I'm starting to wonder if what makes Eternum so popular is a drug-like euphoria gained from playing it. Like in the code. People often say they can't take their mind off it. And realistically how would a game take over an economy without something else at play? I guarantee you that Eternum is just another cult and like all successful cults, it subtly brainwashes the people to think they can't live without it. Remember how WOW had people quitting their jobs just to play it, even tho doing so would mean having no money to pay for it?
I see that you're being satirical but I still say it's odd that the girls are all over Orion right after getting into the game. It's too soon. Especially with Penelope. Nancy kinda has a guilty pleasure forbidden love fetish. But all that crap that Penelope confessed in the Warthag classes was almost character assassination. It'd be like me building up a character as a nice person only to make them go on one business trip and come back a heartless business woman willing to make profit by any means.
I just fear that the sex scenes might because just fap fuel and not endearing and wholesome. I honestly don't wanna see every girl as just a porn star. I don't like thinking that about most characters in games. Not even in ero games or JRPGs.
You know what I mean?
I'm going to be blunt here. If you're playing an ADULT visual novel and not expecting the girls to be in sexy situation(even random ones with no context),then you're playing the wrong kind of VN.I do wind up liking the characters and plot a lot more than the sexy bits,but at the end of day the goal is to wind up in sexy situations.
To me, it wasn't Penny being OOC,more so than her revealing a side of herself she obviously wouldn't share with just anybody. if you had an issue with how it was done,i would get that. but it just seems like you have issues with the whole thing entirely and her having a kink at all is a betrayal of her character. I also don't get how you would see it as OOC considering that up to that point,we didn't know much about Penny at all,much like all of the other girls.
The story is still just starting and it's reasonable we wouldn't know everything about the girls and that's not even getting into how they could develop later on, both in ways that are sex-related and not.Most of these girls are still teenagers who are discovering their sexuality after all. Cari is a good writer who I trust can pull that off and have sexy scenes that make sense with the characters,even if the context might not be there.
So some of the girls might turn out to have kinky sides, which is fine by me,since I find vanilla sex on its own to be boring. But,on the flipside, I doubt that all of the girls would be that way and some might be vanilla. Having them be all one way or the others would make all of them samey, which for an AVN with multiple LIs isn't something you want.
PS. It seems to me like you like mostly vanilla stuff,so if you haven't heard of it already, Lust Age is probably the perfect AVN for you as it's vanilla as it comes and the weirder kinks can be avoided.
I expect sex in the game, sure. But there are times I question if a kink is fitting. It's not always explained why someone likes what they like. I could give a 100 reasons I think, act and like what I like. But in games that info is often times left out. The character just becomes a porn star. She likes something because that's her role. To play out that kink. I'm not talking about Penelope here, just speaking in general. I've seen and quit games where a character starts out one way, then the writer flips the script and makes them like things that don't get explain why. And it felt very much like it was added just to have the player have sex with them that way.
Does Luna seem like a dominatrix? Would you believe Annie is secretly into being gang banged by strangers? Would it make sense for a strong-willed feminist to like be treated like property? What if Alex wants people to beat on her just like the father she hates? Writers can do whatever they want, but there's always gonna be a guy calling BS on it if it doesn't sync with the character. Personality matters. Backstory matters. A nice girl is not always gonna be secretly a wild girl in heat just because! There has to be a reason. Sure there are women who secretly are into off the wall stuff. But in AVNs it's basically a gimmick to ensure that that woman is there and often.
Maybe I was wrong about Penelope. But I thought of her as responsible and an straight shooter. She didn't seem like the type to be into what was implied in the last update (rough sex & bondage, yuck). If there was supposed to be hints to this, I missed it. Maybe they took that moment to throw it in your face as facts for shock value. Idk. But it could have been executed better. I firmly believe, not all the ladies needs to go down the harem road the same. Which, usually in games it ends up being the raunchier the better in the eyes of the audience... and the writers appeal to that. But I just am not believing every girl needs to ultimately be worshipping Orion's penis and want hard banging from it over any tenderness. Consider Maat. She was as straight selfish sex object as it gets. And they played out a tricked into sex scenes with her tricking the heroes. And no matter what you do, you have to watch it all play out or ditch Nova. Thank God for the options at the end of it. But that was too little too late. By then you're again, supposed to take the more risque role and get revenge for Orion and Nova. And Nova, for whatever reason, has become into it. Why?! It blew my mind. But I lived with it.
