For those of you who have gone off and peeked at my website, you may have noticed that there has been a WiP announced there named The Golden Eagle.
Now! With around an eighth of the work done and 25k words put together in a fairly coherent manner, it’s time to reveal some more details about it and give you fine folks a peek at what I have been doing while waiting for Best of Us to go through the rigours of Hosted Games.
Before anyone begins comparing the first chapters to the Infinity series by @Cataphrak - or find a quote from the Lords of Aswick thread where I say I would never be comfortable going into the musketry era so as not to step on toes and because I simply don’t think I could do the era credit - this is not a story about Napoleonic warfare despite the first couple of chapters. While the opening chapters feature good old rifle-muskets, the meat of the story takes place in a very rapid period of change, comparable to the Victorian era of the British Empire, or the post-Civil War era of the United States.
It will be a story of a changing culture pushed along by rapid industrial mechanization of everything from daily lives to warfare, and will be much more concerned on the reader’s decisions along the way that will not only shape what the central Soradour Circle is, but how the dawn of a new era is welcomed.
Will it be fought into existence with bloodshed, internal turmoil, and wars of independence? Or will it be ushered in with intrigues to strengthen the Imperial institutions and gain rights by use of political leverage?
The Golden Eagle is now officially on hiatus. Development will continue, but I have switched my focus over to the sequel for Lords of Aswick. Once that has been finished, The Golden Eagle will be restructured and continued.
When you enter your surname during the whole “Which family do you call yours, Serah? I believe I have not seen the seal before.” the game just loops back to the same choice of surnames. To get out of the loop you must select an existing surname rather than writing your own.
Your surname does change to the one you write, I checked in the stats menu, but you don’t leave the loop.
I get this error “line 533: Not a number: My family has sacrificed much to afford me a place here. I must see things through.” when I choose “I simply wish to serve my family as best I can. This is where I am needed.”
I can’t speak for other players, but I didn’t feel like the difference between demoiselle/messieur/serah was very intuitive. Maybe a translation in parenthesis, or a couple of hints in the text?
As I need to actually sleep at some point, this will be the last update for today. Have at it everyone, I will check in tomorrow morning for more issues.
@trinnie Hm, I can see how I’m making a broad assumption of the reader there. I will make a note to add in some text in the pages before the choice to flesh the titles out and make the difference clear.
I am going to have to brush up on my French it seems, strong narrative that draws you in. I do have a small recommendations though, some people might not know French so they might miss the gender selection completely. But overall nice pacing and good choices. Keep up the excellent work.
I’m not sure how the stats distribution works, to be honest. Why does being 18 makes you more charismatic than being 20? Why is your 16 years old self stronger/more agile than your 20 years old self?
I’ve also noticed that surnames appear to be bugged, and my character is always treated by something other than what I chose.
That aside! I really did enjoy this one. Your writting is very engaging, and you obviously know what you’re writting about. Also, I think you have a knack for injecting personality and charm into your minor characters, which is very rare. I’ll defs be following this o3o
I really enjoy the idea, I myself am a sucker for realistic revolutionary themed games so I am backing this idea 100%, one question though, where did you get that coat of arms looking thing with the golden eagle…ohhhhh that makes sense but really how and where do you get them?!
I have added more context around the choice of genders, as well as split the choices of stats and age into something a little more traditional.
My thought process when writing it out was mainly about prior experiences, but in hindsight it makes more sense to just split the choices and make it clearer to the reader.
The surname issue has been fixed as well.
@ajakax I made it myself. It’s based on the eagles of Napoleon and the Third Reich, with more of a simplified royalist flair all around, and then a touch of military glory as well. The rifle, interestingly, is based on the silhouette of a Dreyse needle gun - the first bolt-action military rifle in the world. You’ll be seeing that kind of rifle design soon enough as the story progresses.
You integrated the choice of gender very nicely into the narrative, I think, with the added bonus of telling us about your world’s position on NB people. Yay!
