Alright, if you’ve been closely following our recent updates, you probably know that our main goal right now is to finally get the entire first chapter of GENBA no Kizuna fully playable. In order to do so, we need to add 4 additional scenes to the content of the extended demo, and although that might not sound like much, one of those scenes is actually an entire investigation segment, so the term “scene” may not be completely accurate here.
I’ve always regarded the investigation of Ryuunosuke‘s room as “scene 11”, but in reality, it actually consists of a whole bunch of smaller scenes. You can examine a lot of objects in his room and talk to Amber about various topics, all of which will trigger a wide variety a small scenes. As a matter of fact, “scene 11” by itself almost makes up 1/3 of the entire first chapter.
In last week’s blog post, I also mentioned that some of the dialogue scenes with Amber cover rather complex topics, which posed quite a challenge to write, and all of this plays into why it’s been taking so long to get the “last bit” of the first chapter done.
I will talk about all of this in more detail once we get to the point where everything is actually done and released (at least to patrons), so today, I’d like to focus on a different step towards achieving this goal: adjusting the prologue.
Ever since the release of our demo, we have gathered quite a bit of feedback and quite some things have changed in regards to the story. As such, completing the first chapter doesn’t simply mean “adding the missing stuff”, but also “adjusting what already exists”.
And since these adjustments have now been taken care of, I’d like to give you a quick overview of what has changed:
- Script Adjustments: A number of people have complained that there is too much banter going on and too much internal monologuing by Keiichi, so I’ve tried to cut down on that as much as possible, similar to what I did in the SHINRAI Update. Some textboxes have been shortened/merged together, some parts have been slightly rewritten and others have been taken out entirely. Ultimately, this is a very subjective topic, though. Maybe you’ll still find stuff you’ll think is “unnecessary”, but all I can say is that what’s left now is what I definitely want to keep.
- Narration: The biggest change in regards to the writing is the addition of actual (past tense) narrative segments. Don’t expect anywhere near as much narration as was featured in SHINRAI. I’m using it rather sparsely in GENBA to keep the pace faster. However, there are some parts now that certainly benefit from using actual narration, especially later on in the story (in the prologue, there are only two instances now that serve to highlight things of importance… such as the sound in the lobby).
- Visual Adjustments: Here we have a number of smaller things going on. Some sprites have been adjusted (excited Keiichi now has a new expression), the text size for DPA entries has been increased, the intro screen for each chapter now shows the silhouette(s) of the focal characters(s) of the respective chapter (rather than the four silhouettes of all our main characters), and the maps of the Kaseki Residence have been fixed (they previously displayed some issues, such as a door that actually doesn’t exist and some incorrect labels).
- Kanji Changes: Since I changed the kanji writings of some character names in SHINRAI last year, GENBA also was in need of some changes (in the prologue, only Nobuhiko is affected by this).
That about sums it up. As you can see, a lot of these things are minor changes, so if you’ve played our demo some time ago, you probably will not even notice them. The prologue generally wasn’t affected much, but you will definitely notice a lot more changes going on in the actual first chapter (we’ll talk about that one next week, though).
I’m currently busy finishing up the first chapter adjustments, so afterwards, we can finally update the extended demo and then add the new stuff on top of that. As mentioned last week, Jurassic June is right around the corner now, and I’d really like at least patrons to go on a dino hunt in Ryuunosuke‘s room!
And in order to achieve that, I’ll get back to work now, so please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care! :3
