Arbiter & The Story Arc That Never Was

So, for the first behind-the-scenes glimpse, I thought I'd talk about Arbiter and its origins in Devourer of Worlds.

So, with that in mind...where did Arbiter come from? To answer that question, I need to go back in time a bit and explain some of the structure of Devourer of Worlds.

Despite its status as a quest, there is an outline for Devourer. I've mentioned this before, but in order to build the world for the quest I had to fill in a lot of history and supporting structure. I needed to know who Salem was, who Ozpin was, what happened in the past of Remnant and how it affected the present day. I needed to know what type of people lived in Atlas and Vacuo and Menagerie. So I plotted and I planned, and from that groundwork eventually an outline was born. A sort of general roadmap of Devourer; a collection of "shatterpoints" around which much of the story might swing. Not guaranteed moments, but ones that would be specifically either met or avoided. The Battle for Beacon, as an example, or the Breach.

And among those moments was time travel. It was obvious that, as a Chrono Trigger analogue, I'd both be expected to and want to include it in the story. But, of course, making time travel work in interactive fiction required some work on my part, so I started planning it early and thought about it often. How might it come about? Who might be travelling? Where might they end up? These questions occurred to me constantly.

And, originally, I'd planned for multiple destinations. Over time, as the quest progressed and I refined my outline, that was distilled into three distinct options: the Days of Ciel, the Faunus Rebellion, and the Grimm Future. In fact, originally I'd planned to run a meta vote at the moment of time travel. To ask the thread: "What time period would you like to see?" (With vague titles and/or descriptions, naturally.)

But...as the vote loomed ever closer, I realized that I didn't believe in the idea. I didn't think it would work the way I wanted it to. Giving the fall through time a vote would rob it of its punch, I thought. So I asked myself: which time period is the most important to the story? If I could only include one, which would it be?

The answer is probably obvious. So, in the end, Blake fell into the time of the Kingdom of Ciel, rather than being granted a tour in a different time. And...over time, as things progressed, I realized how much of a headache having one past time causing ripples in the present was. Having multiple different time periods, all causing their own timeline ripples and eddies? I realized how ambitious something like that was. Could I manage it in a static story? Yeah, I think I could.

Could I manage it in a quest where I couldn't be sure what ripples would come about?

No. No, I don't think so.

So, in the end, the Faunus Rebellion plotline was axed. And, later, it was retooled into a similar-but-distinct idea, crossed with the idea of Devourer!Blake finding herself in the Canon Remnant.

Originally, the Rebellion side-quest was intended to involve the players in the war and allowing them to cause ripple effects throughout it, up to and including the rescue of Adam Taurus' parents. This, in turn, would have caused Revised-Timeline Adam to be more Well-Intentioned and less Extremist, leading to him betraying Cinder during the Battle and becoming an option for a potential recruit further down the line.

On the plus side, I don't have to try to write him as an anti- or fallen hero, which would have been challenging considering how many people absolutely loathe him (deservedly so) after canon and what happened in the Battle.

So, that's how Arbiter came to be. If this kind of thing is interesting to you, be sure to let me know - I'm still refining what it should mean to be a patron, which means I need to know what you want to see as a reward or an exclusive.