Since the beginning, I haven’t been shy about what some of Iravelon’s influences are when I’m asked. I tend to think some of the best games and stories are built off of ideas and concepts from their predecessors in one way or another, and Iravelon is no exception. One of my major influences goes back about 17 years to a GBA RPG you might’ve heard of –
Golden Sun may be said to be nothing all that special in the annals of JRPGs – other games have more intriguing storylines, more innovative mechanics, or more appealing visuals. Golden Sun, in all of these aspects, obviously draws from influences and inspirations itself. But for me, it’s the combination of a developed world, enjoyable characters, and a solid story that make it so memorable. And that’s not to say that the mechanics and graphics are bad – they’re definitely on the higher end of what the GBA could handle, especially so early into its life.
I may go deeper into Golden Sun at another time though. What I wanted to mention today was an aspect of the battle system – what many refer to as the ‘Weapon Unleash’ system.
The way this mechanic worked was that, with certain (usually more high-end) weapons, when you use a normal attack (with a sword, for instance), rather than the character simply jumping forward and slashing, they would end up casting a magical effect. For example, when using the ‘Gaia Blade’ in Golden Sun, randomly a special attack called ‘Titan Blade’ would occur, which resulted in a massive magical sword slamming down onto the enemy. It was awesome getting a new weapon that had one of these abilities – they ranged from more simplistic to extreme spectacles rivaling the most powerful magic (Psynergy, in Golden Sun) abilities.
Well, a while back I found a script for RPG maker VX that allows for a similar type of system in RPGVX games. I’ve tested it in Shades of Resonance and it works well. I’m hoping to make some extreme animations like some of the late-game weapons in Golden Sun moving forward, but they’ll all be original to Iravelon (and may even tie into aspects of the world that aren’t so obvious, giving potential clues or Easter Eggs relating to the universe Iravelon takes place in).
That said, it should be fun stuff!
Also, if you’re interested in the script, I found a link to some forums where the original author posted the script for RPGVX – credit goes to Dargor on the forums for the awesome work on the script!
http://www.hbgames.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=451482
While I don’t have RPG Maker MV, it looks like some folks have also created similar mechanics for there. Here’s a YouTube video by Yanfly about the topic.