Olivia: Hello everyone, and welcome to the FEE3 interview showcase for Fire Emblem: the Hag in White! I have with me, the game’s lead dev, Saint Rubenio. Say hi!
Rubenio: Hi!
Olivia: And we’re just going to talk a little bit about his project! We’re going to go over some of how the game works and some insights into how it might have been developed over time.
Rubenio: I do enjoy talking about myself and my work.
Olivia: [laughs] It’s a good thing you do or the interview would be a little boring.
Olivia: Alright, alright—let’s start with the most basic question, though. What is [the] Hag in White? How would you describe the game?
Rubenio: Well, I guess the most basic thing is that the Hag in White is a game where there is a hag and she is dressed in white.
Olivia: That’s crazy. I never would have guessed.
Rubenio: Serious answer would be that it’s a world where healing magic is largely forgotten, forbidden, heretical—whatever you want to call it. And suddenly, your main character meets a Heal staff, and… hijinks ensue.
Olivia: Mm-hm. I know that you’ve completed a couple projects before but I know—or at least I’ve seen that it seems to be the case—that Hag is somewhat larger and more involved than a lot of those. How does Hag in White differ from your previous completed works?
Rubenio: Well, for one: it’s not a redux. All of my previous projects were largely based on vanilla games. Like, my previous project was Dark Stone, in which you play as the bad guys from Magvel. In the one before that, Eckesachs—I don’t even know how to pronounce my own thing—
Olivia: Neither do I.
Rubenio: —you play as Zephiel through FE6, and before that I made a rebalance like everyone else.
Olivia: [laughter]
Rubenio: Hag in White is my first custom project, and primarily, I wanted it to be free [laughter] so to speak.
Olivia: Right.
Rubenio: The redux formula just felt so stifling at this point. Like, as an example—I’ve mentioned this before in threads and stuff—but every time I wanted to have a female character in my boss hacks, it was a whole ordeal because there’s like no women as enemies in Fire Emblem.
Olivia: Yeah…
Rubenio: So I had to sort of, fanfic, a female character from background characters and it was a whole mess. And even then, it’s just a whole massive sausage fest and it just feels so freeing to be able to say, “well, I want this character to be a girl. I want her to be this class, I want her to be this class, I want her to do this, I want her to do this,” and I can just do it. I have all the power.
Olivia: Yeah! In a similar vein to that question, I’m curious: were there any lessons or ideas, anything that you took from those early projects that you think sort of influenced Hag in White or made it into the final project—something along those lines?
Rubenio: Well, I might struggle to come up with any specific examples, but I would describe my hacking career—for lack of a better term—as a sort of learning experience. Like, I just generally learned a lot from making my original rebalance. I know there’s people who like it. I think at this point, it’s… a good learning experience. I learned a lot of lessons from the things that I did and the things that were not so good—let’s not sugarcoat it—and the same goes for the second game and the third one. I learned a lot of things that people don’t like!
Olivia: [laughter]
Rubenio: And I knew to temper my—to restrain myself in some regards, I suppose. Although, of course, it’s a little different because with my reduxes I was mingling with characters that people knew and loved. And now, I’m just creating my own—so it’s not quite the same thing, of course. But to be honest, the reason why it took me this long to make a fully custom hack was that I was terrified of map design! That was the primary reason. That’s why I did so many reduxes; because I didn’t have to handle the map design.
Olivia: Yeah, map design can get complicated. [laughter]
Rubenio: Yeah, although… Again, it had started to feel a little stifling like, when I was making Dark Stone and I got to Darkling Woods—to be completely honest, I gave up.
Olivia: [laughter]
Rubenio: I have no idea how to improve on that map, like—
Olivia: God damn it, Darkling Woods is so bad— [wheeze]
Rubenio: I’ve gotten into this before, like, I just sort of put a few stealables here and there so people wouldn’t just warpskip it hopefully, and then when I was testing the hack I did warpskip it myself. I don’t want to deal with it.
Olivia: [chuckle] That’s awesome.
Rubenio: So yeah, that’s where I was on map design before I started with Hag. But like, it was a lot of time. Honestly, I needed to brave that challenge and, I still don’t think I’m amazing at map design but, well— it seems to have done the job for most people, so at least there’s that. [chuckle]
Olivia: I’m curious, were there a lot of challenges like that for Hag in White? Like, things that you hadn’t really gotten a chance to practice or hone on your previous projects that, now, Hag in White had you having to do. 'Cause like, you just mentioned map design being something that you never really had to delve into and had to, sort of learn with Hag in White. I’m curious if there were other things like that as well.
