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  • Locked thread
Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Doseku posted:

I wouldn't know what you mean by that. His self insert died completely off screen and never even showed up.

Are we totally sure the Klace SI isn't showing up? I thought the Midnight Deaths were supposed to represent people being transported to Terra. Or is that another idea that Klace threw out there and then ignored, like the rest of this freakin' game?

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Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Sardonik posted:

OK, so we have murders and people trapped in a building, when does the wisecracking robotic bear show up?

My guess is more 999 ripoff than Dangan Ronpa ripoff -- we've already had the supporting character talking about quantum physics for no discernable reason -- but this game is large, it contains multitudes (of ripoffs of better games Klace played once).

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Curus Keel posted:

Play by post roleplaying? In my (not 100% representative) experience, play by post roleplaying has turned up some rather good writing and made me feel better about writing - but those were mainly from experienced people and set with tabletop RPGs as a framework. I mean, self-editing there is good, but it's still a very "in the moment" style of play that would benefit from trimming and editing had they be adapted to literary mediums.

Even in some of the more primitive or worse written play-by-posts, I still felt like I knew what I was doing - can't say the same for Major\Minor.

At risk of revealing my own misspent youth, I'll note that there are some substantial bad-roleplaying tells in Klace's writing. "Circuitously twisty, nonsense plot that's clearly unplanned" can certainly fall in this category, but I'd say the biggest tell is every minor character arbitrarily dropping ~sad backstories~ at all times, always as a total non sequitur, with the assumption that this will make the reader care about them and make them feel sympathetic. That's like Crappy Roleplaying 101, and Klace is throwing it around all over the place.

There's also the entire concept of a huge interlocking multiverse where people regularly get deposited as refugees on other planets, including the generic medieval hub planet "Terra," where everything is centered around a fantasy tavern that's also an immigration office. "Generic fantasy tavern that serves as the gathering place for mysterious visitors from other worlds" is the premise of about half of the lovely crossover roleplaying games on the Internet, and I will practically guarantee that the tavern in Terra was born on some crappy message board, IRC channel, or LiveJournal community in the early-mid 2000's. This poo poo is textbook.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

So, like... does Klace really believe that international arms dealers are benevolent angels of "protection" and repulsed by the very concept of death? This is an actual thought Klace has, insofar as it can even be called a thought? Christ, this goddamn game.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Wait, Max mentioned a "she." Is she about to kill Rook on Jilted Maid Cafe Partner's behalf? Is this why you can't get the true ending if you go to the maid cafe?

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

There's something magnificent about Klace managing to frantically write his way out of any slightly interesting plot development he accidentally creates. The Midnight Murders are about connecting people's alternate selves on Earth and Terra? Okay, could be decent -- nope, never mind, turns out the evidence was faked. Well, the murders are still part of botched rituals to get the Chosen One to Terra, right? Nah, totally coincidental. The murders are being committed by an alternate "Chosen One?" Maybe interesting if it's a mystery, but let's blow all that poo poo out of the water with plenty of third-party scenes, and also make sure that the murderer is an uninteresting, unsympathetic character we don't give a poo poo about. Awesome!!

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Curus Keel posted:

Rook looks like he escaped from Shadowrun because the creator added cybernetic elements to him in an attempt to make a unique fursona. (You'd be glad to know that he once used a wolf character before this)
Shock has unrelated lightning patterns on him because... it's cool? And justifies the name? Beats me.
The fishnets are there because the creators apparently love wearing them for who-knows-what-reason.
Singe doesn't wear pants because his creator doesn't usually depict him with pants.

I'll eat my hat if the story came before the characters. Only ones that seem to have any work to integrate them at all appear to be with Reiyo/Outsider and Daz, since those two are changed from their fursona incarnations - Reiyo's gear and Daz's gender swap were premeditated. These and the (ridiculously useless) Inumi only got this special treatment 'cause they seem to be Klace's strongest friends. Because shoehorning your friends into a commercially released game is cool, I guess.

Is there a list somewhere of which of these characters are people's fursonas and which are Klace's "originals?" I feel like it would shed some light on this mess for those of us who don't recognize them by default.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

inthesto posted:

I believe the only originals are Jade, Eclair, Trish, Max, and two more characters we haven't met yet.

