Development Sneak Peek: CH11 Planning

Hiya, hope your week is going well!!

I haven't posted a progress update in a minute since February was all about CH10, but I have already started planning and writing for CH11. Mostly because I suspect CH11 is going to be gigantic in terms of LI variation, so the sooner I got started, the better. Only a 5k word count so far, but I've been writing the juiciest scenes first.

LI Scenes

So, if you've played CH10 for multiple LIs, you'll have noticed that each LI has a very distinct event occur over the course of their route. While each LI has their own character arc and backstory disconnected from the Crown, their romance with the Crown does influence how they handle it. 

This is exemplified in CH10: a romanced R wants to try harder as the Crown's Sorcerer and ends up [redacted], a romanced A feels bolstered by the Crown and stays out longer in the city to search, a romanced D hurries back to Marabad earlier than planned and [redacted], and a romanced X takes a drastic measure to ensure they can stay with the Crown in the future.

I am extremely excited with finally getting to CH11 now after this set-up, because CH11 is essentially where the LIs' character arcs, the Crown's main story and the Crown's romance with their LI all begin to intersect. It's going to be a massive writing challenge, but it's basically the first climactic moment and first major relationship choice in the Crown's romance with their LI!!

Here's a little preview for an LI scene I'm currently working on, just some lines of dialogue I've been writing. I won't say which LI this is for, but I think you can probably wager a guess...

“I was set on my path long before I met you. Just as you were set on yours, long before you knew of me.”

“Yet our paths have crossed. Where will they lead us now?”

That's a pretty good transition to my next point, actually: similar to how CH9's first half diverged depending on the Crown's plot choices, CH11's first half will diverge depending on who the Crown's LI is and their relationship status, high or low.

The low variants for the romances haven't had major consequences so far, aside from some differences in how the relationship is progressing, but CH11 is where it gets REALLY real. 

I really hope you'll consider having a separate low romance save for your Crown because the differences between a low and high relationship in CH11 are going to be pretty huge. Not irreversibly huge, mind you, but "this scene has a separate variable that will make the game remember whether your relationship was high or low at this point in time and how it went down" in the future lol. 

So if you get the low relationship version in CH11, no worries!! You can still course-correct to a high relationship later on. If anything, it might make the high romance more spicy to have a low-romance moment like this influencing it. Just food for thought... 👀

Political Choices & Subplots

Another thing I can give away for CH11 is that there will be 2 additional major story branches, similar to the one in CH9 regarding the assassin's escape attempt. These two branches are decided by:

• How you chose to investigate the matter of the assassin and the mental wards CH9: using divination or searching the schools of magic?
• How you chose to approach the peri trader in CH10: asking Kham or going behind her back?

Each decision will lead to different variations where you will uncover different bits and pieces of information for each subplot. It can really influence your playthrough in that way, as well as which decisions you will have available to you later in CH12 and onwards.

There will also be more court intrigue in the chapter, where your choices regarding the Office of Law and Official Awir's proposal will directly impact the way in which certain scenes go down. Even your main LI's scenes will be affected by this to some extent.

Both of these choices indicate whether your Crown is on the path to favoring the public, favoring the elites, or smack dab in the middle. As we get towards the climax of Act I, these variables will grow in weight and importance - they directly influence which ending your Crown will eventually get. 

There will still be many opportunities to win points with the public and points with the elite in the future, so don't stress about this too much... yet.

That was it for this month's dev sneak peek! Next month I'll probably go back to posting more lore about the previous Crowns.

Until then 💖