Regrets of the Traitor (WIP) (Updated: 25/05/2020)

I have a question. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems we have just assaulted the ruling monarchs, not only in front of the nobles, but also in front of our ex-party of other heroes. Now, how does one not only survive such an act, but also manage to usurp the throne? I would have thought that the nobles would denounce your claim and for your former party member to actually succeed in stopping you thanks to their numbers and some familiarity with the way you fight, but we somehow managed to come out victorious and successfully claim the throne for ourselves. How?

Other than that, villain protagonist game is always welcome, and the way you write is quite smooth and compelling. Definitely would be keeping an eye on this one.

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Ah, I see now. All the same I’m excited to learn more about them and Spotter :slight_smile: I chose the warrior on my first playthrough of the demo and was drawn in by her somewhat abrasive mannerisms and the way she acts as a parental/elder sibling figure with the MC. It’s especially my favorite because of my love for the strong of will and body characters that are protective, even if they are a little rough around the edges. I especially love the comment she gives to a MC that practices magic. I have yet to play the demo again but I would like to see how each character is to react to our MC and I have a sneaking suspicion that The Warrior will remain my favorite.(She comes with kittens!)

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Well I do like what I see and due to how little we have right now I can’t really say much besides!

From what we have gotten I love it, I love the premise but with me always loving angst I do wish that there might be a character from your band of hero’s that you could romance…because I think it would be interesting with them turning you to the good or then to yours…but beyond that I do like the premise and like some of the others have said in earlier message. Clarify how many are in the party since it is hard to imagine if there are seven six or five other hero’s there…

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That will be explained as the story progresses and more information comes to light. I have thought on this and all I can say is that the character has help in this case. I do intend to expand upon the prologue, however, I didn’t want it to be too long, so I was forced to cut it short for my own sensibilities. The story will return to where the prologue left off, however.

Yes, she’s one of my favourites, particularly in design, and I also really like those types of mentor characters. My all-time favourite has got to be the bird-like shapechanger though. The were my first and I will always love them.

I did say there would be more love interests, didn’t I… There may, perhaps, be a few who you used to travel with… but shh… I told you nothing.

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Great story. Has a lot of potential, I’m looking forward to its progression. I’ll stick around and help out as much as I can.

Oh I do so love ya XD

Edit: removed backquote

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Honestly I’m a huge lover of angst as well, so I would be remiss if I didn’t add that option!

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I’m looking at the code (quicker way of reading everything at once, I’ve found :stuck_out_tongue: ) and I’ve noticed that in the scene “variables”, on the last choice, the options “#It was a lucky shot” and “#Honestly? I didn’t think my assaulter had the guts” give the same result of stubborn +5 and compliant -5.

Working as intended? From the perspective of someone who enjoys replaying choice of games in order to make optimal character builds, this just means there is a redundant choice in the game.

If you’re just doing it to let the player specify their character’s voice, then I get that and feel free to leave it in. Just seems to stand out considering all the other choices are unique.

Oh, almost forgot a nitpick: In “animal”, when the player chooses their fighting style, the stats they didn’t chose drop. Would you consider starting all the combat stats at 5 and increasing the chosen one to 20 instead? Firstly, it’s just less code, but secondly, I think the aesthetic of “you’re now better at this one thing” is better than “you’re now worse at these three things”.

Cheers, waiting for updates :smile:

Then you probably have an idea of some… things, eh?

Ah. Leaving that in was mostly laziness. I will have to make sure to try and either change what personality stats it affects, or just cut it entirely.

Yes, good idea. In retrospect coding everything at midnight probably isn’t the most conductive to making things easier on my part, however I do what I can when I have the time to do it.

Glad you’re enjoying it, I will try to make the update come quicker, but there is quite a bit to the first chapter :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the reply!

I am really just nit picking right now: the changes I’m suggesting are very minor and mostly asthetic, but once more story is written, I’ll try offering some more “high level” feedback on story structure, continuity, characters, etc.

