Part 27: Ezra's Fate

Our Contribution (The Foys' Theme)



: And you'd think that, after all this time, I'd have come up with an answer. I've had over a year to think about what it is I want to do with my life; you, Isol, and Dad, and Mister Houston, you all sound like you know exactly what it is you want to do next.



: I don't know. To this day, I don't know what it is I want to do with my life.

: I could get my degree in robotics; I could take this peace time as an opportunity to explore and expand my horizons past Subsection Four, or even Galilei; I could retire early and maybe find a new career path, or maybe just take up a hobby or something...

: But if you ask me... I'm okay with that. I'm okay with not knowing.

: I'm in my mid-twenties. I didn't have the opportunity to live my life as a teenager because of the war. There was no time to play sports, or sign up for a school musical or whatever – as soon as the war started, I needed to pick a trade that could help us win.

: Not knowing what it is you want to do going forward is supposed to be one of the most exciting, fulfilling parts of a person's life, and I had to pass that over entirely.

: Saying 'I don't know' and then figuring it out later is... me doing my best to fill in those gaps that the Riklid left in my life.

: I just wish Mom was here to be a part of it.



: What she wanted was for us to live our lives. She didn't hesitate to enlist after the Riklid invaded. Even a year out, I think it's natural to still be a little confused about what it is we want from ourselves in the meantime – we were all so hyper-focused on the war.

: She fought so that you could have all the time you needed. There's no rush. We're all figuring it out, bit-by-bit.

: ... Thanks, Dad.

Good on you all for not getting on Ezra's case. She may not be cut out for robotics, but if there's something she's got, it's the ability to see opportunity and follow it to its potential.

: ... Anyway.

: I believe we came here to plant some flowers.



: Would you like to do the honours, Ezra?

: I'd love to.







: I think about her every night, so, there's not really anything new for me to share with her here.





: You're a hero to Earthlings and Ghians alike. It's an honour to know you and your kin.

: There isn't a lot I can say in your language to really articulate her worth to Earth and Ghi together. I don't think the shoots are adequate, either, honestly.

: Heh, it's okay. She'd understand.







: In that sense, Eden was more than a pilot to me. I was compiled on Mars; there are many dozens of programmers listed in the comments of my code that attribute themselves to my creation.

: And yet, it is Eden that I...

: ... that I personally attribute my existence to. My programmers created me; it was Eden that had given me the opportunity to become what – or, perhaps, who – I am today.

: Well, if you'd like to pay your respects, you two, now would be the time.

: ...

: ... We do not know what it is we are to do.

: Just... tell her that you appreciate what she's done for you, and that you think about her sometimes. Or, you... process images of her occasionally, or something. But do it in your own words; don't just repeat what I said.

: Eden is not present.

: Just pretend that she is. Pretend that tombstone is her.

: Eden Foy...

: Without your efforts – or... perhaps it is better to say, without your compassion – I would not exist as I am today. In the two-thousand-seven-hundred-eleven days since my last due date for formatting, I have become more than a program.

: The word 'gratitude' is defined as being appreciative for the kindness one shows toward another. I do not want to prematurely conclude that I am capable of emotions by insinuating that it is gratitude that I feel toward you.

: ... But... all present would agree that you would come to that conclusion yourself.

: Did... did Kirby just try to make a joke?

: Kirby and I possess nearly the same level of intelligence, and we likewise share many of the same sentiments.

: Through what others may have defined as 'insubordination' in repeatedly missing your due dates to have us submitted for formatting, you have given us the opportunity to experience life... or something adjacent to it.

: All others present have discussed their intentions and goals for the future; Kirby and I have no such aspirations as of yet.

: It is because of you that that may change one day.

: Thank you for this opportunity, Ezra.

: You and your mother continually showed compassion towards what you once described as 'a machine. Some lines of code.'

: You had asked us earlier if we could define ourselves as 'alive', and we answered that we are not. We are surviving, but we are not alive.

: If the day comes that we are able to answer differently, it will be because of you, Eden, and Gabriel.

: ...

May your growth and learning continue to flourish, AIs. Just... don't go getting ideas of replacing humanity and Ghiankind, okay?





: Not really, but it's still something I'd just like to keep between us, at least for now.

: Sure thing, Ezra.

: Gabriel!

: Yes, Nathan?

: Ezra, Isol and I were all going to head into the city after this. There's a ritzy restaurant that specializes in food from the eastern continents of Earth that we wanted to try.

: Would you like to join us?



: I may be able to fit it into my schedule, yes.

: Perfect!

: We'll get started, Ezra. Don't take too long to catch up.

: I think I know what it is you want to say to her.

