Dark Core - Review Topic

[xccj]

Hey, so I'm going to try something different here; instead of posting a story one chapter at a time, I'm just going to link to the Google Document and have this open for comments and reviews.

So without further ado, let me introduce my latest story...

Dark Core: A Hero Factory Story

This is an ongoing story I am working on for NaNoWriMo.  Today I'm posting the chapter I wrote up last year (although only recently got around to proofreading) but the story has a long way to go, so hopefully I will be able to provide plenty of other updates in the future.  And in the meantime... well, the Epic forum is not as flush with activity as it used to be, so let's contribute something to the library!

As for the story... in case it wasn't obvious, this will be a bit of a darker take on the Hero Factory story.  While I am taking a lot of names and concepts from the original theme, I have reinvented the universe it takes place in to have a darker setting, allowing me to explore some concepts that Lego wouldn't have wanted to.  The story will focus on the exploits of the latest crew of recruits, Evo, Nex, and Rocka, and follow them as they journey to become true Heroes.

Anyway, feel free to comment here or in the document.  And fair warning, it's a lengthy read, as I had to hit 50K words to make it qualify for NaNoWriMo, and I'm hoping to have another 50K finished by the end of this month!  Plenty of room to explore this new Hero Factory universe I've put together!  Thanks again for stopping by!

 

[confused piraka]

ok I love hero factory so I'm going read the whole thing. 

(I will update when I'm finished)

 

[Nato G]

I’m caught up on everything that’s currently in the doc, and I’ve been really enjoying the story so far. I’m loving the darker, more mature ideas that have been introduced here, with the corruption, classism, conspiracies, and crime families, the new lore around Quaza, Makuro being more of a manipulative mastermind, etc.

I also like the way you’ve described the heroes as each having a different body type and physicality compared to each other, instead of them all basically being clone builds like the sets were. Everyone’s got their own unique fighting style, and gets their chance to shine. I appreciate the way the villains have been given more depth and characterisation as well, rather than the very basic way most of them were portrayed in the original story. Naming some of the ships and locations after Bionicle G2 characters was a nice touch as well.

My biggest criticism at the moment is that the prologue explains too much, too soon. With the story being mainly about the rookies, we could’ve learned more about the world through them. Key themes like the financial and class inequality are signposted plenty of times through the rest of the story, so we didn’t need to have it all infodumped in the prologue. Us readers knowing a lot of the big reveals and twists long before the heroes do takes a lot of tension and mystery out of the story.

The worldbuilding for all of the planets and locations is excellent, but I also would’ve liked to see more of that for the Hero Factory tower itself. After the early training and Core Hunter encounter things jump forward a few months to the main plot threads that keep the characters away from the Factory, so it would’ve been nice to see them spend a little downtime there beforehand.

All said, though, it’s a really interesting take on the Hero Factory story, and I look forward to seeing where it goes from here.