Post originally by Dan Davenport at 2005-04-02 20:27:23
Converted from Phorums BB System

Chris Adams wrote:
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<b>More Designer Response--

Hi Dan, Dave Fooden gave me the heads up about your review awhile back. I'm glad you enjoyed exploring the world of Chi-Chian, and your review is a splendid and fair one.</b>
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Thanks!


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<b>This also touches on your cross-referencing issue. Far from being a proofreading error, the cross-references without page numbers are deliberate. Those are the ones that use the standard encyclopedia/dictionary term "see"-- it simply means what it means elsewhere in literature: Look up the alphabetical listing! We only list page numbers for references *outside* the encyclopedic chapter.

Honestly, it's a breeze to use. It's a human reference book standard.</b>
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Ah. Well, that makes more sense, then. To be honest, I don't recall ever seeing it writting simply as "<i>(see)</i>," but rather as "<i>(see Mimitsu Lines Company</i>". That, combined with the presence of page references in some cases, is what threw me.


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<b>Yeah, that's one of those "work within the license" deals. Voltaire is exuberantly creative, and his Chi-Chian universe has grown to accomodate the needs of a darkly brilliant storyteller. However, none of it was thought out or made to work together beyond the needs of the plotlines he was writing at the time. Our job was to make it a game, and thus, all the parts had to make sense going in.

Seriously, over 90% of the Museum chapter are pure Voltaire ideas. But over 90% of the way they interact had to be figured out by us game guys. (The only "canonical" element that had to be changed was an instance where the war in which Soma Mitsui deployed BioLogic technology was stated to take place decades *before* the war during which Soma was *born*. I remember Volt grinning and saying, "Yeah, okay, *that's* important.")

So the lack of cloned trees in a biotech playground was a noticable problem. I mean, yeah.

We make a stab at explaining it on page 101: "The intrinsic monetary value of wood is now debatable, since Mimitsu has devised a way to grow it under laboratory conditions..."

A clearer explanation is simply: Sure, they could grow trees, but it's value has been inflated due to imposed rarity.

Just like diamonds in our own day. In case you didn't know, the modern diamond indusry has vaults that are simply overflowing with their signature shiny rocks. If all were suddenly released into the market, diamonds would rapidly become nearly valueless.

So the wealthy of 3050 keep wood (and oxygen) rare, instead of free.</b>
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*nod* I figured that was just a fact of the setting -- just like Star Wars spacecraft almost always traveling on an arbitrarily shared 2-dimensional plane -- so I didn't hold it against the game itself. And the artificially-maintained rarity's as good an explanation as any.

--
Dan Davenport