Behind the scenes: Unused dialogue and alternate scenes!

Hi everyone! It's been a bit since I did a big behind-the-scenes post. Apologies for the wait. I didn't intend to take such a long break from these, but, well, I'm still kind of struggling with post-project burnout even a year and a half after releasing SLARPG, and I'm trying to get back into the swing of making things as I slowly develop ideas for my next game. (I did at least draw Melody and Allison for the summer recently, as well as my fursona for pride, if you missed those!) Your continued patience is appreciated.

Anyway! Here's something fun: a bunch of dialogue I wrote that never made it into the game!

Some of this is just jokes that never found a home, though there are also some alternate drafts of more serious scenes here if you're looking for something meatier. I'll generally sort these snippets and their accompanying director's commentary based on where they were intended to be used in the story. As we get further down the post we'll get into MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE GAME'S ENDING, because boy did I write a lot of drafts for those climactic scenes over the years. Fair warning!

Prologue - What does an adventurer do?

Melody: What does an adventurer DO, anyway? And don’t say “go on adventures.”

Allison: Darn. Uh, it’s a pretty broad term, I guess. Other than the prerequisite of being able to defend yourself, it’s kinda just whatever you feel like doing.

Allison: Treasure hunting, monster fighting, cartography, protecting the innocent. Y'know, that kinda stuff.

Allison: What do YOU wanna do once were officially adventurers, Mel?

Early on in the game's development, I pondered the role of the "adventurer" in SLARPG's world, and specifically what type of adventurers the Novas are, and I thought about how much I should spell that out for the audience. Like, things go off the rails for the Novas in the story, but in a normal month, what are they doing? How do they make their money? What kind of gigs do they take? Are they more treasure hunters or monster hunters? Are they hired guns? That sort of thing.

This particular exchange was never properly worked into the intro for the sake of brevity, and also because in the final story Melody and Allison have already had a few unsuccessful missions under their belts with Claire and Jodie when the game begins. It wouldn't make sense for them to not know what an adventurer does at that point.

Speaking of the nature of adventuring as a career path...

Unsorted - We're kinda like superheroes

Allison: You know, when you think about it? We're kinda like superheroes.

Melody: How do you figure?

Allison: We use our magic powers to fight evil, right?

Jodie: I don't think a town as small as Greenridge has enough villains to justify ONE superhero, let alone four.

Claire: If anything we're more like... mercenaries?

Melody: I don't wanna be a mercenary!

Claire: I dunno, we just take on a lot of odd jobs involving monster fighting. Treasure hunters, maybe? We’ve been known to hunt some treasure.

Melody: That makes us sound kind of like a band of pirates.

Allison: What’s wrong with that? I could get behind being a band of lesbian pirates.

Melody: Hey, I didn’t say I was against the idea,

Jodie: Are any of us actually capable of sailing a boat, though?

Claire: They gotta have self driving boats by now. Self sailing. Whatever. Surely some big mainland tech company or whatever.

Jodie: That sounds decidedly un-pirate like.

Allison: Listen. I just wanted to ask y’all what you think our superhero names would be.

I think I actually posted this one on Tumblr before, or something like that, but not everyone has seen it. I'm a known fan of stream-of-consciousness conversational dialogue with lots of pointless tangents (it's one of the main reasons why I would cite Homestuck as a major influence on my dialogue, and why I love shit like Home Movies), but this felt like a step too far. I couldn't think of a natural place for this conversation to occur, and I also never wrote a conclusion for the scene, so it just never made its way into the game.

Act I - Catching up with Allison and Jodie

I actually deleted this one from my notes at some point, but I remember it well enough to paraphrase it here:

Allison: We haven't been able to go on any real missions yet, so this adventurer stuff still kinda feels like some kind of shitty live action roleplaying game.

Melody: A SLARPG?

Jodie: That'll never stick.

Yes, I literally just wrote this joke because "SLARPG" contains the acronym "LARP." Ended up feeling like a really hamfisted gag, even for me, and so it never made it into the game.

Act I? - Allison the bard

Allison: Hey, maybe I should’ve become a bard.

Melody: You just want an excuse to honk a trumpet at people, don’t you?

Allison: Guilty as charged.

My gut instinct is that this could've been worked into the dock scene with Melody and Allison at the end of Act I, but the italicized "I" in the dialogue makes me think Allison would've said this when talking to Beth the Beast and Mary Ena.

