What changes would you love to see in another remake?
Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2015 5:57 pm
Incoming lengthy post. Since most Lunar 1 remakes are modeled after SSSC, I'm posting this topic on this board. As much as I love SSSC, there are times when I think they could have gone the extra mile on story changes. The following is a list of changes I would love to see in a hypothetical re-remake.
1. The Black Dragon Fortress/Pao Village: Despite featuring compelling female characters, Lunar 1 was still very much a product of its time, which means like a lot of 90’s JRPGs, it has at least one moment in which it shafts the female characters to give the men motivation to save them. The whole “the sickness only affects your female party members” plot point was terribly contrived and also contradicted by the fact that there were male victims in the village of Pao. Obviously, with gender representation/equality in video games being a hot subject of debate in recent years, this won’t fly so easily in today’s world. Therefore, I would have Kyle and Mia get sick from the Songstress’ song, thus depriving you of a powerful warrior and your better mage. Tempest and Fresca would help Alex, Nash, and Jessica brave the Black Dragon Fortress. Fresca could be a light melee fighter (kind of like Lunar 2’s Jean) who uses a bullwhip. She’d be faster than Kyle, but not as powerful. She could also be the calm, collected type as opposed to Tempest’s hotheaded personality; she could be the one who initially suggests Tempest give Alex a chance to snap Luna out of her trance (before Ghaleon appears and things get really bad). The reason for having Kyle get sick instead of Jessica would be because unlike Kyle she has an emotional connection to Luna and to add some additional conflict to the scene where Luna is hurting the party with her evil song. While Tempest and Fresca are pressuring Alex to kill Luna, Jessica could be the one calling them out on ordering him to do such a terrible thing to his girlfriend (and, by extension, her friend).
2. Further development of platonic relationships: Lunar SSSC focuses a lot on the romantic relationships, but I’d love to see some development of platonic relationships among the party. We know Jessica and Mia are close friends, so I envision them as an example of a harmonious extrovert/introvert friendship, wherein two opposite personalities truly understand and know how to interact with one another without one alienating the other. Also, maybe development of the friendship between Luna and Jessica, since Jessica is the first person that Luna addresses and embraces after she and Alex escape from Althena’s Fortress. Maybe she could be sort of a big sister to Alex as well, seeing as how he skips out on music practice the same way she cuts class? I would love to see Kyle become something of a rowdy but caring big brother figure to Alex, maybe as a result of some friendly sparring matches during downtime. They’re both warriors with strong-willed, assertive girlfriends (especially Jessica), so they would have something in common that would allow them to develop a strong friendship.
3. Plaster-Mel: The way this scene played out always bothered me. Not only does Jessica give in a little too easily to Plaster-Mel’s demand that she join him in death, she doesn’t help Kyle out during the fight. You’d think she’d at least be like “No! My father would never do such a horrible thing!” I would have it so that she at least displays some sort of defiance (“Keep away from me!”) before Kyle breaks the spell and dives into battle. How cool would it be if the two of them could stop quarreling for once and help one another take down a foe? It’d be an awesome moment for both of them, as Kyle would be proving he does care for Jess, and Jess would be standing up to a monster masquerading as her father. This fight's difficulty could be scaled up to pose more of a challenge to two party members if need be.
4. Additional cutscenes of Ghaleon and the Vile Tribe sisters: it’s implied that Xenobia was in love in Ghaleon, so I would be interesting to have cutscenes in-between key parts of the game showing what Ghaleon and the sisters are up to (kind of like how Star Wars: KOTOR would show what the Sith are up to in between key moments of the game). I imagine Xenobia trying to gain Ghaleon’s affections and being brushed-off/ignored because he’s too pre-occupied with his own plans. Or Luna trying to resist Ghaleon (“Just you wait! Alex will save me!” “How could you do this, Ghaleon?!”) as he tries to coerce and eventually brainwash her.
5. Jessica and Mia punch the creeps who are harassing them in Meryod: Something that I think would be funny would be to have Jessica and Mia punching the perverts in Meryod. Picture this: after the party gets separated, you walk into the building where Jessica is and the first thing you hear is her punching a pervert who claims to be “just bein’ furrendly,” only to get dressed down by Jess (“Keep your hands off me, you scumbag!”). When you run into Mia, at first she’s pleading for help. But before you can intervene, she finally loses her cool and unwittingly knocks the creeps into the water. Afterwards, she’d be like, “Did I really just do that?!” and Jess and Nall would be congratulating her on giving the perverts what for. It’d make for a nice warm-up for her giving Nash an epic slap.
6. Ghaleon and co. don’t continue to capture songstresses after discovering that Luna is the one they were searching for: Dumb plot-hole that could be easily written out of the script. Enough said.
7. More dialogue for Alex: a bit of a given. It’s pretty distracting when the majority of his dialogue is “… … …” and characters seem to be making decisions for him (“I'm sure Alex would be glad to help! Let’s go!”). This would be a good opportunity to give Alex more personality. Maybe he's initially the rash type, since Luna claims he tends to jump into situations without thinking?
