Hello, folks. Like the half-drunk professor walking in fourteen minutes late to class, I am still here and I am still hard at work. Nobody gets to go home quite yet. It has been… an interesting couple of months. By interesting, I mean the worst possible definition of it. Hope’s epic failure about sank the studio. Real life has been mild emergency after mild emergency. Been pretty tricky making all the pennies line up in the right order. Then we lost multiple writers for Order of Ataxia and I had to step in and add to my insane work weeks. Bad. Just… bad. But we seem to be pulling ourselves together. I’m getting a reliable paycheck again (even if it means writing time is lost). OoA is almost out the door (releasing after the Steam summer sale, so save some money for it!). I’ve been getting back into the thousands of interaction scenes that await me. Never fear, folks!

Writing: There’s something in some of Sol’s investigation lines that have been drawing an abnormal amount of thought from me. When you present him Kika in the first act, he tells you about why he is so thankful that she came along and wishes Zuri hadn’t. Natalie, of course, directly questions this since Zuri has rapidly taken the place of her good friend or budding lover depending on how you ended Reborn. Originally it was just going to be a short story about how Zuri has nearly killed him several times, but an accidentally line made me think about it a lot more and flushed out that event.

Sol’s line is that he doesn’t know if Zuri will be there when the need is the greatest. When it comes to security, it is natural to think that she would be the much better choice than Kika. If someone is charging Natalie with a knife, Kika isn’t able to do much more than yell a warning and possibly throw herself in the way if need be. Unless it is one of the other stronger draemon or Agent Syl, nobody is getting through Zuri in CQC. While writing the story, it is very easy to see Zuri as the stone wall between Natalie and danger, not Kika. But Sol has the counterpoint.

Kika protects her friends, Zuri protects her beliefs.

A thread on Steam for Hope highlighted the fact that Kika does whatever she can to help her friends. {Spoilers for Hope/Reborn} Kika goes out of her way to keep an eye on Faye and try to help her with Yoi’s dilemma and Lenna’s heart. In Reborn, she devotes her final hours to find a solution to save everyone while everyone else is giving up. {end spoilers} She might lord herself above them for praise, but Kika gives far more than she receives. But that’s the kicker that I’ve slowly noticed. Her pride makes it really easy to ignore just how much she supports. Her personality can grate with even the fondest of fans, and I think that’s the interesting dilemma.

Zuri is softer, friendlier. She wants to have friends and expresses her emotions a lot more clearly than Kika. It’s easier to associate with her and see the good she does. What Sol highlighted though is that good isn’t always the best for Natalie. As she says a thousand times, Zuri is a warrior and follows a fairly strict code of self-discipline. Most of the time, protecting Natalie and saving the universe fit into that code. What has a hard time fitting into it is compromise and understanding. Where Kika might be willing to accept doing something that she doesn’t agree with if it helps her friends, Zuri will refuse to even consider it. The idea of letting a lesser evil go to get a greater one is a foreign one to her. If it is a black and white situation, Zuri is the best ally you can have. When you start getting into the gray area to save the world… Zuri might not be there. It’s something that worries Sol greatly and why he prefers Kika over Zuri in their adventure.

Sol is a lot like Kika, now that I think about. A very valuable aide to Natalie, but that personality makes it really hard for people to pay attention to what he says.

More updates will be coming as operations get back into full swing. Stay tuned. Until then, Chief out.