[Dead] Suikoden Game for RMXP

[Jack of All Trades]

Heh. Maybe it could be like the Theatre setup, where any character can be appointed to play the role as "matchmaker"? Jeane would be hilarious, especially if the client decided to go with her instead of the one she was supposed to match them with.

On the Stars list, I'm surprised that Kilawher is a Falcon-style fencer. Is this canon?

Original Black Knights occupying the Chiki-Chimou duo could go either way, I guess. Especially seeing how their canon predecessors easily had the least likable personalities or, worst, none whatsoever.

Wish you'd keep the vowel pattern for the names of those non-star, or at least go for a recognisable theme like the Japanese numbers in Koroku's quintet or music notes used for the Doremi Elves.

Milton, Steven, Milo, Cleo aka Dr. Pookman are me and my girlfriend Shayna's cats. Maggie is her families cat that died some time ago. The pattern that we are going with will be two fold. There is one cat for each basic Suikoden element. They are both intelligent and magical in nature. Even though their naming scheme doesn't correspond with sort of quintet I'm either going to put rune symbols on each of their collars or Sindar symbols. I was thinking about naming them Tir, Riou, Thomas, Lazlo, and Freyjadour. That will have to wait for the sequel though.

It is not cannon that Kilawher is a falcon style fighter at all. I just thought it would be something to spice up her character and differentiate her from Sonya a little bit.

The Chiki-Chimou star combo is not a pair of black knights. Only the Chiki star is a black knight. I"m going to dream up a Kurdish name for him as well.

[Yensoo]

Hey guys! I just wanted to say thanks for all the positive comments on the concept art! Perhaps I will have to post more here soon and get your opinions.

-Yensoo

[Jack of All Trades]

So call me slow but today I realized that I just because I'm still waiting for dragonmasterx to finish translating Oath's Hatchet and hoping for someone to help me with the Suikoden Encyclopedia, I don't have to stop writing my plot.

I'm moving on from writing the Succession War for the time being and I'm going to start writing the Scarlet Moon-Jowston War. I'm going to take a bit of artistic license with this war by expanding it a lot.

Even though Agares Blight and Jowston have an ongoing peace treaty they continue to have ongoing border skirmishes. And by the year 447 roles around Darell the mayor of muse all ready had Luca and Sarah kidnapped and raped respectively. I'd say that Highland would be more than willing to form some sort of unofficial alliance with Scarlet Moon.

So I was thinking about Highland Characters who may be available to be stars of destiny.

1. Han Cunningham: Maybe a bit too high profile at this point.
2. Genkaku: Not an official soldier of Highland and since Nanami and Riou are 4 and 2 at this point respectively he may not have adopted them yet and would therefore be free for one last adventure. Maybe he can meet Riou and Nanami's parents...
3. Solan Jee

Unfortunately, Luca, Seed, Culgan, and Rowd are a bit too young for action. However, they are ripe for cameo appearances. Kiba Windamier, would also be an option but unfortunately he and Kwanda share the same Star of Destiny, removing him from as a potential option. I can go with Han and Genkaku or Solan Jee.

What do you guys think?

[patapi]

Nothing is stopping you from havig Kiba as a non-star plot-critical character.

How deep into Jowston territories would this part of the story take us, anyway?

[Jack of All Trades]

Nothing is stopping you from havig Kiba as a non-star plot-critical character.

How deep into Jowston territories would this part of the story take us, anyway?

Don't worry, I'm going to drop some Kiba into the game. I love Kiba and Klaus and I have no idea why?

Not too deep. I was all ready planning on going up to Banner Village, now I'm planning on possibly going up to South Window. I was also thinking about crossing the badlands to do war with Tinto since its not too great of a journey from Senan to Tinto.

It all depends I guess. The way I see it the Scarlet Moon may have to send a message to Jowston to keep them from coming back. Beating them back across the boarder just doesn't seem like enough to me.

[Iesous]

I have to ask, why in the world would Genkaku fight against the city states? Not only that, but if he did, why in the world would anyone (annabelle, Freed, Makai) have any respect for him and therefore respect for Riou come Suiko 2? I think it would be cool to include him, but I wouldn't put him as a SoD. Maybe you could try to recruit him and he would flat out refuse. You could play with that. Maybe a duel, maybe a battle you couldn't win. I don't know.

[Jack of All Trades]

That's a great point. Maybe I won't use them as characters. I was thinking about something along the lines of them being visited by Leknaat before being summoned by Agares Blight. Agares is a piece loving man, and didn't make war on Jowston, even though they raped his queen and destroyed his only son's mind. Their were even border skirmishes between the two nations for a couple years, and they managed to keep from going to war. It would be nice to see that Agares did something about it by sending his best soldier Han Cunningham on a secret mission under an assumed identity. I could even see Han going to Genkaku for one last adventure with his best friend, under an assumed identity. Maybe thats too out of character though.

I may just end up going with a young Solan Jee. I wish I could think of another Highland bigshot to go along with him though. I just want to use more than one, but it looks like Solan Jee is the only one available.

[Runemaster]

Just to remind you for the good of the game: It's Solon Jhee.

[Jack of All Trades]

Yeah, I spelled it off of the top of my head. Sorry about that. More importantly, I was doing some research on him last night. He would be 16 or 17 at this point in the game. Based on Riou and Jowy's ages, Solan Jhee would still be in the Unicorn Brigade. I highly doubt he would be selected by Agares for an unofficial mission to destabilize power in a foreign nation.

