Post by vincent on Nov 2, 2017 7:08:28 GMT -8
I made a post that is floating around the boards about what the community's opinion is on the state of Sunrider now. What I saw was that the vast majority thought it was in a good spot or in a spot of opportunity. Though more importantly what I saw was that nobody ever really addressed proper criticisms about what is done wrong. I have been worried about sounding too harsh or my tone coming off as too rude when making this thread which is why I have avoided it for months. But I have sat down to get this done. I just want to say lastly that my word does not have to be fact and to anyone who reads this to know that this comes from a fan who spent hours discussing builds on the Steam Forums back when Mask of Arcadius and First Arrival was all we had and talking to those fans on Steam about lore and all the more about the series and having the blast.
The Crew Never Feels Unified
Sure in promotional art and battles it looks like they are the crew that the fans have referred to before as The Holy Nine but when it comes to actual lore it feels like they could not be more divided and it just wears on them overall. In each VN for Sunrider it almost feels as if not even the writer can find himself to be writing a story in which everybody on the Sunrider is that unified crew that they want to be. It's never their story or the story of the revival of the Alliance, it always has to be Ava's Story or Chigara's Story or just someone's story to the point of it taking away proper development from characters and making them almost sit in an absolute stasis as one goes through their own story and Chigara's in particular never even developed. It feels like Kryska, Icari, Sola, and Claude have just been completely on the sidelines the entire story waiting to come in for "their arc" and that's in essence what ruins that feeling. The feeling that a character needs to have their own arc to even have relevancy in the story. I missed the idea of the crew all going together for the common goal that they all had together, not a divided bunch who all find themselves to be doing their own thing on one giant ship. This divide is truly shown simply by the ending of Liberation Day in which nobody had sympathized for Chigara even with all evidence pointing towards the fact that she wasn't responsible for what had happened.
[Re]Turn Fixed Nothing
This is a controversial statement to many since a lot do think that the [Re]Turn patch made Liberation Day good. But whenever I look back at it something about it always just seems bittersweet about it all knowing it isn't canon. Kayto actually developing and Ava feeling like his wingman. Choices actually being prevalent and being able to fix the fate that could have happened. Lore wise it fixed nothing and all it added was H-Scenes and that doesn't fix that hole that is in Liberation Day. It almost feels less satisfying than it already is simply because it is showing that not even a god can truly fix the reality of it. I know Liberation Day couldn't have been reworked but something about trying to fix what was unfixable in a simple rushed patch felt nothing short of beating the horse that was already dead.
Self Awareness Isn't A Funny Gag/Kayto Shields Is Not A Good Character
Something always bugged me about the fact that with a group of a ton of individuals and one even feeling like they are on top of the word with the Sharr that the person who can look at the crew during their times of celebration and tell them in a passive aggressive way that their world is fake and nothing short of a story numerous times is the man with PTSD and has lost the most. This always bugged me because what could have been his way of coping with what is going on around him is not ever shown to be a way of coping by viewing the world as a farce as much as it just feels like a poorly done gag. This makes Kayto himself feel less honorable as a character for what character he has and it only makes his losses feel even more hypocritical and meaningless with the way he acts about them. The fact that he can look at his crew and tell them they are in a "Mecha Eroge VN" and then less than a couple hours later turn into an absolute mess over the fact that the love of his life is dead and feels he can value the world then even though he seems fairly certain on the idea that nothing matters. This gag goes as far as making him seem dumb in some cases in which if he had such self awareness and omnipotence, then why in the world is he so fearful in some of the things he does? It just feels tacky and poorly done and even with the character we are supposed to see ourselves in he doesn't feel like the hero or even a protagonist of the story when his personality is questioning the moral standpoint he has in conflict.
Chigara's Arc/The Mask For Criticism
Looking back at First Arrival and Mask of Arcadius we can see that there is no choice in what route you go and Kayto is more aligned with the route of pursuing Ava the majority of the time and this was never a problem to the majority of fans this was because her common route was done very well and held the balance of the story. While in contrast Chigara's Arc was controlling the story around her and upon that left the majority of the fans angry. The fans have a consensus that they do not like the character of Chigara and this feels like it's because of that arc primarily. The reason why this is an issue is ever since the complaints began I never saw anyone judge the arc for what had been done wrong on the writing end of Liberation Day and Chigara's Arc and how that could have been fixed, what was criticized instead was Chigara's Character. While it is correct to criticize her character I feel what's wrong here is the lack of actual criticizing of how her character was written as much as just throwing the blame on her being a bad character. While this may not be the intention of the fans what it almost feels like is that they are blaming the pen the writer is using rather than the writer himself. This is a faulty way of thinking simply because like a character a pen cannot speak for itself and the person wielding it will show the quality of it in the majority of cases. In conclusion this goes back to my statement at the beginning of how it feels nobody made a proper criticism of what was truly done wrong and chose what they wanted to blame. No matter which way you cut it, a character cannot be bad unless the writer themselves fails to make them good.
