Chasing Beth

Chasing Beth (CB) is the sixth game set in the Elsaverse, and the first one in the saga's second story arc. It's also the first game in the Elsaverse originally made with the Ren'Py game engine and it was released for Tora Productions' patrons on December 15, 2021, before becoming available to the general public one day later. Chasing Beth represents yet another turn in Tora Productions' style, simplifying the gameplay elements and removing non-canon paths to give more weight to the intended narrative, intertwining two main storylines that run in parallel until the climax scene, and presenting an already established couple as the main protagonists of the romance part of the game: in CB, players are not asked to try and start a relationship with a girl, but to try and overcome a struggling point in their on-going relationship.

Chasing Beth takes place several months after the events depicted in Saving Chloe (2018) and Darkness Falls (2018-2019), and inmediately after the short story Elsaverse: Transitions (2020-2021) or even colliding with its final episodes.

Premise
Players take on the role of Joel Dresden, a journalist who is suffering from PTSD due to being injured in a war and gets the assignment to write about a vigilante that has started to act in Sangrive. Suspecting this vigilante may have something to do with his own past, Joel tries to find this person and not only for professional reasons, while sorting out his struggling relationship with Serena... and his mental singularities as well.

Plot Summary
Despite being in a relationship with Serena for some months now, Joel is yet to tell her about the reasons for his PTSD: a critical moment during the war he was covering as a reporter when the unit he was embedded with was attacked and he almost died. Now, she's also suffering from the physical consequences of a traffic accident and their relationship is in a tough spot. Joel's empathy and his special ability to see the human side of stories are helping him to deal with these difficult times: in his mind, he sees and hears Tanya and Tony, a happily married couple that gives him lots of solid tips about human behavior and relationships when he asks them. What he thinks is a coping mechanism created by his mind to deal with the fact that he almost died in the war is allowing him to make ends meet, as he now writes a popular advice column for a local newspaper, the "Sangrive Times", that readers think is actually written by those Tanya and Tony, or 'T&T'.

One day, his editor Hanne chooses him to write about the vigilante that has started to act in the city, hoping for Joel to focus on this guy's most personal side; when Joel hears that the vigilante is using 'Tainted Arrow' as a nickname, he quickly links that name with the chopper pilot who saved him in the war, as 'Tainted Arrow' was precisely her callsign. With Serena's help, Joel makes an effort to recall his traumatic experience in the war, but he never heard the real name of his savior, so he gets in contact with one of the soldiers who accompanied him back then, named Zach Sinclair. Zach agrees to help Joel and search for the pilot's real name, while also offering his wife Abigale's services as a therapist to help Joel deal with his PTSD.

Meanwhile, Serena gets a phone call from Paul, her former co-worker and best friend, and also the man she was secretly in love with for more than ten years. She never told him about her feelings because he was still obsessed with his teenage love, Chloe Reyes; as Serena feared, when Paul finally managed to get back with Chloe some months ago, he left his job at the spot just to be with her girlfriend, and they haven't talked ever since. Serena has been trying to move on and has found a perfect match in Joel, but now that Paul informs her that he is going to marry Chloe, she realizes she is losing him also as a friend. Conflicted about her feelings, Serena gives Joel permission to dump her, but he chooses to stay and support her. However, things get more complicated when Joel receives a message from Paul, addressed to his advice column, in which Paul confesses he always felt something for Serena too and is also conflicted about his feelings. Joel tells Serena about Paul's doubts and suggests that they should meet to speak up their hearts and clear things out; much to Joel's and Chloe's relief, in that meeting Paul and Serena agree that now they both love their current partners too much and want to be with them, although they also miss the time they used to spend together at work and agree to see each other regularly to preserve their friendship.

While patching up his relationship with Serena, Joel has learned that 'Tainted Arrow' real name is Beth Lagrange, and he is trying to follow her actions against the local street gangs not only to write about her but also to properly thank her for saving him back at the war. Joel gets some help from Michelle Won, a detective from the Sangrive Police Department who is working on the case, and who tells him that the way his ability to see the human side of stories seemed to improve a lot during his college years is not exactly an unheard story in Sangrive. Eventually, Joel promises Won to keep her informed about the vigilante's whereabouts, as he is convinced that the detective actually wants to help her. However, Joel is also worried about his mental health, as he has been noticing some weird reactions from Tanya and Tony in his mind: they acted as if they already knew Detective Won and Chloe Reyes, seeming quite affected by it despite the fact that he had never met those women before.

In parallel with Joel's inquiries, Beth Lagrange has been recording a memorial video with her best friend and casual lover, Emily, in which she goes through the most important events in her life: from the martial arts lessons she took as a child and how she fell in love at first sight with helicopters, to her time at the war and the exact moment in which she realized she has kind of a superpower that lets her overcharge her senses and react quicker to stimuli as if time is moving in slow motion. Nowadays, Beth is fighting crime as a vigilante because it helps her to deal with her own traumatic experience at the war, and her friend Emily is helping her in her missions, as she has an unnatural ability too: Emily can heal other people's wounds and injuries just by imposing her hands on them, at the price of having to experience the pain of those injuries for a few hours.

