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chuckroAh, The 7th Saga.
Yes, I realize this is a 16-year-old SNES game renowned for its unforgivable difficulty, not for its plot. But I’m a special kind of obsessive. Also, I recently found a patch that reduces the difficulty back to that of the Japanese original, which makes at least the early parts of the game much more playable. (This first boss in the US version pwns you and makes you go back for an item that lets you insta-kill him unless you grind to level 9-10. In this version, I straight-up beat him at level 4.) Anyway, on that note, I’ll be ranting at length about what I’d want to do with the remake of this game that’ll never be made. (It’s like writing fanfiction. Shut up.)
I know the character’s names, but for the sake of anyone who doesn’t who nonetheless wants this to make vague sense, I’ll be referring to them by race or class. So, Knight, Cleric, Dwarf, Elf, Alien, Demon, Robot.
(The only differences between the characters in terms of mechanics is the spells you get, weapons you can equip, and a little bit of your stat growth. Okay, it makes sense that everyone can get petrified, as petrification in this game apparently means getting encased in a giant rock, but would it have been too much trouble to make the robot immune to poison? Or making the alien—who attacks by setting his arm on fire and punching people—immune to fire?)
The game goes pretty much exactly the same no matter which character you choose. Even the dialogue doesn’t really change. The only major difference comes from travelling from the southern to northern continent: The Elf and Robot find a lost boy and get to hitch a ride on his father’s ship. The Dwarf finds a key to a forgotten tower with a teleporter at the top. The other four characters find a remote control that opens a cave door and leads to a mad scientist and his experimental submarine. Besides that, the Robot can get a late-game upgrade, and the Elf gets a free ride on an airship the Alien needs to sneak on to and everyone else has to pay for. That’s it, really.
There are a number of roles that the other characters can take during your game, which they’re randomly chosen for. Obviously, you can recruit one as a sidekick. One of them is the “traitor” apprentice, who hires a super-persistent bounty hunter to kill the rest of you (seriously—he comes back from the dead twice to keep coming after you). One of them finds the Star Rune and sets himself up as a king; one of them finds the Sky Rune before you can get to it. The rest kinda wander blindly, though they always manage to get places before you do.
The thing is, the story doesn’t really follow any real narrative arc until the final quarter of it, so it doesn’t matter what order you find the runes in. So why shepherd every character in basically the same direction? Why not define a role for each character based on these personalities they supposedly have, and have their stories weave in and out of each other’s? Then you have a set sequence of events that each character would “normally” take, which is the basis for that character’s version of the game. As the player, you can “derail” the other apprentices from their assigned roles by recruiting or killing them and change the story. The first recruit point (the towns of Bonro and Zellis) would be the optimal location for that.
Knight follows the original sequence of the game. He’s the last apprentice to leave, so the gate of earth gets locked and he needs to go to Aran Castle to get the key. Pison (the bounty hunter) is waiting for him at the gate. He catches up to everyone in Bonro, then goes to the Melnam ruins and finds the Wind Rune, brings the digger to dig a well and gets the Water Rune, fights the king apprentice for the Star Rune, is too late for the Sky Rune (and needs to track down the guy who took it), then fights the Serpent to win the Moon Rune and Duras for the Light Rune, then takes the glider to the frozen continent. As an NPC, he wanders through the game, just a little too late to find any of the runes.
Everyone else leaves earlier, and they make it to Bonro, so the last one across must have closed the door. Which means that Knight is the only character who needs to do that first sidequest. For that matter, only Knight and Robot will “naturally” find the Melnam ruins.
Elf gets to Bonro, and can immediately get on the ferry to the northern continent. Since she’s the first one up there, she can get to the Sky Rune before anyone else. Then she’ll do the rest of the northern continent, then have to hunt down the characters who got to the Wind, Water and Star Runes ahead of her. She can even have a subplot on the northern continent long before the other characters arrive—perhaps being bitten by the Serpent will turn her into one, so she has a sidequest to prevent that. As an NPC, she’ll wander around for Knight to find, but the characters who are later in getting to the Serpent will find that the original one is gone, and the Elf has taken her place.
Robot accompanies the scientist to the Melnam ruins and finds the Wind Rune. Then he figures out how to activate the various machinery there. In the normal game, the scientist eventually builds the glider with parts scavenged in Melnam, and it’s good for one flight to the frozen continent. With Robot’s help, he gets it finished sooner and goes straight from there to the frozen continent, where the Robot goes through that sequence and picks up the Wizard Rune, then can fly around and do the other events in any order. As an NPC, you’ll either find him in Melnam (if you go there) or in the late-game town where you normally get the glider.
