- May 9, 2024
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Making the game better is a rather abstract concept. I agree that improving the visual aspect certainly has no impact on the core story. But while that is the most important part of a story driven game, it's not like the visuals are meaningless. Having different expressions adds body language to the conversations and makes the characters seem more like actual people. It improves the immersion and thus improves the game.We're up to episode 10, and the development time keeps getting longer and longer, the chart below shows how many days each chapter has taken so far (we have no gauge for when chapter 1 was started so that's been excluded).
If we extrapolate that out to the projected 16 episodes that have been suggested...
...it'll be about 15 years before the game is done!
My calculations may be a little off, but episode development time is still increasing per episode, and at a minimum, I'm expecting a year per episode from now on.
In the past I would have justified why each recent episode has taken longer, but in the end, I think the developer is just milking it:
But none of the above is making the game "better", it's just making it bigger and dragging out development time.
- The animations are getting longer, and are of a higher frame rate.
- The renders are getting more detailed, and where 5 renders would have been cycled in a conversation between two people, now 20+ renders are being used for different expressions etc.
- More minigames are being designed and added.
Provided obviously that DPC is good at it. Is he? Well mostly I'd say yes, but there is definitely room for improvement. And I don't mean increasing the specs further. That would be him getting more advanced tools. What I'd like to see is improvement in how he wields the tools he has now. Producing better art without increasing demands on the hardware and development time.
If we get an episode every December, 16 would be done in 2029. I consider expecting him to stick to that pace optimistic, so I draw the line at 2030. I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong.
What I doubt most is the story being done in 16 episodes. Yes, I know what DPC says about it. I don't think he'll manage it. Why? Because if we consider how far the story has progressed in terms of time, we have only gotten to Thanksgiving. The halfway point is the start of spring semester and we haven't reached that yet. At this rate I expect it to take both episodes 11 and 12 to get there.
I acknowledge that season 1 is about establishing the starting points of the various plot lines, but if it still takes two whole seasons to deal with the fall semester, then dealing with the whole spring semester in just one season will mean that the episodes are either going to be absolutely massive or they will really rush the story.
I'd rather have 10 more episodes of well paced story than 6 that ruin the ending by rushing it. But then stories progress in events rather than time so maybe we really are past the halfway point of drama and spring semester actually can be told in fewer instalments without being rushed. Maybe I just have too high hopes for it.