Evakiss
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Stan's new design
🕑 Added 2021-11-30 17:01:33 +0000 UTCI've been working on the "remaster" of ORS, the main focus of which is Stan's character.
As I wrote in previous posts, I wasn't happy with his character on how he fit in the overall story. When I came up with the idea of Lena having a nerdy flatmate, the main appeal to me was using a character trope I hadn't explored in GGGB, which was full of hunks and malevolent guys. I thought it would be refreshing writing scenes with a different type of character, a nerd who would be more insecure and awkward, but equally horny, and how the female MC could interact with him.
The bad thing about having the develop the game chapter by chapter, and being in a hurry to launch my new project after ending GGGB, is that there's not much time for planning, or to revise and re-write stuff. Speed is key, and there were so many important and interesting characters to develop, both from Ian's and Lena's perspectives, so there wasn't much time for Stan to be in the limelight. And at one point I just realized I wasn't really sure what to do with him. The main problem, to me, was that Stan felt merely like a trope or a caricature, not a nuanced character, especially compared to the rest of the cast, and thus his interactions with Lena felt forced and uninteresting to me.
Surprisingly, many of you seemed to like Stan (I guess his character trope is actually appealing, that's why I added him to the cast in the first place). And there was this other criticism that had been weighing on me from early on, where some of you complained about the lack of "decent" or "good guy" love interests for Lena outside of Ian. At some point I thought about adding another male NPC to fill in that role, a new co-worker at the restaurant or maybe a musician guy, but the cast is already too big, so I scraped the idea. But I kept thinking about it, and the solution became apparent: Stan, underused as he was, could fill that role perfectly. But he couldn't do it in his current state.
I've known I would need to go over his scenes and re-write some stuff for quite a while, even before starting to work on Chapter 9. And now is the right time, before the story keeps progressing too much and re-writing it becomes even more difficult and convoluted. I hope I can make Stan a more relatable character and his scenes somewhat more interesting, even though he will remain as a secondary character.
Many other tweaks and improvements will be added with this enhanced edition, so stay tuned.
Comments
John Doe
I love the old Stan and the fact that he is not super in shape like the rest of the cast and that he's awkward. Hopefully you are able to lean into that more with the new design.
Fantasticon
Late to the party on this, but it might be interesting to have the option to get Stan into the gym with Ian and Jeremy, much like how Holly went to pole dancing with Ivy and Lena, but keep it largely "off-camera" given how much extra work writing and animating all that would be. This change might also open Stan up as a potential partner for Holly should Ian not pursue her? Just my thoughts, I'm happy to know there's a better version of Stan on the way regardless.
