Howdy, Toons! The Writing Team is back, here to follow up on our previous blogpost. It's been quite a while, hasn't it?

Previously, we talked a bit about the newly formed Writing Team. The post included our history, our plans for the future, and most importantly: we prompted you to ask us some questions about us! But before we get into that...

A Foreword

First, we'd like to thank everyone who submitted a question! We were quite happy to see so many of you interested in what we do behind the scenes. We've got plenty of questions to go through, but we first wanted to take a moment to state some disclaimers of sorts. If you don't see your question here, it most likely fell under one of these categories!

• Some questions received were out of scope for the Writing Team to answer. For example, questions about future game content not related to the new main campaign.
• Some questions were quite long, so a bit of condensing had to be done! Blog posts can only be so long, unfortunately.
• Some questions were too specific for us to answer, with everything being reworked behind the scenes!

The Questions

Past Events and Facts

ItsZen_EXE asked: "Will the previous Ottoman conversations remain canon, and if so, are there any details that are going to need to be looked at again/retconned?"

NonsensicalThings: Being perfectly honest, it is hard to say at the moment! Our goal for this project is to rewrite the story, not the characters, so it is true that certain events Thomas (the Ottoman) has referenced may or may not be present, or may simply be tweaked! Many things the Thomas references are not things that have great implications for the lore, but instead serve to inform Thomas' character, so I do not personally foresee any of his conversations' contents being changed, but we're going to need to have a larger discussion with the Writing Team about that before I can give any definitive answers. Regardless, the spirit of the C.O.O. and the characterization those conversations have given him will certainly stick.

Redd "Heir" Wing's Biggest Fan asked: "Do you intend to fully retcon BTL and any characters directly associated with it? I fear for the future of my most beloved favorites, especially after the change to the Former Wing Diploma."

Ultima Charge asked: "The blog post seems a little foggy on how lore and characters from the Break The Law event will be handled, what with the specific mention of including characters "no longer around" in the new main campaign but later that certain story events such as The Last Stand may fall to the wayside. Can you elaborate on what this means? What is happening to Atticus and Redd?"

Maven: While we don't have exact plans for characters such as Redd, the Witness Stand-In, and Elvis Purrsley, at this moment, one thing is for certain: we do intend to feature them! Operation: Break the Law was a significant portion of Clash's history, and quite a sizeable portion of the community is fond of it--even those arriving onto the scene too late to see it for themselves! This is a facet of Clash's history we are looking to embrace in this opportunity to start fresh. We'll be brushing up these characters and plot threads from that earlier era of Clash, writing their tales with more refined direction and goals in mind, and granting them appropriate significance. In short, "Break the Law" will likely become a part of the new main campaign, and while it may look a little different narratively speaking, we are absolutely intending to keep these characters and their major story beats as intact as we can. That is also why The Last Stand may not be applicable to the future of Corporate Clash's writing: as great of a feat as it was for the project, it was intended for a much earlier time; rendering it much more difficult to retrofit to a new narrative.

Stanley Stilts asked: "Is the CJ leaving still canon, or are they retconned out of the story?"

Oddball asked: "What made you decide CJ didnt fit the narrative you where going for in Corporate clash lore? Was it the general supreme court aesthetic or a more narrative standpoint?"

Maven: The C.J. was certainly an interesting character for us to consider when we first sat down and agreed that a narrative reset button was the best choice. First, it's important to understand why our team made the decision to remove him: his fight was notoriously poorly designed and unfun for many. They felt that the best choice that they could've made at the time was to do something no one had done before: create an entirely new boss, boss encounter, and Cog HQ to knock everyone's socks off–in true Clash fashion! In that regard, the plot surrounding his leaving the company was a method to narratively convey what was happening. Instead of the Crew going "oh, by the way, we're removing the C.J.. Have fun with the C.L.O.!" they thought it would be a more engaging experience to integrate this occurrence into the game's story! While that was excellent for its time, the output of that strategy has not aged well. His presence, and all the events following him leaving, completely hinged on the fact that he was previously a boss encounter in the game, and we nor Game Design have any intention of bringing his encounter back. Even if we were to bring him back for the purposes of our reintroduction of "Break the Law" and its characters into the new narrative, it would result in an unfortunately unsatisfying gameplay and narrative experience. As unfortunate as it is to say, his time has passed for Clash.

