Noah is 22, being the second oldest of the five suitors. Out of the five characters, he is the only one whose backstory is actively held back from the player character throughout the story, as he doesn't exactly have the State's best interests at heart. Within Ragnatela, he is the communications guy, relaying top-secret messages from the State's allies and troops.
Noah's parents are in a similar situation to Romeo's parents; they were the children of those who fought and died in the war and have now taken it upon themselves to start a State of their own. I won't go into as much detail about their situation as I did with Capo; however, it is important to note that they are more of a religious cult than a Crime State (this is a reference to my initial ideas that Noah is in a cult); this cult is known as "God's Scapegoat", and they believe that dying for God is slowly chipping away humanity's sin, just like the biblical custom of the "scapegoat" (which is where one of a pair of kid goats is let loose into the wilderness while the other is sacrificed; the goat let loose takes the sins of the people with it). Noah's mother, Juno, believed that she was a human scapegoat, like Christ was, and that she was meant to live while the rest of humanity was sacrificed. In fact, it was she who killed Capo's brother, sparking a long-term rivalry between the Goats and the Ragnas. Noah is the second oldest of five brothers and a baby sister (named after the biblical figure who was the only survivor of God's great flood, of course), and as such, he has always felt like he falls into the background in life and has a burning desire to prove himself to his family. He grew up playing "retro" video games (which, of course, are just regular video games to us in the 2020s) and practicing with guns. As a result, he became a skilled gunman growing up, his signature weapon being a large rifle that he found in a bunker (which he would later turn into his private hidey-hole) and a hand-held pistol gifted to him by his older brother. He spent most of his teen years hidden away, fearing the outside world and the wrath of his mother equally, falling into depression, and wishing he could do more with his life.
When he was 17, his mother approached him and informed him that she had gotten him a job at the Scapegoat's rival State (being, of course, Ragnatela) through some of the State's spies planted amongst the Ragna's troops. He was told that now he would be the true scapegoat, being let into the wilderness to correct the sins of the State's biggest enemy. On a practical level, of course, this meant receiving and relaying top-secret messages through to his mother, and after a few years of being a basic runner and proving his skill in organising and relaying information clearly, Noah was promoted to the official head of communications. He does his job well enough to not raise any suspicion, destorying important messages occasionally in order to prevent fast action and slipping bits of important information to his mother back home, but after a while he began to realise that he prefers his life in Ragnatela over his life back home. He continues to act as his mother's pawn out of fear for her and a desire to prove his worth, but secretly he enjoys Oran's daily banter and Tokyo's eccentric mishaps much more than the constant burnout and shutdowns of his previous life.
Noah's minigames consist of retro-style clicker games. I couldn't find any actual games that match the type of thing I was thinking of; however, the game "Cookie Clicker" might be the closest. Essentially, Noah asks you to help him organise files, and so you are given a game where pieces of paper appear on the screen, and you must click on them in order to gain points while avoiding the viruses. The more paper you can click in a short amount of time, the more points you get. After a while, Noah will ask you on a first date.
Your first date with Noah is the only date out of all the characters where he asks you explicitly out on a romantic date, with no other apparent motive. Little do you know that he's done this for the purpose of getting information out of you regarding the other characters. He takes you to an abandoned Michelin restaurant, where he asks you questions about the other characters. You can either give him answers or ask him about himself; you are able to gather a little bit about his personality and hobbies, but nothing about his backstory.
For the second date, Noah says he needs to show you something—he takes you down to his hidey hole, and everything seems to be going well until he pulls a gun and threatens you. He tells you his backstory and says that you're a liability to his mission, as he's become too attached to you. You attempt to talk him down and say how much he means to you. In the bad ending, he kills you in cold blood; in the good ending, you manage to talk him down and convince him to stay with the Ragnas forever, as you find out he is much happier here than he was with his family. He confesses to you and promises to work together with you to fix his mess.
If you complete Noah's good ending, a version of "Normal People Things" by Lovejoy will play. This is an indie rock song about wondering what being "normal" means, which I think fits with Noah's existential crisis at the end of his good route.
After contemplating his backstory and dates, I got down some ideas of what Noah should look like. Not much came to mind for this character in the way of quirks and assets, as he is meant to be the bland and boring character out of the five. But still, shape language, colour theory, hair, and clothes are all important aspects of any design, even if the design is specifically meant to come off as bland and meaningless.
Every aspect of Noah's design is meant to be either square or circular in order to show his stability, blandness, and youth. His hair comes off as extremely rounded in these sketches (though, of course, that is subject to change), and I had already landed on some sort of t-shirt/hoodie combination for his outfit, as this alludes to his normalcy. Essentially, every aspect of this character design is meant to blend into the background. I also had the idea of giving him freckles, since it indicates innocence, creating a misleading impression of this character's true intentions on the audience.
Overall, this character design is meant to be misleading, normal-looking, and generally inoffensive.
For Noah's outfits, I took a lot of inspiration from his moodboard. I was stuck between making him as normal as possible and trying to give him a sort of "clean" Normie appearance, like many of the aesthetically pleasing blonde boys on his moodboard.
The first outfit is actually based mostly on my friend Dylan's signature hoodie (Noah was partially based upon Dylan), with some baggy jeans. This outfit is the most "normal guy" out of the three of them; however, I still think it looks quite aesthetically pleasing. The second one is based on the fact that quite a few of the outfits in the moodboard feature white knitted jumpers; however, I think that this outfit is a little bit too round for Noah's square shape language. The final outfit is based on one specific picture of his moodboard, and while I really like the aesthetic, I don't think it quite matches with his personality. Therefore, I will definitely go with the first outfit, maybe with a different choice of shoes.
For Noah's hair, I had an image in my head of what it should look like right from the get-go; however, I still wanted to look into different versions of this hair. The short, shaggy blonde look is, of course, a large part of Noah's inspiration, and so I wanted to look into different ways that would look. The first haircut is probably my least favourite of the three; it doesn't have much shape and, while achieving the Normie look, doesn't really look very aesthetically pleasing. The second and third haircuts have much more volume; however, I think the second is too short and looks too much like a bowl-cut, and the third is too long. I think that I will end up doing a combination of the second and third for the final haircut.
This reference sheet was so much fun to make, primarily because of how interesting Noah's shape language is; he is not a particularly bulky or square character in his body shape, but I still wanted him to have square aspects to his design, so I mainly intergrated it into the outfit. The wide-legged trousers add a square aspect to the design that I think brings out Noah's personality and messaging. It gives him a very bottom-heavy look that I'm a big fan of.
As well as this, I really liked the upturned eyes that I drew him with in his hair study, as I think that leaned into both the square and circular elements of his design while still looking distinct. I tried to include hints of them in this reference sheet, but it might be a little difficult to tell with the stylization.