Act I? - Melody the nobody

Melody: You know how there are all those conspiracy theories on the internet about celebrities getting replaced with less talented, more boring body doubles?

Melody: Sometimes I feel like... I'm the boring, phony body double of myself.

Melody: Like I've somehow tricked people into liking me when in reality I'm just. Nobody.

This probably would've gone in the dock scene, though it could've fit elsewhere as well. This train of thought didn't really go anywhere, though I may have also cut it because it felt a little too close to the joke exchange in Higgledy Piggledy's where Allison mentions internet conspiracy theories about influencers being grown in labs. I don't know what was going on that made me write multiple lines like that. It may have been something I saw online, like how the demo has multiple jokes referencing clowns because it was written around the time of the 2016 clown sightings.

Act II, perhaps? - The simplest answer

Melody: They say the simplest answer is usually the correct one.

Claire: Ah yes, Occam's razor. I always did hate that Occam guy.

I don't know why I didn't use this one. It's a good Claire line.

Act II, perhaps? - Joke meter

Allison: That’s...

Allison: Okay, I can’t think of anything funny to say.

Melody: Your joke meter must be running low.

Allison: Oh no, not my–wait, we don’t… actually have some kind of joke energy points, do we? I’m still not sure how all that magic stuff has affected my brain.

Claire: There’s no such thing as joke points, Allison. Don’t worry.

Allison: Thank god, I don’t know what I would’ve done without my quips.

This was cut mostly because I never found the right situation for Allison to be responding to.

Act II - Reuniting with Jodie

Allison: Wow! So you're a cowgirl now, huh?

Jodie: What, why? Because I've been adventuring in the desert? That doesn't make me a cowgirl.

Allison: Yes it does.

Jodie: If I went on a high seas adventure, would you be calling me a pirate?

Allison: Absolutely.

Jodie was originally intended to have a bit more of a cowgirl motif, thanks to the character whose role she's inherited from SLARPG's predecessor project. I'll probably talk more about this whenever I get around to doing a post about the process of creating Jodie. Anyway, it didn't take long for me to downplay this. It briefly evolved into Allison teasing Jodie about turning into a bit of a cowgirl in her solo adventures in the Celestial Wasteland, though this, too, was ultimately cut from the script.

Act II - Jodie and the Basement Dungeon

A version of this conversation ended up getting used in an optional room in the Neon Labyrinth, though originally it was supposed to occur before the dungeon. It was also supposed to feature a branching dialogue choice that would affect Melody's hidden personality stats (which mainly impact her scenes with Harmony).

Jodie: So how'd the training go yesterday?

Jodie: I'd assume it went well, judging by the fact that you three made it all the way out here on your own.

 [CHOICE 1 - Confident]

   Melody: It did go well!

   Melody: Well, the whole part with the warped fabric of reality, not so much. But the rest was pretty good.

   Allison: Yeah, I wasn't so sure about the whole "dungeon in my basement" thing at first. But it worked out, I guess.

 [CHOICE 2 - Negative]

   Melody: It... could've gone better.

   Jodie: Well, I'm sure it went okay enough.

   Allison: Yeah, the whole "dungeon in my basement" thing was a bit much, but I guess we're here now.

 [CHOICE 3 - Confrontational]

   Melody: What do you mean by that?

   Jodie: I just mean you seemed really worried about being an adventurer before, but you seem to have handled things fine without me.

   Jodie: You aren't exactly seasoned fighters, Melody. And we're a long way from home!

   Melody: We're not THAT far from home. It really wasn't that big a deal.

   Jodie: I'm just surprised to see you here is all. I'm not trying to doubt your abilities, Melody.

   Jodie: You seem to be doing pretty great. I'm proud of you two.

   Allison: Yeah, I wasn't so sure about the whole "dungeon in my basement" thing at first, but we got a handle on our abilities, I guess.

[THE BRANCHES CONVERGE]

Jodie: There's a dungeon in your basement?

Allison: Oh yeah, Claire didn't tell you about all that, did she?

Melody: Or about summoning monsters?

Allison: Or about excavating under the Guardian's Tower?

Melody: Or about -

Claire: Let's not dwell on the past, okay? It was a simple training dungeon.

