#That means more scythe lore insanity

[xdolls-crownx]

me when I finally get a twitch ac and wait for scythe to steam again

[isa-ghost]

amfmn missa.. p please.. please mother … feed us

I'M BEING ENABLED PPOVERHEAT

He's an actual grim reaper. That's where he's disappeared to so often in canon, reaper duties. It's a very demanding job, you know.

Doesn't stop him from feeling terrible about being gone so often though. He misses his husband and kids and hates how often he's out of the loop :(

Fr though Phil and the kids make him so so happy after spending countless hours working such a sad job. It's also partially why he sings and makes art. That brand of fun is catharsis for the soul.

He has all his canon weapons but I ALSO gave him a reaper deathscythe. And boy is he gonna use it. Fucking AWOOGA MissaSinfonia when he's angry.

Btw as a reaper he can FEEL souls. He can see their power, their condition, feel the surface level emotions and personality of its owner. This will come in handy later in the fic. ;)

As per the post I made asking for Missa appreciation so I can characterize him properly: He's undyingly loyal, he fights hard and loves even harder, he's protective, silly, and goddamn can he flirt.

All his wet cat behavior is a result of getting too overwhelmed by The Horrors. He's seen A Lot as a reaper. But somehow Quesadilla Island and all its... Everything. Always manage to show him a new brand of What The Fuck he's never even imagined before. Hence all his screaming and weeping when he's caught up on what he's missed. Like how tf else is he supposed to react??

Somewhat attached to that, he and Phil rlly were a match made in Federation Heaven bc they both have issues with self-doubt despite being insanely skilled and sharp-witted. Missa is better abt it than Phil though. His only acts up when he messes up a lot or just. Doesn't have a clue how to handle a situation where it's dire that he does. It's more of an insecurity about being unprepared and failing his loved ones than it is a doubt he has skill. He KNOWS he does, he hates when it's not enough. That's how he differs from Phil, who thinks he has none at all.

Btw when you fuck with the people he's protective over, he gets PISSED. We're getting a LOT of pissed off Missa in AMFMN <3 Ofc there'll be a lot of reaper tears too, his husband is suffering and there's little he can do about it. :( But ohohoho when the sad turns into rage. BARK WOOF. Eventually he decides EK is catching these hands and scythe.

He also shakes hands with his husband on being a self-sacrificing little shit. And. Yeah this is gonna happen later in the fic. (He's not dying dw dw)

You have no idea how excited I am that I basically get to build his dynamics with Fit, Etoiles, and Bagi from scratch. I'm so hyped. People are welcome to reply with this with any crumbs we have of their dynamics in canon but afaik they've rarely interacted outside of very minor moments, so AMFMN will largely be a sandbox for me to establish what I THINK they'd be like. Which in my fic plan so far, is largely taking each character's personality and applying how I think they'd react to a situation, and how that would look when two of them are interacting in that situation. Ex: at one point Etoiles has to comfort Missa bc he's just having a ROUGH time with this saving Phil stuff. But Etoiles is NOT a comfort guy. So he does his Etoiles thing: hearing Missa out while also cracking his usual brand of jokes in an attempt to lighten the mood.

I also have a plot point planned with him and Bagi when shit is hitting the fan the hardest and OUUGHHH. That self-sacrificing shit am I right.

God I'm being so mean to him specifically in AMFMN though. Ender King is a sack of shit, he knows exactly who to harass most using Phil's body >:/

See in my AMFMN Fitza headcanons, I said they're each other's confidants. Which IS true. However, no one in the fic gets the honor of Phil FINALLY communicating with someone about his issues other than his husband. Missa is the person he caves and confesses things to. Missa gets the HC Deity lore and what's been happening to him lately. This is actually what Chapter 3 is :D

Also I am so sorry but I'm sliding a Missa Romantic Love Confession attempt into the fic and it gets interrupted by The Horrors. But yeah Missa is romantically in love with Phil, he just respects that Phil sees things platonically. He still wants to communicate his feelings though.

[shivasdarknight]

whats ur fave piece of surkie lore? or ur fave piece of her char design? (or both) :3c

im gonna yell at u but u also brought this on

......OKAY SO, i swear to god this is the most self indulgent shit but I gotta give a teensy bit of context first.

Surkie goes into enw as effectively a drk+rpr since rpr for her is more of an augment onto her preexisting classes? She doesn't use a rpr jobstone nor does she have a proper avatar, as she kind of just got dragged to Drusilla after she summoned a voidsent into her. That voidsent was Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, something she'd actively researched and sought out due to his supposed status as one of the very first voidsent who might have sympathy to her plight to restore the void with Cylva.

This is Diarmuid, btw:

His size is very fluid and he just kinda hangs out in Surkie's head. He's got a more humanoid form that looks like a devil trigger out of DMC and remembers what he used to look like as a mortal, but that's not something he ever shows to anyone.

Reaper is a compromise between him and Surkie due to their vastly different fighting styles (her being a drk main, him...well when he was alive he often used a sword and a spear in tandem with each other and had two sets so 4 weapons in total, the tails kinda echo back to that). So while Surkie is still dominantly a drk, stuff involving Diarmuid involves summoned scythes and whatnot since them learning something together was better than trying to find a balance between existing styles.

This is all to say that at the end of enw, in order to keep her alive, Diarmuid ends up partly fusing with Surkie to get her back to the Ragnarok, and they're kinda stuck together now. She's half voidsent now, it's fucked her up fundamentally, he's stuck on the Source, and now Surkie has a Devil Trigger.

Like. Seriously. It's in part designed after Diarmuid and his humanoid form, but also in part inspired by her dark knight glam from post stb-enw, which ends up getting destroyed - which is this set below, main piece being the Behemoth King top. Reason being is the Sin DT forms are based on suits of armor, with Dante's being more european armor while Vergil's is clearly samurai armor.

