Status Update (August 10, 2025)
The last proper release of anything related to the project was almost two years ago, ouch! The reasons for those are simple:
I started university in September 2023, I am studying languages, cultures and international relationships and it's been taking a lot of time off my schedules;
Some mental health problems I had to continue dealing with since December 2021. Still working on my anxiety, but my depression had been null and void for three months now;
On September 2nd 2023 I started playing Final Fantasy XIV for the first time. I had spent an embarrassing amount of time in the game since then and moved away from Rockman in general for most of those two years. You may know of that from my side blog!
Why am I coming back only now? It's simple, really, I just felt like doing Chapter: AXL again. Especially after experiencing FFXIV and some other games prior to replaying MMZ again, and seeing what can be done to make the story and the world-building of Megaman Zero even greater. However, it all resulted in the scope of the what-if project getting... bigger than ever before, oops.
So now, instead of being a "What if Inti Creates made an Axl trilogy set in alternative timeline of MMZ series back in the DS days", it now is something much simpler: "What if modern Inti Creates remade MMZ series and added the Axl campaign to every game except Z1?". It's still something that wouldn't really happen in the way I imagine it (especially with the art style I decided to go with), and I'm trying to not insert far too much into the project, but I hope it would still be fun to read about and imagine how it would look like in your head :D
And so, in accordance with everything I have listed above, I have to announce that we have started rewriting Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 because my friends and I think we can make our writing even better after... experiencing 3000 hours of peak writing of FFXIV in two years, yeah yeah. Still not the only thing we have been playing or watching all this time, mind, but XIV just thwarts everything else at this point lol
I have to add that we didn't remove anything from the core of the story and all stages and major story bits will still be the same. We're just rewriting the dialogue and interactions in the scene that already existed as well as adding more context to make some moments hit harder later on.
Thus far, we have rewritten 75% of story content for Chapter 1. We also did 10% of work on Boss Patterns (that really needed to be reworked in chapter 1 especially) and 30% on the new Bonus Document which would list the changes done to Zero's campaign in Z1 and Z2 remakes (Z1 doesn't have a lot at all since Axl wasn't even awake during this game's events). Writing progress is currently slow because I am desperately trying to figure out how to do art again, I had a very rough art block since mid-July and decided to change artstyles for the project twice. First was in an attempt to get closer to Toru Nakayama's style during Z2 and Z3 (I have made Axl, Peatan (Ch1) and Euclid in that style), and then two nights ago I had an eurika moment and made something new, combining the early Z1 art style with Z2 and Z3 style, plus rough-er marker-like shading. It's very hard to explain without showing it, but it has to be the best thing I made this year hehe.
So yeah, most likely that all of the art for the project from now on will be done in a similar style. I just hope I would be able to replicate the shading again in different angles and poses. I even decided to play around with the eyes for certain groups of characters after I decided to try going for a style change.
Other than that, my team is still looking for more people who can help with proof-reading, lore-corrections and some art advice (while I feel quite confident with my lineart, coloring and shading now, I am still pretty bad at angles and complex shot compositions which really affects my self-esteem lol). We all work off pure enthusiasm when we have time and interest, so if you feel interested in the project and can contribute in some way (reblogging this post would also be great!) -- feel free to contact me through comments there (or PMs? I don't remember if I have them set to open).
I think that will be it for now. I might provide more info tomorrow if I remember something I forgot. Have a nice day, everyone!
