Hello, folks! It’s that time of the week again! I hope you all have been having a good week. Personally, I’ve had several strange moments this week, but most of them have been situations in real life by people trying to break the time-space continuum. Development, on the other hand, has been a lot more standard. No big updates for this week, but a fair number of small ones.

-The number of completed backgrounds jumped up pretty significantly this week. Five backgrounds were finished up this week, bringing our total up 6, all but one of them having different alterations for time of day. For those of you who played Reborn, you’ll remember that it only have a grand total of 8 backgrounds, so we are on course for having a lot more diversity in the destinations. I’m pretty stoked about that.

While Reborn didn’t really need a whole lot of backgrounds because it was very focused in that one setting, Fates is trying to expand upon that. To me, the story of an investigator going on a journey to save the universe needs some diversity in the locale. My thoughts drift back to Dragon Age 2 when I think about locale diversity. It’s limiting to recycle the same places again and again and again. We are on an epic adventure and we need some epic places to go!

The universe that Rising Angels is a part of is one inspired by fantasy. Fantasy and sci-fi… it’s an odd hybrid to be sure, but we are going to have an enjoyable time with Zuri and her ancient temples and Kika freaking out in her underwater bubble cities. Wait… I mean…

-For those of you who are interested, updates to Rising Angels: Hope (The Red Rose remake) are also going along well. CG are looking pretty and the story is shaping up a lot better. No idea on the release date yet though. As part of my thanks, all Kickstarter backers will get two week early access to it when it releases.

-Some of the new things being added to Fates that were left out of Reborn are aiming towards increasing the amount of immersion. In the words of an old visual novel reviewer whom I can’t seem to convince to return, immersion makes the visual novel. The story needs those little things to help the player stay engaged.

For those of you who have been following me on twitter for a long time, you’ll know that I love Muv Luv. We can argue all day about various elements of the story, but there is one lesson from it that the EVN industry needs to take to heart. No movement is boring. You have a world, you have characters. Let’s give them a little life. Panning backgrounds, character poses and depth in the scene, and other little things help give that life. I’m pretty happy to admit that some of those things have been making their way in. With the help of Geckos, we’ve (she, really, not going to take credit for her hard work) been adding those things. As pathetic as it may sound, one of the biggest things that disappointed me in the previous RA series games is that Faye’s ears don’t wiggle with her emotions.

Problem solved. (You have to click on the picture. Website doesn’t show it right.)

That’s about it for this week’s update. As always, stay tuned for next week’s update on the crazy world that is visual novel development! Chief out!