If I do an alliance with highland, its either going to feature some new characters or Han & Genkaku incognito. The idea is kind of similar to the Toran Republic one where you choose between Kasumi and Valeria from Suikoden 2. The whole point of this is a Suikoden 2 easter egg payoff.

I can justify Genkaku because he's a morally righteous person. Even though, he'd be dishonored for fighting against his own country, he would probably do it save a hundred thousand people. Especially, if Leknaat visited him in the night, like she's known too. However, Agares has no business asking Genkaku much of anything. So, I'm thinking either Han would recruit him or Leknaat would tip him off and he would just show up while the main character is meeting with Agares.

The idea I want to go with is that Agares wants to have his cake and eat it too. Even though he is a peace loving man and a coward for abandoning his wife and child to Darell's thugs. He still has feelings, and wants revenge. Destabilizing, Jowston by secretly supporting the Scarlet Moon is something that other countries do all of the time. Look at the United States for example, the CIA continues to do this stuff. I'd like to note that during this peace time that Han & Genkaku forged, there were many border skirmishes that resulted from the incident with Sara and Luca Blight.

Here is where I'm stuck, Han & Genkaku are not covert mission kind of guys. They are pretty well known. My idea was for them to be using aliases. However, I have a feeling their faces may give them away. Maybe moreso among the other highland soldiers but that doesn't matter because the highland soldiers would have to deny that they fought in that war anyway. However, their faces may be recognizable to Jowston and they are the one's who count.

Can anybody think of a way to pull this off? I don't want to scrap the idea all together. I really want to reward the players with something cool like this. I can create some new characters to make this happen, but it would be much more fun this way. I really want your ideas and opinions on this one.

[patapi]

You already have plenty of Suikoden II easter eggs with Jowston people being roped into the story, so if involving prominent Highlanders in your story is not workable, don't worry about it.

Canonically, did Scarlet Moon actually have any formal diplomatic relations with Highland?

[Iesous]

Maybe you could have Genkaku meet your hero and refuse to fight against his country. Then, mysteriously, as you're leaving town, a masked fighter shows up. If you beat him, he'll join your group. If not, he'll say you're not serious enough about fighting for justice. Then, you can come back some other time and fight him after you level up 10 or so levels. Win and get him to join. Then you could have your detective drop some hints about the masked fighter being Genkaku.

[Jack of All Trades]

I thought about making Han and Genkaku masked generals. It just seems so contrived to me though. These guys are big shot generals. I'm getting to the point where I'm thinking the only option is the suspension of disbelief. Kind of like the Clark Kent Superman thing.

As far as diplomatic relations go. I would hope so. Scarlet Moon used Milich as an ambassador all the way down in Falena...

I want everybody to know that I have a poll up at Duefiumi, regarding the Tenkai star of this game. No matter what, I'm telling the same story with alternating main characters, so in my opinion this is a choice of small significance. Regardless, I've seen a number of different concerns about the subject of who exactly should be Suikogaishi's Tenkai star. Originally, I had Teo lined up to be the main character of the game, however his role began to diminish right away. As I wrote the story somehow Odessa came out of nowhere and became a major player. The story became a three-pronged narrative, alternating the plot between Odessa, Teo, and Barbarossa. I moved Barbarossa to the Tenkai spot.

The entire time over this was going on I saw posts here and on duefiumi where people were unhappy with the Tenkai star. Some people want a new character, some people want Barbarossa, some people want Teo, and some people want Odessa. I started a poll where you can vote on it. It's here: http://www.duefiumi.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1241.

I would really appreciate it if you guys would make your opinion's known while there is still time.

[Jack of All Trades]

So I thought I would do a little update here. I've got bad news and good news.

First the bad news. It looks like Han and Genkaku will not be a part of this game. In fact there are absolutely zero known Highland entities appearing as stars of destiny. If you think about it though, this is actually good news. It means our game will make sense. I've pushed the envelope in a couple places all ready, and I can only get away with it so much. What I mean is I can take something that doesn't make much sense and write around it until it does make sense, but it creates a lot of "happy coincidences", that as a whole cheapen the value of the story. I don't intend on pursuing such an avenue.

Onto the good news. I had some problems with the early mappers I recruited either being too lazy to work or secretly hiding the fact that they weren't really skilled enough to do the job asked of them. I've recruited several people to help map and we should be resuming progress with the most basic element of the game very very soon. However, we are just testing these people out now. This kind of process is like a job. You apply for the job, you get hired, and you go to work. We will be giving some of our new kids a shot to see if they have what it takes.

Also, I just purchased suikogaishi.com. We are putting up our own website soon. Its mostly for work purposes but we love public feedback so we'll be inlcuding a forum, developer blogs (I know I'll be running a blog at least), a storage area for us, and an easy to use picture viewer for Yensoo's artwork. Right now my scripter is making the site but if anybody is talented we'd love to recruit someone to specifically design the site. Heck we'd just love some logo's and artwork and such...

One last thing.

Humphrey

[Antimatzist]

It's good that you don't force Hand or Genkaku in your story. They could still make small cameos as ambassadors.

Humphrey looks good, but maybe a bit too veteran. At the time of the succession war, he was 20.. but I don't know how to make people look younger.
Btw I just read that Humphrey killed his superior in the Kalekka incident Oo will this be included in the game, too? I mean Humphrey won't be available after that...

[Jack of All Trades]

The game won't stretch much beyond the Kalekka incident so, I don't think it'll be a problem for him to have a major role. I have a couple ideas of how I'm going to deal with both Humphrey and his star after the Kalekka incident.