Toggle Background Color

Episode 5: Part 7: When the game goes completely off the rails and never halfway recovers... And that's a good thing.


We can hear the crashing of waves...


The room sways now and then, so these two and their robed friend on the floor must be on a boat of some sort.


His wound is a sure mark of courage that cannot be ignored!

Stop using such fanciful words. I still don't see why we're helping this guy.

I would think that such a noble warrior as yourself would understand why.
Why are you in such a sour mood Strata?

...
Maybe it's because on the very day that I became famous, the entire city full of my fans went up in flames.
What's the point of victory if no one else remembers it?
(That's what Traziun didn't understand... What a loser.)

Strata, you're thinking about it all wrong.
What really matters is that we love each other no matter what.
I wouldn't have cared if you had lost in the first round of that stupid tournament.

The tournament wasn't stupid! What's stupid is wandering all around looking for your father!

...

You're old enough to be out on your own and I'm tired of looking for him.

But you promised...

I said I'm tired of it!

But he's my dad...

*pft*

...

(You'll never find him honey. He's dead.)

...








Rhue notices the shadowy figure and moves to a plunging position.










Single pass victory. Mandatory wins tend to be so easy.





The shadowy figure starts flashing and making buzzing electrical kinds of sounds.


Then a red mist engulfs everything.

Slade's theme comes on...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUkuYg8d9zs


'Mother' hits the middle girl.

MOTHER: Don't cry or I'll hit you again, Chasta!

CHASTA: ...

MOTHER: There's a good girl.


The little girl looks away.

(What is going on? Why am I seeing this?)


The scene abruptly vanishes.


"Why is this happening!!! I've got to get out of here!"


Rhue looks around a bit, and then runs in a random direction and...


The scene reappears behind him.

It (SIC) think I see something up that way...


So we get to walk Rhue up the path.

Huh?
A flash of light...


"When you don't obey me, you will only hurt yourself and others. I'm only trying to protect you children. I know what's best for you."

CHASTA: That's all you can say? You're so cold...


Chasta gets hit again, the boy at the top actually turns to look for a brief moment.

BOY: ...

(What is this crap?)




...


Ah, a save point.





MOTHER: She disgraced us. Do not mourn for your sister, she was a whore deserving of what was done to her.
Wipe that guilty look off your face, you have done only what was right. You did as I told you to do.

BOY: ... Yes, mother.

MOTHER: You are all I have left. Do not become a filthy wretch like your sister.
Walk upright, do not depart from the ways I have taught you.
Do not fail me.




code:
"Say something to boy"
	"Don't take that, kill that witch"      -1 Rhue
	"Don't listen to that witch"             0 Rhue
	"Listen to your mother boy"              0 Rhue
"Remain silent"                                  0 Rhue


I go with 'Don't listen'. Anyway, the boy seems to turn to face Rhue for a second and then...






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7YtvbiM1Hk



MENDER: It looks really bad. He probably wont last long.

Isn't there something we can do? Perhaps embark on a daring quest in search of an object or special remedy that might save him?

MENDER: No.

What? There's nothing, like some sort of magical item located nearby that can save him?

MENDER: No...

A forbidden treasure?!

MENDER: No, where did you get such a crazy idea?!

How is this possible? That's always the solution in stories like this!




I said you live in a fantasy world!

You called my stories stupid...

So what?!


(They are stupid.)


"Kalmar, our Overseer, has requested a demonstration of your abilities later tomorrow.
I hope that's all right with you."

That works for me. Now lead us to our room.






This is... uh.... a travesty of justice! Yes, a travesty you see?

BLOOD LYN: One more word out of either of you, and you will force me to take violent action.

...



Strata?!

What?

You... you...

Forget it...


"They'd envy me like no other."

And if I were to save her, she'd owe me... big.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9wDFdI3OSg



ASSISTANT: Too risky?

MENDER: The bleeding is actually minimal... the sword seems to have... "grown" into him...

ASSISTANT: Impossible!

MENDER: I thought the same thing.

ASSISTANT: Shall we kill him?

MENDER: Not yet. I must consult with Kalmar about this oddity.

ASSISTANT: All right then, but I doubt he'll live through the night anyway.

MENDER: Indeed.

And yes, that is the sprite consistently used for Rhue's sword.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUkgnLzQcY8





Impossible!!







Once upon a time... this... very important man didn't have a faceset either.

You're not the guy...

What guy?

Nevermind.


Estrana.





...

If you're lost, just follow me to the Shadow Inn.

Shadow Inn? I thought for sure that it burned down.

Nope, though I've heard it may be going out of business soon.
Then this guy uh... abruptly joins the party without even introducing himself.




So we re-enter Estrana the same way we left it.



