How years of writing my own stories and imagination ended up creating this game.

(Caption:- Adena Krieger, Shaena Riques and Riley Wrean fighting back against numerous C.M.D units.)

Meta Revelations has been going for a long time.

From childish ideas, to realisation of concepts. The first drawing was done around 2004 to late 2005, the second was done approximately two years ago.


Above is a drawing of one of the Fourteen Daeva, Nova. In the Meta Revelations demo he is mentioned, and you can even collect short tomenovels of the thing in the game. The idea sprung to me when I was much younger. I saw ads running for the show called 'Transformers' and while I had never seen the show, the advertisement for the particular arc was about tiny chips or something that would enhance them? I hardly remember much about it. But I thought about a self-sustaining machine, called Nova. He was about knee height and pint sized, but his intelligence served as his greatest battle component. What's more, he himself is an enhancement proxy, for a god-machine his factory built him.

While I'm mostly influenced around Medieval Fantasy, the science fiction spectrum is definitely there. One of my favourite games to this day is might and magic VII, a title that draws in everything to its own namesake. However, within the creases if you dive deep enough is a small helping of science fiction fantasy.



I definitely wanted to make a world that was a mixture of both. This was one small example of me wanting a cookpot of various themes. The danger from this is a story can be overloaded with all of these strands which is why The Meta Revelations is the tome to a book of several stories - all the different strands of ideas I've ever had. When taken this way, elements that would seem too foreign can be isolated to a different continent or country, where technology and culture may be vastly different.

So with how malleable Eden is, whenever I get a new idea, I never throw it away. And that what keeps your original fantasy world interesting to you as well; even dreams can be incorporated.



Fighting the waves of 'being original'.

The first thing you have to realise is that human thought is cognitive based on our experiences ever since we were born. We're impressionable people, and our society helps to shape possible ideas when it comes to writing or painting. There are limitations to these however; with the amount of people who have been present on this earth, recorded or not, every conceivable idea in literature has been done in some way or form. However, instead of discarding an idea that may come to you because it is 'too cliche', you think of what other elements you can apply to make it more interesting.

Gods in JRPGs (Some WRPGs, like Baldur's Gate are also guilty of this.) are usually just easily fought by the end of the campaign. Now, personally, I prefer a more rational approach to a final enemy. Gods should always be intangible and untouchable; though if you prefer a world that's full of gods simply persisting through towns and environments at a leisurely pace, that's entirely up to you. Lady Zanter and Lord Blood are actually intangible - nobody has seen them. They are merely presented as a lady and a leviathan because otherwise there is no way to actually present them. You don't fight them at the end of the game either; I doubt I would ever allow that. The entire function of Eden and every plot detail that happens within relies on their constant conflict.

So if the evil Lord Blood were to be defeated one day; no hatred would remain on the earth. Which would mean people aren't really human anymore. If everyone was in a constant state of nirvana, that'd be weird. There has to be conflict to some degree.

So if you do plan to kill gods, make it interesting. What drastic side effects would the world have once they're removed? In Final Fantasy V; the crystals were incredibly empowering, and their destruction one by one led to some pretty nasty real world side effects for the party and the world in the game. For a game in the series with an allegedly weaker handling of the story, it still made sure to let you know that crystals shattering was definitely a bad thing. And ExDeath was hardly god-like. He was a powerful culmination of spirits, but nobody once mentioned him as a god. (That is until you go ahead one entry.)

But it certainly makes you think. Would Final Fantasy VI been a more interesting game if; after Kefka's collapse, the world actually became worse? I mean if there's no order, what is there? This is what I mean by turning a story element on its head. At first, it seems like a generic plot point, BUT with a little bit of playing around with ideas, you can turn something fairly generic into something more interesting.

How interesting that is, is always going to be subjective. But I do feel like, if you create a project; however big or small, it should above all else feel interesting to you. And while big gods being felled is not quite my thing, there are definitely places where it has been done right and where people enjoy it. Someone playing your game will understand your perspective, especially if you have the emotional drive to follow through with it because you're proud of what you've made.

So keep ahold of a couple of those childish drawings and writings. You might end up coming back to them one day and grinning, because you turned a childish idea into something pretty cool you can be proud of.