GGGB characters in ORS! (Patreon)

So the cat's out of the box now! The thing I had been teasing before releasing Chapter 6 was the appearance of Jessica from GGGB in ORS, confirming the link between the two games. This is something many of you asked me if I would do, wanting to see the older cast make some sort of appearance in the new story.

This is something I had been considering from the get go myself. It's always fun to make an homage to what came before and you might've noticed that one of the themes of my games is linking characters and stories together, so tying together GGGB and ORS was a cool idea. If you've been reading the series of articles I've been publishing recently and saw the character poll I did on GGGB you had some clues about my intentions... 

There was one big problem to solve, though. GGGB doesn't have a canon ending, but a ton of different variations. If I wanted some characters to make a cameo, I would need either to pick one of the ending states, disregarding all the others, and that was against what GGGB represented. Every player crafted their own story and had a different canon version of the characters in his mind, so forcing a specific one wouldn't cut it. Other games solve this by importing the save files from one game to the new one, like Mass Effect, for example. But ORS is not a direct sequel to GGGB, not everybody would have played the old game, and I don't have the technology to import saves. This was the route I wanted to take, though.

I was really happy with the idea I came up with at the end. If GGGB characters appeared in ORS they would need to have multiple variations. And the way to go was tying those variations to the choices the player was making in ORS. That way, Jessica exists in two potential states now: depending on the route you took in ORS, one her possible endings becomes real, retroactively shaping the story of GGGB. This way, all the possible endings remain canon (even if I don't show all of them in the game).

It was really cool to redesign Jess. It's been around 5 years in-game from the events of GGGB, and she has matured and progressed. A lot of care was put into this homage, and I love seeing her HD version! She won't be the only character making a cameo though... 

Are you excited to see other members of GGGB cast show up in ORS? Who would you like to see, and in which of their possible versions? I have some ideas already, and I'll implement them bit by bit, as the story of ORS progresses.