Jodie: Oh, okay. A training dungeon! That sounds reasonable.

Allison: It does?

Jodie: I mean, it's safer than a real dungeon, right? It's a controlled environment.

Melody: "Controlled" is the last word I would use to describe that environment.

Claire: Whatever, we took care of it! Let's not dwell on the past.

Allison: Jodie, you really aren't concerned about all that?

Jodie: Eh, Claire's the magic expert. I trust she knows what she's doing better than I would.

Allison: Yeah, this is why you were Claire's first recruit for the guild.

In the end, this conversation was moved out of Mumford because there was already so much other story stuff that had to be covered there, and the branching path was removed because it felt a little superfluous. I also ended up making the way Melody compares herself to Jodie and gets self-conscious about it more subtle in the game, compared to how overt it is in the confrontational dialogue branch here, since I didn't have any sort of big payoff planned for that conflict. It's not like there was ever gonna be a big one-on-one scene where Melody snaps at Jodie and the two work that stuff out. Maybe that would've been a good thing to have, since their dynamic is the least fleshed out in the party, but the game is already four times longer than it was supposed to be and I wasn't about to add a whole 'nother section to the story as an excuse for such a scene.

Act IV - Scrapped customer in Claire's Lunch Rush quest

Claire: Hi, welcome to Higgledy Piggledy's. What can I get you?

Customer: Let's start off with drinks. How about two Red Colas?

Claire: We only have Bupsi. Is that okay?

Customer: Sure, sure.

...

Claire: Two colas.

Sean: Here you go.

...

Claire: Here we are, two Bupsis.

Customer: What? I asked for Red Cola.

Claire: We don't have that. You said Bupsi was okay.

Customer: I would never say that.

I think this was just the result of me trying to brainstorm customers for the Lunch Rush side quest who were the right mix of frustrating and funny. This was mostly scrapped because my inability to use the real brand names made the dialogue sound clunkier.

Act IV - A different idea for Jodie's Beach Day quest

So, some of this isn't terribly far from the final script, but it's building towards a very different conclusion for the quest. This would play out after Faith accidentally burns the food:

Faith: See, I knew something like this would happen!

Faith: I'm so sorry, Jodie.

Jodie: Okay, now I know you're not exactly the most experienced cook, but... does that happen a lot?

Faith: Yes, I'm afraid I'm used to this sort of thing happening when I try to cook. I don't know how you make it look so easy.

Faith: Wait, should I... not expect things to burst into flames this easily when I cook?

Jodie: Uuhhh, unless it's a flambé, no.

Faith: Huh.

Jodie: So if this isn't just a cooking problem, then do you think this might be, you know... a magic one?

Jodie: That'd be more your domain.

Faith: The thought of it being a magical problem had never crossed my mind...

Faith: I mean, maybe it has, but I must have written it off since I always have so many bigger magic problems to deal with.

Jodie: See, this is what I'm talking about, Faith. You need to remember to take care of yourself, too.

Faith: So are you suggesting it might be some sort of curse or hex?

Jodie: Maybe! I don't know. Do you have any personal enemies who could have possibly cursed or hexed you?

Faith: I'm a town guardian, dear. That's in the job description.

From here, Jodie and Faith would deduce that Faith always burning her food wasn't an accident, or the result of stress, but a literal curse placed on her by a minor local villain she had fought at some point in her time as the Guardian of Greenridge. Not a major threat, just a minor villain-of-the-week type. The quest would have then jumped to Jodie and Faith finding and confronting this villain at their lair for a boss fight.

I did really like the idea of concluding the quest with a boss fight, especially after I went to the trouble of making Faith a playable party member. I worried that the quest felt anticlimactic without it. I also liked the idea that Faith's had a bunch of her own adventures off-screen, with her own rogues' gallery. The problem was that I just didn't have any ideas for this villain! I could've gone to Anthony for ideas, like with so many of the other NPCs in the game, but at this point the Beach Day quest had become a major bottleneck for the Act IV side quests. I think I got Lunch Rush done in, like... three days, maybe? But Faith and Jodie's quest ended up taking a few weeks due to creative block, even though it really isn't much more complex. Sometimes in game development you just have to know when to cut corners and say something's good enough.

