Has anyone ever thought to make Optional Weapons and the Tower Of Valni/Outrealm Grinding Location morally reprehensible?

[LeskLyfeld]

My response: beating the tangential allegations

@JasonGodwin7

How much of this post is really relevant to the topic of this thread? What are you even trying to say?

All is relevant towards your previous reply towards my original reply in this thread, and if you want it really broken down after this double down, then I can do that.

@LeskLyfeld

Such games of “choice” (mainly visual novels which is not the genre of Fire Emblem, despite how much lying we want to do) still gap such choices within what is characteristic of such a character, and even bar some of those choices behind specific stats (Evil/Good balance).

Visual Novels (games where you believe decisions matter but only the last chapter does), “Choose your Adventure” and games in the vein of MMOs (through class storylines) and RPG games (Dragon’s Age/Mass Effect as a bad example) make the choices of such a self-insert character be considered all in character (as they are all within the selection, regardless of them being “good/evil” decisions).

These are all options in-character for them, and if they were not, they would not be an option. Simple as that. You don’t get a constant option to jump off from your starship whenever you’re talking to someone, as a rough example.

Point here is - all decisions made by a self-insert character must be made in-character. An uncharacteristic choice would break the flow of the story and how well the player is integrated to the plot (suspension of disbelief), furthermore if such a choice is forced unto them.

@LeskLyfeld

Additionally, go ahead, make that choice - is your army following you? Fire Emblem games that feature choice (f.e. Eligor Spear) make those choices characteristically congruent with the protagonists. There is no option to shove Eligor’s Spear up your ass because that doesn’t fit neither the characters nor the story.

I have told you how other games that have more narrative leeway don’t do uncharacteristic portrayals of characters. Now I’m telling you how Fire Emblem doesn’t either. Being granted a choice altogether in multiple romhacks is a pretty big deal - and when they are impactful (as much as in Eligor’s Spear), they have to be in character to be cohesive to the story.

@LeskLyfeld

Not just that, but many of these games aren’t avatar/self-insert characters, but actual characters with relations and characterization. They are not your vassal for committing choices. If that was what you wanted, you’d need an MMO-type of plot.

This is a reply to you saying “what’s the point of self-inserts if I can’t make my own choices”

They are not self-inserts. They have their own agency. They have their own objectives.

@JasonGodwin7

I don’t know what MMOs you’ve played but I’ve never seen ones where your choices matter in the way your choices matter in something like Fallout New Vegas or Disco Elysium.

Now, Fallout New Vegas is a better example than bringing up MMO’s. My point with them is that the agency of the self-inserted character you make, what missions you do, what places you go, what you fight - is your choice, your agency. The avatar is a conduit for your choices in such games due to not being constricted to a more specific, forced plot.

@JasonGodwin7

But hey, it’d be cool if a fangame or romhack experimented with letting the player make meaningful choices for the characters beyond the occasional route split and fake choices during railroaded conversations.

FIRE EMBLEM - Code of the Black Knights: Decisive Edition (30 chapters)

@JasonGodwin7

Why, just look at how many characters in Three Houses refuse to join you on certain routes because they don’t want to murder absolutely all their friends and loved ones, or refuse to fight or damage or kill specific characters because they don’t want to be told by Byleth to be the one to finish off their freinds and loved ones.

So, two? Pretty much undermining the impact of that choice? Yeah, sure.

@JasonGodwin7

The very thought of any Fire Emblem game ever allowing you to make choices a character wouldn’t, like Marth making unnecessary sacrifices so he can farm more EXP, or a player celebrating the end of any Fire Emblem game by sending 99% of his army to suicidally attack the boss once a kill is mathematically secured after all the needless death, like some macabre fireworks display in celebration of your capacity to cheat death until there are no more consequences for senselessly indulging in it!

Except that is a romanticed perception of Marth (highlighted by Excemblem) for a skewed up perception of the gameplay. All what you consider “unnecessary sacrifices”, “suicidal charges” or such can also be seen through the lenses of “unexpected loss”, “misfortune” or many more. Tiki doesn’t know she has a 25% chance to hit an enemy when I’m about to send her towards an enemy with a weapon that kills her. They don’t know the boss has 80 HP and that hitting it approaches that number to a lower amount - all they know is that they’re fighting the war.