She lost this armor set at the end of ENW after it kind of became her identity. It got worn down from how she channels aether - which she wasn't even aware of doing, but it was what in part destroyed her first and favorite spear, nearly destroyed her Captain's naginata, and then decimated her armor. Granted, what dealt the final blow was the fight against Zenos, but her aether warped the plate so heavily that it was unsalvageable. It's what ends up leading to her post enw look with the Troian gear, which was tailored specifically to her insane and uncontrollable aether.

But this also means it's easy for her to suddenly swap into that voidsent form/DT.

She gets a hang of slipping in and out of it and she winds up fighting MOST OF THE 6.X BOSSES ON HER OWN. Initially it was just because I'm Fucking Gay and I wanted her and Barbariccia to go one on one (*COUGHS*), but then it led into her being the only one to take on Rubicante, and then ofc it just fit to have her go after Golbez on her own. As that DT. Rest of the team joins her for Zeromus, but regardless she still just went stupid crazy DT form against these guys and walked out of it alive.

..............................................................................and this form is also responsible for an uh. Incident. that results in their fifth child, Tseren, whose bio parents are surkie and ysayle.

because Someone's a bit of a monsterfucker.

and they don't learn about this until the Rubicante fight where Ysayle was going to get involved in the fight, but he refused to fight her on the grounds of her. yknow.

gg surkie

BASICALLY I GAVE MY WOL A DEVIL TRIGGER AND IM NOT CHANGING IT

[ashleyisodd]

[ DISCLAIMER! The following rant is just my personal thoughts, opinions, and grievances. I highly recommend you come to your own conclusion about this and don’t take my words as fact or law. I also don’t mean to offend anyone with this, but feel free to debate this with me in the notes I guess. ]

I’m going to be completely honest…

I REALLY don’t like Broker.

The Phighting devs are kind of hyping him up to be this “ooo mysterious silly lore guy!!! And also he’s a bit kooky, and maybe even self aware!!!”

Like. He feels like a rip-off Jevil and Spamton to me. And even then characters like Jevil and Spamton are only VAGUELY, SLIGHTLY aware that they might be in a game, (Jevil moreso than Spamton but still).

BROKER, on the other hand, outright states he thinks the world and its people are all fake, (cough they’re in a game cough cough), and feels way too direct in my opinion. Maybe if he just pointed out the strange things about their world in a questioning manner instead of saying something along the lines of “hmm I think our society is a simulation” it’d feel a bit more natural, as if he doesn’t fully comprehend yet that their world is a game, and it’d feel less to the point, since Broker seems like he’s NOT supposed to be a very direct and honest guy.

And honestly, Broker doesn’t stand out much to me. Sure, he’s got the whole cult thing going on, and the Broker coins, but besides that, he’s just kind of… there. No obvious goal, drive, or apparent ulterior motives, and his “quirky silliness” is barely displayed in the actual game, and when it is it’s hidden in dialogue that’s no longer accessible due to him moving locations.

The thing that did catch my interest is how violent he supposedly can be, being confirmed to have both intentionally and unintentionally killed other demons. And I think they could’ve gone a very interesting direction with this instead of making him as vague as a soggy cardboard box. Make him a bit violent! Maybe even in a silly way; have him accidentally kill people through means that he didn’t expect would happen! I’m not saying he should be serial killer crazy, (Scythe has that covered already), but I wish they’d give him SOMETHING more than “oh he’s silly and sells crypto currency and also he’s gone to jail” and vague social media posts.

He does have an okay design, and his weird eye, wrist cuff, and colors do pretty well to portray the vibe of “shady guy in an alley who’s a bit kooky”.

Thus ends my rant about a stupid fictional character. Thank you for listening to my insane rambling, have a nice day.

| Dialogue that sparked this rant |

[light-that-burns-my-ass]

Bloodborne bosses and how angry they are:

(before starting please note that I'm basing this solely on the limited amount of information I have on each boss, Bloodborne lore is confusing and I have forgotten a lot of it,also these are in the order of the wiki page,also I am aware some of these bosses may not even be able to feel human emotions but that's not gonna stop me)

The cleric beast:

MA'AM UH SIR OR MX WHATEVER YOU ARE PLEASE CALM DOWN AND STOP SCREAMING (VERY ANGRY, lovely screams tho)

Father Gascoigne:

He's angry but he's allowed to be angry cuz he's a dilf (very angry, thought I wasn't attracted to him then I heard the beastly howls)

Viscar Amelia:

I'll be honest I liked you more when you weren't a monster the size of a movable house with a shit ton of bandages? ribbons? whatever it is it's very hauntingly beautiful though (angry,she has a normal amount of angry but not a normal amount of beast unfortunately)

Blood starved beast:

it's just hungry,I think if we give it enough blood it'll just become a puppy, unfortunately it's hungry and the only blood around is yours(Hangry,Less meat flaps please)

The witch(es) of hemwick:

I do not enjoy the clusterfuck of eyes you coat yourselves in, I think they may be slightly angry but they mostly just want eyes(Slightly angry, Please wear normal clothes grandmas)

Dark beast Paarl:

it's a puppy! Skeleton puppy! skeleton puppy with lightning magic!angry skeleton puppy with lightning magic! (Angry,love it's zap zaps,would make a wonderful pet if it wasn't murderous and electrifying,oh also being the size of a small building doesn't really help)

Shadow of Yharnam:

They might be a bit busy being snakes to be angry,also probably a fight that might cause me to go insane if I were to do it(angry snakes?maybe?)

