(no subject)
Jan. 17th, 2013 07:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmxratedAt this point, I'm already tired of Arn's Winter Quest: Gway Edition.
Well, first thing I need to mention, is that while it looked completely flawless on SkullKid3's LetsPlay, the graphics were pretty fucked up while I played the game personally. Not to the point that it was unplayable, until I got to this place that's supposed to resemble Moonside, in which everything is just a graphical mess. I had to watch a video from the aforementioned LP just to see where I was supposed to go. And then, I talked to someone inside the Topolla Theater auditorium, and the game branches off to where, canonically, Prince Poo is supposed to enter the story and it's suddenly coherent. (Thankfully, I didn't save after that, before turning the game off.)
As it turns out, I was supposed to have expanded the ROM to 48MB with Lunar Expand. My fault for not having read anything carefully enough.
In any case, fighting stuff just isn't fun anymore. I think I'm just gonna put the game to rest and start over another day, when it becomes relevant to Starbound.
Also started a conversation with Radiation on Facebook yesterday afternoon. Linked him to the entry about the canon trilogy, but I still have yet to hear back from him. If Starbound interests him enough, maybe I could get him to archive enemies from both AWQ and the Halloween hack, and to also help me retain the same kind of humor and other things that defined Earthbound, be it for the fic itself or the possible future game adaptation that I might have Brian work on, all in exchange for permission to see what I've got planned out for the fic.
-----
Jake asked me why any of this even matters in the first place.
This stems all the way back to when Chelle and I were debating who the villain would be, after I first conceived the story itself. After scrapping what was originally a giant, bikini-clad, destructive version of Haruhi Suzumiya and some stuff surrounding her, I described roughly what Giygas' and Pokey's motivations in the actual Earthbound trilogy were. That led to her saying "So, someone who just wants to be evil? I don't have much to say about that." That... was just awkward.
After some further conversation with both Jake and Chelle, the latter and I decided that the Big Bad is a giant fetus called Philosoma (after the titular Eldritch Abomination of a certain PSX game), who had been developing for possibly eons as the core of the same-named planet that the aliens invading Earth had been residing on. While not all aliens are malevolent, the ones behind everything going on on Earth are actually well-intentioned extremists who don't believe that peace with mankind would ever be possible.
Even though we had some better villains established from there on, the aforementioned "For the Evulz" line still left a bad taste in my mouth. This is where Bosspider, a standalone version of Pokey's spider tank, comes in. His whole point is that he isn't behind the war itself (only taking advantage of it while it's going on), and while what he does is for his own amusement, it is much more specific: To have those fighting the war capture girls between the ages of 6 through 25 for him to torture and slaughter in all kinds of horrific fashions. Or, as he'd put it, "To serve moe."
The fact that the resident Complete Monster here also happens to be the only particularly grotesque being in the canon Earthbound trilogy (besides Giygas, of course) is too much of a coincidence playing into Dark Is Evil. This is where the Halloween hack comes in: His fellow generals, while not as depraved as he is, are no less scary-looking. Here, we have Moltos (a Remnants), Pstatic (a Psycho Psource), Gajegi (a Giegue League), and Baerii (based on Dr. Andonuts' Id), the last of whom is actually against the war itself. Until the end of the fic, the other three play along with Bosspider because he created something with which to keep Philosoma under control even after it hatches, and because they honestly doubt that a bunch of human girls would actually have any potential to destroy it outright; towards the end, they realize the protagonists' potential after having conquered multiple sacred places on Earth, and thus betray him and give the party something with which to prevent him from teleporting away in order to bring him to justice, while also giving them the option to kill him themselves.