These choices of yours are not a choice for the character.

@JasonGodwin7

Name one Fire Emblem game where your army abandons you if you behave dishonourably. You can sacrifice units for minimal or no gain, send unarmed men to their deaths or send them to die facing impossible odds, bench units with a burning passion to destroy their enemies and avenge their loved ones just to fill your army with your small selection of personal favourites and walking sacrifices, trap an enemy archer and plink him to death for maximum EXP gain, nobody will object, nobody will leave your army in disgust or even betray you on the spot and turn red. I’ve never heard of a Fire Emblem game doing this.

You’re grasping straws here. This is also a “gameplay-story segregation” moment if you want to entertain that thought, but just consider the blatant ignorance showcased by your words here. You’re attributing qualities of a player towards their characters - qualities that are not innate to them.

@JasonGodwin7

Nobody can intentionally make something worse than the worst Fire Emblem romhack to already exist.

So there was this time where I didn’t check my sources and gave a link to a hack made by one of the worst people to ever touch this website. Yeah, things can be intentionally made worse. There can always be something one person can do and be way worse than anyone has ever concieved.

@JasonGodwin7

Anyone here who played Advance Wars: Dark Conflict (aka Days of Ruin) remembers the death of Brenner and the impact the death of Brenner had on Will. He was a strong character. He was a useful video game function. His loss meant something to the story. To the people who felt something when playing it. I believe the game would have been lesser if its creators were afraid of alienating people who would have felt ripped off by the loss of a character they had emotionally invested into.

Brenner isn’t a resource in AW:DoR, unlike Jagens are, that’s the central issue - and also a point people made in the Jagen thread. A main point people were making was “You wouldn’t have to need to kill your jagen off if you did well.”

Brenner was a character just like everyone else was - and the point of that is that Brenner’s loss in that game has no gameplay repercussions.

You kill off the Jagen without a warning? You’re tossing out a tool in the player’s hand. The OG Fire Emblem (hardly recall whether it was 1 or 3) has the Marth Disguise situation where you get to choose who is the scapegoat for Marth to escape - giving you a choice. You lose one unit but it is a loss you have control of - and you can ditch a unit that you have made no use of.

On another line - picture Siegfried from TLP. He is the jagen that dies that you are looking for. He is a huge tool for you to clear through early chapters and sometimes gather special rewards, such as defeating Cid for his boots on a defend chapter. You have to use him to get things which would be complicated to attain otherwise - not because ‘hurr he is jagen’.

Hell, I don’t want to admit this, but you have Lonely Mirror giving you a gaiden that pits four lives on edge - letting you only rescue two and killing the other two by crushing them to death - a factor that I enjoyed myself. That chapter exhibits a PAY-OFF. I killed the character’s best friend in exchange of two other human lives, with the game pitting me at a trolley dillema.

@JasonGodwin7

Taking away the player’s crutch, their Jagen, their stern reliable old man mentor character, their new favourite father figure, making the player feel weaker for a map or two, perhaps a Defense map where the hero’s moping over it on his hands and knees crying and sobbing over it and how hopeless everything feels, and he needs to be protected while somebody else talks some sense into him until the timer’s over and the map goes from Defense to Kill Every Last One Of Them and the protagonist gets a buff or class upgrade representing his newfound resolve, it should hit the player harder than taking away a few extraneous Gameplay Mechanics for a bit or introducing the freshly-introduced yet renamed but also established but also self-insert Avatar’s actual mother or father nanoseconds before death.

If the lord is meant to promote at such a chapter I assure you few people are still using the jagen as a crutch by then. In fact, some hacks either try to give the jagen later utility for late game stages (Sage Jagens) or secret events to push them back into action.

I’ll be straight, 'cause I was getting pissed at the whole “mods just shutting down your threads before they even started” - but you generate more discourse than when I do when the words “Effective vs. Infantry” come up.

Half of the things you talk about hardly make any sense, and you double down on telling people that they don’t get what you say.

You go on the offensive when contested and nearly all of your interactions in FEU are threads like these.

And no. Shaming the player for using the Tower of Valni is not good design.