The Dwarf finds a series of towers with teleporters in them (not just the two) and depending on what order he travels them in, could beat the Elf to the Sky Rune, beat the Alien to the Star Rune, beat the Robot to the Wind Rune, etc. He effectively gets bonus dungeons that no one else can access, and can take a totally different sequence from anyone else.
Alien is 5th to leave, and locks the gate of earth out of spite. He finds a cave passage through the mountains to Patrof, where he challenges the king and takes the Star Rune, setting himself up as the new king. He rules there for a while, and other apprentices who’ve found runes come to him. He can choose to join any one of them and follow their basic track from there on (they may or may not have already found some runes) or he can stay there and fight them as they come by, taking the runes from them. Eventually, the Robot will appear with the glider and the Wizard Rune, allowing the Alien to bypass most of the game’s dungeons.
Cleric gets a ferry from Zellis to the other side of the southern continent, gets the Water Rune first, fights the Alien for the Star Rune, then takes the submarine to the northern continent, where he gets a more involved subplot making peace with the warring states. As an NPC, he’ll be making peace for quite some time.
Demon also leaves late, and gets to the door to find it locked. But being a demon, he’s not the type to go fight ghost dogs for keys to help out the travelling salesmen. He runs into the Knight, who announces he’s going to find the key, and hatches a plan to have a bounty hunter kill the knight for him. So he has an early sidequest to go do a summoning ritual and raise Pison, the bounty hunter from hell. Knight kills Pison and opens the door, so the Demon goes to Bonro, and then has a second sidequest to bring Pison back (so that Knight can fight him in the Melnam ruins). Late in the game, he’ll do it a third time. He can also go through the cave to Patrof, but the Alien got the Star Rune first, and the Cleric got the Water Rune first. Given that the Robot would have the Wind Rune and the Elf would have the Sky Rune at this point, the game becomes a matter of hunting down and killing every other apprentice to take the runes from them. Then he gets a sidequest to actually make/summon the item that can kill Duras, rather than just getting it from a random NPC. As an NPC, you’d find him in Duras’ dungeon, and if you kill him then or get him to join you, you can avoid the third Pison fight.
In the original game, there was a problem for some of the characters that the enemy difficulties were scaled for the “main” order, which meant Elf and Robot hit wall of nasty critters when they got off the ferry. The thing is, from a programming perspective, this should be an incredibly easy problem to fix: The game is divided into “zones” with different enemy encounters in each one. Depending on which character/sequence you’re playing, the zones are different. So the Robot meets level 3 enemies when he gets off the ferry, and the Knight meets level 15 enemies when he finally works his way around to that area.
When you get to the past, the game gets very linear, but there can still be differences base on which character(s) you bring along. The Robot should have significantly more plot in Melnam, give that he was built there. The Demon and Alien wouldn’t be caught dead running fetch quests between an old woman and her son, but the Demon would be a useful expert to call on when Dr. Fail tries to power his wizard-killing robot with Pure Evil. Maybe the Dwarf gets to help build the teleporter towers he’s been using. In any case, if you have a sidekick, you should get the full plot threads for both characters.
Addition: If occured to me, if you're doing plot changes for each character, you'll want to make it feasible to play through as each character. But playing through seven times? That's insane. So, here's what you do: Add to scene to the ending the first time around, when your main character gets trapped in the time loop by being reincarnated, but your sidekick (assuming you have one) is told he's has been "unbound from the threads of fate", then you save a clear file and can start a New Game Plus. When you choose your character, the two who finished the last game are grayed out (labeled "ascended" for your first character and "unbound" for your second) and you'll gain four times the XP and gold per battle on your subsequent play-throughs. When you reach the end a second time, presumably with two different characters, the first is again tapped in the time-loop (perhaps with a line about deja vu) and the sidekick gets an "unbound" scene featuring your sidekick from the first play-through. Third time, same deal, with four characters grayed out. Your last time though the game forces you to pick the one character you've never made it to the end of the game with (so you're playing a solo game for most of it), and the game changes after you pick up the last Rune.
You arrive in the past and meet the three sidekicks from your earlier play-throughs, who explain the time-loop and that they'll be able to break it. You then have a party of four for a completely new set of dungeons, acquiring an alternate method of putting down Gorsia that doesn't require the runes. Then you do it. The ending montage shows a different version of history if Lemele and the Runes didn't exist, and there's a scene for what happened to each "unbound" character.