Rubenio: Well, not really. That was the primary thing, for the most part, everything else I did learn. Like, my previous reduxes—especially Dark Stone—were pretty heavy on the redux. Like, I altered a lot of things, and I’ve gotten my fair share of practice at writing characters, writing general cutscenes, portraits, even—yeah, I’ve done some animation edits and stuff so like, generally, Hag I would say is the culmination of everything I learned in my previous hacks, except again for the map design, which was something I had to learn for this one because previously I had been too cowardly tackle it.
Olivia: [laughter] Cowardly.
Rubenio: I did make a couple of original maps for my first rebalance, Princess’ Lament, but honestly, the less said about those maps, the better.
Olivia: [laughter] You know, fair enough, fair enough. Well, were there any major inspirations for Hag in White for its design? I know you mentioned it has—does it only have one healer? What sort of inspired decisions like that?
Rubenio: Well, for a while, between Dark Stone and Hag I was in a bit of a conundrum, so to speak. Like I was wondering, if I wanted my next thing to be a hack or if I wanted to, make the jump to like, try and to make a fully fledged video game. I even bought RPG Maker at one point but didn’t end up doing anything with it. Maybe one day. Anyways, the point is, if I were going to make another hack, and I really want to make one because—working with FEBuilder is a lot of fun, to be honest.
Olivia: [chuckle]
Rubenio: I wanted to, so to speak, to take advantage of the fact that it’s a Fire Emblem hack. Like obviously, I’m not going to claim that I revolutionised Fire Emblem hacking or anything like that, but I wanted to sort of play with the conventions of the series and whatnot. And of course, well—what’s more taken for granted in Fire Emblem than healing? Like, we get our healers in chapter 1 usually, and if not, it’s chapter 2 or chapter 3, and I have seen pretty much everything from romhacks to official games. To adjacent games, like Kaga games and other stuff, we always get our healers, so that struck myself as a neat thing to like, see what if I take that from the players, sort of. “What if I try to pull the rug under the players”, so to speak.
'Cause it’s primarily done with staves and it’s something that’s very pervasive, I guess, throughout the whole hack. I like to play a lot with certain tropes, certain conventions. Mix things up a little, I guess.
Olivia: Yeah, that’s really fun! I really like that. I feel like a lot of Fire Emblem projects really like to assign themselves, like, “we’re trying to do our own personal version of Fire Emblem.” So, it’s kinda interesting to have a project that’s more like, “I want to break some of that Fire Emblem mold and do something different this time.” That’s really interesting!
Rubenio: Mm-hm!
Olivia: So I have seen a lot of buzz around Hag in White lately. It’s sort of the talk of the town, I feel like? How does it feel to be on the receiving end of that much positive attention?
Rubenio: To be completely honest, I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that I’m… apparently a big name in the community right now?
Olivia: [laughter]
Rubenio: Like, I don’t know! I started making a rebalance for fun a few years ago! This isn’t what I was expecting it to lead to. I’m super happy with the reception of the hack, to be honest. Like, so many kind words, so many cool impressions—it’s honestly mind-blowing.
Olivia: That’s really sweet!
Rubenio: Maybe a little cliche, but yeah, I’m so happy honestly.
Olivia: [crosstalk] Nice!
Rubenio: It fills me with pride, it keeps just inflating my ego. One of these days, I’m going to take off flying, I swear.
Olivia: [laughter]
Rubenio: Like every time I think that I’m getting used to it, like, “yeah, I’m awesome!” That’s just the way it is, apparently. And then someone will say, “hey, I found a random Reddit post in some sub-Reddit that has nothing to do with video games, let alone fangames, and they mentioned you.” And I’m like, “what? that’s not possible!”
Olivia: That’s kind of crazy, yeah!
Rubenio: That’s not supposed to happen, what do you mean? Yeah, it’s mind-blowing, honestly.
Olivia: You broke the romhacker glass ceiling, you did it! You’ve broken into the mainstream!
Rubenio: I don’t know how, but [wheeze] sure!
Olivia: Well, I’m curious: what were your goals for Hag in White? I know you talked about wanting to break some of the conventions, but in terms of things like gameplay, rhythm, or major—you know, things like that. What were you trying to accomplish with Hag?
