Fragment 16 Insight (Revisited)

It was around this time I started doubling down on the series’ own in-house designs. The rooms and staff were already a clear indication this was a divergence, but I decided to adapt some game mechanics besides just saint quartz. The most notable was using multiple copies of a servant to upgrade their noble phantasm, but this had diminishing returns. This game design became the foundation for a very important world concept: The Memorial Essence.

With it, I was able to explain why duplicates don’t appear because of what happens when someone to similar to an ‘original’ is summoned. It opened a lot of avenues that would have likely remained closed off otherwise. The Emiya family, without any doubt, is the poster child for what sort of avenues could be opened. Without it, only vague recollections of feelings would have been viable, but I used it as a means to make the targeted Slice of Life possible.

Of course, that led to a lot of introspection on Kiritsugu’s part. It’s the first glimpse of how Memorial Essences can completely shift how people view the world, so there was a lot of room for refinement. I did add quite a few lines and made some paragraphs more precise, but I left some reveals from future fragments where they were. The important bits were covered so that was enough for me.

Arguably, Kiritsugu’s FGO personality was lost as a result. It’s very apparent he’s now far more aligned to his Zero self. It was one of those first decisions that influence everything else to come, but by now, I was adamant on picking a course for the world and going through with it. My choice was to rebuild the Emiya Family and give them a second chance, and so I went for it, with the inclusion of Illya and Kuro arriving as the prominent statement of direction.

Little had to be touched to bring this one back into line save for some perspective shifts. For the most part, it was like Anton or Dante’s fragment. It was another of the growing number of sole-focus fragments that would be the series’ staple.