Intelmission

NO! NO TIMED TEXT! NO NO NO NO NO!

So. We're a secret agent. The action is conveyed to us via what looks like cell phone texting, but isn't actually. I guess it's pretty effective at conveying the sense of dialogue. But it's on timed delivery, which means you have to WAIT AND WAIT AND WAIT if you've been through here before, or else you're pulling scrollback to catch something you missed, or else it's an annoying case of start-and-stop-and-start-and-stop because the text doesn't quite scroll by as fast as you can read. And sometimes there's a timer on the choices which means you had better read fast; and sometimes the screen doesn't scroll all the way to the bottom, thus hiding the final option, which is painful in this case because you have to give the mousewheel nearly a complete spin to move the text up by a mere ten pixels; and sometimes the two happen together so ARGH.

Anyway. We're a secret agent. Our mission is just starting when we spot this other agent who's been a thorn in our side for ages. Then we get ambushed and when we come to, we're tied up back-to-back with that other agent, and the bulk of this story appears to be a long, meandering conversation on a TIMED DELIVERY about our attitude to doing missions and why we became an agent and do we want to be seduced by the other agent and more things that I have no patience for. Bait and switch. We thought this was going to be Ian Fleming but apparently it's Jean-Paul Sartre.

Not to say that a philosophical examination of the self or a romance story couldn't be great with an espionage setting. It absolutely could, and I think the setup here could make for an amazing story. But first, we need to be a bit more focused in the direction of the conversation: it shouldn't feel like we're just discussing any random topic that comes to mind. And second, we need to be upfront about just what sort of game this is going to be: when the introduction sets us up for an exciting tale of danger and derring-do, it's a more than a bit of a letdown to discover that it's really about discussing our feelings. I get that the introduction sequence is important to setting up the situation, so maybe frame it as a flashback after establishing where we are? I would also suggest spicing things up with a few interactive flashbacks to former missions, instead of only hearing about them in conversation.

And please. For the love of God. NO FUCKING TIMED TEXT/INPUT, OKAY? JUST NO.

Breakfast is a vegan breakfast wrap, to go. What, you thought you were going to sit down with real bacon and eggs? Too bad; time is money. Take the wrap and go. NEXT!