Progress Report

Took a couple of days to get back to this, been dealing with a touch of insomnia and some family obligations, but tonight, I've finally concluded IntroDay1x2R (the new extended station sequence) which is with the team for review and testing at present. The final cut weighs in at a mighty 417 lines and 4002 words - for contrast, the equivalent scene in the legacy intro was 46 lines and 587 words. 

The most significant change here is that Axel waits at the station with Adrian, and Diego is very... very late. We get the two on screen together in the first day, and a ton of joyous banter and bickering as one would hope! This sequence is also packed full of little details and 'seeds' laid for later, but most importantly, I think it's a wonderfully strong sequence that further establishes these two characters and Adrian's relationship with them both. In particular, Adrian having an interest in either already feels perfectly viable and feels organic given their dynamic.

Assuming there are no snags in the usual review and testing stages, we hope to release these builds within the next day or two. This will coincide with the public debut of the new intro concluding at the end of the train sequence. This build includes a few other small improvements which will appear on both channels, such as the new hilltop background being implemented, the bonus materials gallery screen now having the updated design, a change to the 1x1R Title Screen section (This now occurs in reverse to how it did before, so we see Adrian in the train at first, then zoom in through the window and display the logo. The animation has been refined as well with an acceleration curve and a similar more subtle animation now also occurring on the background at the same time.) We've also fixed a few minor issues, slightly reduced the 'click' on advance volume, fixed some Day 1 illustration and background artifacts, and more.

By no means an enormous set of changes in this update, but right now we're focusing on a few faster, smaller releases to get our new release schedule off on the right foot!