Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Remnants Chapter Eight - Behind the Scenes

Welcome to my little attempt at a mystery folks. Sorry for the wait, but other things got in the way. In any case, I'm guessing you wanna know a bit about this chapter? Well, okay, here we go.



The impetus for this chapter more or less was to put a bigger spotlight on all the tension and inter fleet politics going around. I've had it in the background a lot, but it was time to put it more upfront. I needed to show a little bit of how this mismatched fleet works as well as contrast more explicitly how different the Jackals and Marines are.

Plus it was a chance to make a decent mystery of a sorts, although not so much the traditional whodunnit but more in the vein of a conspiracy thriller. Good thing Vik isn't here, he'd probably be way more paranoid than most anyone else in the story. This being a mystery of course, it gave Garrus a chance to play Cop again, which is always a delight. People tend to forget that Garrus was tracking down crooks for a longtime before he turned vigilante in Mass Effect 2. He's a capable investigator and I wanted to showcase that more explicitly. Sometimes I wonder a bit more about his previous cases, he probably had a ton of awesome Noir-esque adventures I bet.

It also gave me a chance to look more into Kasumi's relationship with the Jackals. I've hinted she's a little enticed by their lifestyle, drawn into the romance and whatnot. This was my chance to really let her just dive head first into the culture she's been slowly dipping into bit by bit. She's a daredevil in my mind, a thrill seeker. She doesn't care so much about the money as she does about the actual excitement of pulling off a heist, and honestly, who doesn't love a good heist movie? Die Hard is all about a heist after all.

So she's naturally drawn to the Space Pirates and their life of adventure and daring do. She ignores some of the more reckless and ignoble aspects because, well, she's a thief. She breaks the law constantly. These guys are hardly much different from her so who is she to judge? She lets their eccentricities slide a little honestly, probably to the near point of naivete. This is her getting a chance to see more of the danger for herself and see how far she's willing to take this relationship she's building with these aliens.

Plus it's strangely fun to write Kasumi at times, she's a different style of character from the average heroes. She's a lot more quirky, more prone to flare and snark than most of Shepard's crew, and they can all be pretty snarky. But Kas is even more so, she likes being a bit of a pest when it comes to her enemies, she likes being a bit of an oddball. I'm not sure how much of that got across here, but I hope I did capture her personality more or less.

Then there is the Syndicate, they went through a few names, but I felt that was the most appropriate one for the needs of the story. Given the allusions to Goodfellas I made in the chapter, it's pretty obvious they're like a Pirate version of the mafia. Except the Mafia has way more rules, codes and seems to give a shit about looking legit. The Syndicate does not and prefers to make sure everyone knows they're not to be screwed with and they don't care about any laws but the ones they make. They're out to preserve piracy in these troubled times, but while that is the mission statement, their main goal is to make sure no one upsets the status quo they've worked so hard to build. What does that have to do with Taq's relic? You'll have to see.

I can't really say more without spoiling the whole mystery, so check back next chapter for more insights on things once the conclusion to this little noir homage is concluded. Thanks for reading in the meantime.

1 comment:

  1. Very nice blog. Your writing skills are so good and you have described each and everything in a very good way. You can write more stuff and i will surely give them a read. You having true writing qualities.

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