Yes, I realize this is a 16-year-old SNES game renowned for its unforgivable difficulty, not for its plot. But I’m a special kind of obsessive. Also, I recently found a patch that reduces the difficulty back to that of the Japanese original, which makes at least the early parts of the game much more playable. (This first boss in the US version pwns you and makes you go back for an item that lets you insta-kill him unless you grind to level 9-10. In this version, I straight-up beat him at level 4.) Anyway, on that note, I’ll be ranting at length about what I’d want to do with the remake of this game that’ll never be made. (It’s like writing fanfiction. Shut up.)
I know the character’s names, but for the sake of anyone who doesn’t who nonetheless wants this to make vague sense, I’ll be referring to them by race or class. So, Knight, Cleric, Dwarf, Elf, Alien, Demon, Robot.
(The only differences between the characters in terms of mechanics is the spells you get, weapons you can equip, and a little bit of your stat growth. Okay, it makes sense that everyone can get petrified, as petrification in this game apparently means getting encased in a giant rock, but would it have been too much trouble to make the robot immune to poison? Or making the alien—who attacks by setting his arm on fire and punching people—immune to fire?)
The game goes pretty much exactly the same no matter which character you choose. Even the dialogue doesn’t really change. The only major difference comes from travelling from the southern to northern continent: The Elf and Robot find a lost boy and get to hitch a ride on his father’s ship. The Dwarf finds a key to a forgotten tower with a teleporter at the top. The other four characters find a remote control that opens a cave door and leads to a mad scientist and his experimental submarine. Besides that, the Robot can get a late-game upgrade, and the Elf gets a free ride on an airship the Alien needs to sneak on to and everyone else has to pay for. That’s it, really.
There are a number of roles that the other characters can take during your game, which they’re randomly chosen for. Obviously, you can recruit one as a sidekick. One of them is the “traitor” apprentice, who hires a super-persistent bounty hunter to kill the rest of you (seriously—he comes back from the dead twice to keep coming after you). One of them finds the Star Rune and sets himself up as a king; one of them finds the Sky Rune before you can get to it. The rest kinda wander blindly, though they always manage to get places before you do.
The thing is, the story doesn’t really follow any real narrative arc until the final quarter of it, so it doesn’t matter what order you find the runes in. So why shepherd every character in basically the same direction? Why not define a role for each character based on these personalities they supposedly have, and have their stories weave in and out of each other’s? Then you have a set sequence of events that each character would “normally” take, which is the basis for that character’s version of the game. As the player, you can “derail” the other apprentices from their assigned roles by recruiting or killing them and change the story. The first recruit point (the towns of Bonro and Zellis) would be the optimal location for that.
Knight follows the original sequence of the game. He’s the last apprentice to leave, so the gate of earth gets locked and he needs to go to Aran Castle to get the key. Pison (the bounty hunter) is waiting for him at the gate. He catches up to everyone in Bonro, then goes to the Melnam ruins and finds the Wind Rune, brings the digger to dig a well and gets the Water Rune, fights the king apprentice for the Star Rune, is too late for the Sky Rune (and needs to track down the guy who took it), then fights the Serpent to win the Moon Rune and Duras for the Light Rune, then takes the glider to the frozen continent. As an NPC, he wanders through the game, just a little too late to find any of the runes.
Everyone else leaves earlier, and they make it to Bonro, so the last one across must have closed the door. Which means that Knight is the only character who needs to do that first sidequest. For that matter, only Knight and Robot will “naturally” find the Melnam ruins.
Elf gets to Bonro, and can immediately get on the ferry to the northern continent. Since she’s the first one up there, she can get to the Sky Rune before anyone else. Then she’ll do the rest of the northern continent, then have to hunt down the characters who got to the Wind, Water and Star Runes ahead of her. She can even have a subplot on the northern continent long before the other characters arrive—perhaps being bitten by the Serpent will turn her into one, so she has a sidequest to prevent that. As an NPC, she’ll wander around for Knight to find, but the characters who are later in getting to the Serpent will find that the original one is gone, and the Elf has taken her place.
Robot accompanies the scientist to the Melnam ruins and finds the Wind Rune. Then he figures out how to activate the various machinery there. In the normal game, the scientist eventually builds the glider with parts scavenged in Melnam, and it’s good for one flight to the frozen continent. With Robot’s help, he gets it finished sooner and goes straight from there to the frozen continent, where the Robot goes through that sequence and picks up the Wizard Rune, then can fly around and do the other events in any order. As an NPC, you’ll either find him in Melnam (if you go there) or in the late-game town where you normally get the glider.
