Finn and Sean romance should be an ending...

[wdmusicprod]

Sean and Finn should be able to have sex and find their beach house with coconut drinks In Puerto Lobos along with Daniel. The three of them should be able to become a family. An old gay guy's opinion.

From the Community hub:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2092625030

[julian.varanel]

Okay...lol. Here I go diving into murky waters yet again. Romances..not just in LiS 2...but, in some ways, video games in general.

In games in general: If a developer decides to include romance options for a character in their game, make it so they feel real and not like an afterthought. All too often in games I've played...some of which comprise some of my best gaming experiences...the included romances do next to nothing for the story. They seldom develop into anything meaningful. I'm not saying they should be game altering, but they should receive more development than they commonly do.

LiS 2: Cassidy and Finn....I'm not going to deep dive in to character analysis with regard to their "motivations" With fictional characters, that's often a fruitless endeavor..and it's even more so with the characters here for reasons I'll mention later. My main problem with both romances lies in how the writers handled them and utilized them. Both Finn and Cassidy, as characters, are treated very poorly by the writers. Each had the potential for being truly interesting love interests or friends for Sean. That potential never manifests in the story. I'd say the same holds true for Hannah, Penny and Jacob. These characters should have been introduced WAY earlier in the story than they were. Especially so if two of them are slated to be romance options.

You meet Finn and Cassidy toward the end of Ep 2. Then..wham...at the start of Ep 3, you discover you've been living and traveling with them. Uh..writers?..Wake up?. Fell asleep, did you?

The moment you meet up with these characters after leaving Beaver Creek...should have been SHOWN. In game. Not just referenced in the journal. That absolutely annoys me to no end. That's a real problem with the plot design. By the time Ep 3 starts, Sean and Daniel have already established relationships with these characters ..and you never get to see the evolution of how those came about. And yet that evolution is central to why there is so much tension between the brothers when Ep 3 starts. I left Ep 2 with a very good relationship with Daniel. I start Ep 3 and we're at each other's throats. And why? ..Because of events and dynamics that take place off screen. Yeah..I've got a fundamental problem with that.

When it comes right down to it Jacob, Cassidy, Finn, Penny, Hannah, Claire, Stephen, Lyla, Brody and Esteban are not fully realized characters. They're more like...I don't know...sketches on a canvas that the painter intended to finish but never got around to. They're all unfinished in various ways. Charles and Chris don't suffer from this as much because they had the benefit of the Captain Spirit intro. Karen less so because of the beautiful conversation you have with her at the motel. They all had a lot of potential to be more than they were allowed to be. They just needed a story that was given enough screen time to tell itself.

[julian.varanel]

That may be very true, but in that case..rather than try to effectively pull off a story that takes place over the span of an entire year and would require all of that extra time and resources to do and do well, perhaps they should have reconsidered whether a road trip story was one they could do justice to. If you know that you're operating within a 'DDD' set of limitations, why try to make something that would need 'AAA'? I applaud the concept, but telling the story the way they did required characters to make illogical decisions, resigned a lot of pertinent story elements to the journal, and left numerous characters underdeveloped. Had they expanded the number of episodes to say..oh..I don't know...let's just say eight. Those three extra episodes could have been used to fill in a lot of detail with regard to the characters, events and environments. I'm not really asking for War and Peace here, but I would have liked more than a short story.

[wdmusicprod]

Thank you all so much for your thoughtful and civil responses! I love how this conversation has opened up!

[SoBeJe]

I aggree, Julian.

The supporting characters are not worked out well enough. There should have been more. Instead of adding more of it in episode 5, they should have focused on the old ones, for example.

[Resolute]

I would also like it if there are more chapters detailing those things. But I agree with Qiana, your expectations are not realistic and is counterproductive to complain about the development studio that is actually pushing the envelop on making these story based games. Using the journal drawings mechanic to fill things in is a perfectly fine medium ground. Not to mention LIS1 did the exact same thing. THere was lots of character development done with Max's journal, her photos and all the texts on her phone. This is even less a thing in 2 then 1 because Sean throws his phone away.

Also the market scene is a great introduction to those new characters. Sean is a bored teenager who hasn't left the house in weeks and is flirting with the first person he has talked to in months between the ages of 16-25. I don't know how anyone played this scene and then were surprised to be hanging out with this characters at the beginning of the next chapter. Sean was practically ready to jump on a train with them right then, never mind waiting for the police to arrive.

[julian.varanel]

You know...I didn't hate LiS 2, in fact there are some elements of it that I think are quite good. But does that therefore mean that I have to throw out any semblance of objectivity and not critique those parts that didn't work quite so well. Is it a call for all or nothing? I fail to see how it is counterproductive to offer critical insight about something, that, by and large, I enjoyed my time with. A prime example: I think the conversation that Sean has with Karen at the motel is probably one of the best conversations within a video game that I've seen. Are my expectations then to want to have at least one conversation with say...Claire and Stephen or Finn and Cassidy of similar depth and length all that "unrealistic"? I'm not exactly asking for the Witcher 3 version of LiS. I'm really not.

In addition, I've never, in any post I've made on the forum about this game, been anything but objective with my criticism. I've never issued a blanket condemnation of the game, never excoriated it for its inclusion of political perspectives or resorted to personal attacks. I don't do that because I don't think it merits or deserves it. There are many people who post on the forum to complain for the sake of complaining. I am not one of them. I would politely request that you save your disapprobation for them.

[Unacceptable Condition]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von julian.varanel:

As for being "judgey" as you put it, in this instance, I don't judge the character, I judge the writers, who seemed quite content to gate an included piece of lgbt content behind..let's be kind and say "irresponsible behavior" and, in turn, making one of the romance options look like some villainous child manipulator. (Thanks for that, by the way.)

