This is just scaffolding.

The prototype was designed and released almost a decade ago, without much deliberation. I was in my late teens. At that time, the work was entitled Ecco of Legends. The first draft sputtered it’s way off of dad’s old dotmatrix printer, consuming some twenty-odd pages all reamed together, briefly circulated around the family for positive-by-default review before being pulled apart, hole-punched and stowed away in an old high school binder for all but the briefest moments ever since.

Deliberation has been something of a roadblock ever since. The first draft had the benefit of passion without fear. Now, I keep second guessing myself. Too much of a perfectionist. It hasn’t been all bad, though. Sure, The Story’s been put on the back burner way more often than not since its inception, but it’s seldom been stagnant. It’s been evolving, almost constantly.

At this stage, I don’t expect anyone who might chance upon this blog to care, and that’s fine, but a day might soon come where knowing a bit about The Story’s background might be of some interest. The predominant details of The Story’s evolution involve the name and thematic changes that have transpired over the years. As mentioned, it was originally called Ecco of Legends. Why “Ecco”? Honestly, I have no idea. I know that, at that time, I knew that “ecco” meant “here is” in Italian. I also knew of the Sega game called Ecco. I could never get far into it, but I liked it. The idea of sending out a sonar call, holding it long enough for it to bounce back all the way from the edge of the screen to Ecco’s sensory of their environment, resulting in a map for the player. I can appreciate that it was probably influential.

Originally, the first draft was presented in first person perspective. Worse, the main character was named after myself. Soon thereafter, I changed the main protagonist’s name to “Ecco”, but already after The Story had been named. Not entirely sure why I went that route. Still makes no sense to me to say “[Person’s name] of Legends“, none whatsoever. Regardless, the name for the protagonist stuck, even if The Story abandoned it’s original title.

Since then, it’s been redesigned from a vaguely third person/sometimes omni perspective point of view, allowing for a healthier degree of separation between myself and the character(s). Thematically, The Story’s origins were founded on a juvenile outlook on charismatic Christian theology from within the belief system itself. That has long since been shed. In fact, there is now a high degree of moral ambiguity intended to be expressed by the time the final draft is ready to go to print (still a fairly long ways off) [edit: later feelings have me wanting to go a wholly wholesome route, just not seeing the clearest way to do so]. As for working titles, the first change was from Ecco of Legends to The Eden Project, then to Star of Eden, then finally now to the present title, Elyen. I’m very fond of the present title, so I don’t expect any future changes to occur.

The original game plan was a simple “good vs evil” template involving angels and demons, with humans in the middle in a fictional, quasi-high tech, quasi-medieval world that was somehow tied to and vaguely co-influenced by the real world. Now, it’s more about imaginative adventure, psychological poking and prodding, philosophical thought-provocation, and general dilemma-driven conflict.

In summary, The Story, aka Elyen has been a very long time in the making. As mentioned, this blog is just an attempt to establish some scaffolding to perhaps help the process along by giving me a side related creative outlet to express and shape new ideas and old into satisfying and exciting forms which I hope will serve to strengthen and expedite the writing process for Elyen.