What are your thoughts on this? What changes would you love to see?
*I think this would certainly less-problematic than the in-game version, where you have two macho guys yelling at you to kill the songstress and "shut her up."
1. The Black Dragon Fortress/Pao Village: Despite featuring compelling female characters, Lunar 1 was still very much a product of its time, which means like a lot of 90’s JRPGs, it has at least one moment in which it shafts the female characters to give the men motivation to save them. The whole “the sickness only affects your female party members” plot point was terribly contrived and also contradicted by the fact that there were male victims in the village of Pao. Obviously, with gender representation/equality in video games being a hot subject of debate in recent years, this won’t fly so easily in today’s world. Therefore, I would have Kyle and Mia get sick from the Songstress’ song, thus depriving you of a powerful warrior and your better mage. Tempest and Fresca would help Alex, Nash, and Jessica brave the Black Dragon Fortress. Fresca could be a light melee fighter (kind of like Lunar 2’s Jean) who uses a bullwhip. She’d be faster than Kyle, but not as powerful. She could also be the calm, collected type as opposed to Tempest’s hotheaded personality; she could be the one who initially suggests Tempest give Alex a chance to snap Luna out of her trance (before Ghaleon appears and things get really bad). The reason for having Kyle get sick instead of Jessica would be because unlike Kyle she has an emotional connection to Luna and to add some additional conflict to the scene where Luna is hurting the party with her evil song. While Tempest and Fresca are pressuring Alex to kill Luna, Jessica could be the one calling them out on ordering him to do such a terrible thing to his girlfriend (and, by extension, her friend).
2. Further development of platonic relationships: Lunar SSSC focuses a lot on the romantic relationships, but I’d love to see some development of platonic relationships among the party. We know Jessica and Mia are close friends, so I envision them as an example of a harmonious extrovert/introvert friendship, wherein two opposite personalities truly understand and know how to interact with one another without one alienating the other. Also, maybe development of the friendship between Luna and Jessica, since Jessica is the first person that Luna addresses and embraces after she and Alex escape from Althena’s Fortress. Maybe she could be sort of a big sister to Alex as well, seeing as how he skips out on music practice the same way she cuts class? I would love to see Kyle become something of a rowdy but caring big brother figure to Alex, maybe as a result of some friendly sparring matches during downtime. They’re both warriors with strong-willed, assertive girlfriends (especially Jessica), so they would have something in common that would allow them to develop a strong friendship.
3. Plaster-Mel: The way this scene played out always bothered me. Not only does Jessica give in a little too easily to Plaster-Mel’s demand that she join him in death, she doesn’t help Kyle out during the fight. You’d think she’d at least be like “No! My father would never do such a horrible thing!” I would have it so that she at least displays some sort of defiance (“Keep away from me!”) before Kyle breaks the spell and dives into battle. How cool would it be if the two of them could stop quarreling for once and help one another take down a foe? It’d be an awesome moment for both of them, as Kyle would be proving he does care for Jess, and Jess would be standing up to a monster masquerading as her father. This fight's difficulty could be scaled up to pose more of a challenge to two party members if need be.
4. Additional cutscenes of Ghaleon and the Vile Tribe sisters: it’s implied that Xenobia was in love in Ghaleon, so I would be interesting to have cutscenes in-between key parts of the game showing what Ghaleon and the sisters are up to (kind of like how Star Wars: KOTOR would show what the Sith are up to in between key moments of the game). I imagine Xenobia trying to gain Ghaleon’s affections and being brushed-off/ignored because he’s too pre-occupied with his own plans. Or Luna trying to resist Ghaleon (“Just you wait! Alex will save me!” “How could you do this, Ghaleon?!”) as he tries to coerce and eventually brainwash her.
5. Jessica and Mia punch the creeps who are harassing them in Meryod: Something that I think would be funny would be to have Jessica and Mia punching the perverts in Meryod. Picture this: after the party gets separated, you walk into the building where Jessica is and the first thing you hear is her punching a pervert who claims to be “just bein’ furrendly,” only to get dressed down by Jess (“Keep your hands off me, you scumbag!”). When you run into Mia, at first she’s pleading for help. But before you can intervene, she finally loses her cool and unwittingly knocks the creeps into the water. Afterwards, she’d be like, “Did I really just do that?!” and Jess and Nall would be congratulating her on giving the perverts what for. It’d make for a nice warm-up for her giving Nash an epic slap.
6. Ghaleon and co. don’t continue to capture songstresses after discovering that Luna is the one they were searching for: Dumb plot-hole that could be easily written out of the script. Enough said.
7. More dialogue for Alex: a bit of a given. It’s pretty distracting when the majority of his dialogue is “… … …” and characters seem to be making decisions for him (“I'm sure Alex would be glad to help! Let’s go!”). This would be a good opportunity to give Alex more personality. Maybe he's initially the rash type, since Luna claims he tends to jump into situations without thinking?
What are your thoughts on this? What changes would you love to see?
*I think this would certainly less-problematic than the in-game version, where you have two macho guys yelling at you to kill the songstress and "shut her up."