-The theme of this area is ‘hospital’. The sick and injured of Alterna came to this place for medical care-- in the worst cases, their bodies were frozen, in the hope that they might be revived in the future. A future that, ultimately, never came…
-There are lots of medical tools lying around: you can give Smallfry a checkup if you like. ^^ You don’t know much about Salmonid physiology, but he seems to be in good health.
-The outpatient garden is a great place to relax. It seems other animals have started living in Alterna too~
-In the hospital itself, you can find a biometric monitor to put on, and through it gain access to your ‘Wellness File’: a physiological/emotional observation record maintained by O.R.C.A. It will allow you to view Agent 3’s reactions to certain events and features of the environment– explore and interact with as much of Alterna as you can to fill the file~.
-In a lower collapsed floor of the hospital, you can still find some occupied cryogenic tanks. According to O.R.C.A., these people cannot be revived– energy imbalances as Alterna was destroyed disrupted their storage conditions, and at this point they have essentially been mummified. Still, the idea of waking them up and talking to them is interesting to think about.
-Wellness File ###: Elevated heart rate, elevated adrenaline levels detected
Neurological signals indicate recognition and attention. Patient ‘Agent 3’ may be excited, surprised, or mildly disturbed.
-The hospital lobby contains a ‘crystal mirror’ that shows you your desires: happy scenes with trusted friends, playing on repeat. It’s a little embarrassing to watch, so you try not to hang around it.
-Wellness File ###: Muscle tension detected
Neurological signals indicate evaluation and memory access. Patient ‘Agent 3’ may be ashamed, conflicted, or yearning.
Just messing around with the ‘Were-3’ concept from this post– in the “canon” of this AU, it was never Grizz’s intention for New Agent 3 to get fuzzified specifically; in fact you could even argue that he feels sorry for them, accidentally infecting themselves the way they do…
So of course my very next thought was “well, what if he DID do that to them on purpose?” ^^ It’s interesting to think about~.
Although, even in the actual canon, it’s a pretty safe bet that Mr. Grizz was doing experiments like this on at least the Octarians (even if they didn’t look quite this graphic). I assume someone had to be force-fuzzified to make sure the ooze would actually work, before he started mass-producing the stuff. :T
Anyway, even though this is just for funzies, I’m still tagging it #re_rise because that full ‘Were-3’ design will probably-definitely get used in the actual story of the AU. Sometime later. ;)
A recent idea for #re_rise that I’m surprised that I didn’t come up with earlier– I think the Squid Sisters would make a much better ‘misunderstanding boss fight’ than Deep Cut would. ^^
Of course, your actual fight would be with the Captain (callback to the Agent 3 fight from Octo Expansion~), as Callie and Marie toss in bombs and sniper shots with increasing intensity as the battle progresses.
This fight ensues when you finally run into them in Alterna Space Center, looking quite fuzzy and suspicious at this point in the game. ^^; Deep Cut is elsewhere and unable to assist you in the battle, but they can at least give you hints and advice through comms while they rush to catch up with you.
After it’s all over, and the two idol groups meet face to face, it’s through their dialogue that you finally learn what’s going on. Deep Cut chastises the Squid Sisters for thinking you could’ve had anything to do with their grandfather’s disappearance, and they sheepishly apologize for attacking you (even though the battle was pretty exciting~). From here on out, they join you as guides as you ascend the launchpad.
…Big Man designs are really difficult. ⚆‿⚆; And after all the time I spent just constructing this outfit, the color scheme threw me for another loop– see, even though Big Man’s character color is usually red, since I already used so much red on Shiver’s outfit; it would make the group look lopsided…so I decided to expand on my original rainbow idea, not placing emphasis on any color in particular. This way he’s like a “neutral” backdrop for the girls, which I assume was the intention with the canon designs.
Anyway, about his role in the AU…besides all the things I’ve said here and there in earlier posts, I think it would be neat if Big Man was a bit of an Alternan history buff; the Deep Cut member *most* interested in actually learning about its lost civilization. As he’s the last one you run into, you’ll have unlocked most of the map by the time you get to him, so he could help you out with finding more Nostalgic Devices and 100%-ing your collectibles, if you’re into that. ^^ Maybe use his special boss-fight ink to help you retrace your steps as you navigate, something like that.
So, with this done…I think I don’t have any new character designs left. ‘_’ I do plan to draw Octavio and Cuttlefish later (fingers crossed) but I doubt I’ll change much about their looks. After this, it’s just Happiness Research Lab, and then on to the rocket and the end of the story. Weird to think this AU might be over and done with this year… ^^;
-The theme of this area is ‘childhood’. This was a place to gather for the younger citizens of Alterna, and the innocent remnants of their lives are scattered about.
