Lost Eidolons News

Greetings, tacticians.

This week's Town Hall took place during our monthly dev stream! One town hall out of the month will always follow this format. This is an officially curated series of questions answered by Ocean Drive Studio's Creative Director for Lost Eidolons, Jin Sang! Every week we take questions asked by our community about the game, studio, or the people working on it and put it together in an official format. Check it out below.

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❈ Town Hall | Alex14ac: "Is there any way to edit any of the characters' features such as face, hair, or body proportions?"

• CD Jin Sang: "The answer is no. I wanted to, but I didn't get a chance to."
  
• CM Pat: "I think it's okay. Every character that can be recruited has their own place in the game's story. Modifying their look from the original design could alter the immersive feeling of each grounded appearance."

❈ Town Hall | Bodin: "Will the units interact or speak with one another during the story or will they mainly only interact with the protagonist Eden?"

• CD Jin Sang: "Mainly they'll be interacting with Eden, but sometimes you might approach some people talking in the camp and overhear some of the residents talking, almost as if you're not supposed to be listening in."
  
• CM Pat: "Oh! This is a question from me then. If certain characters are supposed to have specific dialogue among one another, is it possible to miss dialogue by not recruiting certain characters?"
  
• CD Jin Sang: "If that happens, yeah that conversation just skips. But you can't miss mandatory/main sequence dialogues because they'll be dealt by characters that the game gives you through the story."
  
• CM Pat: "Well that's cool. Might encourage some replayability since you can't recruit all the characters available in the game in a single playthrough."

❈ Town Hall | NoirValentine: "We're nearing the funding goal. What stretch goals do you have in mind after Permadeath? Will the community be able to vote on which stretch goals they want?"

• CM Pat: "We did have a plan for stretch goals, but we may modify them as we approach the last stretch (pun not intended). Besides for Permadeath, we had Hell Mode and something called the Debug Menu, but we're open to ideas from the community pending viability."
  
• CD Jin Sang: "Hell Mode wouldn't just be an increase to HP. They'd receive new skills which could largely impact their overall AI and behavior on how they attempt to defeat the player."

❈ Town Hall | NoirValentine: "Will people be able to continue to back the project after the campaign has ended?"

• CM Pat: "This is TBD. We know there are some services that allow pledges to be given after a campaign has already ended but it's tentative."

CM Pat: "How does working from home affect the team and development of the project?"

• CD Jin Sang: "As a developer, you need good tools, and having to remotely connect to the office to access everything is just slow and a hassle."
  
• CM Pat: "We've been working from home for how long now?"
  
• CD Jin Sang: "Like a year? A year and a half now?"

❈ Town Hall | Saint Furfur: "Are there any plans to have monsters playable in the future? If not, can it be considered later in a future update?"

• CD Jin Sang: "While I've thought about other playable races, there isn't really intent on making monsters a playable type of unit. Maybe in another installment, or a sequel."
  
• CM Pat: "Wouldn't it be a logistical nightmare to have playable monsters? Don't they occupy multiple grid cells?"
  
• CD Jin Sang: "Depends on the monster. Some are small and occupy one cell, some occupy multiple."

❈ Town Hall | jord: "Are there any plans for a photo mode for people who want to take artistic screenshots?"

• CD Jin Sang: "Hmm, never thought about that..."
  
• CM Pat: "You never looked at your project and thought, hey this is a pretty good looking game?"
  
• CD Jin Sang: "Well it's not really an open-world RPG so I hadn't given it much consideration while building the game. Anyways, we'll think about that feature."

❈ Town Hall | Tsu: "Aside from stretch goals, will Lost Eidolons continue to receive content support after the launch? For example seasonal/holiday updates?"

• CD Jin Sang: "As far as I'm allowed to say, I'm willing to add more features and possibly story contents focusing on characters other than Eden."
  
• CM Pat: "We're operating on relatively tight deadlines trying to deliver the game in early 2022 in its fullest. Maybe not everything we want to do can be done at that stage and we might want to finish the spit-shine and polish post-launch."

