Okay, okay, I know the title of this post may sound a bit confusing, but that's how I am at the moment.
Well, first of all, it is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Highway Star and I'm new here on the Serenes Forest forum, so take it easy on me.
I'm a gamer and an aspiring writer, and I've always wanted to write my own stories and fantasies and always desired to turn them into a book that could be sold and found in book stores and on the internet for all my friends to read my stories and see what my passion is about, so about two or three years ago, I finally put this idea into practice.
After months of study about writing and several classes, I started writing my modern fantasy book while still keeping a good amount of time to play video games and enjoy other things, and it was about a year ago that I discovered the JRPG franchise that completely changed my view on Worldbuilding, character development and story arc and fantasy in general: Nihon Falcom's Trails/Kiseki franchise.
I played all the games up until Trails to Azure and it is redundant to say how discovering this franchise impacted my work. Seriously, it wasn't until I played these games that I realized how much my fictional world lacked all the basic elements of worldbuilding and characters. My world had no structure, no politics, no rules, no systems, no elements, not even a story about everything my characters' ancestors did to create the world they live in. Even worse, the characters. In a nutshell, they were all empty carcasses with no good motivation or justification for doing what they did, and they were all very passive, with no personality or interesting characteristics that made them stand out. But by far, my worst mistake was the story, which had a very confusing back and forth about things and events that were not addressed to the right extent, by far. My biggest mistake.
Of course, I took inspiration from many elements of the Trails franchise to fix my world, and after that, my universe changed completely. I was able to create a history for my continent, establish the proper political and geographical structures, establish organizations, rights, etc. My characters also stopped being empty carcasses and gained tons of depth, development and personal growth according to their individual problems and beliefs, as well as new purposes and new characters to accompany them in these purposes. And it looks so different and better that all the friends I have shown it to praise my work and say that I really have created something spectacular and well-crafted.
However... this is where my problem begins. I fear that even though I included many of the things I had originally planned for my book before I met the Kiseki games, my work has become very similar to the aforementioned Falcom franchise, to the point where my franchise is more like a true spiritual successor of the Trails series, like Mighty No.9 and Megaman, or Castlevania and Bloodstained.
The fear of being accused of plagiarism and theft are things that truly scare me. Sure, my world has original things, quite a bit to be sure, but that still doesn't erase all the similarities between the two universes, and I wonder whether I should scrap half of everything and try to rebuild it or whether I should consider my work a spiritual successor or a pastiche so that it can exist the way it is without any problems occurring.
I AM a Trails fan and I make no point of hiding it, I don't mind having to write an epigraph or a preface on the first page of my book to make it clear that it resembles the Trails series INTENTIONALLY, and that it is STRONGLY INSPIRED BY IT. Heck, I could even write that on the back cover of my book and inside the synopsis! something like: "This book is meant to be an homage/pastiche/strongly inspired/spiritual successor to Nihon Falcom's acclaimed game franchise - The Trails franchise which currently with X number of games released in Japan and etc, etc".
What should I do? I need someone to really enlighten me on this issue and help me with my doubts. Thanks to everyone who has read this far and is willing to help me in this.