{"id":680,"date":"2012-04-14T18:07:03","date_gmt":"2012-04-15T01:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/?p=680"},"modified":"2015-12-17T16:34:27","modified_gmt":"2015-12-18T00:34:27","slug":"double-double-soil-and-rubble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/?p=680","title":{"rendered":"Double, Double, Soil and Rubble"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been awhile, but I&#8217;d like to make up for it by sharing and storytelling on\u00a0two main character portraits today.<\/p>\n<div class=\"mceTemp\">\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<figure id=\"attachment_681\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-681\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/wp-content\/upLoads\/2012\/04\/Ethan-Fairbanks-poster-smaller.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-681\" title=\"Ethan Fairbanks\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/wp-content\/upLoads\/2012\/04\/Ethan-Fairbanks-poster-smaller.jpg\" alt=\"Ambassador Ethan Fairbanks\" width=\"300\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/wp-content\/upLoads\/2012\/04\/Ethan-Fairbanks-poster-smaller.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/wp-content\/upLoads\/2012\/04\/Ethan-Fairbanks-poster-smaller-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-681\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ambassador Ethan Fairbanks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Meet Ethan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Ambassador Ethan Fairbanks is one of the first people Arashi encounters that begins her descent into the moral grey area of the main plot.\u00a0 Though Morsett is an established thief, typically considered criminal in modern society, he does so with the best of intentions. Ethan, on the other hand, is a test of the player&#8217;s actual judgment on what they believe right and wrong.\u00a0 Having a more worldly view, along with his wisdom and life experience, he brings to the table information and advice that even Ket is not aware of, but his motivations are dubious at best. His position as a politician certainly is no small influence on his outward personality.<\/p>\n<p>I like this character for the sole reason he revels in the lack of trust surrounding him.\u00a0 As a Xalmeisian national, he is the enemy in a foreign land, but he seems exceptionally savvy and somewhat understands Arashi&#8217;s plight as a misplaced foreigner as well.\u00a0 I think it will be interesting to see how their relationship plays out.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t want to give away too much, but I almost put Ethan&#8217;s role in the game as my favorite character arc.\u00a0 Of course, it&#8217;s ultimately up to you &#8211; the player &#8211; to decide if he&#8217;s worth the trouble.<\/p>\n<p>Ethan was a character I had written in the original <em>Shadowdawn<\/em> project and his journey to where he ends up at that point in the timeline is equally complex. At the time, he was a minor character but a proper foil to the dualgun-wielding Tiya Koryu, another main character of <em>Shadowdawn<\/em> that unfortunately is one of the few that does not have a role in this game (she&#8217;s too young at this point).\u00a0 But Ethan is one of the older human characters and thus he was a prime choice for the plot to the game.\u00a0 In fact, the plot kind of pointed to him after I had laid it out, so it was more opportunity than a conscious plan.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"mceTemp\">\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<figure id=\"attachment_682\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-682\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/wp-content\/upLoads\/2012\/04\/Nephele-poster-smaller.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-682\" title=\"Nephele\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/wp-content\/upLoads\/2012\/04\/Nephele-poster-smaller.jpg\" alt=\"Nephele\" width=\"300\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/wp-content\/upLoads\/2012\/04\/Nephele-poster-smaller.jpg 599w, https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/wp-content\/upLoads\/2012\/04\/Nephele-poster-smaller-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-682\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nephele<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I was debating whether or not to\u00a0give a preview of\u00a0the remaining main cast, as I\u00a0feel that defies the spirit of exploration in the game, but I decided that enough key art includes the &#8220;second four&#8221; that a brief introduction is fair.<\/p>\n<p>Nephele here is one of the strongest-willed characters of the group. She is also the only one with two equally skilled combat roles, hand-to-hand and dual-wielding katanas, preferring fists to steel and only using her swords when absolutely necessary.<\/p>\n<p>Her relationship to Arashi is extremely complicated\u00a0and I look forward to seeing how players react to the character.\u00a0Nephele is also the only character in the game that was completely written for it, as almost all others were previously\u00a0designed (or at least mentioned)\u00a0for <em>Shadowdawn<\/em> or much later stories in Euterra in a couple cases.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div name=\"googleone_share_1\" style=\"position:relative;z-index:5;float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><g:plusone size=\"tall\" count=\"1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/?p=680\"><\/g:plusone><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been awhile, but I&#8217;d like to make up for it by sharing and storytelling on\u00a0two main character portraits today. Meet Ethan. Ambassador Ethan Fairbanks<a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/?p=680\"> [&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,55],"tags":[78,11,25,10,43,9,8,7,200,212,23,217,214,6,18,80,110,13,185,213,12,92,17,103,309,4,84,215,216,15,33,90,67],"class_list":["post-680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-development","category-random-thoughts","tag-action-rpg","tag-anime","tag-arashi","tag-art","tag-art-delay","tag-concept","tag-concept-art","tag-development","tag-ethan","tag-ethan-fairbanks","tag-euterra","tag-ffxiii-2","tag-final-fantasy-xiii-2","tag-game","tag-independent","tag-indie-game","tag-indie-rpg","tag-jrpg","tag-kickstarter","tag-main-characters","tag-manga","tag-nephele","tag-pc","tag-psn","tag-rpg","tag-shadowdawn","tag-shadowdawn-genesis","tag-tales-of-graces-f","tag-togf","tag-xbox-360","tag-xbox-live","tag-xbox-live-indie-games","tag-xna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shadowdawngenesis.com\/devblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}