Ultimately, I ended the side quest with a simple heart to heart conversation with Faith and Jodie, with no climactic boss battle involved, and explained the spontaneous combustion as a side effect of stress. Part of me thinks that the gameplay anticlimax that leaves you wanting to do more with Faith is actually a good thing. It puts you in Jodie's shoes, since she ALSO misses Faith and wishes she could fight by her side more. It emphasizes Faith as "the one that got away" of the party. Plus, there's already a lot of fighting elsewhere in the Act IV side quests, so I don't think it hurts to have a few smaller ones focused purely on character development for variety.

Act IV - Heavy Jelly introduction

Here's a single borderline-fourth wall breaking joke cut from this scene:

Claire: We already got the "Helper Jelly but evil" bit, there were poison versions of you guys in the--

Heavy Jelly: SHUT THE HELL UP.

Act V - First encounter with Javis, before the party is split up

Claire: Yeah, we know you don't like us, and we're not your biggest fans either, but we're willing to set that side for the sake of diplomacy.

Javis: Who says I don't like you?

Jodie: Do you like us?

Javis: No.

I love this stupid little exchange, but by this point it was just too obvious that Javis disliked the party and was going to make himself an obstacle in their plan to reason with Verena for it to really fit. Not that I couldn't have still used it anyway lol

And that brings us to Verena, and the heavy spoiler stuff.

Act V - Confronting Verena

There's a looooooooooooooooooooot of scrapped dialogue with Verena, because I completely rewrote several key scenes from Act V multiple times. There's honestly too much to share here, and also some of it just isn't that interesting, so I'll just share some highlights here.

I started toying with scattered bits of the game's climax and ending in 2016 or 2017, long before I'd nailed down Verena's arc, so that I could go back and write the earlier parts of the game to support that ending. (Frankly, I was paranoid about whether or not people would accept her "redemption arc," and wanted to make sure I worded things perfectly to convey the true nature of her character.) Many nights before bed I'd randomly get ideas for an angle I could try approaching the final confrontation with Verena from, jot down a couple lines of dialogue on my phone, and then expand upon it the next day.

Sometimes I just wouldn't like a certain angle I was trying to approach a scene from, and so it would get cut entirely and I'd go in a different direction. But writing this stuff so early also meant the climax and epilogue were the first scenes I wrote for Verena, and therefore I defaulted to cramming her whole story in there all at once, not knowing how much would be set up earlier in the game. As such, when it was finally time to wrap the game up and make Act V, some exchanges felt redundant, or they just didn't gel with the scenes from earlier in the game. Some of this got pared down in editing, in what I like to call a "subtlety pass."

For instance, Verena was supposed to say this during her boss fight:

Verena: I used to be like you, you know. An adventurer. Someone who wanted to use my powers to do good.

Verena: But even with my power, no matter how much good I did, it never mattered.

Verena: The world was still cruel. People still died. And I still got screwed over.

Verena: What's the point in trying to do good if the world only rewards cruelty?

And it's like... she doesn't need to say this. It's already obvious that she feels this way from her other scenes. But writing this helped me figured out that this was how she felt, even if she didn't need to say these exact words out loud. There's a lot of stuff like this, so I won't make this post twice as long by including all of it.

But like I said, there was also just stuff that didn't fit the final direction of the story. For instance, early on, I wasn't sure when exactly the party would realize they didn't necessarily have to fight Verena. I wanted the ending with the party befriending Verena to feel properly earned, but I also worried that signposting Verena's redemption too heavily before the climax might undercut the stakes of the conflict. In the final game, Melody and Claire have this realization in the Flurry Mountains, and the party goes into the final act with a plan to reason with Verena, but the uncertainty over what exactly happened between Verena and Zinnia lets there still be some uncertainty and tension going into the climax. However, long before the whole Flurry Mountains section and Zinnia as a character were added to the story, I had drafts of the script where the Novas only realized they didn't have any ill will towards Verena over the course of their fight with her, almost treating it more as a twist. As such, the scene after that boss fight could've started like this:

Melody: ...I don't think fighting is going to solve anything here.

Verena: What?

Melody: Verena, if you win and go through with your plan, that's obviously awful for us.

Melody: But if we keep fighting and beat you, then... what? We just banish you again?

Melody: I don't think that actually solves anything.

Claire: Honestly... Melody's right.

Claire: Verena, maybe you see magic as a burden you can't escape from. But we see it differently.

