Lunar 3 - Black Star Story (MANIFESTO)

[Lishy]

"But the vision did not come true! Look around you.. Are we not slowly descending once again into dictatorship? Are people not making the same mistakes they made thousands of years ago? We're drunk with welfare, abolishing our very human nature for the illusions of prosperity and shelter once again! Is this the 'dream come true' Althena wanted me to see!?

'For one to gain something, another must lose something'. That is the rule of this third dimensional universe of ours. How many years must we wait for humans to stop all their foolish wars? What must we do to finally learn to respect, and love one and other? I have given up hope. If the vision did not come true now, it will never come true... We are a world of "have" and "have not"...

Father believed the only way to resolve the sadness of those who "have not" is for one to "have" everything, and for all to "have not". But I don't agree with my father. As long as there is a "have", humans will eternally envy and fight for which others possess!

It makes my heart wrench!!!

But I don't know what to do...

Living conscious to the horrors of this world is too much for me to bare!

Do I truly deserve an existence of my own...?

The powers Althena gave to me forces me to reincarnate each time I die... I've tried to eventually bring death upon myself in the past, but reincarnation forces me to start this hell all over again!!!

This is not a blessing... This is a curse! I want to die! And I want return to nothingness! I do not wish to reincarnate through in this world of hell! I want to return to nothingness, and return to the void! Damn you Althena! You selfish, dead coward! I will find a way out of this three-dimensional maze you've created for me! Even if I must chase you to the burning depths of hell to find it! I will escape! I will pursue my own happiness and escape! I will return to the void!!!"

MANIFESTO COMING SOON!
But I hope that quote sets the tone for what kind of story is to come!

A manifesto for a Lunar game taking place on the Black Star. The premise is to make the heroine (not to be confused with the protagonist. Think of Luna.) the antagonist herself by revolving the conflict around the ideas of "have" and "have not" being the central scientific rule of this universe, while her sub-conscious desire is to return to nothingness.

The plot explores a setting without a central god and deity watching over the world, instead resembling how real life has its own interpretations of religions amongst many cultures. However, without a central god of worship, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats have taken over as rulers of the world.

The objective of the protagonist is ultimately to pursue his own happiness and freedom by succeeding independence from the imperialist, corrupt state which killed his mother and father after his family involved themselves in top secret military affairs. However, without escaping the Black Star itself, there would not be any other way to escape their grasp. There for, the protagonist turns to exploring Ancient Myths and archeology of the world. There is a legend about a portal utilized by God's Angels used during a war with Iblis' devils, in order to access hell. However, the Cifran culture describes "Hell" not as a place of underworld, but as a Blue Star in the sky. If there was a way to travel to the Blue Star, could they possibly escape those which hound them?

For graphics, I'd love to see a style similar to Grandia. Ps1-styled environments, with 2D sprites.



For the protagonist and other characters, I did not establish the design. But I would love to make Leena (The heroine) use a scrapped character design from my visual novel:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v626/ ... /kagra.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v626/ ... sized1.png

A heroine who uses bladed fans. She probably would not be a yandere if we adapt her to a Lunar fangame, but I adore the Beret. Her design actually evolved into this..
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v626/ ... ot0011.png


Your impressions are appreciated!

[Aaron]

Doesn't sound at all like Lunar why bother setting it in the same universe?

[Lishy]

Doesn't sound at all like Lunar why bother setting it in the same universe?

Because I want to see something which truly feels like a Lunar 3, with a fully developed and fleshed out world of new characters, rather than some piece of crap rippoff of like Lunar DS was of Lunar 1!

Since I'm putting lots of honest effort into this, I'll hear you out though. Could you elaborate why it does not belong in the Lunar universe?

It is true while the planet it takes place on is.. Unique, why wouldn't it capture the Lunar experience? Couldn't we say the same for Lunar 2: Eternal Blue being too different from Lunar 1 in setting?

I mean, the story as I have it right now carries from both, but in its essence, isn't it what Lunar is?

Boy meets magical girl he falls in love with, who has some tie to god? Boy embarks on journey to make his dreams come true, and the journey evolves into conflict about divine intervention in humanity? Boy must meet four dragons needed to even step foot into the villain's territory, then the hero beats up the bad guy?

