What were some of the original storyline plans?

[Davzz]

Looking through the dedicated updates thread, I noticed stuff like how in the original storyline Johan and Sazabi would have went to Sorceria and Kevin would have a different purpose etc.

So I was wondering if RCX could take the time to write some of his original plans in greater detail because I'm curious as to what could have been.

[RazorclawX]

It didn't go much farther than the outline stage, really.

The most important thing to know is in my initial outline, Kurumi didn't exist. Any and all events pertaining to Kurumi also did not exist, which means she isn't so much of a character replacement as an entirely new addition. Therefore only 2 different versions of Book 6 adventures were planned: Hikaru and Shizuka.

In any case, Sorceria was set up so when Hikaru and Shizuka go to a district, they would meet one other character. It went as follows:

Hikaru
West: Nekurow
East: Johan
South: Zule
North: Six (later Ingram)

Shizuka
West: Scaldar
East: Sazabi
South: Yue Fang
North: Abolisher

The playable District Governors Braddle and Veraft were added at a later date when I was rearranging everything. Both of them existed in the outline, but they weren't playable. Ingram was always meant to be playable.

When adding Kurumi to the mix I determined that I had too many characters going to Sorceria, so I picked the characters that needed to go the least and left them behind. Or rather, characters I could end their arcs without having them go to the city. The only suitable characters were Johan and Sazabi.

With Sazabi I spent Book 5 giving him a better reason for him not to go, although, to be honest, he really didn't have a reason to go, either. Sazabi was one of those characters that didn't really have a good arc going for him, nor did he have a decent motivation for getting himself involved. Of all the 'main' heroes, he was perhaps the least useful storywise (and lets face it, he shouldn't be on the same side as Scaldar) as he turned out more like a diplomat than anything.

For Johan it was much easier, because it made more sense. As a hero that wears his heart on his sleeve, he's also the one most likely to defy authority and do what he thinks is right. He knows he's not the one that's going to save the world, so he's going to do his part and make sure that hero gets there. Functionally, if he went to Sorceria, it would come down to much the same thing there. He's like the opposite of Kurumi in that regard.


More later.

[Sokaaa]

Thanks RCX 

Also, I feel that Hokuto's role kind of reversed in book 6. She was telling Shizuka and Hikaru that their fight is inevitable during almost all the books. However now she tells them that they should defy their fates and not fight. And since you mentioned Kurumi not being involved at that stage I was wondering what Hokuto's role was, and what would have happened in the fight between Hikaru and Shizuka. Was Hikaru really meant to deeat Shizuka and distroy himself in the process?

Thank you very much for answering our "what would have happened if" questions btw  :)

[RazorclawX]

At first I was going to leave that up to the player. In my original plans the player would choose either Hikaru or Shizuka, and do their best to defeat the other. Then you use only that hero for the rest of the campaign against the remaining bosses.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I had to make Shizuka win. I already gave Hikaru a shot at that all the way back in Book 1 (granted, Shizuka wasn't going all-out then), but I wanted to make a point that no matter how good Hikaru is, Shizuka is still stronger than he is. In addition to that I figured it was the logical progression given how Shizuka was reluctant to use her full strength against him (based on her desire to protect him), but by then she decided to put aside her feelings about the matter because she knew she couldn't let him go ahead. In a way it's still protecting him.

And yeah, that did affect how the ending played out significantly. If Hikaru won he would've got eaten by the Black Pearl (this is what Hokuto was talking about). The current ending is pretty much how it would turn out if Shizuka won.

Hokuto's role is pretty much unchanged. Her main goal is to get Hikaru and Shizuka to stop fighting each other; she's the only one that knows how many times they've gone through the same dream, and every time they fought each other. Well, her main goal as pertains to the campaign, that is... her actual main goal is to hit it in the sack with both of them. Hikaru doesn't know that, and he still treats her nicely. Shizuka, however, does know that, and treats her extremely rude for it.

I haven't even gotten to how Kurumi changed everything yet (which is for another time, it's a long one), but at one point I was going to have her just shoot Hokuto no matter what.

[RazorclawX]

Kurumi came about because I was dissatisfied with the way Kasumi was turning out.

Ultimately I don't remember what I was originally going to do with Kasumi, but the basic gist of it was this: Kasumi is a naive idiot mentally living out everything in a fantasy world, with a dissociation for what she was doing and without really understanding that she could hurt people by what she was doing. Shizuka would take her on and try to straighten her out (some of this can still be seen in Book 3), ultimately leading up to some point in an indeterminate future where Kasumi would inadvertently betray her to the Dragon Slayers (through either action or inaction, this wasn't set in stone). At that point Shizuka would either hunt her down or forgive her.

So at some point during the development of Book 3, I thought about it for a while and decided I made a character I really disliked, and I couldn't stand to keep writing her that way. So I sought to replace her with one of her fellow ninjas, Kurumi, who had a rather indeterminate role in the story and no history at all (in fact, she was meant to be another one-shot ninja villain like Kotetsu and Kagero). And in spite of her lowly origins I took a liking to the character because of how her duel with Shizuka panned out, so I decided to give her a shot at the spot Kasumi was occupying. Shizuka has Mizuki as a mentor-type figure and confidant (this probably doesn't really show in the campaign); I saw a common ground where Shizuka could provide that role for Kurumi in turn, and in a better manner than Shizuka would with Kasumi, as Shizuka would always look down on her and disrespect her without hesitation.

As a complete nobody, I could do whatever I wanted with her. In Book 4, instead of Kasumi doing the betrayal, I had them both do it-- Kurumi involuntarily, Kasumi on purpose; I think that was the point I decided to make Kasumi a Dragon Slayer. The Alice in Wonderland motif also started here after I was reading the original story, and from that was born her connection to Hikaru-- which in turn now provided a reason for Hokuto to be jealous of her (in an unused subplot Hokuto would try to do a soul possession of Kurumi's body, which eventually moved to Nara's role instead; Kurumi would tell Hokuto she's a fucked up loon for that, but I decided not to go there). Now Kurumi has a Big Brother-type figure in addition to a Big Sister, which made some kind of sense to me at the time because Kurumi would be looking toward someone stronger than her to prop her up in times of trouble.

However, now Kurumi has a connection to two of the leads, and now she needed to go to the city. About that time I looked at the Heroes that were going to the city, and I determined there were too many of them going, so I tried to prune as many as I could (and I could only prune two of them). And then, how about settle the long-foreshadowed dramatic irony by making this complete nobody the one who breaks it up? Perhaps make her stand on her own? In a way, this is what I wanted to do with Kasumi to begin with, and Kurumi somehow organically fit her way into the same role.

Kurumi is a nobody. She's the person you don't expect. She's the person who wants to become better than themselves. She's the normal person rising up to the challenge. She's the one who, even for a brief moment, gets to be the hero.

[Rui]

That is very interesting, RazorclawX.

Spoiler

I would never have thought of Kurumi, it was a big surprise when she arrived and took the initiatives.

[Sokaaa]

I have to agree with Rui, Kurumi was the biggest twist since even at the end of book 4 and perhaps in book 5 I still felt as if she was just a sidecharacter, yet you really got her character rise up to the same limportance as Shizu and Hikaru was.

we <3 Wos! thank you again for all the great work you done for us! 

[Sokaaa]

I was wondering if Bannon had any other roles besides that one level where you actually play him then dying by the hands of Kagero and later" returning " just to aid Sazabi?