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Belief - Lileah, Salvia, and Dharma

5 years ago3,751 words

Here's some revised concept stuff for my planned next game, Belief, in which a protagonist vaguely based on Mardek's mother is inseminated by an alien based on Rohoph. Fun for the whole family!

First, I've been terrible at replying to any feedback recently, which I feel bad about since it's not as if I get much, and sometimes people write really heartfelt, supportive things that I really wish I were better at responding to. I blame depression, or whatever's causing me to constantly feel awful and fatigued, and I hope you understand, but still. I do read them all, and appreciate them (unless they're jabs at me). Perhaps I'll try to go back through some of the previous posts and reply to things when I have the time and energy, but it's been so rare lately that I have both that I don't want to promise anything. I'm not sure how much people want replies anyway though or whether just commenting is satisfaction enough.

I got an email from Armor Games re Sindrel Song the other day actually, telling me that they're reviewing it and will get back to me again soon. I didn't reply to that either. Perhaps I should do that now, actually, just to say "thanks for letting me know!". It's annoying that I just don't do things like that as soon as I could or should, and instead they nag at the back of my mind for days instead. "I should have replied to that thing", "why not do it now, then?", "...I feel bad that I didn't", "why not do it now then??", "I wish I were better at replying to things". Sigh! So stupid.

...There. I just sent a reply, which took about ten seconds. I hope that if things move further along, I don't end up taking days to reply to emails. I don't intend for that to be the case, but I've been doing this forever. I remember taking days to reply to emails regarding the sponsorship for MARDEK 3. I wonder how prolonged that process was, actually. I can't remember at all.

I suppose some days I just feel so lousy that I can't actually bring myself to type any words that'll be read by another person, since I assume they'll be horrible and wrong so it's better not to write anything... Something like that. It's a pain though.



Anyway, Belief! While there are days where I feel correspondence is beyond me, often I'm able to at least do some developing. I suppose it's something I retreat to for comfort, since I can feel like I'm making progress, getting somewhere, even if in my life beyond that I'm absolutely not.

Belief is my new game, which I've written about in ∞ a few posts already ∞. I started a couple of months ago, but I've not done much on it because there've been a lot of snags along the way, largely because I was hoping to draw upon MARDEK for inspiration, and some of the hardcore fans have been vehemently opposed to anything other than a faithful remaster of exactly what they loved when they were younger. I've already been over that a few times in other posts.

I was trying to think of a story using the same mechanics which didn't draw on MARDEK at all, but my mind keeps going back to some recently-developed concepts inspired by MARDEK (or Taming Dreams). Things like ∞ an Alora Fane race called the Lucen ∞, which are ruled by ∞ a group of 'magisters' who could very well resemble the original Governance de Magi ∞. I also really like the characters I already planned as the main cast - ∞ Blight, Lacuna, and Flaymh ∞ - and it seems a shame to just throw that all away.

I planned for those characters' stories to span three separate chapters, but wrote in a previous post that it might be a good idea to try and make a standalone one first, to see if people even like the idea before either locking myself into something unappealing, or leaving yet another series unfinished.

I've been looking into that, and I've come up with something that I like... though it's not standalone exactly. It could serve as a direct prequel to the three-chapter story, but maybe that's not a bad thing.

I've been thinking about different types of 'belief'. In Blight's story, he shares his mind with the 'Rohoph' character, and has to convince the world that the gods are gone and that he - this 'Rohoph' character - can replace them and bring about a better world. Something like that. You're effectively Jesus, and the belief is essentially religious.

But there are other forms of belief. ∞ I wrote the other day about UFOs ∞, sort of as a deliberate precursor to this post, and it's interesting how people respond to things like that. Rather than actually looking at any accounts presented, they instead just share what they already believe, because, well, we're all already right, so why listen to what anyone else has to say? They should listen to what we have to say though. We've already built our mental castles, and it's difficult for those to be toppled.

Another kind of belief that's culturally relevant at the moment is whether or not someone's been a victim or instigator of sexual assault, or whether they're just making it up. Do we #BelieveAllWomen, or does that mean that some innocent men have their lives ruined by unscrupulous people taking advantage of the system? Or should we be sceptical, so real victims suffer more than they already have? And what about men saying they've been sexually abused, and many people don't take them seriously?

