Annotated 9-6
I wrote this page, but Phil replaced my obvious “straw journalist” with Adam Sessler, who would do X-Play until 2013.
(Edited, see comments) Escape from Cyberia was not intended to be a Chekhov’s gun. It just would have seemed a little too weird for HR not to be discussing something the company was rolling out that wasn’t Kingdoms of Arkerra… even if this interview hints that his true focus is elsewhere.
Had our second plan for HR come to pass, he would have been having some version of this conversation with his family. Yes, family. I thought he’d be a regretful absentee father whose “world-building” activities were intended a gift for his daughter, trying to leave her a better world than this one even as he neglected her in “real life.” He would still be on a path to evil, if not already there, but the good intentions he’d paved his road with would have been more personal and less sociological.
X-Play, on G4. Ah, such memories.
But narratively, it presents certain issues.
On the one hand, it helps ground Sepia World with a bit more semblance of reality.
But on the other hand, it also locks the story to a specific time frame, which unfortunately does not age well.
I had just assumed x-play was a made up thing till I read your comment
Is it wrong that I miss the ladies of TechTV?
In retrospect, I’m puzzled by the age of Kingdoms of Arkerra. Apparently people were playing the “savage races” as an allied World of Warcraft-style faction for seven years before they officially united, declared themselves the World’s Rebellion, and set out to conquer Gastonia. And where do the Savasi fit in?
Beroli: this is just my take on it, so grain of salt and all that. I’ve always felt there isn’t a straight 1-to-1 connection between Arkerra and Sepia World. They can and do influence each other very strongly, but they’re still pretty much separate. Up until HR really starts tinkering with that influence, that is. So the previous years people spent playing before the whole “stuff five people into tubes and start working on magic” thing was just people playing a game. Only after HR’s plan started in earnest did the connection between the game and the world really establish.
With the exception of the gnomes, I think each of the races were mostly still independent until the five showed up. So maybe players fought for the interest of their particular race. Maybe there hasn’t been any united alliance for the last seven years.
You just called it Kingdoms of Cyberia, not Escape from Cyberia.
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Fair enough!
Gosh, I never realized that Cyberia was the alternate plane with the bleedover that brought us slightly-less-obnoxious-and-even-maybe-OK Best!
You guys never waste anything, do you?