Context changes a lot of things, I believe.  It’s a heavy basis of how the story of DotI came around, knowing that something that comes across as irrefutably evil and wrong can be seen in a completely different light, given the right circumstances.  The story is about people who change their stories, hidden figures, deceit, disguise and mystery, all the things that cloud judgement and cloak context, making the true nature of any one event hard to read.  To add onto that, the characters all have ambiguous natures and goals; it’s never exactly certain what they’re thinking or why they’re doing this, and I’m trying to bleed that into the story from the start; giving a very one-sided, flat concept, then throwing some ambiguity at it to create that speckle of doubt about it.

It’s the “Dance” of Immortals because nothing is just a straight line, no one is just a mug shot, nothing’s that simple.  Everything is in constant motion, the characters are all moving around and changing their minds and having secret agendas… it’s more like a dance: looking at it in pieces and short segments looks like people just falling around aimlessly, but from my side, when you know what’s happening with everything at once, it’s more of a dance, more flowing than that.  Everyone’s going to where they’re supposed to be, but they’re not just walking there in a fashion that makes it simple to uncover from just looking at a step at a time.  Question really is; which one of them is who they appear to be?  Which one of them is actually evil?  Any at all?  Everyone

As an example, Chapter One introduces the Imperials fairly strongly.  They’re our bad guys, they’re destroying an innocent archipelago full of innocent folk.  Take that one piece of information and we have a typically “evil empire” scenario.  But that’s too boring, too cliche, no?  So we throw in a few curve balls at their story.  There’s a few cutscenes on the island as you run around as Kata, each tossing out some other viewpoints.  Then at the end of the chapter they’re brought up again and once more you get a different question about their motives.

I believe that context can change the world; had my fair share of being judged and abused based on one snippet of information taken out of context and it happens a lot.  People have a habit of seeing one side of things and accepting that as the raw truth, forgetting that everything is three dimensional and has different viewpoints.  I’m trying, I’m hoping, that I can bring that sense of context into this game, and really encourage the idea that you need to focus on more than just what you see at first.