Comrade asked: "Is Doe Vinci's backstory as established in April Fools 2019 and BTL still considered canon?"

Maven: While we do intend to keep the spirit of her character alive, it's most accurate to say that her backstory isn't entirely canon anymore. This is because, as addressed in the questions above, we are doing heavy narrative reworking to Break the Law! As for April Toons, and the other holidays for that matter, their relevance to canon is... dubious at best.

Renfield asked: "Will you bring back Count Erclaim, Count Erfit, and explore those vampiric Cogs' backstories and family? I love them and vampires a lot!"

Peach Monkey asked: "Will we be able to revisit all the unique characters: Count Erclaim, Count Erfit, Redd Wing, the Witness Stand-In, Sads, the C.J., and Face The Family?"

Sheriff Cranky: As we've explained before in our earlier development update, the Counts will not be returning in the short-term, but they're certainly still on our minds when designing future content! They remain in our lore and may be featured in our social media content and comics - it's not forever goodbye!

Sads is no longer canon to the Corporate Clash canon (and hasn't been for a while now) as we feel that his writing does not reflect the quality standards that the current Writing team has.

Queen Midnight Flowerteeth asked: "I remember during the Daffodil Gardens story-line searching for both Rain and Detective Lima. The former being found at the Senior V.P battle and the latter never being found. Do you plan on bringing him back and/or the players actually finding him?"

maxiemcsoda: Detective Lima is more of a leftover for a direction in the story that we aren't intending on going anymore, it's safe to say we haven't forgotten about him, but we just weren't able to conclude that plotline. We do plan on tying up loose ends in the future, whether or not we go with this specific plot point again isn't set in stone quite yet.

New Main Campaign

Anonymous asked: "What kinds of things inspired the expansion of the storyline? Namely, were there any standards or themes that shaped what would be going into Corporate Clash lore and what wouldn't make it?"

maxiemcsoda: We felt that we were more than a little disorganized with what we originally were working with, and at a point we came to terms with the fact that we just could not tie every loose end together. We opted for the next best decision; a big rewrite to make the story more comprehensible! We have also established writing pillars to keep us on track for the future.

C.R. asked: "Will the dialogue of the new taskline be uploaded in its entirety somewhere accessible? I really don't want to make a second Toon and replay the entire game just to refresh myself on the new lore."

Anonymous asked: "If the taskline is getting completely redone, what does that mean for players with maxed out toons that have finished the current story? Will players have to start all over again with a new toon to experiance the new stuff?"

Anonymous asked: "What will happen with Toons who are in the middle of the taskline or at the end of the taskline when the new taskline drops? Will people who have already finished it be able to do it and how will it affect people who are in the middle of it?" 

Sethem asked: "How exactly is the Writing Team and the Development Team going to shift the game to that new taskline?"

Nagito asked: "with the plans of rewriting the taskline and lore for Clash, how is it going to benefit Toons, who have already finished the taskline, and the Kudos tasks for the playgrounds?"

maxiemcsoda: This question is actually more fit for the Game Design Team to answer. To hopefully answer your questions to the best of our extent, Game Design is working on brainstorming up how this change will affect players that are mid-taskline or completely finished with all of the progress one can make in-game. It is absolutely something that is on our minds and we will have a solution for this, both keeping progress and allowing old players to experience the new campaign.

Anonymous asked: "Regarding the future taskline overhaul, will there be any changes to the kudos rank-up tasks?" 

Jello Omnicrumbs asked: "While I understand that the re-write is extremely early days yet, is there any plans for the Kudos managers to play a larger role in the new main story?"

Maven: Something we found we greatly disliked almost immediately after the Hires & Heroes update dropped and community reactions started pouring in was... These new managers all feel extremely disjointed from any story Clash has going for it. While the Formerly-known-as Lore Writing team agreed unanimously that all these new encounters definitely needed some narrative oomph, we made a quite unfortunate mistake that we overlooked until far, far too late: we wrote everything. EVERYTHING. Characters, dialogue, cutscenes, and all, in a vacuum. Meaning, we were not much considering the larger picture of what the game's overall story feels like to play from start to finish, and it feels... not great right now! Which brings us to the BIG reason we wanted to overhaul the main campaign so badly: we made all the characters... and they're just side content?! Now, that's no good. We could do so much better for them, and for you in the community! And here we are now... It is a goal of ours to far better integrate the Regional Managers into the new campaign.

