REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM News

Hello, Survivors!

Last week we talked about the changes to the character Stats and Skill/Talent systems.

The changes to the higher-level systems for characters naturally led to quite a few changes in the design philosophy of the Weapons, so today I’m going to talk about that!



[h3]Rebalancing Weapon-Character Importance[/h3]
In the Early Access version, Weapons were given a very high level of importance, with basic elements such as Attack Range/Area, Min/Max Damage, Critical Hit Chance, and even special effects such as Bleed, Pain, and Stun, virtually giving them the same level of characterization as Characters in other games.

The main reason for this design was that the Early Access version was locked to three Characters, and while each of the three Characters had a Perk Tree to choose from, the sense that the player could pick and choose something they liked and build upon it was weak.

As a result, much of the meta-game relied on the Blacksmith, Jorgn, to upgrade the tiers of Weapons, as well as a system of modifications that allowed players to specialize in the options they wanted. The development team jokingly said, “When you play the game, you get more attached to the Weapons than the Characters.” In fact, we've even joked that Remore is a game about growing Weapons.



However, now that the game has been reworked, we have more Characters to choose from, and we've refined the Memory Bonding system we shared earlier as a key feature of the game, we needed to rethink the weight of the Weapon system.

The question that arose was, "With stronger characterization and customization through Memory Bonds, is it really a good design decision to keep Weapons at the level of importance as before?"

Of course, we've found that Characters, Memories, and Weapons all have their own distinct personalities, and figuring out how to combine them is a lot of fun and gives you a lot of freedom and depth to decide how you want to play. We've had a lot of positive feedback on the Weapon modification system when we first showed it off in Early Access, and I think that's because it has its own unique appeal.

However, more people felt that if the Weapon gimmicks were as complex as they are in the current Early Access version, it would take away from the Character's Personality and Freedom of Customization or make it an unnecessary step.

For example, the Early Access version of the One-Handed Sword has an Attack Range that includes a diagonal attack, a moderate Critical Chance, and the ability to inflict Bleed. From there, you have the option to modify it to remove the Bleed and increase its Critical Chance or Damage, or to make the Bleed stronger to maximize the damage of the sword's Tier 2 Finishing Blow Skill.



However, at this point, the primary identity of the Weapon as a "Sword" is in its ability to inflict Bleed, even in the second-tier skillset, and options like removing the bleeding and attaching a critical option become more of a variant option that offers a bit of a different playstyle. Actually, "specialize in a more suitable weapon that specializes in Critical Hits, like a One-Handed Axe" is more of a meaningful option.

On the other hand, if you have a lot of Characters, Memories of the Dead, etc. that you can combine, we felt that the following design would be a “freer” approach.

• The Sword itself would not have a Bleed effect and would only have a “Range”' and “Skill Stat bonus.”
  
• When you bind "Butcher's Memory", you gain the talent "Weapon attacks inflict Bleeding equal to 25% of your Dexterity stat".
  
  • Thus, you can use the "Bleed" special effect with a weapon other than the "Sword" (= increased freedom).
    
  • However, the Sword has a Damage Bonus based on its Dexterity stat, and has an Attack WP cost of 1, so it synergizes well with that Weapon.
• On the other hand, a character that specializes in “Surprise/Assassination”, such as a Shadow Sister, who relies on having high instant damage so does not need an effect like bleeding really.
  
  • Therefore, a more appropriate build choice would be to bind Swordsman's Memory to increase the damage of Sword Skill attacks.

We concluded that giving Memories of the Dead the special effects that were previously granted to Weapons would make the Character, Memories of the Dead, and Weapons more distinct and enhance the fun of finding "More Synergistic Combinations".

Each Weapon's characteristics are centered around what we call "Weapon-specific Features": the attack's Range and Area of Effect, and the resulting WP cost and distribution of Skill power. So, a Spear would be focused on the "Can attack enemies 1 space away" feature, with only the "Stab" skill to hit a single enemy 1 space away and the “Pierce" skill to hit 2 enemies in a straight line at the same time", and special abilities such as traditional immobilization effects would be acquired "via memory bond, if you wish".

