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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 24, 2016 18:32:52 GMT -8
Just gonna point out that the story is one of the game's "important aspects" - hell, I'd argue that they're equally important and that there is no such superiority between the two. Plus I don't get the point of this - LibDay's combat system already got good or great remarks, so it seems like that parts down pretty well - in fact I'd say it's the absolute last thing that needs improvement in light of the other complaints. No need to force an overhaul just because that ONE strategy-nut didn't find it challenging enough . More constructive note - things like the "plasma gun/cannon" sounds more like something that would make sense mounted on the pre-existing PACT Fast Cruiser/Knife-Fight Cruiser since close-range is already their specialty - a vanguard unit that charges in to knife-fight cruisers with kinetics, only now it can blow holes in clustered Ryder formations with AoE/shotgun-shots. You don't need to create an entirely new ship design. The second ship design... is also basically a re-balance of the PACT Fast Cruiser, just more nimble. Assassins, Scouts and Disruptors sound cool, but they also sound closer to the kind of units Ryuvian forces such as Crow's "Reborn Empire" might use, instead of anything from PACT - his faction, "The Fallen", was described by Sola as an insurrectionist force, so it would make a certain sense.
The rest of it, again, sounds a lot like just trying to stuff busywork into the gameplay if it's all at once - how about one new type per new game? It sounds like there's at least two more Sunrider games coming anyway, so balancing it out would give time to stress-test old and new features. Point being - isn't this kinda pushing a lot for a function that doesn't seem to readily require any sizable expansion as of yet? Yeah, my fist sentence was meant as a joke, it’s entirely subjective as to “what is more important.” In the end it comes down to on whom you ask, some people prefer a good story, some the actual gameplay. For me it’s overall gameplay for you (probably?) the story. On potential “plasma-fast-cruiser”: Wouldn’t really have the effect, I intended to create with the “Heavy destroyer.” This new fast-cruiser (with AoE capabilities) would offensively be so devastating that every player has no other choice than to target it down immediately, which is (regarding their low HP) not really a big deal. Ultimately your formation stays the same though. And if we consider increasing their base HP, we’d really be creating a super op unit (fast, brutal attack, high hp) A unit that is comparable to “Heavy destroyer” can’t simply be prioritized and targeted down in a turn. It will eventually reach you, and force you to split up your formation. (but unlike "fast cruiser" is still slow enough so that you can outrun it.) Purpose “Heavy destroyer”: Punish defensive formation in a way that the player still has time to react. (desperately needed, as of now there is NO reason to even consider an aggressive set up, where you’re not hiding behind thousand flaks/shields.) The combat Cruiser is probably my favorite design out of all I suggested, because it fills in a niche that is completely underrepresented. There is no effective way PACT can deal with you, when they don’t have supports and you hide behind Flak+Shield. Missiles do shit, Lasers do shit, Battleships can’t effectively hit you (low accuracy kinetics.) They can only hope to land a rocket at best. The new combat Cruiser with its Railgun ignores shields and does impressive damage regardless of how much the player tries to turtle. (Finally armor upgrades become more viable, switching up your formation, moving out more, and being more aggressive becomes a possibility - which in the current meta, is just not a thing.) On “trying to stuff busywork”: There are quite a few people that criticized LibDay’s mission-design compared to FA/MoA, if you think it’s less important then that’s your opinion and I’m okay with that. However I maintain the view that gameplay+unit/mission design and expanding upon it, always was and still remains high-priority. There are more ways to spice up and improve gameplay. Just trying my best here in presenting interesting unit-concepts, (balance) feedback from high-tier player perspective, and suggestions to help establishing/ making different play styles more viable. Yeah, I know it was a joke - just being an ass I was talking more making the attack a new staple of the normal PACT Fast-Cruiser. And that would kinda be my entire point - they would be a severe threat in combat that will force you to not rely on the strategy of bunching up defensively. Not like the strategy for dealing with them would be any different form the normal one - you'd just have to react faster. So again, I don't see the "Heavy Destroyer" being anything but redundant since the Destroyers (missile boats) and Fast-Cruisers fill these roles already. Plus you're really underestimating the whole "Can't be prioritized and targeted down in a turn" - anything at Captain or below can be unless they're over 5000-6000 HP like the Ryuvian Falcon or Nightmare Ascendent. In all honesty, the Heavy Destroyer feels like it would be just an annoyance to deal with on the battlefield as opposed to something revolutionary. And in truth, it STILL doesn't really discourage defensive positioning - if it moves so slowly, it allows for sniping or missiles to whittle it down so that you can knock it down by the time it reaches you. Again, the "Combat Cruiser" just feels like another name for the PACT Fast-Carier we already have, just rebalanced. The strategy for dealing with it - not much different. Only because it felt like they were just thrown in one on top of the other - there wasn't any NARRATIVE PACING for the missions. Again, it was always A priority, but not/never THE priority - LibDay's negative response pretty conclusively proved that, I think. I get that. It just feels a bit too soon to be suggesting it like it should be the focus over all else given, again, what happened in LibDay.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 24, 2016 13:48:20 GMT -8
Just gonna point out that the story is one of the game's "important aspects" - hell, I'd argue that they're equally important and that there is no such superiority between the two. Plus I don't get the point of this - LibDay's combat system already got good or great remarks, so it seems like that parts down pretty well - in fact I'd say it's the absolute last thing that needs improvement in light of the other complaints. No need to force an overhaul just because that ONE strategy-nut didn't find it challenging enough . More constructive note - things like the "plasma gun/cannon" sounds more like something that would make sense mounted on the pre-existing PACT Fast Cruiser/Knife-Fight Cruiser since close-range is already their specialty - a vanguard unit that charges in to knife-fight cruisers with kinetics, only now it can blow holes in clustered Ryder formations with AoE/shotgun-shots. You don't need to create an entirely new ship design. The second ship design... is also basically a re-balance of the PACT Fast Cruiser, just more nimble. Assassins, Scouts and Disruptors sound cool, but they also sound closer to the kind of units Ryuvian forces such as Crow's "Reborn Empire" might use, instead of anything from PACT - his faction, "The Fallen", was described by Sola as an insurrectionist force, so it would make a certain sense.
The rest of it, again, sounds a lot like just trying to stuff busywork into the gameplay if it's all at once - how about one new type per new game? It sounds like there's at least two more Sunrider games coming anyway, so balancing it out would give time to stress-test old and new features. Point being - isn't this kinda pushing a lot for a function that doesn't seem to readily require any sizable expansion as of yet?
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 24, 2016 8:40:04 GMT -8
...You realize all this was to point out that Samu's statements of most of the players going through the game in waifu mode was false, do you? It's even in the TLDR in my first post...I only talked about bad reviews in one or two times in pointing that the longer the time passed after the initial batch of reviews 10-12 hours after the fact, the more the reviews improved, indicating a small correlation between time spent playing the game and general reception; which is normal, as you will enjoy the game for more things if you enjoy the gameplay, duh (and of course you don't talk about story length in a normal game as a its real length; do you know anyone saying "Ugh, Skyrim is so short"?). And then, that some of the initial problems (short-length for example, which as I said before was the one criticized most consistently in those reviews) will then be biased by that, as a normal consequence. All in all, I just won't bother anymore; the fact that you're assuming that a group of people going through the game in a total of 9 hours of playing can contribute to the reviews 12 hours after release just as the same as a group that goes through it in 4 hours tells everything. The focus was never on writing, so for you it will be a "non-consequence", but rather wanting to address some kind of misunderstanding the devs might have had about their audience. And you realize my point was that it didn't really matter either way, right? That if a story flops, the whole game isn't going to be received well regardless of what difficulty level you play it at. And again, reviews after that were probably more likely to be from casual players the longer out they were as opposed to core players - who I'd believe actually would be among the first ones to finish (and that's kind of a misnomer to say as well since, for the most part, the reviews stayed pretty consistent at 50%/50%-60%/40% until after V2.00 was released). Plus, I'd point that practically half those positive reviews ALSO claimed/complained about the story being botched, mishandled or even outright bad regardless of if the gameplay was good or not. And I'm going to come out and say you're outright wrong about people not judging game-length on story alone - I've seen it be differentiated from gameplay time before (do you know anyone who counts time walking from place to place as actual gameplay instead of busywork?), especially if (A) the story is what they play for or (B) the story isn't worth the gameplay itself. So no, as a result, I still don't believe the time was biased as a "normal consequence" and persist in saying it really doesn't matter either way. The thing with that though - you're not even acknowledging the fact that some of those "4 hours" was likely them talking about story-length instead of their full game-time. Or considering beta-players who'd had saves near the end anyway. Or that the number of reviews that were in that fast were extremely limited to begin with. Or even that difficulty setting doesn't even matter in the slightest since it doesn't make a story fail any more or less. You're just lumping them all together - that says "everything" just as much. Plus, the past two games kinda disagree with you big-time - it was EQUALLY about writing as much as gameplay because one is inartistically tied to the other as being it's payoff. Samu-Kun even had a poll on his twitter - and gameplay rated in last, behind story and waifus. Based on just the last games alone there was a direction that LibDay deviated from, and the players seemed to feel it would be obvious that things had to be balanced.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 23, 2016 8:25:45 GMT -8
Just throwing my own tidbit in, but I think it was more they didn't feel the story was worth the battles; In Captain mode or higher, you tend to put a lot of emotional investment in the story-payoff being worth the hell you went through to win the tougher battles. Anything lower then Ensign is people seeing if the story is worth it without the strain of investment caused by the latter. Short version - I'm of the opinion that the people who complained the loudest was largely because of their opinion of the story and not the gameplay, but NOT that gameplay was ignored; rather I think that playing on higher difficulties probably made it sting worse when they felt the plot failed to make it feel worth the effort ( Then again, I admit this might be a biased opinion since it's practically my own experience; my first playthrough was on Captain and... well, my initial thoughts at the time are a dead horse that's been very, very well beaten by this point, ^_^; Suffice to say I didn't think the good gameplay alone was enough). Point being... you're really just arguing semantics, I think - good gameplay needs a good story to serve as the payoff for the hard work you put into it, otherwise it'll probably just piss people off worse. It's been brought up before, but that was Mass Effect 3's big mistake for many as well; if something as big as the story fails, the point's moot. And TBH, I really don't think the first reviews were just "waifu-runners" - I beat the game in 7-9 hours the day it came out (stayed up and played from 6:00 PM to around 3:00 AM straight, minus bathroom breaks and dinner-time), on Captain difficulty. I personally don't think it's fair to say the first players were only interested in the VN or that the average player uses Ensign Mode; that speaks more to casual players coming later as opposed to the diehard-fans who would be first in line to play. It might simply be that Sunrider was lucky enough to have players who were that devoted, you know (again, possible bias here since I'd be one of those after-mentioned devotees and am using my own playtime as a benchmark to judge ). I don't think we're really arguing about semantics when some people actively shun the gameplay element. Neither I'm trying to talk about reception depending on them playing it on Captain or not, though there's definitely a correlation. The main point was that the initial reception and reactions were highly biased by the "waifu-runners", and that's a fact, not something you can really argue: -The rating and reviews started hitting by 9-10 hours after release; while this gives time to some passionate fans like you to make a run in Captain, I think we can agree the percentage of this is statistically insignificant, because it requires non-stop playing in very differing timezones. I'm not saying that there weren't people who played in Captain in them, but that in those first hours there was a high bias towards those that finished earlier because of being in waifu mode; in all cases, we're talking about the first hours of the game so the divide between "casual" and "hardcore" does not even enter the divide. Taking 2 "days" to finish the game still enters as a "hardcore" fan, just in a harder difficulty that makes battles longer; and likewise decrying people who play in waifu mode as all casual is ignoring that a lot of people were fans of VNs and Academy and followed Sunrider because of that -All the reviews considered as "most helpful" in Steam in the first days had the main point against the game being its shortness. All decried different decisions, but to the point to which they offered more consensus was the game "lasting 4 hours" (even more than decry against the ending and with only decry against railroading Chigara being somewhat comparable). This obviously points to at least casual difficulty selection, if not lower. And the average player is certainly ensign; not only has numbers been offered that at most 20% of the players plays on Captain or higher, but it's even the default difficulty. To be honest, I agree on most of what you say about combining story and gameplay, but dude, facts are facts. The entire point of the post was to make clear that Samu-kun's idea of "most players playing on waifu mode and going through the battle at top speed" is actually false, and due to a bias in the most initial reviews of the game just after the release. Now, that even players on Captain or higher criticize the writing or some decisions it's obvious, but at least they won't claim that the game does indeed lasts less than 5 hours. Keyword - "some." And no, I really disagree on there being any correlation - at least not the way you're saying. My main point is that I don't think there was any such bias as it flat out does not matter if they were "waifu-runners" or not since it's utterly moot because; A) - It means not acknowledging that if the story fails, the game is going to be frustrating to everyone no matter what difficulty they play at. B) - It means presumptively assuming that nobody can beat the game in seven-to-nine hours - which I fail to see as being "a fact, not something (I) can really argue." Yes, I know - again, I finished the game in around 7-9 hours, so I'd formed my opinion well before I learned it was shared by quite a few people. And I point out that this may simply be the case you know - because it suggests that all those players were casual players as opposed to the many people who paid for the game via Patreon or were waiting for it to come out. "Statistically speaking", most of those players would logically have been the diehards to the series because they would have been the people who pledged and got Steam codes for the game; people who'd been waiting and anticipating it for a year. Now yes, it's supposition, but I don't see anything directly invalidating it. Also, let me point out something - when people talk about "lasting 4 hours" in the reviews... they're probably talking about STORY CONTENT ALONE. They mean LibDay's overall story length is about 4 hours MINUS GAME TIME. That doesn't point to "casual difficulty selection" - that points to them opting to subtract gameplay length when reviewing the story. And the thing that makes it funny? Even if you ended up being right, I really don't think it would change anything - because I think your belief ignores the fact that the gameplay difficulty really DOES NOT MATTER in the long run because it's a semantical point regarding those early reviews; LibDay's failing was regarded as being it's story, and if the story fails then the gameplay is just going to be more likely to frustrate anyone suffering through the higher difficulties. Say for argument's sake it was just "waifu-runners" making most of the early reviews - it changes a whopping zilch because if the story fails, playing (or struggling through) at a higher difficulty isn't going to magically make the overall opinion that much better. Hell, like I said before, I think it would actually risk pissing people off worse because it would show there WAS effort put into the game - just not everywhere/in the story/in the payoff for the battles. I really think it never mattered either way if the story was a case of "most players playing on Waifu mode or not" because it's secondary to the point. So likewise, I'd think it's just as much a bias for you to assume that "waifu-runners" were the cause of LibDay's initial negative response - plus it seems to misinterpret people talking about the STORY being 4-5 hours, not the whole game itself. And again, consider that perhaps that 20% might have been largely contributing to the reviews since the number there isn't even really 10% of the 2,500-sale ballpark you put the game in.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 22, 2016 12:51:25 GMT -8
Techercizer I'm not saying the plot isn't important. I've mentioned in previous/other threads that I do like the writing and the characters as well but felt Lib Day felt a little short in that regard. What I'm trying to convey here is that turn based component is likely to be under appreciated based on the data from reviews, achievements, sales. Especially in relation to the time that was put into it. I'll be honest here. Cutting/dumbing down gameplay in favor of more story, waifu service etc, might help the game in regards of the general, casual audience. But the core fanbase (Typically people you find here on the forums) won't approve of this. We can't underestimate the importance of a strong core-community. In the end it's not casuals, who play the game for a week and then forget about it, who keep the game alive. I can only speak for myself but gameplay was the main reason why I kept playing Sunrider in the first place. Depending on how much the game forfeits in that department it could very well be enough so that I'd have to say "I respect the direction the devs chose to take, but here's where we part ways." Marx last post: Good breakdown on underappreciating strategy aspect, wrong expectations and reasons why the game ultimately flopped. Despite all the problems LibDay had in marketing, writing, etc, I'm still shocked that Academy is received better, because that game was truly unbearable. In all honesty, I'm not sure dumbing it down would be something we'd have to see. The pre-existing assets from LibDay ought to ensure that they don't need to start from square one when it comes to combat. The thing is though that I think Gameplay is made important because of the STORY just as much as it is vice-versa - a story satisfies more when you have to work for it because the triumphs and hardships feel more real; more personal. LibDay's failing was that it's story (V1.00 at least) didn't make many players feel like the fights they went through were worth the narrative they were given - a deficiency that can make practically any battle, no matter how good it is on it's own, feel hollow and pointless. I mean, it's why I think Academy was better received - I think people felt the story they were getting was worth the tedium of the life-simulator (which is why those who see it as "truly unbearable" seem to be such a minority ) - a balance of effort and reward. LibDay failed to make a story that felt like good payoff for the strategy element in the eyes of many players, and good strategy might just have been salt in the wound if they felt the payoff wasn't there. People seemed to feel it was a case of failed expectations, not wrong expectations - or rather, that they feel the game's own strategy wasn't appreciated by it, because it didn't have a good story to balance it with. If YOU went into it for strategy alone, that's fine - but you might want to acknowledge that focusing too much on that was Samu-Kun's admitted reason the story wasn't focused on; ergo, focusing solely on strategy was what caused the very deficiency that people said was LibDay's big failing. What's needed is a balanced blend of it all - and if either side is more hefty then the other, it'll likely fail.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 22, 2016 12:41:39 GMT -8
Bumping this thread for some careful considerations about Liberation day (sorry for the double post) now that there has been some time and data. Let's look at the Steamspy page here. First, it counts around 2500 sales. However, that number is not likely very accurate; Steamspy numbers only get really accurate once you pass the threshold of 30.000, and before 5.000 sales it's only a very ballpark number. The big fluctuations also point to this. Liberation Day could have sold from 2000 to 3000 copies (and of course this also counts the KS backers and people from patreon; you have to take out around 1700 in the worst case). Now, on the interesting tidbits. The average playtime has a median of 7:40 hours, and even the mean (which in Steam tends to be very contaminated by people who still haven't played or only touched it for a while) is not that far off. Furthermore, there's likely contamination from beta-testers like me (I have, I think, around 5.5 hours?) who just didn't bother replaying and redid everything from a save of the previous beta. Even with 2.0 it seems very unlikely a Waifu mode player would have reached that playtime, or even someone playing on casual. We can thus affirm that, unlike what everyone started believing just after the release, that the average player of Sunrider plays on Ensign mode. While the chunk playing on Captain or higher is unknown for me, I suppose Samu-kun has the stats for the "Captain" achievement and thus knows the true number. In all cases, all points to it being a remarkably high percentage of the players. Furthermore, even the median and mean of the playtime of these last 2 weeks is significantly high (median of 7.02 hours). While the release of 2.00 can explain this, I find it unlikely that the bulk of people would entirely replay the game 3 days after it again in captain mode just to see the extra scenes: either they would use the same trick that I did, loading from a battle save, or they did a very quick playthrough skipping everything in waifu mode.
All of this is very significant, because it points towards a very high degree of bias on the initial reception: the first players only interested in the VN part made a very quick playthrough and thus reviewed the game first, clearly dominating over the one who played for the gameplay, that took their sweet time finishing (and thus took more time to make the review) Even the scores reflect this; even with 2.00 the change on ratings (and even the "most helpful" reviews) is pretty astounding. Thus, the initially very bad impression is more due to a bias in the type of players than the game's intrinsic worth. TLDR: The thought that this game's audience is mostly people who rushes through battles in waifu mode is pure bullshit. The earlier impression is due to a bias in the time they took to finish the game Just throwing my own tidbit in, but I think it was more they didn't feel the story was worth the battles; In Captain mode or higher, you tend to put a lot of emotional investment in the story-payoff being worth the hell you went through to win the tougher battles. Anything lower then Ensign is people seeing if the story is worth it without the strain of investment caused by the latter. Short version - I'm of the opinion that the people who complained the loudest was largely because of their opinion of the story and not the gameplay, but NOT that gameplay was ignored; rather I think that playing on higher difficulties probably made it sting worse when they felt the plot failed to make it feel worth the effort ( Then again, I admit this might be a biased opinion since it's practically my own experience; my first playthrough was on Captain and... well, my initial thoughts at the time are a dead horse that's been very, very well beaten by this point, ^_^; Suffice to say I didn't think the good gameplay alone was enough). Point being... you're really just arguing semantics, I think - good gameplay needs a good story to serve as the payoff for the hard work you put into it, otherwise it'll probably just piss people off worse. It's been brought up before, but that was Mass Effect 3's big mistake for many as well; if something as big as the story fails, the point's moot. And TBH, I really don't think the first reviews were just "waifu-runners" - I beat the game in 7-9 hours the day it came out (stayed up and played from 6:00 PM to around 3:00 AM straight, minus bathroom breaks and dinner-time), on Captain difficulty. I personally don't think it's fair to say the first players were only interested in the VN or that the average player uses Ensign Mode; that speaks more to casual players coming later as opposed to the diehard-fans who would be first in line to play. It might simply be that Sunrider was lucky enough to have players who were that devoted, you know (again, possible bias here since I'd be one of those after-mentioned devotees and am using my own playtime as a benchmark to judge ).
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 21, 2016 9:21:42 GMT -8
Ava's strict enforcement of such regulations aboard the Sunrider seems to point to the Cera Space Force having indeed had those regs regarding relationships and active duty (though I admit you could argue she enforced it harder then any officer normally would). And at the same time, I really doubt Kayto went out with anyone else - wandering eye, maybe, but never actually committing. He also wouldn't exactly be in a situation where he'd expressly want or need to go out with someone else either, like he was in the Sunrider series - though in all honesty, the implication seems to be that he clings to her based off their interactions in the series. Thing is though that the Chigara relationship WAS rather flawed - perhaps not necessarily in concept but certainly in execution and implementation. Plus, what I'm using is in fact based on what we know of Kayto thus far - it's not really "speculation" so much as "current information." There's no real evidence to suggest Kayto ever got into a serious relationship after Ava between her enlistment and the start of FA. Plus, you can't actually speculate at all unless you know something about the characters to speculate off of. Sorry, wanted to say "I am certainly not saying that the execution of the relationship with Chigara was not flawed", sometimes even small words can be really important... Anyhow, I would guess that the Cera Space Force regulations on relationships are pretty similar to modern western army regulations, so no relationship stuff during active duty and with closely related colleagues (like on the same ship), but one is free to pursue it otherwise. So Kayto certainly could have had other relationships, and I would guess he had since that what most people do during their twenties, but none that had a deeper impact on him (since he never thinks back to somebody else than Maray and Ava). So yeah, I think you are right if you argue about high-impact relationships, but not about relationships in general. Thing is though that again, it never seemed like he really had reason to. Think about it - all the girls he knew school and yet he never had a truly intimate relationship with anyone else but Ava in those first eighteen or so years, so why would him not having one 8-10 years after be so surprising? Especially if he'd convinced himself he did love her the way he convinced himself he loved Chigara? I really would guess he hadn't because been in anything, or at least anything serious, since it's hard to imagine him having gotten so broken up over it in MoA if he'd really moved on to that point - hell, he would have had a far easier time dealing with others in-game who liked him such as Claude if he'd really had steady girlfriends before then. It points to him still being pretty naive about this stuff - in terms of relationships in general, he doesn't seem to have had a lot of experience with it so it likely never got to such a point with anyone. And yes I could be wrong - it could just be supposition - but nothing so far really shows that yet.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 21, 2016 3:43:54 GMT -8
Well, it's detailed that he went into the Space Force for Ava's sake and it seems more like and only just now gave it up after finally reaching her aboard the Sunrider and slowly deciding that maybe he ought to have let it go. It's never even so much as hinted that he'd pursued anyone else, either (in fact, spending years in the military - back when the Cera Space Force was still intact and there regs against it - would cement that). Also, I should point out that since it seems that Kayto and Ava were both virgins who had their first time together, it's hard to believe he ever got that far with anyone else prior to that - hell, even the shore-leave scene pointed more to Kayto's school crushes being rather one-sided. Additionally, I should point out the fact that Kayto as a whole was always portrayed as rather naive - he really does seem the type that would abstain from another relationship in the hope of at least finding out if the first one was salvageable, and the idea that it wasn't hit him so hard that it's arguably one of the biggest reasons he even ended up falling in so hard with Chigara in the first place (though the execution of that still lacked as that was practically the ONLY thing that there was to back it). Of course you can be right, but I might be right as well. He spends many years (10 I think) apart from Ava and while it is possible that he clings to his affection to her it can also be the case that he goes on. Also I would be surprised if the Cera Space Forces regulate against relationships of their members in general (like celibacy), they might forbid relationships with other members of the forces though. I am certainly not saying that the execution of the relationship with Chigara was flawed, in fact I am far from it, but I think it is problematic to prove ones point by using speculations. But I guess that is one of the problems of this whole argument, that there is just too much unknown about the characters that each one has to fill with their own interpretation of things. Ava's strict enforcement of such regulations aboard the Sunrider seems to point to the Cera Space Force having indeed had those regs regarding relationships and active duty (though I admit you could argue she enforced it harder then any officer normally would). And at the same time, I really doubt Kayto went out with anyone else - wandering eye, maybe, but never actually committing. He also wouldn't exactly be in a situation where he'd expressly want or need to go out with someone else either, like he was in the Sunrider series - though in all honesty, the implication seems to be that he clings to her based off their interactions in the series.
