DAY ONE: "FIRST TENTATIVELY-TITLED THING FOR SURE!!"[]
Welcome home.
Hello, and welcome back to the world of Project Fate.
Its been quite a while, hasn't it? Almost seven months since Project Fate's big reveal at last year's Fantendo Holiday Showcase. Makes you wonder if I've been working on it at all.
To tell you the truth, I have been going through a bit of a dry spell lately with things, due to what I tend to elegantly refer to as "artist's anguish" (which, in reality, is called "me being a huge whiny dork all the time"); its a toxic mixture of the negative feelings I already suffer from constantly and an increased lack of self-confidence, and that certainly doesn't make such an overambitious and time-consuming process any easier. But for the last handful of months, I'd been staring at the nigh-empty notepad file in which I had begun typing the formal story of Project Fate. Below that would be a slew of other notepad files that I had typed paragraphs of brainstorming in. And next to that would sit countless SAI and Paint files where there would be artwork, sprites, and all kinds of other visual aids and references. And outside of the computer would be my desk next to me, covered in drawings and several sketchbooks full of them. So its certainly not like I wasn't surrounded by Project Fate wherever I looked, because I literally was (which is partly the reason why you haven't seen too many pictures of my room lately; spoiler avoidance).
So I bring to you a few tidbits concerning Project Fate to the Fantendo Iterum event; Iterum is proving incredibly convenient for me, as its serving as a sort of a halfway check to give you updates on how Project Fate has progressed in the last six and a half months. But enough talk; let's get down to business.
Project Fate is driven by its story, and presenting the story in a way that would make sense within the context of an actual game, but that would be able to be artistically appreciated outside of that context as well has been important to me from the start. Project Fate, like all Fantendo games, is a concept, but I want it to feel greater than that. In an artistic sense, articles on Fantendo can be pretty limited, and thus the full and complete idea that their writers are trying to convey is often lost or is forced to be dumbed down due to the limitations of the medium. With Project Fate and any game article I make, getting the full idea out for people to understand has always been a top priority.
In that spirit, the first announcement I'd like to make is that the story of Project Fate as it appears in the game will be released as a free companion piece along with the game in the form of a handbook of sorts, available as a physical book. This handbook will essentially contain the entire game in text form, along with additional content such as artwork and new, more literary interpretations of the game's cutscenes.
The Project Fate Handbook will also be available digitally on a subpage of the Project Fate article on Fantendo, where you'll be able to read it instantly as I update. Updates are unfortunately expected to be rather far apart, as these things don't come to me as fast as I'd like them too. But I'm happy to announce that later tonight, the first update to the page will be posted, meaning that the long-awaited beginning of Project Fate's story is just around the bend. I hope you're looking forward to it, as its coming very soon.
Look familiar? I teased this very same gif on a Project Fate promotional blog a few months back. I'm sure those of you who have been following those have wondered for a long time what function this strange helmet serves. Well, the world of Project Fate is large and very open, and in the wreckage of a broken world, there are bound to be many secret areas and past relics to find. There's also bound to be enemies and foes where you least expect them, lurking around corners and in hidden areas. The function of YE's Bug Helmet is to locate these things and more. The left eye of the helmet, the plain green one, aids in enemy location by use of heat-seeking. If there does happen to be an enemy somewhere hidden, or anywhere at all within the radius of YE's view, with the helmet on, YE will be able to locate them, and you as the player can either choose to sneak past them or execute them. The large, fly-like eye on the right serves as a sort of X-ray into YE's surrounding environment. By using the bug eye in the immediate area around YE, he is able to locate any hidden area around him. Inside these hidden areas could be a number of things; money, items, or even enemies. Hidden areas are often good to find, but YE still has to watch his back when entering one, and the way into a hidden area is often not apparent, so a certain amount of navigation is required to get into one. YE cannot use both eyes of the Bug Helmet simultaneously, however, so its important to make good use of them one at a time when you can.
The Jetpack is another useful item I've shown off before. The Jetpack's function is rather self-explanatory; it allows YE to hover above ground for extended periods of time, making for faster navigation and increased enemy avoidance. Its also useful for a bit of aerial combat; you're not too high off the ground, but it still gives you an advantage over groundward enemies. The Jetpack is a little hard to control, however, and its also rather loud, so foes can spot you pretty easily. The Jetpack isn't the best item to use if you prefer avoiding combat, but aside from its control difficulty, its great for movement.
(Unfortunately, in the midst of writing this, my tablet broke. Again. This is a great tragedy in my world. Especially because I had waited a long time to start on some things and flat-out never got around to a couple of them. Which is why a lot of the rest of this presentation is going to be relatively visually lacking. Believe me, I didn't want it to be that way either. Hopefully that will change tomorrow, when I plan to include more stuff.)
