0064 | in which I talk/rant about Shall We Date? The Nilfheim events & work on a new project

► Yesterday, I participated in fandomsecrets's Friending Meme XVI, and now I have a few new people on the flist. Welcome! ♥

► Now, onto the main point of this entry. Some of you may remember my talking about Shall We Date? The Nilfheim last December. One of the things I didn't talk about much then were the events.
( general event explanation beneath the cut )

Still, it's pretty easy to play through all the routes twice before the event ends. However, there is one major issue I have with these events, and that's this: once the event ends, the stories disappear, and it's impossible, as far as I can tell, to read them again. I have a memory like a sieve, so this is really a sour point with me.

For instance, the first time this game had one of these events, it was around the end of December. I played through all the routes, twice, but as of right now, I can only remember the bare minimum about what some of the routes were about. Since I've been becoming increasingly fannish about this game lately (and later events tend to refer to things that happened in prior ones), you can see how this is a problem— especially since I've been considering requesting it for Yuletide or some other exchange more and more. The monetary model is already, in my opinion, a huge roadblock in getting people to play this game, and having whole chunks of the canon being completely unavailable would only make it even harder.

This all leads me to my reason for bringing this up in the first place: the current event, which is called the "Lovesickness Event", which began earlier in February, and ends tomorrow, on 2 March.

This is the second time that I've played through one of these "grace point" events. This time, it had routes for Orlando, Jean, and J.J., and I played them in that order. However, when I was half-way through my first playthrough of J.J.'s route, all those above concerns coalesced into an idea for what should have been an obvious solution:

Why don't I just transcribe the event stories?

That way, I can just reread them whenever I want to refresh my memory on what happened, and, if I post them, I'll be able to direct people that way if I ever convince them to play the game. It's not quite the same as playing it directly— the loss of music to set the tone, and, while I've taken many screenshots, the loss of actually seeing the character's reactions as you read— but it's the closest I can get, and it's definitely better than nothing.

I'm really, really surprised that I didn't think of this earlier, and I really regret that I didn't think of it when that Christmas/New Year event was going on, because I remember Orlando's route in that one had some great Sunny/Isabella scenes. (I did screencap a few moments, but not enough. =/)

So, ever since then, I've been replaying the routes as much as I can, trying to get it all transcribed. J.J's was the easiest— since I was only halfway through my first playthrough, I got the entirety of his route, plus the two endings, transcribed rather quickly.

However, I'm having more troubles with getting Orlando's and Jean's route done. With both routes, I do have the basic route transcribed, as well as the premium ending. However, I don't have the normal ending for either of them transcribed yet, nor do I have the text for all the answer options during the choices yet.

Right now, I'm playing through Orlando's route for what is the fourth time overall, and the second time since I started transcribing. I think I probably can get to his normal ending, but... I'm not so sure I can do the same for Jean's, which is really troubling, especially since I remember that that one had a conversation between Orlando and Isabella that'd be important for a fic-bunny that attacked me last night.
( cut for a mini-rant )

I have more to say about the story/characters, but this entry's already gotten pretty long, so I'm going to cut it short. Next time, perhaps.