A Caliross Analysis: Fictional Factions (Patreon)

We are back again with the post-mortem on Caliross. I touched on this before, but I wanted the game to continue after the mind-control is complete (at least some of the times), because I think it's hot to see the effects play out in ordinary situations: forcing certain outcomes during a quest, while the protagonist (and maybe the players as well XD) are too turned on to resist the commands.

I also wanted to have more complex interactions reminiscent of the ones in Morrowind (where the various guilds might be in strife and you can't just blindly accomodate everyone), although I wasn't aiming for the same depth or ramifications.

Anyway, it made sense that these requirements would overlap a little by having factions in the game. I think those are both the best and the worst made elements in Caliross: some got a ton of content and little details here and there, with effects rippling through multiple quests: I think the cowgirl/Zanti family path is the best one, with the vampire faction being a scaled-down but functional version of the same concept.
Some could have been more present or featured more conflict with others and more reactive elements: I think the League of Merchants, particularly if you don't get involved with Kira, is too drab, and the two guilds get the job done, but we rarely get some proper interactions between the two. There are other characters that sort of function as factions as well, but generally speaking these are the main ones. The Zanti family, the League of Merchants and the two guilds were basically planned to be in the game almost from the start, because I wanted the feud between two "bad" factions going in the background, while also having something a bit more petty between the two "good" factions.

The very first quest in the game (with the slimes in the forest) was the perfect "low stakes" setup for the Zanti and the LoM to fight over a legal operation in underhanded ways. You can learn about this if you become a cowgirl before doing the quest (which is very unlikely) as you can't "tame" the slime-girl anymore (as that would disrupt the Zanti's plan to mess with the LoM operation), so if you do the quest the "legal/right" way, you also unknowingly help the LoM.

The LoM as a faction kind of suffered because of changes to my plans I made along the way, together with the Outcasts and the Partikans' rebels. I mentioned it here and there, but originally they were supposed to have some parts intertwined. Specifically, the Emperor's uncle would have actually been guilty of conspiring against the Emperor, cooperating with the guys involved with Kito's kidnapping, which in turn would have gotten help with smuggling in troops and items from the LoM, This is why you can still meet the woman escorting the cart in Rahib. Basically, the Outcasts would have been the "good guys" (or at the very least, loyalists), but as you saw in the game, things went in wildly different directions (there are several reasons as to why, but the main one was that I didn't think I could handle an actual coup mid-game, and finishing the game only to see Emperor get replaced if you didn't do a good job would have been weird and out of place). At one point, I was even thinking that having you deal with the forest slimes or not would affect how many vessels the LoM merchant fleet would have, talk about over ambitious! XD XD XD

Speaking of the Outcasts, I think it's worth mentioning that Marintas's charm was HEAVILY inspired by something I saw in the old game "The Adventures of Garnet". That game I think affected and inspired Caliross in many ways, although the questionable content eventually turned me off for good, and I haven't touched it since (I remember a very "friendly" dog, to name one thing I saw, but I can't say if there was anything worse and didn't find it, or if I saw it and erased it from my mind to preserve my sanity). It didn't help that the game wasn't finished, that it was developed by multiple people over time (it felt very patchwork and messy at times, and I think at times there were builds which dropped some previously added content to add different stuff), and that it runs on the "even older than VX Ace" RPG Maker XP. I think someone started development on it again in recent years, weirdly enough. I generally tend to do my own thing after the initial inspiration (sometimes to the point where nobody would recognize where it came from unless I told them), but I figured I should at least mention this one.

I think this is it for this month. We haven't made much progress in the game's timeline, but I touched at least on one or two things I never mentioned before, I believe. It's incredible how much stuff there was behind these decisions, when I look back on it, but in many ways most of my projects are like this (I wonder if I should have done a deep analysis of TOTDC 1 when I had the chance, now it's been too long to remember stuff as clearly).

Anyway, stay tuned for the short story update this week (for those who support that tier), more TOTDC 2 preview/writing and, well, more in general. Until next time! ^_^