CoD1 New Stuffage
From Soloralwiki
Various thoughts about the game by Harvey
Contents |
Storyline Thoughts
Chapter 1
The first chapter is the hook part of the game to get the player comfortable with the style of humor and the world of Micras. It introduces the two major protagonists - Jason and Bill - and gives them both plenty of places to shine. It’s also a nice section of the game as both Bill and Jason know something about the past they’re going to, so they can narrate important details that would have be given by random unimportant NPCs.
Things are intentionally bright and humorous; from the friendly jabbing back and forth between Jason and Bill to the method of entry into Demesos City. Even the military guards themselves are seen as bumbling and silly so the difficulty is very low.
Amazingly, this part of the game has changed very little over the seven+ years of development. The graphics are amazingly better, the dialogue seems like it was written by someone with more than a quarter of their brain, and the pacing overall is longer and less rushed, but when reading this chapter I can still see the crude RPGMaker95+ versions of the military complex with guards all lined up in a row. The first chapter is just too good to really screw around with much.
Chapter 2
The first time I freed Matt and teleported into the future, I stood on that godawful RPGMaker95+ version of the future world map, all broken and destroyed, with a simplistic midi version of Another World from Chrono Cross playing in the background. It was as if Bill had somehow plucked exactly what I thought the future would look like straight out of my head and put it in video game format. It was crude and simplistic and by today’s standards completely unacceptable, but right then, soaking that scene up without looking away, my life actually changed. It’s corny to admit it, but it’s true. I realized the joy of art, of programming, of making my thoughts into something tangible. It’s sort of weird that I can narrow that down to an exact moment, but here it is.
This is supposed to be about the game, yeah, but I did say this article was about my thoughts and that was a major one.
Chapter two is the “problem” chapter. We’ve met the heroes, now they need a quest. So they see the future of their world and decide to alter it.
The original script omitted Mount Audentior and all events after meeting AI. It was pretty much arrive -> visit the robot factory -> get captured -> escape with AI. Mount Audentior and Micronia were added not too long after the first version, so I didn’t really have to do much extra rewriting there.
One glaring hole in the script is the Apollo Cavern where the heroes learn magic. I have NO IDEA what should happen here and just skipped it. It really bothers me.
The major problem I had with Chapter 2 is that all three characters are very serious. This, combined with the doomsday of the future, makes this even too bleak for a problem chapter. Matt’s the hard logic combined with street smarts, a combination that makes him very knowledgeable about everything in life and thus arrogant and not too much fun to be around most times. AI’s a robot. I gave him more types of knowledge in the rewrite, including sociology, but having a robot joking around with the team just seemed too weird.
And then there’s Amy. Amy was conceptually added to the story at some point, but, to the best of my knowledge, she’s never actually been a playable character in any version of CoD1. I was left entirely up to my own on how to design her based on two, agreed-upon facts. 1) she’s not a real person, but a copy of a person, which makes her act weird sometimes. 2) she has leadership quarrels with Jason. That second one was easy enough to work in from time to time (mainly later in chapter 3) but the first always throws me off as to how to make Amy be acting noticeably weird but still not completely stupid or bizarre.
I solved most of the character issues by expanding their personalities. Matt, because he’s smart and likes to flaunt it, makes “smart jokes” that the less intelligent might not get but hopefully the players do. AI is agreeable in most cases. Amy is kind and sincere in a cutesy sort of way, though she hasn’t done much of that yet.
Overall, I kept most of Chapter 2 intact; like Chapter 1, it’s relatively bug-free as far as the story goes, and the number of locales feels about right to give the player time with each new character.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 became the “growing pains” chapter of the game after the rewrite. Now that the team is officially on the job of saving the world, they need to get to work. And they find out that saving the world is a lot harder than they thought.
I took a good long look at the original version of chapter 3 and decided, essentially, “it has to go.” I kept Empress, naturally, and the Emperors, along with the antagonist Evan von Christoph, but had to scrap most everything else.
The original script was ridiculously short in length, involving what would probably be only a half hour of gameplay. Plus, none of it was really gold material. There was a part where the heroes read that they kidnapped the king, and so they go kidnap the king. That’s an interesting self-paradox, but it’s just too weird to introduce since it ultimately doesn’t make any freaking sense.
My first problem was getting the party out of Micronia. In the original script, they warp back to Jasonia, but Micronia is an isolated island. So I introduced the Imperial spy plot hook in order to give them something to research and a reason to go back to the year zero in the first place other than the original “exploring history is fun; let’s go somewhere else!” nonsense. The whole subplot lets Bill get some action, both in fighting and in his knowledge of history. Bill had become less important with the addition of the chapter 2 characters and Jason’s position as overall leader, so that helped keep the balance.
Regarding the actual kidnapping of the king, I wove a massive plot around the event and its aftermath that seems a bit wordy and complicated but is hopefully understandable. It involves a lot of locations, names, and history that might overwhelm the player, but I wanted to emphasize the complexity of the political situation that the year 0 is. Admittedly though, it got a bit out of control.
Maybe the player could get a color-coded map. RED: Grace Kingdom: Audentior and Automatica, BLUE: Ultimate Republic: Demesos and Blackrock.
Empress is the new character here and her dialogue came extremely easy. She has trust issues so she questions everything, but when she’s in her element she tells people what to do and they do it. Mryin is also new and a temporary hero. Her addition harkens back to the good old CoD days when we’d just add in people we liked from any old place. Myrin has a heart of gold but a simplistic nature and is wildly insincere with her apologies. She makes a good love interest distraction for Jason. Both are fun people.
I also added a few of Bill and Matt’s ancestors here. I thought that would be fun, and it was. I might do this with the rest of the heroes at some point.
A few new important concepts are in the dialogue of this chapter that were totally lacking in the old script. The first is that it’s EASY to screw up the past and Jason does so totally without meaning to. This has wide-reaching consequences that takes the entire rest of the time in ACS 0 to finish. The second is that the party isn’t really a team yet and so they fight a lot, especially about who’s to blame. Jason gets very defensive over criticisms to his leadership. By the end though, they mostly come to terms with their problems. The last is that Amy has some sort of metaphysical connection with the time streams being screwed up, so that altering the future badly hurts her in some way. I plan to use Amy’s headaches (or worse) as an indicator of time stream stability later on.
The last problem was similar to the first; how to time-travel the group to the right spot. I knew Chapter 4 took place in Automatica but the original 3 ended in Epoli, which was explored in Chapter 1. I came up with the shipwreck idea to force them into the red portal to Hau’oli ‘Ena, but admittedly I’m not too happy with that. Maybe I’ll change it at some point.
Chapter 3’s dialogue, much like this description, is long. But it’s a political chapter in stark contrast with Chapter 2 before it, having only one or two major combat sequences and a whole lot of talking. It’s to hook the players that want a deep storyline. Hopefully the ones that don’t will just skip it all and not totally lose interest since, despite the complexity, it’s a pretty straight-line path.
