Addressing the part “This is the level he could hit with everyone if he redid all of the character portraits again, but that ain’t happening because the game needs to come out this decade”:
I’ve once seen a solution in Eldritch Academy VN game (steam case as Steam is the purpose platform for Forks) that the game was fully released with v1 and then in spare time slowly reworked to v2 and after almost 3 years it got its sprites fully reworked to new artstyle in v3. Maybe this is the way to go? Focus on finishing the game now with developing art skills through it but once it’s released, start slow preparations of reworking sprites into new visual level. This would put no haste to anyone as it could last even few years as Eldritch Academy example shows, however someday it eventually would have been finished.
6 Likes