Episode 8 - Progress Report #1

Hey everyone

First progress report for the new season 🥳! I keep counting upwards with the episode numbers, so next episode is still called Episode 8, despite being the first one of a new season.

So, how far along am I? In short: The storyboarding is complete, meaning the outline of the story for this episode is done. And I am currently in the middle of writing the episode. I'd guess I am about 70% done with the first draft. Season 2 will start after a small (3 days) time skip, and Episode 8 will span 4 in-game days. I'm in the middle of writing Day 3 now. As usual, I'll do renders only when I'm done with writing, so I haven't started with that.

Apart from storyboarding this coming episode, I also took some time to outline the rest of the whole story a bit more. My main goal was to see how many more episodes are needed, and in turn how many more seasons are there going to be. I currently tend towards Season 2 being the final one, but there is still a lot of ground to cover, so I won't make a final decision on that just yet. I will likely have a clearer idea after 2-3 episodes are done for Season 2. I am the kind of writer who does their best work with a lot of flexibility and loose constraints, so sometimes small ideas grow rather large in the end. I'm fine with having a second season that is a bit bigger than the first one, but I might split it in two if the number of episodes gets too big. The most important thing for me is to neither rush to the end, nor to drag it out more than necessary (even though I'm sure some of you would welcome a dozen more seasons of EI 😅). Anyways, it's still a bit too early to tell, so let's come back to it after a few more episodes are done!

The end of Season 1 was also the perfect time to take a good look at the game, and review the things that have worked well so far, the things that I can improve, and where I should put the focus next. I want to mention two points (among others) that I plan to put extra care towards for Season 2:

• I want to change how I write sex scenes a bit. And with "how" I mostly mean how I tackle them during the writing/rendering process. As I said, I write the whole script first before I start doing renders. This includes many placeholder lines where I basically write notes to myself for when I'm testing the render-less early build, and when I'm doing renders later. These usually describe things that aren't mentioned in text later, such as where we are in the scene, who is there, what are they wearing, or smaller things that happen only visually (a glance, a gesture, something in the background, ...), and so on. Now when it comes to sex scenes, I also put placeholders in there, but they are usually pretty generic (e.g. which position are we in). The final in-game text is usually a mix of the narrator voice that describes what Ashe is feeling, maybe some dirty talk, and a lot of Ooohs and Aaahs. When I write the draft, I leave out a lot of the smaller details, and come up with them when I do the renders. Now because I've done renders for sex scenes the same way that I've done renders for all the other scenes, (which is basically going line by line of my script), sometimes sex scenes felt a bit short. So what I want to do, is basically factor in some more breathing room when writing sex scenes, to give me more space when I do renders. How should that translate to the final game? Sex scenes should feel less rushed and a bit slower, with more focus on just visuals at times. That doesn't mean that there will be less text in the sex scenes, but hopefully just some more "filler" visuals to make those scenes a bit more fulfilling. Renders for sex scenes are among the most time-consuming though, so don't expect insane changes here, I don't want development times to bloat too much either.

• The second thing I want to focus on during Season 2 concerns new side characters. Each of the previous episodes introduced many new characters, who all had/have their roles to play. For the next season, I do want to focus mostly on the cast we already have though. There will be new additions still, but I want to limit those to characters who are critical to the story, or who neatly fit into the scenes that are already planned. What I want to avoid, is introducing new characters who feel like a side quest or full detour from the rest of the plot. So, there will be 3 new characters coming into play in Episode 8. All of them are necessary for different reasons:

  • The first one is going to play an important role in one of the main plots in Season 2. She's been in the works for a long time, now's the time to make her appearance.

  • The second character was created during the storyboarding for Episode 8. I didn't know beforehand how she'd turn out, but I knew I needed a specific character for another big plotline in Season 2. Writing her has been SO fun, I hope y'all will like her as much as I do.

  • And the third one isn't actually a new character, just someone who's only been mentioned so far, and hasn't appeared on screen yet. Maybe you can guess who it is?

There are some more things I want to tell you about the direction of the story and what you can expect, especially in terms of the romantic relationships, but this wall of text is already getting too big again. I'll save it for next week 🙂.

My current goal is to finish writing the first draft of Episode 8 before the Season 1 Steam release on the 25th (Wishlist here), then take a couple days to focus on what will likely be a hectic release. After that I'll review and rewrite the draft, and then start doing character models, locations and renders maybe around the second week of September. And I know... people want a release date for the next episode. You need to be patient with me, alright? I'll give you something concrete as soon as I know. Earliest possible date I could see for now is December, but might as well be later.

❤️ Thank you all for your support! Enjoy your weekend! ❤️