I’m not sure about you but one of my favorite things to do when consuming media is analyze Relationships! So, of course, any game I create would bring said relationships to the forefront. For this blog we’re going to dive headlong into the relationship mechanics found throughout Sanctuary Saga! Our first stop will be the one most obvious for players: there’s a Relationship scene in our Main Menu. Here, the player can see all relationship information spelled out. As our Guild Leaders defeat enemies together, when agreeing on which Expeditions to choose, or if the party selects Event options they mutually like, they will gain Relationship Points with one another. These points are exactly like XP: as they go up, so do Relationship Levels. More levels are generally good, right? But why bother? Very early on in talks with Vicarious Publishing, a key factor they wanted to bring EVEN MORE to the player’s focus was highlighting these relationships as a core part of gameplay. Their key ask was “Make relationships matter in combat”. I loved the idea and ran with it! Suddenly these party members are teaching each other ways to improve. Now Skills have levels, each Skill gated by a different relationship with another Guild Leader. Eventually they may come to rely on each other even more at higher levels. Maybe, just maybe, this shared trust will manifest in other ways, but I’d rather you discover those aspects for yourself. But what if we don’t want to worry about relationships? Well, like in real life, team cohesion suffers. Relationships can go negative and have detrimental effects during battle. As discussed in the Battle Post (check it out [url=https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1582200/view/5663873078619595671]here [/url]if you haven’t), the Argument meter can lead a party member to ignore commands and trigger Arguments during fights. Negative relationships make this much more likely to happen. That’s in addition to missing out on the aforementioned Skill upgrades and other potential rewards, let alone the plot points. Wait, what is this Narrative you speak of, you may ask? Harking back to relationships being my favorite part of media, did I mention each of these relationships has a unique story that plays out as the connections deepen? That’s a lot of content (I’ll do the math for you: 15 relationships among the six party members). And some of those relationships may just be a bit more…impactful…than others for those involved. I still have all of the emotions when I encounter them in play testing so I hope you do too! All in all I love where this system landed and think it generates a lot of interesting choices for players to explore. I’m sure once you’re all done number crunching (nooo…my nefarious systems have been laid bare…), someone will math out the optimal path. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this key aspect of Sanctuary Saga as much as I enjoyed creating it. Till next time!