Rom the vacuous spider:

she's not angry, she's just disappointed (HA mom joke) , She's too nice to be angry at you but throwing meteors and sicking her children on you is fair game(not angry,Love and hate your name)

The one reborn:

put it back in the moon please,the definition of creepy and wet, whatever birthed this monstrosity should've considered an abortion,has 4(I think?) Adoptive witch mothers and none of them make it less bad(it's a fucking moon baby it doesn't know what anger is)

Martyr Logarius:

Santa is not doing well,and he's going to make sure you know that by kicking your ass into next Friday (angry, please stop floating it looks weird)

Amygdala:

what kinda fucked up giant enemy spider are you,why did you rip out your arms , couldn't you just hit me with them without ripping them out?why are you named after a brain part?(angry,stomps a lot)

Celestial emissary:

what even are you supposed to be,you 're kind of blueish so that makes you less angry,but also you look like there is a huge egg where your brain should be,I don't like you (not angry, please stop existing)

Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos:

she's just lonely,she doesn't even attack you without you attacking her first, poor child (not angry,She looks like she has a giant clam for a head)

Micolash host of the nightmare:

who's crazy twink is this,he's way too crazy to feel anything other than utter chaos(not angry,needs a shower)

Mergo's wet nurse:

now I wouldn't say she's angry on account of the fact that she doesn't even have a body,or at least one we can see,she looks very calm but she's still gonna slice you like a lawn mower specifically made for hunters(not angry,very spooky,love the theme)

Gehrman the first hunter:

legit the first time I read your name I just said "is he German" ,grampa off the chair what will he do,he's not angry he just wants you to leave the dream (for some reason?) (Not angry,cool scythe)

Moon presence:

depending on which ending she can be very angry or not angry at all ,if you leave the hunter's dream she probably doesn't even aknowledge your existence after that,if you beat Grandpa G and you don't have enough umbilical cords in you she's not angry too,but if you want to turn into a slug you have to make the moon angry,very flowery, please don't bite my stomach that hurts (not angry/angry)

Ludwig the accursed holy blade:

is your name an oxymoron (I don't think I'm even using that correctly) starts out very angry but then calms down a little, unfortunately for you that means he's stronger (very angry then not angry, Horse man very cool,very cool sword)

Laurence ,the first viscar:

It's literally just the cleric beast but on fire , still very angry though(very angry, someone get a fire extinguisher,or don't idk)

Living failures:

if I see one of you fuckers make a "ha same" joke I'll send you to the shadow realm, they're not really angry,but they sure as hell want to ruin your day, pretty star magic though (not angry,what happened to your heads why are you deflated)

Lady Maria of the astral clock tower:

Probably my favorite boss,but she's not angry, she's way too tired to be angry,her anger has burned and burned and burned and left her empty,she needs some rest, although similarly to Ludwig,her being not angry just makes it worse for you (not angry,Badass lady with swords , wonderful, please don't stab yourself)

Orphan of kos:

ah yes Kos,or as some say kosm gr- *gets hit with a placenta*,You really should've listened to Lady Maria when she said "a corpse should be left well alone" because this baby knows only three things

1) Something killed it's mother

2)you are something

3)unending violence

The angriest thing in the game,how is your placenta so solid,not even therapy can make it not angry (VERY ANGRY, Stop screaming you butterfly looking MOTHERFUCKER,Very fair reason for being angry I would say tho)

And that's it,if you disagree with any of these please consider the following:

Suck my ass/j

[darlingseraa]

Odyssey || Theory time.

Aight. So. Less than 24h after the official teaser release, and I have a theory on it. Typical, I know lmao. I’ll admit I had a completely different theory about this before I saw all of this.

Anyway, let’s take a look at the splash arts for Odyssey Kayn and Sona for a minute, okay?

Here’s Kayn:

Here’s Sona:

Now. There’s a few things I’ve noticed (thanks to @sushi-okita) about them that make me question what kind of relationship they have with each other in the Odyssey universe.

First up, the golden orb, that strange gold liquid they both wield. For Sona, it originates from her etwahl; for Kayn, it originates where Rhaast’s eye should be on his scythe. 

Their eyes are the same golden color.

They both have golden markings / tribal designs on their faces.

Kayn literally has one dialogue line (in the teaser) refering to an unknown female; “You took what was mine! I will find her, and I-”

Now that that’s out of the way, notice how, on Kayn’s splash art, he seems to absorb the life out of a man’s body. The color of the life-sapping liquid coming out of the corpse’s eyes? 

Gold.

Just like the orb replacing Rhaast’s eye. 

Kayn’s official voicelines for this new skin have also been released (and I can’t tell if he’s totally batshit insane, suffers from a superiority complex or both lol). There are many things I’ve noticed in them:

Both Rhaast and Kayn mention something called ‘aura’.

Rhaast has three voicelines aimed directly to (or refering to) Sona, telling her to ‘open the gates’ (whatever that means) and [here speaking to Kayn] “I told you to leave her ALIVE!” (to which Kayn responds there was a ‘change of plans’) and also “Face the monster you unleashed, Sona!”

Rhaast mentions that ‘gate’ twice, in the aforementioned line directed to Sona, as well as this one; “You should never have opened that gate!”

Kayn has a few lines targeted directly to Sona; “Rhaast can’t save you now, Sona!” along with “At last, Sona, the secrets of the Aura Gate will be mine!” 

Both keep referencing someone called the Templar, which I believe is one way they refer to Sona. Their lines concerning this Templar person are variations of the lines they already voice towards the maven, so it’s only logical to interpret that the Templar is, in fact, Sona.

One of Kayn’s lines in particular may seem very small, but once you understand that the Templar is Sona, this line becomes key to deciphering the lore; “Captain Yasuo, why don’t you tell me where you are hiding the Templar?”

It is also worth noting that Rhaast himself refers to the Dark Star skin line quite a few times, implying that he himself is a Dark Star, and even having one or two voicelines refering to Thresh in that same context.

