SoV3 Post Mortem #4

Hello everyone,

Time for the 4th post about SoV3. Today we're going to talk about two things: the intro and Ayame.

Last saturday during the streaming I played SoV3 because I hadn't touched the game ever since its release (so almost two years ago.) It was interesting because there are many small details I had forgotten (and I wanted to have them back in mind to write the novel.)

But I wanted to talk about the content of that part of the game because it's actually incomplete. When the v0.1 was released, we worked with Peak on those missing elements first before working on the content of the continuation of the story. The majority of what was cut is at the very end of the game. Basically, as soon as you can initiate fights. After all, like this beautiful disclaimer mentions, the whole fighting part was not properly done (now you know why.)

Let's start with the forest itself. When you leave Lilith's temple, you're supposed to wander in two forest maps. Those are meant to get the player to get a bit of experience and a few items. If you felt that the map where the forest stops and lead to the mountain trail was a bit empty it's normal. It was supposed to be the place where the first boss fight would occur. And it was supposed to feature the headless monster chasing Yuki at the beginning of the game.

Since we didn't have the sprites for the characters I had to postpone that fight. Let me show you some sketches Peak made for enemies designs.

The bottom line (fungus, flying thing and headless monster) was supposed to be the content of the forest. The first two ones as normal monsters and the last one as the boss. The lineart version was actually ready. But neither was the coloring nor the characters and I didn't want half-done stuff so I waited for the next version to implement them.

That's the first thing that was set aside. Now the other things are all stuff linked to the Shu'Qwan camp attack by Aleksia and Yuki to save Ayame. Those elements will spoil the content of the novel so don't read them if you want to keep the surprise :x

There's actually 3 whole pics that are missing from that scene. The first one is kinda evident. In my effort to have a better immersion, just like I did with some of the scenes of the game that are not here for smut, Yuki and Ayame's reunion was supposed to be pictured.

After all, I didn't build Yuki's distress for the whole beginning to let her reunion with her dear sister be a simple couple of lines. So I wanted a full picture for it. There isn't much more to say about it ^^'

The next missing part is MUCH less guessable. You see, right after the sister's reunion, two Shu'Qwans were supposed to come out of a tent as they didn't participate in chasing down Aleksia. Yuki's supposed to act all brave saying she'll defend her sister, but Ayame begs her not to do anything reckless as those two are actually the ones "guarding her". It does sound stupid considering she was chained down but that's because those two big guys are more or less the shame of the camp because they hold no stamina at all. Ayame quickly explains her sister that making them come is enough to make them collapse. And considering they've always been nice to her, she prefers that way to neutralize them.

It then switches into the sisters actually assaulting the two guards in order to make them come.

This scene was also supposed to show the Shu'Qwan's dick and since we were leaning towards the nasty side of things we gave them a very specific layout. The kind of highly retractable foreskin (going down to the base), half-open tentacle-looking glans, and myriads of tiny flesh pieces running along the shaft, inside the foreskin that would allow a good stimulation during penetration and a terrifying amount of cheese buildable inside 8D

You can already see that between the pic on the top and the one on the bottom, the number of those fleshy bits increased a lot on Ayame's side x) (You can hardly see it here on Fanbox because it's censored but you get the idea :x)

So the girls perform their assault with success and as expected, the two guards actually fall unconscious. Aaaaaaaand, there's something else happening that is meant to do the link with the second part of this post: Ayame.

You see, something that wasn't mentionned in the game (yet) is that Ayame is part of the Kyudo club in her school (Kyudo being Japanese archery). As such, after the previous scene, there are a couple of Shu'Qwan who are supposed to come back to the camp before Aleksia. And they're not as compelling as the previous unconscious buddies. So Ayame searches around her for a way to defend herself and...

With a proper arrow right in the head, she instantly defeats one of the enemy. From here on, a battle was supposed to occur, with Ayame fighting naked with Yuki. And when Aleksia joins them, the whole part where they run away towards the boat was supposed to have Shu'Qwan along the road blocking their path that you had to defeat.

Now you have to the whole view of how this part of the game should've been in its globality.

Do I surprise you if I tell you Ayame was meant to be the archer of the game? 8D

Before I move on, you have to understand one thing: Ayame is Peak's nightmare. He's never satisfied by the way he draws her and during her design development she was without a doubt the one he struggled the most with for the head/face. I won't spend ages talking about the fact we had trouble finding a proper design (again), but here, you're seeing something that should've been seen later in the game, when she gets clothes:

We wanted something slightly sexy but not over the top. So we went for that little opening in her skirt as well as a bare leg and arm. But for the rest, we took a pretty fantasy road with a breast protection, a little cloak and gloves/forearm protection for the bow.

Here are the data in case you're interested.

You can see that unlike Yuki or Aleksia, Ayame isn't meant to focus on a single element. She's more versatile. And other than her archery skills, she's also meant to be the item master of the team. Not much with her skills but with her passives. This is something that is more or less inherited from any item-related element of FF (The ninja class that can throw items, Riku who can use items only she can use or the thief class raising the odds of having rare items.)

And lastly, I'd like to finish with a little extra pic which is the size comparison chart between the three girls. It's extremely difficult to see in-game how tall Aleksia is so I asked Peak to do that so you can a better idea.

Yuki and Ayame being small girls (they're Japanese after all) you can consider Aleksia to be taller than 2m. 

Aaaaaaaaaand that's all for today. I hope you liked it. The next post will be the last one. I'll reveal the very last bits of sketches we have as well as small lore elements that I deem revealable.

But chances are I'll fit in a TH2 post in the mean time to talk about the brothel :p

See ya o/