Thing is though that the Chigara relationship WAS rather flawed - perhaps not necessarily in concept but certainly in execution and implementation. Plus, what I'm using is in fact based on what we know of Kayto thus far - it's not really "speculation" so much as "current information." There's no real evidence to suggest Kayto ever got into a serious relationship after Ava between her enlistment and the start of FA. Plus, you can't actually speculate at all unless you know something about the characters to speculate off of.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 20, 2016 21:09:50 GMT -8
No - I think the issue here is that you think I'm disagreeing because I somehow don't get it. Fact of the matter is I do - I simply don't agree with it, plain and simple. Mainly because that view of yours doesn't answer my question about how the story really seems to lack the contexts NEEDED to interpret it differently from what it was before. You seem to think the advantages offered are substantial - I do not because prerequisite contexts needed for them to exist just don't seem to be there. And the reason I believe that comes down to another question; what else besides Kayto's breakdown in MoA was definitively regarded as a major contributing factor in the hyper-speed escalation of their relationship? The Prototype debate and refusing to acknowledge Chigara was part of it certainly plays in (or should), but it never really directly tied into it - if it had been cited as being a direct contributor in Kayto pushing things out of a need to prove to himself and Chigara that she was her own person, you'd have had a point. See, it's not that I'M not acknowledging it - it's that LibDay's story itself doesn't (or doesn't do a good enough job to) acknowledge there being any of the necessary trigger-points to explain this relationship's hyper-increased speed; there's nothing for me to acknowledge because the game doesn't really give much of anything for me to do so outside of pure speculation. I personally can think of reasons that would take a romance down this route (if not with different dialouge) and I never said you were wrong that relationships like this were possible - but near as I can tell, no such reasons to justify the rushed and forced nature are really shown in the narrative of the game itself; ATM it's all speculation just because "it's possible". So again, fact of the matter - I'm not disregarding it at all. I just plain disagree with it. And what makes it funny is that I never even said you were flat-out wrong/that what you're saying wasn't possible; just that there wasn't enough in LibDay's story to justify/prove it, and that this lack of grounding was what made the romance a fail for so many. Saying "but it is possible!" over and over when the story itself doesn't really showcase the "what, where, when, how and why"/any directly-inferred contributing factors (or even really hint they exist) well enough to believe the pacing makes your argument just as much a moot point; you still need to show how Point-A gets to Point-B. LibDay just really failed to do that for Kayto and Chigara - and while V2.00 certainly helped make what happened more believable in hindsight, it's currently up to future installments to show us the narrative "A to B" for that romance that LibDay didn't exposit on and make it believable. I don't think you're disagreeing because you somehow don't get it. I just dislike when people sell their personal opinion as the one and only univeral applicable panacea. I just wanted to open up people for different ideas. Summarizing why Chigara/Kayto's silly, rush relationship is justified or at least tolerable/somewhat believable. (Although sloppily written, bad implemented in overall plot, and indirectly harming the story with negative side effects.) - My first real life example: Love can be irrational, reckless and even harmful. (purpose: produce reference to reality, for love in general.) - Ava rejecting Shields, most prominently in Legion scene.(Quite possibly the reason why Shield's began to pursue Chigara in the first place.) - Shields Breakdown (functioning as catalyst for relationship.) - Chigara's ambition (They already shared a one sided relationship since the mid/beginning of FA. Affection from her side was a given from the very get go.) - Crewmember pushing the issue and encouraging Chigara/Kayto relationship. (hooking them up, for ex. beach scene.) I don't think that future installments even want to elaborate on Chigara/Shields relationship. The sole purpose of the forced romance was to create a conflict. And again: If Chigara/Shields weren't romantically involved we would have a DIFFERENT conflict for post-LibDay. We can't tell if whatever Samu has planned would work out with a different approach. We have to wait and see before judging possible effects in future games. Note: I personally still think the forced romance was horrible. (in regards of LibDay only) It created a static love triangle (my real problem with LibDays writing. Changing 1,2 lines to make a relationship appear to be platonic, won't terminate this atrocity. And in itself was the main reason for the story losing its focus.) But that's just it - I NEVER DID say what you said was impossible or that it doesn't happen in the world; I said nothing done in LibDay's current story justified the speed of such a relationship/made it believable. How is that me trying to "sell (my) personal opinion as the one and only universal applicable panacea" when I flat-out never made such claims of being definitive?
The reason why people believe otherwise though is because the elements that usually bring this about - powerful triggers - are not visibly present in LibDay. In fact, the only substantial trigger (Ava rejecting Kayto which caused him to break down) was in MoA. Moreover, what really kills the idea for many though is, ironically, the precise timing - it would have made more sense had Chigara and Kayto actually started dating SOONER, having something like dinner or the like during the Sunrider's month in drydock instead of seemingly jumping into it with a sudden kiss scene the week of departure; why wait a whole month doing nothing and then do it all in one week? I'm not saying this kind of relationship can't happen - just that LibDay's setting really doesn't do enough to make it believable.
- Your first real life example: I's sorry, but really don't see how that counts since, from what you said, there was intentional manipulation in that as opposed to shared affection. It still needs triggers - "can happen" isn't the same as "will happen" and there still at least needs to be a way to see how it's happened because even unpredictable madness has a method to it. Yes what happened with Kayto and Chigara was "irrational, reckless and harmful", and yes it's possible, but for a lot of people, there's very little that actually supports it going down this path to make it feel tangible instead of shoehorned. - Ava rejecting Shields: This we agree on, but the problem is that I don't see any other clear-cut element beside this one that really serves as a flashpoint in catalyzing the relationship. And it alone can't justify the shotgun-wedding plans - Dating, yes. Kissing, yes. Even sex would be justifiable if it didn't happen till the very end. All of that, plus kids, living together and marriage, in a week? That broke suspension of disbelief for a lot of people. - Shield's Breakdown: We agree again, but I don't really see why this is a separate point - this and the above pretty much count as a single thing. - Chigara's ambition: The thing that makes me pause here though was that Chigara was never actually shown to have "ambition" as opposed to naiveté; a very simplistic idea of love - one that lead to her treating love as something childishly simple. - Crewmembers pushing the issue: That's more supporting the shy Chigara then something that would drive Kayto himself into the length he went to. It's not the kind of flashpoint element that would put the relationship on the fast-track like the rejection-based breakdown would.
The thing with that is that they may not have a choice but to elaborate on it - in fact, just by looking here, most people seem to agree that it'd be worse if it wasn't elaborated on, lest Kayto come across as a completely unrepentant dickhead for it if he just goes to someone else. And this is where we disagree again because I'm of the opposite belief - I do not in fact think Kayto and Chigara's romance was anything close to an "atrocity", though I think the way it was handled might have been. In truth, I really think the main reason for the loss of focus was simply because LibDay was short - they tried to cram too much into far too small a window and it made everything fall apart, and had it been developed over a longer time, it could possibly have worked. (please note I have not made any claims to this being anything but what I believe!)
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 20, 2016 17:35:53 GMT -8
As far as we've seen, Kayto doesn't in fact have reasonable experience; the only actual relationship he ever seemed to be in was with Ava - and look how that turned out. (...) he joined the Cera Space Force purely because of Ava and his life's pretty much been hell since then. As far as I remember it is never mentioned how Kayto's life has been between the time Ava left high school and the start of the game, so I do not know if these points are really valid. He might in fact have had relationships during his time on the Space Force Academy and in fact also before Ava (she in fact mentions once or twice that he was pursuing various girls, but not how far he got with these relationships). While he is joining the Space Forces to meet up with Ava again originally, it is nowhere mentioned that he really holds this believe for the whole time or if it fades out over the 10 years (?) inbetween. His interest in Ava might have been reignited once he got to know that she will be his XO on the Sunrider. Again, just speculation. Well, it's detailed that he went into the Space Force for Ava's sake and it seems more like and only just now gave it up after finally reaching her aboard the Sunrider and slowly deciding that maybe he ought to have let it go. It's never even so much as hinted that he'd pursued anyone else, either (in fact, spending years in the military - back when the Cera Space Force was still intact and there regs against it - would cement that). Also, I should point out that since it seems that Kayto and Ava were both virgins who had their first time together, it's hard to believe he ever got that far with anyone else prior to that - hell, even the shore-leave scene pointed more to Kayto's school crushes being rather one-sided. Additionally, I should point out the fact that Kayto as a whole was always portrayed as rather naive - he really does seem the type that would abstain from another relationship in the hope of at least finding out if the first one was salvageable, and the idea that it wasn't hit him so hard that it's arguably one of the biggest reasons he even ended up falling in so hard with Chigara in the first place (though the execution of that still lacked as that was practically the ONLY thing that there was to back it).
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 20, 2016 16:06:53 GMT -8
I don't mind dissenting opinions, nor I plan to really convince anyone, but on the concrete matter of sex; We're talking about two adults above 20 years old (one of which with a reasonable amount of experience, and the other an specially engineered body with who knows what priorities) in an universe with barely religious influence and probably hundred of ways to fight both STDs and unwanted pregnancies. And while they went from kissing to sex in one week they knew each other for at least month, and you can probably even argue that their relationship was ambiguous since before the Legion. Ava and Kayto had their first kiss together just before having sex, of all things. And really, it's kinda a given when in the previous situation scene they were already talking about kids and family. If you really want to slow down the whole relationship, no problem, everyone already said their point about it. However I find this fixation with sex a tad odd. Well, yes, but Kayto doesn't in fact seem to have reasonable experience; the only actual relationship he ever seemed to be in, outside of (supposed) errant flirting with a bunch of girls in his youth, was with Ava - and look how that turned out. Plus, knowing someone for a month isn't the same as loving them for a month - unless you're fast and loose like Claude or had a very long time to develop it like Ava, it's an adjustment you need time to get used to or even be sure you want. And the crazy thing? It could have actually been mitigated somewhat had it been directly inferred that Kayto and Chigara started dating during the month in dry-dock instead of after - as it is, it seems like they only actually started a relationship with, if Chigara's words are any indication, her first kiss.
And.. OK, this is going to be a mini-rant and a half, but Ava and Kayto's first time is a very, very, VERY bad example to use - counterproductive, even; She was leaving and for all they knew would never see each-other again, they had years to know each-other and develop sexual tension, they both were young hormonal teenagers who'd yet to even understand what love really was and this was from a time before Kayto himself had started to change (aka - before he was player-determinable to an extent). None of these things apply to Kayto & Chigara's romance - in fact it kinda undermines it because it would point to Kayto having had opportunity to learn what the consequences of rash decisions with a girl can bring (aka - he joined the Cera Space Force purely because he on-the-spot decided he loved Ava and his life's pretty much been hell since then).
