Well, okay. You know how you got little glimpses of things happening that Arthur wasn't around to see, and you could control everyone involved in a fight that was on his side. That's because you weren't playing as Arthur.
-What Was Going On with Marion?-This requires a bit of explanation. First of all, everyone playing the game was already dead and was fighting for their very existence. They were all told this, along with the fact that the winning team would receive a prize, by an "angel" before the game began and they were assigned to teams to wage war on one another.
Yes, the fact that Arthur and Peter were dead already was deliberately being kept from them by Armand and Amanda.
After the mass defection and routing of the blue team, the only members left were Marion (you know, the girl you met in the beginning), Armand, and Amanda. This could have been prevented, possibly, if Marion hadn't become so obsessed with "figuring out" the game and how she could effect it with math. Eventually, she wanders off into the woods and manages to "hack" her was outside of the games parameters. That's the white space you showed up in, where she was living and working on a way to get back at the ones that had put the game on in the first place.
She created a being like them and gave it a class and domain, the Heir of Souls, that she could put into the game because the Blue Heir was dead. But They might notice such a creature, so she created a human facade for it to hide in. Arthur.
Arthur, Peter, and Aya were all game constructs, like creeps, fitted with any stray soul the Heir of Souls could pluck out of the nothing. The Heir, at this point, was just robotic and emotionless because it was made from numbers. That's why she chose to hide it in a vessel that not only embodied words, but learning, before sending it into the game. She hoped that, after the Heir had learned enough from experiencing life in Arthur's and the other players heads, it could lead everyone who remained out of the game and into whatever came next. She was eventually going to hack herself back in after exhausting all the souls that the Heir had gathered for her, taking part in the climactic battle and explaining all of this that you hadn't already figured out.
-What Was Going On With The Red Team?-The Red Team had suffered a split in ideology between Jessica, their leader and Heir of Power, and Clarissa, the Seer of Life. Jessica, as you know, wanted to end the game with as few people remaining as possible and receive "the prize" all by herself. She didn't know what the prize was, but she assumed it was something important if she was going to be receiving it. She settled on a new world, built from the winners own hands, where they would rule from on high as god beings forever. She didn't let anyone in her camp know she planned to ice them all the second they got their new world.
She was wrong and there was no prize, but she also had an ego bigger than most planets.
The Seer, on the other hand, looked around her and saw paradise. Especially after the mass defection she saw a world right here where all their needs were met if only they could keep the game going perpetually. Her and her faction worked secretly to insure that this was the case. Iris and Estaban, the two characters from the first intermission, were members of this faction. Estaban brought a facsimile of Malcolm, the first person you fought, back to life using his abilities as the Tailor of Memory in order to keep Jessica from knowing exactly where Amanda and Armand were. To keep the game going. They had been following the blue teamers in secret for months using Iris Thief of Sight powers, helping them stay one step ahead of Jessica's faction until Arthur showed up, a development they immediately left to report to Clarissa of.
Clarissa, and her Knight bodyguard/boyfriend Roland, were moved up to the prestigious position of act 1 Final Boss after you talked Jessica over to your side.
-Wait, who was the act 2 final boss then?-Good question. First of all, there was the "angel." Her name was Planner, and she was the Game Master for this particular game. They, the game runners, were amalgamation of various thoughts people had while dying, hers being wonders of what they could have done to avoid this. As I became less satisfied with all the rules I had made up I envisioned the overcomplication of the game as being her fault, having put so many rules in place, every rule she could think of even if they were contradictory, as just being her nature. She was to be the final boss.
She was just one of many such entities that had appeared in the void, and these entities made up games played with humans to alleviate their boredom. She was also the only one of them allowed in her game world while the others watched. But there was another...
You were actually supposed to meet him in the next Intermission, where you would have been found yourself wandering the Main Red base watching everyone freak out because Jessica defected and getting some insight into Clarissa. At the tail end you would have been approached by an entity that could actually see you, who would complain that you were going to ruin it for the both of you by being as blatant as you were. This entity, going by the name Joker, had snuck into Planners game because he didn't care for her rules. He would have realized what you were (not telling you that, of course. Why spoil the drama of you figuring it out) and what Marion was up to (not interfering with her because what she was doing was making a boring game more interesting.) You'd see him a few more times after that, just hanging around and being a cryptic ass, before Marion came back and everything went to hell.