-----
Originally, I was only planning on using the four of those enemies (initially excluding Baerii), and only to make the one appearance during the party's first fight with Bosspider. Originally, I had no intention of driving myself crazy and seeing every last enemy in every last Earthbound hack made to date, and instead just keeping things simple with only what the canon trilogy had to offer. This, however, was before Chelle suggested I introduce them earlier on, about halfway through the fic, and honestly, while I only had watched two videos of the aforementioned LP for Arn's Winter Quest, pretty much everything from Halloween (except for anything before the bloody section of the sewers) seemed interesting in their own right. If I had any intention at all to borrow anything from the scary hack, then it would only be practical that I derive enemies from the funny hack as well.
So, I decided that most enemies from AWQ would appear in Starbound's version of Magicant (some as bosses earlier on), with each of four paths home to different enemies, while most enemies from Halloween would be seen on planet Philosoma. Given how utterly incoherent AWQ is (the canon games do take themselves somewhat more seriously, while still being zany), I probably won't need to relocate anything from that game to somewhere else. Six enemies from Halloween, though, would have to be sorted out.
Four of them, those being Remember Me?, NO (whom I'd likely rename Yaoi), Anxiety Attack, and Dearkhart, would be four bosses that different members of the protagonist party would have to fight before regrouping with one another and meeting the Goddess of Good Fortune whom they had been looking for. The Overrecycled, an undead hippie, will likely be the last Sanctuary guardian.
The Desperate Survivor, though, is just problematic. I mean, he's pretty interesting, given who he is and that he, like many other enemies, have non-canon intro, moves, and outro, but he just isn't gonna fit, as a boss or on Philosoma. While Varik is something of an anti-hero, I'm pretty sure the Lucky Star girls and anyone they befriend would never kill someone who just wants to live (look, he doesn't approach you; he runs away from you), even if they themselves were trying to survive in an apocalyptic wasteland (and especially then, when they working together with anyone they meet would be a better idea for such a purpose). Even though I myself killed a few of them in my playthrough of Halloween, someone who profusely apologizes to you while fighting for his own life is very much in league with the Walking Bushie, an actively benevolent Mother 3 enemy whom I never did harm.
(Then again, I do also plan to include shoggoth as Philosoman enemies, due to my intention to rename "Desire Dog" to "Shoggoth Dog". That one much might just make up for omitting one enemy from the actual game.)
Well, first thing I need to mention, is that while it looked completely flawless on SkullKid3's LetsPlay, the graphics were pretty fucked up while I played the game personally. Not to the point that it was unplayable, until I got to this place that's supposed to resemble Moonside, in which everything is just a graphical mess. I had to watch a video from the aforementioned LP just to see where I was supposed to go. And then, I talked to someone inside the Topolla Theater auditorium, and the game branches off to where, canonically, Prince Poo is supposed to enter the story and it's suddenly coherent. (Thankfully, I didn't save after that, before turning the game off.)
As it turns out, I was supposed to have expanded the ROM to 48MB with Lunar Expand. My fault for not having read anything carefully enough.
In any case, fighting stuff just isn't fun anymore. I think I'm just gonna put the game to rest and start over another day, when it becomes relevant to Starbound.
Also started a conversation with Radiation on Facebook yesterday afternoon. Linked him to the entry about the canon trilogy, but I still have yet to hear back from him. If Starbound interests him enough, maybe I could get him to archive enemies from both AWQ and the Halloween hack, and to also help me retain the same kind of humor and other things that defined Earthbound, be it for the fic itself or the possible future game adaptation that I might have Brian work on, all in exchange for permission to see what I've got planned out for the fic.
-----
Jake asked me why any of this even matters in the first place.
This stems all the way back to when Chelle and I were debating who the villain would be, after I first conceived the story itself. After scrapping what was originally a giant, bikini-clad, destructive version of Haruhi Suzumiya and some stuff surrounding her, I described roughly what Giygas' and Pokey's motivations in the actual Earthbound trilogy were. That led to her saying "So, someone who just wants to be evil? I don't have much to say about that." That... was just awkward.