As for why people keep bringing it up - that requires a mini-tangent;
It's because it was far too blatant and quick for the situation and was not executed well - the way it happened between Kayto and Chigara felt extremely forced to the point that you could argue the sex-scene actually cheapened their relationship instead of strengthening it. And the fact that they were talking about kids and family that soon and BEFORE they had sex instead of after only highlights it worse because that talk is extremely out-of-place that soon in. It really does come across as saying "sex = love, no objections" - it takes everything in MoA and caps it in a rather shallow climax. It's fixated on because people felt that not only was it not needed and the story around it not executed in a way that made it work, but it was done in a way that made it feel utterly shoehorned for the sake of having a sex-scene - and that's the last thing you want a sex-scene to do unless you straight-up don't care about the story or characters. It's not odd at all - it's simply that people actually cared.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 20, 2016 10:19:05 GMT -8
Um... I actually think that's you who did that, not me. - But that doesn't work because of one big flaw in that question of yours; doesn't there need to BE various ("inter alia external") factors SHOWN for that relationship to change an not be "a damn constant"? Factors that, due to the shortness of the overall story, we really saw none of - or at least none that could justify the abrupt tonal shift in the speed Chigara and Kayto's relationship developed at. It really looks like it just jumped from what happened at the end of MoA to "obsessive dependence" - had there been more time to show the steps this happened through, you'd have a point. But in lack of that, well... it'd be like if all you knew of your friend's romance was "starting point" and "current point" without any of the other contexts ever being shown, much less touched upon - would it still make any kind of sense to you, let alone the casual onlooker? - That's pretty much THE SAME THING as saying "this isn't a real romance" - that Chigara was basically ruined for people who both did or didn't want her in a way that wasn't even realistic. For a lot of people, it felt like Chigara's whole character and the option of romance with her was gutted for a forced plot, and not even one done well enough to justify it - especially since the Chigara after this is most certainly not going to be the same one liked by the people who did vote for her. - It was defined by many as being bad establishment purely because it was seen as unrealistic for the characters and situations they were in. You're arguing otherwise - that it was realistic for the situation. So forgive me if I don't see where you made that distinction. - Right definition, wrong idea; that may be love, but those definitions aren't in fact exclusive to being romantic or platonic. I am listing reasons toward Kayto's affection toward Chigara - and none of really them require a sexual relationship to get across. It's literally the thing I've argued about ad nausium, so I really don't know how it would sound any different this time. Okay, I'll try one last time to explain my standpoint and I hope we finally get this sorted out. This whole time I was trying to provide a more liberal point of view, showcasing HOW you could interpret things differently and WHY developers could have done things, the way they were done. (intention original post) Not only mentioning all negatives of forced romance, but also the few advantages it brought in. (for ex. creating a potentially interesting setup) "It was defined by many as being bad establishment purely because it was seen as unrealistic for the characters and situations they were in. You're arguing otherwise - that it was realistic for the situation." Finally, you got that right. I did not always represent my own opinion. For example first statement from my side: external factors do matter. Your reaction: "But that doesn't work because of one big flaw in that question of yours; doesn't there need to BE various ("inter alia external") factors SHOWN...." Only because you don't see or don't acknowledge something to be important enough to make a difference, that's your subjective opinion and shouldn't be taken for granted. It's your style of entitled argumentation that leads every corversation to spin in circles. You do this every time, and that's the reason I thought of you as a troll originally. I couldn't believe that someone would completely disregard every viable objection from anyone and blatantly talk the same stuff until people just give up. I'm not willing to have further discussions under these circumstances. Too annoying - not worth it. No - I think the issue here is that you think I'm disagreeing because I somehow don't get it. Fact of the matter is I do - I simply don't agree with it, plain and simple. Mainly because that view of yours doesn't answer my question about how the story really seems to lack the contexts NEEDED to interpret it differently from what it was before. You seem to think the advantages offered are substantial - I do not because prerequisite contexts needed for them to exist just don't seem to be there.
And the reason I believe that comes down to another question; what else besides Kayto's breakdown in MoA was definitively regarded as a major contributing factor in the hyper-speed escalation of their relationship? The Prototype debate and refusing to acknowledge Chigara was part of it certainly plays in (or should), but it never really directly tied into it - if it had been cited as being a direct contributor in Kayto pushing things out of a need to prove to himself and Chigara that she was her own person, you'd have had a point. See, it's not that I'M not acknowledging it - it's that LibDay's story itself doesn't (or doesn't do a good enough job to) acknowledge there being any of the necessary trigger-points to explain this relationship's hyper-increased speed; there's nothing for me to acknowledge because the game doesn't really give much of anything for me to do so outside of pure speculation. I personally can think of reasons that would take a romance down this route (if not with different dialouge) and I never said you were wrong that relationships like this were possible - but near as I can tell, no such reasons to justify the rushed and forced nature are really shown in the narrative of the game itself; ATM it's all speculation just because "it's possible".
So again, fact of the matter - I'm not disregarding it at all. I just plain disagree with it. And what makes it funny is that I never even said you were flat-out wrong/that what you're saying wasn't possible; just that there wasn't enough in LibDay's story to justify/prove it, and that this lack of grounding was what made the romance a fail for so many. Saying "but it is possible!" over and over when the story itself doesn't really showcase the "what, where, when, how and why"/any directly-inferred contributing factors (or even really hint they exist) well enough to believe the pacing makes your argument just as much a moot point; you still need to show how Point-A gets to Point-B. LibDay just really failed to do that for Kayto and Chigara - and while V2.00 certainly helped make what happened more believable in hindsight, it's currently up to future installments to show us the narrative "A to B" for that romance that LibDay didn't exposit on and make it believable.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 20, 2016 10:03:15 GMT -8
Very nice discussion. All in all, my feelings are more on vaendryll's side, the extremely rushed romance did make sense even if it wasn't good per se. The proof for me is precisely how the Captain's relationship with Chigara shifted from going very slow to going very fast. In MoA and the beginning of Liberation day she was simply going for tea, helping the captain, etc. Even if she had feelings from months ago, it wasn't until kissing that things started picking up, and it was both because the captain desperately wanted to make a family and because Chigara allowed it in order to please him. If you take the "rushing" part then things start to fall apart as the romance starts being more similar to a normal and good one. Of course, it could have been executed better, the reason and timing for sex was terrible (though a week after starting going out is definitely normal on most relationships of 20+ people, it's more that the situation definitely wasn't suitable and the exact motivations very shaky), etc. But, while I would have probably done the dialogue different, the feeling of a "rushed" and "too perfect" relationship is kinda the point. More development would have been better and make things make more sense as an "irrational and foolish love", but the pacing itself of the relation and the ultrasacharine words would probably have to stay. Now, that does not mean it was not boring or bad; the mistake of Lib Day was not exactly this entire plot point, but relying only on this plot point. A plot point can be purposely bad in order to improve or set a future development, but what can't that game/book/VN/whatever expect is to focus exactly on that point. That's where Liberation Day's plot falls apart. Thing is though that I think there's really nothing that was shown in LibDay to make vaen's "side" seem solid. Tonal shifts like that tend to require there be some solid element(s) that illustrate why things suddenly shifted to high-gear like that, and LibDay simply never showed any - in fact the only element there ever was had been Kayto's breakdown, which was not only in an entirely different game (MoA) on it's own could only go as far as being the justification to start something, not take it to the Nth degree of extreme.
Plus, in my experience, jumping to sex one week after going out is the mark of CASUAL relationships with people who are either every much previously experienced in relationships (which is not really applicable to either Kayto or Chigara) or in all honesty, very easy on the level of Claude - hell, I even took a sociology class that exposited on this and most starting relationships apparently take at least a month at the fastest before people even have sex; time to allow for a few dates to see how things are going and if they wouldn't be making a mistake, ect. Go figure, but a person's body isn't exactly something most people are really willing to just hand out in a week - there are precedents of course, but LibDay simply didn't have enough story to make it work/feel believable. Saying "it can happen!" but not having the situation needed for it to feel like it would or even make sense makes it moot. And that was my point - the "ultrasachrine" words would not just have been better but might actually even have WORKED had it been a longer-developed relationship.
So about the most we agree on was that the game's biggest narrative mistake was relying on this plot-point as the driving force of its story.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 20, 2016 2:25:06 GMT -8
I'd beg to differ - I think you're overestimating the development of love and the limits or disbelief-suspension. There is "reckless", there is "irrational"... and then there is "totally senseless" - and when you're working off a PRE-ESTABLISHED relationship that was pretty much built on slow growth and gradual trust, it's even more stark a jarring change to not only reverse the direction of it to "face-paced" but take it to an extreme of "talking about kids only a week or so after we first see them kiss". I remember - it just has no bearing on what I said since, again, it's pre-established as having been a relationship that had mutual caring established between two generally good-natured people who's bond was more slowly paced... then took a turn into dialouge that even people who see both sides found it contrived and unrealistic. That's quite a bit different from what you're bringing up - hell, I'd actually say it's so opposite an example to what I'm saying that YOUR example is trying to "generalize" love more then anything I've said . (sorry if that's rude - my point though is that I disagree and say the romance isn't actually in touch with reality, if only because there is no justification seen for the abrupt tonal shift it took) Likewise, my point is that, for a lot of people, it was BAD setup/establishment, and even he went out of the way to state he "didn't consider it a real romance" - like it was just something to be pushed out of the way. The thing is though that nobody was really asking it be ignored - just that they wished it was handled better (also, I disagree - the crew was pushing it and joking about it long before it even happened, so you could actually keep all the crew reactions and just chalk it up to it being their assumptions. The only ones you'd really need to change are Kayto and Chigara's and then the dialouge between Chigara and Asaga before the Battle of Cera. And that in and of itself is assumptive - in my experience; anything can work if it's executed right, the same as how LD's current story could have worked if it had been executed better). Maybe, but at the same time it really wasn't done well enough to feel justified for a lot of people; that it was simply too forced and contrived to feel like anything that comes of it will be GOOD, or at least until V2.00 came out. And at the same time... I again disagree, because in the end it quite possibly was never truly about love either way for Kayto as opposed to a desire to be accepted by someone as "Kayto Shields" instead of "the captain", which then became a near-physical dependence on never losing that one person who would accept and forgive him no matter what. Considering that the story arguably only needed Kayto to "love Chigara as an emotional center for the duration of LibDay", it really doesn't seem like the sexual relationship was required for anything else but fanservice, especially since it's so contrived that, like Somasam said, you'd practically have to flat-out acknowledge in-universe how forcibly fast-paced it was and make it a focus to explore why it went the way it did to try and get past it at this point. Hm. You somehow managed to put my example in wrong context and misinterpreted the core statement. Nice. - Next thing on "and when you're working off a PRE-ESTABLISHED relationship that was pretty much built on slow growth and gradual trust, it's even more stark a jarring change to not only reverse the direction of it to "face-paced" but take it to an extreme of "talking about kids only a week or so after we first see them kiss" Instead of answering, I'll rather ask you something: Is character and relationship development a damn constant or what? Or is it too far fetched to assume there are various (inter alia external) factors that play part too... - If he says "didn't consider it a real romance" that doesn't necessarily mean that he pushes it aside, in the sense of saying that it was unnecessary/insignificant or that he doesn't stand behind his choice. He simply wanted to point out that THIS romance is not final. He is not implying that he'll never build upon this concept. - I never claimed the establishment was good. - Last part makes zero sense, what you're describing IS LOVE. definition, love: a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. You're listing REASONS for Kayto's affection towards Chigara. You're describing the KIND of love they have. Um... I actually think that's you who did that, not me. - But that doesn't work because of one big flaw in that question of yours; doesn't there need to BE various ("inter alia external") factors SHOWN for that relationship to change an not be "a damn constant"? Factors that, due to the shortness of the overall story, we really saw none of - or at least none that could justify the abrupt tonal shift in the speed Chigara and Kayto's relationship developed at. It really looks like it just jumped from what happened at the end of MoA to "obsessive dependence" - had there been more time to show the steps this happened through, you'd have a point. But in lack of that, well... it'd be like if all you knew of your friend's romance was "starting point" and "current point" without any of the other contexts ever being shown, much less touched upon - would it still make any kind of sense to you, let alone the casual onlooker? - That's pretty much THE SAME THING as saying "this isn't a real romance" - that Chigara was basically ruined for people who both did or didn't want her in a way that wasn't even realistic. For a lot of people, it felt like Chigara's whole character and the option of romance with her was gutted for a forced plot, and not even one done well enough to justify it - especially since the Chigara after this is most certainly not going to be the same one liked by the people who did vote for her. - It was defined by many as being bad establishment purely because it was seen as unrealistic for the characters and situations they were in. You're arguing otherwise - that it was realistic for the situation. So forgive me if I don't see where you made that distinction. - Right definition, wrong idea; that may be love, but those definitions aren't in fact exclusive to being romantic or platonic. I am listing reasons toward Kayto's affection toward Chigara - and none of really them require a sexual relationship to get across. It's literally the thing I've argued about ad nausium, so I really don't know how it would sound any different this time.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 19, 2016 23:49:42 GMT -8
