Hello, folks! Old Chief here with some of the latest announcements from the front! The Steam Summer Sale is going on and I am happy to say that Rising Angels: Reborn is now 75% off. That’s right, you can save all of the money and make it a super free game! Best deal you’ll get, even better than that 75% off of Valkyria Chronicles that has preoccupied most of my evening. There are a lot of really good visual novels on sale at the moment, so I hope you all are getting out there and finding some solid games to occupy your time.

Wordcount: Very little writing was done this week. I was mostly working out things for the investigation and testing out how the code was working. Investigations are a pretty large portion of the game and I want to be able to give the player the most possible options when presenting clues and facts to characters. The most annoying thing in the world in Phoenix Wright was getting the same message again and again when you presented different pieces of evidence. I want to minimize that as best as I can. Even if they are only a line or two, I want to maximize the uniqueness of the events. That means figuring out how many items there are and how many different ways they can be presented. It’s a flow sheet nightmare…

Voice acting: Act 2 lines should be finished up in a couple weeks and almost all of Act 1 lines are done. Voice acting is progressing at a solid rate.

For today’s topic, let’s chat a little bit about our main protagonist, Natalie!

Name: Natalie Puccile

Age: 24/25 (Natalie has a birthday over the course of Fates. Some of the fun character events involve it.)

Gender: F

Rank: Major

Nationality: Katajion

Bio: A brilliant mind who always excelled at schooling, Natalie won numerous awards growing up for academic excellence. When she graduated, Natalie immediately joined the space force to work as a Special Investigations and Tactics officer. After being posted to the KSS Nimross to investigate a missing research team. After stumbling upon a threat to the future of space travel, Natalie takes it upon herself to independently pursue and neutralize the danger to the ones she loves.

Chief’s Notes: I realized I never talked much about Natalie and her story heritage. That’s a bit odd for me, considering she is the protagonist after all. Then again, Natalie is another one of those characters who comes from a lucky break during the creation process. The original main character for Rising Angels: Reborn was supposed to be her sister. Name is a much more… aggressive character than Natalie, much more driven to succeed. Overwhelmingly self-confident. This is part of the reason why Natalie is a lot more forceful and stuck-up in the introduction of Reborn. She was still channeling her sister.

Eventually, we decided to change it up a bit. Using Name as a base, a new character was fleshed out. I don’t really recall why we decided to name her Natalie. I keep feeling like there is a story there, but I feel it may have been lost to the ages. Knowing me, it probably has something to do with Natalie Portman, but I honestly couldn’t tell you. Either way, Natalie arose out of the ashes of the Beyond Fading Stars project and I quickly set to work fitting her into this new universe.

Still recovering from the Red Rose fiasco, I didn’t want to have a repeat where the cast was a bunch of very forceful people with a laidback protagonist. With Sol and Kika both planned to return, I needed someone who could balance their aggressiveness out, but not be pushed around. Name would have been too harsh, too demanding, so I started working. Natalie would be more interdependent, relying on her personal skills but willing to vest some of that trust into the rest of the crew. Sol was a beautiful match for her in that aspect. I wanted her to have a trusted friend, someone she could rely on from the start as she fostered relations with the other characters. They were foils, to a degree, but those differences only served to strengthen the bonds between them.

Zuri was an unexpected factor and really helped evolve Natalie in my mind. Unlike Sol, Zuri was a true foil to Natalie. The strong warrior and the academic scholar is a fairly time-tested duo. I expected them to fight and argue more, but they both shared a common thread. Natalie’s starting out with a focus on her own advancement had her very selfish at the start. Not a lot of honest caring for others. Zuri was the opposite, only caring about how she could better serve the group. Putting them together helped me evolve them both. Natalie started to see the crew as actual people, realizing her decisions had consequences. Zuri had her first streak of greed since losing Akurel all those years ago; she had a closer friend and didn’t want to lose her. Both girls fought against that inner reflection, not willing to accept that the reflection might show other aspects of their heart.

With there being a lot more hands-on investigations in Fates, I’m eager to see how Natalie grows. As the writer, I see a tipping point in her development and psyche. Will she return to being that career-driven officer who sees this investigation as a way of improving her standing by becoming a hero? Will she become more interdependent by opening her heart to her friends amidst these trials? Both are perfectly viable options with the story. Normally, I have my own canon for a character and that’s what they are. Not this time. Not for Natalie. Life is still very much transpiring for her and I don’t think I will see who she will become until the story comes to its conclusion.

Well, that’s all for this week. Go out there and remember to enjoy the summer with things other than video games as well! Books are totally awesome to read indoors in the summer as well. Until next time, Chief out!

Video of the post is some awesome music by an awesome guitarist.  Or was. Video didn’t load. Instead, here’s something else! Okay that didn’t load either. I’ll try again later.