That woman with the brilliant red hair was at the bar, and she leaves just as Rhue and his new friend enter.

Thanks...

Don't mention it.

Who are you anyway?

My name is Midian.

I've got to be on my way now. Enjoy.







No one above or below has anything to say and nothing happens. In fact, the dance floor screen lags REALLY badly half the time. All you can do is leave the Shadow Inn which leads into another scene.
























The Phantom Slasher returns Rhue's sword to him and... he gets a whole slew of new auras. Now, people have long gotten confused about some stuff around this, but I feel it's being made clear here that Rhue has... taken something from Slade. Something vital, and apparently very powerful too.

Anyway, Rhue regains consciousness just as a Blood Lyn wanders by.



Where am I? (Is this real? Wasn't I just leaving the Shadow Inn?)

BLOOD LYN: Don't feed me that line, this is a restricted area. People don't just accidentally wander into here.

I'm sorry about that, I'll leave this area at once.

BLOOD LYN: Sorry, but I can't let you do that. I have to take you in, it's standard procedure.

You're beginning to annoy me.

BLOOD LYN: No need for violence. Please come quietly.

I'm not going anywhere with you.


(Burn them...)

Well, uh. That was all very odd. Next time we gotta bust out of jail and see the birth of the series oddest couple. Also we start learning a bunch of... things. And the long search for Serena may come to a close.

And for the sake of posterity, I'll include what was once a seperate post here too:

So, in related news, a game I'd never heard of finally escaped it's 11 year development hell.

https://rpgmaker.net/games/406/blog/21597/

I find this kind of thing heartwarming. It gives me hope for some other games long in development.

A Blurred Line is one of the all-time classics of the RPGMaker community but yet it infamously ends on a cliffhanger on all things. Lysander86 used to come around promising he was still working on the sequel every couple years, but beyond making a 2.0 version of ABL with a couple hours extra content, nothing is yet to materialise.

Three The Hard Way is another classic game, and it's creator iishenron is actually the same guy who started the Misao Awards. He promised a sequel to Three The Hard Way called The Queen's Court with NO combat, for years as well.

Then there's the massive amounts of unfinished demos. Sites like GamingW and GamingGroundZero, among others, often had threads like 'Post what you got this month' or people would release demos of their own accord to build up hype for their game that had nice ripped and/or altered (or even completely custom) assets, unique battle systems, or to show off the atmosphere they'd cultivated in their game... and most of those would never get done.

I don't know much about this game in particular though. 2008 is roughly when I stopped paying attention to the RPGMaker community except to see if Master of the Wind's next arc was out. Part of that was because sometime before then is when GamingW.net begun to shun RPGMaker and its followers to focus on wanting to be more upscale indie gaming site. Even changed its name to Salt World which was some kind of in joke.
A lot of people are still bitter over that to this day, especially since GamingW.net started out as probably THE RPGMaker site.

The other big place, GamingGroundZero was the place that rabidly protected its 'custom' (slightly altered mostly) assets, even threatening legal action iirc, which is odd, since this is long before people ever dared to make money off their RPGMaker games (largely). GGZ had a rep for being kind of elitist and cult-like, with the admin Wishmoo being the centre of it all, along with her righthandman QHeretic. Notoriously ban happy too, especially if they thought you were someone from GamingW.net. Also notorious for spying on other communities for just that reason.

I bring this up because... because of this sort of... rival community shenanigans thing going on (and these two were just the two -probably- biggest, not the only two) specific games were usually associated with different communities. Some of the 'GamingW.net games' were The Way, A Blurred Line and... The RPGMaker 2k3 version of Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden before it was ported to Gamemaker 6. (They planned to release it in both engines but never did!)

There was a third community which splintered off from GamingW.net after a heaping of drama, lead by the Iron Gaia dev I forget the name of. Ghostlight or Ghostgrave or some crap like that. Relations between all these different community was usually pretty heated. Well. Where GamingW.net was involved, anyway.

Meanwhile Indinera of Aldorlea games was off on his own doing his own thing because no one wanted anything to do with him except for when he suddenly became a publisher of other peoples commercial RPGMaker games. And god bless that French bastard for that.

The lessons we take from all this are:
1. People on the internet SUCK!!!!!!!!!!
2. Don't take games like Exit Fate, Last Scenario and Master of the Wind for granted. Even The Way, as unpolished and... unfinished, as it may be, is still a finished story, all things considered.

Anyway, I'm going to try this new game now. And maybe I'll talk more about what I -remember- and can dig up about RPGMaker community history, in the future. That's part of the reason why I decided to do this LP, and hopefully LPs of more RPGMaker games. Anyone, of course, can feel free to chime in with what they know, especially if I say something flat out wrong. It's ancient history and I was just a teen in the 00's.


the end