The Dwarf finds a series of towers with teleporters in them (not just the two) and depending on what order he travels them in, could beat the Elf to the Sky Rune, beat the Alien to the Star Rune, beat the Robot to the Wind Rune, etc. He effectively gets bonus dungeons that no one else can access, and can take a totally different sequence from anyone else.
Alien is 5th to leave, and locks the gate of earth out of spite. He finds a cave passage through the mountains to Patrof, where he challenges the king and takes the Star Rune, setting himself up as the new king. He rules there for a while, and other apprentices who’ve found runes come to him. He can choose to join any one of them and follow their basic track from there on (they may or may not have already found some runes) or he can stay there and fight them as they come by, taking the runes from them. Eventually, the Robot will appear with the glider and the Wizard Rune, allowing the Alien to bypass most of the game’s dungeons.
Cleric gets a ferry from Zellis to the other side of the southern continent, gets the Water Rune first, fights the Alien for the Star Rune, then takes the submarine to the northern continent, where he gets a more involved subplot making peace with the warring states. As an NPC, he’ll be making peace for quite some time.
Demon also leaves late, and gets to the door to find it locked. But being a demon, he’s not the type to go fight ghost dogs for keys to help out the travelling salesmen. He runs into the Knight, who announces he’s going to find the key, and hatches a plan to have a bounty hunter kill the knight for him. So he has an early sidequest to go do a summoning ritual and raise Pison, the bounty hunter from hell. Knight kills Pison and opens the door, so the Demon goes to Bonro, and then has a second sidequest to bring Pison back (so that Knight can fight him in the Melnam ruins). Late in the game, he’ll do it a third time. He can also go through the cave to Patrof, but the Alien got the Star Rune first, and the Cleric got the Water Rune first. Given that the Robot would have the Wind Rune and the Elf would have the Sky Rune at this point, the game becomes a matter of hunting down and killing every other apprentice to take the runes from them. Then he gets a sidequest to actually make/summon the item that can kill Duras, rather than just getting it from a random NPC. As an NPC, you’d find him in Duras’ dungeon, and if you kill him then or get him to join you, you can avoid the third Pison fight.
In the original game, there was a problem for some of the characters that the enemy difficulties were scaled for the “main” order, which meant Elf and Robot hit wall of nasty critters when they got off the ferry. The thing is, from a programming perspective, this should be an incredibly easy problem to fix: The game is divided into “zones” with different enemy encounters in each one. Depending on which character/sequence you’re playing, the zones are different. So the Robot meets level 3 enemies when he gets off the ferry, and the Knight meets level 15 enemies when he finally works his way around to that area.
When you get to the past, the game gets very linear, but there can still be differences base on which character(s) you bring along. The Robot should have significantly more plot in Melnam, give that he was built there. The Demon and Alien wouldn’t be caught dead running fetch quests between an old woman and her son, but the Demon would be a useful expert to call on when Dr. Fail tries to power his wizard-killing robot with Pure Evil. Maybe the Dwarf gets to help build the teleporter towers he’s been using. In any case, if you have a sidekick, you should get the full plot threads for both characters.
Addition: If occured to me, if you're doing plot changes for each character, you'll want to make it feasible to play through as each character. But playing through seven times? That's insane. So, here's what you do: Add to scene to the ending the first time around, when your main character gets trapped in the time loop by being reincarnated, but your sidekick (assuming you have one) is told he's has been "unbound from the threads of fate", then you save a clear file and can start a New Game Plus. When you choose your character, the two who finished the last game are grayed out (labeled "ascended" for your first character and "unbound" for your second) and you'll gain four times the XP and gold per battle on your subsequent play-throughs. When you reach the end a second time, presumably with two different characters, the first is again tapped in the time-loop (perhaps with a line about deja vu) and the sidekick gets an "unbound" scene featuring your sidekick from the first play-through. Third time, same deal, with four characters grayed out. Your last time though the game forces you to pick the one character you've never made it to the end of the game with (so you're playing a solo game for most of it), and the game changes after you pick up the last Rune.
You arrive in the past and meet the three sidekicks from your earlier play-throughs, who explain the time-loop and that they'll be able to break it. You then have a party of four for a completely new set of dungeons, acquiring an alternate method of putting down Gorsia that doesn't require the runes. Then you do it. The ending montage shows a different version of history if Lemele and the Runes didn't exist, and there's a scene for what happened to each "unbound" character.
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Date: 2009-07-14 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 04:25 pm (UTC)