Feel free to ignore most things I’m suggesting right now, or put it on a “do later” list, lol. :sweat_smile:

And yes, I have learnt, err, some things! Got me excited to see more, and I’m already thinking of the different ways we’ll see these things worked into the story.

I was just rereading it and I did not read this the first time! I don’t care how you perceive your art, no matter the skill I would absolutely love any kind of fan art because that would just warm my heart. But that’s a thought for another time :wink:

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It’s good so far looking forward to more

And that is how you move to my top five writers, to get number one I need my precious Dawi XD and of course be awesome!!!

  1. While i admit i wasn’t very engaged in the prologue, from the assassination onwards everything turns pretty interesting. No, that is an understatement, it’s REALLY interesting. I don’t know how to put it, but at that introduction, i felt like i got in the middle of something, and as i didn’t understand nothing about the people or the world i was in, i was unable to care about it. The dream sequence is pretty amazing, at least with the character i choose(the floaty being), and i hope everyone else is different enough.
  2. See, the introduction is the most important part. The first impression is something that will always be with the person that is reading, because everything the person imagines from then on will be based on that. I feel like the queens, for example, should be narrated with a more strong presence at the beginning, and some more detail as to how they look. And despite your writing being pretty descriptive overall, i feel like the place, the ambient should be described more.
  3. Many times i see a " [i/] " appearing. I am still not familiar with choicescript, but i think you are doing something wrong there.
  4. I am not the best person to answer this, i don’t have a tumblr, not sure what it even is for, but i say that if you think it will give your work more visibility, do it.
  5. Well, i think you should make a separate switch, when the player sees those characters, they should have something like the following options: “I am interested in this character, and don’t care about their identity” " I am not interested in them but may be interested in another gender-neutral person in the future" “i am not interested in gender-neutral people”
    Obviously, in case the player choose to be asexual or pansexual before that, no questions need to be asked
    Another solution would be to have two “straights” and two “homos”. “Straight1” will only be attracted to the opposite sex, but “Straight2” would be open to gender-neutral characters as well.
    Personally, the way i would approach this is just to get rid of sexuality entirely. They are pretty useless labels for me, people feel attracted to who they are attracted and that is just how it is. So i think you should keep track of if the player is attracted to from character to character, i also feel that this helps to write more organic relationships, something i think is pretty hard to do at all.

Yknow usually what gets me going in a game is its romance. But thats mostly because I found the plot too drab to enjoy without a spicy romance besides it.

Now for the interesting games they don’t even need romance to stand on its own! So really it feels like a fantastic bonus. Instead of a tacked on consolation prize for a boring story.

Anyways, maybe spoilery but to what degree can we repent? How hard are you planning to make the redemption route as compared to other ones?

(Also my favourite dream guide was the teen girl. She was the least antagonistic female so go figure!)

I also loved options where we could discreetly show our alignment to a person without being “Ugh I hate em” or “ohmygosh i luv him 100%”. I love love love shit like subtlety.
So more of those nuanced choices like you just offered please. :blush:

I will certainly try my best XD

I certainly hope they’re all unique in their own ways. I’m glad you liked it!

At this point I am inclined to agree with you here, however, my biggest priority is not revising right now. Once I finish the first chapter, then I will go back through and make changes, but as of now this is not the final version of the script. It will be changed in the future, you can count on that.

I will attempt to fix this, thank you for pointing it out.

Perhaps. As before, none of this is set in stone, I’m currently just writing the code for ease and once I’ve fully decided on what to do I will change it to fit this decision. As of right now, that isn’t actually coded into the game, and probably won’t be until chapter two or even three. But I appreciate the suggestions and will ponder them.

Let’s hope my story is the interesting one, eh? :wink:
But I totally agree. If I’m not interested in a story, often I might not find the characters interesting either, and that’s a real bummer. So I’m writing what I want to see, because usually villain games tend to make you an aspiring villain? But? What if? You already were one?

