As you may know, New Horizon began its life a long time ago on a forgotten forum far far away. The original premise was simply "Mega Man on Another Planet." or... MMoAP for short. It is common for people to play around with the notion of their favorite games moving onto another planet. Many other franchises have had their established characters move to another plant. But this post isn't a story about how New Horizon got where it is, but a story about what it has become.
My biggest concern with the forum role playing (RP) was how few people took into account this was not earth. Rather, the forum RP was taking place on an alien hostile alien world. In the last year, I decided it was time to start over from scratch in certain aspects. I began by studying many books about the foundation of planetary colonies such as The Legacy of Herot, Beowulf's Children, Destiny's Road and War World. Many of you would agree that these books laid the foundation for Halo so I knew I was in good company.
New Horizon is a world that is in a much later phase of evolutionary development than Earth. The animal life has had an extra five to ten million years for creatures similar to earth creatures in superficial ways to evolve into advanced organisms. The world looks familiar but is unfamiliar.
Life as a whole on New Horizon is a hybridization of carbon and silicone based life that makes the native life forms resilient in composition. Native life forms are more ferocious than anything native on Earth. Their digestive system is powerful enough to find even certain parts of reploids to be tasty treats. I'll elaborate more on creatures in a future article.
New Horizon is different than Earth, in that aside from a few city states, the entire world untamed wilderness that has never felt the touch of man, populated with creatures that would be more than happy to make a meal out of even heavy machinery. Every time someone leaves a city, they take huge risks. Aside from air and limited sea traffic, the city-states of New Horizon are fairly cut off from one another and each have a distinct culture.
Grenzenlos
This game represents an alternate sequence of events, and is not to be confused with an official product of the Mega Man series.
This game was originally planned out to start around the same time as Mega Man Zero 2 ended and Mega Man Zero 3 begun, (approximately at the end of 23XX according to Earth's calendar). At this point of time Zero is still alive and X was making his final appearance. New Horizon has a different calendar than the one which is used on Earth. The New Horizon history starts with the year 2325, while Earth's calendar is closer to 24XX during the same time period.
We want people to understand that while this GBA game is called Mega Man: New Horizon, the emphasis is more on the latter part of the title than the former. New Horizon is about New Horizon, as opposed to being about Mega Man. Mega Man is simply the medium through which New Horizon was originally expressed.
Mega Man: New Horizon was originally a forum RP, which was specifically planned as a break from traditional canon, exploring the colonization of a new world, it just took place in the same hypothetical universe as Mega Man. A few familiar characters from the official continuity existed within it, but they were sparse and not story movers or shakers except on one or two occasions.
As time has gone by, New Horizon has been more and more about New Horizon and less and less about Mega Man. Right now, the only reason Mega Man X is even involved in this game, and the game is called Mega Man: New Horizon, is that the game is too far into development and planning, and too much money has been spent for it to be anything else.
This isn't a game designed to be a duplicate of existing series gameplay, story and characterization, it's designed to look like that from the outside, to just seem like X doing his thing all over again the way he's always done it, rising from his grave like a messiah, the invincible blue bomber the same as he ever was.
This game, much like the games Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic reveals that this is a very much different world than what we're used to dealing with in most ways, where things are more than what they appear, and everything you think you know has been skewed in a different direction.
This isn't Mega Man: Much the Same As He's Always been, it's Mega Man: New Horizon. It is by fundamental nature a different sort of storytelling environment than what's been used previously, in that X is now quite literally in a world he's never been a real part of. It's hard to see this all yet, as the only dialog other than the partial unedited script are all about three years ago, and the new prologue isn't quite finished yet.
X is an outsider to this society, as opposed to being it's virtual creator in the Zero series. He lived in an isolated environment alone with his Cyber Elves, so those who are expecting a story of the return of a grizzled war veteran may be a little surprised to find X is well beyond that at this point. X is little more than a legend to his people, with only a few people knowing that he, or even his hidden sanctuary, exist.
At the time the game starts, X finds himself in a society different from what he's known, where Humans and reploids, while distinctly different aren't differentiated between in any significant way. A world of alien creatures, and plants he never explored, due to his desire to shut himself in and keep away from the age old threat of war and violence.
At its heart, this is a story about X ceasing to be a shut in, and joining the world outside, and dealing with a whole new world, with characters who barely know who he is, or why he's been called up to serve, or why he's so out of touch with the world around him, dealing with people who don't even remember his name, and many of those who do, but have no direct knowledge of his rebirth think he's a fraud. They won't have any reason to think otherwise, as he'd appear to be nothing more than an attempt to scare disobedient reploids and humans into line.
The story isn't about what we know about X, but rather what we don't know about him, and how he reacts to a new world unfolding before him. So, for better or worse, this is going to be different. That was the plan since day one.
Grenzenlos