Based on this, we can assume a few concrete things;

Sona is a priestess / princess tasked with guarding an ancient gate leading to another dimension; her golden orb is the key to said gate.

This other dimension (to which said gate leads) is where Rhaast came from, which is where the Dark Star / Cosmic / Star Guardian skin lines exist, making the Odyssey skin line their own universe (to make things simpler, SGs / Dark Star / Cosmic are NOT in the same dimension as Odyssey).

Aura refers to a person’s life force, which Kayn needs in order to become stronger (and possibly access the gate Sona is tasked with keeping).

When Kayn harvests a person’s aura, he is strengthening both himself and Rhaast. The aura is stored within the golden orb replacing Rhaast’s eye on the scythe.

Yasuo’s crew are, in a way, taking Sona into hiding so that Kayn can never find her and access the Aura Gate.

Opening said gate would unleash the other Dark Stars into the Odyssey universe and cause their end.

If you paid attention, at one point I mentioned Rhaast had told Kayn to keep Sona alive. I think Rhaast knows something Kayn doesn’t; I’ll assume that in order to open the gate, they need a high priestess to do so. My guess is that they need a SPECIFIC aura to open the gate. More on that later.

Keeping all of the previous information in mind (I know there’s a lot, but bear with me, it will all end up making sense), we can make an educated guess as to what the possible story behind this skin line is - or, at least, we can guess as to what kind of role Sona and Kayn actually have within it. Here’s my interpretation of it based on all of the information above;

Sona is a High-Priestess, refered to as the Templar. Keeper of the Aura Gate. Her golden orb is an association of all the previous Keepers’ auras. This means ONLY a Keeper (Templar and / or High-Priestess, all three are the same) can wield this specific orb, and said Keeper is the only person who can access the Aura Gate’s power. In this universe, I believe there is ONLY ONE KEEPER. She originates from the same world as Kayn, hence their shared facial markings and eye color.

I believe Kayn and Sona have a shared past; Kayn speaks to her with such familiarity, calling her by name in most of his voicelines, that it would be illogical to think they don’t have any connection besides Kayn wanting to kill her to gain access to the Aura Gate. They may have been classmates, studying together or training together at some point. They may have been friends, or they may have been more (which would be logical considering Kayn himself in the teaser refers to Sona as ‘what was mine’ (unless that line refers to her orb) and says that he will find her).

In any case, from Kayn’s voicelines we gather that he was an Imperial Soldier before Rhaast came along. I believe that he might have been one of the best, part of the elite if you will, whom the previous emperor of their world had sent through the Aura Gate to retrieve something that might aid them in the conquering of new planets and solar systems. Rhaast was that ‘something’ the emperor had wanted them to get; a weapon forged from the dying heart of a Dark Star, corrupted through and through. 

It was the sentient weapon’s corruption that turned Kayn into this insane, ambitious and power-hungry man, who overthrew the emperor to rule in his stead over the Empire, and desiring even more power had decided to take Sona as his own in order to have access once more to the Aura Gate. This caused the Templar to flee the temple -and eventually, the planet- where the now inaccessible gate resides, finding refuge with Yasuo and his crew after her spaceship was attacked by monstrous creatures following her escape from her home planet. 

Although Sona has found herself surrounded by a band of misfits, she quickly understood that they could all be trusted. They all have their quirks, but they were her new family, people she needed to protect. She blames herself for the trouble she puts them through; because of her, Kayn is now after them. Because of her, Kayn has strayed from his path; because of her, he is no longer human; because of her, he has caused suffering to so many, just to find her.

Ever since she escaped, Kayn and Rhaast have been bent on finding her and have hunted down Yasuo’s ship and crew, meaning to kill those who dared take Sona away from them and, eventually, meaning to kill Sona herself, so she can never take the key to the Aura Gate away from him again.

***

And there you have it! I know, this was a loooong ass post. Have a cookie! 

I’m really excited to see what kind of lore is truly behind this skin line. What do you guys think? I’m hyped as hell. I’m not sure my predictions are accurate but hey, who knows!

I really want to know you guys’ thoughts on this :3

P.S.: For those of you who haven’t heard Kayn’s new voicelines yet and have over 30min of free time to waste, here’s the link to them good lines. Some of them just made me crack up. He throws some SERIOUS shade tho lmao. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnqu0e1758c ♥

[luxintima-a-blog]

foreign hunter - bloodborne au

Yharnam was always a sad city in Noctis’ eyes. Once every year came the night of the hunt, when monsters commanded the streets and it’s citizens chose to hide in their homes. Normally it would only last the few hours when the moon was at it’s highest, bathing the city in a red light and anyone stupid enough to brave leaving their homes would shortly join the ranks of the insane and twisted that roamed. All of it was to blame on the plague that had swept the land, and while often Yharnam had escaped the sickness, it had now fallen, even it’s famed cure unable to stem the flow of creatures that had fallen victim. Such things were the reasons he and other hunters still had work, clearing the city of it’s taint before the morning came and they needed to return to their lives. Dirty work, dangerous work, and he’d spent the better part of his life making damn well sure he was one of the best at it.

Much like the first hunter himself, Noctis wields a scythe, disguised on his person as a sword when he is not using the weapon. It is his wish to use it as a pole arm, preforming no small number of acrobatic and aerial feats with his weapon of choice. If push comes to shove, however, he will use it as it’s normal state, as it is far more effective in getting rid of large crowds. Also on his person is a handgun, a repeating pistol that he was requested to carry by a friend who wished for him to merely stay safe, and a large stash of both poisoned and standard throwing knives for thinning out mobs when his own strength can not do so.

His first few hunts he was accompanied by another hunter, preferring to work in teams because he could not yet move past the fact that what he was killing used to be a human with a family or a dog that was once a pet of some small child. Some number of hunts into his career, he stopped caring, having seen far too many hunters fall because of their bleeding hearts. Noctis has ended up ruthless, focusing on the task at hand so that he might escape the stench of death that blankets the city.

