Friday Update #4 (Building a World) (Patreon)

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you're all doing well.

Today's update (which is a little late because I've been helping a friend run a speedrunning marathon by restreaming the event) covers the structure (and structures) of Zach's school life and the world he lives in. Buckle up, because this is going to be a deep dive.

World History

The in-game world history for re:Dreamer is a bit complicated, but the gist is that it's a present day setting in an alternative timeline where Japan ended up with territorial control the Pacific Northwest of North America after a very lengthy World War II that doesn't end until the 1970's. One of the important ramifications of this is that Japan spent a lot of money rebuilding the infrastructure of its new territory, but the efforts weren’t universally successful. Modern Shinto shrines coexist with old Catholic churches, high-speed rail transit runs next to crumbling roads (I-5 in particularly is woefully maintained), and half of Zach’s campus is brand-new building while the other half have been needing renovations for decades at this point.

Zach's Personal History

Zach was born and raised in Lake Oswego, OR (about 25 minutes south from Portland) in a in a small cul-de-sac neighborhood (we’ll cover Zach’s home in more detail at a later date). Keisuke moved next door when he was 3, and the two attended the nearby elementary school. The shore of their town’s namesake was less than 1 km (0.6 miles) away from their homes and was a frequent hangout for the two boys during these years.

Zach and Keisuke later went to the same middle school, though their paths started to cross less and less as Zach pursued more academic avenues and Keisuke became busy with sports. Zach was accepted to a local science/theater magnet high school, while Keisuke was scouted to a high school further down state known for its outstanding athletics department. The two would meet up from time to time, but Keisuke moving into his new high school’s student dorms in his second year made finding that time hard.

Zach was a loner at his high school and did little more with his time other than study and play games on his phone. As he started to do less of the former and more of the latter, his grades started to slip, and he was in danger of being dropped from his advanced placement courses.

Early into his second year he met Britney, an incoming first year with the theater magnet, who originally approached him because she saw that Zach was at an extremely high level in a popular phone game and she wanted his friend code. The two realized their shared love of anime, manga, and video games and quickly became friends.

Through Britney, Zach wound up on the periphery of the school’s theater department, where he would often be conscripted as a general-purpose theater tech. Despite his lack of muscles and proper knowledge of theater sets, his general knowledge of handiwork (which he got from his dad) and engineering (which he got from studying) allowed him to excel in whatever technical role Britney volunteered him for.

After graduating from high school, Zach unexpectedly rebelled against the academic track laid out for him by his parents since he was a child by declining all his college admissions, taking out a large student loan, and embarking on a year of spiritual globe-trotting. Until he began his year of travel across the globe after graduating high school, Zach had never been more than 100 kilometers (62-ish miles) away from him home.

After coming back home, his mom gave him an ultimatum: attend the nearby fictional Lewis & Clark University without a scholarship to put a freeze on his student loan, or live at home while working and fend off the creditors. Zach didn’t give much thought before deciding to do the former.

Zach now feels like he largely wasted that year of travel meant to “find himself.” As he sits in his budget student housing as the game’s story begins on the first Friday of October of his freshman year, he wonders what he could have done differently with his life to find out who he is.

Lewis & Clark University

This fictional school sits on the site of the real-world University of Portland, which it uses as a reference. Unlike UP, which is a small 44 hectares (108 acre) college with deep Catholic roots and an undergraduate enrollment of about 3,800 students, the scale of LCU is far larger. Bordered by Lombard Street on the north, the Willamette River on the south, the Fallbridge Subdivision railway line on the northwest, and Swan Island on the east, it’s a sprawling campus over 5 times the size of the existing UP campus. 

The heart of the LCU quad is centered on the existing buildings of UP. With two notable exceptions (St. Mary’s Student Center and The Commons), everything on this part of campus has been renovated within the last 20 years, though several areas are lagging behind in renovation (such as Zach’s dorm, which is located on the spot of the existing Holy Cross Catholic Church on the north edge of this fictional campus boundary).

This is an aerial photo of the UP campus as it existed in 1968, which would be a few years before Japan gained control of this land. Using this in conjunction with the existing UP campus maps from Google or the UP website, a rough idea of a campus layout emerges.

Obviously, this method isn’t exact, but as a writer, I want enough creative liberties to give Zach an interesting and varied college town to explore and enjoy.

Amusement Park

Over the course of my research for the Pacific Northwest for the world of re:Dreamer, I’ve been on the lookout for a few specific local spots. I’ve already found the shopping mall featured in the Keisuke Day 2 clothes shopping trip (located at the spot of the existing Hayden Meadows Square), but a planned local amusement park location was starting to look a bit dubious until I found something interesting.

Jantzen Beach Amusement Park was a popular amusement park that operated on Hayden Island in the middle of the Columbia River from 1928 to 1970. On it opening day of May 26, 1928, its various attractions covered 50 hectares (123 acres), making it the largest amusement park in the nation, and it was soon regarded as “The Coney Island of the West.”

Around the 1958, the park started to lose popularity due to rising prices of nearby commercial land and issues with a second highway lane of the I-5 Bridge taking out a large portion of the park; eventually, the park shut down for good on Labor Day in 1970.

The buildings were razed within 2 years to make room for Jantzen Beach Center, a rather unimpressive outdoor shopping mall that’s since been sold to a New York realty company, while the spacious swimming pools were covered and their pumps repurposed to pump drinking water to residents on the island. The last remaining vestige of the amusement park, a carousel originally displayed at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, was disassembled and placed into storage in 2015, though in 2017 parts of it were reported as lost.

Assuming that Japanese investors revitalized Jantzen Beach Amusement Park like other areas of the Pacific Northwest, it’s fully conceivable that this park would be operating in a mixed modern/retro capacity in the present day of this game.

This location is intended as a common event location for all of Zach’s planned routes (with the exception of Alone). Zach is already stated as being prone to motion sickness (even with his new body), and Keisuke is deathly afraid of the supernatural. Could a roller coaster ride and a haunted house be in store for these two?

Zach's Fall Class Schedule

Zach is enrolled full-time as a first year mechanical engineering student. I’m not doing much to my reputation of people thinking that Zach is a self -insert by basing his schedule on my own freshman schedule at UIUC (I was a Mechanical Engineering major for 4 semesters before switching over to Ancient Mediterranean History & Classical Studies).

Honestly, this is the sort of schedule I wish I had freshman year. Tuesdays and Thursdays are wide-open in the afternoon, and Zach is taking a generally balanced mix of core credits and required electives.

One notable thing with this schedule is the option between a painting class and a music class decided by the player. I don’t want to spoil anything for this campus-focused coming update next Friday, but let’s just say that Zach’s going to become a lot more popular in these classes than he would like.

Anyways, I hope this unnecessarily informative Friday Update was entertaining to read. Until next time!