Claire: Magic is the power to rewrite your destiny. To overcome the hand life has dealt you and choose your own path.

Claire: It's what makes us, us.

Claire: And because of that, if there's anyone who doesn't deserve to be trapped in an unwanted role, it's you.

(The explicit mention of the fact that Verena is "playing a role" in that last line is an on-the-nose reference to one of the core themes of the game. The "RPG" in the title means more than you might think!!!)

This version of the scene leaned a little more into the sadness of Verena's story from the get-go, but in the final version I lean more into the idea that the Novas and Verena actually started having fun in their battle. It's less of a duel to the death and more of a dance. (Hence "Twin Moon Dance.") Believe it or not, this angle clicked for me after I became a fan of Touhou in 2021! In those games, sure, the fate of the world (or at least Gensokyo) is at stake, but the over-the-top boss battles rarely have all that much hostility. It's more about letting the music wash over you and being entranced by the beauty of the bullet patterns. Again, it's a dance!

It's from this angle that we get things like brief bit that was cut from the final draft of the scene. This very nearly made it in:

Verena: Claire, I must say, your fireballs pack a punch. I know that can't just be a pure fire spell.

Claire: Good eye. They're not just pure flame, they're also explosive to give them an extra impact.

Verena: And you... Allison, was it? Are you enhancing your attacks with mana?

Allison: I am!

Verena: Interesting, very interesting. That's pretty advanced stuff.

While the final scene still leans into the idea that Verena and the Novas were having fun by the end of their battle, these lines where Verena outright comments on the party's moves were cut. It was already an incredibly long scene, and I felt it was more important to focus on Verena's admiration for the Novas' teamwork and compassion for each other.

Here's another take on the moment where Verena realizes she's lost the will to fight the Novas.

Verena: Are you four familiar with the sunk cost fallacy?

Verena: I've kept busy over the centuries, but in the back of my mind, I've spent a lot of time dwelling on this world that discarded me like trash.

Verena: Letting my resentment fester. Figuring out exactly how I would get back at this vile world.

Verena: I just thought it would be so cathartic!

Verena: And I think that, since I've arrived here, I've been trying to convince myself that my grand plan for revenge wasn't just a waste of time. I'd already come this far, right?

Verena: But now, I'm actually here. Revenge is within my grasp. And I can't shake the feeling that this is all... stupid.

Javis: What are you saying, Verena?

Verena: I'm saying I have no desire to fight these people any longer.

Verena: We had our little fight. I got to vent my frustration a bit. I think I'm good now.

Javis: (Verena, is this a ploy to lower the beasts' guards before delivering the final blow? How delightfully fiendish! I must say I--)

Verena: Javis, shut up. Just for once in your life.

Verena: These are people with hopes and dreams! They have their whole lives ahead of them. Why are we putting them through this? We're better than this.

Javis: You... you can't be serious! What happened to that righteous anger of yours?

Javis: Verena, we're so close now!

Verena: Oh, I'm still pissed. And I have every right to be. But these folks have nothing to do with why I'm angry. And killing them and resetting their realm isn't going to solve anything.

Verena: I've already made enough mistakes with this world. I don't need to make another.

Verena: Let's just... Let's just go, Javis.

This draft likely predates the addition of Zinnia to the story, and therefore it predates the idea that Javis was intentionally withholding the fact that Zinnia was still alive from Verena, a change which both makes Javis way more of a villain and spices up the scene a lot in the final game. It's just not the same without those drama bombs and the ensuing tone shift. This also predates the addition of Paula to the story in 2018, meaning Paula doesn't play her small but important role as a foil to Verena in this draft of the scene. Verena doesn't have that moment where Paula says she could obliterate the Novas and she's like "Oh god, is that how I come off to people? Is this what my followers think they're fighting for?" Instead of all that, Verena mostly just loses interest, decides she shouldn't have done this, and leaves, which doesn't have the same impact.

I also never really liked the part where Verena name drops the sunk cost fallacy. It's a little too blunt, a little too therapy-speak, even if a story about a bunch of characters talking out their feelings and their problems with their loved ones is always inevitably going to come off as "too therapy-speak" to some.