Rubenio: Well, primarily—now that I had all the power—I wanted to make a game for me, so to speak. There are certain things, certain tropes and conventions, like I said before in Fire Emblem in both gameplay and in story that—uh, I’m not saying they’re bad. But I’ve always been like, “what if”—
For instance, what’s something that’s not very spoilery…
Well, I mean—everyone at this point knows about López, I guess.
Like, the early game brigands in my hack—I love myself a good mob bossman. I mean, obviously, I made two hacks about them. I love myself a good, ugly goober who’s like, evil. And does evil things. Of course, now that I have all the power, I decided, “what would be a great idea? Oh, I know: let’s just make all the brigands recruitable and cool and awesome and wholesome and friends!”
Olivia: That’s really cute!
Rubenio: Then I went ahead and did it. And yeah, that’s basically what I wanted to do with this game. I just wanted to have my fun, do things my way, and just sort of make a game that only I would make. I mean, that’s a little presumptuous, but—
Olivia: No, I think that’s totally fair!
Rubenio: More or less what I wanted to do when I set out—like, that’s how we ended up with so many characters that wouldn’t fly in any other protagonist’s army. Kyra has a lot of patience.
Olivia: [chuckles] Well, looking at our next question here, I feel like you’ve already answered it with some of the discussion before… So, instead of asking you, “what sets your game apart from its peers?” I think I want to follow up on that idea about—you were talking about really liking a good villain. Do you think Hag as a project has a villain focus in its writing at all?
Rubenio: Well, it’s—yes or no, I guess? Like I’ve been told before—and it’s true—that a lot of the villains aren’t exactly super developed. But that’s because, when it came to the villains, I wanted to keep a sort of focus on the main players, obviously, and… I don’t know when the interview’s going to be visible, but my PFP in Discord right now is Sandraudiga. And I mostly wanted to focus on her and the one or two major villains.
Here’s the thing: I love writing villains. , writing comically and unapologetically evil people is a ing joy.
Olivia: It’s so fun.
Rubenio: Sorry about the swear.
Olivia: I don’t think anyone will mind.
Rubenio: It’s so fun! Writing Sandraudiga was the most fun part of this project, like, without a doubt. And yeah, I definitely tried to have her have more of a presence than FE villains perhaps usually have?
But even beyond the overt villains, there’s a lot of characters in Hag—uh, people who are familiar with Hag will know—there’s a lot of morally grey people in Kyra’s army. Like Kyra picks up corrupt nobles, she picks up brigands, she picks up… actual murderers! A conman! Like, she picks up a lot of people who aren’t exactly good because—I mean, I wish I could say that I was making some kind of deep, profound point about the necessity of pragmatism and how she needed to make sacrifices to fight the behemoth that she was up against and everything. And I mean, to an extent, that’s certainly true—but I kind of just love my unapologetic holes.
[crosstalk]
Olivia: Nah, I totally get it.
Rubenio: It’s just fun to write.
Rubenio: We’ll go into this later with one of the later questions, but it’s also part of one of my main inspirations for Hag.
Olivia: Mm-hm! God, I love a good villain. Actually some of the most fun writing I’ve ever done is just like, “here’s the worst guy ever!”
Rubenio: Yeah, no—evil, evil s are the most fun to write.
Olivia: They’re so awesome!
Rubenio: They have the most fun in the world, like—
Olivia: No one else loves life like them!
Rubenio: Nope, no one else loves life quite like an irredeemable monster!
Olivia: Well, [laughter] another thing I mentioned before, I’ve seen a lot of buzz around Hag in White. The good news is, I feel like people like basically every part of the project. I heard a lot of buzz about the whole thing. But I feel like the part that people tend to be the most excited about—and maybe I’m biased in noticing this—is the story. People really, really, really talk about the story in Hag in White a lot and really seem to enjoy it. What is it you think you did that resonated so well with so many players?
Rubenio: I mean, to be honest, like I said before: I just made a story for me. I made a story I thought would be fun for me to write. Like, I wrote characters I enjoyed, I went against the grain in conventions and tropes where I enjoyed them. I’m trying to avoid spoilers here, but—
Olivia: Yeah, yeah.
Rubenio: I try to do some certain things differently for me—for things I will enjoy. And beyond that, I guess it’s just that—not to toot my own horn, but I’m good at writing.
Olivia: [Laughter]
Rubenio: That’s not me trying to claim that I’m some kind of amazing prodigy. Like, I’ve had a lot of practice writing at this point. I wrote a lot of things in my time, mostly ancillary stuff, I guess, for other things I did online. Most—all of it—very silly, all of it very not great, but you know everyone has to get started somewhere. And I guess at this point, I guess I’ve just gained the practice I needed to be above average at writing, perhaps?