Of course, to prevent all Weapons from becoming too similar, we're still retaining some special effects for Weapons that can't be differentiated by range or AoE alone, especially abilities that directly relate to "Ambush" or "Surrounded," the centerpiece of the new Combat System.

For example, we kept the Knockback effect on the “Mace” because it was useful for creating “Surrounded” situations and was always a core feature of Blunt Weapons, and we kept the “Dagger” because it gave a bonus to Ambush while reinforcing the concept of assassination.

The big difference is that the effects are much simpler than in the Early Access version and organized to focus on a single feature.

Instead, the Strength and Dexterity stats we introduced earlier will now be more deeply tied into the damage of Weapon Skills, for example, skills from the Two-Handed Blunt Weapon will have a [Strength]-based attack, so higher Strength will give a bonus to damage, and skills from the One-Handed Sword will have a bonus from Dexterity. This is intended to make each Character's Weapon arsenal more "tailored to their stat allocation" and give us more room to consider stat synergies outside of special effects.



[h3]Changes to Weapon Swapping[/h3]
In addition to this shift in weapon tech design, we've also made a major change to how each Character equips and swaps Weapons.

In the Early Access version, all three Characters were able to "swap out any weapon in your inventory, on the fly, in the middle of battle." This meant that when enemies raised an alarm and captured a friendly character, "choosing the right weapon for the current formation and enemy type and attacking with the right skill" was a key tactic in the game.





The problem is, in order to perform these tactics at the level required by the game, the player needs to be familiar with the characteristics of the Weapons in their inventory (Range, AoE, Special Skills, and approximate damage ranges) that are currently not equipped.

We think it's definitely fun once you understand it, and we even created a quickslot UI to intentionally encourage it, but it's by no means intuitive for newcomers to the game.

We've also gotten a lot of feedback that, while it may be "tactically valid" to unequip Edwin's wooden fork at a distance, equip it to Diurmuid, and then use it again, especially in situations where Blisters and such are tricky to hit, it's really breaking the immersion of the game.



As we hinted at in our previous post about the UI overhaul, to address these issues, we've changed the Weapon Swap rules to allow each Character to have a maximum of Two Sets of Gear, and only allow swapping between those two Sets of Gear during combat.

We initially tested a cleaner approach of only allowing one Set of Equipment per Character, but we realized that it would be a shame to completely give up the fun of "Switching Weapons to Suit the Situation." We decided that each Character should have a Primary Set of Equipment, and a Secondary Set of Equipment for situations that the first set might not cover" to get the best balance between intuitiveness and gameplay fun.



If you get a new weapon from a weapon rack or chest in the middle of a battle, you won't be able to equip it while you're in combat while an enemy is alerted to you. You can only swap out equipment sets when it's safe to do so after combat is over, and I think that's a line that doesn't break immersion too much. (Having the ability for distant Royal Guard able to unequip his Sword so you can equip it on the nearby Shadow Sister when you're not "in combat" is just less annoying!!)

Well, that’s it for this introduction to the changes to the Weapon System.

In fact, there are quite a few other minor changes, such as modifications to the damage formula and the addition of “Defense Types”, but I've omitted the more complicated parts of the formula because they’re a bit much for this Dev Note’s context!

These are the things that have changed from the Early Access version and will continue to be the direction of the game. Of course, there will be other minor changes as we continue to balance and add more content, but we think you can safely assume that our current "Theme" of simplifying weaponization - leaving each character with a maximum of two sets of gear - is set in stone.

Thanks again! We'll be back next week with something new!
REMORE

Greetings Survivors,

Kane Jung, Game Producer of REMORE: INFESTED KINGDOM, is ready to leave the darkness and wants to bring all your burning questions into the light with a special Q&A Live Stream!
Selected Inquires submitted by the community will be answered on our Q&A Live Stream Day!

