With Chapter Three’s pending release, we’re a little over halfway done with Mythos: Book One. The entire story has been plotted out from the start, but some changes were made “on the fly” (like Mara becoming a love interest, and Monica losing that status). Now that we’re approaching the conclusion of the first game, my eyes are set on the future of Mythos (as I touched upon in one of my Friday Updates).
There’s one glaring issue that I have to worry about as we roll in to whatever Mythos project comes next: Who was the main character of Mythos: Book One?
“It was Nelson, Nine, you fucking moron!”
Yes, obviously Nelson is the main character of the game, but that leaves a pretty big issue: Which one? Was it Kylie or Kyle? Maybe it was neither, because you changed the name from the default.
This becomes important in other things coming down the pipeline. For future games it’s somewhat easy to work with, as I have the ability to load the save file from Mythos: Book One and rip the relevant information. So if your name character is a dude named “Bigschlong69 Nelson”, the next game can “remember” that. But what about stories? Webcomics? Another project I have planned that I’m keeping coy about?
So I decided, for my own sanity, to take a sort of “character canon” approach – thus why this entry is called “The Gender Canon”.
In future media, the events of Mythos: Book One are assumed to be undertaken by a woman named Kylie Nelson. Anybody who read the story “The Road to Nowhere” probably saw this coming. This doesn’t invalidate your own playthrough at all; you’re just taking an “alternate universe” version through those same events. In maybe the canon version will have Kylie Nelson failing to identify what happened to Lisa Harrison while eschewing all romantic entanglements, but in your game this guy Bigschlong69 Nelson bangs every girl on his investigation team while also successfully solving the murder. (Note: I’m not saying that canon-Kylie fails; you’ll have to see how the game ends!)
As much as I really would have loved to take the “Dragon Age” approach and have everything going forward tailored to each individual players’ world, that’s just not feasible because:
- There are things other than the visual novels happening.
- There are a lot of variables in each game that could affect the rest of the world
- I’m not very good at this.
This method will also make it much, much easier if, in a future game, you’re not playing as the same character as in Mythos: Book One. For example, let’s assume everyone survives through the end of the game. Maybe in a future game you can play as Monica Schwartz – but since I know not everyone is keen on the idea of playing a female, they could play as Maurice Schwartz. Same character, just gender-flipped.
Or, I guess, Bigschlong69 Schwartz.
The evens of Monica’s story canonically will unfold in a particular way, in regards to things outside of her game, but within that game they happen depending on what the individual players do.
Hopefully this all made sense. Note that it’s also not fully written in stone! If someone has a better idea of approaching things, I’m open to discussion. Especially on my Discord (which I will never stop urging everybody to join).
Keep the Legends Alive!
– Nine
I propose that all of your future games feature a scene immediately after the player chooses the MC’s name and sex where the MC is hit by The Gender Cannon, which transforms the protagonist into the canonical identity of said character.
I do play games that the MC is female. However if a game offers Male/Female I choose male.
Because you offered both sexes in the beginning changing what you started might lose players. If you had intended the MC to be a certain sex, maybe that would have been better to start the game.
I’m still going to offer the choice of genders at the start of the game, and all the games coming. This is only when I have to refer to what’s happening outside of the games; for example in the stories I’m going to refer to the MC as Kylie. That’s an issue that would need to be tackled regardless of the gender choice, since the player can change their own name, too.