Not quoting stuff, but to each question...
1) Yes, correct. We were cheerily cavilier with our classical allusions. If you got to the first mission - which was riffing off all the Moon Landing conspiracies, the line between the Apollo Missions and the Apollo Modifications was drawn pretty heavy handedly. Apollo, as the masculine principle, was one of my shorthands for authoritarian control. The whole moon landings was read as a metaphor for man's rationality conquering feminine irrationality (Whatever Diana related Moon God stuff). Of course, since the Moon Missions were faked, the conquering of the irrational was faked.
(In Cassandra's world, only the Russians landed on the moon, since both Capitalism and Communism systems were organised by the Hidden Masters.)
Er... all of that's outside the bounds of the question, but just more information.
2) No, not really. Everyone's moved onto other projects, and returning to Cassandra would feel a little like creative necrophilia. Lots of new ideas to play with rather than the old ones. In fact, if *i* was suddenly given a large amount of money to make a development team, Cassandra would no longer be my first choice for something to make.
Onwards!
(Also: None of us are the same person who made Cassandra. As I think I may have said upthread, Cassandra was a direct response to me having a particularly horrific break up with a girlfriend. Other people had break-up poems or songs to write. I tried to channel the emotions into the game, with Charlotte as my clear avatar of insecurity (Which I didn't really entirely understand until having done it for a few months. Most of Charlotte's speeches to her Exs are just gender switched me). The basic theme of Cassandra's staff - expressed by Anna: "First rate at their jobs, distinctly third rate as human beings" - was what bothered me. That's pretty much how I considered myself, and most of my friends and lovers. Cassandra was processing all that. And since I don't feel that way anymore, I feel it'll come across insincere if I kept the same timbre. If we *did* pick it up, it'd have to change to fit our new instincts and loves)
3) Heh. Not without crying a lot. As I said, further into the project, things are increasingly foggy. There was lots of space for improvisations. The second and third missions weren't even completely tied down. I was considering the second being something in Gibraltar, but that would have been entirely up for debate.
4) No, I don't think so. Redeeming a tragic character removes the point of a tragic character. She was always a metaphor for old-skool videogame heroines who were characterless pawns of men with no personality bar. Imagine *being* Lara Croft. That's Emily. The Old Agent.
Like everything, however, we could have changed our mind.
5) Well, I think we're well into the theoretical realm already. I've leaked out most of my favourite stuff already. Ironically, the most concrete stuff - the stuff for the first mission - would mean nothing to you lot, as you hadn't had the context where it happens.
6) Well into the theoretical realm now, though I figured that if we ever reached the point where it started to really matter, we'd have the technical know-how to make it work. Not all of them as sophisticated as the final e-mail pay off thing I was hoping we'd do - I do like the idea of a game, once completed, coming back to you. In Memoriam did some similar stuff, apparently, with "people" mailing you up to a week after it completed to congratulate you. I loved the idea of doing the same, but across months and years. It'd be like recieving a mail from an old friend - which is exactly what I hoped the characters would be by the end.
There's one working example of the sort of puzzle which can only be solved through meta-game actvity. The secret weapon vault - you'd notice a string off passwords to its side. All the old ones. When you returned from the mission, it'd have yesterday's code on. Of course, yesterday was when the mission was, so you could re-load and enter it then, so gaining access to a whole load of impossible weapons.
(Puzzle credit: Was Tim's idea)
I was vaguely thinking of similar puzzles that were *essential* (Example off the top of my head: Have to go into a room to get a password, but going into the room starts a death-trap. Reload, use the password to continue), and then Charlotte (or her friends) trying to work out in the game how she managed to gain the knowledge ("How the fuck did you know that Charlotte? That was a quantum-locked door and you just tapped it out" "I dunno. I just... did"). This would link with the Demiurgic frontier stuff of meeting Narcissus, with perhaps the opportunity to change something in the frontier so when you went back to a previous save game to continue with the next episode, you could come across this message in a bottle from a self who no longer exists.
Once you've created a seed of doubt in the nature of reality, it plays out relatively easily - conversations with people about "What's over that brick wall." "A carpark" "Ever seen it? No - really?". This would have dovetailed with the "real world" plot, with the defeating of the hidden masters leaving an epilogue for a possible escape into reality.
Note: This wasn't actually a Necessary part of the plot. It was something which only the more attentive player would find. If you just liked running around shooting stuff, Charlotte remains an unknowing slave forever. There might have been some meta-commentary there too.
7) Yes. I liked it a lot. I also like lots of Philip K Dick style stuff. I tend to think Nature of Reality plots are videogame's natural narrative focus, which is why we've seen so many of them.
8) Yes, definitely. Damn them all.
KG
Originally Posted by Brem_X_Jones
). Presumably you know the Thief 3 editing tools are out now? Any plans with those?
