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Mar. 10th, 2014 04:43 pmSo, I've been having another pair of simultaneous discussions between Jake and Chelle regarding storybuilding. Nothing too special with Chelle, just her finally getting through to me that storywriting is about character development and growth. Regarding Jake, though, I asked him to ask his friend Zerodius about the purpose of each part of Earthbound's plot that isn't directly related to any of the Sanctuary locations.
According to Jake, here is everything that Zerodius has had to say regarding Earthbound:
A major theme of the game is humorous, little scenes that build up to form a greater, coherent narrative, actually fitting the main theme of the game. Said main theme is *growing up*.
( Cut for length and spoilers )
After that point, Jake told me that he couldn't go on any more, and to sum it up, he emailed me the following from him:
Because the guy wanted to tell a story.
This is the shortest explanation but I will elaborate a bit.
With the Mother games, the goal is not for a generic quest. And that stems from two radically different goals. In Dragon Quest, the journey is the point. As in, the whole point is to beat up monsters, level-up, and beat up enemies with bloated stats eventually. 'Save the world' is an excuse to move to the next set of targets. And 'this town has X problem' is the excuse to stop at a town beyond buying equipment.
The Mother games tell a cohesive story with a clear beginning, events linking everything, that eventually lead to the end. With Earthbound, this is noticeable but in Mother 3, it's pretty much blatant that the game's structure is divided more into 'chapters' than in 'stages'. (Earthbound still separate events by location. Mother 3 echew this completely ; it's the game world that changes instead. Though you still move from area to area, the journey actually make you tread a lot less ground than Earthbound)
To summarize...
In Dragon Quest, the point is to beat up bad guys.
In Earthbound, this is Ness's journey.
Jake himself added:
The comparison to Dragon Quest comes because of your asking being derived from that 'simplified list' you've been bringing up. They were a story first, and a game second, where Dragon Quest is a game first, and a story second.
-----
Now, let's compare that to everything I've thought up to date for Starbound. Admittedly, some things are inspired directly from the Earthbound trilogy, but most things aren't. Also, I'm just listing what inspired each element, and since the story in general is still relatively undeveloped, there is lots of room to give an actual purpose to anything that doesn't currently have one.
0) Themes: A major one is that the world is not so simplistic as people render it for fiction. There is more to it than the countries people can immediately think of. There's more to a country than the cities that people go to on vacation or the things or concepts that people normally associate it with. People look, act, and dress much more diversely in any given place than TV will lead you to believe, and the clothes they wear during regular activities (as opposed to special occasions) will usually run along similar lines as anywhere else, such as business suits for office jobs, or different kinds of shirts and skirts, shorts, or pants for leisurely activities.
Admittedly, some might argue that trying to make the people inhabiting the various countries the party will visit realistic would go against the Earthbound spirit. However, keep in mind that Japan, the country in which Lucky Star was produced and is set, is as easy to reduce to The Theme Park Version (which The Simpsons did) as each Gundam pilot except for Domon Kasshu in Mobile Fighter G Gundam had been to a Captain Ethnic of the country they represent. Quite frankly, it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the world that Japan be the only country not reduced to its "essentials". A general rule here, is that everyone is to be treated as equally as possible.
And, before anyone asks, Patricia Martin is not a Captain Ethnic. Despite the stereotypical blue eyes and blonde hair she sports as the show's token American, she is nothing more than an otaku who sees Japan as a mecha for anime and related fetishes such as for maids or miko, and fails to appreciate it for what it really is.)
-----
Speaking of equality, there's also the fact that canon characters tend to have established acquaintances or experiences to refer to, while OCs don't, and even those of the former are limited. With the latter, twelve hours worth of stuff that happened throughout a year and a half was covered. We started out with Tsukasa, Kagami, Konata, and Miyuki. Kagami in particular is revealed to be friends with two others named Ayano and Misao. Konata's cousin comes to live with her, and makes friends with Minami (who lives next door from Miyuki), Patricia (who works the same part-time job as Konata), and Hiyori. The manga goes even further, establishing Izumi as the representative of Yutaka's class, Tamaki and Miku as friends of Izumi's, and Kou as the president of the Animation Research Club in which Hiyori, Tamaki, and Miku participate among others. Such, needless to say, is not the case with original characters.
While references to canon characters or events might sometimes be justified or even necessary, they really should be kept to a minimum, for the simple reason of fairness to OCs who don't have anything canon to refer to or interact with.
-----
Chelle has also made the following suggestion about the value of different life forms:
They've just seen aggressive animals that wore sunglasses, so now they might have a bit of curiosity on what this means for all animals and how the sentience is affected. That kind of theme can be referred back to later on when the aliens are asked for justification, or even later when it comes to Philosoma being used by the villains.
She had also suggested that the girls come of age, since that was a common theme throughout the Earthbound trilogy. Even in-story, Ichirobei mentions that one's true self is brought out in times of crisis, and concepts such as Tsukasa gaining a backbone and Miyuki becoming more alert and less accident-prone are definitely up there.
