Redemption for Jessika (En, Sp, Fr, It, Ge)

[JFR]

... Let me quote here George R. Martin. Given that you guys are trying to tell stories, maybe there is something to learn from people that evidently know how to tell one. ...

Wow. Tlaero writes sweet, sensitive, gentle stories - if I can use those adjectives to describe a porn story/game. Are you actually suggesting she should take as a model for future writing that warped psychotic who wrote and still writes a hideous gore-fest like GoT? Just - wow!

Her male characters are sensitive and nice guys, traits that seem to be under-appreciated by some. It is everyone's right to comment as they see fit. After all, she asked for comments. But the fact is that all men are not neanderthals who always have to be macho control freaks. Although I, as an adult male, might well have made some different choices in the same situation as the PC in RfJ (like that would ever happen ,) there are a lot of his decisions I might well have made too. And I don't see those decisions as less masculine or less realistic than "chop off his head" or "storm out in a huff if I don't get to screw someone." There are all kinds of people in this world and all of us may not be comfortable with the PC's choices. I get that. I might have been a little madder at SaraB's treatment of him at first myself but the whole point of the visit was to prove she was wrong. His choices did just that.

Making comments and suggestions is one thing but calling the writer's skill and ability into question is just a bit over the top, don't you think? Her ability is pretty darned obvious as it is. So far, the two major games from this partnership have been among the more popular in the genre in recent times. That speaks to a lot of satisfaction in the product.

[Petri]

A little surprised by all this "critical analysis" I'm seeing here. It's a free game and I didn't see anything wrong with it. I see no reason to be critical.

I think it's important to realize that if people didn't enjoy the game and appreciate its overall level of quality, you'd never see these sorts of nitpicky criticisms.

I guess so. I've heard from someone that people only nitpick things they like. Guess the reason these games are being nitpicked is because they left an impression on the players.

I could come up with a number of little things I didn't like about Redemption for Jessika, but I don't feel like I want to say it out loud. If I did, it would sound like I'm demanding the creators to do better work in the future. Tlaero and Mortze don't owe me anything.

[Dolphin-BR]

Giving him also options to take the initiative, propose something instead of just saying 'yes' or 'no' to the female characters' ideas would make him look less weak and more manly too.

If you're saying to make it so that it's Marc, instead of Jess, who suggests the walk or going to see PowerGirl, that's fine. If it's that Jess wants to go for a walk or see PowerGirl and Marc says, "No, let's do this instead," and we need to make both scenes, then it's incredibly expensive. Between writing, posing, rendering, coding, and testing, one of these scenes takes over a week to produce. Doing multiple scenes for every date would double the length of the game, as well as double the amount of time it takes to produce. Alternately, it would cut the story in half. I don't think people would be served by either.

Tlaero

I didn't really mean a way to change the game "Redemption for Jessika". I just meant a way to avoid a male character in any game to look weak. If he is an active participant of the story, suggesting things, leading the action, he will look manly and not weak, without having to be necessarily a "gorilla man".

If you want to know if Marc suggesting the walk, or proposing a different activity would help him look less "weak", the answer is yes. Any alternative in which he is more proactive would help.

[boyo111]

... it would have been pretty easy for me to give the options to have Marc refuse to go to Sylvia's,...
... Similarly, I could have pretty easily had Marc refuse to sleep on the couch...

Giving him also options to take the initiative, propose something instead of just saying 'yes' or 'no' to the female characters' ideas would make him look less weak and more manly too.

I guess we differ here because in most of the game I did not see Marc as weak or less masculine, perhaps we have different views of what this means. As players we read a lot into the game, the writers give us a framework to work with and we tend to fill in the gaps ourselves. I know there is some psycho/social term for this but it escapes me right now. The whole argument on Marc's masculinity I think only comes from one perspective, sure he may not be at the forefront of proposing things all the time, but that doesn't mean he is being weak, that is the story we are brought along with. I could go along point by point but really that is going to get into a longer conversation, I will just say I hear you but I don't agree with you and leave it at that.

I like how we are having this discussion since its such a great game, and I hope it is constructive on all fronts.

