#and was getting chased by some ffxiv boss monster

[dear-crybunny]

thinking about him a normal amount

[voidsentprinces]

📜 (For each)

Each of the Voidsent Princes are translated from my creation of them in my mind back in 2010, 2011. All of them have kept a few of these details necessary to their characters when translated to Final Fantasy XIV.

📜 - Envy’s overwritten existence was a happenstance in that the Catholic belief each sin is represented by a corresponding demon. Meant that the Leviathan is associated with Envy. Since, there always exists a Leviathan in Eorzea, this meant that Envy would be overwritten even if he was the Leviathan of his world. Envy’s spite initially came from being forced into a humanoid form and keeping only his tail to forever remain nostalgic and bitter over, what he once was rather than what he could grow to be.

By this same vein, I added the aspect of him keeping his eye color, hair color, and tail to remind him of this. To drive him forever to begrudge the Sahagin and the Eorzeans. Which motivates him to commit atrocities out of spite.

As it stands, I am still trying to work in how Envy got his start in creation lore. As in his original back story, he was literally placed in a Goddess without her knowing. Feeding on her divinity and driving her mad with the newfound feeling of jealousy, spite, envy, and pettiness. Which slowly turned him from a simple snake, into a great draconic serpentine.

This event he clings onto as his peak and why he is arrogant in that he is greater than any being. Wishing to reobtain such a place and corrupt all hearts. Feeding on many more essences. But alas, he remains anchored to trying to reobtain that lost former glory. Rather than using, his powers for any good. Reminded daily of his current state, forever chasing a dream he will never reobtain.

📜 - In their origin and repeated in their back story. Only Wrath and Sloth began as demons. Which had been changed for their translations into FFXIV. Initially; Envy was a Primordeal force, Lust was human once, Gluttony was an angel, Greed was a human made deity, Sloth was a demon, Wrath was a demon, and Pride was an angel. To reflect this, Envy was a Primal in his world, Lust was a mortal, Gluttony was a Warrior of Light, Greed was an Elder Primal, Sloth is a homunculus, Wrath was an Xaela Au Ra, and Pride was also a Warrior of Light.

I, explain this, due to keeping with the translations of things that stayed over other than the obvious (i.e. eyes, hair, manner of speaking, dress). Lust maintains his backstory of prostatuting himself to make enough money. To hire, his sick sister a life-time doctor for her non-specific illness. Then the tragedy following, where his memories and beings are stripped away. Forever doomed to only vaguely remember his sister. Ever searching for her, but centuries have past and she was mortal. Whereas, he isn’t anymore.

This was my attempts to make Lust more than a simple overtly sexual force. Giving him meaning, a passion and something to lust forever outside the obvious. He wants to remember his sister, he wants to be there to protect her, watch over her, as a big brother does. See her grow, see what choices she made, etc. Alas, he might never have that chance as his shard of origin was consumed by one of the Ascian’s ploys.

📜 - Gluttony has always been together with Pride. As it is written that Beelzebub was lieutenant to Lucifer in his uprising. This follows suit, in both interations of my translations of the sins, the two are separated. Gluttony takes up hunting in a hellscape. Eventually consumes corrupted meat which drives him mad with hunger.

Unfortunately, there is far too much green, I associate with the Seven Deadly Sins. Got Envy, Gluttony, and Greed all which could be associated with various shades of the color. So, I couldn’t decide whether or not Gluttony’s eyes should be an acidic yellow or a bile green. In the end, I felt it better to learn on this angelic figure twisted into monster. When full hog on the eldritch monstrosity. His eye deforming into a compact insectoid ocular. Carapace, translucent wings, etc.

Beelzebub was shown to favor the bow in some scriptures and drawings. So, he kept a hunting aspect about him. Though I might change him, to be more approachable in the near future.

📜  - Greed was always to be a welcoming being. As he was worshipped in both previous lives in both iterations of him. He is more than happy to welcome mortals. Share a drink, buy them food, etc.

One of the few sins to actually grow, after his downfall from the throne of divinity and being outwritten as a faux deity. Mammon found to value less material things and more people in general. Though he still wishes to collect various objects, now that he has found himself in a new world. He also wishes to collect people. Relationships, memories, experiences, stories, and the like.

This turns Greed away like Lust from the simple path of corporate greed to one of more character. Always broad shouldered, hair and eyes the color of fresh minted dollar bills. Dressing in suits like a romanticized prohibition mob boss. But, with genuine hospitality. Greed was probably the easiest to translate story wise.

📜 - Sloth is probably the least touched on Sin, I’ve worked on. They follow the troupe of being lazy and unmotivated. But, in a logical way. Yes, Sloth does tend to sleep and prefer to be undisturbed. But, in my research, I came upon an interesting bit of lore from the Belphagor myth, Belphagor is sent out into the world by Hades to measure humanity. Though his findings are uninteresting, the folklore of Belphagor offering up unimaginable inventions for people to patent and claim as their own to incite Sloth. Had some sort of impact on me.