❈ Town Hall | Severance Bane: "Will there be any randomized battles either during or after the campaign to extend playtime?"

• CD Jin Sang: "Outside the main story, there will be battles for level grinding and those will have some form of randomness."
  
• CM Pat: "It's good to recap that there's an intended amount of EXP we plan on players to be able to get from grinding. But it doesn't actually hard-stop anyone from really grinding out levels if they have the patience."

❈ Town Hall | Severance Bane: "Are there any class-specific items to equip? What about character-specific?"

• CD Jin Sang: "There are some specific items where you need to be in a certain classes, for example magic spelltomes can generally only be equipped to mages. There are certain items that are specific to characters per the lore but they don't actually have a restriction on who can wear them."
  
• CM Pat: "Good ol' past time of stealing all the cool unique items and putting them on your favorite characters."

❈ Town Hall | Severance Bane: "Can you upgrade or expand the camp?"

• CD Jin Sang: "As the story goes on, camp will be expanded and more of the camp's features will be unlocked."

❈ Twitch Chat | xxnoirvalentinexx: "Will we get to see any additional gameplay footage with commentary of combat battles or interaction scenarios with the companions/general camp life with the lore of the game etc before the Kickstarter ends :)?"

• CD Jin Sang: "Probably not during the remaining two weeks, no."
  
• CM Pat: "It's not like we'll stop giving updates though after the campaign has ended."
  
• CD Jin Sang: "Hopefully soon, maybe next month we can show more gameplay."
  
• CM Pat: "It's not like we'll stop giving updates though after the campaign has ended. That being said, status on the thoughts on the first playable demo?"
  
• CD Jin Sang: "We're building it now. I think we're planning by the end of May? It won't be fully-featured but it'll have a bit of gameplay of the camp and battles. Two episodes maybe? And no difficulties to pick from yet."

❈ Twitch Chat | TobenRacicot: "In a similar way to how Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy pulls in weapons from mythology like Caladbolg, etc, will Lost Eidolons pull in weapons from myth, maybe Korean mythology?"

• CD Jin Sang: "I've never thought about doing something like that, but it would be really cool to include really famous weapons from history. Especially with things like the family heirloom unique weapons."
  
• CM Pat: "It would be cool. Famous weapons like that you know are always badass. Like you see something called Excalibur, you know that's the real deal."

❈ Twitch Chat | benatsu: "can you play as companions in the camp? would you be able to participate in any activites like mock battles or mini games in the camp?"

• CD Jin Sang: "Only as Eden."
  
• CM Pat: "It's very centric around the protagonist."

❈ Twitch Chat | thegreatskeletor: "will there be a weapon durability system?"

• CD Jin Sang: "No durability."
  
• CM Pat: "It's always a hassle and often doesn't add much to gameplay."
  
• CD Jin Sang: "There is skill/magic durability in a way though?"
  
• CM Pat: "Oh yeah, skills and magics have limited use per battle so you can't just spam them. You have to actually carefully use them depending on the situation. It's not like you're bringing your spells and skills to a blacksmith to repair though."

❈ Twitch Chat | icy_skizors: "will the demo be available to all, or just Kickstarter backers?"

• (In Chat) Global Operations Director Jungsoo: "To everyone!"
  
• CM Pat: "Demo will be available for everyone, though the demo isn't as robust as the beta test we intend to have later on that all Kickstarter backers will have guaranteed access to. Also we know that a lot of y'all were hoping we'd reach out to more influencers; probably by this point we will once we have something tangible to put in their hands!"

❈ Twitch Chat | benatsu: "just from previous - is there actual like life skilling / time sinking activities in the camp or is that TBA"

• CD Jin Sang: "What does time sinking activities actually mean?"
  
• CM Pat: "It means walking over to a tree in the camp and cutting it down."
  
• CD Jin Sang: "Aha... there are some simple quests objectives that you'll have to do a few menial tasks but otherwise nothing really."
  