Please enter your inquiry using our Question Submission Form and your question may be selected to appear on our Q&A Live Stream Day with the answer! (Host: Fanatic Bob)

[Question Submission Period]
June 4 ~ May 11 (PT)

[Question Submission Form]
https://forms.gle/7go7R38X6PhKojM36


[Live Stream]
June 25 6:00 PM (PT)

[Rules]

• Please keep submissions cordial. Offensive or personal inquiries will not be accepted.
  
• You may only submit one inquiry per form.
  
• Only one of similar questions will be accepted and answered. (Sorted by submitted time)
  

Thank you,
REMORE

Greetings once again, Survivors!

Last week, we introduced three New Characters to the game: the Shadow Sister, the Inquisitor, and the Jester.

Along with the addition of these new characters, we're also making some big changes to the system that defines who they are in the game and today, we're going to introduce these Systemic Changes.


[h3]Changes to the Stat System[/h3]
In the original EA version, the Stats attached to the "Characters" themselves were fairly simple. Health (HP), Crit Chance and Damage, Armor and Evasion, and the actual "Default" differences between those Stats weren't that significant - it was a decision to weigh additional factors, such as perks and weapon characteristics, that would be acquired later.

But now that we've chosen to increase the number of Characters, we naturally need a way to make the "Differences between Characters" a little more pronounced - unlike before, when we had a fixed set of three Characters and only had to choose Perks or Weapons to use, we now need a way to decide "which Character to bring with us into battle".

Of course, as I mentioned last week, there is a big difference in the basic Skill composition, but in the context of the Memory Bonding system we introduced earlier, we felt that the difference in Skills alone was not enough. If a character with 2 Skills is given an additional 4 Skills through Memory Bonding, then their innate uniqueness is lessened...

In addition to Health, we're introducing a system of four "Primary Stats," which we've labeled Strength / Dexterity / Fortitude / Agility.

• [Strength] Increases the damage of weapons with the 'heavy and strong' concept, such as blunt weapons or two-handed axes, and offsets any damage reduction from enemies due to the [Fortitude] Stat.
  
• [Dexterity] Increases the damage of weapons with the "agility attack" concept, such as swords and spears, and offsets the effect of increased enemy evasion due to the [Agility] Stat.
  
• [Fortitude] Reduces the damage you take when attacked, while the [Agility] Stat increases your dodge rate.

With the introduction of these Stats, we've differentiated between which Stats each character specializes in, whether it's a “Starting Stat” or a “Leveling Stat.”

For example, Diurmuid who is powerful, specializes in the [Strength] Stat, while the Shadow Sister, who specializes in ambushes and assassinations, is a damage dealer who specializes in the [Dexterity] Stat.

The Jester has a lower [Dexterity] than the Shadow Sister, but a higher [Agility] instead, which makes a difference in the way that a "Dodge and then Counterattack" type of Memory can be more effective when bonded. If you choose Willam (Royal Guard), who specializes in the [Fortitude] Stat, you might want to play him with a Shield and stand firm in the middle of the enemy hoards.



In this way, the stat system was introduced with the goal of having different play styles depending on which stats you specialize in, and each weapon was given attributes like Strength-based damage, Dexterity -based damage, and so on.

You'll see how these Stats are distributed, and then choose which Memories you want to bind, which combinations you want to build, and then go onto the stage.

We're still in early development and the UI still needs a lot of work, but based on internal test feedback, we think we’ve done a good job of "conveying each character's personality" through the four basic Stats. The next challenge is to refine this Stat structure to make it easier to understand, and how to "differentiate between characters with similar Stat allocations" when we have more characters in the future.


[h3]Differentiating between “Skills” and “Traits”[/h3]
As I mentioned in my notes on the UI redesign, we've separated the location of Weapon Skills and Character Skills in the UI to some extent, because we didn't want the slots for Weapon Skills to change every time you swap Weapons, and we didn't want the icon locations and Hotkeys for the Character Skills you use to always change.

We ended up capping the number of Character Skills at 6 (with a maximum of 2 Weapon Skills, for a total of 8 Active Skills), which led us to a problem with the Memory Bonding system.