Well, there is a specific reason why you ‘became evil’ in the first place, though you can have ulterior motives past that initial reason. Repenting in the eyes of your companions, depending on who they are will be rather difficult, because many of them will not forget your betrayal. You as a character can repent all you like, but some characters themselves will need solid proof of this that they can’t just pass off as manipulating them into trusting you.
For example, with the character of Arke, you can define the initial relationship you had with him from enemies to the best of friends, with the possibility of having a crush on him (this will be defined in a childhood flashback, as he is directly involved in the player’s teenage years), however, his relationship with the player will always start at zero. If you say something he agrees with, you will receive very little approval, however if you take a course of action he approves of that approval will go up a bit more. As the story progresses his approval rate will go up as he comes to trust the player. Basically, there’s a whole lot more to forgiveness that simply saying you’re sorry.

And I’m very glad you liked her. She is definitely the softer of the female choices, but in certain situations… God I wish I could give so much away about all of them!

Yes I agree. Yes, there can be cases where all you feel is white hot rage at even hearing a person’s name, but rarely are feelings for a person so blatant and a single feeling. And also, you’ve just met these characters, you don’t know who they are and thus you need to make your mind up about them. Each choice, no matter what it is should reveal something about them that teaches you something new about them, ot otherwise extends upon their character. I’m really glad you liked it!

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so far i am loving the story and the idea of playying the villane in this

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Looking at features and something jumped out at me:

" * Play as a human, elf, half-elf, dwarf, or half-orc, but this does not give you more or less experience in any skill. It will, however, affect how some characters in the world perceive you."

Will how these people react have an effect on the opprotunities we have for improving our stats? For example, being a half elf, will an elven druid offer to teach me magic where he wouldn’t do the same for a dwarf? Will the grisly veteran refuse to teach me bladesmanship due to my Orc heritage?

Or will the reactions be purely narative? If so, will they have a significan’t bearing on the story? Or just change the scene?

I’m just concerned about not giving a mechanical identity to the races. Would make them window dressing at worst if the story changes aren’t significant enough, and at that point, fixing human might just be the way to go. But I’m a rpg player, so maybe that’s my bias showing towards each race having different stat bonuses. :sweat_smile:

If you can find a way to make them matter beyond small changes in dialouge, now THAT would be some awesome stuff to see!

Dragon Age Origins had amazing varied starts depending on your race, but mostly forgot about it after that outside of a few dialouges. Maybe that could be an option? One big event or chapter that plays differently for all the different races, but outside of that, just aesthetic changes in conversations?

I’m interested to hear you elaborate on this feature.

Thanks!

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I hope i have the option to destroy all in my path that’s what villains do right.

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That’s part of what I’m planning. As of right now, the stats screen isn’t completed, but I do hope to eventually add the rest in once I decide whether something is relevant or not (I’ve already cut out two of the personality traits for example). But to extend upon this, I have attempted to create a world with history that might differ from other fantasy settings. Your heritage will come into play at some point and all throughout the story. If you are half-orc dwarves and humans are typically hostile towards orcs, but you could have the capacity to intimidate information out of an npc instead of passing a check or going through a longer dialogue tree to attempt to coerce this character into giving up information. Likewise, orcs will no outright attack you most of the time if they see your party is lead by someone who is at least somewhat recognisable as an orc. If you’re an elf, an elven servant may give you a way into a theoretical castle or estate that you might otherwise not know about. To extend this, important characters will also have differing opinions on you depending on your race. Severa, for example, is far more likely to look down on an elf, but would respect a dwarven or half-orc player.

Actually, I have considered this. Depending on your race your backstory does change significantly due to some simple fact of race, and I have also considered creating separate little ‘side quests’ let’s say for each race, however, that would require more coding and currently thinking that far into the future isn’t on my to-do list. That differing backstory, however, is set in stone.

Speaking of which I really appreciate you asking these questions, they really help me get my thoughts together on a subject I might not have fleshed out too much.

There will be that kind of option, yes. Just how you want to destroy everyone is up to you; you can do it blatantly and violently, or be more of a puppeteer if you so choose.

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