Lack of Motive
Every time I look back at the crew I see a lack of motivation for what they are doing. You could say that the destruction of Cera has something to do with it but it is never conveyed in the story beyond the introduction that this is their reasoning for tracking down The Empire and destroying PACT. With that reasoning hardly ever being glossed upon beyond the intro, what is their real reason? The point they are at right now things seem to be more bleak and they don't even seem to know what they want to achieve with Fontana in contrast seeming to just have a motive that we aren't shown.
Eroge v. Story
While Sunrider may have been able to get this far with having the slowly incoming equals of these two styles of the VN, we already see issues coming in with the hate towards the common routes they give and the fallback into making a lens of what could have been while making a mini eroge to please fans in the DLC. They have to make a choice here whether or not they want to cater to the story of Sunrider or if it shall let itself fall into becoming an eroge. Because we have fans of Sunrider who liked it for the lore it had and the potential it has and others who like it for eroge. With Starnova coming out and Love in Space showing that they are capable of handling more than one project thought I do not see how they couldn't manage not letting the two seep into each other and they hold their respective values as story and eroge as separates. Because from what we have seen in a lot of cases and this one too, if you try to please everyone you only end up hurting more than if you just stuck to your guns on one side.
Conclusion
This goes back to the topic of the thread at hand of where the fans have gone. The fans are gone because of reasons like these, while I would not speak for all of them the vast majority have left for reasons like this. Whether it be at the fault of anybody or not. But the primary one is the choice of whether Sunrider itself is going to decide to be this half and half eroge story in which whenever the fans are unhappy just hand them fanservice of Kayto being a guy who is on a ship which is practically a sorority when it needs to be or if there is ever going to be a real direction for the story. I myself am not going to support the series further but it does not mean that I have lost all hope, I would be happier to just see the story finally decide what it's going to be rather than the course it's going down right now. If you have read all of this, thank you and please try to keep the discussion civil.
The Crew Never Feels Unified
Sure in promotional art and battles it looks like they are the crew that the fans have referred to before as The Holy Nine but when it comes to actual lore it feels like they could not be more divided and it just wears on them overall. In each VN for Sunrider it almost feels as if not even the writer can find himself to be writing a story in which everybody on the Sunrider is that unified crew that they want to be. It's never their story or the story of the revival of the Alliance, it always has to be Ava's Story or Chigara's Story or just someone's story to the point of it taking away proper development from characters and making them almost sit in an absolute stasis as one goes through their own story and Chigara's in particular never even developed. It feels like Kryska, Icari, Sola, and Claude have just been completely on the sidelines the entire story waiting to come in for "their arc" and that's in essence what ruins that feeling. The feeling that a character needs to have their own arc to even have relevancy in the story. I missed the idea of the crew all going together for the common goal that they all had together, not a divided bunch who all find themselves to be doing their own thing on one giant ship. This divide is truly shown simply by the ending of Liberation Day in which nobody had sympathized for Chigara even with all evidence pointing towards the fact that she wasn't responsible for what had happened.
[Re]Turn Fixed Nothing
This is a controversial statement to many since a lot do think that the [Re]Turn patch made Liberation Day good. But whenever I look back at it something about it always just seems bittersweet about it all knowing it isn't canon. Kayto actually developing and Ava feeling like his wingman. Choices actually being prevalent and being able to fix the fate that could have happened. Lore wise it fixed nothing and all it added was H-Scenes and that doesn't fix that hole that is in Liberation Day. It almost feels less satisfying than it already is simply because it is showing that not even a god can truly fix the reality of it. I know Liberation Day couldn't have been reworked but something about trying to fix what was unfixable in a simple rushed patch felt nothing short of beating the horse that was already dead.