In the case of this story, though it does have a very dark backdrop, doesn't it still capture essential Lunar elements? The world itself is very religious, and it plays a role in how people are governed (Lunar 2 did this too!). The protagonist himself has aspirations for adventure (Like Lunar 1), making the plot about finding the Blue Star from a world enriched in deep history (Kinda like Lunar 2). While the heroine is also a blue-haired girl with a terrible secret, kept from the protagonist, with a power key to conflict (Like Lunar 1 and 2...) However, due to the nature of the plot, the villain is not revealed until halfway through the story (Like Lunar 1), Meanwhile, the antagonists are fighting in the end fight for god's intervention in the world as opposed to the power of humans (Lunar 1 and 2 explored two versions of that conflict)

Is it an issue of a modern world fused with magic? What if such a thing looked more like Vane, and this is all about how things are interpreted ingame? And wouldn't the story feel half-assed if it was just like Lunar 1, without its own imagination? What if corrupt government is nothing more than a metaphor for god? What if this isn't trying to be a "fan-game", but a "fan-installment"?

[Sonic#]

The quick reason why I would say it doesn't feel like Lunar is that it doesn't take place on the Silver Star. There's no continuity of setting, no sense of a developing world whose bounds have been expanded. It's a lot like Phantasy Star III in that regard, a game loosely connected to the system of Algol in backstory. I've also considered that the game's greatest weakness; it's a game with an interesting plot that doesn't feel like a good sequel.

Let's think about sequels that have worked.

C.S. Lewis's Narnia stories all follow in the same universe, many after a considerable amount of time has passed. Many things change, but the world and key central characters remain to give it a sense of continuity. Lewis's space trilogy accomplishes this through consistency in theme, each book being about a people and their experience of evil, as seen through the eyes of the same space sojourner. It's a little more clunky, but it works.

Terry Pratchett's books have a very broad license. They're hardly sequels of each other at all, except where they follow a single character or group of characters (the Night Watch for example). What holds them together, what makes them contiguous, is that they still take place in the same world. That's what makes them Discworld novels.

A lot of people like Phantasy Star IV better than Phantasy Star III because Algol returns. Players get to see the radical changes (and persistent similarities) between each world. It also returns some familiar elements (like King Lassic, a villain from PS1).

A series like Grandia, Final Fantasy, or Dragon Quest maintains consistency in game play alone. But Lunar is not one of these series. Lunar 1, Lunar 2, Magic School, Walking School, and Dragon Song are all in the same world. All take place in the Silver Star, with possible brief excursions to the Blue Star. What this game asks us to do is accept that there's a third star, a Black Star, and move the action there. So there's no consistency of setting. You then remove the idea of a central guardian of the world. So there's no consistency of organization or order. It sounds less and less like a Lunar story.

That's not to say you can't make it interesting. I only suggest that this feels like a story lightly inspired by Lunar but very different from it.

[Lishy]

You said making parallels to the real world causes a story to lose its depth due to the lack of fantasy. However, I think you have the wrong idea. You achieve even more fantasy by bending the real world!

That's nice, but now you're not designing a Lunar game, but a Xenosaga one.

Glibness aside, it's hard to describe precisely why renaming things from a Judeo-Christian perspective sounds bad. So bear with me.

The short answer is that it forces a consistency of allusion in a game that isn't that concerned with where its names come from. Zophar is one of the friends of Job, someone who tells Job that his suffering could be a result of divine punishment. He was a comforter, not a destroyer. But the name works for an evil god anyhow. The allusion is latent, it hardly matters. In the absence of an explicit allusion, the name still manages to convey maleficence within a setting. It's a great name. Similarly, Althena, Lucia, and other names are great because they are distinct without being allusions. The only consistent allusion is Luna, which along with Lunar is a reference to our names for the moon that is similar to the Silver Star.

In contrast, by picking every major name from a single mythology, you create a borrowed allegory. You're working within an already established thought system. This is difficult to do well; Xenosaga only pulls it off because it delves much more deeply into gnostic traditions than most people would care to do, and it attains a level of detail that makes it work. In this case, forgive me for saying this, your allusions just seem trite, a shortcut to establishing a consistent world. Why can't the world have its own language for good and evil? Why does it have to be Judeo-Christian? More to the point than the triteness though is that Lunar doesn't do that sort of thing. Lunar escapes those specific allusions, going for a more distinct design that feels like a world and mythology of its own. Making it work within another mythology makes it, in an important way, unlike Lunar.

