Character Introductions: Marcus and James

With The Regret of Vitrerran demo in its final stages of completion, I think it’s time to talk about the two characters you’ll play as. It’s also just been awhile since I’ve written about the writing aspect to our no-longer-so-little game, and that needs to be fixed.

So. Marcus and James! I really like these characters. Their surprisingly comedic, which isn’t a direction I had thought either would take. But they have this amazing back-and-forth that’s one part sarcasm and one part sorrow. Both characters have lived less than ideal lives, and they cover their true feelings up with biting jokes and outright insults. They don’t like each other. At all. But they also have a begrudging respect for each other’s abilities, and they share a camaraderie in being outcasts.

Like all the characters I’ve worked on, I created Marcus and James only after I designed their home, in this case Mount Nefisigg. Mount Nefisigg (and Castle Alboiss) is the lofty dwelling of King Midus and the only knights of Vitrerran. It’s biting cold, corrupt, and filled with self importance. It’s also a place of high invention with a host of powerful mages.

So, let’s talk Marcus first.

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Sehktus Desert: Religion, Sand, and Heat

It seems like all fantasy-inspired video games come packaged with a long, sprawling desert, and The Regret of Vitrerran is no different. We, of course, promise better pacing than your average desert level.

The Sehktus Desert plays home to the oldest civilization on Vitrerran, the Areen predating the other races by what many scholars believe to be two hundred or more years. While historical records are sparse and open to conjecture, the Areen have taken this belief and embraced it. To many, age represents wisdom, and the Areen feel like their strict beliefs are deeply rooted in wisdom.

Follow the Hiernont. Follow the Tenants of Sollal.

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Utility Cards and Weapon Crafting

I’ve noticed that the more The Regret of Vitrerran grows as a game, the more ideas it borrows from other games. There are already a lot of little influences scattered about, such as the Megaman-inspired “Pick a character and play the game in almost any order you want” aspect to the story or the Baten Kaitos-inspired “Cards are actually attacks and spells” aesthetic. But I never thought we’d take ideas from more traditional RPGs.

Do you guys like weapon crafting?

I don’t play very many RPGs, but there are aspects to them I quite enjoy. World of Warcraft treated me to the pleasure of finding and upgrading gear, and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning showed me the joy of building new gear. There’s a strange little high you get when a raid boss drops a much-needed upgrade or a tough monster yields a very rare piece of crafting material. Shiny loot comes with the intrinsic thought of, “I can more easily save the world with this!” and I love it.

We’re bringing that feeling into The Regret of Vitrerran, though in a more straightforward way than the above mentioned games.

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A Character Driven Story

One of the selling points of The Regret of Vitrerran is that it has a character-driven story. This "Key feature" is something I've thrown around a handful of times, though I've never actually explained what it means. That is something that needs to be fixed.

I've always looked at novels and other written stories under two guides: plot driven or character driven. All novels fall somewhere between the two to be sure--for characters without a plot or a plot without characters make for bad storytelling--but the main approach seems to either be one of plot or one of characters.

A plot-driven piece of work is one where the story is thought out ahead of time. Perhaps the author crafted an extensive outline and his characters followed his preplanned plan with efficiency. Perhaps the author crafted an outline and deviated more than he thought, yet still his characters hit the major headings in their proper fashion. Character arcs and character development are forethought things.

The Golden Compass reads like a very plot-driven affair. The speed with which Lyra makes her way through the book can only be described as rapid, and everything seems to happen and fit together too perfectly for forethought to have not been involved.

A character-driven piece of work is one that's driven by the characters. The author starts out with a small idea, a set of people he wants to work with, and then he throws it all together in a blender. Once he has enough to start working, he simply starts working and damn the consequences! Some things will be preplanned, specific instances of notable importance, but everything else will be spontaneous.

Cujo was a character-driven story by Stephen King's own admittance, and really, almost all of his novels are. That's just how he writes.

But in video games, the writing process is much more difficult.

[Click for more]

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A Last Minute Change

The title to this post is one part joke and one part reality. As it stands, The Regret of Vitrerran is early in development and so any changes made right now aren’t and cannot be last minute. We haven’t even Kickstarted this yet! However, we did—or rather, Joe did—employ a very substantial change that has pushed our Kicktarter plans back a bit.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, the last two and a half weeks have been absolutely correct.

The Regret of Vitrerran is now a different game with different gameplay.

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