Oh I was being "judgey" in a far more shallow manner. Both Finn and Cassidy look like they constantly smell like a mixture of body odor and weed. If they were friends in real life and you were visiting them, you just know that their apartment would smell of weed and patchouli and there would be copious amounts of drug paraphernalia everywhere. They both have pretty gross looking hair, and absolutely no one can pull off face tattoos imho.

As for your complaint, I totally agree. Gating the protagonist's gay/bi content behind the second most dubious moral choice in the entire game is fairly problematic. The authors wanted Finn to remind the player of Huckleberry Finn, but while Huckleberry Finn is mostly about harmless mischief, LiS2 Finn comes across as being about making choices that actively hurt and manipulate people

[Resolute]

Im not meaning to blast you specifically at all. It is just there is a negative vibe in this forum that 2 has somehow not lived up to 1. I am attempting to point out when people complain about something in 2 that is actually either the same or been improved. Why are we complaining about things that have improved since the first game? This is the case with what you said about the journal. There is less off-screen character development then before. The pot farm group is introduced perfectly in the market scene, not in the journal.

Talking about additional ideas how the story could have gone differently would be fun if it isn't framed as the game being bad or incomplete. For example, with Claire and Stephen you spend most of the episode trying to figure out if you are going to be able to stay there or not. An additional conversation I could imagine would be them saying that Sean is going to have to leave because they will officially register Daniel to start going to school. This would be a realistic conversation since Sean is a fugitive and Daniel is only 9. Do I think the story actually suffers for not having this conversation - no not really.

[julian.varanel]

Well...as for the body cologne called "Sweaty Weed", lmao, I would have to agree. I love how the two of them tease each other about this very fact when you meet them in the market. At least they have self-awareness and a sense of humor about it.

I agree..that's exactly how he comes across in the immediate moment. And you really have to put a number of factors in place to see beyond that initial impression. One of the things that moved me past seeing him as purely exploitative is this:

Finn got Sean the job with Merrill. Now, based on Merrill's conversation with Sean, you know he's NOT down for having Daniel around the farm. How much butt kissing must Finn have had to do to sell Merrill on that one? Obviously, that predates any knowledge of Daniel's power or the notion of the heist.

Now, going purely speculative, why did he go to the trouble of doing all that? I would suspect that he saw in Sean and Daniel a fraternal element that he was very much missing from his life. I think he fell for Sean pretty hard. He flirts with him practically every chance he gets during Ep 3. When Sean got fired and Finn knew that they would be leaving..well..desperate to keep the boys around he comes up with that ill-thought out scheme.

Thing is..you really have to sort through facts and draw conclusions to see that. Otherwise you're left with only the initial impression. That initial impression is what I wasn't too keen on.

[Resolute]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Unacceptable Condition:

Both Finn and Cassidy look like they constantly smell like a mixture of body odor and weed. If they were friends in real life and you were visiting them, you just know that their apartment would smell of weed and patchouli and there would be copious amounts of drug paraphernalia everywhere. They both have pretty gross looking hair, and absolutely no one can pull off face tattoos imho.

Cassidy is self aware. She knows Sean was from the city. It is no accident she jumps in a lake before asking for a kiss.

[julian.varanel]

Thank your for your reply Resolute. I understand the frustrating nature of the forum. Believe me. It's why I parse my words very carefully. And in that spirit, let me be a bit more clear.

It's not that I think that everything in the journal needs to shown in game. Just that there are some specific parts of the journal that I feel should have been shown. Not the entire contents of it. That would have been both unnecessary and a waste of resources.

As for people who say that LiS 2 did not live up to the standard set by 1. Well..I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with them. LOL..I'm going to be uber careful how I phrase this..

In the ways that matter to me the most..graphics, dialogue...I feel like 2 exceeded 1. And if I was forced to replay one of the games, it would have to be 2. I suppose to expect the graphics to be better is probably a given simply based on the leaps that tech takes over time. But dialogue. Yeah, that. That's an element that super important to me in any game I play. For various reasons, to me anyway, the dialogues that you do have, however too short I feel some of the are, just felt...uh..I don't know the right word, ..mature, maybe? Not really sure if that encapsulates what I mean. It'll have to do. Perhaps "denser" is a better word.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to reply.

[SoBeJe]

I really loved the game. I have such a hard crush on the game, so I write here in this forum. I've never done that before. But I really understand the critic regarding the support-characters. They all had potential: Lyla, Brody, the grandparents, Finn, Cassy, Jacob, even Hannah and Penny, Chris, his father, Karen and even this police officer.

I'm particularly sorry for Finn and Cassy. I've said it bevor, I really wish, we could take one of theme with us to Ep 4 and Ep 5. Finn is an underestimated character. The most of the gamers see in him an selfish man.

But:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von julian.varanel:

Finn got Sean the job with Merrill. Now, based on Merrill's conversation with Sean, you know he's NOT down for having Daniel around the farm. How much butt kissing must Finn have had to do to sell Merrill on that one? Obviously, that predates any knowledge of Daniel's power or the notion of the heist.

Now, going purely speculative, why did he go to the trouble of doing all that? I would suspect that he saw in Sean and Daniel a fraternal element that he was very much missing from his life. I think he fell for Sean pretty hard. He flirts with him practically every chance he gets during Ep 3. When Sean got fired and Finn knew that they would be leaving..well..desperate to keep the boys around he comes up with that ill-thought out scheme.

And Cassy is a strong independent young woman. She shouldn't be only the girl that sleept with Sean.