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You are going to walk a number of tight-ropes, here. I applaud your courage to try to picture this.

FenCayne wrote:Anyways, when I came to write the script, they emerged as grounded, rather serious, down-to-earth characters who (because opposites attract, right?) had somehow forged firm friendships with the Trevelyans which had survived numerous long-duration and long-distance separations. As reserved, shy people – even, in Neville's case, a kind of high-functioning autistic – they were never going to make the first move romance-wise. Not heterosexual, not homosexual. No way. No how. Not ever in a million years. They value Ann and Arthur's friendship too much to take the risk of spoiling it by coming out with their feelings and risking rejection which would taint what friendship might remain.

This will be especially a difficult thing to portray. So you have a person (Christina/Neville, in all 4 variants) who is shy and needs to be pursued so the PC gets to romance them. Which can - if done just a little bit wrong - make the whole thing like the PC is pressuring the poor shy people into something. (Yes, they will say they want it at the end - but how many people say this just to please, without really meaning it.) And this is regardless of any gender-combination, just to make that clear.

Ah well, maybe it's just me, and the more open chars are going to be more of my type...

I'm reminded of the time a few years back when a white commissioner in Texas stated that the "central collections office was like a black hole" when it came to money, and two black commissioners took offense at his "racist" remarks. This set off a fire storm of debate in the press. I suppose to be politically correct, he should have said "singularity" instead of "black hole", which is kind of a shame, because "black hole" is a more tangible description of an astronomical phenomenon that would otherwise go over a lot of peoples heads. The more you dance around trying not to offend anyone, the more you limit your ability to tell an interesting story with any punch.

P_Tigras wrote:I'm reminded of the time a few years back when a white commissioner in Texas stated that the "central collections office was like a black hole" when it came to money, and two black commissioners took offense at his "racist" remarks. This set off a fire storm of debate in the press. I suppose to be politically correct, he should have said "singularity" instead of "black hole", which is kind of a shame, because "black hole" is a more tangible description of an astronomical phenomenon that would otherwise go over a lot of peoples heads.

I suppose it was a case of "derail discussion made easy". The guys who cried "racist" very likely knew very well what was said, but did not want to discuss the original issue: money being squandered. (Maybe because it is true, and maybe because it is *not* but any discussion just leads the public to believe otherwise.) So they used PC, and everyone felt the need to chime in to prove (s)he is at the "correct" side, least be taken as a latent racist.

Which will very likely happen to this game as well: Once someone (who very likely has not played it, or even seen a lets play on youtube) gives it a bad name, using the usual buzzwords which activate the PC-machinery, all hell will break loose. This is why it takes real courage to create a game which tackles so many issues at once. It is also worth doing, but that may be beside the point...

P_Tigras wrote: The more you dance around trying not to offend anyone, the more you limit your ability to tell an interesting story with any punch.

Which is exactly why it is worth doing.

*raises hand*

Interesting. I am actually deliberately trying to stay away to avoid getting myself too hyped up for games that won't be released for a while, but I gotta say, this looks REALLY interesting.

Plus, specifically for FenCayne: I think you'll be very good with this. You are very articulate, clearly try to think about ramifications beyond a simple "if player chooses A, then B happens" and think about the medium of the game itself (and the accompanying decisions) as well as the writing. Plus these snippets are addicting.

Any new updates on Roger Steel?

I just got a 81-pages script from Fen a few days ago
(OK 81 because he wrote it not in Ren'Py format, but still, was a lot of text!)
Some interesting stuff, lots of flirting and romance so people who liked Loren should really like this, and also some cool ideas for minigames/gameplay stuff (hunting and survival rulesets, and so on).

He should be able to work on it more in next months, but of course still no ETA, etc!

Yay! Nice to hear