• First of all, the number of active Skills per character (up to 8) is still quite high compared to other games in the genre. You can “get used to it”, but it's not easy to “get it all at once.”
  
  
• However, keeping this UI puts a relative limit on the number of skills that can be added through Memory Bonds.
  
  • Once we excluded the two Weapon Skills, we realized that each Character would need at least two Unique Skills, and possibly three Passive Skills, to flesh out their personality, such as Stealth for the Shadow Sister.
    
  • That leaves us with only three Skills that can be added through Memory Bonds,
    
    • which is far too few for the "room for build customization" we're trying to achieve with the Memory Bond system,
      
    • Having an infinite number of Skills would have been difficult to manage and recognize in combat.
• In Early Access, Perks like Edwin's “Flanking Stab” and Diurmuid's “Healing Boost” were unique Perks that didn't take up space in the Skill pool, so we thought, "What if we made a lot of Memories that are bonded in this way?”
  
  • However, even at that time, there was a lot of feedback that it was difficult to recognize the existence of such Perks due to the UI.
    
  • The Perk types were already fixed for each character, but we knew that allowing Players to "freely set their own Perks" like Memory Bonds would exacerbate this problem.

As a result, we created the concept of "Traits" to separate from "Skills" and represent them separately in the UI.



On the left-hand side of the UI, you'll find "Traits" that correspond to the "Perks" in the original Early Access version.

Unlike Skills that directly cost WP or TP to "use" or "trigger", they tend to consist of additional effects that synergize with the Skill's activation, such as "Increase Skill power on a successful Surprise" or "Inflict 2 additional Pain on Collision", or simple but powerful Stat boosts like "+1 WP" or "+4 TP".

Meanwhile, on the right side of the UI, "Weaknesses" are placed. These are basically used to create “Drawbacks” for your characters, which in turn reinforce their “Traits,”

For example, I mentioned that the Shadow Sister who specializes in ambushes has a "Stage Fright" weakness that makes her weak in frontal combat, while the Jester has a "Sarcasm" weakness that triggers when an ally's attack misses, angering (?) and debuffing them.



We'll also use the Weakness UI as a guide for how to deal with enemies. We want features like Blister's "Instant Death on Collision" effect, or Orman's "Stun on Armor Break" in EA, to be clearly labeled as Weaknesses in the UI so that when you encounter a new enemy, you can easily remember how to deal with it based on the description of the Weakness.

It was a challenge to balance the two conflicting design goals of keeping each character unique while still allowing for the freedom of customization that comes with the "Memory Bonding" system, but fortunately, test feedback on the current version has been very good.

So, while we're keeping the broad outlines of this system, we'll continue to add new Characters and expand the types of Dead Memories that can be bonded, while maintaining a design direction that reinforces the fun of customizing "the Character you want, the Party you want."

There's a lot more to talk about, such as the changes brought about by the introduction of permanent death and the concept of "Corruption" that aligns with the new narrative, but we're running out of space, so we’ll leave it there for now!

We'll be back next week with another look at new System Changes!
REMORE

Hello again, Survivors!

In addition to the Memory Bonding system we introduced last week, there are a number of other changes in the new build we're currently testing.

Over the coming days, we'll be talking about what these changes are and why we made the decisions we made, but before we get into the more detailed systems, I wanted to give you a quick overview of the New Characters we've added.

In fact, if you've been following closely, you may have already realized from the "Memory Bonding" screen we showed you last week that there’s currently a total of Six Characters joining the adventure.



We're also making some big changes to the skillsets of the Royal Guard (Willam), Barbarian (Duirmuid), and Militia (Edwin) that you've seen in Early Access, but we'll talk about those changes after we're done introducing the other systems.

Today we'll focus more on introducing the “New Faces!”


[h3]Before we get into it...[/h3]
As some of you may recall from our old [Archive]posts, back in the early days of development, when we were focusing on a more "medieval" and "human" narrative rather than "strategy/tactics", we implemented religious figures such as "Monks" and "Nuns" as playable characters.

