Sunday 18 March 2018

Elemental Heroes - A Preview of the Elements [Network]


Before bringing the next preview of the book, I thought I’d go over some of the elements within it. And what better place to start than with those elements. The idea with them is much the same as magical attacks within games like Kingdom Hearts or Skyrim, but I wanted to expand the range considerably. The basic ones like fire, water, and electric are there, but then you get ones that don’t seem like they would be much use, such as gravity and wind. I’ve worked in as much as I could with all of them – looking for both world uses and mobility uses. They are ever growing with new things always being added to them. While some of them won’t get much use within this story, you can guarantee that they will get time to shine in future stories.
As for the world itself, I’m looking at the construction-based games. The ones where you can build cities and individual houses. The easiest comparison to make would be The Sims series, along with SimCity. However, the idea has been given a bit of an addition in the form of health for individual pieces of those buildings, kind of like Fortnite or Dragon Quest Builders. This comes into play quite a bit with one major area of the story. There’s also the simulation zones and rooms, which put into real terms the idea of virtual reality. As seen in the preview last month, zones build a place within the parameters set, such as an office or a small plaza. Rooms are more like the virtual reality we know, but here a person is literally transported to another world as a copy that they have full control of.

The main talking point of the novel is the characters and theming. I’m not going deep into this, as the story explores these things and would ruin one of the largest parts of it. The police force – as seen from the preview last month – is split into two divisions. The main force which makes up the bulk of the entire force, and the elemental division. This elemental division has Gary Storm as a Primary Commander, though there is a Secondary Commander as well. These two head the elemental division along with numerous technicians and researchers. The Primary Elemental Unit had already been formed prior to this first episode, and is led by Terrance. The PEU also includes Robin, Heather, Ira, and Martha. The Secondary Elemental Unit is formed with Kieron taking leadership, Brandon and Emma by his side. The elemental division is different from the main force in that there are only two units. The main force has four people to a unit, with multiple units within both primary and secondary categories.
The city of focus is Ballart [Ba-lart] within the region of Gigalish. Ballart isn’t the capital or the largest city, but it does house the largest police force station. The central area of the city features several plaza areas. One of these holds the abandoned building that came known by the name of the Infected Caverns. As stated above, health of individual pieces of buildings is a factor that comes into play, and it is within this place that happens. Another place within the city is near its outer ring – dubbed the dry lands. There’s a story about why the place got the name, and it has to do with a certain crowd of people trying to avoid paying for their power and damaging the system.
As for the story, it’s a simple tale of good and evil, but with a bit of moral questioning. I’m not going into it all as you can read it, but the preview that will come later focuses on one of these questions. And that is the running of the force. It’s one of the major themes within the story that starts with the second episode. The main force sees the elemental division as redundant – or at least the fact they have their own units as redundant. It runs through most of the eight episodes, and needs to be read to fully feel the impact of it. You’ll get an understanding of it upon reading the preview, I’m sure.

All of these elements I’m talking about – including the influences – are coming together nicely to bring a story that will have a clear beginning and end while still leaving the way for more to be explored in the future. It might seem like there’s too much of an emphasis on all the influences, but I’m hoping the previews I’m posting prove that isn’t the case. The next time I come back with a post about Elemental Heroes, it will be the second preview. There’s other things that I haven’t talked about, as I want you all to experience them yourselves when reading.