( Covering the current chapters and Birthday of Destiny. Cut for length and spoilers. )
( Planned for the story's future )
According to Jake, here is everything that Zerodius has had to say regarding Earthbound:
A major theme of the game is humorous, little scenes that build up to form a greater, coherent narrative, actually fitting the main theme of the game. Said main theme is *growing up*.
( Cut for length and spoilers )
After that point, Jake told me that he couldn't go on any more, and to sum it up, he emailed me the following from him:
Because the guy wanted to tell a story.
This is the shortest explanation but I will elaborate a bit.
With the Mother games, the goal is not for a generic quest. And that stems from two radically different goals. In Dragon Quest, the journey is the point. As in, the whole point is to beat up monsters, level-up, and beat up enemies with bloated stats eventually. 'Save the world' is an excuse to move to the next set of targets. And 'this town has X problem' is the excuse to stop at a town beyond buying equipment.
The Mother games tell a cohesive story with a clear beginning, events linking everything, that eventually lead to the end. With Earthbound, this is noticeable but in Mother 3, it's pretty much blatant that the game's structure is divided more into 'chapters' than in 'stages'. (Earthbound still separate events by location. Mother 3 echew this completely ; it's the game world that changes instead. Though you still move from area to area, the journey actually make you tread a lot less ground than Earthbound)
To summarize...
In Dragon Quest, the point is to beat up bad guys.
In Earthbound, this is Ness's journey.
Jake himself added:
The comparison to Dragon Quest comes because of your asking being derived from that 'simplified list' you've been bringing up. They were a story first, and a game second, where Dragon Quest is a game first, and a story second.
-----
Now, let's compare that to everything I've thought up to date for Starbound. Admittedly, some things are inspired directly from the Earthbound trilogy, but most things aren't. Also, I'm just listing what inspired each element, and since the story in general is still relatively undeveloped, there is lots of room to give an actual purpose to anything that doesn't currently have one.
0) Themes: A major one is that the world is not so simplistic as people render it for fiction. There is more to it than the countries people can immediately think of. There's more to a country than the cities that people go to on vacation or the things or concepts that people normally associate it with. People look, act, and dress much more diversely in any given place than TV will lead you to believe, and the clothes they wear during regular activities (as opposed to special occasions) will usually run along similar lines as anywhere else, such as business suits for office jobs, or different kinds of shirts and skirts, shorts, or pants for leisurely activities.
Admittedly, some might argue that trying to make the people inhabiting the various countries the party will visit realistic would go against the Earthbound spirit. However, keep in mind that Japan, the country in which Lucky Star was produced and is set, is as easy to reduce to The Theme Park Version (which The Simpsons did) as each Gundam pilot except for Domon Kasshu in Mobile Fighter G Gundam had been to a Captain Ethnic of the country they represent. Quite frankly, it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the world that Japan be the only country not reduced to its "essentials". A general rule here, is that everyone is to be treated as equally as possible.
And, before anyone asks, Patricia Martin is not a Captain Ethnic. Despite the stereotypical blue eyes and blonde hair she sports as the show's token American, she is nothing more than an otaku who sees Japan as a mecha for anime and related fetishes such as for maids or miko, and fails to appreciate it for what it really is.)
-----
Speaking of equality, there's also the fact that canon characters tend to have established acquaintances or experiences to refer to, while OCs don't, and even those of the former are limited. With the latter, twelve hours worth of stuff that happened throughout a year and a half was covered. We started out with Tsukasa, Kagami, Konata, and Miyuki. Kagami in particular is revealed to be friends with two others named Ayano and Misao. Konata's cousin comes to live with her, and makes friends with Minami (who lives next door from Miyuki), Patricia (who works the same part-time job as Konata), and Hiyori. The manga goes even further, establishing Izumi as the representative of Yutaka's class, Tamaki and Miku as friends of Izumi's, and Kou as the president of the Animation Research Club in which Hiyori, Tamaki, and Miku participate among others. Such, needless to say, is not the case with original characters.
While references to canon characters or events might sometimes be justified or even necessary, they really should be kept to a minimum, for the simple reason of fairness to OCs who don't have anything canon to refer to or interact with.
-----
Chelle has also made the following suggestion about the value of different life forms:
They've just seen aggressive animals that wore sunglasses, so now they might have a bit of curiosity on what this means for all animals and how the sentience is affected. That kind of theme can be referred back to later on when the aliens are asked for justification, or even later when it comes to Philosoma being used by the villains.
She had also suggested that the girls come of age, since that was a common theme throughout the Earthbound trilogy. Even in-story, Ichirobei mentions that one's true self is brought out in times of crisis, and concepts such as Tsukasa gaining a backbone and Miyuki becoming more alert and less accident-prone are definitely up there.
( Covering the current chapters and Birthday of Destiny. Cut for length and spoilers. )
( Planned for the story's future )