One evening, Joel gets to a park where Beth is expected to strike next, watching how she takes down several gang bangers with her amazing fighting skills before the gang leader shoots her. Shocked by the gunshot, Joel loses his consciousness and sees Tanya and Tony trying to make him react while telling him that their actual names are Tatiana and Anthony Blackhawk and that they are not exactly a product of his troubled mind. Encouraged by them, Joel comes to his senses and charges against the gunman, saving Beth's life; then, he watches dumbfounded how Emily magically heals her friend. Joel tries to take the girls to Beth's home, but detectives Michelle Won and Nathaniel Blake are already there, watching the memorial video, and he decides to bring them to the safety of his own home instead, where Serena doesn't seem impressed when she learns about Beth's and Emily's powers, as it happens that she already knew some people with powers too.

During that night, Serena and Emily talk to each other and Emily heals Serena's injuries from the car crash, absorbing her pain; then, in the morning, the four of them talk with Detective Won and Beth decides to put her vigilante career to an end, with Joel agreeing to write a fake article about her death in which he states that she was just an ordinary woman with no supernatural powers, as Won suggested to protect Beth. Then, Joel talks internally with Tanya and Tony, who tell him that he is actually a medium with the ability to talk with the dead, as long as they are from a certain parallel world like themselves: when they died, their souls found Joel's mind while he was fighting for his life after being saved by Beth, and they have been living there ever since. When she was alive, Tatiana Blackhawk had the power to get strategic insight into people's feelings, and Anthony's power allowed him to amplify other people's powers, which explains why they can communicate so easily with Joel and why Tanya/Tatiana's tips are always on point; Joel's ability to see the human side of stories is not a power on itself but a byproduct of his connection with dead people. Now that Joel knows the truth, they ask him to get some info about their children, Trisha and Michael Blackhawk, as they fear that Trisha could be in some danger.

Achievements
Unlike previous games, Chasing Beth doesn't have an achievement system as such. However, there are several checkpoints that players must pass to progress the story, with a different T&T scene triggering when players fail. Those failure scenes have a dedicated gallery and are automatically unlocked there when players pass the checkpoints; since a bonus scene is unlocked by watching all of them, they can be listed as Achievements:


 * "Morning": Treat Serena with the right amount of sensitivity and non-sexual intimacy when you wake up.
 * "Hanne": Be professional around your boss, Hanne.
 * "Flashback": Trust Serena with your traumatic past and your current assignment.
 * "Evening": Support Serena through her down moment.
 * "Confession": Choose to stay with Serena after her confession about Paul.
 * "Eve": Be consistent when talking to Eve at the precinct (either professional or friendly).
 * "Psych1": Talk about yourself in the therapy session with Abigale Sinclair.
 * "Psych2": Tell Abigale about what you saw when you were injured at the war.
 * "Snakes": Be calm and respectful when talking to the Snakes' gang bangers.

After watching all of the nine T&T scenes, either by failing the in-game checkpoints or by watching them on the T&T Help Scene Gallery, a bonus sex scene with Tanya and Tony is unlocked in the Sex Scene Gallery.

Post-credits Scene
Another difference from other games in the saga is that in Chasing Beth, the post-credit scene is not a scene but a visual short story titled Stand Up. In this story, Tanya's and Tony's son, Michael Blackhawk, is coming back to Sangrive after spending some time away. He's perfectly aware of powers' existence and quickly notices that a woman in the street is a Distractor who can draw others' attention to herself. What he doesn't know is that this woman is called Maria and she is the stripper Charles Reyes convinced to join him in Elsaverse: Transitions (2020-2021); since she is seriously attractive and he's not immune to her power, Michael agrees to help her and finds himself caught in the trap set by Charles, who asks him to join his squad of gifted people too, claiming that the Blackhawk family is in debt with the Reyes family. Shocked by that claim, since that alleged debt had been paid with the death of Michael's parents, Michael refuses to join him and Charles has to hastily run away from the apartment as detectives Blake and Won show up at the door looking for him. After failing to catch Charles, Won is surprised to see Michael there, and it's hinted they've been a couple in the past or at least had a very close relationship that ended poorly, although she doesn't resent him and he seems to still feel something for her. During their private conversation, Won talk about powers and ask Michael if he has one, and Michael nods.

Bonus Scenes
Another singularity of Chasing Beth is that it has two bonus scenes and not just one as the rest of the games set in the Elsaverse. Both scenes are of a sexual nature.

The first bonus scene is automatically unlocked in the Sex Scene Gallery after completing the game, and it shows a foursome sex session with Joel, Serena, Beth, and Emily. Storywise, the scene just follows up on the flirting between Emily and Serena, and also on the challenge that Beth came up with while in the war to not have sex with anyone who hasn't beaten her in unarmed combat. It also shows Serena's first anal sex experience.

The second bonus scene is unlocked by watching all of the nine Tanya and Tony help scenes, either by failing the in-game checkpoints or by watching those scenes in their dedicated gallery. This bonus scene is accessed from the Sex Scenes Gallery and it's a flashback in which Tanya and Tony, or Tatiana and Anthony, talk about settling down in this realm and having their children in Sangrive. From their conversation and the setting, it's hinted that they were staying at the first hotel Morland Reyes bought in the city, shortly after its acquisition, and that they were helping him somehow, although they didn't fully trust him. It can also be inferred that their first child was begeted that night.

Sex Scenes
Chasing Beth contains up to 9 sex scenes, although 2 of them are more like short glimpses of a scene, and another pair are extra scenes that get unlocked after completing the game and watching all of the T&T Help scenes and are only accessible from the game's gallery.