Nick

Before cohost goes read-only, I thought I'd make a summary post of the game I've been working on since 2011.

HERO is a mecha science fiction visual novel set in the near future, 2048. In 2040, an alien invasion wiped out a third of Earth's population (~3 billion people) in the space of ten days before vanishing as suddenly as they appeared. In the eight years since the attack, humanity has been working tirelessly on both rebuilding what was destroyed, as well as preparing to fend off a second invasion, if one were to happen again.

One of the efforts to protect the future is the development of large, twenty meter tall robots with human pilots (very much in the vein of other mecha stories). Since this project is just getting off the ground, training pilots is critical. In addition to training existing soldiers as pilots, preparations are also made to pre-train students in high school to get them to a position of being easier to fully train after graduation.

The story takes place at one such high school, where the student body, in addition to their regular classes, trains in piloting these giant robots, the HERO (Human Enhanced Robotic Operants). The story follows Kuroto Hiroshi, a second-year, along with eleven other classmates, including his two sisters, as they learn how to pilot the HERO along with all the other travails of high school life.

This visual novel has seven routes, each one focusing on a different "heroine" though the main plot of the story remains the same regardless of route. The story is split up into three acts, across 49 chapters, with the script currently sitting at about 8.1 million words (approximately 1 million will be seen on a given playthrough).

There are 369 background locations, with time of day and weather variations as is typical. Being an architect, setting is very important to me, which is why I started development by creating a full 3D model of the entire city from which to render out background art, as well as inform how the story unfolds.

In addition to the main cast of twelve, there are thirty-six supporting cast members that will be getting character art. Sprites will have up to five poses, one for each of the main emotional states (happy, sad, angry, afraid, and neutral). Main cast members have an average of sixteen outfits, while supporting members have just a couple.

There will also be about two dozen giant robot models featured in the story, each built on the same skeleton, but with different design elements making up their armor and armaments.

The visual language draws on Celtic mythology, and will employ the use of illuminated manuscript style artwork in certain situations (e.g. chapter title cards, pause menu, etcetera). Celtic myth also informs aspects of the story, and is the main inspiration for the design of the HERO themselves, each one named after a famed hero and connected thematically to their legends.

Being such a large and dense project, this summary only touches on the surface. Check out more information on the official website.

Hey everybody, I've reached a milestone with HERO: all background art is now completed! Will be moving on to character art now.
Read more: https://sasugastudios.com/blog/status/24-09-15-hero-status.html

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Hello and welcome to the third issue of Behind the Scenes Themes! Today I'd like to discuss relationships between characters.

What I see as the greatest strength of visual novels as a medium is their ability to center and showcase relationships between characters. The typically dialogue heavy text combined with a focus on character art allows this to excel. For HERO, I wanted to take advantage of this strength not just for the primary relationships between the protagonist and the route characters, but for all characters in the story, even those with small parts.

There are around fifty characters in HERO that are named and receive character art, along with a smattering of others that exist just for the sake of a particular scene. Of those fifty, twelve are the main cast (each with their own page in the character section). These are the protagonist, his two sisters, his two guy friends, and the seven route characters.

What I wanted to do is to have relationship development not just between the protagonist and the route characters, but between all of the main characters. They work together as pilots in the same squadron so their relationships are crucial to their ability to function as a team. That means that, while the relationships between the protagonist and the route characters are still the most significant, the dynamic between all members of the team receives attention in the story. With twelve characters, that results in sixty-six relationships that get explored in some fashion (n*(n-1)/2 where n=12).

The rest of the fifty characters are supporting cast members. They are a mix of family members, school staff, and assorted others. Their relationships also receive attention, though only for those that matter to the story, because otherwise we'd be trying to keep track of over a thousand connections. There's interaction between instructors and students, between characters that have a shared past, and so on.

Expanding on that, the family dynamics of each of the main characters are the most important relationships outside of those within the squadron. I wanted to give attention to these relationships to show their significance in contributing to how the characters came to be who they are in terms of personality and relationship style.

To recap, the main themes of HERO that are present independent of content are:

(1) a story driven primarily by setting rather than by plot or characters.

(2) character routes where the style of relationship is what differs rather than the events that unfold.

(3) attention to a broad tapestry of relationships rather than focusing exclusively on those between the protagonist and route characters.

Next time, we'll delve below the fold into content-based themes, while trying to avoid getting into specifics that are intended to be revealed in the course of experiencing the story. Stay tuned.

Nick

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Hello there!

Welcome back for the second issue of Behind the Scenes Themes. This week we're talking about character routes. There are two points I would like to make about how I thematically conceived of the character routes in HERO.

Firstly, many visual novels have character routes, where the story splits at some point based on the choices made by the player and follows a path typically focusing on building a relationship with one of the central characters. HERO is no different.

Character routes can cause the story to unfold in wildly different ways, or they can stick largely to the central plot. For HERO, I opted for the latter. The overall thrust of the story and the main events are the same no matter of which of the seven character routes the player chooses to follow. Where the differences come into play is in the small details. Rather than seeing the character routes as different branches, I conceived of them all as a singular 'trunk', albeit one that is thick and allows for lots of variation within itself.

Secondly, as far as the routes themselves are concerned, rather than make the events vary significantly, I opted to focus on how the style of relationships could differ.

Each character route centers its focus on one of the seven 'heroines', as is the parlance, but how that relationship unfolds is wildly different from person to person. While several of them do develop in a romantic direction, others do not. The type of relationships include friendship, camaraderie, and the upperclassmen-underclassmen (senpai-kouhai) dynamic. Each route is therefore unique not in the events of the story, but in how the central relationship grows in response to said events.

That's all for now. Next time we'll be back with the basics of another of HERO's underlying themes.

Nick