It's awful to have some experience that affected you massively, but other people just don't believe that it happened at all, at least as you believe it did.

Those are hot, tricky topics to deal with in a silly video game. But in ∞ a recent post about games that dealt with deeper issues ∞, the game LISA came up. That's explicitly about sexual abuse, from what I remember, and apparently it did quite well despite - or because of? - that. I can't imagine it's the only game that's true for.

So I've combined a lot of ideas and inspirations into what I have at the moment. Here's the plan as it stands currently:



The first chapter would follow this character, called Lileah:



She's actually (very vaguely!) based on Mardek's mother, Lilanea, though her name's been shortened to six letters. While I think Lilanea was just a random word I came up with back then, now it's a derivative of Lily, the flower (I could have gone with Lillie, but it sounded too childish). That's obviously incorporated into her design, which also draws inspiration from gypsies and pirates.

And she teams up with her best friend, Salvia:



I'm really happy with how these models turned out. They're reminiscent of the 2D style of my old games, while having a stylised liveliness that 3D can provide. The faces still look a bit unusual, and I worry that minds other than my own might not find them appealing, but... eh.

Not long after I made MARDEK, and before Taming Dreams, I had a dream where a blonde woman who called herself 'the Green Sage' offered me the chance to relive my life, knowing what I do now... or something. I started a game around it, which is what Alora Fane was first designed for. The game was called Alora Fane: Regression, and I didn't get very far with it. Because Alora Fane was meant to have an overarching flower motif, all the characters had names based on plants. This 'Green Sage' character was called Salvia, as my research suggested that was something with hallucinogenic effects... I think? It was years ago. (Oh wait, salvia is also called 'sage', so there was that too.)

In Taming Dreams, I reused this name for the revision of the MARDEK character Gloria. The Shaman, who now had an actual personality and joined the party briefly in the second episode, was her mentor, and she was called Sylvia (not confusing at all!). So this character's inspired, at least partly, by that progression of ideas.

Her design here is based on hippies, and it incorporates the look of the actual Salvia plant's flowers, which are apparently (usually) purple. Her braids are meant to be reminiscent of them, and of 'alternative' types who are inclined towards dying their hair in unnatural colours. I also like the yellow/purple contrast between the two characters; I'm becoming quite fond of that colour pairing. She's got a 'third eye' too, though not a real one.

Characters in this game have these 'personality runes', which are a key part of the 'combat', and which say a lot about, well, their personalities. They're in three pairs: Abstract/Realistic, Feeling/Tough, and Jolly/Grave. Abstract/Realistic is essentially the personality trait Openness (to Experience), which ∞ I talked about in a previous post ∞. The reactions to that were interesting, as they often are, and it's something that's been on my mind a lot because of much of a role it likely plays in what kinds of ideas and beliefs we're receptive to as individuals. I prefer Abstract/Realistic as a pairing rather than having a singular variable you can be 'low' in. It seems more palatable to be "strongly Realistic" (sounds - accurately - like an inclination) rather than "low in Openness" (sounds - inaccurately - like a deficit).

So these two characters, Lileah and Salvia, have grown up together and been best friends essentially their whole lives. But Lileah is Rfg and Salvia is Atj. Lileah is down-to-earth, extroverted, fairly serious, and fiercely devoted to her cause and her sense of identity. Salvia, by contrast, is very much into ~spirituality~, and she's quite dreamy and detached from reality, feeling that it's ~all an illusion~ anyway and it's best to just be positive and let things go.

(The F/T and G/J runes are interesting here. I imagine Lileah as quite tough and assertive, and Salvia as softer and nonconfrontational, while Salvia's the one with the tough rune. I might change these later, but for now I'm seeing it as F+G meaning Lileah's compassionate towards others (Feeling) but serious and neurotic (Grave), while Salvia is more self-oriented (Tough) but easy-going (Jolly). I might change them as I develop the characters though. Not all of the real Big Five traits are covered by these runes, so I'm having to play around with what each of them mean; previously, G/J meant introversion/extroversion, at least partly, but here that doesn't work. I wonder if anyone other than me is even slightly interested in this!)