and emotional overload doesn't go far enough to justify "sex, living together, kids, pets and marriage" in less then a week after the first kiss . It'd have been better if it was over a month or so, or if Kayto and Chigara already been dating and kissing in MoA. Having it all in LibDay... again, the game was far too short to try and justify that as being realistic even for a suspension-bridge effect, because there is a difference between being "swept up in the atmosphere" and "suspending disbelief to moronic levels", and LibDay fell into the latter when it came to romance. I wouldn't generalize this, you're underestimating the power of love. There are people who have themselves under contol, and there are people who tend to get irrational and reckless when they fall in love. Hate to bring it up again, but it fits in perfectly to bring my point across. Maybe some of you remember the post I made a while back, where I wrote about this girl who I was forced to house in my room. Long story short. Surprise, surprise, there really was more between her and my housemate. I'm having first hand experience of how moronic love can be at the moment. After weeks he still insists on me keeping her in my room, he is blind in recognizing her horrible character traits and tries to make excuses for all the bullshit she pulls. (Took me not even a day to figure out what kind of person she is - look at my original post.) Believe me this is both, pathetic and saddening to see great friendships break in such manner. So here you go, real life example of an even more ridiculous case, because Chigara unlike this girl, isn't actively harming anyone. (only passively through causing jealousy etc.) Sidenote: I'm not defendind LD's horrible writing, but merely suggesting that the way their love expressed was in touch with reality. For example; Fate/Stay Night used it as an actual plot mechanic so that, even if forced, there was an in-story reason for it. In LibDay, it feels like it was done "just because", and that is the mark of fanservice for fanservice's sake instead of actually being something the characters would do If you just regard LD you're right of course. But as I and many others said before, Chigara romance serves as setup/establishment for furture titles. I don't think Samu would simply ignore that. I'd be shocked if he did. Would a platonic relationship between Kayto/Chigara in Lib Day do as well? Possibly. Although it's more than 1-2 small changes you have to make to do this right. There are many little details in dialogue you would have to redo. (Not only Chigara, but also how all the other crewmembers reflect the relationship. I'm afraid the "Oh Chigara/Shields never really were a pair - we got it all wrong approach" wouldn't cut it. Talking about shitty writing here.) Would it work out with whatever Samu planned in the future? Unlikely. Point is, that it doesn't matter how much you love someone, or if you can love a close friend/family member as much as your lover. It's more important to understand that these two options are inherently very DIFFERENT from another. Different in the way characters feel for each other, different in the way their love is expressed. I'm 100% certain that there is reason behind this choice, otherwise we would truly reach rock bottom in terms of writing. I'd beg to differ - I think you're overestimating the development of love and the limits or disbelief-suspension. There is "reckless", there is "irrational"... and then there is "totally senseless" - and when you're working off a PRE-ESTABLISHED relationship that was pretty much built on slow growth and gradual trust, it's even more stark a jarring change to not only reverse the direction of it to "face-paced" but take it to an extreme of "talking about kids only a week or so after we first see them kiss". I remember - it just has no bearing on what I said since, again, it's pre-established as having been a relationship that had mutual caring established between two generally good-natured people who's bond was more slowly paced... then took a turn into dialouge that even people who see both sides found it contrived and unrealistic. That's quite a bit different from what you're bringing up - hell, I'd actually say it's so opposite an example to what I'm saying that YOUR example is trying to "generalize" love more then anything I've said . (sorry if that's rude - my point though is that I disagree and say the romance isn't actually in touch with reality, if only because there is no justification seen for the abrupt tonal shift it took) Likewise, my point is that, for a lot of people, it was BAD setup/establishment, and even he went out of the way to state he "didn't consider it a real romance" - like it was just something to be pushed out of the way. The thing is though that nobody was really asking it be ignored - just that they wished it was handled better (also, I disagree - the crew was pushing it and joking about it long before it even happened, so you could actually keep all the crew reactions and just chalk it up to it being their assumptions. The only ones you'd really need to change are Kayto and Chigara's and then the dialouge between Chigara and Asaga before the Battle of Cera. And that in and of itself is assumptive - in my experience; anything can work if it's executed right, the same as how LD's current story could have worked if it had been executed better). Maybe, but at the same time it really wasn't done well enough to feel justified for a lot of people; that it was simply too forced and contrived to feel like anything that comes of it will be GOOD, or at least until V2.00 came out. And at the same time... I again disagree, because in the end it quite possibly was never truly about love either way for Kayto as opposed to a desire to be accepted by someone as "Kayto Shields" instead of "the captain", which then became a near-physical dependence on never losing that one person who would accept and forgive him no matter what. Considering that the story arguably only needed Kayto to "love Chigara as an emotional center for the duration of LibDay", it really doesn't seem like the sexual relationship was required for anything else but fanservice, especially since it's so contrived that, like Somasam said, you'd practically have to flat-out acknowledge in-universe how forcibly fast-paced it was and make it a focus to explore why it went the way it did to try and get past it at this point.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 19, 2016 23:29:42 GMT -8
Long story short - It feels like you think the fact it was short and quick mitigates that it was shit, and if so then I disagree.
My point was that it was shit because it made sense to be, and I preferred it being short if it was going to. Also, I'm not quite equating sex = love, but I am saying that any relationship with sex is going to be more intimate than one without. And in turn, my point was that it didn't really make sense to be at all - not in its current state at least - because of how jarringly-contrived it became. Being in a relationship because of positive-reassurance dependency and stress is more understandable - kids, living together and spending their lives together is another thing entirely. Especially if it all happens in less then a week... ...and the only way to mitigate it is practically to at some point have it state, as bluntly as possible, that Kayto was deliberately pushing things and straight-up forcing what was practically a fever-dream fantasy and Chigara simply accommodated him because she was too in love with him to deny him. Which would make him a complete asshole for what happened - though it would be char-development if he was forced to acknowledge that. The thing is... you kinda need to be intimate to even be at the point where sex is considered the next step. Once again, it's a definition I don't quite understand because it's like saying that in terms of family, relatives are supposed to be loved less then a spouse/girlfriend as a rule purely because you can't/don't have sex with them; that a love that doesn't involve sex is somehow inferior or weaker then one that does... even though that in turn undermines the entire surrogate-family dynamic the Sunrider crew has. In my experience, intimacy is a requirement of sex, not simply an end-result - it's an expression of how intimate you've ultimately become, not something you do purely to become more intimate. Now that's not to say what you're saying can't be the case in relationships any more or less then what I've said, but it's hardly the rule. Now, to try and get it back on track, I've actually looked at these comments and formed some kind of working theories on how other girls might approach Kayto's state. And while I doubt you and I will agree about whether LibDay implemented it good or bad, I do acknowledge your point that it makes an interesting character-development point for future romances now that I've had some time to think on it all. I could really see each girl having different reactions (brace yourselves - this is gonna be a long one);
- Icari; If there is in fact an option to have her be with Kayto and the stuff with Kryska is just a cock-tease (figuratively speaking of course ), then I think Icari in particular would probably be very understanding of Kayto post-Chigara - in her begrudging, sarcastic tsundere way that is. Because, by her own admission in MoA, she’s been here before - doing things she came to regret when she fell into an emotional rut. Hell, it's even arguable that the pirate-guy she mentioned in MoA was a mirror to Kayto and Chigara; a romance she inadvertently started as a dependence tool back when she was learning to cope with her own emotional issues. Plus, her pushing the relationship between Kayto and Chigara as far back as First Arrival might make her feel somewhat responsible for how it ultimately turned out, both with Chigara and with the actions Asaga took.
If I could pick a 'theme' I think an Icari romance would follow, it would be 'Acquiescence'; coming to accept that what happened happened and that it's pointless to dwell because it can't be changed.
- Asaga; She would probably be the same as Icari in this sense - more accepting since she's also guilty of having let emotional neediness and want land her into doing something she wouldn’t really have chosen to do. However, unlike Icari, the wounds would be fresh, so she might have an easier time emphasizing with a Kayto who is still reeling from it then someone who's got a few years hindsight like Icari does. The two could also have a very intimate bond coping mechanic regarding Chigara herself - they both knew her and cared for her in their own way, and her fate might serve as something the two could bond over, be it through regret or acceptance of what happened. It would also be nice to see Asaga have to come to terms with the fact that the girl she thought of as a sister ultimately met the very same tragic end Asaga herself had wished for back in her embittered state, and guilt over that could tie into Kayto's guilt of having not seen it all coming or having let Asaga's hate fester without ever seeing it.
If I could pick a 'theme' I think an Asaga romance would follow, it would be 'Absolution'; learning to forgive oneself of failings and others to move past guilt to a new day for those that remain.
- Ava; The commander would probably more complicated then the others - she's always been a very up-front person when it comes to her opinion of Kayto doing something wrong. So, even with the reconciliation in V2.00, she might not hesitated to deem Kayto all manner of things; selfish, emotional and ultimately having proven her right about his endangering the crew just to try and prove some point to everyone (including himself) about his faith in Chigara not being a dependency act for his own security. Yet in the end, if anything between them were to happen, Ava would probably have to also confront the idea that her own failure to be Kayto’s support - her inability to be the grounding, open, unreserved and emotionally-reassuring second that Kayto himself had been to Ava as school president - might have been part of what lead him to that sorry state. Effectively, a Kayto/Ava pairing would require she'd have to accept that her trying to keep things neutral and unchained only resulted in feeding Kayto's need to have someone accept him without judgement, effectively giving him a persecution complex.
If I could pick a 'theme' I think an Ava romance would follow, it would be 'Resolution'; how long-standing feelings can twist events simply because things were left unspoken or unfinished and that how it ends is what matters.
- Sola; Having likely seen death caused by far less, Sola would perhaps be a bit more neutral then anyone else and liken it to this being a general failing of people, which in turn would play into what she'd told Asaga in LibDay; having emotions always risks them going astray. She may likely not agree with how Kayto potentially fell without thinking into a relationship with Chigara, yet might not fault him for it - she would arguably be a far more unbiased judge for character and circumstance in events like this and that vices are very common. In short, Solay would probably be denote that such things were why she works to keep her own ties to others impersonal - yet, ironically, that might also make Sola one of the first to assure Kayto that his weakness of the heart and falling into things probably makes him MORE human, not less; something that would likely be a prime issue Kayto would need to confront in grappling whether or not he was just using Chigara's love for him to comfort his own insecurities.
If I could pick a 'theme' I think a Sola romance would follow, it would be "Introspection"; looking at oneself and possibly seeing their past and present actions with new definitions, thus redefining what is or isn't a fault or strength.
- Claude; If she actually does turn out to be an option, I really imagine she'd either wouldn’t mind or wouldn’t care that Kayto had been with someone else. In fact, if you want to get character development for Claude in there as well, it could be that she would be the first to advocate that Kayto WASN'T WRONG to have had that brief relationship with Chigara. By that, I mean Claude would probably say that, even if it ultimately didn’t end well, being with Chigara helped remind Kayto that he didn’t need to shoulder every burden on his own and that everybody in the world needs someone or something to lean against - it reminded him that he was not a mountain but a man; that he's still human no matter what and that humans need emotional support because they simply are not and never will be perfect. I also think Claude also could possibly be the first to advocate that what happened with Chigara doesn’t mean he can’t trust anyone else with his heart or that he should forever abstain from another relationship, because bottling those feelings up without release was what lead him into over-dependence on a release (his bond with Chigara) the moment he had one.
If I could pick a 'theme' I think a Claude romance would follow, it would be "Progression"; acknowledging not just what happened but that perhaps that it was needed or even for the best because you learned from it either way.
- Kryska; I think she's regarded largely as a 'bro' character the way Chigara was, though is also far harder to anticipate since she's basically the only girl besides Cosette who's expressed no romantic attraction to Kayto. That said, if something like this did happen, I would imagine it would largely focus on the two's definitions of duty and responsibility - how they both became blinded by the idea the people they fought for (Chigara and Gray respectively) were incorruptible and how their emotional devotion caused them to inadvertently betray the very people and ideals they fought so long and hard to protect. That in turn could play into how the two react to the prospect of trying to find a new cause to fight for in the Sunrider crew in the absence of the Alliance and Cera and the hope of restoring those old goals and integrity, which in turn leads the two down a path together.
