Sacred Seasons 2 Tutorial and Gameplay Tech Demo Footage
Did you know that in Sacred Seasons 2, an original tutorial existed that introduced players to the mechanics of the game in a much more lore-friendly way. This original tutorial was cut and replaced with the well-remembered "Stella's Spiders" quest. In the original version, clearing the spiders for Stella was just another quest you received later.
For fun, I wanted to see about restoring this original tutorial, which has been lost to time for well over a decade, maybe even fifteen years. All the original assets, including the tutorial variant of the map, the quests and the dialog, all was preserved so I was effectively able to reconstruct it like a digital jigsaw puzzle. The result was so fun I felt like I wanted to share.
This tech demo goes through the flow of the tutorial including some quality of life improvements, including a treasure chest quest featuring a mini-boss, all to help players learn more about the game and the mechanics of exploring. I also wanted players to learn that some fights are hard but not impossible!
Back when the original tutorial was in the game, quest dials (the spinning circles underneath an NPC to indicate an available quest) did not exist. I wanted to make the restored tutorial feel just like it had never gone, so I broke down the original assets for quest markers, and reconstructed them along with remastered name tags that are auto-generated from the NPC name. The result looks near-on identical to the original, just sharper.
You'll see from the tech demo that battles also work. I am very pleased with the current state of battles. It took a lot of work to get them in this state, including effectively reverse engineering the damage formulas and incorporating status effects, row damage, weapon damage, weapon proficiencies, season proficiencies, guild (for later) bonuses, and more. Right now, in its current state, the results feel so similar I would be confident in mistaking it for the real thing.
Because I restored this version of the tutorial, that obviously means the first quest in the game is no longer "Stella's Spiders". In the original game, this quest still featured, it just wasn't the first one you played. As a result, I have re-wired it in along with a brand new quest that links the tutorial with Stella, called "Welcome to Plimouth". This is granted by Lewis, who appears temporarily at the start of Plimouth and whose job it is to guide the player to find Stella to obtain their next quest.
Oh, and I also joined Plimouth with Plimouth West, as you can see in the video. I figured the plan for SS2 originally was for these areas to be connected, but they weren't due to the limitations of Flash games at the time. No more running to the Season Shrine and running back to the main town, for fear of missing out on any chat going on! I'd be interested to hear people's opinions of this.
Until the player finds and helps Stella, most of Plimouth's residents will be wary of the player and will not interact much or give quests. This is intentional, and I hope will be an example of enhanced storytelling. The player will be singularly focused on helping one or two people until they learn the mechanics of the game, and dungeons. After which, they'll earn the trust of the town and be able to accept more and more quests. My hope is this will give the player a real sense of progression.
I finish the tech demo by running through the "Explorer's Badge" quest with Lewis, which is another restored quest, whereby you had to complete Lewis' task to get clearance outside of Plimouth and explore the Farmlands. I also gated the Sewers behind this check, to keep the player on task.
I hope you enjoy watching the tech demo, and especially things like the restored battle backgrounds in combat that mostly went unused in the original game (I love the one in the Sewers, personally).
Please note, this is a hobby-driven tech demo. At this point in time no server exists, no playable build exists. I currently have no plans to launch this in any fashion, which I state to manage people's expectations. I don't even know if I could get it that far as my life is very busy right now. With that being said, I'm having a lot of fun with seeing things progress in the engine. If I ever end up being able to provide another update, I will certainly do so.
All assets and intellectual property here belong of course to Emerald City Games, who I thank for providing a wonderful source of fun in my childhood that I still look back on fondly to this day, and is the inspiration behind this video. Music used was created by Kevin Macleod and is used under the creative commons license.