-You can find a bicycle to ride on the shores of the island. Smallfry loves to tag along in the basket. ^^
-O.R.C.A.’s first terminal is found here. Once you have collected three Golden Eggs from the first section of the underground laboratory, O.R.C.A. will detect their energy on you and grant you access to the first few of its files, as well as the rest of the lab spaces in the area. Its hope is that you will continue to collect energy to ‘reawaken’ Alterna, and keep its legacy alive by learning its workings and history.
-Shiver, along with the rest of Deep Cut, had no idea that O.R.C.A. existed until now. But since it’s opening up facilities where they can find more weapons, supplies, and Golden Eggs, they suggest you do whatever it wants so it’ll keep helping you. ^^
-The number of Golden Eggs you can collect is fixed: 3 from clearing each lab space, and 33 from defeating each King Salmonid boss. In this way, the number in your possession acts as a benchmark for your progress.
However, the number of Power Eggs you can collect is unlimited, just like in the real game. You can search the overworld and return to lab spaces repeatedly to gather as many as you want. These are used to access/retry certain challenging levels, to feed Smallfry and clear Fuzzy Ooze, and to activate Nostalgic Devices.
-A Nostalgic Device is usually a mundane electrical appliance, toy, or piece of gadgetry, reminiscent of some aspect of life in Alterna. O.R.C.A. will reward you with special files and locker decorations for finding and activating them, and the Devices themselves will often lead you to Power Egg caches or Sunken Scrolls.
-When you look at certain locations from a far enough distance, you may see a large shadowy figure interacting with whatever Nostalgic Device is hidden there. If you’re having trouble finding any Devices, keep an eye out for that shadow while you explore Alterna!
…Ever since I drew this comic, I think I’ve accepted ‘Mr. Grizz eats people’ as a personal headcanon, to the point where I sometimes forget that he does not actually do that. ^^; But who cares; it’s fun for me to think about~
(very long salty rant ahead (+new Alterna backstory, though! ^^;))
So I've always thought Alterna’s backstory, despite being presented as a grand mystery that’s definitely worth fighting through 90% of the missions to uncover in its entirety…was kinda stupid. :/ I’m all for humanity destroying itself for ridiculous reasons, but trying to launch a rocket in an enclosed space?? Are you serious…? o_O
How could the Alternans devote such immense amounts of time and energy to something like that without once thinking, “hey, uh…burning metric tons of high-energy fuel inside of our flammable safety dome might be a little unsafe, idk”.
And it shouldn’t even have been necessary! DX I mean, if they were able to build a dome like that in the first place, wouldn’t they have some sort of scaffolding or elevator system they could use to reach the top and just literally climb out if they wanted to leave that badly??
Had Alterna existed for so long that the technology used to create it was lost to time (seeing as it’s implied that Alterna was destroyed by its SECOND generation, I doubt it)...??
Or, did the writers suddenly realize that coming up with pseudo-scientific lore that explains why inkfishes resemble humanity is wholly unnecessary and adds nothing to the themes of Splatoon…but it was too late to rework the concept, so they just finished off the story with whatever-the-heck and called it a day. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I guess we’ll never know...
Anyway, my version of Alterna’s backstory starts with a similar premise: humans invented crystal thingies that can manifest people’s desires and whatnot…but this alone caused conflict that eventually doomed Alterna.
People began to make their own interpretations of other people’s desires, judging and condemning them for how they manifested. They began treating the crystals’ reflections as compulsory measures of morality and worth, rather than simple expressions of the human heart that exist outside of a good/bad binary.
Alterna’s leaders envisioned themselves creating a society of ‘pure truth’, free from the destructive power of deceit and subterfuge…all the while ignoring the destructive power of paranoia and exclusion that they immersed themselves in.
Exclusion escalated to oppression, which eventually spawned rebellion: plans were made to create a rocket that would allow a select group of ‘undesirables’ to escape Alterna for the surface world, destroying the integrity of their safe haven in the process. Despite not knowing what was waiting for them out there, they were willing to take the risk in the name of freedom. Eventually, this secret plan was revealed to the public, resulting in Alterna’s first and last civil war.
As the Alternans began to fight and kill each other, the crystals were overwhelmed with the unprecedented ferocity of their clashing desires-- “a violent and terrible chain reaction ensued”, and the energy within them exploded outward. The sky dome, still filled with the beautiful blue of the peoples’ wishes for peace and happiness, came crumbling down, raining fire and shrapnel upon Alterna. The still-poisoned air of the outside world flowed freely into the cavern, ensuring the eventual death of anyone who might have survived.
…Then the crystals fell in the ocean, the sea creatures were imbued with human hopes and dreams, yadda yadda, all that’s basically the same as the canon too. And although I still think it’s unneeded (the mere concept of a bygone humanity in Splatoon carries plenty of weight without all this “lore”, imo), at least now the story isn’t stupid!
