Shadow's Reach

I've completed a sequence in which one of the characters the gamer knows less about is forced to walk a 'Spirit Path' and undergo a solo-dungeon where elements of his personality are brought to the fore. The dungeon itself is a sprawling teleport-maze with a heavy sparkly-lights and blue tone that cumulates in speaking to a goddess. I've tried to keep combat to a minimum on this dungeon, featuring only 'Shadow Selves' of the character that deal low damage and run away when harmed. You would think that this wouldn't make them a threat at all, but with many of the traps in the dungeon able to reduce your HP it develops an interesting 'fight or flight' take. More importantly the Shadow Selves have a 2% chance of dropping the most powerful weapon for this character in the game, further complicating the decision. Delving into the conciousness of just one character is interesting, especially since it forces you as the games designer to be more creative with their backstory and internal debate than you would normally have to be. After all, not everyone can have daddy-issues or such-like.

Of course it wouldn't be fair to have one character take all the spotlight, so while he's away the others get to go on a large 'save the child/slay a dragon' sub-quest which sees you having to utilise local plants to gather the attention of giant eagles to ferry you up a mountain.

I'm aware that it's been a while since my last post on RMN (further compuer issues have slowed work greatly and I've had to hault progress for over 2 months) and I am hoping to provide some new screenshots giving an idea of the new elements that have been added to the game soon.