As a nitpick, it would be nice if we could know more about the army branches before deciding which one attracts us the most. From what I gather the choice doesn’t have any impact at the moment, but it could be good to have them all explained somewhere, instead of only receiving an elaboration on the one you chose and no other. I was very confused about the difference between Engineering and Experimental, for example, and had to reload a couple of times for the game to tell it to me.
I have very little army knowledge though (aside from “flank 'em gawdamnit” and "calvary >>>> footsoldier scrubs), so that may as well be my ignorance showing.
Actually, a solid square of well disciplined infantry will beat cavalry. The infantry can shoot out, while protecting themselves with their bayonets. The square shape provides no obvious weak spots (flanking will work on a line, but a square is defended in all directions), and while the cavalry could shoot back, they will generally have much worse guns (pistols as opposed to muskets and rifles) than the infantry. The primary advantage of cavalry is speed, which allows them to easily beat skirmishers or flank lines of infantry, but is practically useless against a disciplined infantry square. (A square does make a nice big target for artillery, though.)
French is not that hard to learn, especially when it’s presented in bits and pieces like this story does, as a lot of French vocabulary have cognates in English as well.
Dans l’époque des Lumières–>“In the year of the Enlighteners” (think Voltaire, John Locke, and other Enlightenment thinkers)
Aigles d’Or–> “Eagles of Gold” (or Gold Eagles)
Livres d’Argent–> “Books of Silver” literally , though in the time period @Goshman’s trying to do, it’s more appropriate to translate as “Silver Currency”
Also, any number that has an “e” after it (like 3e, spelled “troisième”) are the French equivalent of first, second, third, etc.
Anyway, as far as the story goes, it feels oddly reminiscent of Sabers of Infinity, though that could be just because of the lengthy academy segment. The story’s still nice, though, as I don’t think anyone has done one taking place in a parallel universe of the French Revolution, let alone the real world French Revolution.
One question, though. How exactly will technology advance in the story as time goes on? Will we be able to take part in inventing anything, even if it’s only investments?
Hah, at least I’m not completely off in the way I present the French phrases. This is good, because that means I’ve done my research well, because I don’t speak a single word of French.
I debated for a while on using English terms in the text and leaving the French terms in the spoken or written (in-story book or letter) segments, but I felt that caused far too much confusion. Especially this early on.
I’m very aware that the beginning of the story does resemble Sabres, and I tried consciously to steer away from certain elements of barracks life that were presented well in Sabres. Unlike the Infinity series, I aim to be done with the warfare aspect as soon as possible so as to carve a very different path for the rest of the story, and that will be where the real differences become apparent.
The parallel to the French Revolution is apparent in almost everything I think, except the Emperor’s status. The Empire is a strange mesh. French Republicanism and Belle Époque culture, as well as enlightenment ideals, all injected into a nation where the Imperial institution (and the Emperor itself) are considered much more like the Chinese Celestial Emperors, which also brings about some nice Forbidden City intrigues stuffed into a very fancy Versailles.
But that is peeking behind the curtains and will be developed further in the story, when it becomes more likely for the MC to have a glimpse at anything going on in the highest Imperial echelons.
Now to finally answer your question, I haven’t thought about the details very much yet. I know that I want the MC to have some opportunity to invest in new technologies, or take part in great revolutionizing moments, but mainly the march of progress will be going on in the background.
In Lords of Aswick, I might have the MC constantly able to take on that newest invention because inventions that took some kind of a great leap forwards were fairly sparse during a medieval era - but this story is set during a time where the industrial revolution is already steaming ahead at great speeds. Each year a new more powerful engine comes out, a new more modern factory is built, ships are clad in copper and then finally in steel as the processes become refined, etc.
I have three general goals in mind for the story, and I think laying them out will help in figuring out what my answer is:
Show the brutality of an industrialized warfare fought with obsolete tactics and strategies.
Explore the changes in culture, economics, and politics, as the world shrinks down thanks to industrialization.
Do not end up working on the story for five years and make it over 1 million words even if it could easily be.
. I still can’t figure out what a “Sarah” is.