Self Awareness Isn't A Funny Gag/Kayto Shields Is Not A Good Character
Something always bugged me about the fact that with a group of a ton of individuals and one even feeling like they are on top of the word with the Sharr that the person who can look at the crew during their times of celebration and tell them in a passive aggressive way that their world is fake and nothing short of a story numerous times is the man with PTSD and has lost the most. This always bugged me because what could have been his way of coping with what is going on around him is not ever shown to be a way of coping by viewing the world as a farce as much as it just feels like a poorly done gag. This makes Kayto himself feel less honorable as a character for what character he has and it only makes his losses feel even more hypocritical and meaningless with the way he acts about them. The fact that he can look at his crew and tell them they are in a "Mecha Eroge VN" and then less than a couple hours later turn into an absolute mess over the fact that the love of his life is dead and feels he can value the world then even though he seems fairly certain on the idea that nothing matters. This gag goes as far as making him seem dumb in some cases in which if he had such self awareness and omnipotence, then why in the world is he so fearful in some of the things he does? It just feels tacky and poorly done and even with the character we are supposed to see ourselves in he doesn't feel like the hero or even a protagonist of the story when his personality is questioning the moral standpoint he has in conflict.
Chigara's Arc/The Mask For Criticism
Looking back at First Arrival and Mask of Arcadius we can see that there is no choice in what route you go and Kayto is more aligned with the route of pursuing Ava the majority of the time and this was never a problem to the majority of fans this was because her common route was done very well and held the balance of the story. While in contrast Chigara's Arc was controlling the story around her and upon that left the majority of the fans angry. The fans have a consensus that they do not like the character of Chigara and this feels like it's because of that arc primarily. The reason why this is an issue is ever since the complaints began I never saw anyone judge the arc for what had been done wrong on the writing end of Liberation Day and Chigara's Arc and how that could have been fixed, what was criticized instead was Chigara's Character. While it is correct to criticize her character I feel what's wrong here is the lack of actual criticizing of how her character was written as much as just throwing the blame on her being a bad character. While this may not be the intention of the fans what it almost feels like is that they are blaming the pen the writer is using rather than the writer himself. This is a faulty way of thinking simply because like a character a pen cannot speak for itself and the person wielding it will show the quality of it in the majority of cases. In conclusion this goes back to my statement at the beginning of how it feels nobody made a proper criticism of what was truly done wrong and chose what they wanted to blame. No matter which way you cut it, a character cannot be bad unless the writer themselves fails to make them good.
Lack of Motive
Every time I look back at the crew I see a lack of motivation for what they are doing. You could say that the destruction of Cera has something to do with it but it is never conveyed in the story beyond the introduction that this is their reasoning for tracking down The Empire and destroying PACT. With that reasoning hardly ever being glossed upon beyond the intro, what is their real reason? The point they are at right now things seem to be more bleak and they don't even seem to know what they want to achieve with Fontana in contrast seeming to just have a motive that we aren't shown.
Eroge v. Story
While Sunrider may have been able to get this far with having the slowly incoming equals of these two styles of the VN, we already see issues coming in with the hate towards the common routes they give and the fallback into making a lens of what could have been while making a mini eroge to please fans in the DLC. They have to make a choice here whether or not they want to cater to the story of Sunrider or if it shall let itself fall into becoming an eroge. Because we have fans of Sunrider who liked it for the lore it had and the potential it has and others who like it for eroge. With Starnova coming out and Love in Space showing that they are capable of handling more than one project thought I do not see how they couldn't manage not letting the two seep into each other and they hold their respective values as story and eroge as separates. Because from what we have seen in a lot of cases and this one too, if you try to please everyone you only end up hurting more than if you just stuck to your guns on one side.
Conclusion
This goes back to the topic of the thread at hand of where the fans have gone. The fans are gone because of reasons like these, while I would not speak for all of them the vast majority have left for reasons like this. Whether it be at the fault of anybody or not. But the primary one is the choice of whether Sunrider itself is going to decide to be this half and half eroge story in which whenever the fans are unhappy just hand them fanservice of Kayto being a guy who is on a ship which is practically a sorority when it needs to be or if there is ever going to be a real direction for the story. I myself am not going to support the series further but it does not mean that I have lost all hope, I would be happier to just see the story finally decide what it's going to be rather than the course it's going down right now. If you have read all of this, thank you and please try to keep the discussion civil.
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