So, earlier this week things more or less collided in my mind and I realized that I am doing quite well for someone my age and stature. I have a bachelor’s degree and am going for a master, I am a highly valued employee at my place of work. I have a steady stream of income coming in. I have a loving significant other and an incredibly supportive mother. And I am very much happy. Though, I still cannot help but view this site in a less pleasing manner, and I cannot help but feel indecisive about whether or not I should replace it, heavily rework things while removing old content, or just abandon this pursuit in general, because the things I write are read by very few people. I mean, if I picked the latter option I would have a lot of free time to spend working on my novels… which I do not think are read by anyone, period. Ho-hum.
So, last week HuniePot put out a new Hunie Direct that revealed some useful information on the upcoming HuniePop 2, in addition to a new character in the form of Polly Bendleson, an overtly feminine woman who also happens to have a penis. This caused a bit of a stir amongst the greater fanbase, with some people liking this move, and others not wanting to have their self insert protagonist do it with somebody who has a penis. Because of this, HuniePot made the decision to leave the genitalia of Polly up to the player via an in-game option, while also maintaining a degree of ambiguity about what she has in her pants.
This is the sort of thing I would have expected from the developer, and I do not mean that negatively. They always struck me as an equal opportunist smut peddler, and I always felt as if their games are trying to remain tongue and cheek, overtly sexual, yet largely neutral in a world where radical political binaries are only becoming increasingly pronounced. Besides, options are a good way to make most people happy. Regardless, I am still cautious about the exact portrayal of Polly’s in-game, but HuniePop 2 is not due out until 2019, so I am sure things are still in flux on their end.
Following a teaser released a few months ago, Dontnod have finally revealed Life Is Strange 2 with a debut trailer that depicts the game as a journey between two brothers as they flee from the tragic circumstances that happened in their suburban Washington home and flee across the country to Mexico, with the journey there inevitably centering around making tough decisions, as that is kind of the crux of this entire series. Personally, I think it looks fine, but nothing about the premise strikes me as particularly interesting, and I know of a ton of people who are quite upset to hear that this series will be continuing with a male protagonist, especially after the prior entry became renowned for its female characters and their portrayal. Heck, I think the premise sounds plain old boring compared to what Captain Spirit had going for it. Still, things could always change as the story goes on, and this being an episodic game, it will be quite a while before the big picture is made clear.
Hot off the heels of announcing a PC version of Let It Die, Japanese game publisher GungHo have announced that they will be producing an HD remaster of the 1999 RPG Grandia, set to release on PC via Steam sometime this winter, in a move meant to tie in with the 2015 PC release of Grandia II HD. This alone is good news, as it is another classic game being given a nice little revival, but both Grandia HD and Grandia II HD are also coming out in a bundle for the Switch, due out sometime this winter. While the series itself is destined for a niche existence, it is nice to see the effort being made, and hopefully the game will find an audience. Thought, this is the Switch, so I guess I should be saying that I hope people actually play the games after they buy them.
Speaking of obscure JRPGs, The Last Remnant, a Square Enix title that, from what I can recall, was primarily made as an experiment in using licensed engines, namely Unreal Engine 3, will be delisted and removed from sale on September 4th, 2018… or at least the PC version will. As far as I can tell, the Xbox 360 version will remain on sale for the foreseeable future, though that version is supposedly the inferior one. As for why this is happening, I did some digging and found out that The Last Remnant was selected as part of a initiative by Valve to make numerous existing Windows games compatible with Linux. Why or whether or not that would have anything to do with a delisting? Hell if I know. But at least there is some time to let the news fan out before the game is delisted, and people to sing its praises, as opposed to the last minute or after the fact announcements that seem all too common with larger publishers. Still kinda sucks though because, well, the game deserves to be on sale.