: Take as long as you need.

*The soundtrack fades away.*



: I'm pretty sure Isol's the one.

: I just wanted to apologize about, you know, not giving you the grandkids you wanted.

: I know that you know it, and you don't need to hear it, but, I love you. Sometimes, I just want to say it.

: I think about you every day. I miss you a lot. But it's getting easier. It still hurts sometimes, I won't lie, but it's getting easier.

: I think that's everything I wanted to say.

: I'll see you next time.

The Future We'll Make







And that is Star-Crosst, everyone! I hope you enjoyed this short but sweet journey into the life of a war survivor in the far future. May Ezra and Isol live a long, happy life, as well as yourselves. Thank you for your readership and participation!

* * *

An Interview with the Game's Writer

What was your role in Star-Crosst's development?

I was the writer for the game. Most of the creative decisions went through me as well, including signing off on character designs and sprites, background art, music and sound effects. I also co-directed the voice-acting.

Have you ever been part of a game design team before? What did it feel like to work on Star-Crosst with the other creative staff?

I've been a part of other creative group projects, but nothing to this level. I have not been a part of 'game design' insofar as a visual novel really involves 'game design,' haha.

Working on Star-Crosst with other talent wasn't anything I wasn't already used to, honestly. We were a small team of only about six people: myself, the producer, some artists, one musician, one programmer, and the voice-acting talent and the voice-acting co-director. A project this small felt more like a hobby project, or even a school project, but with money involved.

Although, while I'm on the topic of voice acting: the producer knew a guy in the business, and he knew how to put out a call for voice actors in the circles that he's in. It included some particularly top-name talent, including Mike Pollock (Doctor Eggman) auditioning for Gabriel and Tamara Ryan (Professor Bellis from Pokemon Masters EX; Android 18 from Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super) for Eden Foy. I was definitely star-struck by some of the names that auditioned to voice my characters and it was difficult to turn some of the bigger names down.

As a writer, what elements of storytelling do you find come easiest to you? What elements come hardest?

I feel my personal strength comes from character writing and character studies. How a person would react to a given situation and putting myself in their position to better realize it and put that reaction onto paper. Which is a good thing for a visual novel, particularly one as character-focused as Star-Crosst, but, unfortunately, I feel my biggest weakness is actually in my plots. I'm good at characters, but not as good at over-arching stories. I've written more than a handful, but in reviewing my own work, it's always clear where I had an easy time and where I tended to struggle, and although Star-Crosst had editors to help review my work, it's not really different here.

Please explain your process when you are writing a character or drafting a story idea. Do you come up with a general concept, like "I want to write a tough-talking gangster learning to show tenderness" and go from there, or do you plan out the story's general track and come up with characters that would explore themes you have in mind?

Stories and characters are organic things, just like you and me. They're not really something that you meticulously plan out and adhere rigidly to from the word 'go'. You can sit down and write a general outline for a plot and the particular beats you'd like to hit as the story progresses, but you're not always going to stick with it all the way through because the characters you've written would have driven the story in a direction you didn't anticipate.

In Star-Crosst's case, we started with the setting - sci-fi Solarpunk, set off-Earth (a setting that we didn't take nearly enough advantage of, if you ask me), and I was given the stipulation to try and write something a bit shorter. In the outline that I wrote for myself for chapter 2, all it says is that a press release happens midway through the day and it gives a general idea of how the characters would all react to it. I didn't even stick with what I wrote very well - for example, Nikita had a much tamer reaction to it then what I wound up writing.

To answer your question, the 'process' is very bare-bones at first, and the story fleshes itself out as time progresses and work is done. I have a setting, some story beats, and then I have 'the human girl-next-door that has established history with the protagonist', 'the unreasonably pretty boy', and 'the alien'. That's how they started, and they evolved into what you see in-game as the writing progressed.

Regarding character dialogue, do you "get in their head" and let your dialogue flow as you go and surprise yourself as to where the story goes when the character "comes alive," or do you try to stick to a predetermined outcome you drafted?

As I explained in the previous answer, I do the former. Characters don't just pop-out perfectly coherently and fully-fleshed. I may have written them, but I was introduced to them at the same rate as everyone else.

How did Star-Crosst's story and setting begin? Did you already know you wanted to make a romantic story with themes of loss and hopes for the future, or did it start as something entirely different?

The producer - the one with the money - messaged me on Discord and said "I want to make a sci-fi romance VN and I want you to write it" and I said "okay". We first decided on what kind of setting we wanted: dystopian, post-apocalyptic, idyllic, whatever. I always preferred to think that a better future is possible, so I wanted to write something with a Solarpunk setting (specifically inspired by the 'Good Future' segments in the game Sonic CD, where technology is integrated into nature and they both work harmonically).