Noctis himself has already escaped the illnesses he finds in the city, a childhood of infirmity and poor health driving him to ensure that he does not fall victim to what the creatures he cuts down have. To this end he wears a large cloak, with a hood that makes him look much like the personification of Death himself. It serves two purposes, alienating those people that might have something and get too close, and give a subtle ( if always ignored ) warning to those he hunts that if they see him it nearly always means their end. The hood is large enough to keep anything but the most insane sprays of tainted blood.

As for the reason that he, a frail child for a large portion of his life, became a hunter in the first place was because his mother died from the illness, killed by some hunter when she lost her mind, and his father set such an example for him before he was taken by a twisted man, easily 1.5 times the size of his father on his best days and armed with an axe. His death came after Noctis had already chosen his long standing weapon, and struck out on his own, and is partially to blame for how hard he works to rid the world of the plague ridden bodies.

Pretty much, the reason I made this verse is because of some wonderful art and a love for the game and the lore behind it. That said, I have not played in a while, so forgive glaring mistakes.

Ask, Threads, and Images for this verse.

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Revived Kickstarter Game Unsung Story Ending Pre-Production This Month; Reveals Lots of New Details

The story of Unsung Story (no pun intended) is quite painful for fans of the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform. Announced in 2014 promising a grand return of Final Fantasy Tactics creator Yasumi Matsuno in 2015, the project was largely mismanaged by Playdek until Little Orbit stepped in to try and salvage the agonizing project last year.

Luckily, it seems that there may still be a happy ending to this whole mess, as Little Orbit has gone to work following Matsuno-san’s original design, and despite having to start from scratch to remove Playdek’s influence, progress is being shown.

In a Kickstarter update released today, Little Orbit Founder and CEO Matthew Scott announced that pre-production will end in April, which signifies a major development milestone. With the exception of art, everything is now “fairly well mapped out.” The art side is progressing more slowly, and the developer is going to keep working on concepts until they’re spot-on. In fact, the screenshots that you’ll see at the bottom of the post showcase only gameplay, with placeholder assets.

A Twitch stream showing the current build will happen later this month, alongside the first developer blog about the game.

The development team has completed the second draft of the design document, which is over 100-pages long. All of the twenty classes have been created, named, assigned skills and roles. Classes are split into four schools, Technology, Mana, Divine, and Nature. The initial class tree and progression has also been mapped.

So, without further ado, we get to take a look at the classes themselves:

Sellsword: Mercenaries unbound by specialty, Sellswords are useful in several areas, but are masters of none. This is one of two beginning classes, along with the Physician. The Sellsword is used to teach players a few basic mechanics for melee combat, but also touches on some more metagame functionality such as boosts. They use Short Swords & Shields.

Physician: The player begins the game with the Physician unlocked, but it serves to teach them more advanced mechanics, such as ranged attacks, the use of items and cross-class abilities. Even though they start off weak, Physicians are capable of combining their items to create new effects. This becomes especially important in the late-game, where advanced items can only be created by combining two lesser items. They use Slings.

Guardian: Guardians stay at the front of combat, defending key choke points and fortifying their allies from harm. Stalwart warriors that protect those they deem worth protecting (which, incidentally, can include themselves). They use Long Swords and Shields .

Archer: Archers are a simple but effective long-range attacker, capable of striking distant foes with ease. The backbone of any successful army. Archers are able to fire further from high ground, which allows them to out-range opposing Archers. This means the ideal situation for a Archer is to be on high ground, with friendly units fortifying them from melee enemies. They use Longbows.

Plague Weaver: These guys represent a power that humans would sooner choose to forget—rot, disease and decay. They are all about debuffing the opponent’s entire team from anywhere on the map. These debuffs are typically less likely to hit than one that’s focus-cast on a single target, but the added benefit of affecting multiple enemies at once can alleviate the risk.

Elementalist: Elementalists focus on magical power in its most pure and destructive form. They deal lots of damage to single-targets. They use Staves.

Sharpshooter: The Sharpshooter sports a unique tool—known as the Infusion Rifle. They use nearby tiles to infuse their rifle and fire bullets with specific effects.

Necromancer: Necromancers are masters of death, of others and of themselves. They utilize corpses and debuffs. Necromancers can regain Health and Focus from enemy corpses, make them explode and even raise them as minions. They use Scythes.

Spellbreaker: Spellbreakers are powerful anti-magic tanks, capable of absorbing magical damage. They should be paired up to protect allies that are vulnerable to magic attacks, or used to hunt down enemy magic users to end them quickly. They use Two-Handed Maces.

Cavalier: The Cavalier is a “civilized” tank class who focuses on avoiding damage. The rapiers they wield have naturally high weapon evasion stats, allowing them to easily parry incoming blows. They also have some options for moving other units around the battlefield. They use Rapiers.

Scout: The Scout infiltrates enemy lines, sneaking up on a vulnerable backline enemy and finishing them off before the enemy team can react. They’re also capable of stealing equipment, which makes them essential versus powerful units, such as some bosses. Stealing isn’t easy, but results in not only disarming the opponent, but giving the stolen equipment to the player’s party. They use Daggers.

Priest: Priests are zealous wielders of healing magic, able to appreciate the value of life and taking measures to ensure it is preserved. They are backline support casters, keeping their allies healed through combat. They use Rods.

Berserker: Powerful—and possibly insane—the Berserker is a powerhouse in melee combat. They lose their wits as readily as they take lives, so must be guided with a cautious hand. They like to get up close and personal, taking heavy hits and dealing them in return. The Berserker focuses on buffing himself, then using special abilities that benefit from those buffs to deal damage, debilitate foes and keep himself alive. They use One-Handed Axes.

