Scorched Earth expansion update

The story content for Scorched Earth (both Story Mode and Side Stories) has been completed, and as such, more can be revealed about what the final expansion's story content will consist of.

The Scorched Earth expansion's story content is bigger than the base game or any of the 5 previous expansions individually in terms of event piece count (messages, changing variables, character movement, playing music/sounds, animating a character, fading a screen, etc. -- used mainly for measuring cutscene complexity but not necessarily story/gameplay length) by a huge margin (with the entire Scorched Earth expansion being 55% bigger for event piece count than the base game alone, and the Scorched Earth expansion making up 30% of total event pieces for the base game and six expansions), which was a big reason behind this update taking 4 months.

Scorched Earth will add 2 new story arcs to Story Mode and 10 Side Stories when it releases:

A Mirror Warped -- Mentioned previously in the roadmap (and was the original name for this expansion), this Story Mode section (like all new story arcs for Story Mode) requires the previous expansion's main story arc to be completed to access (which is the Nanowish expansion's Ascendant Gate). This story arc (and Scorched Earth) will be linear (no side quests, no dungeons for new weapons, no Crystal Arena challenges).

Scorched Earth -- A new massive story arc that is also a point of no return that can be accessed after A Mirror Warped has been completed (the game will warn the player at two points during A Mirror Warped before it starts to give the player the opportunity to save in different slots in case the player wants to go back, see the original ending again or finish up gaining old triumphs). The Scorched Earth story arc takes the story in a different direction with a different ending, and the event piece count for the Scorched Earth story arc is slightly bigger than the entire base game was (the Scorched Earth story arc itself makes up just short of 20% of total event pieces for all Story Mode/Side Stories content).

Side Stories -- 10 Side Stories will be added, and their event piece count is much higher on average than previous Side Stories (277 average event piece count for Scorched Earth's Side Stories compared to 166-182 average event piece count for previous expansions). The characters who star in these 10 Side Stories will be mentioned at the end of this page.

To better emphasize how large the Scorched Earth expansion and story arc are and the higher complexity for Scorched Earth's content due to event piece counts, the chart below has been added below to compare the base game and different expansions.

Cutscenes are measured to include battles in between scenes (so for purposes of measuring this, a story scene -> battle -> story scene -> battle -> story scene will count as one cutscene). Endings include their final battles.

Endings were separated in the chart below from the base game and Scorched Earth arc due to their size to better emphasize average cutscene size.

Event pieces totals are rounded to the nearest 10.

Message counts (which includes story scene dialogue/NPC dialogue and Yes/No style choice selections in Story Mode/Endless Dungeon/Counterintelligence and can range from "..." to longer/multiple sentences, but does NOT include ending placards, ability descriptions for any game mode, Prison Break taunts and so on) are rounded to the nearest 10 per expansion.

Side Stories are measured as all cutscenes, gameplay events and dungeons within a single Side Story (for time constraint purposes for this single news page, as they were not divided up the way cutscenes were), and do not add to Cutscene count.

Miscellaneous non-story work (such as NPCs and their dialogue, activating doors to travel between maps and Challenge Arena setup) are merged with Main Story, Side quests and Side Stories as appropriate (this brings up the overall average event piece count/cutscene, but the amount of time required to sort out the miscellaneous parts from each expansion will be too high for the purposes of this single news page).

As Scorched Earth is still not released, it could still have event pieces added/removed/altered over the course of its remaining development (the Nanowish expansion had about 70 or so added to it after its first progress update for general fixes and additions).

Average event piece count will be abbreviated as AEPC for the chart below.

The 10 new Side Stories for Scorched Earth will also be revealed. Like Stel'cra'ded in Nanowish, Almavana is a new character introduced in Side Stories.

Work on models, maps and music is next. Hopefully, I can get a preview video for Scorched Earth ready in a shorter time than past expansions (since this expansion adds no new game modes and no new playable characters to fit into every mode).