As for the theme of 'loss', honestly, I decided on having Ezra's mom having fallen in battle in order to give the story some conflict. There isn't a story without conflict, after all; if I didn't do that, the 'struggle' would come down to which character to romance, with no stakes and no way to stress the characters in uncomfortable scenarios. A very early outline had Eden come home instead of Gabriel, but I had a hard time progressing the plot further from there, so I looked over the outline and asked myself 'where can I fuck this up?'

Who was your favorite character to write, and why?

You might as well ask me which of my kids is my favourite.

But since I know you're after a specific answer: I gave Isol her weird accent specifically to test myself. I was inspired by the novel Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright, which doesn't include the letter E in the entire 50,000 word story. Isol doesn't have lips, so she can't say any word that includes the letters B, V, P, M, or F, which isn't quite on the same level as Wright's Gadsby, but, you know, baby steps. I was very specific and read and reread Isol's content over and over to avoid any instance of her saying any word that uses The Forbidden Letters, and seeing her say any of them in the finished product (there's at least one) really annoys me.

This, though, is not to say that Isol was my favourite character to write. It was actually quite difficult and annoying. But it really helped her development as a character and made her much more interesting than if I had just written her as 'Carla, but a bipedal lizard'.

Which of the three romanceable characters would you consider to be the "canon" choice for Ezra, if any?

Probably Carla.

Which character would you personally want to date, not necessarily being one of the three romanceables?

Isol. I'm into that.

I am not alone in having wanted more time to spend with the romanceable characters during the story's progress, perhaps in having more days to date them, or even in choosing to not go on any dates or end with any of them at the end of the story. Would you have wanted to write more content if you could, or do you feel that the amount of time spent with the characters was enough for the story's theme and pacing to get through to the player?

I'm personally comfortable with the pacing and structure of the story as it is. Adding even half a day extra to the story would mean that something else would need to occur to keep the story from stalling out, which would have a ripple effect across the rest of the story, where decisions would effect future dialogue. If I don't - if I add a half a day somewhere in the story and don't do anything to progress the overall plot - then that's filler.

If I wrote, say, an entire extra chapter that had the same options and development as chapter 2 - choose two characters to spend the day with, and plot-relevent events happen in both halves of the day - then that'd increase the wordcount of the entire story by roughly one third, at minimum, and that whole extra chapter is going to have knock-on effects in later chapters as well that'd further increase bloat.

Star-Crosst originally started as a very different kind of story: something more akin to a spy thriller with romance elements. That draft made it to 100,000 words and a year of development time before it was cut for scope and we started from scratch. I was specifically instructed to keep Star-Crosst trim and slim to avoid this issue a second time, and I'm happy with what we've put out rather than bloat the story with content just for the sake of having more content.

Fun fact: Carla is the only surviving character from that initial spy-thriller draft, and she was originally someone very different: a nurse that moonlighted as a punk rocker. Some of her early concept art is on the blog page for Steam.

Did you draw on any personal experience for the characters' struggles of loss, uncertain futures, or dreams for themselves? If not, how did you approach these themes to get an idea of writing them realistically?

I don't know; I just asked myself 'how would I handle this situation if I was Carla? How would I handle this situation if I was Nikita?' I'm not a woman, or an exceptionally pretty man, or an alien lizard, nor am I a robitics engineer or a software engineer or a military commander, so if you think I'm writing these characters realistically, then I guess I'm just good at faking it.

What is one thing about Star-Crosst you would change to make it better?

I'd give it more time and staff. A lot of the problems it has - particularly the ending credits - are because it ran out of time and didn't have the manpower to do some of the things I'd like to see done.

Do you have a game you'd like to design in the future? What resources or people would you need to make it a reality?

I have a few ideas, sure. One is another visual novel and the other is an RPG. I'm a writer and I can learn some basic coding skills - I have a little bit of experience working with Twine, a story-based game engine (think of those books that say 'if your character does this, go to page X', etc) - but my biggest hurdle would be most other assets. I'd need to hire someone capable of making art and music for me. Star-Crosst was just a visual novel and our team was very small, but our budget was in the tens of thousands. Game making isn't cheap!

You wished to remain anonymous, but if someone wanted to hire you to work on their game as a writer or creative director, how could they reach you?

I mean, my name is in the end credits. It's not going to be hard to look me up on Twitter.

Do you have any last words for the readers of this Let's Play regarding Star-Crosst, their participation, or your work?

Just that I hope they enjoyed it, despite some of the warts.