Wildlord: Wildlords are capable of learning the abilities of monsters they encounter and wielding these strange powers to great effect. They focuse on using Monster Skills, which means they have a great variety of skills to use in combat. However, they lack a specific tactical focus, instead serving to fill in holes in the team. They use Glaives.

Saboteur: These guys should rush ahead of their team, place as many traps as possible and then retreating to safety. Once behind allied lines, they can pelt the enemy team with bombs, dealing decent ranged damage in an area. They use Hand Bombs.

Shadow: Shadows are the unspoken and unseen hand of fate. They operate by inflicting themselves with status effects, then passing them on to foes and finishing them off with Killing Blow. They use a Sickle and Chain.

Disciple: A Disciple is able to fight at close range, keeping his allies alive while dealing respectable damage. They have unusual ranges for all of their abilities, and are able to attack two squares away. They use Bo Staves.

Echo Knight: Echo Knights wield an unusual and incongruous power, warping the very fabric of space around themselves and their foes. They are able to move around the battlefield quickly and easily, ensuring they reach the best possible position to hold the enemy back. They use Two-Handed Swords.

Sword Speaker: These guys unite the arts of swordplay and spellcraft. Sword Speakers practice with all swords and have the ability to summon a magic version of any blade they have previously mastered.

Librarian: The Librarian focuses on speeding up the player team and slowing down the enemy team, allowing players to perform devastating attacks with much less risk of missing. If you’ve been following our forum updates, then you’ll know Librarians are part of the lore and are part of the core storyline. They use Tomes.

The development team has also worked on how stats are calculated under the hood, and how level progression influences them. Numbers might change during development, but the equations should be close to final. Below you can read a list of those stats:

Strength: determines physical damage with most weapons.

Intelligence: determines the power of most abilities and some weapons.

Speed: determines how frequently a unit acts.

Agility: partially determines evasion rates and partially determines the damage of Agility Weapons.

Health: determines how much damage a character can take before they’re killed.

Focus: determines how many spells a character can cast before needing to restore their Focus (our version of magic power).

Natural Strength: a character’s starting strength based on several factors.

Natural Intelligence: a character’s starting intelligence based on several factors.

Some work has been done on recruitment, with permadeath in mind (excluding story characters). Each recruitable unit will look different thanks to randomly-generated appearance.

Bubble maps for all levels have been designed, identifying the location, story character requirements, and primary objectives. Grey box layouts for each map are being worked on, which will facilitate playtesting.

For the sake of full disclosure, I, like many others, have backed this project back in 2014. While it’s natural to retain a level of skepticism, it’s obvious to me that Little Orbit is doing what it can to fulfill a promise made by others, with is nothing short of praiseworthy. Hopefully, they will be successful.

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Revived Kickstarter Game Unsung Story Ending Pre-Production This Month; Reveals Lots of New Details

The story of Unsung Story (no pun intended) is quite painful for fans of the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform. Announced in 2014 promising a grand return of Final Fantasy Tactics creator Yasumi Matsuno in 2015, the project was largely mismanaged by Playdek until Little Orbit stepped in to try and salvage the agonizing project last year.

Luckily, it seems that there may still be a happy ending to this whole mess, as Little Orbit has gone to work following Matsuno-san’s original design, and despite having to start from scratch to remove Playdek’s influence, progress is being shown.

In a Kickstarter update released today, Little Orbit Founder and CEO Matthew Scott announced that pre-production will end in April, which signifies a major development milestone. With the exception of art, everything is now “fairly well mapped out.” The art side is progressing more slowly, and the developer is going to keep working on concepts until they’re spot-on. In fact, the screenshots that you’ll see at the bottom of the post showcase only gameplay, with placeholder assets.

A Twitch stream showing the current build will happen later this month, alongside the first developer blog about the game.

The development team has completed the second draft of the design document, which is over 100-pages long. All of the twenty classes have been created, named, assigned skills and roles. Classes are split into four schools, Technology, Mana, Divine, and Nature. The initial class tree and progression has also been mapped.

So, without further ado, we get to take a look at the classes themselves:

Sellsword: Mercenaries unbound by specialty, Sellswords are useful in several areas, but are masters of none. This is one of two beginning classes, along with the Physician. The Sellsword is used to teach players a few basic mechanics for melee combat, but also touches on some more metagame functionality such as boosts. They use Short Swords & Shields.

Physician: The player begins the game with the Physician unlocked, but it serves to teach them more advanced mechanics, such as ranged attacks, the use of items and cross-class abilities. Even though they start off weak, Physicians are capable of combining their items to create new effects. This becomes especially important in the late-game, where advanced items can only be created by combining two lesser items. They use Slings.

Guardian: Guardians stay at the front of combat, defending key choke points and fortifying their allies from harm. Stalwart warriors that protect those they deem worth protecting (which, incidentally, can include themselves). They use Long Swords and Shields .

Archer: Archers are a simple but effective long-range attacker, capable of striking distant foes with ease. The backbone of any successful army. Archers are able to fire further from high ground, which allows them to out-range opposing Archers. This means the ideal situation for a Archer is to be on high ground, with friendly units fortifying them from melee enemies. They use Longbows.

Plague Weaver: These guys represent a power that humans would sooner choose to forget—rot, disease and decay. They are all about debuffing the opponent’s entire team from anywhere on the map. These debuffs are typically less likely to hit than one that’s focus-cast on a single target, but the added benefit of affecting multiple enemies at once can alleviate the risk.

Elementalist: Elementalists focus on magical power in its most pure and destructive form. They deal lots of damage to single-targets. They use Staves.

Sharpshooter: The Sharpshooter sports a unique tool—known as the Infusion Rifle. They use nearby tiles to infuse their rifle and fire bullets with specific effects.