If I could pick a 'theme' I think a Kryska romance would follow, it would be 'Determination'; resolving to not let a personal failing defeat them and strive to not repeat it, learning how to keep walking in spite of the hits.
- Chigara; If this is resumed at some point, I really doubt the Chigara Ashada that it's with is anything like the one before the end of LibDay. Between the fact that; A- that her entire past was a lie because it was all actually lived by someone else (Alice/Arcadius) B- that her father was an unapologetic sociopathic monster of a scientist C- that her very existence betrayed Kayto, Asaga and everyone she cared about D- whatever trauma DYING might have done to her mind E- her failed romance with Kayto and the belief that it might have simply been him stress-venting with her as a convenient outlet F- possibly that she knew or suspected the relationship wasn't actually "real" on Kayto's end and did it anyway just to make him happy, sacrificing her own happiness for it G- assimilating traits from Lynn or Alice in whatever hive-mindstream the Prototypes are all connected to ;Whatever's going to be seen has a really, really low chance of still being the same Chigara from before. In turn, Kayto would have to confront the fact that he not only failed her because of her death but because, without even realizing it at the time, he'd manipulated her for his own comfort and took advantage of her unconditional love and effectively ruined her. Any future relationship between the two would have to deal with not only the implications of what that original bond really was but on how to try and move past it, as well as whether or not the two even really still feel for each-other as well as if they ever actually were in love to begin with. Chigara would additionally likely now understand something she might never have truly felt before; bitterness and angst, which might help to tie into Kayto's own feelings of it and help her realize that perhaps she wasn't quite so understanding of his full feelings as she believed and question whether her prior "love" was just empathy.
If I could pick a 'theme' I think a Chigara romance would follow, it would be 'Devotion'; staying the course one has previously taken out of obligation, a sense of responsibility or love regardless of what transpired before.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 19, 2016 19:38:17 GMT -8
So, the problem isn't so much that the the MC had a forced romance but just that the one that was there sucked? well yeah. it wasn't very interesting (and far from satisfying) as far as romance stories go. Not sure if I wanted a more slow-paced build-up of the romance. Actually preferred to have it over and done with as quickly as it was. The lines between them are far too saccharine and unnatural, but that too felt fitting as the whole romance was essentially a combination of suspension-bridge effect, emotional overload on Shields' part and prototype manipulation tactics (with Claude doing whatever she could to push them further together for her own reasons). It would result in what can only be compared to a shotgun wedding. Chigara was exactly what Shields thought he wanted her to be. it was a mistake from beginning to end, which was obvious unless you got swept up in the atmosphere as Shields was. When Shields had some time to reflect even he could look back and see it for the mistake it was. Turns out though that disregarding everything, Chigara did somehow start to develop real feelings of love towards the captain despite being a prototype. And then they had sex because lol eroge. Maybe my expectations were very different but having a sex scene thrown in because the opportunity is there just seems par for the course. I feel it does bring the 2 closer together though than is plausible without it. rushing up and snogging her to dispel a mindjack just because they drank some tea together sometimes seems a hard sell. I know you feel differently about this, but just consider me as being a cynic and having a different view on how people tick. none of this means you don't have valid points. you do, and I understand why you feel the way you do. however, I too would like to explain why I see things the way I do and generally don't really have that much of an issue with this as a whole. TL;DR: the romance with chigara seemed shit because it was. More or less. I have little doubt in my mind that what happened in LibDay could have been better received if only it were paced better - even if people complained about there being no choices, what happened would have still been more acceptable had it been executed better then it was.
Having it done quickly was probably what stung the worse for people - it felt like something as serious as 'who the MC loves', which was arguably something this game toted as a big feature of this series, was just arbitrarily forced down their throats for "plot needs this". It felt anything but fitting - it felt jarring; it took what was a deep, caring bond between Kayto and Chigara that was built up over MoA and even as far back as FA and trivialized it to a shotgun-romance, and emotional overload doesn't go far enough to justify "sex, living together, kids, pets and marriage" in less then a week after the first kiss . It'd have been better if it was over a month or so, or if Kayto and Chigara already been dating and kissing in MoA. Having it all in LibDay... again, the game was far too short to try and justify that as being realistic even for a suspension-bridge effect, because there is a difference between being "swept up in the atmosphere" and "suspending disbelief to moronic levels", and LibDay fell into the latter when it came to romance.
And for the record, that's "par for the course" for either a SINGLE-ENTRY game where all the story's in one installment over weeks or even months in-game... or it's the mark of a straight-up no-story eroge if there's no present plot-requirements. For example; Fate/Stay Night used it as an actual plot mechanic so that, even if forced, there was an in-story reason for it. In LibDay, it feels like it was done "just because", and that is the mark of fanservice for fanservice's sake instead of actually being something the characters would do - you might get away doing this with someone like Claude because the "shotgun romance" atmosphere would fit more with her character... but the gentle, shy and reserved Chigara is really the absolute last person this kind of romance-model would generally work with. Had it been longer, or even if what's presently there was just re-balanced a bit, it might not have gotten even half the complaints that it did. And I'm a cynic for the opposite reason because it feels like you're basically saying "sex = love, no sex = no love" - and I really think that's pretty darn shallow way to think because, if Kayto and Chigara were really in love - or even if Chigara was the only one that loved Kayto - they wouldn't NEED to have sex to prove it; love is love.
Long story short - It feels like you think the fact it was short and quick mitigates that it was shit, and if so then I disagree.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 19, 2016 17:55:13 GMT -8
Goodness, this is intense. I'd try and lighten the mood a bit but I'm not a fan of explosive decompression. Oh, don't worry - I'm just OCD. Even if it sounds like I'm mad (and I get told that I do alot), I'm not. It's just me being painfully blunt 'bout what I think ^_^;
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 19, 2016 16:02:46 GMT -8
No offense, vaen... but I feel I have to disagree completely here. I think it's actually more the opposite, in fact - that they felt what happened didn't match what did exist for Shield's character; namely that a captain who has been shown to care for his crew and proactively bond with them would suddenly just become so obsessively focused on one person like Chigara that he'd neglect the rest. It felt far too fast, too contrived and too forced for how little time there was - honestly, the relationship was disliked not just because it felt forced but because it simply didn't feel real. Had it simply been drawn out longer and paced more, you might have done better - in the end, it's a suffering of the game having been too short. Very, VERY bad examples to use, dude - especially since it seems more like a lot of people felt Witcher 'cannon' was Geralt NOT having a committed relationship. Players like choices, but those choices do not instantly mean the player is substituting themselves entirely for the character, and the only time they'll complain is not because they have no choices - it'll be when the 'cannon/forced' choice seems to be in violation of what the character themselves would do. But you know what, vaen? I honestly think that was almost MORE INSULTING to people instead of interesting - it's basically trashing an entire romance option purely "for the plot." Anyone who didn't like Chigara isn't going to like the forced romance, and anyone who DID like Chigara is going to feel put off that this was done to her. And that's probably the REAL biggest reason that people hated the forced romance - not because it was 'cannon/railroaded' but because players probably felt the only reason it was artificially done was "for the plot" instead of actually being a natural evolution of the two's relationship. I've said it before, but either making the extent of the romance optional or even just simply pacing it better (like maybe not talking about things like having kids until, like, after the "final battle"?) would have solved those concerns without ever having had to axe it. Like Marx said, there simply was not anything substantial enough to the romance arc - it felt like trying to down pure saccharine simply because there was no other flavor. I get the feeling you think I'm defending the writer's choices from a developer perspective. I'm not. I had nothing to do with the story or any creative decisions. The only thing I ever influenced was the combat. I explicitely chose to keep myself in the dark as much as possible where story is concerend and never even bothered giving Sam any particular feedback on the story or the game's direction as a whole. Writing is not my thing so I leave it to the expert. I too thought we'd have various character routes by this point, but at the same time I don't dislike the current direction either as future possibilities seem more exciting to me than what could have been done now. Maybe I didn't experience it as a punch to the nose like many seem to as for me the realization was more gradual. I understand you have deep rooted issues with how LibDay turned out, but even if we differ in opinion on how horrible this or that aspect of the story is complaining to me isn't really going to do anything - ever. Even if you convinced me and I suddenly hated the narrative direction of the series I'd still feel it's Sam's prerogative to do with this story as he pleases. Actually... that's far off the mark. Let me please make something as clear I (hopefully) can - I am not, and never was, debating with you under the pretense that it would magically change anything, nor that you had anything to do with how LibDay's story turned out. I am, and always was, debating with you purely because I flat-out disagree with what you've said thus far in defense of the course it took and state why people (not me specifically - the general Sunrider audience, a lot of which had issues with forced romance) disliked what happened in the game. Because honestly, the fact of the matter is I'd sooner accuse you of defending LibDay's story just because you're a Chigara fan then I would over you being a dev (not that I actually think that, mnd you - just a bad example at work ). Point of fact being that you being on staff has no bearing on why I argue with you on this. Thing is... rushing the player-character down a romance-path AND lynching a waifu's potential for romance, all as a forced plot-point (even if it's a waifu that people have lost interest in) doesn't tend to speak of "future possibilities" that most would find "exciting". To a lot of people, it speaks more to the story being dominated by rushed contrivance instead of actual storytelling. Again, had it been executed better, maybe more would feel as you do - as it is now though, even people who can see both sides like Marx have admitted they'd rather shoot themselves in the head then go through the romance's dialouge. See, that's just it - I'm not at all opposed to how the story in LibDay was done. I have seen non-choosable, plot-essential romances work before. I have seen this kind of thing done repeatedly in anime, manga and VN's alike. Hell, even Gundam SEED Destiny, for all the flack it got/gets, did well in my opinion regarding main-character Shinn Auska's failed romance/bond with enemy bio-modified soldier Stella Loussier, which in turn drove him as a character-development point even after he ended up in a new relationship with long-time friend and fellow pilot Lunamaria Hawke. What I had concerns with though was the same thing that arguably plagued GSD; the execution of it - even senior people like Marx found that romance was terribly forced. It is not a "deep rooted issue" so much as a general concern that at a sizable part, if not a majority, of the community shared one level or another. And that is; if you're going to make a 'railroad romance' in a VN, either make it controlable how far it goes (opt out of sex or the like) or spend as much time as possible developing it and getting the pacing down right (put more space between scenes of kissing, sex and talk of marriage with kids and pets respectively) - because otherwise it's going to come across as a forced plot-contrivance.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 19, 2016 13:39:39 GMT -8
Do you happen to have any pairings that would amuse you that aren't canon already and don't involve Kayto (or Icari with Kryska, since they're at least minorly canon)? Seeing Claude try to flirt her way through the brick wall that is Sola would amuse me, but is ultimately futile. Well, aside from the hinted yuri-tension between Icari and Kryska (Claude having anything close to bi-inclinations was only in the Novelization last I checked), most of the girls seem to be rather soundly heterosexual. And so far, the only other guy in the entirety of the Sunrider series is Fontana, who is pretty much Ryuvia's current ruler by way of it being his stronghold ATM and has had at least partial interaction with Asaga, so that might be a thing if Asaga doesn't end up with Kayto. As for the others... I don't know.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 19, 2016 9:49:34 GMT -8
Interesting you say that. I was thinking just earlier that a lot of the hate for the railroad chigara romance is likely because Shields is too much of a player stand-in. Showing him only so rarely and giving him so little personality in his own lines makes it both hard to imagine him falling for Chigara but also makes it feel like it's not Shields but the player who is being forced to have a relationship with a girl they avidly dislike. In nearly any other medium where a forced romance was a critical plot point (required for later events to make sense or even happen at all) the MC had a lot more characterization of his own. In Fate Stay Night for example the entire (fairly lengthy) prologue wasn't even from Emiya's perspective and he was voiced like an NPC! having a canon 'official' relationship for Geralt from The Witcher probably wouldn't raise nearly as many objections either.
