Less Miserables Mayish Devlog

OK, it's a little late again, but at least I got the video out while it was still May!

Anyway, thank you all SO much for helping fund the Kickstarter, we met all our stretch goals in the end! There are still a few physical box editions available, so you can still buy them today...

We've worked on new characters and backgrounds, including the final paints of Notre Dame and the barricades (front and back views), and the character for Gavroche, and expressions and poses for many of the Act 2 characters, including the over-stressed baker!

I've been a little worried about writing one of the few songs for the game - it's basically a parody and mashup of Empty Chairs at Empty Tables, that merges into Do You Hear The People Sing (as you try and change the lyrics to be more glorious and bloodthirsty). Now, structurally this has always been theoretically possible, but today I finally managed to sit down and make it work, with a few lines, but most importantly a main melodic theme and chord progression that works across the minor/major change so that it can be interactive... I'm now simultaneously excited and terrified for making this work in the game engine, but I can see a path now! I've also been to see some amazing choir and a cappella groups in Edinburgh the last few weeks, and I can see the live recording and maybe a little Fringe show coming together...

I've also been working on writing some of the climatic scenes that end Act 2 (but not the whole game). This feels a little like procrastinating on the main story of Act 2, but I like to think it's important to make sure that all the thematic connections work and come through. Can you believe we are doing all this guff for a comedy game? Well yes - there are important metaphors to the light of education, griffins, hydra, family, liberty and equality, and it's important that these themes keep resonating through the game.

So I leave you with an edited version of Enjolras' speech on the barricades (mostly bastardised from the Hapgood translation), just imagining this being read out by the amazing [redacted] we have for this character is giving me chills:

"Citizens, picture the future: the streets of cities inundated with light, thinkers entirely at liberty, no more hatreds, work for all, right for all, peace over all! We are heading to a dawn of truth corresponding to a dawn of day.

Citizens, you are about to die, that is to say to triumph, here. Whatever happens today, through our defeat as well as through our victory, it is a revolution that we are about to create. As we light up a city, so revolutions illuminate the whole human race. And what revolution shall we cause? The sovereignty of myself over myself that is called Liberty. And liberty to all is called Equality, and the protection of all over each is called Fraternity.

Let us understanding equality; for, if liberty is the summit, equality is the base. Equality, is not a society of blades of grass and tiny oaks; it is all aptitudes possessed of the same opportunity; all votes possessed of the same weight; all consciences possessed of the same right. Equality has an organ: equal schooling. Yes, instruction! Light! Light! Everything comes from light, and to it everything returns.

Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy. There will be nothing more like the history of old, we shall no longer have to fear an invasion, an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of kings, a combat of two religions meeting face to face. We shall no longer have to fear famine, misery from the failure of work or the ruffianism of chance through the scaffold and sword. One might almost say: There will be no more events. Harmony will be re-established between the soul and the star; the soul will gravitate around the truth, as the planet around the light.

Friends, the present hour in which I am addressing you, is a gloomy hour; but these are terrible purchases of the future. A revolution is a toll. But the human race will be delivered, raised up, upon on this barrier. For this barricade is not made of paving-stones, or bits of iron; it is made of of ideas, and of woes. Here the day embraces the night, and says to it: ‘I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me.’ From that embrace of desolation faith leaps forth. This agony of suffering and this immortality of ideas are about to join and constitute our death

Friends, those who die here, die in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the light of the dawn."

Vive la Révolution!