Yes, there's more characters incoming.

Also, note that there's a common theme between the non-self insert characters.

So, uh, did every backer submit a shirtless/nigh-shirtless furtwink aside from Kila? It seems like it would have been more honest to just make a gay datesim, and probably also more successful.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Curus Keel posted:

I could compile one, but it would be the majority of the characters minus all but one of the females. TBH, I'd rather not do it, as terrible as the game is, personal harassment is something I do not want to encourage.

Well, I wasn't looking for screennames, more just "which of these designs are Klace's idea for the plot and which aren't," in case it made any of this make sense. But I'm sure it wouldn't.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Seyser Koze posted:

The real end is basically this but Klace is the one playing the guitar, isn't it?

The Rise and Fall of Klacey Stardust and the Shirtless from Mars

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Okay, so... what is Terra? Is Klace just constantly contradicting himself to keep things "twisty?"

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

GeneX posted:

he says this, and yet terra apparently isn't a fever dream

Terra being some sort of Reiyo-induced fever dream to reinforce his weird lies would at least make sense, as opposed to the current status quo, wherever everything we've seen on Terra -- including the third-person material where the MC isn't even present -- relies on this alternate-world idea that Reiyo is now claiming is a lie. There are only three options I can see at this point:

1) Terra is an elaborate fabrication to delude both the MC and the player, or maybe to shoehorn more people's fursonas in, or maybe just to waste time;
2) The alternate-worlds thing is actually true and Reiyo is lying to Acheron/Max for reasons unknown/reasons Klace hasn't bothered to figure out yet;
3) Klace has no overarching plot outline, is making this up as he goes along, and has decided that the best way to make a "mystery" plot is to constantly contradict himself even if it makes the story fall apart.

Also, I'm a big fan of the "oh no! I only have X hours to solve the mystery and save Terra!!" deadline coming down right before Chapter 6 of 10. Oh no, what time pressure! He's only got half the game to wrap up the plot!!

... also also, because thinking about this game just makes me think of more problems with it: the main reason/excuse for the cast being such a bizarre mishmash of designs is that they're people's pre-existing characters, right? But Max, who is apparently Acheron's sister, was an original creation for this game. Why couldn't Klace be bothered to make her look anything like Acheron? (I'm guessing either ":effort:" or "that plot twist wasn't written yet when Klace commissioned the art assets, because who needs to have a story written before you get character art?")

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

"Do you want a game where things happen? Then go play your AAA titles, scrublord!"

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Added Space posted:

At this point I'm honestly not sure if Kila was faking his persona or he's one of those people who go "I took a trip to Tokyo and it was nothing like anime! Everyone looked at me funny when I said hello to them out of nowhere."

I feel like the answer to this requires Klace to ever be able to write these characters as having distinct voices or personalities besides their plot-supplied interests and motivations, which means we'll never know.

Also "Max smirks softly" is so Bad Chat Roleplay that it's destroying me. It's like my whole misspent adolescence rolled up into one single, awful screenshot

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Yeah, dude isn't even interesting dumb, just regular nerd dumb. The person who pointed out that Klace's style comes from only ever consuming nerd media and fan works is right on; go onto any site where nerds are attempting to write (roleplaying, fanfic, fan-translations) and you'll find a swarm of people who have consumed the same crap as Klace and write prose freely interchangeable with Major/Minor. Klace is fun to gawk at, but he's not a unique freakshow exhibit, just another midway clown.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Waffleman_ posted:

Also you're wrong because furries loving love this poo poo.

I wonder if you could actually make a furry VN bad enough that the furry fandom wouldn't embrace it. The only ways I can think of to manage it would be to have sufficiently unsexy art (the art in Major/Minor is pretty mediocre, with terrible character designs, but it's very shiny and the character designs are sexed up enough to still appeal to the lowest common furnominator) or to have a story about bashing furries/human supremacy -- actively insult the fandom, more or less. Even then, you could always earn some goodwill by selling slots for people's characters, because if there's one thing the furry fandom loves, it's paying people money for the privilege of being able to say "see that generic vaguely canid thing in a trucker hat and mesh shirt? That's my character!!"

