Although not many brothers read the announcements, I still feel that I should say what needs to be said, doing my best and leaving the rest to fate.
Regarding the shortcomings of "Undead realm:Ego", they have already been mentioned in previous announcements and replies to event emails. Mystery Crown makes the following statements:
The crew of "Undead realm:Ego", including the director, screenwriter, is not the same as that of "Back". However, it is indeed a project that I initiated, funded, followed up on, and developed. So, ultimately, the awkwardness of this matter is due to my failure in handling it properly.
Based on the plot performance of "Undead realm:Ego", Mystery Crown will not have any cooperation with its crew for all future horror FMVs.
"Back 2" will be produced by the crew of "Back 1".
During the implementation of "Undead realm:Ego", I already felt the awkwardness, but I couldn't stop it. Because if I stopped, the entire shooting couldn't be completed, and I couldn't afford the loss. That's why I marked the information about the "awkward" plot in previous announcements and even in the prompts at the beginning of the game.
Regarding the acting skills of the actors, in an environment lacking the ground for horror FMV performances and with such performance requirements far from real life, our actors have already tried their best in their performances. For the aspects that are not satisfactory, most of them can be attributed to the budget problem. Most of the shootings could only be done in one take, and there wasn't even a second chance. I personally believe that even if most other well-known FMV actors were to perform horror roles, their performances would be at best the same or even worse. You can criticize the game for being bad and not meeting expectations, but please spare the actors. These actors are very young, some are still in school, and some have just graduated. Moreover, the performance of actors' acting skills mostly depends on the script.
The final statement is that our future horror FMVs will definitely be better than this "Undead realm:Ego". I make this statement here. Although there is no standard for whether it's better or not, since my first FMV, I have at least been able to objectively evaluate my own FMVs, both before and after release. For this "Undead realm:Ego", its advantage is that the entire scene was shot in a completely real abandoned school, which is better than the artificially built villa in "Back". Most of the shooting was done in a one-shot way to pursue a real documentary feel. For example, for the parts like going up and down the stairs that everyone has complained about, since the viewing experience wasn't the best, we will think of other ways to optimize them later. As for the forcibly awkward emotional scenes, the real situation is that in the early stage of the script, I required at least 120 minutes of shooting. Due to the crew team's insufficient expectation of the content, it was found on the last day of shooting that the duration requirement was far from being met. So, the scenes were added temporarily. Regarding the duration, although most brothers are kind-hearted, there are still quite a number of brothers who chose to refund after playing "Back" completely. I don't blame these people. It's just that the duration of my own game didn't meet the requirements of Steam's refund policy.
Finally, I would like to thank the brothers who have always supported me again. As for the experience that this work has brought to you which is not as expected, it can only serve as the motivation for me to optimize my future works. Please look forward to my next FMV.