Necromancer: Necromancers are masters of death, of others and of themselves. They utilize corpses and debuffs. Necromancers can regain Health and Focus from enemy corpses, make them explode and even raise them as minions. They use Scythes.

Spellbreaker: Spellbreakers are powerful anti-magic tanks, capable of absorbing magical damage. They should be paired up to protect allies that are vulnerable to magic attacks, or used to hunt down enemy magic users to end them quickly. They use Two-Handed Maces.

Cavalier: The Cavalier is a “civilized” tank class who focuses on avoiding damage. The rapiers they wield have naturally high weapon evasion stats, allowing them to easily parry incoming blows. They also have some options for moving other units around the battlefield. They use Rapiers.

Scout: The Scout infiltrates enemy lines, sneaking up on a vulnerable backline enemy and finishing them off before the enemy team can react. They’re also capable of stealing equipment, which makes them essential versus powerful units, such as some bosses. Stealing isn’t easy, but results in not only disarming the opponent, but giving the stolen equipment to the player’s party. They use Daggers.

Priest: Priests are zealous wielders of healing magic, able to appreciate the value of life and taking measures to ensure it is preserved. They are backline support casters, keeping their allies healed through combat. They use Rods.

Berserker: Powerful—and possibly insane—the Berserker is a powerhouse in melee combat. They lose their wits as readily as they take lives, so must be guided with a cautious hand. They like to get up close and personal, taking heavy hits and dealing them in return. The Berserker focuses on buffing himself, then using special abilities that benefit from those buffs to deal damage, debilitate foes and keep himself alive. They use One-Handed Axes.

Wildlord: Wildlords are capable of learning the abilities of monsters they encounter and wielding these strange powers to great effect. They focuse on using Monster Skills, which means they have a great variety of skills to use in combat. However, they lack a specific tactical focus, instead serving to fill in holes in the team. They use Glaives.

Saboteur: These guys should rush ahead of their team, place as many traps as possible and then retreating to safety. Once behind allied lines, they can pelt the enemy team with bombs, dealing decent ranged damage in an area. They use Hand Bombs.

Shadow: Shadows are the unspoken and unseen hand of fate. They operate by inflicting themselves with status effects, then passing them on to foes and finishing them off with Killing Blow. They use a Sickle and Chain.

Disciple: A Disciple is able to fight at close range, keeping his allies alive while dealing respectable damage. They have unusual ranges for all of their abilities, and are able to attack two squares away. They use Bo Staves.

Echo Knight: Echo Knights wield an unusual and incongruous power, warping the very fabric of space around themselves and their foes. They are able to move around the battlefield quickly and easily, ensuring they reach the best possible position to hold the enemy back. They use Two-Handed Swords.

Sword Speaker: These guys unite the arts of swordplay and spellcraft. Sword Speakers practice with all swords and have the ability to summon a magic version of any blade they have previously mastered.

Librarian: The Librarian focuses on speeding up the player team and slowing down the enemy team, allowing players to perform devastating attacks with much less risk of missing. If you’ve been following our forum updates, then you’ll know Librarians are part of the lore and are part of the core storyline. They use Tomes.

The development team has also worked on how stats are calculated under the hood, and how level progression influences them. Numbers might change during development, but the equations should be close to final. Below you can read a list of those stats:

Strength: determines physical damage with most weapons.

Intelligence: determines the power of most abilities and some weapons.

Speed: determines how frequently a unit acts.

Agility: partially determines evasion rates and partially determines the damage of Agility Weapons.

Health: determines how much damage a character can take before they’re killed.

Focus: determines how many spells a character can cast before needing to restore their Focus (our version of magic power).

Natural Strength: a character’s starting strength based on several factors.

Natural Intelligence: a character’s starting intelligence based on several factors.

Some work has been done on recruitment, with permadeath in mind (excluding story characters). Each recruitable unit will look different thanks to randomly-generated appearance.

Bubble maps for all levels have been designed, identifying the location, story character requirements, and primary objectives. Grey box layouts for each map are being worked on, which will facilitate playtesting.

For the sake of full disclosure, I, like many others, have backed this project back in 2014. While it’s natural to retain a level of skepticism, it’s obvious to me that Little Orbit is doing what it can to fulfill a promise made by others, with is nothing short of praiseworthy. Hopefully, they will be successful.

[gamingtipsandtrickshacks]

Revived Kickstarter Game Unsung Story Ending Pre-Production This Month; Reveals Lots of New Details

The story of Unsung Story (no pun intended) is quite painful for fans of the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform. Announced in 2014 promising a grand return of Final Fantasy Tactics creator Yasumi Matsuno in 2015, the project was largely mismanaged by Playdek until Little Orbit stepped in to try and salvage the agonizing project last year.

Luckily, it seems that there may still be a happy ending to this whole mess, as Little Orbit has gone to work following Matsuno-san’s original design, and despite having to start from scratch to remove Playdek’s influence, progress is being shown.

In a Kickstarter update released today, Little Orbit Founder and CEO Matthew Scott announced that pre-production will end in April, which signifies a major development milestone. With the exception of art, everything is now “fairly well mapped out.” The art side is progressing more slowly, and the developer is going to keep working on concepts until they’re spot-on. In fact, the screenshots that you’ll see at the bottom of the post showcase only gameplay, with placeholder assets.

A Twitch stream showing the current build will happen later this month, alongside the first developer blog about the game.

The development team has completed the second draft of the design document, which is over 100-pages long. All of the twenty classes have been created, named, assigned skills and roles. Classes are split into four schools, Technology, Mana, Divine, and Nature. The initial class tree and progression has also been mapped.

So, without further ado, we get to take a look at the classes themselves:

Sellsword: Mercenaries unbound by specialty, Sellswords are useful in several areas, but are masters of none. This is one of two beginning classes, along with the Physician. The Sellsword is used to teach players a few basic mechanics for melee combat, but also touches on some more metagame functionality such as boosts. They use Short Swords & Shields.