Absolutely brilliant, able to invent things on the spot, but the laziest being in the universe. Whenever awoken, Sloth would offer up someone a genuine good idea or invention which would see themselves prosper. If, they’d just let Sloth roll over and go back to sleep.

Another aspect of Sloth kept in both iterations, they are either unfathomably lucky or unlucky depending on where you look at it. As they get around purely by chance. By never moving and always sleeping, Sloth is often farried around without their knowing. Appearing in odd places all due to random chance.

For example, Sloth went from the Great Gubal Library steps to Ul’dah by; being swept by one of Matoya’s brooms off the beaten path, rolling down a hill into the river below, floating through Coerthas onto the oceans near La Noscea, where they were subsequently eaten by an over size fish, said fish washed up on the harbor of Horizon, where it was split up only for them to come tumbling out of its belly, into a cart, which was then farried to Ul’dah, whereby they rolled off it onto the streets.

📜 - Amon is one of 72 demons written about in the Goetia of Soloman. He is a marquis of Hell and bears an owl’s head with wolves teeth, a man’s body, with a serpent tail. He is sinfully summoned by scholars to foresee the future or help them obtain knowledge. This is an aspect translated into Wrath, once a great oracle of the Xaela. He predicted an outcome which bode ill for the current Khagan. Ill respecting of this prediction, that Khagan killed Amon’s tribe and tried to force fate to bring about a new revelation which served the ruling tribe before Nadaam.

To this end, they tortured, Amon for many moons. Until at last, fate intervened in a way that was unexpected. Infusing Amon with the rage of all those unlawfully killed in his tribe. He began a beast of Wrath. Still maintaining his ability to see the future, as indicated by his ring patterned eyes. Always prone to anger and irrational thinking, going as far as to destroy a marking place because of some pineapples. Sloth developed a system of stealing piercings.

Wrath’s body is covered in piercings that pentrate through Wrath’s abdomen, fore and upper arms, his ears, nose, and lips. When ever, he gets angry. The piercings attempt to seal in the rage and when they are close to expiring, they glow molten white. This way, Wrath can maintain proper thought and function without going berserk at a moment’s notice.

The piercings can double as explosives, as Wrath can remove them and throw the heated piercings to erupt releasing the fiery energy in the designated area.

📜  - Pride, Lucifer. One of the most iconic sins and in a handful of religion, the first sin and sometimes to root of it all. Vanity, narcassism, and glory seeking. Pride is another one I hadn’t touched on alot and currently sits in an amnesiac state.

Though, his form is that of a Warrior of Light, who did his best and was awarded nothing for it. He started out seeking adventure, gathering friends and allies along the way, battling everything the troubles of the world put forth and in the end, he and his Warriors of Light. Couldn’t stop of the Ascians from consuming, his world in Calamity.

His last act was to protect, what he thought, was the last remaining member of his group from the flood of darkness. That would go on to consume his form.

Once golden in hair and eye, his fair hair turning black and the shine of his gaze fading.

Now Pride is going to be acting as a Project of mine. Balmung is going to shape him into what he becomes. Will he return to being a Voidsent Prince? Become an adventurer? Or something else? We’ll see....when I get to courage to throw him at the Balmung community again.

[symbianosgames]

We know you're busy making games. That's why from here on out, Gamasutra will be bringing you a regular look at what passionate game fans are talking about right now, tapping the zeitgeist to look at what makes these heroic new fan favorites tick. Sometimes cultural buzz isn't just about retail units, formal market research and sales figures. This time, we take a look at the complex appeal of Atlus' rich, explosive JRPG Persona 4: Golden.

Japanese role-playing games used to be console-sellers, but things have been quite different this generation. The titanic sun of Japan's software industry dominance has slowly set, and long-standing Eastern franchises have struggled to maintain their luster.

Among those with the hardest fall from grace has been the Final Fantasy franchise, with an incredibly mixed reception for FFXIII and a disaster for FFXIV, and with its decline has come the perception that there's hardly any market for JRPGs anymore, not outside a specific niche.

Atlus has been catering to niches for years, with its Western arm and its partners bravely bringing installments of the Shin Megami Tensei series, from which the Persona games spawn, to our shores. The company's taken bets on relatively-hardcore titles like Tactics Ogre or the Growlanser series, games that enjoy small but passionate audiences.

But the Persona games have exponentially gained buzz with each installment. It was 2007's Persona 3 that first broke through in a big way, combining modern jazz and hip hop soundtracks with sleek, stylized animation -- and the attention-grabbing imagery of young students summoning demons by holding guns to their heads. There was something about that game's subtly-dark storyline, which followed teenagers searching for their inner selves as they investigate supernatural phenomena, that grabbed people.

2008's Persona 4 was an incredibly lush and sharp iteration on some of the formulas Persona 3 had laid out, giving the player richer characters and a more well-realized world, ironing out some of the weaknesses in the battle system, and offering more, in general, to do.

It follows the story of a boy who moves to the country town of Inaba in the midst of fog-shrouded murder mysteries -- and ends up joining friends to chase down psychic traumas in a nightmarish technicolor TV world.

