Add new Cassette Beasts article about Sunny

src/changelogs/logs/2025/2025-03-28.md

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+date: 2025-03-28T13:33:52+0800
+---
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+* Add new article to [{% cite "Cassette Beasts" %} shrine](/shrines/cassettebeasts/): ["Why I Did Not Mind Sunny Had Only a Minor Role"](/shrines/cassettebeasts/articles/sunny-minor-role/).

src/shrines/cassettebeasts/articles/sunny-minor-role.md

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+articleTitle: Why I Did Not Mind Sunny Had Only a Minor Role
+date: 2025-03-28T13:33:46+0800
+desc: Despite liking the character of Sunny in Cassette Beasts, I did not mind her only had little screen-time in the game.
+tags: cassette beasts articles
+categories: ["cassette beasts"]
+---
+
+On 27 March 2025 in Western time zones and 12 a.m. on 28 March 2025 in my time zone, the 2025 edition of [Cassette Beasts Showcase](https://wiki.cassettebeasts.com/wiki/Cassette_Beasts_Showcase), an annual video presentation in which news and updates about {% cite "Cassette Beasts" %} are shared, was aired on the game's publisher [Raw Fury's YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJe9aRZCc3U). The main highlight of the 2025 Showcase was the announcement of version update 1.8, named the "Sunshine Update", revealing that among other things, Sunny, a fan favourite character will be a new partner character, along with a new story quest involving her.
+
+The reveal of Sunny being promoted from a minor NPC who only appears in a minor side quest to a playable partner character took me by surprise, because Bytten Studio, the developers of {% cite "Cassette Beasts" %} had never hinted at any possibility of adding new partner characters before. In fact, Jay Baylis, the art director of Bytten Studio, had [stated in Bytten Studio's AMA on the r/NintendoSwitch Subreddit on 1 July 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/14nvsiu/comment/jq9hy3n/?context=3) that:
+
+> [...]the current number of partner characters is baked into the design of the game in a number of ways, making it very difficult to organically add new ones in.
+
+Therefore, it speaks of the power of Sunny's popularity among the player base that she became the first new playable character since the game's launch in April 2023. Unsurprisingly, Sunny fans are expressing immense excitement over the news, because wishing Sunny had a larger role in the game, including becoming a partner, has been a common sentiment among Sunny fans, with some fans even expressing disappointment that Sunny only got a brief role in the game, and questioning why.
+
+The reason why Sunny initially had little screen time and content was that she was added late into the game's development and only intended by Bytten Studio as a little side story after Eugene's quest to surprise players. Bytten Studio never intended Sunny to have a huge role or much content, and they did not expect Sunny would become this popular in the player base.
+
+> We believe that a lot of the secret sauce for Cassette Beasts' appeal is in its ability to surprise the player in various ways, so things don't get too predictable. Sunny is a character that I wrote into the game quite late, as I had envisioned her whole sequence of events as being something unexpected and funny that you wouldn't expect happening as a consequence of the questline that proceeds it. Sunny's appearance is, ultimately, just a fun little side story that I cooked up to add some more flavour to the goings-on in Harbourtown. However, it's clear that she's very popular for a character who appears in exactly two cutscenes, which isn't something we entirely expected!
+> — Jay Baylis (u/SamuriFerret). [Comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/14nvsiu/ama_we_are_bytten_studio_the_developers_of/jq9mwtq/) during Bytten Studio's AMA on the r/NintendoSwitch Subreddit. 1 July 2023.
+
+> [...]in hindsight, given her popularity in the community, we all wish we'd given Sunny more screen-time. She was a late, unplanned addition as we neared the release.
+> — Tom Coxon (u/tcoxon). [Comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/1bniroh/comment/kwjb7w4/) during Bytten Studio's AMA on the r/JRPG Subreddit. 26 March 2024.
+
+> Sunny was a late addition to the game as I pitched a short storyline involving the gang rehabilitating a Landkeeper after Eugene's quest. It's very apparent we underestimated how popular she'd turn out to be!
+> — Jay Baylis. [Comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/1bniroh/comment/kwmb4j4/) during Bytten Studio's AMA on the r/JRPG Subreddit. 26 March 2024.
+
+Questions about Sunny only getting a minor role were asked by players frequently enough that I even compiled the developers' response in [my {% cite "Cassette Beasts" %} shrine's Facts page](/shrines/cassettebeasts/facts/), so I can link to it whenever I see someone asked the same questions about Sunny. Now that Sunny would become a partner character, meaning thankfully questions and complaints about Sunny's minor role could finally stop, I have removed those form the Facts page, but not before [saving the page to the Internet Archive](https://web.archive.org/web/20250120094054/https://leilukin.com/shrines/cassettebeasts/facts/#sunnys-lack-of-screen-time-and-content) for reference.
+
+I like Sunny too, as I appreciate the concept of a character getting deprogrammed from capitalism and starting a new life beyond capitalism, which makes a good addition to {% cite "Cassette Beasts" %}'s leftist messages. In fact, Sunny's in-game character title, which can be seen if she appears as an opponent in Magikrab's Gauntlet, is "Recovering Capitalist". However, to be honest, I had always been fine with Sunny only having a minor role in the game, and I did not care as much as other Sunny fans did about the idea of her becoming a partner character.
+
+Why? The main reason is that it would not be a poor game design in terms of the game's pacing. Sunny only shows up after you completed the personal questline of Eugene, one of the partner characters available since the game's launch. Eugene's personal quest is already rather infamous for taking longer than every other base game partner character's quest to complete, as Eugene's quest requires the player to explore the majority of New Wirral, the main setting of {% cite "Cassette Beasts" %}, to track down and clear the Landkeeper Offices all over the map. This is not helped by the fact that you need to complete a partner's personal quest before you can raise your relationship level with them, so when you finally complete Eugene's quest, you may feel that you only have little time left to raise Eugene's relationship level with you before facing the final boss of the game.
+
+Therefore, the idea of making Sunny a partner character means having a partner locked behind another partner's questline that already took up a huge chunk of the game to complete. Making Sunny a partner in the base game would make it feel like you only have little time to spend with Sunny before facing the final boss of the game.
+
+I believed that if Sunny were to become a partner character, making her unlocked as a partner in the post-game would be better than doing so in the base game. Fortunately, this appears to be Bytten Studio's approach for making Sunny a partner character in the "Sunshine Update", as revealed in [their Steam post announcing the content update](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1321440/view/543351239572719532):
+
+> Sunny's quest will be available to those who have finished the base game's story
+
+Learning that Sunny was a late addition to the game during the game's development only cemented my feelings that I was fine with Sunny having little screen time in the game. To be honest, if I were the developers, I would not expect a minor NPC I added to my game only at the last minute to become this popular with the players either.
+
+With all that being said, I am looking forward to recruiting Sunny as a partner and exploring her story more in the "Sunshine Update". Partner characters are a major appeal of {% cite "Cassette Beasts" %} to me, so I welcome more content updates involving partner characters.