The game begins with the two of them having just applied to become Cherubim in the Cloud-Clad Castle, a concept retained from Taming Dreams (though this bit could change as I develop more). They're on their way home, talking about the experience, and how a bright future lies ahead of them. Lileah talks about wanting to spend her life helping people as a Seraph (Cherubim are recruits, Seraphim are the 'knights' they become). Salvia wonders whether they'll meet new people, even someone to start a family with, but Lileah says she doesn't want children, or a man; she'd be more than happy to just spend her life with Salvia... though Salvia doesn't exactly pick up on what she's saying.

It's late, and they go back to their respective homes. On Lileah's way to hers, a beam of light appears from the sky, and abducts her! She's taken into a 'cloud', where she meets this person:



Obviously that's 'Rohoph', making use of his divine design from Taming Dreams. He's called Dharma here, which - like all these new names - was chosen carefully rather than just being something I made up.

He explains to Lileah - who's quite shaken, scared, and angry at being taken against her will - that he needs her for something, to help bring their people together, to have them intertwine. He wants to cultivate oneness, togetherness. However, he doesn't particularly want to dirty his own body directly, so he summons a machine from the floor that straps Lileah down, preventing her escape. A mechanical tendril goes up her shorts leg... She blacks out.

She wakes up in bed at home, with her parents looking over her, telling her they found her unconscious just outside the village. She feels traumatised; she was just abducted and violated by a strange... man? Whatever that even was! The regional shaman has been called to check on her - the Bronze Archipelago's equivalent of a doctor - but when she explains what happened, the rather scientifically-minded shaman is incredulous, and assumes she's delusional, remembering a fever dream. As she rests, word of this spreads, and the whole village comes to see her as crazy.

Salvia pays her a visit, and eagerly asks her details about her unusual experience ("ooh, ooh! What was it like??"), but Lileah's annoyed that her excitement is inappropriate, and she's not even asked if she's okay; her curiosity is detached from any actual compassion, and it makes her feel unsupported. She says to Salvia that she wants to convince the people in the village that she's not crazy, that something like this really did happen, but Salvia thinks she should just ~let it pass~, in a spiritual sort of sense. This creates conflict between them, which triggers a 'battle' where Lileah has to convince Salvia to her point of view (that she needs to go out and convince people).

When she does, they join together, and go out to convince the people in the village of your truth.

That'd be the first main section of the story, which might conclude with you finally convincing the shaman that you're not crazy after all. The shaman tells you though that their medicine can't exactly heal the mind (Salvia's annoyed that the shaman isn't spiritual enough), but apparently there's a 'Prophet' who's appeared on a neighbouring island, and there've been some interesting stories of people having mental wounds soothed thanks to him. The shaman suggests that Lileah go and see him, so she does.

When they do meet this Prophet, though, Lileah is shocked! It's him! The man who violated her! And here he is, acting like some kind of holy prophet, exerting his power over others and getting them to believe in him! This is an outrage! They need to know what kind of person he really is!

So the second major section would involve trying to convince people to not support this prophet, which would culminate in an encounter against him and his most trusted companions. When you convert all of them, he realises that you're not ready for his message, and departs.



This combines several different kinds of belief. The belief of having an unusual experience - a UFO abduction - with being the victim of trauma (which together is also very much like the trope of alien probing), plus there's the thing of a powerful man having behaved badly, and you aim to topple him from his position of influence once you know what kind of person he really is.

Obviously it's not as viscerally vengeful as something like, say, LISA, and I don't know how people would respond to how it deals with these kinds of topics. But I think there are a lot of really interesting ideas in here that could be worth exploring.

I've written in recent posts about wanting to be quite silly with it, but I'll probably blend silliness and seriousness in the same way I always do.

I've planned it in more detail than that, though it'd be overwhelming to write about everything in one post, so this summary will have to do.

If this were appealing enough to people, then I'd make the other three chapters, which follow Blight... who's the son of both Lileah and Dharma thanks to the events of this story. Dharma is the one who returns to the Bronze Archipelago, and comes to share Blight's mind, so the plot of that would be getting other people to believe in Dharma. Interesting.