CrazyMew37 asked: "So, since you guys are going to be doing a complete overhaul with the taskline, does that mean there will be new bosses for each playground, or will it stay as the current taskline bosses and the cog bosses as well?"

NonsensicalThings: The department bosses and taskline bosses are here to stay! It is possible that their place in the narrative may be shifted around a bit, but they will all be present.

Anonymous asked: "Will the sidetasks be rewritten? Also, are there any plans on increasing the presence of certain NPC toons that only played minor roles before? Either in terms of moving the main plot forward or just by making some more of the smaller scale stories more impactful?"

NonsensicalThings: We are currently working to hone in on the contents of the narrative, so we haven't gotten to addressing sidetasks just yet, but us rewriting them is very possible. As for specific NPCs, we're really trying to make them more engaging all around! As is the nature of NPCs in MMOs, some of them are inevitably going to be less developed than others, but we really want Toon presence to be more felt, so we are definitely aiming to have some awesome Toon stories and more engaging, relatable Toon characters!

BananaGal asked: "While writing for a task, are there ever concerns in regards to gameplay constraints such as what is possible in engine and the amount of potential activities? How does the team work around this to keep the quests feeling fresh and unique?"

NonsensicalThings: Our writers are pretty accustomed to the scope of tasks at this point, and even when we ask for something that hasn't been seen in a task before, it tends to be very possible! Our Technical Team is very talented, so assuming it is not something that is going to take up a massive amount of team resources, generally speaking our requests as the Writing Team are able to be met. Part of our new campaign plan is figuring out what more we can do with tasks, so we're hoping to push the boundaries of what is possible even further, both on a narrative and technical level!

Sources of Truth

Odd asked: "Are there plans to still use the Cogs.ink site for information on managers and other cogs (both already-implemented characters and upcoming ones)? I find the site a good idea as a place to find information that would not come up organically within the game, such as manager names, backstory details, and general insight on how Cogs Inc works."

maxiemcsoda: Yes! We do plan on continuing to use Cogs.ink for information on the managers, and it is considered one of the canonical sources of information. We plan to make sure that Cogs.ink continues to reflect what is canonical in-game and provides insight on characters. We also would like to use official comics as sources of canon information that wouldn't organically come up as well. All canonical comics will be on the Corporate Clash website.

Anonymous asked: "The recent blog states that cogs.ink is one of the canon sources, because High Roller has a profile there, does that make them canon?"

Melody Mcflip asked: "Does High Roller stay as non-canon as they were before or has Your Quackjesty become double non-canon?"

maxiemcsoda: High Roller will continue to live outside of canon. He, and everything he is included in, is not canon, they are simply an April Toons' boss that exists for celebration of the most Toony holiday and for the players to have fun with!

Lemon Dreamsicle asked: "Are the cog part descriptions in the cog disguise page of the stickerbook going to remain/still canon?"

maxiemcsoda: We have no current plans on changing those descriptions. They are simply fun flavor text!

Anonymous asked: "Is everything contained in the "your_questions_answered" folder of the "treasure_trove" file from the cogs.ink website still canon?"

Maven: Unfortunately, no. While it was certainly fun to create that content at the time, it came about on the cusp of us realizing just how incredibly scattered all of our media extras were getting. In the future, we are also planning on balancing out Suit-focused storytelling with Toon-focused storytelling (as Toons are currently quite underrepresented!), and maintaining readily accessible sources of truth.

The Lofian asked: "Is there a coherent timeline for Clash lore like TTR has?"

Maven: Not currently! With all the overhauling happening, it unfortunately wouldn't make much sense to create one for the current iteration of Clash's narrative. But, we absolutely want to put in the legwork of maintaining a proper timeline as we start things anew. Whether this will be in game, on the website, or some other third thing, we don't know for sure just yet.

Anonymous asked: "Is Scapegoat still like 50 or is that being retconned?"

maxiemcsoda: Discord messages from Crew members are not considered canonical any longer, as it would be an unreliable source for information to those who were not there at the time the message was sent, are not a member of the Discord server at all, or are in the server but do not participate in it actively.

Anonymous asked: "Does this mean Dave never ate all all those quarters?!?!"

maxiemcsoda: Well... we wouldn't put it past him...

