Curate of Curiosities

So, one would expect that now that I've finished The Reconstruction, I would move on to I Miss The Sunrise. While I have finished its prologue, I didn't back up its save data before installing Linux on my laptop. And while the game still functions with Wine, it runs at such an unbearably slow speed that I didn't think that I would be able to even get past the intro cutscene.

So instead, I've decided to go back to The Reconstruction, and showcase some things that either I neglected in my playthrough, or things that would be explained by the creator on his now-defunct personal blog.

First, a minor thing that sort of ties into gameplay. As you are probably aware, there are six elements and three different stats, body, mind, and soul. According to one entry in the glossary, this is indeed the case: Fire and Physical are associated with body, Mental and Noxious with mind, and Cold and Divine with Soul. This is only relevant to gameplay in a couple of instances, namely Falitza's Mana Twist attack and an attack used by one of the final boss' minions.

For the intro, if the footage I uploaded was any indication, I was a bit of a hurry to finish the prologue quest, so I may have missed out on some important background info. Okay, I say important, but we all know at this point that anything relating to Rehm and his merry gang was not important in the least, and that it does a worse job explaining the gameplay mechanics than the manual does. The plus side is that all of their relevance is front-loaded, so I only need to go through the first 20 minutes at most.

So we go to the start of the prologue mission, noticing that Wine cannot play MIDIs right out of the box, so the intro cutscenes will be eerily silent, and take our chance to look through the status screens of Rehm's compatriots.

First off, Vasra. It turns out that the name listed in the dialoge and her status screen isn't her real name.

It's Sara Nafo. With that name, you'd expect her to hang out in the replies for Russian government-run Twitter accounts. Now on to Private Chlamydia.

His full name is Taru Clapian, and yes, that's the same last name as Tehgonan, so you can probably figure out their relation well before it's...well if not revealed then strongly hinted at during the latter's sidequest.

Remember Yfus, that one Fih'jik who joined the party in chapter 5 that I never used? Also remember Zaka, the boss of the same chapter that kills you if you let him get too close? They're brothers, as it turns out. Didn't suspect anything with that, especially since Yfus has practically no reaction to Zaka bleeding out in front of him. Okay, there may have been something when you take him to see his father in his sidequest, but that's it.

Now, on to unused content. First off, Syri and Yacatec were initially meant to be playable. I can kind of see why neither of them made the cut: Yacatec's an unrepentant slave driver, and while Syri has every reason to join forces with the guild (and they would certainly need the help after their sorry performance in Kir'Ssha), she would proably only join midway through the chapter, thus possibly delaying the quest that leads to recruiting Tezkhra, resulting in giving his character even less breathing room. I suppose a sacrifice had to be made in her case, either Ques' sister gets the shaft, or the most lore-important character in the game spends less time in the spotlight.

As for unused quests, there are two. There was supposed to be one late in chapter 4, where the party would accompany Havan and the Blue Guard, who would definitely benefit from the extra screentime. The other would be set in Kir'Ssha during chapter 5, and would task you with keeping the local wildlife away from the city as the Unstoppable Night approached. But since it's in the middle of a barren wasteland, wouldn't Do'Ssha be a more desirable refuge for the wildlife? The really funny thing about this quest being removed is that Space Lizard forgot to remove the space that it would have gone in in the records menu!

Like a couple of other RPG Maker games, I was able to extract the source files with a third-party decompiler, but since I didn't take the engine with me when I moved to Linux, I can't analyze them like I was able to before. I did find out a few tidbits though. For one, the game transitions to battle in Adventure Mode by shifting the camera to a section of the current map set aside for that purpose.

Another thing is that when you name the guild at the start of chapter 1, inputting certain names will give you special dialogue from Dehl, as well as bonus essence. They include: literally inputting six asterisks, the first few digits of pi or the square root of 2, 8675309, or the numbers from Lost (remember when that was the big thing?)

One last thing, this game, once you get past the combat quirks, is pretty easy, since the simplistic enemy AI means there's little risk of getting wiped (barring cheap shots like Asarik's attack), so I haven't had any chance to show of the game over screen. Here it is:

I took this from the game's files, and there doesn't seem to be any other game over screens, so it might have been the same during the endgame, after Fell and the other Watchers bite it. I really like that the very last line mentioning a cleansing will probably seem like vague, flowery nonsense to a first-time player, but becomes much more ominous after you get the true ending.

And that's all there is for The Reconstruction. Hopefully I can get Wine to run I Miss The Sunrise at a respectable framerate soon, because I wouldn't want to leave off with the developers admittedly awkward first steps into the freeware RPG scene.