[fatquack]

I just want to chime in and say that this is an excellent game (one of the best I ever played) and that I hate "one choice dead ends".

[tlaero]

To answer the question, if I personally were in the Sylvia and Sarah situation, I'd have acted almost exactly the same as good path Marc did. I'm very comfortable with my representation of the human that is good path Marc. I understand that some people want him to be different than he is, but I think he's a righteous dude.

That said, I missed the masturbation option. Women don't have the same biological urges in that regard that men do and tend to do it much less, if at all. Clearly I don't speak for all women, but the porn trope of "woman covertly sees people having sex and starts to masturbate" is male fantasy. I'm not in any way offended by it, but it's not the kind of thing that comes naturally. (Ug, no pun intended.) I'm still not sure I'd have added it, though, because I like the sexual tension the scene created, and think that not masturbating makes the bonus stronger. But, I'll admit that it really wasn’t something that I thought of.

Ares, is it possible that your impression that Marc is all "she’s out of my league" comes from the lewd path and not the good one? After he's failed, lewd path Marc does do the sour grapes thing and say "she was out of my league" a few times. And, by the way, he's right. Lewd path Marc is a jerk who doesn’t deserve a woman like Jess. But, in the good path, I'm pretty sure that you never have to say anything to the effect of "you’re out of my league" to Jess. There are some self-deprecating optional lines, but you can get through the game without using any of them. He's self-conscious about playing the piano terribly in front of a professional musician, but that’s completely justified. There's a line after he buys her the book where Jess says, "What did I do to deserve you?" but that’s her being self-deprecating, not him. I don't remember any places where he has to say things like that. I'm not sure if my memory is faulty, or if we have differing impressions of the meanings of some of the lines (maybe I think he's being sweet and you think he’s being a wus, or something like that).

Let me ask this of the "Marc is weak" camp. If you learned that someone you cared about had become self-destructive, and your primary goal was to help fix the situation for her, what would you do differently than Marc did in the first week? Please be specific. "I'd have made her go kart racing rather than take a walk," etc. Also, if you could comment on why these changes in his behavior would do a better job of helping Jess, that would help me as well.

Tlaero

[Dolphin-BR]

Let me ask this of the "Marc is weak" camp. If you learned that someone you cared about had become self-destructive, and your primary goal was to help fix the situation for her, what would you do differently than Marc did in the first week? Please be specific. "I'd have made her go kart racing rather than take a walk," etc. Also, if you could comment on why these changes in his behavior would do a better job of helping Jess, that would help me as well.
Tlaero

Marc can be perceived as weak not only because his attitude towards Jess, but during the whole game. He is too much passive.

If someone close enough was self-destructive, I would intervene (if the person was under 18) to the best of my ability to keep he/she away from the source of the problem according to my point of view. And I would support him/her in any activity that would lead him/her in the opposite direction he/she was going before.

If the person was 18 or older, I would try to convince him/her about the source of the problem according to my point of view. And I would support him/her in any activity that would lead him/her in the opposite direction he/she was going before.

If the person was not close enough I would give him/her a hint of what the source of the problem was according to my point of view. If the person receives it well, I would support him/her in almost any activity that would lead him/her in the opposite direction he/she was going before.

[tlaero]

And you feel that Marc didn't do those things? What should he have done differently? Please be specific.

Tlaero

[ares]

Women don't have the same biological urges in that regard that men do and tend to do it much less, if at all.

Mmm, masturbation you mean? I think you are wrong. Now, I am not a porn star, but I do have been with order of dozens of sexual partners. I also have many women friends with which I speak openly about sex. And by a big margin, the majority of women I know a) masturbate often, some of them masturbate every day b) Would have masturbated if in that situation. To tell you more, as a matter of fact, I have been myself in a scene similar to that one portrayed in the story, in which I and a girl started having sex in front of another girl. We didn't tell her not to join - we wanted her to - but nonetheless she herself didn't join for her own reasons. She did masturbate openly though. So, from first hand experience I can tell you that this

Clearly I don't speak for all women, but the porn trope of "woman covertly sees people having sex and starts to masturbate" is male fantasy.

is just incorrect. In my experience, there is not much difference about sexual behavior between free men and women. What does happen is that in some societies women feel more social pressure than men not to manifest openly their sexual identities.