World

Jaxon asked: "I've always been curious about the worldbuilding in Corporate Clash, will we ever learn more about places outside of Toontown like Suitopia, Sky Clan, etc?"

NonsensicalThings: As it stands right now, we're currently focusing on fleshing out the story and lore of just Toontown itself, in order to keep our scope reasonable. We could certainly touch upon Suitopia and Sky Clan at some point in the future, but it's not something we're looking to do just yet.

Anonymous asked: "Are there plans to explore what Toontown was like before the Cogs or even what the initial invasion was like?"

Maven: While it is an important narrative component, informing the new campaign's plot and characters, how we will approach conveying that information to the player–and what information to convey–has not yet been nailed down.

Anonymous asked: "Other than Sky Clan and Toonseltowne, are there other Toon locations outside of Toontown?"

Comrade asked: "Will Sky Clan be explored more in the future, lore wise? (After all, we haven't seen the place in almost 5 years!)"

maxiemcsoda: There are locations outside of Toontown, but we are not sure that we will explore them within the storyline! However, we have talked a bit about fitting Sky Clan into the narrative, as it is somewhat of an important location to some of our Toons. We do not want to have to entirely retcon characters if we can help it, so Doe and Bro Vinci will likely still be a link to Sky Clan. As it stands, there are no current plans to explore it yet as our focus is primarily on fleshing out Toontown itself for the time being.

Characters

Rainy asked: "Will we learn more about certain Toon characters involved in the story beyond some of the regulars? Will some characters be toned down or will they all be expanded upon as the changes come into place?"
 

Prince Fluffs asked: "We have so many great Cog characters, but no major Toon characters (In the game at least), and I have noticed that cogs are written to be more human and emotive than the original TTO cogs. If we ever got major Toon characters, would the overall contrast between Toons and Cogs still be as exaggerated?"

NonsensicalThings: I'm glad you two asked! As it stands currently, yes, our Cogs tend to be more engaging characters than our Toons, which is a bit awkward for a game with "Toon" in its name, ahaha. This is something of a result of our crew culture, as well as a result of our original team structure. Originally, we had no Writing Team! As a result of that, there was no real streamlined way for us to write for the game and analyze that writing, much less receive the continuous rounds of feedback we receive on our work now. We were (and still are!) big fans of Cogs, so we put a lot of effort into writing them because they interested us the most, which is totally cool! But when the Writing Team was formed, it had dawned upon us that our Toon characters had been left in the dust a bit as a result of this. One of our big goals with the narrative rewrite is to put Toons more front and center, and fortunately we have a lot of ways of going about that which we are currently discussing. There's potential to expand on Toons currently in the taskline, expand upon Toons not in the current taskline, expand upon Toons not currently in the game, and even expand upon completely new Toons! We're excited really start exploring these Toons' characters further. This doesn't necessarily mean Cogs will be made more robotic and less emotive, however. Toontown Online's Cogs were intentionally very boring and stale to further feed into their corporate aesthetic, and that is simply an idea we're choosing not to pursue, as it doesn't particularly interest or inspire us. Given that Corporate Clash has more narrative weight than Toontown Online, having Cogs be consistently bland and corporate would be very limiting for our writers when it comes to writing an engaging narrative.

Cool Midnight asked: "Who was your favorite Kudos Manager to write personality-wise?"

Maven:  I'd say it's a tie between both favorite and greatest annoyance: the Duck Shuffler. His lisp was actually added in after the dialogue was completed, as a Crew member went "wouldn't it be so fitting if he had a lisp," and then it become so! Following this, quite a few other characters saw reworks to their dialogue–the Crew loved the flair it added to the Duck Shuffler! Bellringer and Treekiller were among those altered–Bellringer to a far, far lesser extent than Treekiller. And while that's all well and good, the Duck Shuffler (and by extension, Dan Dribbles) released with some minor typos as some fiendish "s" letters slipped through the cracks... apologies to Sheriff Cranky for all the minor text fixes.

Shark asked: "How do you come up with the storyline and character dialogue/speaking patterns? "

NonsensicalThings: A lot of back and forth, ahaha. An idea is proposed, and we all rip into it like the hungry writing goblins we are. That is to say, we critique it and discuss it further with the team so that we can create the best possible result. A lot of it is also situational as well. There are many ways to cook an egg, so to speak, so how we work may vary depending on what we think would best benefit that particular situation, or even which members of the team are writing that particular idea.

