Twinsen's Odyssey

I know that many people prefer the sequel over the original Little Bit Adventure. What makes sense. It is bigger, have easier to follow story, and has this epic ending, which I like a lot. It also feels more like a fairy tale in which you save not one but two planets.

The original game, in some way, is unforgiving. You often end up dead or non-stop landing in prison. Players often get lost and don't know what to do next. Any hit with the wall is frustrating and gives you damage, and on top of that, fighting is tough. The feel of it is more grounded, darker, and in the end, you only save one planet.

The official remake tried to solve a lot of these issues, but I have a feeling that the goal was not so much remaking the original game as creating a prequel to the Purple Empire. Game supposed to be lighter, with locations looking like the Twinsen's Odyssey, which you can notice in the graphical style. I personally like it, but I know some people have issues with it.

There was also this new character of Twinsen's sister, whose goal was to give an opportunity for Zoe to become a strong and independent figure. She is no longer a lady in distress. She doesn't need Twinsen to save her. Now she leads the rebels, and it is Twinsen who needs her help. There are also a lot of smaller changes here and there to add a lighter tone to the game. 

The intention, in my opinion, was good. Sadly, the execution resulted in a game that does not feel like an epic story of LBA2, but at the same time does not feel like a more serious story of LBA1. There would be a need for even bigger changes to the story to make it feel right. I suspect that this was a plan, but the tight schedule stopped the team from doing it. 

I'm one of the few people who understand how tough it is to remake the Twinsen's universe. That is why I wrote in the last post: 

"What I can say is that fear of exactly that led me to restart six years ago. I was catching up then Uncharted series, and while playing the first game, I knew that what I had would not be enough. Some may think that I was paranoid, but my biggest fear was of hurting an already fragile franchise."

I also got a reply from Axolotl, one of the LBA fans who follow the project:

"Don't ever worry about hurting the LBA franchise! Your Tribute is the most beautiful way of respecting, preserving and continuing the legacy of LBA"

The reason why I always thought about it is that when I started doing Tribute, I had hidden hopes that it might one day become an official remake. But to do that, I would need to create something that will appeal to an audience outside of the small LBA community. To achieve that, I took the original story and added a lot of layers to the original plot. Introduced depth to characters in a way that would explain their behaviors from the original game and connect them with the sequel.

As an example of this lets take Zoe. I wanted her to follow the routine from LBA1, but at the same time be badas mechanic who works with the old ferry that travels from Citadel Island to Principal Island. This simple addition to the character would explain why you cannot leave the island in the newly added intro sequence. Ferry is just broken... again. It would also explain why there is a new ship in the sequel. Because the old one was breaking down all the time, and they finally replaced it. She would of course not be wearing a dress, at least not right away. She would put it on later and then be kidnapped, but not without fighting back. 

I personally do not feel that her wearing a dress or not making her the leader of the rebellion would make her a less impactful character. There are 101 more creative ways to turn her that way. In my case, I did not want to skip this beautiful opportunity of adding a pair of enemies with black eyes and a bag of ice, crying somewhere in Fun Frock base that they don't want to deal with the demon in the dress. 

This is one of many examples of how I plan to build up the story of the Tribute. In some ways, I attempt to do the opposite of what Twinsen's Quest was doing. I try to make a grounded universe that feels less like a fairy tale but more like an epic adventure in some galactic far, far away. And because we do not want it to be a fairy tale, we need to tackle the problem of Sendels and their place in this more mature world. 

But this is a topic for tomorrow.