Olivia: Mm-hm!
Rubenio: And yeah, beyond that, I try to make my story stand out a little by breaking tropes, breaking conventions and stuff—trying to—and most importantly, by not holding back. Like, this is one thing that—again, not to go into spoilers—but I really think Fire Emblem needs to be more ballsy about killing playable characters.
Olivia: [laughter]
Rubenio: Like, nothing hits quite so hard as losing—as having this one character that you love, that you’re super invested into, that you fully intend to kill the final boss with, and then they’re just ripped away from you. Nothing hits quite so hard as that.
Olivia: I… am player death’s strongest soldier. I have been screaming this from the rooftop for like, five years!
[crosstalk]
Rubenio: [???]
Olivia: I feel like people played Birthright and had Kaze fall off the cliff that one time and they were like, “killing player units is irredeemably bad” because they looked at this game that did it bad and decided that it can’t be done better!
Rubenio: Yeah, that’s the thing!
Olivia: And I’m soooo—I’m so mad about it! Because I feel like there’s such interesting things you can do with that kinda stuff!
Rubenio: Yeah, that’s exactly the thing! Like, they bring up the Fire Emblem examples, and the thing is: Fire Emblem examples are just bad!
Olivia: [laughter]
Rubenio: Fire Emblem has not done unit death well!
Olivia: The horrible secret no one wants to admit.
Rubenio: Remember Aerith in Final Fantasy 7? How about that? That’s like, the Darth Vader of video game plot twists!
Olivia: Yeah!
Rubenio: And that was a player unit death! How was that?
Olivia: A rather significant one, too!
Rubenio: And to bring it back to well, Three Houses spoilers, if that’s important, but—
Olivia: [laughter]
Rubenio: How much harder would Jeralt’s death have hit if Jeralt was actually playable, and you had actually gotten supports with him, and you had actually gotten invested in him throughout the game, and—then they rip him apart from you? That one hits so much harder! Instead the game is just, “Oh yeah, here’s dad. He’s not playable for some reason. Totally going to talk to him later.”
Olivia: Yeah, it’s kinda like uh—
Rubenio: Like, “Yeah, he died. There we go.”
Olivia: Not to use a buzzword, but it’s some Gameplay-Story Integration to do that kind of thing—
Rubenio: Yeah!
Olivia: —because then you actually feel that loss. Not just in terms of the genuine story loss, which is obviously important and significant, but also in the gameplay sense, you feel that character’s absence. The fact that they’re missing is relevant to you as a player and as a, you know, participant in the plot. I think it’s really good stuff.
Rubenio: Yeah.
Olivia: Alright, just a couple more questions to go here.
Rubenio: Mm-hm!
Olivia: Last couple questions are pretty simple. What is your favorite part of your project? I like this question, this question’s really fun.
Rubenio: Chapter 16. Without a doubt.
Olivia: Yeah?
Rubenio: Like, I can pinpoint the exact chapter—I had so much fun with that chapter. The chapter title is “Treason”.
Olivia: Mm-hm.
Rubenio: And in many ways, it’s where the story reaches its midpoint climax. Like, it’s where a lot of plot points peak, where a lot of things come to a head. Sandraudiga is all over the chapter and a lot of things happen in that chapter, and it was so much fun making that chapter, just—as a whole.
Olivia: Mm-hm.
Rubenio: Like I mentioned before that Sandraudiga is my favorite character and that writing her was the best part of it, but if I had to pinpoint a specific part, it’s chapter 16. Chapter 16 was just so enjoyable, and I wish I could talk more about it, but it’s like spoiler central.
Olivia: “If you want to know more—”
Rubenio: Yeah!
Olivia: “—you’ll just have to go to FEU and download A Hag in White!”—The Hag in White! No, I got it wrong!
Rubenio: THE Hag in White. There’s only one of them.
Olivia: [laughter]
Rubenio: Or is there? Maybe there’s TWO hags in white!
Olivia: Oh, I have an idea for a sequel for you.
Rubenio: [laughter]
Olivia: The Hags in White. It’s like 102 Dalmations.
Rubenio: Hagging out—
Olivia: [laughter] Alright—
Rubenio: Oh my god.
Olivia: So, for people who might be interested in checking out the game after this interview: how many chapters is your project? 'Cause that can be a deciding factor for a lot of people, I think.
