Gaia is a character from the E.V.O. series.
In 64 Okunen Monogatari, she is referred to as ガイア (Gaia).
She is a female, humanoid being, that appears as a flat-chested, young woman with blue hair and blue eyes. Gaia's hair isn't simply blue, though. It appears like a river with living beings in it and glitters as if the sun was shining onto it.
Just as her name and her backstory in E.V.O. Search for Eden suggest, Gaia is said to be the personification of our planet, Earth. She is also said to be the daughter of the sun god.
First appearance[]
The Shinka Ron[]
In 46 Okunen Monogatari ~The Shinka Ron~, she is first met as an orb at the bottom of the sea, when the protagonist is still a fish and in the first chapter of the game.
She will introduce herself and tell the protagonist, that they have first met each other billions of years ago, but that it's still to early for her to reveal their role to them.
Once the protagonist has evolved far enough to be able to go to land and become an amphibian, Gaia will contact them again and tell them about their purpose.
E.V.O. Search for Eden[]
In E.V.O. Search for Eden, Gaia first appears as a nonedescript speaker in the game's intro cutscene and later makes her first, proper appearance in the cutscene, that happens when the player starts a new game.
In this cutscene, she basically tells them the same thing as in The Shinka Ron, only that this time, they haven't met billions of years ago, but the protagonist has evolved for billions of years until they became a fish.
This idicates, that she has been watching over the protagonist since they were a baby.
Gaia's role[]
In both games, Gaia's main role is to guide the protagonist by telling them about the world.
In The Shinka Ron, the protagonist is in full control of their evolution and needs to make sure they evolve in the right way. They also will need to nearly max out their stats and then chose to max out their Wisdom stat to enter a new era and continue their path.
In E.V.O. Search for Eden, they can now decide which part of their body they want to evolve, but only Gaia can grant them a new body to make them able to cope with the new situations, that they will encounter in a new era. She also allows them to move forward in time and revives them in case they should fall in battle.
Unlike EVO, The Shinka Ron has time going on as the player progresses through the game's story and the player goes Game Over when they mess up their evolution, fall in battle or get killed by a natural disaster.
Guiding the protagonist []
Gaia guides the protagonist by telling of the events that happened while they moved through time and space via ingame cutscenes, that happen every time, they go to a new ear (in The Shinka Ron) or partake in a time travel event (in EVO).
The first time, this happens is in the introduction cutscene when player starts a new game and Gaia's introduction. Every time after that, Gaia speaks to the protagonist whenever they finish one of the game's chapters and tells them about the aforementioned timeline events.
Evolving and moving forward in time[]
Whenever the protagonist defeats the final boss of one of the five ingame chapters and goes to the exit of current stage, Gaia will speak to them and tell them about the end of an era and how the defeat of the corresponding boss chracter has affected the world around them.
Then, Gaia will then evolve the protagonist, so they can cope better with the new surroundings awaiting them in the next chapter. Afterwards, Gaia will create a black, door shaped portal, which then opens like a regular door. The protagonist then walks through the portal and into a new world without any input from the player.
She only gives the protagonist a new body after completing the first and the second, though. The first evolution has her evolving the protagonist from a fish to an amphibian, while the second one has her evolving them from an amphibian to a reptile.
The other two, completely optional, bird and mammal evolutions are achieved by other means, which are mentioned in the linked second featured here.
Note, that Gaia's evolutions and the ones provided by the means mentioned in the linked section will cause you to lose all of your E.V.O. Points. You will keep the evolutions saved in your log and your green crystal, tough.
The Shinka Ron[]
Ironically, while E.V.O. Search for Eden forces the protagonist to fight and defeat the bosses to advance ingame, The Shinka Ron only requires the protagonist to meet most of the boss characters and listen to their speeches. Only very rarely, The Shinka Ron requires the protagonist to fight and defeat them and then its due to them either being corrupted by Lucifer or being Lucifer herself.
Falling in battle[]
Whenever the protagonist runs out of hit points, they will die. But unlike many other games from the SNES era, E.V.O. Search for Eden gives the player infinite lives/continues.
Dying will sent the player to a black screen with Gaia, where she will tell the protagonist, that she will revive them for half of their E.V.O. points.
The protagonist will always be revived by Gaia, regardless how many E.V.O. points they had beforehand.
Interestingly, if the player has no E.V.O. points or only a single E.V.O. point, they won't lose any E.V.O. points at all. Of cause, the more E.V.O. points the player had before hand, the harsher the penalty for dying will be, as more E.V.O. points will be lost.
To protect themselves from losing their E.V.O. points, the player should save the game at regular intervals. There is no penalty for or limit to saving and loading the game, so the player can save any time they are on the world map, but there are only three save slots, so the player can only keep three native saves at a time.
The Shinka Ron[]
When the protagonist dies in The Shinka Ron, the player will receive a Game Over. The game will automatically return them to the point before the start of the last cutscene, or if they have saved the game at some point afterwards, to the last saved game.
As such, the cutscenes of this game can be seen as autosaves.
In E.V.O. Search for Eden, the player can only save manually, but is never able to get a Game Over.
Gallery[]
The Shinka Ron[]
E.V.O. Search for Eden[]
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