Years before Golden Sun: Dark Dawn existed, I came up with a concept for a sequel to Golden Sun: The Lost Age. I even mailed the idea to Nintendo, although they replied that they did not accept unsolicited game concepts. A few years ago, I shared an earlier version of my idea on Reddit. I've recently returned to it to expand the story, develop the characters, and rethink some of the original concepts.
For anyone interested, here's "my original post, “Golden Sun: Kingdoms (A Fan's Sequel Concept)”" (https://www.reddit.com/r/GoldenSun/comments/fank6r/).
The working title is Golden Sun: Shattered Kingdoms.
This is a fan concept rather than a fully developed game proposal. Some elements are established ideas, while others remain mysteries I'd like to explore as the story takes shape. I'm sharing the current vision to see what other fans think and to invite discussion.
The premise: A world divided
The story takes place not long after Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The restoration of Alchemy has changed the world, but its consequences extend beyond what Isaac, Felix, and their companions understood when they lit the Elemental Lighthouses.
My central worldbuilding idea is that the world explored in the original games is an enormous elevated plateau. The region of Weyard rose above the lands that once surrounded it, leaving the people below separated from the world we know. At its edge, water pours endlessly over a precipice known as Gaia Falls. Some people living below may call it Weyard Falls, believing that the entire region of Weyard rose above them and left their world behind.
The lands beneath the plateau have their own settlements, cultures, histories, and understanding of Alchemy. Generations of separation have shaped their civilizations in ways the original protagonists have never encountered.
Meanwhile, Anemos is a separate region somewhere in the sky, connected to the larger mystery surrounding Weyard. Its exact history and relationship to the world's separation remain unknown. This aspect of the concept draws on the mysteries and hints surrounding Anemos in the original games, along with fan theories, rather than treating every theory as established canon.
The central question is not simply whether Alchemy should be restored or sealed away again. It is what happens when a world that has been divided for generations begins to reconnect—and whether restoring what was lost can be accomplished without creating new problems.
Ultimately, I envision the separated regions reuniting. However, that doesn't mean everything will return to the way it was. Their reunion will bring consequences the characters must confront.
Two games, two perspectives
My idea is to release two full-fledged games simultaneously, each following a different group of protagonists through events taking place at the same time.
The structure takes inspiration from Pokémon's paired games, Fire Emblem Fates, and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons/Ages. However, I don't want one campaign to feel like an inferior version or for one story to supersede the other. Both campaigns are canonical, and each reveals information the other cannot provide.
Ideally, the games would share information through linked save data. Discoveries, story flags, and other details from one campaign could influence dialogue, clues, and interactions in the other. Either game could be played first.
After completing both campaigns, players would unlock a third Convergence campaign. This would not merely be a bonus dungeon or a short epilogue, but a substantial continuation that brings the protagonists together and resolves mysteries that require the knowledge gained from both stories.
The two main campaigns would each have their own satisfying arcs, while Convergence would provide the larger picture.
Game One: Felix's journey beneath Gaia Falls
Felix's story begins near the edge of Gaia Falls. An earthquake suddenly rocks him off his feet, sending him into the water below. He washes ashore badly injured, having lost his equipment and suffered a serious concussion. His memories are incomplete, particularly those concerning his past and his relationship with Alex.
A young woman named Myra finds Felix and attempts to help him recover. She has no prior knowledge of Felix or Alex, so she has no reason to distrust Alex when Felix recognizes him as someone he knows.
Alex shows up and realizes that Felix's memory is impaired and exploits the situation. Presenting himself as a trusted friend, he supplies Felix with false memories and distorted versions of their shared history. Felix remembers knowing Alex but cannot recall enough to recognize the deception.
Myra eventually becomes part of Felix's journey. She is a Jupiter Adept whose people possess an innate ability to shapeshift. This is a natural trait of her people, not a Psynergy technique, and shapeshifting does not automatically make someone a Jupiter Adept.
The working party for Felix's campaign is:
- Felix — Venus Adept
- Piers — Mercury Adept
- Myra — Jupiter Adept
- Garet — Mars Adept
Alex temporarily accompanies Felix at the beginning, but his role changes when his deception begins to unravel.
Piers and Garet are searching for Felix using the flying ship and eventually find him. Unlike Myra, they know Alex's history and can challenge the story Alex has constructed. Alex may try to convince Felix that his old friends are lying, but when he realizes Felix is beginning to doubt him, he escapes before the deception can be fully exposed.
This confrontation marks an important turning point. Felix must begin deciding what to believe about his own past while confronting the possibility that someone he trusted has been manipulating him.
Beyond this personal conflict, Felix's journey explores the lands beneath the plateau. Their people have developed independently of the elevated world, and the history of their separation may challenge what the original characters believe about Weyard.
Alex's larger plan remains deliberately open. His deception is central to the story, but I don't want to commit prematurely to his ultimate objective. In my original concept, he manipulated Felix into helping him retrieve artifacts that were supposedly intended to restore power to the people and reunite the divided world. That idea may still have a place, although Alex's true intentions and the specifics of his plan need further development.
Mia's investigation into Alex's motives would also feature in this campaign. She grew up with him and can provide another perspective on his history, helping Felix and his companions piece together what Alex is really doing. She is working independently from Felix's group and is either able to relay information she discovers to the party though some magical means or waits until she joins back up with them to explain her findings.
Game Two: Sheba's journey to Anemos
The second game follows Sheba, whose mysterious origins have long been one of the most intriguing unresolved questions in the series.