• CM Pat: "Simple enough. I think if people want Lost Eidolons to be a time sink it should be trying additional playthroughs or challenge runs or the like."

❈ Twitch Chat | jiyva00: "Are the races you said could be playable include races like Centaurs/Minotaurs with equipment restrictions?"

• CD Jin Sang: "Probably not no."
  
• CM Pat: "It's pretty grounded isn't it? Besides for the mythological creatures, humanity is all that there is and humanity are pretty its own oppressor."

❈ Twitch Chat | benatsu: "can you play cards with the boys, is OceanDrive planning to go witcher style and invent a mini game or is there like anything sort of 'casual and light' in nature lol"

• CD Jin Sang: "Ah, The Witcher. It's kind of like that, but kind of different. I want to add mini-games similar to this. The Witcher did Gwent, a card game, I wanted to do something like an in-game board game that simulated battles that had a separate set of rules from the normal combat."
  
• CM Pat: "Strategy game-ception. I really, really hope you'd have to collect the figurines to use in the board game from the main game."
  
• CD Jin Sang: "You challenge an NPC and their team of figures."
  
• CM Pat: "You challenge them and beat them and take their figures right? Like Triple Triad from Final Fantasy 8."
  
• CD Jin Sang: [laughs]

Have a burning question that you definitely want answered at the next Town Hall? You can have your question featured at the next Town Hall by asking it in the #town_hall text channel on our Discord!

Greetings, tacticians.

We have a couple of awesome news to share today!

[h3]PC Physical Collector's Edition (add-on)[/h3]

First and foremost is that per popular request, we're working with a partner to deliver a PC physical copy Collector's Edition to the add-ons for backers. This means that you can select to obtain a physical Collector's Edition to own regardless of the current tier that you are via add-on. Orders for the Collector's Edition are available now!



As you can see above in the concept, we plan to include the following in the physical edition:

• A special Collector's Edition box that houses it all.
  
• Vinyl record (2 LPs) (each record holds a certain amount of music, due to the length of the soundtrack being too large for one vinyl).
  
• A collector's edition art book which contains original art for the game as well as additional commentary.
  
• A case with a Steam code copy of the game (the medium decided is TBD).

To include the Physical Collector's Edition, please choose the type of pledge and you can select it as an add-on.

If you are an existing backer who wants to add the Collector's Edition, you can click change pledge, and choose the same pledge reward and you will see the add-on there.

The above image is the concept for the physical edition and should just be used as a reference. We intend to deliver something of similar or better quality! Once we start to work on the design, we will be sharing them with the backers!

As mentioned above, this is for PC only. As of this time, our partner that we're working with can only create this bundle for PC. We may return to this idea for console players at a later date.

The price of the package for Kickstarter-only is $69 including shipping (DDU). After the Kickstarter campaign, we may continue to sell the Collector's Edition for $69.99 plus shipping. The price we will be paying for the shipping for most of the countries will be $20 and few countries at cheaper rate. Also note that as progress on all of the artwork and the soundtrack are ongoing work, that we will only deliver the physical Collector's Edition once both are complete, meaning, unlike other packages the physical edition will be delivered when the game is ready to launch in 2022.

[h3]Monthly Dev Update Stream Tomorrow![/h3]



Secondly, we'll be holding a Livestream this Thursday, May 6th at 3:00 PM PT. This is part of our goal to bring a monthly stream to our community to highlight the latest updates to the game and also hold a live Q&A session for attendees. It essentially serves as a video format of our weekly Town Hall while also providing new information about the development of Lost Eidolons!

Join us on our official studio Twitch channel!

Localized Times:

• 3:00 PM PDT (UTC -7)
  
• 6:00 PM EDT (UTC -4)
  
• 11:00 PM BST (UTC +1)
  
• 7:00 AM KST (UTC +9), May 7th

You can see the previous Livestream we had last month below as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru3WWLqXU2o
Do you have a question that you definitely want answered by Creative Director Jin Sang? You can ask it in our Discord server in the #town_hall channel and we'll definitely answer it during the stream.