Unfortunately (?), very few people wanted to bring back the bald Monk, but there were quite a few people who played the early demos or watched the reveal videos who wanted the Nun to return.



So, shortly after the development direction of adding new characters was set, the first thing we started looking at was whether we could reintroduce the Nun to fit the current direction of the game.

The main reason why the Nun/Monk were not adopted as playable characters in Early Access was that it was "difficult to give them combat abilities that fit the concept of the class," and while we were thinking about this, we had a great idea. Give the Nun the role of an “Assassin.”


[h3]New Character #1: Shadow Sister[/h3]
When we adopted “Surprise” as an official mechanic, we knew from the very beginning that we wanted to make the Assassin a primary class, as we felt this type of character could best lean into this gameplay style.

However, the actual name of the class itself, Assassin, was a bit of a challenge, as we wanted to keep it somewhat historical, and the concept of a Middle Eastern "Hassassin'' naturally came to mind. However the actual setting of Remore was more of a fictionalized western to central European world, so it felt inconsistent.

While discussing the fact that we were not trying to recreate a completely specific historical real-world space, we decided to think of a concept for an assassin, but with a different physical appearance, and so we thought "what if we didn't have nuns, but instead had a religious group in our world that ran a convent as a kind of assassination organization?" and it was unanimously decided on the spot!



The result of this process is the Shadow Sister character, who has Stealth as an active skill, allowing her to move freely and ambush enemies without being seen.

Other characters without the Stealth skill are less likely to be able to sneak up on enemies in close quarters and surprise unhindered, so it's common to surprise one character and then have the rest of them raise the alarm. These new Shadow Sister, on the other hand, are designed to allow the player to make the mechanic of surprise much more proactive.

The tradeoff is that they have a "weakness" called "Stage Fright" that greatly reduces the amount of damage they can deal when they are within an enemy's line of sight.


[h3]New Character #2: Jester[/h3]
Whereas the Shadow Sister is designed to be a surprise assassination character that most intuitively uses the mechanic of Stealth, the Jester is a character that utilizes surprise play by occupying a specific space using Active Skills and Free Movement.

For example, your basic skill, "Backflip," costs 4 TP to instantly move to a specific location, where you can leap over enemy/friendly units or obstacles freely. Without the Movement skill, you'd be stuck in enemy sight, but with it, you can sneak up behind them and create creative ambush opportunities.



You can also level up to gain a talent called Blindside, which automatically engages Stealth immediately when you enter an enemy's line of sight. This further enhances your ability to create surprise routes with your backflip skill and makes it easier to "scout" for enemies, such as opening doors to check your line of sight without being spotted.



This allowed us to create a character that is similar to the Nun in terms of being an agile, ambush-based character, but very different in how she is utilized. In our testing, we found that while the Jester is a bit trickier to use than the Shadow Sister, it definitely has a "different feel", as if you're playing a different character in the same role in a MOBA genre game...


[h3]New Character #3: Inquisitor[/h3]
The final new character we'll be introducing is the Inquisitor, who shares the narrative of a religious vocation, but has a "Power/Strength" concept that is the opposite of the Shadow Sister, who is more "Ambush/Assassination" centered.



If you've played the Early Access version of the game, you know that tile manipulation elements like pushing and pulling are very important in the game, and that there is a debuff called "Pain" that increases "Collision Damage".

We still see pushing and pulling enemies as an important part of the core fun of the game, and the “Pain” debuff was introduced as a way to make this tile manipulation a unique archetype of the game that can be utilized as a “Damage Dealer” rather than a “Support” role.

However, these “Push/Pull” and pain debuffs were mainly just the effects of “Blunt Weapons,” and there wasn't much synergy with the existing three characters.

In response, we've redesigned the Inquisitor to specialize in Blunt Weapons, giving him a talent that causes colliding enemies to split their pain between them. He also has a skill called Merciful Strike, which allows him to instantly execute characters who have accumulated a certain amount of pain.




We're still working on the animations, so for now we're just using the NPC Knight character sprite for testing, but we'll show you a more polished version once they're done.