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

God, that conversation with Shock. The only way I can read it is as a seasoned road musician puffing things up for an overeager fan. "Yes, Rabies, touring musicians mate for life, like the beautiful swan. Losing this gig means my desire to create is broken, and I will never perform again; thank goodness I, a random studio hack from Singe's idol farm, have the immense fortunes of all rock stars and can retire to a life of philanthropic acts. I'm definitely not going to immediately see which mesh-shirted idiot vocalists need a session guitar so I can make rent once I get out of this death hole -- heavens, no!!"

Also, I'm honestly not sure if the "this conversation was optimal"/weird character-emotion cues are because of the intense awkwardness of this game's target audience or because this game is so drat obtuse about the differences between its dialogue options. I'm not gonna say every conversational fork needs to have huge telegraphed GOOD OPTION/BAD OPTION, but it's so weird when we're given two prompts that are nigh-identical lines about worrying if Shock's okay. Like, is there a meaningful difference? Can there possibly be?

Anyway, kill Kila. I guess if we have to save Rook in the process, y'know, whatevs.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Curus Keel posted:

This would be more suspenseful if we actually had more possible characters, an active attempt to hide the killer's idenity beyond obvious silhouettes, and - oh - NOT CROSS CUTTING TO THE REAL KILLER KILLING.

I don't think this would be any good anyway, but it really is remarkable how thoroughly Klace is undercutting himself with these third-person scenes. Even that godawful scene with Shock earlier might have had the chance to be a little effective if it had been the first revelation that Generic Snarky Dude Shock actually really cared about Rocker/the band and was shattered by the murders, instead of being made totally redundant by the scene where Klace literally has the characters come out and say "oh, we banter, but we're really such good friends!" A major point of limited-POV storytelling techniques is allowing these revelations to be surprises, so why is Klace loving fixated on showing his hand every chance he has?

(Because he's a bad writer. That is the answer to that semi-rhetorical question.)

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Leamonde posted:

At any rate, kill whichever takes us to the True EndingTM
...There is one of those here, right?

I sincerely hope that this choice doesn't influence your ending at all, just so we can say that whether or not you like maid cafes matters more to the plot of Major/Minor than which one of your friends(?) you save from a superpowered murderer.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

This game's lack of varied art assets is getting more and more shameful. "Everything is terrible! Kila is dead! Inumi is pulsating and wetting himself in fear as he gets stupider and stupider!! ... This is portrayed by characters with the exact same playful/cocky portraits as they always have standing in front of a generic building backdrop!!"

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

So, uh, isn't the entire plot on Terra based on them getting constant immigrants from parallel realities? Like, mentioned by characters who aren't the authorReiyo? Constantly? But of course now that's totally false because... reasons?

Christ, I feel like these constant ham-handed exposition scenes are Klace's way of trying to tell himself what the story's about. He's got the continuity memory of a goldfish.

Also, are Nagi and Nami, like... hyenas? With a jackal dad? I complained before about Max and Acheron looking nothing alike despite being siblings, but at least they could theoretically be the same furry species ("genericanid").

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Not to play dumbass's advocate, but is there any proof that Klace got M/M greenlighted via shenanigans? I'd assume that a successfully Kickstarted game marketed at furries wouldn't have a ton of trouble getting support totally organically, even if that support is coming from extremely stupid people.

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Data Graham posted:

You guys I think we're supposed to be experiencing ~pathos~ and/or :airquote: feels:airquote: at this point

You monsters

I seem to have lost my ticket to the Feels Train. I wonder if Rook can pull it up for me on his magic iPad?

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

CommissarMega posted:

This is nitpicky I know, but how the hell did a cheongsam end up in Furry Fantasy Land?

EDIT: Now that I've actually looked at it, it's not a cheongsam, but an evening dress or whatever with a long leg slit. Didn't pay too much attention the first time, sorry.

Furry Fantasy Land also involves bartenders in mesh club-kid shirts. Best not to think about it.

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Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

krisslanza posted:

A bit of a difference here is, those things you listed at first probably didn't cost money.
Major/Minor costs actual money. People paid money for it!

To be fair, furries regularly pay more for worse.

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