After some further conversation with both Jake and Chelle, the latter and I decided that the Big Bad is a giant fetus called Philosoma (after the titular Eldritch Abomination of a certain PSX game), who had been developing for possibly eons as the core of the same-named planet that the aliens invading Earth had been residing on. While not all aliens are malevolent, the ones behind everything going on on Earth are actually well-intentioned extremists who don't believe that peace with mankind would ever be possible.
Even though we had some better villains established from there on, the aforementioned "For the Evulz" line still left a bad taste in my mouth. This is where Bosspider, a standalone version of Pokey's spider tank, comes in. His whole point is that he isn't behind the war itself (only taking advantage of it while it's going on), and while what he does is for his own amusement, it is much more specific: To have those fighting the war capture girls between the ages of 6 through 25 for him to torture and slaughter in all kinds of horrific fashions. Or, as he'd put it, "To serve moe."
The fact that the resident Complete Monster here also happens to be the only particularly grotesque being in the canon Earthbound trilogy (besides Giygas, of course) is too much of a coincidence playing into Dark Is Evil. This is where the Halloween hack comes in: His fellow generals, while not as depraved as he is, are no less scary-looking. Here, we have Moltos (a Remnants), Pstatic (a Psycho Psource), Gajegi (a Giegue League), and Baerii (based on Dr. Andonuts' Id), the last of whom is actually against the war itself. Until the end of the fic, the other three play along with Bosspider because he created something with which to keep Philosoma under control even after it hatches, and because they honestly doubt that a bunch of human girls would actually have any potential to destroy it outright; towards the end, they realize the protagonists' potential after having conquered multiple sacred places on Earth, and thus betray him and give the party something with which to prevent him from teleporting away in order to bring him to justice, while also giving them the option to kill him themselves.
-----
Originally, I was only planning on using the four of those enemies (initially excluding Baerii), and only to make the one appearance during the party's first fight with Bosspider. Originally, I had no intention of driving myself crazy and seeing every last enemy in every last Earthbound hack made to date, and instead just keeping things simple with only what the canon trilogy had to offer. This, however, was before Chelle suggested I introduce them earlier on, about halfway through the fic, and honestly, while I only had watched two videos of the aforementioned LP for Arn's Winter Quest, pretty much everything from Halloween (except for anything before the bloody section of the sewers) seemed interesting in their own right. If I had any intention at all to borrow anything from the scary hack, then it would only be practical that I derive enemies from the funny hack as well.
So, I decided that most enemies from AWQ would appear in Starbound's version of Magicant (some as bosses earlier on), with each of four paths home to different enemies, while most enemies from Halloween would be seen on planet Philosoma. Given how utterly incoherent AWQ is (the canon games do take themselves somewhat more seriously, while still being zany), I probably won't need to relocate anything from that game to somewhere else. Six enemies from Halloween, though, would have to be sorted out.
Four of them, those being Remember Me?, NO (whom I'd likely rename Yaoi), Anxiety Attack, and Dearkhart, would be four bosses that different members of the protagonist party would have to fight before regrouping with one another and meeting the Goddess of Good Fortune whom they had been looking for. The Overrecycled, an undead hippie, will likely be the last Sanctuary guardian.
The Desperate Survivor, though, is just problematic. I mean, he's pretty interesting, given who he is and that he, like many other enemies, have non-canon intro, moves, and outro, but he just isn't gonna fit, as a boss or on Philosoma. While Varik is something of an anti-hero, I'm pretty sure the Lucky Star girls and anyone they befriend would never kill someone who just wants to live (look, he doesn't approach you; he runs away from you), even if they themselves were trying to survive in an apocalyptic wasteland (and especially then, when they working together with anyone they meet would be a better idea for such a purpose). Even though I myself killed a few of them in my playthrough of Halloween, someone who profusely apologizes to you while fighting for his own life is very much in league with the Walking Bushie, an actively benevolent Mother 3 enemy whom I never did harm.
(Then again, I do also plan to include shoggoth as Philosoman enemies, due to my intention to rename "Desire Dog" to "Shoggoth Dog". That one much might just make up for omitting one enemy from the actual game.)