Several people have said that one of the most compelling parts of MARDEK was Rohoph's moral ambiguity. He believes himself to be the highest good, but is he? Dharma is an elaborated version of that general idea. He represents the spiritual perspective, believing that everything's essentially a dream and that a greater reality awaits beyond, and everyone who's not enlightened enough to see this is just blind. He truly believes he has the best intentions for everyone, but his aims are just completely detached from everyday reality in a way that would definitely be perceived as, well, not Good.

Was Rohoph the main villain of MARDEK? It'd be less ambiguous with Dharma, at least at the start, but as things go on, it becomes apparent it's not quite that clear-cut. Much more interesting, I think, than a heroic figure who does only good, or an eeeevil one who kicks puppies while madly laughing.



I've made some technical/gameplay changes/refinements, too. I recently played the Link's Awakening remake (and had a similar feeling to the Spyro one - I enjoyed it enough, but there was a heavy feeling of deja vu and I was relieved when it was over), which reproduced the look of the originals by giving the camera a fixed angle. I thought I'd do the same, to be reminiscent of the old games I was once known for.



It doesn't work well with these interior, cramped areas, because a lot's hidden by the walls, but most areas would be external anyway. (Link's Awakening NS did an interesting thing to get around this, where the camera angled up when you went behind an obscuring wall, but those walls were uncommon.)

I've also rethought how to handle dialogue, visually. In ∞ this post ∞, I had a gif of it zooming in on who was talking, but that presents a bunch of issues. You can't see both characters' faces, and there needs to be distant scenery, otherwise you'll see all kinds of graphical weirdness.

So now it works like Taming Dreams:



Though there are issues currently. Multiple text boxes are shown so you can see what was last said, though new messages are added at the top currently, which is confusing. There can also be multiple characters per side, though if the speech bubbles all appear in the middle, that's confusing too. It might be clearer once I add varying poses and talking mouth movements, or I might have to rethink their positioning, or have non-speakers darken or something. I'll work this out myself, but I thought it'd be interesting to share where I am anyway.

I've also elaborated on how skills work:



In ∞ the first post about Belief ∞, I talked about how characters have 'cold', 'neutral', and 'hot' skills, available to them depending on their 'excitement' level. I've expanded on that, so characters have up to four skill slots, and each skill can have a variable availability range, rather than being divided into those three categories. So here, Lileah's excitement is low (the blue bar across the screen, behind the skills), and that gives her access to either of these two skills.



Salvia's two skills here have the same availability, but if she were to get too excited, her third skill ("Deep Breaths") would become available, allowing her to calm herself. Salvia's skills are based around calming excitement, while Lileah's are based around rousing it. So that should lead to some interesting mechanics.

Speaking of interesting, in this sample battle here, where Lileah and Salvia face against 'Boyfriend' and 'Girlfriend', I got into a situation where I'd converted both of them to my side, but lost both Lileah and Salvia to the opposing side. So I was controlling the original opponents, and trying to convince the original player characters to join me. It made me laugh, but it was also quite tense and involving in a way that typical JRPG turn-based combat rarely is. But of course it's all down to subjective preferences and perceptions and all that, as always. (Sadly, that's too long for a gif, and I don't feel it's worth a video.)

I'm imagining that new skills could be acquired, either through equippable items (currently I don't know if there's any reason to add items at all, though it feels so empty without them), or perhaps through interactions with people who you convert to your side, as either Blue Mage-like combat mechanics, or through plot events where specific individuals give you new abilities with a bit of story behind them. Perhaps you could level up skills by using them too, improving their effectiveness.

Oh, and finally, I've added a temporary particle effect, which already makes things feel more alive (though obviously the final ones would be more elaborate and not all the same).





So that's that so far. I feel like it'll take time to get anyone to believe in this as an idea, but did you know that MARDEK 1 and 2 received a really mediocre response when I first released them? It was only once I released MARDEK 3 that it seemed like everything blew up... though I could be remembering that all wrong. I know some people joined my sites following the first two, hmm.

This combines a lot of ideas I feel compelled to make, though, most of which saw their beginnings starting with my earliest projects. My very first games were about religion, and alien visitation. This is just a more developed take on that.

I know these posts are obnoxiously long, but I hope you got something out of this if you managed to read this far!!

(I've posted this on Taming the Mind again, though maybe I should be setting these as Alora Fane posts instead... Hmm.)