After spending almost a year remaking Something’s In The Air as Something’s In The Air Redux, I have made some major changes to the game that are probably not that obvious if you play them separately.

Here is a brief, mostly spoiler free run down of the differences between the two games:

Improvements with Graphics

One of the biggest is the graphics. While the latest version of SITA had 1920×1080 graphics the majority of the images were 1280×720 pictures blown up to 1080p. Redux is redone in true 1920×1080 graphics, rendered with Poser 12 Superfly graphics. Many new sets like Ariane’s kitchen, living room, backyard, bedroom, pool area, lingerie store, fancy restaurant, parking garage and amusement park have been borrowed from Date Ariane Remastered, and places that use old sets like the Rachel’s condo, Cafe bar, Jim’s gym, convention area, strip club, computer center, Paula’s office and lab, convenience store, daytime lake beach have improved lighting and textures. There are a handful of original sets too like the player’s living room.

The biggest non-graphic change was the addition of a player avatar, and there are two: one male and one female, which as this post proves, I didn’t think it was possible without a huge rewrite, and I did the rewrite.

Much of the game play mechanics has changed because of this change. The game keeps track of the players dress status and mood and changes the avatar as appropriate. Places where you can see the player’s hands and arms will change with the gender of the player and some scenes change depending on which gender you are playing. All achievements are obtainable with either gender, so if you want to stick with one there is never a reason to change, but changing is as easy as clicking “character” on the main menu.

There is also a big quality of life change: built in paths (aka walkthroughs) that help you reach stuff that is difficult to reach by guessing. These are built into the game via the help menu and are a much improved substitute to going online to find walkthroughs (which still exist) and switching back and forth between screens to play.

What they have in common

Both consist of 25 path stories 10 featuring Ariane, 10 featuring Rachel, and one each featuring Wendy, Veronica, Bonnie, Stacy, and Paula. Images have been updated in the new game, and lines have been rewritten, but the plot of these 25 paths have not changed much. Most of the puzzles have the same solution as before.

The central mystery about why it rains on some dates and not others is still present, and its solution is the same. A lot of the cultural references, like the Paula’s salute to the TV show “Fringe” are still there even though the show ended over a decade ago. Still a great show by the way.

The Character Notebooks have remained, which along with completed endings, is the game’s “achievement” method.

What was cut in Redux

The biggest change was the removal of the introduction that asked you to select what happened in Date Ariane so the game would generate with that in mind. The most often selected option was multiple dates with Ariane, which Redux more or less follows by default.

There are places in Redux where you can select if you know Rebecca or not, or if you and Ariane ever had sex before. These mostly are for the benefit of new players, so that if someone is playing SITAR first and never played DAR before, they will not get lost. I assumed as I wrote it, that there would be players in that situation, so it is explained up front that the player dated Ariane before, but I removed anything that depends on what happened.

Gone is the introduction where you call Ariane, replaced by quick text messages, gone is the fancy restaurant bar where Stacy dumps wine on Ariane’s new dress, gone is the flashback scene where you review what happened on the last date. You text an invite to Ariane, you pick her up and go to the Drive-N-Dine, and you go to the theater afterwards, a much simpler flow of events, since the branching stories starts at the theater.

The Alarm Clock scene was also removed. This is where you used to decide what to do with your day: Call Ariane (Ariane dates), go to the gym (Rachel Dates), sleep in (go to a baseball game then meet Bonnie or Veronica), play MMORPG (Paula ending).

This means that a video game encounter with a Blue skinned Medusa and going to a baseball game have been removed.

Also removed are the epilogues where you select the woman to follow resulting in new encounters with Ariane, Rachel, Bonnie, Wendy, or Paula. The only one that was really interesting was the Ariane epilogue, and that has pretty much turned into the sequel Ariane in Paradise so the epilogue is unnecessary.

What has been added

Well to start with the player alarm clock has been replaced by the player’s living room, and you can play as either a male or female, with different versions of the story depending on your choice.

The alarm clock menu has been replaced by the Gym menu. Go to yoga to meet Ariane, go jogging to get invited to the bar where you meet Rachel, Stacy, Bonnie, and Veronica, or get a workout from Wendy, to get to the two Wendy endings.

The “flashback” section has been changed from talking about events from the last game to showing graphically events in the conversations. This is a way to enhance long conversation scenes like at the Drive-N-Dine or at the Ice Cream Parlor. If you ask Ariane about her day, she will discuss a lot of cut content in flashback form rather than a Date Ariane Remastered review.

The thunderstorm mystery which used to be the final mystery, is now the first of three big mysteries, each with additional content. There is now a 26th path in the game where you meet Wendy and Rebecca, and possibly spend the night depending on what gender you play as.

And if that is not enough new content, the sequel game Rachel Meets Ariane has been remastered and added to Redux as bonus content, and events in the story have been integrated into the character notebooks, so as to make it all one big game.

The original 4th edition game was a 311 MB download, the Redux is 623 MB download, so more than twice as big.