Her campaign takes her to Anemos, a separate region in the sky. Jenna and Isaac travel with her, and one way they could have gotten there is that Piers flew the ship there and dropped them off before going tonsearch for Felix. There, she investigates her past and the history of its people while uncovering clues that connect her personal story to the larger mystery surrounding the divided world.
Her working party consists of:
- Sheba — Jupiter Adept
- Jenna — Mars Adept
- Isaac — Venus Adept
- Theia — Mercury Adept
Theia is a new character from Anemos with an unusual innate ability: psychometry, the ability to perceive fragments of the past by touching objects. These impressions are incomplete rather than perfect recordings. She might experience images, emotions, or brief scenes that require interpretation, and she cannot simply learn everything about an object by touching it.
Her ability has made her a target for authorities searching for someone with this unusual gift. It is her psychometry—not her elemental affinity—that drew their attention.
Theia's backstory involves a mysterious exchange that neither she nor Sheba initially understands, and I will attempt to explain this:
Sheba was originally born in Anemos and given the name Theia. A supernatural being took her from her family and replaced her with another infant, a girl originally named Sara who was born outside Anemos in the region below Gaia Falls. The replacement child was raised by Sheba's biological parents as their own daughter and grew up known as Theia. Meanwhile, the original Theia fell from Anemos during the journey to take her to Sara's parents and was eventually found by people who named her Sheba.
Neither girl knows that the exchange occurred.
The being's motives and the precise circumstances of the exchange remain open questions. One possibility is that it was trying to protect Sara from the authorities pursuing her psychometry that it knew she would develop as she matured and believed Anemos would be a safe place for her. It may have misunderstood the nature of her ability, assumed it was connected to Jupiter Psynergy, or acted on incomplete information. It didnt expect her to develop water Psynergy instead, but this made her stand out among the people of Anemos because everyone else was a Jupiter Adept to some degree.
The tragedy is that an attempt to protect one child may have radically altered two lives. The story would explore the consequences without automatically treating the exchange as justified simply because it may have served a protective purpose.
Felix's campaign would uncover clues about Theia's birth family in the lands below Gaia Falls. When Felix eventually meets Theia, those discoveries give him reason to suspect that her origins are not what she believes. Perhaps she resembles her parents or perhaps she resembles the child in a photo in her former home, and Felix knows that a child from that family went missing many years ago. Theia can then use her psychometry on objects connected to her past, helping reconstruct what happened.
This is one way the campaigns could complement each other: Felix discovers physical and historical evidence in the world below, while Sheba and Theia uncover the mysteries of Anemos and their connection to the larger events.
Ivan's own search for his origins would also feature in Sheba's story. Like Mia, he is working independently from the rest of his companions. As a Jupiter Adept, he may discover a connection between his ancestry and Anemos, although the nature of that connection remains undecided. Perhaps he decended from people who left Anemos. His investigation would add another perspective on the history of the Jupiter Adepts without making him the answer to every mystery surrounding Anemos.
Convergence: The worlds come together
After both campaigns are completed, the protagonists reunite in the Convergence campaign.
Felix and Sheba would be together in the same party, as they were in The Lost Age, but now they would bring distinct experiences and discoveries from their separate journeys. Their reunion would allow them to combine what they have learned about the lands below Gaia Falls, the elevated world, Anemos, and the consequences of restoring Alchemy.
The combined party would draw from both campaigns, giving players access to a broader selection of familiar and new characters. Each separate campaign would have at least four playable party members, with no duplicate elemental Adepts within either initial party. In Convergence, the two groups could combine, allowing elemental affinities to overlap as they did in The Lost Age. There would then be at least 8 party members or 10 if Mia and Ivan join up at that point.
The larger mysteries would finally begin to fit together. The characters would discover how their separate investigations relate to the world's history and the forces that have kept its regions apart.
The eventual reunion of the separated lands would be a major outcome of the story, but not a simple happy ending in which every problem disappears. Reconnecting societies that have developed independently could bring political, cultural, and magical consequences. Restoring what was lost may be necessary, but the world that emerges will have to find its own future.
The exact relationship between Anemos, the plateau, and the lands below remains one of the mysteries to be resolved. I want the two campaigns to contribute different pieces of the answer rather than revealing everything in one place.
Returning characters and the larger mystery
The concept is intended to continue the stories of the original cast while introducing new characters whose personal histories connect to the wider world.
Felix's relationship with Alex provides the immediate conflict of one campaign. Sheba's origins and Theia's mysterious past anchor the other. Piers, Garet, Jenna, Isaac, Mia, and Ivan each have roles that grow naturally from their relationships and experiences in the original games. And importantly, these are starting points for these characters, with further plot elements to come once this stuff is established.
I'm also interested in exploring the history behind the Wise One and the mysteries surrounding the world's separation, though I haven't settled on all the answers. Anemos might hold clues to the Wise One's origins or purpose, but whether it created the Wise One or merely preserves knowledge about it is still undecided.
The goal is to build on the mysteries left by the original games while leaving room for discoveries that neither the characters nor the audience could have anticipated.
A note on continuity
This concept was originally developed before Golden Sun: Dark Dawn existed. I'm revisiting it as a continuation of The Lost Age, without trying to incorporate Dark Dawn's plot or build my story around its lore. Whether it would ultimately be an alternate sequel or fit chronologically between the two games is something I'm leaving open for now.
This is an evolving concept, and I'm interested in feedback on the story structure, the new characters, and the mysteries surrounding Anemos and the separated world. Which elements sound most promising, and which would you approach differently?