-Endgame-Marion returns after the defeat or pacification of Red Team, explain her whole deal, then Planner comes back pissed. Planner traps Marion in a cage and begins killing her slowly, literally deleting her existence bit by bit for "spoiling" her intricately detailed game. Joker steps in at that moment, reveling himself and claiming that nothing that Marion did broke any rules. Using this claim, he calls out to the other entities that Planner has lost perspective, objectivity, and was unfit to run the game. They take his side, and more out of frustration of the game taking as long as it has than anything, they make Joker the GM and tell him to craft a suitably pleasing climax.
Joker changes the rules, makes Planner a player as the only member of Yellow Team. If she wins, she's forgiven for running a long, boring game and welcomed back into the fold of the entities. If the other teams win, Joker swears to bring every person that had been in the game back to life and even incarnate the Heir of Souls into a proper human body.
However the last fight turns out, it's show in a stinger that Planner had never run an actual game before this one, and didn't think she was fit to. Joker convinced her to give it a try because it might be fun.
The Dying thoughts that make up Joker, by the way, are "HAHAHAHAHAHEEEEEEHEHEHEHEHOOHOOHOOHOOHAHAH" and variations thereof. There was going to be a sequel quest with him as co-GM of a different game with his sister Delight.
-Miscellaneous Plans-Armand: Armand was going to have a whole sub-plot with an Ex-member of Blue Team, the Prince of Emotions, when he blamed for fanning the flames of the mass defection.
Amanda: I don't know how well it came across, but Amanda was completely in love with Marion. She was also going to flip out when she found out Jessica was now on the same side as her, closing up completely and relying more and more on Armand. In general, I tried to convey that she'd been hurt badly in the past and her story arc was going to be about coming to trust other people.
Jessica: As final boss before you turned her head, I had to scramble to think up something for her. She was never going to be humble, ever, but if you spend some time with her she could have developed a grudging respect or certain members of the party. I planned for her to get trapped, either by Clarissa's faction, Planner Creeps, or Planner herself and blow herself up rather than admit that she'd lost. Like most thing, this was totally preventible depending on what you did.
She also has the most fleshed out backstory of any character in the story, and there was an explanation for her insane overconfidence.
Architect: The newest member of Blue Team who we never saw much in the way of personality of power from. We never even got to hear his name, I don't think. An Architect is used exclusively or upgrading and repairing bases, and that suited this guy just fine because he was a complete pacifist.
Peter: Everything you saw from Peter was essentially his whole character. Still, as his class was designed to be amazing early game but weak as everyone started leveling up, he'd have eventually gotten into some angst over his usefulness to the team that might have resulted in some foolish attempts at heroic sacrifice.
Aya: Aya was actually a complete sociopath and master manipulator, which you could have found out by either spending time with her or Jessica. What can I say, psychos can smell their own. The weak, wounded deer-like facade was to get Nadine under her thumb and turn her against the other in the Tree base, and that relationship was only going to get more abusive from there on out. She was the Blue most likely to defect.
Nadine: Nadine was someone who valued privacy and never had many friends, but had a strong sense of justice that was completely taken advantage of by Aya. Most of her development was based on if you noticed how much Aya was abusing her friendship and stepped in. Ironically Nadine, along with the character after her, was designed as one of the only characters with Arthur/The Heir to the end, seeing as defection if a one time thing.
Prince Norton: A character who would have show up after the next intermission, Norton was the Prince of Respect and one of the important leaders of Red Team, primarily as someone who lead Creeps into battle. After the success of Jessica's brute force strategy, he lost prominence in Red Team and became something like Jessica's version of Starscream. He shows up to defect to blue, hoping that being on the more desperate team will make him important again. Along with Nadine he was the only other character designed to never betray you and defect to red, because it's impossible for someone to return to their old team after defection.
Hey son, wanna' learn how ta' make witch balls?
Locked
That's not the feeling I was getting from this at all. Everything seemed to be going quite nicely in my eyes.
That certainly was a fun move we pulled off.