So, there you have it, the important characteristics and development intentions of the new characters.

It ended up being longer than I thought, and I have a moment of regret (?) that I should have dug deeper into each character's features and introduced them one at a time.

In any case, in addition to the Inquisitor's sprite, the Jester's movement skill animation and the Shadow Sister's design still need to go through the art team's hands once more, so I think it would be better to introduce them in detail as a kind of showcase when they're finished.

Starting next week, we'll be talking about the system changes we're making to these characters.

Thanks as always, and we'll see you soon!
REMORE

Hello once again, Survivors!

We're just finished testing the first full, unified (as opposed to piecemeal) build for the first time since the reorganization and are in the midst of identifying improvements for the next build.

We've been talking about our mapping standards, UI, and narrative direction versus procedural generation in isolation, and it's probably been hard for you to get a sense of "so what does this all look like together?"

It can be confusing, even for us! No matter how much thought and intention we put into creating a subset of things, the end user experience is almost always different from what we intended. I think that's what makes game development so challenging, but also so fascinating.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be walking you through the elements that make up this consolidated build, what worked and didn't work intended, and where we're headed next.

Today, I'd like to start by talking about the most important elements of our new direction: the “Ember” and “Memory Binding” systems.



[h3]What is an "Ember"?[/h3]
When we were reimagining the game's main themes of "Medieval" and "Apocalypse", the idea of "carrying on the knowledge and experience of the dead" was one of the things we talked about. We wrote about this back in March in this post, and the narrative framework for doing so and the concept of "Ember" in this post.

As always, there were a lot of trials and tribulations and stories that went into organizing this idea into a workable system... but I'll share those stories in a future post in the form of an "Archive" when I get a chance.

For now, here's the broad outline of the narrative.

• The religious people of Remore venerate the "Fallen Flame (a great stone that fell to Earth) as a holy relic, and it serves as a vehicle of faith for many, much like the "crucifix" of Christian religions.
  
  
• When the First Creature appeared (for reasons that will be revealed over the course of the game), this Fallen Flame holy object was destroyed, scattering countless "Fragments" throughout the world of Remore, known as "Embers".
  
  
• The player characters that will come to discover these scattered Embers are the first to realize that they contain the living memories of those who have died, and that as they collect smaller Ember Fragments, the Ember’s power grows as it absorbs them.

The new narrative is built around the above, with the ultimate goal of the game being to gather the scattered Embers and use their power to defeat the “First Creature” and end the outbreak.

The idea is that players will actually find these "Ember Fragments" scattered throughout the maps during gameplay, and that they contain the memories and experiences of those who “died” during the outbreak throughout the world of Remore.



[h3]“Binding” the Memories of the Living and the Dead[/h3]
When you return to your Hideout with an Ember Fragment from a stage, the memories of the dead contained in the Fragment are absorbed into the Ember that you and your party have in camp.

Each memory can be identified by the name and occupation of the dead person in life, such as "Memory of John the Swordsman" or "Memory of Brune the Thief," and these memories can be bonded to the current "living," or player-controlled characters.

When a memory is bound, it grants the player character the following "Abilities" based on the dead person's "Class" and existing abilities.

• Stat Gains: Increase or decrease in Stamina/Strength/Dexterity/Fortitude/Agility stats.
  
  • The dead carry over the "Abilities" they had in life, though certain stats may decrease!
    
    • You'll see a lot of unfamiliar stats, but we'll talk about the stat system overhaul in a separate post.
• Skill Additions: Specific "Weapon Skills" or Tactical Skills like "Grappling Hook" and "Side Step" from the Early Access version.
  
  • The idea is that "the skills that the dead have gained in life" are now available to the living through Memory Bonding.
• Adding Strengths/Weaknesses: Adding effects that are not directly used “Skills,” but rather a kind of temperament trait.
  
  • For example, the memory of the Assassin class can give you an ability that adds power to your skills when you surprise an enemy.
    
  • On the flip side, it can also give you a Weakness. For example, if you bind the memories of the Assassin class, you'll gain "Penalty to attacks within the enemy's line of sight". which is a trait of that class.