The quick reason why I would say it doesn't feel like Lunar is that it doesn't take place on the Silver Star. There's no continuity of setting, no sense of a developing world whose bounds have been expanded. It's a lot like Phantasy Star III in that regard, a game loosely connected to the system of Algol in backstory. I've also considered that the game's greatest weakness; it's a game with an interesting plot that doesn't feel like a good sequel.

Let's think about sequels that have worked.

C.S. Lewis's Narnia stories all follow in the same universe, many after a considerable amount of time has passed. Many things change, but the world and key central characters remain to give it a sense of continuity. Lewis's space trilogy accomplishes this through consistency in theme, each book being about a people and their experience of evil, as seen through the eyes of the same space sojourner. It's a little more clunky, but it works.

Terry Pratchett's books have a very broad license. They're hardly sequels of each other at all, except where they follow a single character or group of characters (the Night Watch for example). What holds them together, what makes them contiguous, is that they still take place in the same world. That's what makes them Discworld novels.

A lot of people like Phantasy Star IV better than Phantasy Star III because Algol returns. Players get to see the radical changes (and persistent similarities) between each world. It also returns some familiar elements (like King Lassic, a villain from PS1).

A series like Grandia, Final Fantasy, or Dragon Quest maintains consistency in game play alone. But Lunar is not one of these series. Lunar 1, Lunar 2, Magic School, Walking School, and Dragon Song are all in the same world. All take place in the Silver Star, with possible brief excursions to the Blue Star. What this game asks us to do is accept that there's a third star, a Black Star, and move the action there. So there's no consistency of setting. You then remove the idea of a central guardian of the world. So there's no consistency of organization or order. It sounds less and less like a Lunar story.

That's not to say you can't make it interesting. I only suggest that this feels like a story lightly inspired by Lunar but very different from it.

Thanks for the reply Sonic#. I really hope to get discussion going before I continue working on this because I fear I could be making a great plot go to waste! (And yes, in response to your other thread, I am a HUGE Xenogears fan! Which is where the name Deus comes from... )

I've changed stuff around since my post in the other project thread however, and luckily some of it addresses your comments in that post.

My main concern with taking place on the Silver Star is conflicting with cannon.

But if it is not the plot that is wrong, but the setting, and religious allusions to the real world, what if those things were addressed?

The key to my plot is the different interpretations of religion from many different cultures. What if the cultures did not reference the real world?

Furthermore, what if gameplay took place on all 3 stars? (Black Star, Silver Star, and Blue Star), starting from the Black Star, to the Silver Star, and the Blue Star as some snowy Final Dungeon of sorts?

Do note my plot is not fully developed yet, and I can change MANY things around (Even redo the plot as a whole!) But it would make an interesting scenario to return to Pentagulia in my opinion (As it holds the metaphorical grave of Zophar.), and interactions with Beastmen would be interesting to interpret from the viewpoints of the protagonists.

So would it be fine if players access the Silver and Blue Stars regularly throughout the plot? And if I cut references to the real world?

As I said before, my specific goals are to create a conflict where the hero and heroine are at odds with each other on the fate of the world, and to focus on the idea that "something can only be transferred and transformed, and never created, or destroyed. This dimension can only 'have' and 'have not'" (As that reflects Althena's power, according to the FMV of Zophar vs Lucia in EBC...)

What do you suggest I do? Or should I redo the plot entirely but with a similar premise about the hero and heroine? Maybe instead, a plot where the final boss takes the form of some sort of dragon? (I'm surprised no Lunar games make you fight a dragon for a final boss, with the exception of Star Dragon...)

[EternalDragonX]

Lunar SSH graphics would suffice as "fresh" for Lunar 3 seeing as its the first time the characters actually look like there anime counterpart. Also in regards to everything else.........what?

[Lishy]

I guess I was sort of rambling my ideas for a plot in a game I was working on. Bad idea. I'll just make an original franchise of my own unrelated to Lunar since I already got the game engine programmed