Friendship and Chang'e

Hey all,

I thought I would take the time to discuss Chang'e and its emphasis on friendship.

How important are friends?
In my opinion, friends and friendship are a crucial part to one's development. I say this now because I had very few friends as a kid, and I kind of regret not reaching out to people and making more friends.

Friends, real friends, always have your back and support you. Friends respect you. Friends always tell you when you're doing the right or wrong things, and will provide insight into situations that are happening to you. Friends are important.

...Maybe I hold friends to an impossibly high standard.

Cherish them, and most of all, respect them.

About Chang'e
That being said, how does this factor into Chang'e? What do friends have to do with it? Aren't all RPG parties formed up of friends? To answer those questions: Combat and interactions, everything, and sometimes.

The idea is to make all of the characters feel like real, compatible friends. The characters should legitimately care about one another, and tell each other their thoughts and opinions. This may seem grandiose, but I plan on having A LOT of time spent into writing the dialogue. Dialogue does not change based on friendships, at least, so far as it's planned. That would be REALLY complicated. I feel like many other RPG's miss this opportunity to build character bonding and adding realism to their characters.

I noticed in many RPG's is that party members aren't real friends, usually just acquaintances. They will help each other and care for one another, but do these characters actually talk about their fears, their wants, their needs? Do these characters discuss what makes them human amongst one another? Can they talk about something OTHER than what the immediate quest is? Maybe this has something to do with creating realistic characters, or maybe it has something to do with pacing. I'm not bashing on other RPG's, just noticing that it's almost like parties are a means to an end, or a means to fill certain roles. Maybe I'm naive, and I'm gonna learn my lesson soon enough. That being said, there are some RPG's that do nail this, such as Tales of Symphonia. (I love that game) It's a bit of a shame that many RPG's don't incorporate the teamwork aspects of friendship into the game itself.

Without revealing way too much about the mechanics of the game, the strength of the party will be based upon how much the members like each other. Friendships influence combinations and damage. Friendships influence cooperation. Better friendships will increase the odds of helping one another. Pairings of good friends in combat will just operate better, like in real life.

I plan to reveal more details in the future about Chang'e and combat systems. But I would rather have something pretty to present before going into deep detail.

Here is some character concept art as a reward for dealing with me up until now:
http://bikedo-enraged.tumblr.com/post/69648070930

Have a good one,
Jimmy