Now for your questions!
"What made you want to make a whole fanfiction story about your Strinova OC's? It felt like the game wasn't big enough for me to expect someone to make something as big as this for it, so seeing this story was a surprise to say the least!"
Simply put? I'm a writer! Once I get started on an idea, it's hard to get me to stop! But, in longer terms, I was enamored with Strinova's world from the first moment I discovered it! It's a really unique world among games in its vein, and I really, REALLY wish that the devs would let their lore come to the front more and shine! This is my attempt at doing that, trying to show that there's so much potential in this world, and that I would love to see more people, including the devs, come forward to explore that world!! I have many more stories I would love to tell---an original character I haven't revealed yet, and little stories I'd love to expiriment with the official characters in!
"How long did this take to make? Must've been a long time"
About a month and a half! Maybe closer to two months in terms of actual time, but if you narrow down the amount of time I spent working on it when I wasn't burnt out or busy with work, it was about a month and a half. A lot of that time was actually just spent creating Natalie and Feng from a gameplay perspective, then diving into their lore. There was also a LOT of research!!
"And how did you go about adapting the world of Strinova for this story? Personally, it upsets me that the global version of Strinova doesn't do much to show the players the lore of its world and characters besides its tutorial story mission. Did you have to do extensive research or get outside help to convey the game's world in a way that seemed accurate?
RIGHT?! It's so upsetting that they won't put more of that forward, because it's by far one of the most unique aspects of their game!!
But yes, extensive research is the answer to your question! I spent many hours digging through the game's official cutscenes and scouring the wiki for any and all information I could find. I found myself digging through a lot of unreleased content, looking at official art from the CN version, and even going as far as to dig through all the characters' voice lines just to see how they talked and how they interacted with each other.
I think the biggest hiccup in this process was probably the Enforcers. That's not actually their official name, but they're the white armored dudes you usually see getting their butts kicked in the trailers---the guys you attack in the training range. Ultimately, the game doesn't say much about them, and they aren't in any of the art outside of Michele's Legendary Splash Art (and Eika's Legendary Splash Art). Ultimately, I spent a lot of time studying how they moved and behaved in the trailers, and came to the conclusion that they were likely some human-robot hybrid of some kind. The game even refers to them as "AI guards". So I tried to portray them in this unnatural, almost human way, while still maintaining evidence that they were artificial.
But ultimately, it came down to a TON of research, and anything I couldn't research I just filled in the blanks with my own interpretation. Ofc, I did this in such a way that seemed as accurate to the game's lore as I could.
Hope this answer's all your questions!! Thanks so much for reading and supporting!!! It means the world to me! Sequel coming very soon, I promise!! <3
dull plover
modest dagger
granite wolf
timber dagger