Act V - Transformation

I always had a pretty clear vision of the climax in my head, but a few details changed over the years. At one point, I wanted Javis to crack the cliff the party is standing on and endanger Allison, and then Melody's heroic desire to save her girlfriend would be the final straw that pushes her to unlock her true power. Melody would've had a different line here for the moment where she transforms for each of her three Paladin specializations.

For Amorous Paladin:

Melody: You know what? I never wanted to be an adventurer. I wasn’t doing it for me. I did it for Allison. so what’s the point of the power I’ve been granted if I can’t even save her?

For Resolute Paladin:

Melody: You know what? All my life, no one has ever told me I could be the hero. So I guess I’m just a gonna have to say it myself. If you want this world, you’re gonna have to go through me!

And for Woodland Paladin, I came up with... nothing! I thought about focusing on her wanting to protect the planet, but that overlaps with what I wrote for Resolute. Unsatisfied with all of this, I just scrapped these altogether and changed the scene. Sometimes with branching dialogue I'd rather just have one really good and definitive line for such a pivotal moment, rather than three different ones of varying quality. And it's just much more narratively satisfying to bring things full circle by having Claire repeat the ritual on Melody and Allison from the beginning of the game, the potentially fatal risks of which were established by Paula's double power up, rather than having it straightforwardly be The Power That Was Within Melody All Along.

(Fun fact! Melody and the Novas are referred to as "heroes" as little as possible throughout the entire game, instead preferring the label "adventurers," so that this moment where Melody declares she wants to be a hero can have maximum impact.)

Epilogue

You didn't think we were done with scrapped Verena dialogue yet, did you? Because we haven't even gotten into the epilogue yet! The image of Melody and Allison sitting down and having a chill conversation with the game's villain over tea was one I came up with very early in development, and like with the dialogue around Verena's boss fight a lot of it was stripped out for being redundant or too blunt, or simply because the scene didn't need to be even longer. For example:

Verena: And, more recently, this became the place where your friend Claire started storing all of her trash.

Melody: ...Oh. My god.

Melody: That's how you found out about us, isn't it?! Claire got her storage spell from your book!

Verena: Mhm.

Verena: I had no idea my magic was still being used on Reverie until Claire's crap started appearing in my house one day.

Verena: When I figured out people were still reaping the benefits of my work even after what happened, I was... well, not pleased.

Verena: Javis quickly helped me devise a plan to undo my banishment and get my revenge. A plan that centered around the four of you.

Verena: We snuck some new summoning spells into the book as Claire was preparing her little dungeon, and the rest was history.

Verena: Again, sorry about that, and thank you for ruining our idiotic plan.

Allison: It was our pleasure.

This bit was removed because it became redundant when I could just have Melody and Allison find the junk from the party's inventory in Verena's house, letting players piece some of the remaining details together on their own.

(Fun fact! Either the Zircon Sabre or the Jolt Sabre will appear in the pile of junk in Verena's downstairs closet, depending on whether or not you've completed the Crypt and upgraded Allison's sword.)

There's more like this that was cut from the scene, such as dialogue where Verena spells out her and Javis's plans and how exactly they manipulated Claire using Verena's old spellbook, but it felt like that was just me being paranoid about players not understanding the plot on their own without me explaining every little thing. It was patronizing. There was also stuff that became redundant after I wrote the final version of the scene at the summit. I'll skip most of that here.

Later on, in Claire's final scene with Verena and Zinnia, there was this:

Verena: Your 20s are just weird. Trust me, I would know. I'm pretty sure I've basically been stuck in my 20s for a thousand years.

Claire: Oof.

Verena: Tell me about it.

This was cut mainly because I now think it would be more accurate to say Verena's been stuck in her thirties for a thousand years, never really moving past the moment when she lost Zinnia. I guess at the time maybe I hadn't figured out how long Verena and Zinnia had been together before The Incident happened - in the final story they met when Verena was 21, like Claire, and were then together for about a decade.

And finally, on a lighter note, I'll leave you with this:

Verena: There are a million more constructive ways I could be expressing my frustration.

Verena: Like starting a shoegaze band, for instance.

Allison: Dude, I'd join a shoegaze band with you.

And that's all for now! I hope this was a fun read. If you haven't already read it but want to hear more about the development of Verena and Zinnia's storyline, you can check out my post from last year all about Zinnia's creation. And if you have other subjects you'd like me to do a behind the scenes post about, let me know!