Physician: The player begins the game with the Physician unlocked, but it serves to teach them more advanced mechanics, such as ranged attacks, the use of items and cross-class abilities. Even though they start off weak, Physicians are capable of combining their items to create new effects. This becomes especially important in the late-game, where advanced items can only be created by combining two lesser items. They use Slings.

Guardian: Guardians stay at the front of combat, defending key choke points and fortifying their allies from harm. Stalwart warriors that protect those they deem worth protecting (which, incidentally, can include themselves). They use Long Swords and Shields .

Archer: Archers are a simple but effective long-range attacker, capable of striking distant foes with ease. The backbone of any successful army. Archers are able to fire further from high ground, which allows them to out-range opposing Archers. This means the ideal situation for a Archer is to be on high ground, with friendly units fortifying them from melee enemies. They use Longbows.

Plague Weaver: These guys represent a power that humans would sooner choose to forget—rot, disease and decay. They are all about debuffing the opponent’s entire team from anywhere on the map. These debuffs are typically less likely to hit than one that’s focus-cast on a single target, but the added benefit of affecting multiple enemies at once can alleviate the risk.

Elementalist: Elementalists focus on magical power in its most pure and destructive form. They deal lots of damage to single-targets. They use Staves.

Sharpshooter: The Sharpshooter sports a unique tool—known as the Infusion Rifle. They use nearby tiles to infuse their rifle and fire bullets with specific effects.

Necromancer: Necromancers are masters of death, of others and of themselves. They utilize corpses and debuffs. Necromancers can regain Health and Focus from enemy corpses, make them explode and even raise them as minions. They use Scythes.

Spellbreaker: Spellbreakers are powerful anti-magic tanks, capable of absorbing magical damage. They should be paired up to protect allies that are vulnerable to magic attacks, or used to hunt down enemy magic users to end them quickly. They use Two-Handed Maces.

Cavalier: The Cavalier is a “civilized” tank class who focuses on avoiding damage. The rapiers they wield have naturally high weapon evasion stats, allowing them to easily parry incoming blows. They also have some options for moving other units around the battlefield. They use Rapiers.

Scout: The Scout infiltrates enemy lines, sneaking up on a vulnerable backline enemy and finishing them off before the enemy team can react. They’re also capable of stealing equipment, which makes them essential versus powerful units, such as some bosses. Stealing isn’t easy, but results in not only disarming the opponent, but giving the stolen equipment to the player’s party. They use Daggers.

Priest: Priests are zealous wielders of healing magic, able to appreciate the value of life and taking measures to ensure it is preserved. They are backline support casters, keeping their allies healed through combat. They use Rods.

Berserker: Powerful—and possibly insane—the Berserker is a powerhouse in melee combat. They lose their wits as readily as they take lives, so must be guided with a cautious hand. They like to get up close and personal, taking heavy hits and dealing them in return. The Berserker focuses on buffing himself, then using special abilities that benefit from those buffs to deal damage, debilitate foes and keep himself alive. They use One-Handed Axes.

Wildlord: Wildlords are capable of learning the abilities of monsters they encounter and wielding these strange powers to great effect. They focuse on using Monster Skills, which means they have a great variety of skills to use in combat. However, they lack a specific tactical focus, instead serving to fill in holes in the team. They use Glaives.

Saboteur: These guys should rush ahead of their team, place as many traps as possible and then retreating to safety. Once behind allied lines, they can pelt the enemy team with bombs, dealing decent ranged damage in an area. They use Hand Bombs.

Shadow: Shadows are the unspoken and unseen hand of fate. They operate by inflicting themselves with status effects, then passing them on to foes and finishing them off with Killing Blow. They use a Sickle and Chain.

Disciple: A Disciple is able to fight at close range, keeping his allies alive while dealing respectable damage. They have unusual ranges for all of their abilities, and are able to attack two squares away. They use Bo Staves.

Echo Knight: Echo Knights wield an unusual and incongruous power, warping the very fabric of space around themselves and their foes. They are able to move around the battlefield quickly and easily, ensuring they reach the best possible position to hold the enemy back. They use Two-Handed Swords.

Sword Speaker: These guys unite the arts of swordplay and spellcraft. Sword Speakers practice with all swords and have the ability to summon a magic version of any blade they have previously mastered.

Librarian: The Librarian focuses on speeding up the player team and slowing down the enemy team, allowing players to perform devastating attacks with much less risk of missing. If you’ve been following our forum updates, then you’ll know Librarians are part of the lore and are part of the core storyline. They use Tomes.

The development team has also worked on how stats are calculated under the hood, and how level progression influences them. Numbers might change during development, but the equations should be close to final. Below you can read a list of those stats:

Strength: determines physical damage with most weapons.

Intelligence: determines the power of most abilities and some weapons.

Speed: determines how frequently a unit acts.

Agility: partially determines evasion rates and partially determines the damage of Agility Weapons.

Health: determines how much damage a character can take before they’re killed.

Focus: determines how many spells a character can cast before needing to restore their Focus (our version of magic power).

Natural Strength: a character’s starting strength based on several factors.

Natural Intelligence: a character’s starting intelligence based on several factors.

Some work has been done on recruitment, with permadeath in mind (excluding story characters). Each recruitable unit will look different thanks to randomly-generated appearance.

Bubble maps for all levels have been designed, identifying the location, story character requirements, and primary objectives. Grey box layouts for each map are being worked on, which will facilitate playtesting.

For the sake of full disclosure, I, like many others, have backed this project back in 2014. While it’s natural to retain a level of skepticism, it’s obvious to me that Little Orbit is doing what it can to fulfill a promise made by others, with is nothing short of praiseworthy. Hopefully, they will be successful.