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Why hasn't anything of the weird monsters and alien invasion leaked to the rest of the world? And wouldn't the characters be curious about why it hasn't?

-part of Chelle's latest feedback on Starbound, chapter 7.

For reasons I can understand, seeing how she's never played Earthbound and is not likely to, she seems to be thinking along the lines of Mars Attacks! or something, where Earth in its entirety does find itself in a full-blown war pretty quickly. While Mother 3 is similar enough, much more to the point about the Pigmask Army and its influence on the Nowhere Islands, that is not what I'm aiming for here. In Earthbound, not everyone is under any sort of attack by Giygas' forces or even says anything about them. Tomato even refers to the first title screen as "the most out-of-place screen in the game" (although it could easily represent the future from which Buzz Buzz hails instead). (This is also the reason why I've been sharing my playthrough of the game with Mom, slow as that's been going lately.)

So, let's break that all down:

Read more... )

The same holds generally true for Earthbound Zero; some things are directly related to the aliens, from the attacks on Ninten's house and the zoo, to the offscreen mass abduction of the adults in Youngtown, to Teddy, whose parents were killed by the aliens. Other events, such as at the cemetery, Merrysville, two different factories, and Snowman, do not involve aliens in any way plot-related, even though they do appear simply as enemies in such places as Yucca Desert and the swamp. Nor is everything established to be working for them, unlike by Buzz Buzz in Earthbound.

My point here is to answer Chelle's question about why things are so much more peaceful where the party in Starbound currently is than back in Japan. Why isn't there such widespread paranoia as one would expect in those two games? For all they or even readers would know, those kinds of things could have begun unfolding during the events of the anime.
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Chapter 2 of Starbound is now up on Fanfiction.net:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8895129/2/Starbound

Right now, that's probably as far as I'm gonna go with it for a while until I see what Mother: The Original Story is like.

In the meantime, while I'm down here in New Jersey where it's easier for me to focus on stuff, I think I'll use this entry to analyze how everything in Earthbound interweaves to form its plot, rather than each chapter being just stuff that happens. For those of you who've either missed it or would like to revisit it before or after reading the following cut, here is my original summary of just what its plot is.

Read more... )

With that all said and done, here's hoping Chelle and anyone else interested will be able to help me formulate some kind of plot for Starbound, instead of just me making stuff up to put its main characters through as I go along.
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Read more... )

(Well, this entry has taken days to complete. That, along with having to have been split into two, makes it the longest I had ever worked on by a long shot. Now that it's finally complete, I guess I'll get started with chapter 2 of Starbound, before continuing with Kanji in Context.)
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Set long after the events of Earthbound, Mother 3 takes place in the initially rural farming community of Tazmily Village, in a remote place called the Nowhere Islands, the only place left on Earth that is able to sustain life after the rest of the world was ruined by humanity itself. In a lot of ways, it is nothing like either of its prequels.

That point that Zerodius inferred about Earthbound? It would truly apply to this game. It has a lot more melancholy to them, and also shows much more of the bad guys' direct activities. On the flip side, while the first two games could be considered straightforward enough (items, enemies, sideline stuff, and contrived coincidences aside), there are things that play a direct role in the more lighthearted parts of the story that could not possibly be written into anything down-to-earth, such as a coffee table that acts like a horse, a man tall enough to ring a town bell without climbing up, Thomas's comical way of running around frantically, a refrigerator on top of a snowcapped mountain, male mermaids who help you breathe underwater by mouth-to-mouth contact, etc.

Just the other day, I have seen official novel adaptations of Mother 1 and 2, which, while written by someone other than Shigesato Itoi, and also darker and edgier than, do retain the same quirky humor that the games were known for. Unfortunately, I'm not so sure if that's something I'll be able to quite pull off with Starbound. Humor is neither my specialty nor Chelle's. Even though Jake does not like Lucky Star, he has written a comical adaptation of Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal, titled Johto: The Funne Version!!!, and said that he'd try, though even he can't make any promises.

That said, Starbound is most likely going to originate as something mostly straightforward, just like what Earthbound 199X is to Earthbound. If a game adaptation even is feasable enough after I complete the fic, I might consider hiring people to work on humor.

Read more... )
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Life is not serious all the time. It's also not a comedy all the time. There are sad points, and there are happy points... but ultimately, life is what you make of it.

-The underlying message in Earthbound, according to Zerodius, according to Jake.

Before I begin, I'd like to mention that, months ago, I had drawn a lot of similarities between the plots of Earthbound and Popotan. And now is a better time than any to describe them (for anyone in general reading this), before I go onto the real content of this entry.

Read more... )

Now, for the real purpose of this entry:

Read more... )

(Mother 3 is next, either this weekend or this coming Monday.)
dmxrated: (AVGN)
Last night, I used the word "diversion" in a rather loose sense. Jake pointed out the reasons why the main characters in each game were doing the things I specified during a conversation about the entry in general and what his friend Zerodius had to say about it. I relayed the convo to Chelle after we were done chatting, and managed to speak to her through MSN this morning, but she said she didn't really understand the actual context surrounding each thing. I told her I'd list everything from each game in the Earthbound trilogy, and started listing them this morning, before realizing that I might as well just describe the entire plots to all three games (also so that she would understand what I'm talking about each time I refer to the events of those games, and wouldn't have to watch gameplay videos full of random battles and other meaningless stuff).

Anyway, by "diversion", what I meant was stuff that the main characters do that isn't directly related to finding their respective plot coupons or contending with the enemy armies. Really, though, I suppose that "sidestops" and "sidequests" would have been better terms of choice. In other words, stuff that Chelle could not have taken into account in her proposed outline for Starbound:

Here it is, btw )

If you read the above cut, notice that everything she's written is about how they grow, whether they win or lose against each mana guardian, and the alien generals' involvement in things. That would seem to suggest that it's all about fighting the enemy armies, like in such other works as Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), Suikoden, Mega Man Zero, The Lord of the Rings, or Ancient Ways, Ancient Evils. It isn't. True, we do see plenty of the Pigmasks' activities in Mother 3, but not nearly so much of those of the aliens' in the first two games.

The first line you read after you defeat Giygas in Earthbound reads, "The war against Giygas is over." In Mother 2, this originated as "Ness's journey has ended." The person who analyzed all the differences between both versions of the game on Earthbound Central even agrees more with M2 than with EB, saying that it felt more like a journey or an adventure, or maybe a mission, than an actual war. However, I do recall Chelle stating that despite what most people think of when they think of a "war", the word technically refers to political violence among nations, and that civilian life does continue normally whenever and wherever possible.

Anyway, here is the lowdown for Earthbound Zero:

Read more... )

(Well, there you have it. No generals or full-scale battles to speak of, and most of the time, if you're not using the player's guide or a walkthrough, you're just kinda supposed to figure out what to do or where to go on your own or by talking to random people. That's right, you visit random places or try random things as you go along, and they actually work towards your overall goal. Some of the things that go on are pure coincidences, such as you entering a factory to send a rocket off, which just so happens to land right where you want it to to do just what you hope it'll do.)

(Earthbound will have its own entry next, followed by Mother 3.)

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