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Donovan Keegan. Who is he?



The post today featuring none other than Don. Shown above is the one of the versions of his sprite for BtHr. (Multiple expressions in the works!)

This lad has had quite the journey, becoming the game's most disliked character over the course of two years. For context, I started running a survey with the 0.2 release of the original BEYOND THE HARBOR, and my favorite category to keep track of (after the long-form written criticism!) is the least popular character poll. While the favorite character would change quite often (with Trevor holding favor in BTH, and JC winning hearts in BtHr), the least popular character poll has been trending in one particular direction, Don.

This hyena was likely at his most popular when he was first shown at the end of 0.2.

The survey at the time was probably the most balanced it had ever been.

And then, things changed forever after BTH 0.3 released.

People finally got to spend some time with this guy and learn about him. And they weren't happy.

I got quite a few comments about Don in particular, people complaining about his attitude, how he treated all of the other characters, especially how he treated Ollie. Had Ollie done something to justify being treated this way? Their story continues in BEYOND the HARBOR r.

BtHr chapters one and two didn't include surveys. It was a pretty turbulent time for development, a lot of assets were still in early development, so even if the story had all been planned from the get-go, we still had a lot of work to do fleshing everything out. Don doesn't make an appearance in chapter one (aside from being mentioned by name a few times), though something tells me he still would have ranked the lowest!

We now arrive at BtHr chapter two, and don makes... Some sort of appearance.

If only Ollie knew at that point what had awaited him.

Chapter three didn't feature Don, but it DID feature a survey! (oh, and Trevor was there too, I guess.)

As for the survey (making a triumphant return with the most results yet!), Don scored the lowest he ever had!

Over half of the players who voted in this one said that he was their least favorite character.

Don finally makes his full reappearance in BtHr chapter four, the last member of the main cast to do so.

Something is certainly.. different... about him this time.

Survey results are still early of course, but things still aren't looking up for this guy.


What kind of future does he have? Is this hyena destined to always get the short end of the stick?

Development of chapter five has been going well, so, hopefully soon, you can learn a bit more about this enigmatic fellow.

That's all I have for you now, thank you as always for your reading!
Please consider supporting the development of the game through patreon, you could have seen this post one week ago (as well as some additional new pictures of Don) if you had!

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Comments

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There always was too many gaps, and there still are too many gaps.  In both cases the VN has hardly started and no real developments made past introductions.  If it weren't for his attitude I would like Don, but there was always a feeling that there was something important/serious behind it, some goodish reason.  There is much open ended and unexplained, somehow things have to start linking up, even if done in the way of making us come to our own conclusions.

(+2)

Personally yeah, I wasn't happy with his first itteration for much of the reasons you stated. I don't think I've seen enough of him yet to form a conclusive opinion, so I'll reserve judgements especially since all character relationships are overturned.


That said, I do feel seriously bad for the new take on Ollie :(