No tenderness? Just hard loveless banging. Rough sex. If that's goona be the norm... The notion itself is off-putting. In VIRTUES this happened too. Every character by the end of the game is a masochist and allows the MC to shame them openly all the time, as long as he says he loves them later. He's even allowed to expose their breasts while their at work or bang them in their locker rooms. All while claiming to love them and be a gentleman. But apparently the women want him to be nice most of the time, but a brute in bed. Whatever. I just hope Eternum isn't going down that road. I would have to quit it like I did VIRTUES.
These girls aren't all teens either. A good deal of them are 20+. Nova, Penelope, Calypso and Nancy are all 20 or over. Only Ann, Luna, Alex and Dalia are 18. And that just not a clear indicator that they all would be still figuring out what they want in bed. Personally I knew what I wanted sex wise since I was 15. And I never changed my mind. There was never a moment I tried out rough sex and spanking a girl's ass, only to find out 8 yrs later I didn't like it. I know what I like and it's the exact same as it was over 15 yrs ago. Now they aren't me, but let's be real, some of them are not figuring themselves out. They are simply given roles. The MILF, the little sister figure, the tomboy, the beauty queen, the goofball eccentric, the haughty princess and the bad girl you have to stand up to. I like Caribdis writing too. But nothing is perfect. Maybe he just decided he wanted some bondage and tossed it into Penelope character's likes because he just wanted her to have that angle since all other kinks were filled in other angles. That doesn't mean it feels organic tho.
I don't want them to be all the same. I want the option to say yes or no to a hardcore sex scenes that might disgust me or other gamers. If Nancy wants to watch some gore porn, I wanna be able to say "nah, I'm good", not have the scene play out automatically or risk losing her as a Love Interest. That's just an example. But you'd see what I mean. I want to say yes or no based on each girl without losing them or pissing them off.
And yeah I'm mostly vanilla but I know the world doesn't like vanilla that much anymore. In public people say that's fine, but behind closed doors most people want crazier stuff. It's one of the reasons I'm alone right now. I turned down so many things from girls who liked me in middle and high school that I was written off as boring and left alone for a long time. I'm still a virgin now. Imagine that, rejected because you don't want to have a quicky 20 minutes before someone's parents comes home. I feel lust but my logic I feel more and louder.
I'll look up Lust Age. But I doubt it's better than Eternum in terms of comedy and mystery. That's why I'm here. I like the cast but I ultimately can't shake the fact that I may have to see stuff I hate and cringe thru it. Even more so because Caribdis said you miss key plot if you don't romance all the ladies. The villains I won't miss as they're taken down. But big gaps in the plot will appear if the girls are not romanced. And that's what happened in OIAL. I tried to not peep on Judie, lost her as a LI. Tried to get teacher to patch things up with her husband, lost LI. And that won stung harder because that was a major plot points with the husband.
I know someone people want kinks galore. More power to them. I like watching sexy stuff too. But I just want the scenes to fit the characters. And I want the option to say no if it doesn't fit the gamer, the audience. If I had my way I'd be satisfied with Nancy, Luna and maybe Annie or Nova. And stop there. But what if they all have kinks I hate? That's not impossible. And my worse nightmare. Just like in VIRTUES. And by the end of the game, with 3somes on the table and the need to go bigger by the end, I think my stomach is gonna turn by the time the last sex scenes plays. But at least if there's a chance to turn down a sex act and just cuddle and look at the stars, then you can end on a good note. At least for me.
