The game was intended to be standalone, (to be completely open with all of you, I never planned a sequel until I got a few thousand emails from fans asking when the next one would be out). If anyone is upset with any continuity issues such as asking for all the gold in the treasury, that may be why. I had to be very creative in how I continued the story, had I known a sequel was coming I would have adjusted those boons at the end of TG1 greatly.
At the time, I was currently working on a different project, but I put that all aside and started working on the TG2 story full time. I was getting a lot of feedback from fans and I was surprised at how many people did not end up with Hannah in TG1. I assume it was probably still the majority or a big number, but a lot of the emails I received were talking about Nadine, Abi, and other paths I thought were non-traditional.
I decided to do something rather ambitious and it took quite a lot of work. I decided to essentially create five or so games in one. I hadn’t seen any sequel on COG that allowed the player to pick up right where they left off, and to also give them at least three completely unique stories based on the previous game. In case you guys are not aware, not counting the extra scenarios there are around three main story arcs, The Prince of Magnicia, The Lord of Redwood, and the Justice for Magincia stories. Within those three story arcs, there are about a dozen or so variations based on the choices from the previous game. Also, I am not sure if anyone has found this out yet, if you play on hard I add a lot of extra scenes; depending on the scenario you choose it can be around 10% to 25% more dialogue and story options. I also was surprised at how committed some players were at getting all the achievements so I decided to go big, and maxed out all the achievement points I could. (Many of them are hidden, so if you are able to unlock all of them huge props to you.) It wasn’t until much later in the process did the opportunity to restore saves come about.
TG1 did not have a store save feature, so COG had to update it to include this. At that point, I was already done with 85% of the game, so importing your stats from the previous game would have had major balancing issues. For anyone having trouble try playing on Easy. I did add a checkpoint system on at least one story arc if you play on easy, also keep in mind Easy means more you want to enjoy the story more, and worry less about passing checks or making optimal decisions, Normal can be challenging, but doable and good for players that want to be challenged, and Hard…well hard is very very unforgiving…basically only for people that don’t mind doing multiple play-throughs to get something right. It is funny, in the last game some people complained it was too easy, others complained it was too hard, so I put in a lot of effort to make the difficulty in this game matter a lot more; It doesn’t just give you more or less stats, it changes everything from how difficult it is to pass stat checks to how strong the enemies you fight are. If you were to look at the code it is constantly checking difficultly levels.
To sum up, since TG1 was created with a followup story in mind (different MC), but not a direct sequel. Upon hearing requests for a sequel, I devoted all my time into creating a game that would allow anyone who played the previous game (no matter how they ended it), to have a continuation of that particular and unique story, tailored to their own choices. At this point, I couldn’t import the stats since it was already balanced for a New Game. Upon learning about the restore function, however, I realized I could add even more variation to the story based on your individual choices. I mean…try choosing different options and see how much of the story changes based on it. Even small things.
I hope that answers your question. Sequels can be tough, and the main focus I was trying to go for was something no one had done yet, which was essentially several games in one based on all the choices you made in the previous game. (You wouldn’t believe how many story branches I had to account for. It probably would have been easier to just have forced everyone to start the game Married to Hannah, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted everyone to have a continuation of their story. It was a very ambitious task, and at some points I felt the strain hard. In case you are wondering I import about 161 variables from TG1 when you restore, but I would say only only about 30 of those variables make a major impact on the game’s story.)