The current hardware climate has allowed Atlus to be quite iterative with both games, much to fans' delight. Persona 3 got an add-on disc called FES in the year following its release, and the PSP edition, Persona 3 Portable was broadly enhanced, adding in the mechanical improvements made to its systems in P4 -- and giving the player the option to play as a girl, completely shifting the lens of the game's key social interactions and romances.

Now, Persona 4 Golden is a similarly enhanced and expanded remake of Persona 4 that is poised to become one of the most popular titles on Sony's PSVita -- maybe even a system seller. If it does well, it'll resemble the old days when Sony relied on big, hundred-hour JRPGs to help move its hardware. So why this game, why now? What's all the buzz about?

It's a fresh approach to story. Back in the day, you'd see Western games shoot for "gritty realism," while JRPGs were teased for having too many winged androgynes and absurd sparkling god-monsters. This game has its share of that, to be sure -- but the imagery is strongly grounded in the game's ideas about human psyche. P4 contrasts the player's surreal objectives with the mundane and vivid normalcy of a real world.

The typical JRPG work of powering through dungeons and defeating bosses is set alongside a daily time and life management sim. Choices and tasks undertaken in the real world -- spending time with friends, allocating attention to school activities, clubs and studies -- determine your player's character progression and strength level in the dungeons. Somehow the grind of battle feels more meaningful when it's anchored to something relatable, like the quiet repetition of country life or bonding with school pals.

Alongside the rise of the Western RPG has come an increased focus on the tropes of high fantasy and science fiction, accompanied by dense lore and complex arrays of discoverable quests and equipment. P4 is highly linear, favoring a strong narrative, but offers players a number of statistical choices. This lets the players focus on elements they can directly control, while being free to let the story unfold.

One popular complaint about P4, both in Golden and in the original, is that the game takes a good two hours before it opens up fully to the players. It's a very slow burn of an exposition, spending time introducing the town of Inaba, life at home with host relatives, and the protagonist's school friends before allowing the player to take meaningful control. Lots of P4 fans actually like this, though, enjoying a game that focuses on emotional foundation.

Characters are part of gameplay. P3 and P4 alike both rely on the idea that the protagonist can create strange, monstrous alternate selves called Personas that can be summoned into battle. The strength of Personas depends on the relationships the player forges and cultivates with the other characters within the game. Spending time with characters within the game's world and pursuing their individual story arcs increases the amount of power Personas can receive.

Social interaction as directly impactful to strength is a mechanic that appeals to a lot of players, especially as they seem to get attached to the surprisingly complex characters as the story unfolds. For example, the player can help his drama club captain decide whether she wants to see her father before he dies, or his basketball teammate deal with the pressures of being from a rich family. Much to fans' delight, the player can choose to engender romances with some of the female characters in the game.

That this is actually a core part of the gameplay seems to be a major pillar of the game's appeal -- most successful roleplaying games include depth when it comes to options on friendships and romances.

It's more than a port. Remakes and updates of varying degrees of quality are everywhere these days. But Persona 4 Golden represents such a meaningful iteration on the beloved original game that it's worth a purchase not just for new players, but for those who already have the PS2 version and some means of playing it. The massive JRPG has had a few years to marinate in fans' minds, and fresh off the well-received PSP iteration for Persona 3, there are enough new features to make it seem like the right time to revisit.

The game adds two new social arcs, makes some subtle but meaningful changes to the pacing, and polishes the battle system even further, removing a few frustrating random elements in favor of more engaging options. It also provides more detailed feedback on some of the progressions and a few alternate avenues to fulfill daily goals, eliminating some of the system's opacity and giving players a greater sense of choice and control at each junction. It also adds a few more story events, providing new content to familiar players.

It has meaningful multiplayer. One of the most significant tweaks that P4 Golden includes is some cleverly-integrated multiplayer. With its use of message-leaving and the ability to summon another player when needed, Dark Souls and its predecessor charmed audiences by proving that multiplayer could mean more than competitive or co-operative arena spaces, and P4 Golden also takes this cue.

When given a block of time, connected players can touch the Vita's screen to get a population sampling about what others decided to do during the same period. Since success in the game revolves so much around planning for major upcoming events, the ability to do a sort of audience poll when confronted with many options is engaging.

Players can leave distress messages in the dungeons as well, giving powerful players the option to come to the aid of those in desperate straits. The massive and detail-heavy nature of JRPGs rewards those who use real-world social behavior to help solve problems, and sharing suggestions with other fans is simple but powerful.

Its localization is brilliant. The writing and dialogue in Persona 4 is an understated art, managing to delicately balance the Japanese cultural influences that attract a lot of JRPG fans with dialogue and text that feel modern and accessible.

P4 Golden's additions even include a couple references to subtle in-jokes within the fandom, showing that Atlus USA has a close acquaintance with its community and knows how to interpret language for it. In an era where much bigger Japanese companies have foundered as they try to pitch for Western appeal, that's no small feat.