As the title says, I was wondering if something like that was possible, if the main lord’s death can be made so it triggers a game over in every chapter except for one that could be at about the 2/3 of a rom in only one chapter.
Among other things, that’s an idea that popped into my mind. But I was also generally wondering about rom hacks that made the gameplay really impactful on the narration (more than just an explicit path choice, for example), because I would like to see what has been made that transforms the classic FE writing formula and maybe what could be possible in terms of making the gameplay a whole part of the writing of a rom hack.
That said, I’ve barely played more than two or three rom hacks to completion and I’ve also played very little with FEbuilder. I’m just really curious about its possibilities as someone who’s really into writing as it is and video game writing that includes gameplay.
For things that go out of their way to help the writing, I’m thinking of stuff like the Black Knight’s invincibility for a character or the Thracia chapter where your army gets force deployed and split in two because Leif gets cocky for a situation.
But also, I’m thinking of things like the Xavier or Stefan recruitment as secrets/challenges that are really interesting gameplay wise.
This is certainly all possible - 0x65 is the game over flag usually used on the Lord’s death quote trigger each chapter. Changing it to another flag for that specific chapter would negate a game over.
I’ve done something similar to this on a few small chapters, making it so units that die do not die forever, and you either beat the chapter and X happens, or you lose all your units and lose the chapter and Y happens. There are many ways to reflect the plot through gameplay with simple eventing, of which vanilla FE did not do much of.
Once you get more familiar with eventing, the language that it uses, and event IDs/conditional flags, you’ll have a much better idea of what things you can really pull off.
That’d be easy to code in LT-Maker, the boring part would be making copies of every event (or branching paths within those events) that account for every possible combination of dead/alive states.
One protagonist who can die? Doable, but where do you go from there? Playing as a sibling or parent or child or one of the other main characters in the protagonist’s army?
To cut down the workload you could isolate characters to specific sections of the game like what Undertale does. What you do in Toriel’s zone isn’t something every single Snowdin, Waterfall, and Hotland NPC needs to check. But it’s nice when those do get checked and referenced, like when 2 food items matter later. Imagine what a mess Undertale’s code would look like if you could kill the protagonist off and keep playing as Toriel or Sans! Countless branching if statements.
Might be more in the realm of a “failing” route. I was thinking about a series of increasingly difficult chapters where the lord eventually gets cornered and killed if the player does or does not do certain things (such as reaching a kill count, which is also an idea I had that might very well be possible with a global flag). There wouldn’t be any lord after that, so maybe a final chapter without one or the ending directly.
I.E. the whole idea is to punish the player for killing too many enemies by putting them on a new route that’s way harder. From there, there would be the aforementioned failed ending and another one where the player manages to make the lord survive, which would be, in essence, the real challenge run. Above simple difficulty levels.
I’ve always wanted to see Fire Emblem hacks explore routes like the “Genocide Route” and “The Hero Is Dead” route. Even if the world is doomed, people would still struggle against fate.
Seeing Ike feel bad about getting his friends killed was neat. But it could go further. Perhaps second generation kids could get stat buffs if their parents die, and lovers could get buffs if their lovers die. Players specifically trying to get all their units killed and kill all optional allies should have that reflected in some way. Recruitable characters rejecting you because they’ve heard your “reckless idealism” gets people killed, or because your “Machiavellian strategies” sacrifice the weak.
Tons of FE games let you decide which unit to get from two. Or decide if you bother getting an optional recruit at all. But how many make this a meaningful consequence for meaningful prior decisions?
You want players to think about their decisions beyond the context of “Am I doing a good or neutral or evil run”? Make moral dilemmas with no easy answers, where you lose something no matter what you choose.
Imagine how much the 3H House Lords would hate it if their weapons and Byleth’s got a little stronger after every dead ally. Or just every dead Crest-bearer.
Come to think of it, remember when Marth got legions of disposable replacement units if too many of his units died? That could be framed as something a Validar/Iago/Garon style character could be responsible for. Something to reward the protagonist for being “Wise” (evil, compromising his ideals, giving into his half-Dragon nature, being the useful schemer his nation wants). Here you go, “Hero”. Here are fresh-faced new recruits, drafted nobodies who’d rather be anywhere but here, under-trained and under-prepared. Perfect for the meat grinder of war. Heroes struggle to keep everyone alive, villains sacrifice them by the dozens. Disposable generics backed by meaningful lore integration.
Part of an issue with (less ideal) routes from a player perspective (let alone from its dev) is that unless you outright state that such an entry point exists for side content, most if not all players will reset into a redo most of the time and have this side route somewhat unseen - and if what it boils down to is a cut short bad ending, then there will be even less will for someone to push forth with that story line - so at that point it leads to having the lord die as a mainline event - but that’s not what the thread asked so that’s not a thing I should elaborate into.
And if a unique sidestory is borne from the lord dying, you need to make sure there’s a specific point in time - think about the necessary coding if you must plan out a story switch at every chapter if the lord can be killed without repercussion everywhere.
These features oft go unused because it’s way too much work for a dev for little payoff overall - as this leads to content that not a lot of people - if any - may even see at all
so, like, cool stuff, but not something you might expect to see soon as its just kind of utterly unrealistic to commit to within the medium of a Fire Emblem hack, and more realistic within the medium of a Choose your Own Adventure mobile game or VN