Each “Living” character also has their own unique “Stats, Skills, Strengths/Weaknesses” separate from these “Memories of the Dead.”

So, for example, a Guard who specializes in shield skills will have a strong synergy with memories that emphasize Counterattack, while the new Inquisitor character has a specialization in Pain/Collision, which pairs well with memories that emphasize blunt force or pushing...



However, each memory has a cost, called "Influence," and the maximum number of memories that can be bonded is constrained by an "Influence Limit" value based on each character's current level.

As such, how well you can create synergistic combinations of memories under the constraints of Influence will be at the heart of the new meta-gameplay, and our goal with the redesigned memory binding system is to encourage diversity, so that the same character can bind completely different memories to create completely different builds and forms of combat.

[h3]Related Changes and Self-Assessment[/h3]
Bringing the "Bonding" system centered around the memories of the dead contained in this Ember to the forefront of the metagame has led to a number of changes, both large and small, in many areas.

• Once the character "Perk" system was in direct conflict with the memory bonding system, it became much more streamlined.
  
  • Each character's unique skills, strengths, and weaknesses are no longer a "choose between two trees" and automatically gain a set of abilities as you level up.
    
  • Instead, the focus has shifted to "choose and bind memories that go along with those unique abilities", allowing for even more variety and possibilities for actual character building!
• We've also changed the weapon modification and forging structure to be more streamlined.
  
  • Technically, the effectiveness of existing Tier 1 weapons hasn't changed much, but instead of gaining a new active skill from a Tier 2 weapon, you'll now be able to bond with classes that specialize in a particular weapon, such as Swordsman or Spearman, to increase the power of that weapon and gain additional active skills.
    
  • If you want to go with "diversifying your tactical skills" instead of "diversifying your weapon active skills," you can do so by selecting only the memories that match!

In other words, the goal was to concentrate on the "building/customization" elements that were scattered throughout each character/weapon in the original Early Access version into a new core system called "Memory Bonding" which would both reinforce the thematic feel of the game and make it more fun to play through the variety of combinations.

We're still working out the kinks in the UI, and we've barely started to play around with the narrative setup, but the bottom line is that the internal feedback on the Memory Bonding system so far has been very positive!

Even with only about 20 memories in the test build (plus the three new characters) due to time constraints, I really enjoyed the challenge of figuring out which memories to assign to which of the six characters, and the difference in experience when using them in combat felt really meaningful.


[h3]And the future plans...[/h3]
At this point, we've only seen the most basic skeleton of a system with "Pre-prepared" NPC memories in the game. The original idea that inspired this system, and the ultimate goal of its implementation, is to create a "play experience that carries over the memories of a player character and ties them to another character even when the player character dies".

This is because we think it's essential to deliver the thematic experience of "the dead continuing their will to live on and accomplish impossible goals" that we talked about in our initial narrative pitch.

It's also a major way to address what we consider to be the downside of permanent death in party-based games, as we don't think it's a good experience to have "similar/identical characters regenerate to fill the void left by dead characters," no matter how thematically appropriate permanent death is.

Our goal for the next build is to minimize the sense of loss of punishment by having the experience of the dead carry over, while also making it so that "killing a character on purpose is not a better option for normal gameplay," and we're thinking a lot about how best to do this.

There's a lot more we want to talk about related to the Ember and the Memory Binding System, but I think that's as much as we can share for now.

We know that many of you are eagerly awaiting the next update, and we'd like to take this opportunity to thank you again.

As much as I can't wait for you to get hands-on with the new gameplay and get feedback, we realize that the changes we're making are more of a process of redesigning and building the game from the ground up, which will take some time, but rest assured we believe it will be worth the wait!

So, we'll continue to share as much as we can in writing so that you can get as close to the team's understanding of why and what we're building, as well as our internal assessments and plans for it.

Next week, we'll be taking you through some of the other changes in the builds we're currently testing, including the changes to the stat system we've been sneak peeking at.

As always, thanks again and see you soon!
Thank you,
REMORE