Two points though. One, what is a porn trope is that a person, woman or man, would get instantly horny and start masturbating because of watching some two random people fuck no matter who they are without any preliminaries. Two, watching "covertly" is a different activity, much less arousing at least for me. If you are watching "covertly" you are not part of the sexual act as you are if you are invited to watch. As it happens in the game, Marc was not watching covertly, nor was he watching two random people with no relation to him.

To answer the rest of your message, let me go over the game again when I have the time and I'll be more specific.

[boyo111]

To answer the question, if I personally were in the Sylvia and Sarah situation, I'd have acted almost exactly the same as good path Marc did. I'm very comfortable with my representation of the human that is good path Marc. I understand that some people want him to be different than he is, but I think he's a righteous dude.
Tlaero

I have been in that situation of watching people have sex, opposite and same sex of various combinations, a few times and I have been open about following along (not joining in as that was not the invitation) as well as just watching. Including just watching two women, and there were times that it was just watching. Then again, it depends on your own kinks and fetishes, mine were more along the line of watching at certain points. I liked that scene, the way Mortze captured the expressions I thought was great, and it was key to both the way Marc treated Sylvia at work, and how he knew of Sarah as being in one of his favorite bands. I'm apparently in the minority though.

[jk103]

Let me ask this of the "Marc is weak" camp. If you learned that someone you cared about had become self-destructive, and your primary goal was to help fix the situation for her, what would you do differently than Marc did in the first week? Please be specific. "I'd have made her go kart racing rather than take a walk," etc. Also, if you could comment on why these changes in his behavior would do a better job of helping Jess, that would help me as well.

Generally, when someone is stuck in self-destructive cycle, I feel like there's two approaches you can take to help. Support them, or confront them. That's the choice I'd give to the player, to decide whether they think Jessika could use a shoulder to lean on or a kick in the pants to get her out of her rut. Option 1 would probably be the easier route relationship-wise, compared Option 2 Marc risks alienating himself but maybe it's healthier in the long term. Now, in the exact story you've written this probably isn't realistic since Marc is more or less a complete stranger, but that would be my starting point. My goal would be to present that one choice to the player, and I'd design the game and write the characters from the ground up with that choice in mind.

[tlaero]

If you picked option 1, what would you do differently than Marc did?

Tlaero

[jk103]

Option 1 would probably be pretty similar to the game as-is, but again, I think having AN option in the first place is what makes the difference. There's a difference between being passive because you think that's the best course of action and being passive because you don't know how to take action, and in a video game, you do the former by giving the player a choice.

[john milton]

Option 1 would probably be pretty similar to the game as-is, but again, I think having AN option in the first place is what makes the difference. There's a difference between being passive because you think that's the best course of action and being passive because you don't know how to take action, and in a video game, you do the former by giving the player a choice.

I don't know,
I’d have loved the option 2, i think it would have strengthen the connection between Marc and the player. Nevertheless, having an option 2 would mean making another game, and that is not likely to happen in future games. However, I’m telling this because all the game is built on Mark's approach, and making it optional would change the game utterly.
However, in another context i think that giving the player the opportunity to confront his partner (I mean, giving the player the option to choose between two ways to face a situation. Both leading to the same outcome maybe) would strongly affect the emotional impact.

But again, it's something that could not be done in RfJ. It would mess up with the game structure itself.

I can't come up with any idea on how to make Marc a more realistic character, he's probably the best written character in the whole game (good path). Moreover, reading again the script, I realized that he is neither weak nor passive. He's quite a strong character that takes control of the situation definitely more than once during the game. Somehow, it's a difficult thing to perceive. But it's not Marc's fault, it's a problem related with the interactivity and the little stress focused on the playing character.

I guess that a way to overcome this problem is to use the third person in those pictures where the PC needs to take important decisions; it would both add pathos and switch the focus from the main character to the PC.

These are just a few ideas, but analyzing the script makes it really easy to see how well-balanced Marc is.

John

[azrael]

First off all, I love the game, had a great story and the images are amazing. I only wish the story of them can continue in a near future.

And i have a question,

Whats the next story?