The world of Project Fate is an alternate version of our own; this is post-apocalyptic Earth we're talking about, but the history of Project Fate's Earth varies vastly from ours in many ways. One of those ways is the pre-apocalypse advances in warfare and weaponry. Project Fate's Earth had three main types of weapons, which were your standard, bullet-firing weapons, advanced laser technology, and chemical weapons, and often combinations of the three. These were mostly made in the form of guns and/or explosives; tear gas and UV rays just didn't cut it. There are three new weapons, one in each category, that I'll show you when I'm able; they're the Hailstorm, Dwarf Star, and Durden, which correspond to the Standard, Laser, and Chemical weapon types respectively. The Hailstorm is a sort of contradiction in and of itself; a lightweight heavy weapon, you could call it. Its very similar to a smaller version of the Heavy's weapon from Team Fortress 2, and is useful when confronted with hordes of enemies. The Dwarf Star is light, but slow; it fires powerful, white-hot laser shots at foes, but takes a while to charge up, so shots in rapid succession can't be. The Durden is a brutal one; it fires a fine spray of clear substance out from vials within its ammunition chambers, which gives the target an intensely painful chemical burn. The Durden is good if you're wanting to take out one target at a time, but its short range makes it unwise to use on more targets than that. These three categories of weapons make the possibilities practically endless when it comes to combat, and Project Fate is to feature a vast array of weapons, each unique from one another. Look forward to seeing them all in action soon.
I'd like to end the Project Fate portion of the presentation with a reminder of sorts. As I've said before, Project Fate's world is very open. Throughout the course of YE's journey, he will be exploring many parts of the world, parts even our version doesn't have. There's not a lot I can say about the world presently due to spoilers, but again, keep this in mind as a (hopefully) reassuring reminder. When a person is dead and buried, what happens to their body? The person's mind ceases to function, but their physical body becomes far from dead. The cells in their body and their functions stop, but their body becomes a home to the lesser creatures; worms and maggots crawl out of the mud and grime to burrow into a peaceful new home and feeding ground. And the body becomes teeming with new life; the body itself becomes a life force. Which is a grim metaphor, I know, but it applies to the world of Project Fate more than you realize. Just because the world is dead does not mean there can't still be life that comes from its remains. There are forces at work constantly, YE himself being one of them. Forces that may have been present from the beginning. Some hostile, and some friendly and valuable. And whether they like it or not, these forces have remained on the dead world and have adapted to make it their home. In Project Fate, you'll see the barren, lifeless parts of the world, but you'll also see the reanimated, lively parts that have sprung from the ashes. The world has become but a husk now, and it will take wise minds to resurrect the skin and muscle around it. Its up to the player as YE, however, to decide if these minds are the right ones.
Project Fate is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious endeavors I've ever dared to take on. This is why the update train has been rather slow; believe me when I say this shit's not easy. I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize for being so half-assed with this. But I promise there'll be more to come in the near future, kicking off with the release of the first update to the Project Fate Handbook. Be on the lookout for that, as well as the presentation for my second and final project to be shown off at this year's Iterum. Big things are on the way, folks. The iceberg has only barely been tipped. Endless thank-you's for reading, and be sure to stay tuned for more.
Rage and love, YE out
YE Rage and love.
Till next time, sunshine
DAY TWO: SECOND TENTATIVELY-TITLED THING FOR SURE!![]
Our lives are but data in the Great Tree of Knowledge.
Each of us have the capability to crack the code. Vast amounts of untapped potential, always circulating, but rarely brought to the surface. We are great oceans, but we can only see the shore.
All it'll take is someone with the will to infiltrate the system...
...or someone infinitely more foolish than we could ever imagine.
A22 ENTERPRISES, A FOUNDATION BUILT ON LIES.
THE INTER-UNIVERSE ANTI-UNIVERSE MERGE FEDERATION, OR "IAMF", A FOUNDATION BUILT ON ORDER.
ALPHA STARSHIP MONOLITH, A VESSEL BUILT FOR PROVENANCE.
THE PI TRIBE, A COLLECTIVE BUILT ON SURVIVAL.
THE DIVISION, A COLLECTIVE BUILT ON THE IMPOSSIBLE.
HYDE, OF THE DIVISION, AN ALLY BUILT ON CONTRADICTIONS.
GORDON ALGEBRAIC, A LOST BROTHER BUILT ON THE NEGATIVE.
MASTER BINARY, THE EYE OF THE STORM.
AND COAL ALGEBRAIC, THE PI(E) IN THE SYSTEM.
FIGHT FOR ORDER.
CRACK THE CODE.
3.14: A PIE IN THE SYSTEM
c o m i n g s o o n