Monthly Archives: September 2018

Planet Stronghold 2 Cast: Rebecca Fox

Fun fact: Rebecca was the first character I commissioned for this game back in 2010, after Lisa. Originally the game didn’t have a playable male protagonist, Joshua was named “Gunnar” and was a secondary NPC! Then after some feedback I decided also to add a male protagonist (Planet Stronghold 1 was my first game to feature both a male and female playable character).

Rebecca Fox

Rebecca Fox is considered to be the best scout/sharpshooter of Planet Stronghold even if Philipp might disagree. Despite what one might expect, she doesn’t come from a family with a military background. Her lineage contains famous journalists, actresses, models — nothing to do with shooting targets with deadly accuracy from long range.

Rebecca Fox is very competitive, and spends a lot of time in the gym training and honing her skills. She often encourages others to do so as well, offering to train them. She is not stupid, but sometimes she rushes into battle or takes risks that she would normally avoid trying to impress her companions and reassure herself about her abilities.

She can be quite bold, ignoring the chain of command to speak her mind. However she has never disobeyed a direct order; even when she broke up with Tom Shatz and he was her commander, she never let personal feelings endanger her companions.

Rebecca is a very confident woman, and doesn’t restrain herself from showing off her body. After all those hours spent in the gym, it would be a pity to not show the results, though in matters of love, her aggressiveness has often intimidated more than one man from getting closer.

Rebecca’s sister, Cassidy, was in the army as a field medic but was killed years ago by aliens. While Rebecca doesn’t unconditionally hate all aliens (at least not as much as Philipp does), her sister’s death left a deep mark on her, leading her to distrust most aliens, possibly more so with especially manipulative ones like Queen Shiler.

Meanwhile, work on the game continues. I basically finished the crafting system, I’ll talk about it in details maybe in a future post, but the most interesting feature is the possibility to upgrade the Rare/Legendary items, so if you are attached to a specific item you can keep using it until the end of the game (assuming you find enough resources for the upgrade process!)

Goodbye Otello

He was very sick (renal issues) since over 1 year, so this wasn’t a sudden loss. We already knew it, even if when the time comes to put a beloved pet to sleep, it’s always a hard choice.

Otello was one of my favorite cats (though I love them all), indeed he appeared in my game “Bionic Heart” back in 2008. Like in my other games, he could talk directly to the player. In one scene, Tanya (the female android, one of the main characters of that game) pets Otello (in the game I used the English variant “Othello”) saying he is a lucky cat, and Otello promptly replies with “Me? Indeed, modestly, I can’t complain about my life…”

And this is what comforts me mostly in this very sad moment: knowing that, even if he’s no longer with us, he was lucky and he lived a good life, surrounded by our love.

Goodbye, Otello

Planet Stronghold 2 Cast: Joshua/Lisa Nelson

Before you think I’m crazy, let me explain: I am going to do a series of blog posts about Planet Stronghold 2 cast, re-introducing the old characters as well. Why? Well first of all, I never did it before (at the times of making the first game, I wasn’t doing this sort of thing). Second, because over 7 years have passed since the release of the first title (PS1 was out in Spring 2011…!) I can’t say I remember clearly every detail of the characters’ background, personality, story, etc. So it will be helpful also to me. Plus, it will be an excuse to show some of the new outfits I’ve commissioned for the characters! For example the new “gym outfits” below:

During the next months I’ll introduce the old cast and also the new ones. I’ll take some breaks to do the usual end of year/new year blog post, or in case I have a new game announcement to do… 😉

Let’s start of course from the protagonist, Lisa or Joshua Nelson. I’ll write this intro as if they were both present in the story but of course, you can choose to play as either Lisa or Joshua on every playthrough.

Lisa and Joshua Nelson

Lisa/Joshua doesn’t remember much about their parents who were assassinated on the colony of Mars when they were only five. Raised in an orphanage, once they reached the age of adulthood, they joined the military.

They graduated as the top recruit of the wole military academy, and shortly thereafter were assigned to the colony on Planet Stronghold. Once there, they discovered that their father worked at the colony as a scientist, and their grandfather did as well. Albeit the official records were destroyed during a ferocious war, the legend of John Nelson is very popular on Planet Stronghold, and everyone, Lisa/Joshua included, started to think that they were the true descendant of John Nelson.

Lisa/Joshua played a key role in the events following their arrival, until they defeated the fearsome Descorian, a race of sentient robots.

Because of their exceptional performance, Lisa/Joshua were promoted to colony Captain of the colony Zero-One, while Tom Shatz, the current captain, was reassigned to Zero-Two, the second biggest colony on Planet Stronghold.

With great power comes greater responsibilities they say, and this case is no exception. The story begins several years after the victory against the Descorian, and we find an exhaused Lisa/Joshua trying to keep everything together while the colony seems to be collapsing at every turn: food and water scarcity, revolts, and mysterious earthquakes shattering Planet Stronghold’s surface.