Can't make it to the Livestream? Don't worry about it. The day after, we'll be posting a recap with a video for people who couldn't make it here and on our YouTube channel.

Greetings, tactician.

In the previous week's updates, we met the lifelong friends of Eden that comprise his ragtag band of mercenaries at the onset of Lost Eidolons. Circumstances as they play will force Eden to enlist the aid of powerful new allies to overcome difficult hurdles ahead of him. Today's story revolves around one of the first of the fiery compatriots that Eden will encounter once chaotic events spur into motion: Marchelle.

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In the Ludivictan Empire, power corrupts, and corruption pays. Nowhere is that axiom more on display than among the ranks of the Inquisitors. Mid-level bureaucrats tasked with auditing the local officials who oversee the provinces, Inquisitors are theoretically a safeguard against corruption. In actuality, most are as dirty as they come, earning more in bribes than they draw from their salaries.

Then there's Marchelle.

Highborn, educated, and deeply principled, Marchelle is the embodiment of dignity and grace. Hailing from the Imperial capital of Leroyaure, in the Province of Floriant, she is an excellent administrator, experienced at fighting lopsided battles with little resources or support.

But trying to fix a corrupt system from within is no easy task, and might even be downright impossible, a moral conundrum Marchelle is soon forced to confront, with a little help from a certain young mercenary.

As Eden is drawn into broader conflicts for the future of his people, Marchelle will become one of his closest allies and most dependable advisors: ready, willing, and able to bring justice to a land sorely in need of it.

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That concludes today's story entry. Later this Saturday, we'll meet one of the key figures of Lost Eidolons, and one whose face has already been seen a number of times: Balastar.

Greetings, tacticians.

Happy Monday! Our art team created a few new environment concept arts that we wanted to share with you all. They were created by taking in-game screenshot stills and touched-up in post. You'll see some of these regularly as Steam banners moving forward. Check them out below!

Greetings, tacticians.

Today we're continuing our spotlight of Eden's mercenary crew. Earlier this week, we introduced you to Robin and Robere. Now get ready to meet our hero's two closest friends and brothers-in-arms: Leon and Francisco.

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Eden's childhood friend and confidante, Leon is often mistaken for a sibling. While they may not be literally related, their bond runs deeper than blood; years ago, Leon's mother took an orphan Eden in, and treated him like a second son. Since her passing, the pair have become inseparable.

Though he can often come across as grumpy or aloof, Leon cares about his friends deeply. With a quick wit and a barbed tongue, he has a knack for gently reprimanding those he disagrees with, while bringing down the temperature in heated confrontations. Through sheer necessity, he's also developed his talents with an account book, as well as a needle and thread — both surprisingly useful skills in a mercenary company, particularly when Francisco is around.

The group’s go-to muscle, Francisco is strong as a boar and just as short-tempered; he likely would have landed in jail years ago if not for Eden. But the reverse is also true: without Francisco, Eden probably wouldn't survive the particular brand of high-risk do-gooding he can never seem to resist.

When he's not thumping skulls on the battlefield, Francisco enjoys training and gambling. He's also been known to write and sing his own verse, but that fact is a closely guarded secret.

As Eden's journey carries him out of Lonetta and into the wider world, Leon and Francisco will be there every step of the way, helping to keep him anchored. Though Eden's propensity for charity often drives them to complaint, in truth, it's why they follow him at all. Like any who have experienced more than their share of hungry nights, these rowdy ruffians learned at a young age one of life's most valuable lessons:

Having friends you can trust isn't an idle luxury. It's a matter of survival.

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That concludes today's story entry. With this, the stage is set for the band of rugged mercenaries and their controlled fate among one another. This week we had met the lifelong allies of our protagonist. Next week, you will get to meet some of the key figures that Eden will encounter once the wheels are set in motion in Lost Eidolons' events.