Giving you a chance to establish what your priorities are before you enter the four v four and have to decide what your actual final match is going to be.
Even then, it wouldn’t be a great solution, but it would at least have made the JJ thing feel less like something that was just hanging there completely unresolved in games where you choose to face Prototype or Solitary.
Yeah. If you fight Solitary, are told about his medical condition, and have ring awareness <30, you can basically try to snap his neck, resulting in something that…well, you should see it for yourself. In the code, it’s referred to as ending_truevillain, so.
No game has desperate me so much I have played three times and haven find the outcome I want -flips table-
(Anyway, awesome game, I love Evan, like, so much, I think no other game, not even choice of romance or intrigue has given us such a beautiful and compelling love story, and kudos to the writer because in one hand he/she give us a beautiful compelling and healthy romance to makes us swoon, and in the other hand he/she gives those angsty yaoi fans the kind of story they want where the villian is so obsessed with the mc and makes him suffer through the whole thing just to reveal at the end that in his own crazy way he was in love with mc, yes, I can see the yaoi fangirls dgging this.)
I never got the impression that JJ was in love with the protagonist. Maybe right, at the epilogue at home but not before then. There was plenty of opportunity to hook up, but none that he took advantage of. Even if you have an extremely high relationship rating with him you have to be the one that makes all of the moves. He doesn’t show any of that sort of interest, in fact he tries to avoid it. When you’re at college he says those sort of things don’t matter and steers the conversation away.
Right at the end, in most endings he’ll just not be interested in anything but friendship. He was well aware that he was burning bridges with his actions, he just wanted that fight. That was all he wanted, all he was obsessed with. He doesn’t even contemplate a relationship if you lose the fight, surely if he was in love with you, he would.
I did do a playthrough where the protagonist was hopelessly in love with JJ and harboured a huge crush throughout the game which is the only way I could really justify shrugging off all the stuff JJ did. But I never got the feeling it was at all reciprocated.
That end kiss takes JJ by complete surprise and there’s no mention of him returning it. (Although he clearly doesn’t fight it either). By the prologue everything’s worked out between them and they’re building something new. But I never got the impression that JJ was motivated by love.
I also never saw JJ as a villain. He is completely messed up, but I always saw him more as a rival. Prototype’s a villain.
I did like Evan a lot too. Evan worked as a healthy romance option, which is always nice to see.
Actually if you’ll recall in the college section it’s mentioned that JJ would never be interested in anyone who can’t beat the living daylights out of him/her, it’s the trope best her to bed her, so the fact that JJ blows you off if you lose to him/her isn’t a surprise.
So combine JJ’s obsession with a fight/rematch against the PC, combined with their lack of interest in anyone who can’t beat them, one can certainly interpret JJ’s action as their version of a courtship, slap slap kiss slap slap, or in this case slap piledriver kiss clothesline uppercut.
So from JJ’s perspective, if you can’t beat them, you aren’t the person he thought you were.
Considering how out of line JJ is for attacking the PC’s love interests, perhaps that was out of jealousy.
And if you blow JJ a kiss and JJ doesn’t look uncomfortable, you aren’t on the romance with JJ path, so JJ looks uncomfortable because they liked it.
But yeah erotic obsession doesn't seem like the most stable relationship to me either. lol@Stsword Is that actually said in the college section? I can’t remember it. Where is it? Do you have the specific quote?
Although ha, that idea of courtship sounds amusing. (Only amusing in fiction, please don’t try that at home). But surely, if you had beat JJ, then he’d make a move and he doesn’t. If you don’t make a move JJ is happy for you to just be friends.
I had to go reread the JJ attack scene again. He protected them, I assumed he did it to make you angry, as well as being overconfident in his own abilities. He does it even if you’re in a fake relationship with Madison so I don’t think it is jealousy so much as JJ just trying to get to you, using whatever methods he can. He wants you angry. He wants you extremely angry.
As your sister says. “He’s obsessed with this fight; clinically obsessed, maybe. I think that his life has been on pause ever since that accident, and I think that, in a different way, yours has been too.”
Although yeah that blown kiss. I figure there’s maybe a spark of attraction there. I wouldn’t have said in love. But well who knows. JJ is contrary. I’m sure both of our interpretations are wrong or equally valid.
I just didn’t see it as erotic obsession. It just didn’t read that way to me at all.
I think the main point is that we don’t know what’s going on on through his mind, but in the first scenes when mc remembers the past MC says jj never seemed interested in anyone, yet my mc had a crush on him and they were extremely close to the point that the mc named his finisher delgado, I see this as a phenomenom that often occurs between friends, when you fall in love with your best friend some people expierence anxiety because they don’t want to lose the friendship, so you prefer to stay friends, specially if you’re gay and you don’t know if the boy/girl you love is gay or straight, it could end up alienating them and losing the friendship, so if we take this in consideration i coud see jj thinking that if he cannot be mc’s lover the only way to get closer to him is fighting, so when you forfeits he grows aggressive because in his little twisted mind he sees this as a rejection, furthermore when he invites the team to watch the ppv with in his house more than watching the show or talking with anyone he seems to be only interested in watching mc’s reactions, and the way he’s obsessed with the mc, he could have an awesome fight with anyone but he wants the mc, he must have very strong feelings, by the time he turns nasty in his mind he cannot backtrack anymore, and becomes even more obsessed with it, because is the only connection he has to the mc anymore, he says he says he was willing to burn those bridges because he himself doesn’t consider worthy of the mc anymore, even if you lose he doesn’t say anything because he knows all what he did and he’s punishing himself for it, he wants you, but he doesn’t believe he can make you happy, and then when MC says you two have been dancing around the issue for a long time, he’s recognizing he has feelings for you, they didn’t spring out of nowhere.
That’s my little crazy theory. ^^U
2 Likes
@Ryocchi your theory its amazing i was thinking something similar but you expressed it way better i could this remember me a Soft cell song Tainted love