User blog:Shadow8411/A More Realistic Version of The Freshman

The Freshman series was one of the original series and by far the biggest. Spanning 8 books from The Freshman, Book 1 all the way up to The Senior, as well as numerous specials, it was a cash cow for Pixelberry. However, it was released during a time when Pixelberry were finding their feet. Things such as the ability to choose your gender (introduced in Endless Summer, sexuality (introduced in The Elementalists), which love interest you would like to spend time with (introduced in Open Heart, I think), etc. weren't present back then. If Pixelberry are going to release another college-based series in the future (one grounded in reality, not a fantasy one like The Elementalists), they should consider some things that would make it realistic. Also, these things may apply to other books as well, but mainly a series like this. This list will be updated over time.


 * Customizable gender and sexuality, with acknowledgement. The closest we got to this was in The Elementalists, where we could choose to be either male or female and be into guys, girls, both or neither. However, it would be more realistic if there was more acknowledgement of our character's identity (besides switching a few words around).
 * Love interests identities: While many people prefer gender-of-choice books, some don't because not having a fixed gender protagonist means that the story and dialogue is often neutralised. Also, every love interest is available regardless of our gender, which isn't even questioned most of the time (with a few exceptions). To make things more realistic, each potential love interest should have their own sexuality. Some would be into guys, some would be into girls and some would be into both. There may even be a character who is asexual but not aromantic, meaning that they could be pursued if the player enjoyed romance but didn't mind being without sex scenes. This would also mean that some love interests would be unavailable to specific genders (the concept of flirting with someone who isn't interested in that way has only been addressed once in High School Story, if a male MC flirts with Brian).
 * Choice of subject and level of study. Despite being based around college life, studying barely came up at all until near the end of The Freshman series and the subject our MC majored in was fixed (we could choose an area of expertise, though that didn't affect much), and the MC graduated no matter what. In a potential new series, we should be able to choose our subject and the people we get closer to as a result (much like how we choose was club to join in High School Story) and decide how much or little time we want to invest in our studies (like in Ride or Die).
 * Relationship System. Much like the one in Endless Summer, this could be very fitting in a college environment. They made a good start in The Freshman with the "relationship improved/damaged" and ""confidence improved" pop-ups, but the former didn't really affect the story and the latter's main purpose was to get you gifts from various people if you raised their confidence high enough that were mostly cosmetic. Even if the relationship system boils down to the same "relationship improved/damaged" pop-ups at The Freshman, they should still affect dialogue more, if nothing else.