Ok, so, I'm a little late on this one...but I just moved house, and I think most people would struggle to maintain regular productivity during a move.

Key in-engine updates:


- The first two sections of Part 1 are fully greyboxed. The locations this covers are: Deling City, Balamb Garden, Balamb Town, and Dollet. I am currently working on greyboxing Winhill fully, it's around 60% done. The remaining sections required/not touched for Part 1 are Timber and a few dungeons, though dungeons in general I'm doing less greyboxing for since I'm not using references.
- Rough gameplay elements for these are also in place, but they are not priority.
- At about halfway through the overall story for Part 1, the scenario takes about an hour and a half to run through.

With general progress updates out of the way, I'd like to discuss a couple of design decisions.

1 : Lore Expansion

A very key angle I have aimed for with SLH is to not unmake any established lore that FF8 provides. While I was writing collaboratively for the game over the past few years, I saw a lot of people going for the angle of 'I can fix it', rewriting key aspects that they deemed 'poorly done'.

I've never really agreed with this take, because I don't think FF8's lore is poorly done. Perhaps not entirely well presented in places, but the game is also not forthcoming with information -- it must be sought.

The only real 'rewrite' I have done is changing the Poison element to Dark, and switching up some of the GF oppositions to suit.

So coming into writing SLH as a whole, I instead try to ask what supposed 'gaps' I can fill in naturally, adhering to conventions established in game. These are things like each city's main exports, plotting out unestablished but inferred smaller towns and unexplored dungeon areas. Which brings us to the game's second dungeon: The Old Timber Mill.

Profile

The Old Timber Mill saw around 70 years of continuous use, with operation even continuing during the Galbadian occupation at first. However, the Galbadian regime became suspicious of it being used as a Resistance hub, and its operation was violently shut down, with the wood logged from Timber's forests instead being moved and processed through a Galbadian built and controlled facility. The old building still stands, unused, though rumours have long circulated through Resistance members that there may be a secret way in and out of the city in the building.

Needing to seek access to Timber but lacking a clear path from the south east, Rinoa's group seek the abandoned facility for this very reason.

Gameplay

The Timber Mill is a puzzle-based dungeon, though it has been occupied by monsters and animals during its years abandoned and will have encounters. The area must be explored thoroughly to find and open the secret passage that will allow progress into Timber.

2 : Player Character - Seifer Almasy

Seifer's inclusion as a playable cast member has long been decided, though not discussed at length on this game page. During the aforementioned period of writing collaboratively for FF8, I met a number of people well-versed in Seifer, and came to more deeply appreciate him as a character. Looking at SLH's overall plot, upping his involvement to playable became an easy decision. And in that same vein, I am treating his inclusion the same way the original promotional materials treated him -- his story is of equal footing and importance as Squall and Rinoa's. SLH gives me an opportunity to explore their relationships to each other, and how each has coped with the aftermath of the original game.


Brief Rundown

Following the defeat of Ultimecia, the brainwashing that had taken place in Deling City was lifted. Ingrid Deling, Vinzer's successor and the new president, demanded immediate extradition of Seifer Almasy for war crimes. However, Garden rebuked the demand, refusing to turn him over and instead claiming he was Garden's responsibility. The debate was still in place the war reignited, and thus has been left at the wayside...for now, at least.
Seifer's actions and movements are carefully monitored, but he has relative freedom of movement and agency within Garden and occasionally outside, provided he is escorted. However, events of SLH have resulted in Seifer not only being locked up in the disciplinary hold...but breaking out of it. Again. Naturally, the circumstances will become clear during the game.

Design
(You can view his design in the images tab)
In terms of Seifer's design, I knew I wanted a few key elements:

- Some kind of hood
- Some elements of armor or medieval 'knight'
- Maintain the original palette

Which the final design manages to accomplish. The back silhouette invokes the profile of a medieval knight's attire, along with keeping Seifer's symbol and trademark white coat. The hood is present to hide his face/identity, though he was unable to fully let go of his trademark colours. Portions of the boots were inspired by the Bodyguard's Attire from Final Fantasy XIV, which I felt was an appropriate point of reference given the gear's clear Seifer inspiration.

On that note, Squall's design is not inspired by the Allegiance gear, though it looks like it. I'll probably talk about FFXIV: Shadowbringers in another blogpost, because while SLH's story has not changed at all in response, you'll definitely find similar plot points in both games.

Gameplay

Seifer's main specialties are damage and enmity. Although he has high STR, his focus on group damage means he's less about boss focus (especially in his early kit) and more about crowd control. As a tank, Seifer's enmity generation is a Provoking move which raises his enmity level to max and bottoms out the rest of the party's, so if not serving as the sole tank, it's best he goes second.
Seifer has a few drawbacks - his base kit is elemental leaning, with several moves using Fire-based attacks. He is also not a proficient magic user, instead using chi-based energy to create magic-like effects, and therefore has the lowest number of GFEs he can link with.

Another drawback to Seifer is that his kit starts out with no self-sustain and lower defensive stats, so he relies on the party healer keeping a close eye on him and regular refreshing of his enmity draw. Later on he gets more of his own self-sustain (or can be bolstered with the Alexander GFE), though he'll still need healer support if not using a curative GFE.

What's this about 'secondary tank'?

Although not relevant to the first part of the game, the game mechanics and kits are, naturally, being developed for the game as a whole. From Part 2 onwards, you'll have access to a Reserve Party that can be subbed in at any point during combat, if you so wish. There'll be several benefits to this, least of which being able to have flexibility regarding elemental weaknesses and playstyles on the fly.

Alright, so that's all from me this fortnight. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up the pace again now that the move is (mostly) finished, though I won't have access to my main computer til tomorrow.

Ciao~