I've been relistening to the Xenosaga OSTs lately, and while Kaijura has some excellent pieces in Episode II and III, I really can't help but feel how underrated Mitsuda's OST for the first game is. While not every track is a winner, and unfortunately, said tracks got the most air time, this game really did have some fantastic pieces in it. I also appreciate the fact Mitsuda placed a few musical nods back to Xenogears in it as well. Many of the more ominous tracks would feel at home in Gears. His version of Albedo's Theme is more fitting than Kaijura's which sounds more like a theme I'd give to the Testaments.
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas, friendo!
Well that's good news. Any productivity is good if you ask me.
So instead of sitting down to write yesterday, I instead drew a group pic of the main cast for the first book. Not exactly progress, but it did get me inspired a little.
I keep going back and forth with the game. I like all of the elements of the game, but it just feels like a slog to go through. I can't quite put my finger on why though. Maybe cause it's a game that punishes you for grinding, but if you want all the content, you kind of have to. I enjoy story bibles because they both help organize my thoughts, make it way easier to get back to a story I put on hold after I leave if for months with no work, and I feel re-reading it tends to motivate me to get back to work on the project. The last one is especially important for me, since re-reading my work tends to make me zero in on my weaknesses as a writer and discourages me from getting back to work before jumping into revision mode. Whereas re-reading the SB tends to remind me why I wanted to write it in the first place and will likely make me not focus on my awful early drafts and instead refocus on me to move on to get to some of the juicy details from the SB.
I still need to play that game. I do regret that I missed it back when it was new because everything I read about it really does make it sound like the actual first Bravely game, instead of BD being a simple spiritual predecessor. And this really only reinforces my opinion that BD is still very much an FF spin-off Story Bibles for me are tricky, because I always feel that whenever I work one so etching meta, like a bible or outline, all my creative energy goes into that and there’s none left for the writing proper. I still need to figure out what the best method is for me.
How equipment works is the same, but I'm well aware of how BD does jobs, I did play the demo after all. 4HoL is more like a revamped version of FFIII's Job system with a heavy emphasis on support units. I imagine most players give up on the game because most of the Physical based idiot-proof jobs unlock in the second half of the game and even then, they're hardly as OP as a Black Mage powered up by a Hero and Elementalist Jobs. It's a really interesting game, especially since it really deconstructs the whole "Chosen One" cliche in RPGs and also because your merry band of adventurers are all either incredibly self absorbed, or just completely inept often causing more harm than good. The second half of the game is basically a time travel story where the party is now fixing the circumstances of their worlds past which will inadvertently also undo all the terrible trout they've been doing as well. So I have a very good idea of what to expect from BD. Yeah, I'm happy to be working on it again. I think the nice thing about having a story bible is that working on it usually gets me motivated to work on my story proper. I may take a chapter out of Perfect Works and try to organize my SB like their book. Maybe build a dedicated Science and Magic section to detail a lot of the nuances of the cosmology. The SB gives the impression of a hard magic system, but it's really a soft one in the story proper. Probably due to the heavy magic users being the characters who have the power to break the established rules doesn't help...
Honestly, from what I read of 4HoL, the job system isn’t really like it in BD. The absolute best way I can describe it is honestly a refined FFV job system. It takes some cues from FFIII, namely in some of the jobs that return from there (like the Conjurer, Arcanist (aka Magus) and Spiritmaster (aka Devout), but with the multiclassing that FFV brought to the table, with a bit more freedom when it comes to choosing passive abilities. All the jobs are also very balanced, so even those that are usually throwaway are actually really useful. The red Mage comes to mind as very interesting as instead of Dualcasting being its main gimmick, this time it’s job that’s all about throwing a wrench into the Brave and Default mechanic. It’s honestly my favorite iteration of the system outside of the Tactics games. Great to hear your stories are getting attention! I’ve been feeling fairly inspired myself lately, with my protagonist finally coming through to me in my head. I couldn’t write today because I had extra work, but I’ll be sure to write some tomorrow
That sounds similar to 4 Heroes of Light's way of dealing with equipment vs. jobs. I really need to finish that game someday. Honestly, jumping back wasn't too hard for me, but I'll probably still do a real start over playthrough. I've actually been spending more time reading Perfect Works at the moment, which has got me working on my own story bible more. I find it hilarious that in both Gears and Saga, the Zohar is largely a device that allows people to control probability and rewrite reality, and in both settings, they use it to be a power generator instead. Tells me everything I need to know about how Takahashi views humanity. Still, the whole thing has me reworking on my own story's timeline and adding more details which is nice. I also feel like I have a better idea of how the second half of my story is going to work since it was always really vague in my head outside of the ending. I'm also thinking of restructuring my story a little bit. It was always split into arcs, but I'm re-evaluating how those arcs should be told when I get to the rewriting stage. There are a lot of chapters in this current draft that I feel I unveiled too soon in the story and I may instead re-arrange where they fall within the plot.