Anonymous asked: "While I am still only partway through the game, I’ve noticed a theme of loneliness with some bosses (namely Winston, Brian, and Misty). Was this recurrence intentional at all?"

Maven: While loneliness itself is not a theme we go out of our way to touch on, it does tend to be a side effect of the broader ideas we like to shoot for. For Winston and Misty, as examples, they are two that got dealt a pretty bad hand by C.O.G.S., Inc. Their stories exemplifying both the viciousness of their hyper-work-focused societal expectations, and the feelings of being a disposable Cog in the machine that comes with it. Complicit in the terrible things C.O.G.S. (and the greater Suit society) is capable of, but outcast nonetheless. 

Steve asked: "Who is your favorite shopkeeper?"

maxiemcsoda: Hard choice! But I'd have to say one of my favorite shopkeepers, at least personality and dialogue-wise, is Lil' Oldman. I just find his antics to be amusing! Though, even if they aren't exactly shopkeepers, Professor Pete, Rocky, and Doe Vinci are all really fun shopkeeper-adjacent Toons!

Anonymous asked: "Are there plans for more LGBT Toon representation in the future?"

Sheriff Cranky: Yes! We're proud to be a trailblazer in ensuring minority voices like LGBT+ are well-represented in Corporate Clash, and have more plans to introduce new characters representing people from all walks of life.

Roy G. Biv asked: "When coming up with the Regional Managers for 1.3.0, did you come up with the game mechanics and create characters to fit them, or did you think of a character archetype/business pun first and then think about how they'd work in-game later? Or which method did you use the most?"

Maven: This is a lovely question, and it's one of those things that honestly just has all the pieces clicking into place. I believe the first step in the designing of the Regional Managers was selecting names, and deciding how many Cogs from each department were wanted and where they'd go–whether they'd be a street encounter, instanced encounter, and what playground they'd reside in. Once that was decided on by Game Design, the Concept Artists were off to the races, keeping in touch with Game Design as they went. As the Concept Artists worked and showed off their progress, pieces of battle ideas began to come together. As those ideas matured, so did the concepts; it was the wonderful push and pull of iteration–sixteenfold! Lastly, for the writing of the characters, this was one of the last things that was done because... when most of the managers were initially concepted... there was no Writing Team! Yet. However, for an excellent example of an encounter where Writing Team was involved from the beginning of an idea, look no further than the High Roller and his Low Ballers.

Sam asked: "How do you decide which manager Cogs fly away after being defeated and which get blown up like normal Cogs? The Litigation Team and the Directors come to mind for me."

Maven: I like this question, it lets me talk about a little facet of lore that we haven't had the narrative breathing room to bring into play yet: the differences between different types of Suits. Truth be told, the Litigation Team and the Directors are relics of the past in this regard; these sort of proper character Suits actually would have a greater sense of self preservation than something like a Short Change. The mass-produced Cogs you see roaming the streets of Toontown are what we on the Writing Team typically refer to as Grunt Cogs. They're not Cogs meant to receive any character development, and are extremely disposable robots at C.O.G.S. Inc.'s disposal. They do some pretty mundane things, and are only meant for simple directives such as filing the boss's paperwork, roaming streets, and stopping the Toony opposition. These are the Cogs that would be doing all the exploding, whereas a manager, now that's an expensive Suit! Has a fully programmed personality processor and everything. Can't have that getting destroyed in a battle, those damages are expensive! In short, in the future the only Cogs that will be doing any exploding are those mass-produced lackeys. 

Anonymous asked: "Is one of the things the team's planning an expanded narrative presence/personality for the Cog Facility Leaders? "

Maven: The facility managers are... a bit different from other managers to be completely honest! The Writing Team doesn't view them as managers in the same way that we view, say, the Firestarter in terms of character. They're sort of like Grunt Cogs+, if that makes any sense. They don't have the same degree of autonomy as the Regional Managers or the Litigation Team (and so on) by design, they're just stronger mechanical workhorses. This is a disparity we do intend to make clearer when it comes down to redoing our narrative–the differences between Suits like Cold Callers, the Mouthpiece, the C.L.O., etc. 

Once again, thank you for submitting the questions and we certainly enjoyed answering them! Keep an eye out on our Blog and our Social Media for more information about our taskline revamp - we'll be sharing more down the line!

Until then, enjoy Toontown!