It speaks to the way humans actually treat each other, and blames their downfall on their long-established bad habits of cruelty and callousness, rather than morally-neutral traits like ambition and pursuit of the unknown (I would never have expected “curiosity killed the cat” as the lesson of the day from Splatoon, of all franchises. o_O This IS the same game that celebrates individual expression and forging your own path, right…?)
Anyway…I’m gonna be using elements of this rewritten backstory and the theme of “manifesting desires” to flesh out the final boss encounter and Agent 3’s subtle character arc. So please look forward to that~
Skipping forward a bit in this re-concept, just because I can~ (loooong post ahead)
So one of the many things I found underwhelming about Return of the Mammalians is the lack of villainous impact Mr. Grizz has on his own story.
For starters, he’s straight up absent from 80% of it. =/ Just a vaguely threatening disembodied voice that does weak comedy bits with Cap’n Cuttlefish from time to time…and that’s basically it until we face him in the final battle.
The worst thing he’s responsible for in the story (as in, a successful act we have to contend with, rather than a work-in-progress that we interrupt) is dehydrating Cuttlefish…which is very temporary and played for laughs immediately afterwards. We don’t even get the opportunity to engage with this “tragedy” by actively rescuing the Cap’n in gameplay, we just suddenly find his body during a cutscene.
Compare this to Commander Tartar manipulating the player and lying directly to their face throughout the game, attempting to kill the player during the reveal of its treachery in one of the most memorable scenes of the entire series, brainwashing a former protagonist into fighting the player, and then attempting to destroy an entire city while quietly confessing that it murdered thousands of victims just to get to this point.
I’ll let you guess which one of these antagonists feels like a genuine threat, and which one just feels like a disappointment. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now, I don’t mind Mr. Grizz being less violent and deranged than Commander Tartar…the two have different personalities and slightly different goals, and anyway a body count isn’t really necessary to be a convincing villain.
But I DO mind him being so totally uninvolved, despite being a character that we already knew and interacted with beforehand. Like, at the very least…talk to the player. o_O Care about the player. Do something to interfere with the player sometime before the last minute!
The fact that Grizz just doesn’t give a damn about our existence for most of the campaign is baffling from a writer’s standpoint, and heartbreaking from a Grizz-fan’s standpoint. ;_; Notice me, Kuma-san!!
…Anyway, there’s a million ways to remedy this, because it’s such a simple and obvious problem that really shouldn’t exist. ^^; And the one I chose for #re_rise (besides having Grizz haunt the game like an ever-present specter, as explained here) is one of my old tried-and-true favorites: using the villain to parallel the protagonist.
Basically, both characters are lonely at heart. Agent 3 left home for the Splatlands in search of a “fresh beginning”, after spending most of their life feeling like they never fit in anywhere. Throughout the story, we get subtle clues that what they want most is belonging and friendship…which they’re clearly discovering through their interactions with Deep Cut and Smallfry, although it’s not until the climax of the final battle that they can truly believe in it and accept it.
And of course, Mr. Grizz lost his home and entire civilization, and even in the midst of a thriving new one (that he actively engages with through his corporation…!) he’s apparently such a massive bigot that he doesn’t consider it worthy of his company. ^^; Fish-people do not count to him, thus his loneliness is self-inflicted and intensified. He believes his only recourse is to transform the world back into something he can accept.
These parallels, plus the desire-manifesting powers of Alterna’s crystals (discussed in this post) eventually brings the two characters to an understanding of sorts. Without having to exchange words, they can see and consider the similarities of their innermost feelings.
This doesn’t have much of an effect on Grizz, outside of something he might muse about while Agent 3 ascends the launchpad (and maybe quietly internalize as proof that fish-people have feelings too, just to give his last-second change of heart at least one leg to stand on).
But it weighs heavily on Agent 3, especially since they’re being physically changed by their adventure in a way that makes these parallels even more relevant…yes, I’m finally gonna talk about what I actually drew. ^^
My idea was that spending too much time around Fuzzy Ooze will affect you even if you don’t touch it (i.e. through splashes/aerosols), just to a lesser degree. And since Agent 3 was the first to actually enter the underground lab spaces and spends more time fighting there than anyone else, they’ve had an unprecedented amount of secondhand exposure to it.
Through O.R.C.A.’s files, they can understand why this mild fuzzification is happening to them, and that it may not be reversible, although they press on anyway (I’d like to imply that they’re willing to ignore it to impress Deep Cut~). But Grizz’s offhand comments make them realize that they may be unintentionally setting themselves up to be cast aside again, slowly turning into a repulsive mutant monster that no one will want to be around. The only one of their kind in the world, just like a certain Ursine Anomaly…and if they succeed in stopping Grizz’s plan, that’s all they’ll ever be.
…On the other hand, if they were to sit back and let him fuzzify the world, then…no, they couldn’t do that. They…wouldn’t…