personally, I took it as the whole thing revealing that Chigara (as we've come to know her) plainly was never a romanceable choice to begin with. at least as far as the player is concerned. I thought this to be an interesting thing from a meta perspective. there's sure to be a route representing her eventually, but that chigara will definitely be quite a different creature. No offense, vaen... but I feel I have to disagree completely here. I think it's actually more the opposite, in fact - that they felt what happened didn't match what did exist for Shield's character; namely that a captain who has been shown to care for his crew and proactively bond with them would suddenly just become so obsessively focused on one person like Chigara that he'd neglect the rest. It felt far too fast, too contrived and too forced for how little time there was - honestly, the relationship was disliked not just because it felt forced but because it simply didn't feel real. Had it simply been drawn out longer and paced more, you might have done better - in the end, it's a suffering of the game having been too short. Very, VERY bad examples to use, dude - especially since it seems more like a lot of people felt Witcher 'cannon' was Geralt NOT having a committed relationship. Players like choices, but those choices do not instantly mean the player is substituting themselves entirely for the character, and the only time they'll complain is not because they have no choices - it'll be when the 'cannon/forced' choice seems to be in violation of what the character themselves would do. But you know what, vaen? I honestly think that was almost MORE INSULTING to people instead of interesting - it's basically trashing an entire romance option purely "for the plot." Anyone who didn't like Chigara isn't going to like the forced romance, and anyone who DID like Chigara is going to feel put off that this was done to her. And that's probably the REAL biggest reason that people hated the forced romance - not because it was 'cannon/railroaded' but because players probably felt the only reason it was artificially done was "for the plot" instead of actually being a natural evolution of the two's relationship. I've said it before, but either making the extent of the romance optional or even just simply pacing it better (like maybe not talking about things like having kids until, like, after the "final battle"?) would have solved those concerns without ever having had to axe it. Like Marx said, there simply was not anything substantial enough to the romance arc - it felt like trying to down pure saccharine simply because there was no other flavor.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 16, 2016 18:07:04 GMT -8
See, the issue is that this is the same as saying it IS okay to lie to oneself and use or even abuse someone's feelings to you, no different then the other option. There's no more or less genuine affection (even if not sexually expressed) for any less wrong a reason (replacement sister vs replacement lover). He's no less taking advantage of her, correcting it doesn't require any more or less honesty then the other (stating he can't ever return her feelings before the fact isn't any less painful then saying so after the fact, though in the former you at least have not strung her along and taken her innocence on a pretense that was false even for yourself). He is being false and disrespectful to her either way - and in both cases he's doing it unwittingly because neither one precludes her being there for his convenience.
In BOTH cases, it doesn't mean they don't care about each-other nor require there be false love. Likewise, it means the reverse for your own point too - having the relationship under these circumstances doesn't mean it's going to be less hurtful at the end then if there hadn't been one, and getting her hopes up by directly encouraging something can still be just as bad or worse/is as much stringing her along and ultimately crushing her dreams then if you never let her get close. I just simply don't see it that way. Mostly because it's very hard for me to believe that the captain doesn't realize he's taking Chigara as a replacement of his sister, both because lust doesn't cloud his mind and because the role would be way too similar. It also is way easier to keep someone as "little sister" (as it normally requires a lot less responsibility than a girlfriend or wife would take) but also a fairly strange choice of relationship, so I really can't imagine Kayto really doing that without realizing. He has always been shown as very naive respect to love, but not dumb.
And a difference I think you're missing is that chigara doesn't want to be a replacement sister. If she was fine with either, I would agree they would be a lot more similar, but she doesn't want that. Simply being friends with her would hurt her all the time and in the end she would get nothing in both cases. With a romantic relationship, they've at least tried, and then he realized it couldn't work because he loved her for the wrong reasons. That's to me a lot more genuine and respectful that the scenario you're suggesting; the pretense wouldn't be false in any moment, and her innocence would be lost in the same way any girl loses theirs in a first relationship that lasts less than a year.
All in all, however, I think we're derailing the thread on what seems to be a conflict more of ideas and feelings that facts. Feel free to answer, just know that I probably will stop here. The thing is it should be easy to see it that way, since it seems extremely easy for you to believe the captain doesn't/wouldn't realize he's taking Chigara as a replacement of his school-lover Ava and the promise she tried to void. If he wouldn't realize that - if he couldn't realize he was stringing Chigara along for his own comfort in a relationship he'd wanted with someone else - why would he realize it in any other shape or form? And that's not discounting the idea that he just wouldn't want to believe it, which may also have been the case in the romance bit. And considering Chigara is basically the only person he's let himself be unguarded with and that Chigara promised to never share that with anyone else because maintaining his image is important... well, how isn't that any less responsibility then what she'd have as a girlfriend?
And truth be told, this here represents the big issue I had with vaen's beliefs as well; I don't think what Kayto felt about Chigara was EVER about lust - I think it was about a near-physical need to have someone just plain accept him without judgement as "Kayto Shields", instead of "the Captain who made so-and-so choice", which then evolved into a dependence on never losing that one person who'd unconditionally accept him. I don't believe Chigara is so shallow as to expressly require a romantic relationship - even as far back as MoA, she stated the reason she wanted to get close to him was to try and help him with his emotional baggage. So long as she is actually helping him do that, the pretense isn't any more or less false. Nor does it require any dishonesty - it would be no more or less "what it is" then the romance path, and it would hurt just as much all the time to think they started something that was ultimately just his comfort-rebound as it would that they could have had but didn't.
It doesn't feel like you're arguing things that are actually unique to being in a romantic relationship, and a lot of your long-term justifications require not acknowledging the fact that the bond is basically just supposed to last for the duration of LibDay and can pretty much end at it's finale. Maybe, but it doesn't feel like a conflict of ideas and feelings to me. More like it's trying to say one is better or worse then the other out of two equal sides of the same thing. Still, point taken about derailment.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 16, 2016 8:58:50 GMT -8
(Speaking of which, does anyone know what happens to Cosette if you were to save her, but trash her Ryder? Does she get saved by Ava when she evacuates the ship?) Gonna need to second this request for knowledge. I don't know who is heartless enough to destroy the Havoc. It's just a big purple Ryder that don't know it's doing nothing wrong. I think most people who did it would have done so purely to see how pissed off they could make Cosette when she finds out it's been scrapped. Though at the same time, I'm not really sure the Ryder WAS ever really destroyed as opposed to being left idle and unrepaired in the hangar bay, given Kryska's love for heavy Ryders - that way, Cosette could still use it to escape with; she just couldn't fight in it. Though if anyone knows different, feel free to correct me.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 16, 2016 8:55:30 GMT -8
At the same time, you can argue the opposite; seeking that love but later realizing you're wrong can not only be equally as bad but even kinda crueler - you're taking someone's dreams, pure hopes and even their innocence as a woman just to satisfy your own need for comfort, and by the time you realize it you've arguably done more damage then if you'd just kept her at arm's length. You can give back a lot of things - a girl's first time isn't one of them, though. How exactly IS that any better? In my eyes... it's not. Like you said, love does often entail the kind of selfishness that makes one an asshole in someone else's eyes, and that doesn't really lessen just because a different path got taken. In BOTH cases you're somewhat lying to yourself, as well as causing damage that can last for years. Both cases have chances for making amends and asking forgiveness (sorry I did that to you/sorry I didn't try to make it work) and neither really require you lie longer then the other - the difference between feeling "maybe there could have been something and I'm sorry I didn't try" and "it was a hurtful mistake and I shouldn't have done it"; regret for what you did do or regret for not trying, it's still regret. Neither is really easier to try and make amends to - and both imply a significant hurdle to try and overcome in regards to trusting anyone else. I don't see it that way. I suppose part of it are personal views; even how you put it I prefer "seeking comfort in love" than the other option by leagues. Mostly because I feel that, while a mistake, in this case I feel that there's a genuine affection, just for the wrong reasons. And while correcting it is painful, the entire process is honest in itself and even respectful; he leaves her because he knows he can't love her like she wants and because doing that while knowing his love is purely for comfort would be taking advantage of her. In the case of "friends in which I know she clearly has a crush on me" i see it as taking advantage from moment 0: If Shields comes ahead and says "I don't love you, sorry" and then she want to keep insisting, well, I see it a lot better. But in the case he just strings her along then he clearly is being false and disrespectful to her dear friend (which is something that happens a lot of times too), specially when she is there only for his convenience. In the former case it's a mistake, but that does not mean the "love" shared was false. Those months/weeks/whatever won't be a lie; now, continuing that relationship would be a lie. And well, how does crushing a woman's dream count as a problem when you will be doing it anyway (because having her as a friend but not saying anything is not keeping her hopes up, sure)? Love is kinda assholish, but that goes both ways too; simply not having a relationship does not mean the same doesn't apply. See, the issue is that this is the same as saying it IS okay to lie to oneself and use or even abuse someone's feelings to you, no different then the other option. There's no more or less genuine affection (even if not sexually expressed) for any less wrong a reason (replacement sister vs replacement lover). He's no less taking advantage of her, correcting it doesn't require any more or less honesty then the other (stating he can't ever return her feelings before the fact isn't any less painful then saying so after the fact, though in the former you at least have not strung her along and taken her innocence on a pretense that was false even for yourself). He is being false and disrespectful to her either way - and in both cases he's doing it unwittingly because neither one precludes her being there for his convenience.
In BOTH cases, it doesn't mean they don't care about each-other nor require there be false love. Likewise, it means the reverse for your own point too - having the relationship under these circumstances doesn't mean it's going to be less hurtful at the end then if there hadn't been one, and getting her hopes up by directly encouraging something can still be just as bad or worse/is as much stringing her along and ultimately crushing her dreams then if you never let her get close.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 15, 2016 16:09:47 GMT -8
First, what the hell?!? I leave for a day and a half and suddenly Cosette is approaching Ava?!?! WHAT MADNESS HATH THOU WROUGHT UPON THIS PLACE OF DISCOURSE?? Secondly, I hope that Kyrska and Icari become their own couple on the ship without stuff from Kayto. Partly because I think it would be adorable, partly so that some of the other thirsty as hell females will have something new to gossip about besides Kayto's affections. Threesomes just aren't a thing for me, and the ones I do see feel very unrealistic and contrived. If a good one came about, I wouldn't be against it per say. I simply wouldn't support it until it was good because I don't believe in it's potential. It would also be realistic in illustrating that not every girl is someone the protagonist can get with. Come to think of it, I wonder what happens to whatever girl Kayto doesn't end with? I'm especially worried about Asaga, because... well, at the moment, Fontana's faction was centered at Ryuvia Prime as a bastion world... and Asaga DID admit she thought Fontana was "good lookin' for a Red"... and Fontana always did come across like some kind of nobility/royalty... and he has been deferentially kind to her before, and... Do I need to say more, or are your imaginations already taking care of that?
