Possible EOIII Untold story changes? [Endgame spoilers for ALL games!!!]

[BlindsidedbyFOE]

Just in case you missed the Spoiler warning in the title...


This thread contains open (which means not-hidden-in-spoiler-tags) discussion of Endgame Story Spoilers for ALL the Etrian Odyssey games including EO3 (but not EO5 because no one knows the story of that one yet). Don't read this topic if you don't want to see endgame boss names and other really important story spoilers!!!

I hope this warning satisfies the rules on spoilers. Also, I am making the assumption there will be an EO3 Untold, maybe after EO5 gets released. Nothing official about EO3U has come out.

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Anyway, I was reading some discussion on another site about how EO3's story does not exactly merge well with the main canon, especially with the Untold games. In EO1U and EO4, the seven Yggdrasil trees are part of the 1000 year old Yggdrasil Project and were planted by the former Earth civilization to fix climate change and clean up pollution (Miasma in EO4) so that the world would become habitable again. EO3's story is significantly different. 3Tree is a space alien which has chased world conquering space Cthulhu (Abyssal God) to Earth and ensnared it there in its roots. The Abyssal God created the Deep Ones which power themselves with the negative emotions of humanity with the ultimate goal of erasing and replacing humans. (I least that is what I remember) Yggdrasil is having none of that so it sunk part of Armoroad (the Calamity) in order to give humanity a fighting chance at containing the Deep menace. If EO3 Untold's story is going to merge with the main canon, something has to change.

The main point of contention is: What would you change to bring the EO3 story in line with EO4 and the other Untold games?

In the discussion I read, a saw some people suggesting dumping the alien plot and making the Abyssal God another corrupted Core like the Untold games. Doing so would mean changing the nature of the cores. In EO1U and EO4 they were fairly mindless consumers, although the trees did have some intelligence. Making the Abyssal God a corrupted core would mean massively upgrading its intelligence so that it could create the Deep Ones with the intent to replace humanity. At the same time, you have to also recreate Yggdrasil to be some competing aspect like a M.I.K.E. equivalent that is attempting to keep the Abyssal God sealed.

Personally I like the idea of keeping the alien aspect and having EO3 Yggdrasil become the mysterious Eighth Tree in EO3 Untold. I think that sort of storyline provides some more options for later games in the series since 4 Yggdrasil's have been accounted for so far, Gotham (the city that got Gungnir-nuked in EO1U), Etria, High Lagaard, and Tharsis/Empire of Yggdrasil), leaving just two left for later games to play around in if EO3's counts as one.

By keeping EO3's story intact you can also introduce a space dimension of threats and characters. If there was to be a change, perhaps instead of making the Abyssal God some random space conquering creature, have it be a creation of humans who fled the dying Earth into space 1000 years ago. The humans, not believing those left on the ground would pull off the Yggdrasil project in time, hedged their bets on evolving into a race tolerant of Earth's miasmatic corruption over the next 1000 years, aka the Deep Ones. They would then return to Earth and reestablish civilization. The soon-to-be-not-humans who bet against the Yggdrasil project unfortunately discovered their promised homeland would become toxic to them because the trees were working. As a last ditch effort to reclaim their homeland, they changed their genetic plans into ones suitable for war and created the Abyssal God to seed the Earth with an appropriate environment as a base from whence they could launch an attack against the rest of Earth to conquer it and render it habitable for themselves.
Meanwhile there was another faction sympathetic to the humans who were going to bet on the Trees and try to survive on Earth. This faction which existed 1000 years ago foresaw the possibility for conflict between the earth goers and space farers if the Yggdrasil project succeeded. They didn't want the work of the Trees undone so they poured their energy into secretly creating an artificially intelligent Eighth Yggdrasil seed which would be launched into space. This seed would observe the actions of the space farers. If they tried to recorrupt the Earth as the ancient pro-tree faction anticipated they might, the Tree would chase after them and grow in order to lock them down. The Tree would them make contact with nearby humans to bestow upon them the technology needed to defend against the Deep ones.

A story like this captures the alien intrigue of the third game without any actual aliens. It also reuses some familiar concepts without repeating any exactly. 3Yggdrasil becomes something more like M.I.K.E. from EO1U, which explains the technology like the Yggdroids. It also explains the lack of Core since the Eighth Yggdrasil had an entirely different purpose than the others. This storyline also avoids repeating the pollution-centric storylines of EO1U and EO4 but acknowledging their existence in the backstory. I also feel like the depth of the story would be improved by having the Deep Ones be former humans. It matches the morally ambiguous flavor of the first game where you had to stomp the poor forest folk in the name of exploration. It also explains why the Deep Ones are as human as they are, and why the alien Eldest One might feel a romantic interest for the Princess which I always thought was a bit strange in the original. What do you think?

[Klaww]

Love it. After playing the second untold and reading references to the first, it would only make sense that the Midgard Library would investigate an Yggdrasil in contrast to their initial reports. If memory serves however, both games included more characters than from the Midgard Library in addition to new classes. Perhaps the story arc would link your idea along with the characters so as to make the plight more relatable, and thus harder to choose a side. Not to mention a party in conflict with itself would be an interesting spin on the series. Losing one or two members of the party when you make your choice only to be compensated by replacements of your new affiliations should spice up the whole dynamic. Such as losing a librarian to a shogun, or a privateer to an yggdroid. The untold stories always bring a more personal touch to games, and three should be no different.

I like the idea of only making a few alterations to allow for more trees to exist. I love these games and the thought that they will run out is a little disturbing. As any Final Fantasy fan could tell you, there is no end to the series.

Something new, something old, all original.

[BlindsidedbyFOE]

[YangKoete]

Yes, yes; I do know this part, but I do have a few questions though...What about the characters? The main ones, that is that make up the story-mode party?

I was thinking since this has been a reoccurring thing; From EO4, I suggest we have a strictly front-line character, while your main character is in the back as the special class. Maybe you can play as a female silent protagonist instead this time around?

What would we have for our other three classes that fit in with our game like we've had before? Perhaps they'd be a bit more unorthodox but run well together? No Princess/Prince/Sovereign because they were in Untold II for the story, so none for the Untold III story.

[Aegix Drakan]

*Just skimmed the thread*

I'd always assumed that the Yggdrasil tree/s originally were alien in nature after 3 (And that the other trees were cloned/planted by human scientists to speed earth's revival), and that the various "Taints" in the other trees were also alien in nature (IE, corrupted by the deep one taint)

I figured that Tree #3 was the original one that hit earth just as the pollution crisis was at its peak, and Tree #1 was the result of scientists cloning Tree#3's seeds to create more of them to speed the revival along quick enough to save humanity. Unfortunately, straight up trying to clone the seeds also carried along some of the alien "taint" and led to the ravenous corrupted cores from the previous games.

[Wolfling]

I Agree with this one and much more believable despite I don't believe in aliens , its more acceptable in my opinion cause based on the official story the earth was drag to destruction because of humans lust for progress and they only found out about the toll it had on the environment only too "late", u see I put kinda stress out the word late, for a project huge/law-of-physic-defying like the world tree it needs great time and probably they won't be able to make it (in one story one guy fused with it so he can watch over the tree for its incomplete) especially if they started from scratch, they probably dead while still thinking on "how to" part (the most difficult part in inventing stuff is mostly on thinking of way achieving the goal) if they have something to copy or to based it from, yeah then maybe they can do that much with little time they have.

PS. I know this story is SciFi but I'm just RP-ing.