Ok. I can understand wanting a kink to fit the character,but realistically?Kinks often don't make sense for a person's personality. Not going to sit here and say it's completely unrelated,but you know that saying 'it's the quieter ones that are often the most kinkiest?" Well, there's truth to that. A person who you think wouldn't like it might turn out to like shit you wouldn't expect them to. As someone into BDSM,I can tell you that the Dom can be the quiestest,straight laced person and the Sub could be the most confident,independent,and pushy person. People can have different sides to them,that'swhat makes a person complex.And in the case of characters,as long it's foreshadowed or the context makes sense,it doesn't bother me. Like with Penny,this is still early in the story,we didn;t know much about her,and it's implied she has had not experience dating aside from that one boyfriend in high school.=,so she might've not have time to experiment with her boyfriend.
And you just want an explanation on why they have that kink,that's fair.But in an ADV that frankly isn't as important of a detail and i don't think it'll be important to Cari and the story he wants to tell.Would it be neat if he did that.Sure,but is he likely to do it? Probably not. Unless it's a new kink they discover in their relationship with Orion or maybe with the other girls(since it's implied there's going to threesomes when the relationships develop enough.)
And yeah I know some of the girls aren't teenagers(Nancy being the only exception), they're in they're 20's,but they're in their early 20's. That's still pretty early in life. You might've gotten shit figured out by that time,but that's NOT going to be true for everybody. In my experience, college age was a time where lots of people still experimented with sexuality and were still unsure of themselves. And your comment about 18 years reasonably figuring everything they like and don't sexually is even more weird to me. No. 18 is still teenager age,even if it's late teens and it's believable to me that they wouldn't have that figured out everything. Maybe they had a one-time stand where the focus was on rough or tender fucking and there wasn't time to experiment. Maybe they had a boyfriend before who wasn't into their kinks, wasn't willing to experiment,or broke up before they could discover that kink. Maybe they experimented a bit on their own,but not enough to know what they truly like or don't. Maybe they experimented a lot,but for different reasons, weren't brave enough to try out a kink before Orion came. The point is there are plenty of believable reasons a character or a person IRL might have a kink that goes against their personality or discover new ones. Hell,even fully grown adults,depending on their situation and willingness to experiment can still find new kinks they might not have known they had.And I don't necessarily need the game to point that out when I can make inferences like this on my own.Although i do think that it's unlikely that Cari will add extreme stuff like gangbanging,considering his last game didn;t have stuff like that.
I can get being frustrated that there's not a game that caters to your sexual preferences and also not liking certain kinks or fetishes. Hell, if Lust Age's urination stuff wasn't skippable,I wouldn't have played it. I like BDSM,but finding an ADV that that caters to that at least somewhat is like finding water in a desert. BDSM is one of the most misrepresented kinks in media and it sucks that all you have for it is Fifty Shades of Shit,which portrays BDSM like its abuse, which is NOT the point of it.
If you already mostly dislike the direction the game is going in kink and fetish wise,even at an early stage like Eternum is in now,you might want to stop playing. Because I'm sure what happens early on isn't going to change.Is it worth staying if in your own words, you might have to suffer through fetishes or kinks that you dislike so much that it turns your stomach apparently? I don't think so. If it was just stuff you were neutral on or only slightly disliked that would be one thing,but it seems like even the slightest bit of kinky stuff turns you off.I was going to say maybe you should bring it up with Cari and have him put in a skip scene button,but he already said no. At least he gave you answer on that and wasn't vague. I respect that Cari has a story he wants to tell and an audience he wants to appeal to that like at least a little bit of kinky stuff,it's just unlucky you're one of the very rare people that don't fall into that. I guess you like the game in spite of that,but....
I recommended Lust Age since you don't like any other stuff but vanilla.It may not have Cari's mystery or even comedy elements,but it's still a charming story in its own right that's pretty sweet throughout.It's worth giving a shot at least. I always think that people should finds stuff that appeals to them and this dev at least seems to want to make stuff for the pure vanilla crowd. So if you don't want to play LA,at least this is a dev that you could watch.Maybe one of the next games they do will be something you like.Who knows.The AVN crowd is growing more everyday and there are more people trying to make them. There might be a new dev who does vanilla stuff like LA too. it's the mindset I use when I'm looking for BDSM stuff.
While I understand better where you're coming from,I still don't agree with a lot of what you're saying.We have two drastically different views on things and that's fine.I just wanted to know why you felt the way you did about that.