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 15, 2016 2:12:41 GMT -8
I don't know, I feel the kind of assholes that have been assholes without fully realizing it are precisely the ones with most development, because they can realize those mistakes and try to not make them again. And the fact, that, well, love is kinda assholish. You love someone? Most of the times it can have 0 relation with how good has someone been to you or if it's deserved or whatever. And sometimes it can go just as quickly as people change (and it's clear that the Captain at the end of Lib Day has changed, even withholding Chigara's change). Keeping someone as a friend that you know loves you but can't renounce to it because you need its comfort is in my eyes worse than making a mistake and seeking comfort through love but later realizing you were wrong. In the second case you can try to make amends and ask for forgiveness, but now you're being honest. In the first you're lying to yourself and her for what can be years. So I see making this kind of mistake as certainly the most dramatic, but also the one with brighter prospects for both the future and character development. At the same time, you can argue the opposite; seeking that love but later realizing you're wrong can not only be equally as bad but even kinda crueler - you're taking someone's dreams, pure hopes and even their innocence as a woman just to satisfy your own need for comfort, and by the time you realize it you've arguably done more damage then if you'd just kept her at arm's length. You can give back a lot of things - a girl's first time isn't one of them, though. How exactly IS that any better? In my eyes... it's not. Like you said, love does often entail the kind of selfishness that makes one an asshole in someone else's eyes, and that doesn't really lessen just because a different path got taken. In BOTH cases you're somewhat lying to yourself, as well as causing damage that can last for years. Both cases have chances for making amends and asking forgiveness (sorry I did that to you/sorry I didn't try to make it work) and neither really require you lie longer then the other - the difference between feeling "maybe there could have been something and I'm sorry I didn't try" and "it was a hurtful mistake and I shouldn't have done it"; regret for what you did do or regret for not trying, it's still regret. Neither is really easier to try and make amends to - and both imply a significant hurdle to try and overcome in regards to trusting anyone else.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 14, 2016 22:09:09 GMT -8
Without the hook-up he stays to be somebody who basically does everything right. He is then right in trusting Chigara without being biased due to being romantically involved with her, which also makes Ava's and Asaga's jealously "more wrong". He could have been more cautious and worked more against the mistrust in his crew, but in the end the events in the final chapter are caused by Alice, not by him. Altogether he appears to be much less broken due to the past events and should also be so in the future. So in the end it boils down to how we like to see Kayto and how we feel about him. A problem I had was that till the end of MoA, I had the feeling I was playing as Kayto and, within the given boundaries, was able to make his choices. However, in LD this impression was quickly lost and I had to watch him doing things I did not like him to do. While I think that this is rather because of the change to the underlying concept of the game, one could also interpret it as the experience surely many of us went through at least once where we do things we know we shouldn't do and in fact like to act differently, but we do them anyway. Anyhow, bottom line is I liked the experience of MoA better, but I guess only future installments of Sunrider will tell if this romance and how it played out was necessary or not. For me, it was not necessary for LD to work, but again, I will have to wait for the big picture to reveal itself. I think he'd be biased either way simply because he may become attached to Chigara as "the one person who won't ever judge him". Hell, I'm not even sure he has to be romantically involved with her to be biased towards her - you could make it brother/sister or close family, kinda like what your mod's done. Or, if you REALLY wanted to keep the romance vibe yet still try to solve the complaints, just have it so that Kayto can choose to hold back on committing fully to a romance - that they are in fact an item but Kayto just doesn't outright compound it/make it sexual yet for whatever reason, even if he does in fact want to at some point (he wants to wait till after the war to confess, he wants to take it "slow and right", he wants give them both something to come back to, he doesn't want to pressure Chigara, he doesn't want to commit fully until he's sure they're both still going to even be alive tomorrow, ect). The crazy thing is that it might have worked better had LibDay simply been LONGER and had more story to evolve it over. Had there been more time to develop things and better pacing - like an entire chapter/arc before they even had a first kiss, or that they don't start talking about raising kids until AFTER the Cera liberation actually "happens" and Chigara living there seems an imminent reality - it might have worked better. A "railroad romance" isn't usually regarded well when it comes to VN's, but there are times when it can actually be well-accepted - it just requires the romance not feel forced.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 14, 2016 21:54:55 GMT -8
No, there was no choice for which waifu route you can take in Sunrider Liberation Day, as this is game is still pretty much apart of the common route as the last two games were. This is a good way to think about it! Personally, I think that three titles released across three years (if you count First Arrival and Mask as separate) is a little long for a Common Route, but massively long Common Routes are du jour these days-- see Rewrite, or Hoshizora. But then, Sunrider already seems to be shaking things up, flipping the general assumption that "common routes are for establishing characters, the character routes are where the plot happens" on its head. That's interesting to me. The thing about common routes in a VN, though... is that they typically share development among all characters before they put you with one. They don't force you down one set path with a single girl like that. Or, if they do force a romance, then - like in Princess Waltz - they make sure that it happens EARLY so that, when you eventually reach the choices, enough time has passed since the end of said romance to justify you starting on a new path. This tactic might actually have been better received if Sunrider STARTED with Kayto in a romance that fell apart as the series progressed - you know, instead of sticking it right in the middle well after the player was given agency in what kind of person Kayto was. Ultimately, taking an "interesting" turn means squat if you don't execute it right - and LibDay simply didn't. And before anyone says I just don't like that there's no choice... that's just half of it, and I'ma going to need to go on a tangent to explain the rest; Truth be told, it's not even like I think Kayto being with Chigara makes no sense - yes it was rushed and "railroaded" and having no choice rubbed people the wrong way, but it didn't feel at all contrived to me that they'd hook up.
The way I personally see it, Kayto - regardless of "Prince" or "Moralist" mindsets - is someone who's gradually come to deeply fear being judged by others. Both share the same fear for different reasons - one fears he's sacrificing victory for his friends, the other fears he's sacrificing his friends for victory, and at some point they come to fear their own defining traits; the "Moralist" starts to fear his idealism and the "Prince" starts to fear his pragmatism. He fears someone - especially someone close to him like Ava, or someone comparable to him like Fontana - is going to judge his actions and expose something about himself he doesn't want to face; he doesn't know if his choices have or haven't made him a monster and he's scared that if he lets someone get that close to him, they're going to prove those fears true.
This is a paranoia that Chigara mitigated because she was willing to openly accept him for all he'd done with the forgiveness of a saint - I mean, who in that position wouldn’t find that appealing? Who wouldn’t get so absorbed in such an unnaturally-accepting person amid such a stressful time that it would simulate love? Gundam SEED did it in how, before he basically ended up with Lacus Clyne, the protagonist Kira Yamato fell in with Flay Alistar because he was lost and insecure himself and she came across as a saint who'd accept and forgive him of everything he found fault in himself for (though Flay was Yandere and faking it to manipulate him while Chigara was actually genuine), so I know it can work. Especially with someone who found himself questioning whether or not his humanity was slipping at every turn - I see arguments about games with moral choices arguing “this is what a human being would do” or “no human would advocate this”, but the truth is that a normal human really wouldn’t be able to make EITHER choice. A normal human isn’t trained to deal with such choices, let alone the repercussions of them - even those who ARE trained often aren’t prepared for it.
(Both versions of) Kayto wanting some kind of assurance that he’s still a human - that he’s still GOING to be human at the end of the war - was probably a big contributor into why he was willing to accept Chigara’s affections so readily; it was a convenient lie/fantasy for him to escape into. And in the end it makes him an unwitting asshole because, even if there is the chance to have Kayto decide it became real at some point, he still would have basically STARTED it out of wanting a comfort tool/rebound instead of actual, unconditional love. It’s even crueler if he comes to see the whole relationship as a mistake, lets it go and eventually ends up with someone else, which would pretty much be the perfect trigger to shatter whatever's left of the once-innocent Chigara between Alice and Lynn’s influences and make her into a full Yandere. Likewise, it would force Kayto to wonder whether, if in his need to feel he was still human, he might have only proved himself less then one?
Like vaen said, making a compromise - even one as mild as the choice to just not have sex with her - might have made being on a forced romance more tolerable because there would be some agency in how fast Kayto takes things. If vaen and Samu-Kun REALLY just want to railroad it that badly that they wouldn't do anything else, they need to at least give some degree of control in how far it goes - because honestly speaking, I think that had Chigara and Kayto's development been longer and LibDay in general had a longer arc to develop things, it wouldn't have felt so forced to begin with. Like say, hold off on Kayto and Chigara even having a first kiss until after a chapter-arc, then have them kiss a few more times right before and during the Cera invasion. Then, when the option for sex comes up, either choose to have it then or don't - Kayto can say he wants to wait until the war's over or, if you wanna add some corniness, have him say he wants her to have something to come back to. Either way it'll be clear what he thinks of her without changing much. Granted, unless they intend to DLC a new arc for mid-game, it's probably too late to do much else except make the sex-scene optional, but even that would probably soothe over any lingering complaints, because I STILL see people complaining about it on Steam.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 14, 2016 16:33:20 GMT -8
Why "your idea" worked in Mass Effect? Do you know why this episodic attitude was feasible in Mass Effect? Because in Mass Effect 1 we had only 2 girlz: Liara + Ashley. Players didnt know about Subject Zero, Miranda, etc. so they couldnt be pissed "why no Miranda romance?!"
While there were introduced new girlz in Mass Effect 2 , the 2 original girls were "busy" with another work, so they were not available so Sheppard had excuse to get intimate with new girlz... or he could wait for Mass Effect 3, but that idea works only that much. People are not willing to pay money to get something they dont want. If Bioware presented 4 games without Liara/Ashley people would be mad.
Actually, it didn´t work in ME either. When ME3 was released and it was discovered that NONE of your decisions in the previous games actually mattered the devs said it was because they didn´t want to waste resources in paths that not everyone would see, and that it´d be too complex and time consuming to do so anyway. This is why many, myself included, consider ME a failed series, the basic premise of your choices mattering was simply ignored because Bioware had decided to be lazy/cheap and not follow through on their promise of impactful choices that mattered. ME romance suffered from the same problem, Bioware simply decided that making your romance options matter was just too difficult and expensive so any of the ME2 romance options were written off or treated as cameos in the last game. Then there was the ending... its not what we´re talking about but its always worth complaining about. I cannot decide if Bioware was trying to be artsy or just cheap, maybe their egos really made them think that people would eat whatever they threw out, whatever it was they completely killed off a franchise. The ending and the failure to make choices matter after going on at length FOR YEARS that it was important killed a multi year franchise at the last moment. Fuck EA/Bioware. It DID kinda work, though - as far as the romances go at least. By that point, the Normandy Crew had gotten so close that they were practically all family - close enough that they all had pretty deep connections to each-other. So it didn't exactly feel quite so jarring in ME3 when romances weren't game-changing moments among the crew. As far as the romances go, those never affected the main story anyway in any of the three games. ME2 did much of the same thing with ME1's romances as well, and it didn't have the same pretenses ME3 did. The romances were always kind of more insular from the main story, and the design linearity of the ME games only became a real, enjoyment-destroying issue at the final ending of ME3 - which was the only thing that really did require the major choices have some kind of agency.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 14, 2016 16:23:17 GMT -8
That's just it - it's not as a best friend but as a big brother. You're telling me that if this had been Maray, Kayto wouldn't help her with her kids, open a business and live with her if she needed help, or even just offering to help as a matter of course as family? This is again why it feels like you and vaen are saying "sister is lesser then girlfriend because no sex!" The fact of the matter is I don't think that nature would in fact actually change - just the manner in which it's expressed. I feel the two are distinct; brothers and sisters help each other, but are supposed to take different paths. Of course, this can fully depend on your subjective implication of what does a brother/sister mean, and I don't think derailing this thread to that is on topic, but I believe there's a very different implication between "starting a family" and "being a family" (here, I can even point to the fact that the Captain was so focused on the first to rebuild his lost blood family, that he forgot that he already had the second; the Sunrider) Here the idea is the two starting on a common point after the war: would Chigara if Kayto was "only" his big brother go live to Cera (which she doesn't know or has ever been) or would she plan to go with her best friend (with which she has already fled together once and knows from before) to a Ryuvia she already knows and has lived before? If she really wished to be with his "brother" so much to do that, then I feel some implications would unavoidably slip by, even with a fully platonic relation. Specially with Chigara's characterization until that point. Would it mean so much not having sex at this point? And, well, on the Captain's part it could work, but then I think even he would probably recognize she has made Chigara a replacement for Maray. And that she kinda has a crush on him. So he is kinda a super-asshole instead of a naive and deluded broken man. I think that depends on if Chigara felt Asaga needed her anymore - it's possible Chigara felt Sola would take over looking after Asaga (and that, due to her seemingly-chronic lack of self-confidence, she probably figured Sola would do a better job of it then Chigara could have). That in turn would have freed her up to go to Cera - plus she seemed to think Kayto had more burdens then Asaga had. Like I suggested, I almost feel that Chigara cares about Kayto so much that just being there for him would have overshadowed whether or not he'd ever returned those feelings. Yes there'd probably be some tension, but that's not the same as committing.
Yet at the same time, one could almost argue that he alternatively did something just as bad - he effectively made her a replacement for Ava and the relationship he never really got out of her (or at least that's pretty much the case if Kayto chooses to class Chigara as a mistake). And of course he'd probably realize it - it's just whether or not he'd do so before the "Liberation Day Massacre". Plus the whole "she has a crush" thing is redundant - if we're all honest, Kayto's likely known about that since shore leave in MoA, and it's probably the reason he even let her get so close to him in the first place; she was the only one he knew of who was willing to be OPEN about unconditionally loving him and not judge him.
Honestly speaking... anything outside of "get back together with Chigara" makes Kayto become an (unwitting) super-asshole either way, be it relegating her to a sister in spite of her crushing on him or taking her innocence as a par of her being a comfort-tool rebound (hell, the worst kind of assholes are the ones that don't know they're assholes - people who do bad things unwittingly because they're broken and/or naive, cause they're ultimately ones you sympathize with). And either way, it'd be something Kayto (and Chigara if she returns) would have to live with. Hence why I started this topic to begin with - to see how people think a new relationship would advance if Kayto has to live with that kind of potential guilt.
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