Rubenio: Well, it’s between 25-30 chapters. I don’t want to be too precise, but yeah it’s like something in that ballpark. Like, basically around the length of Fates, I suppose?
Olivia: Mm-hm?
Rubenio: The game does have a postgame. I made 10 chapters of a postgame.
Olivia: Ooh!
Rubenio: For no particular reason beyond that I wanted to hack more!
Olivia: Hey, that’s the best reason of them all.
Rubenio: I wanted to do more hacking and I decided, “let’s make some postgame content that no one is ever going to play.”
People have played it, honestly. Like, not everyone, but some people have played it and I’m so happy for them. But I just made a really silly postgame in the spirit of Valkyrie Profiles: Seraphic Gate, where I basically just take a piece out of my own story and setting and characters. And it was a lot of fun, but yeah the main part of the game is 20-something chapters. More or less the length of, yeah—an average Fire Emblem: Fates. Shorter than six, around the length of—yeah, more or less that.
Olivia: And lastly, are there any closing remarks that you might want to make that weren’t covered by any of our questions here?
Rubenio: Well, I never did get to talk about the inspirations for Hag.
Olivia: Oh, yeah!
Rubenio: And, primarily there were two. There’s the Kaga Saga games, like Vestaria Saga, Berwick Saga, Tear Ring Saga, less so, but—… I mean, yeah, when Kaga’s not being so Kaga, they’re pretty good games.
Olivia: [laughter]
Rubenio: And there are a lot of concepts from them that I enjoy. Like there’s a few things that I’m honestly going to admit that I just shamelessly stole.
Olivia: Awesome!
Rubenio: There’s the closing of a certain chapter, where a lot of people were like, “wow, this is cool, how is this thing that happened so cool, it’s so weird,” and I’m like, “yeah, that’s the thing from Berwick Saga.”
Olivia: [laughter]
Rubenio: And chapter 22 of the game, it’s the big city siege. It’s basically me trying to make my own take of a certain map concept that appears in Vestaria Saga—in the two games, actually. And the other inspiration, I mentioned it before, is Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume. Specifically—that game’s a franchise—but that game specifically, it’s a DS strategy game. And I was inspired by it in more than a few games. Like, that’s a game that does not hold back either.
Olivia: Right.
Rubenio: I don’t want to go too into it because, well, play Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, everyone. But the game, already in the prologue, just hits you in the feels already. Like, it opens big—
Olivia: [chuckles] Right.
Rubenio: And then, the main gimmick—the main mechanic—of that game is that you have to use the titular plume to kill your friends to gain power. And there’s also all sorts of plot points written around that, and routes and stuff. And there’s one character in particular who’s called Fauxnel, who’s this horrible, slimy noble, who is the best character in the game. And I made three of him for my hack.
Olivia: [laughter]
Rubenio: And those three— who are, yes,that guy. He’s too much fun.
Olivia: [Through laughter] That’s so awesome.
Rubenio: So yeah, those were my primary inspirations for my hack. And beyond that, I guess… I honestly don’t know exactly what I would say. I think we’ve been pretty thorough with the interview.
Olivia: Awesome! That just means I did a good job, [laughs].
Rubenio: I would just say that, it’s still incredibly funny to me how everyone thinks they’re so original because they killed the final boss with López.
Olivia: [giggling]
Rubenio: Like, I’m pretty sure López has more final boss kills than every other character in the game combined.
Olivia: That’s awesome.
Rubenio: Like, I know that was the case before release with the playtesters and I’m pretty sure it still is. That man cannot be stopped. He WILL steal that coin.
Olivia: See, I’m always a “the lord has to kill the final boss” player, so— [sighs] I would not be among the López fans. I’m such a fake fan.
Rubenio: I mean, that’s fine. Kyra has a pretty good conversation with the final boss!
Olivia: Alright, well—thank you so much for joining me. This was a lot of fun! Hope it was fun for you too.
Rubenio: Thank you, I had fun too!
Olivia: Yeah! We got a lot of really interesting stuff, I think. To anyone watching at home, you can find the description will have a link to this project. You should check it out!
Rubenio: [Evilly] Yes, give me more downloads!
Olivia: Yes, more more more!
Rubenio: Yes, more downloads! [evil cackling] [coughs]
Olivia: And [laughs] we’ll be having more of these interviews throughout the show’s runtime. So, if you enjoyed this one, please—y’know—look forward to more interviews like this one! And enjoy the rest of your FEE3! Bye-bye!
Rubenio: Play more hacks!
Olivia: Play more hacks.
Rubenio: Play more hacks.