After months, I reread the announcement of the new game (hhr) just to see if I had actually read it right back then, and I had. In my opinion, the TM girls should only appear in TM, or if they do appear in hhr, it should be in cameo form. I think the ending of TM would be ruined if the girls appeared in hhr, because in the end all the girls are happy with the main character of TM and if they appear in hhr it means all our efforts in TM were completely useless.
Viewing post in Total Maidness! (18+) comments
In general, they aren't the exact same girls, just heavily based on their TM predecessors.
If HHR even played in the TM world at all, it would be in some alternate timeline/worldline/"what if".
What's canon in your TM playthrough remains canon in your TM playthrough, namely that they lived happily ever after with the TM MC.
1. It was never about recycling assets.
Designing new character models is my favorite task during development.
I'm sitting on a bunch of good models that may never get used.
I had to brush up the TM-based models for HHR quite a bit to make them 'competitive'.
Adding characters based on TM girls was more an "emotional attachment" decision than anything else.
2. HHR was my 2nd "IP", TM my 3rd (not counting the discarded ones in between).
I'm also just into stuff like worldlines and alternate realities in general.
Think more "Fate/stay night" or "Steins;Gate", though.
My only noteworthy contact with DC Comics stuff was the first 2 Arkham games, so no idea about the degree of similarity.
Generally not much of a fan of western stuff, honestly.
3. I don't really care much about success or money.
In fact, I kind of expected in advance HHR would be less popular than TM.