Some days ago I was rewatching “Paths of Glory” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” (the 30s version), both war movies with very strong anti-war subtexts. Paths of Glory going as far as being a War Movie where you never see the “enemy” army, showing that the real enemy of soldiers are their higher-ups sending them to their death.
I then wondered how to translate similar ideas with the limitation of GBA Fire Emblem, so I wanted to start a discussion on it, I’m sure many people here have good ideas for it !
Of course, writing would play a big part. But I also really tried to imagine how to also transmit it through gameplay mechanics. One of my idea, was that no matter how well you play, there will be regular events that would kill some of the players units. Showing that you can’t avoid arbitrary losses in conflicts
Another idea I had was to have a map being reused multiple times, with a defense objectives, then rout the enemy, etc. Each time the map becoming more and more desolate. To recreate the feeling of pointlessness of trench warfare, where thousands will die for taking and loosing minimal objectives
The only thing I feared is that: at which point does the gameplay become too much unbearable for the player? No matter the intensity of the subtext, if the gameplay of a videogame is just too “unfun” there is a point where most people will just drop it. It’s very hard for me to know where to draw the line
From a gameplay perspective, what prevents a player from not investing on a certain unit? If I know someone is going to die, then I would probably focus my usage towards other units. As well, if people focus their resources on one unit and then it gets killed off without their own control, it would be infuriating for them.
So the main question from this stems to: How much can you sell the unfairness of war without punishing the player for playing the game?
Ngl, the idea of different chapters being the same map, but more desolated and barren each time is a good idea for a small hack with an antiwar theme. Making it more unberable and hard each time, and while that could strip the fun of much of it, could be an “interesting” experience to try. maybe following a bunch of fresh recruits who are thrown into the field without much training and must survive whatever comes against them.
I dunno, the ‘unfun’ for what you noted would kind of make the point you’re posing effective in a way, wouldn’t it?
It sure would be @VelvetKitsune , if done well ! I’m a bit worried that an idea that sounds good in my head could just be (or feels like) bad game design, and not feels like an intended mechanic when people play it ahah
So the main question from this stems to: How much can you sell the unfairness of war without punishing the player for playing the game?
That was a bit of my dilemna @LeskLyfeld . Like, how to make a mechanics that does translate the unfairness of war that the game want to portray, without the player just thinking that he got “punished” by a janky game. If done well, I do thinks that units dying from events (mostly) outside of the player control can be interesting. Like even if we take mainline Fire Emblem, there is the example of FE4 where a whole generation of characters get mostly killed
Ngl, the idea of different chapters being the same map, but more desolated and barren each time is a good idea for a small hack with an antiwar theme. Making it more unberable and hard each time, and while that could strip the fun of much of it, could be an “interesting” experience to try. maybe following a bunch of fresh recruits who are thrown into the field without much training and must survive whatever comes against them.
Glad you liked my map idea @Gunnar ! I really like your idea of following a bunch of fresh recruits thrown into the reality of war, it’s also very fitting with the “all quiet of the western front” inspiration ! Experiencing those ideas on a short hack is also a very good idea to avoid the game being too discomfortable to play, especially if there only a few “gimmick” to portray the subtext that could quickly feels redundant on a long project !
There two really big ways to convey this messaging, of course a mixing of these two ways is a good idea but overall if you’re going to minmax here’s the two ways.
One is to not have it affect gameplay, for the most part this is what I did with Host of the Dark, although the messaging goes beyond simply being anti-war, the anti-war messaging is a byproduct of the story itself framing the war as largely pointless.
A lot of fire emblem games don’t quite push this aspect all the way because it’s viewing each side of the respective conflicts as black and white, the only game to not really do this presents the question of the point of war and presents two conflicting arguments.
Regardless the narrative framing of this theming can be just as impactful as the gameplay framing, having all of your achievements in game be at odds with the results that come out of those achievements. That sort of dichotomy can work wonders at actively changing the players viewpoint on their actions in the moment.
The second and rarer choice is to have it directly impact the gameplay in a distinctly negative way ala spec ops the line. Make an FE that’s not meant to be fun to make a statement. Art is not always comfortable and fun, games don’t have to appeal to a person’s sense of fun to be good. Make boring slogs of route maps with soldiers treated as replaceable by the story as every single time you kill an enemy unit they get a death quote. Randomly kill units due to disease. The amount of things you can do with gameplay to make the point of war being pointless and hell is near infinite.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? FE is at it’s core about making a fun war game, so a huge part of usual FE is playing against this. Here’s a couple ideas, though:
1-Don’t make the player control one of the armies in question. Instead, be a different group that’s inside the warzone, with no interest on being part of the conflict. For example, the goal could be trying to find a family member during the war. That way you can have both sides being a mess and have the effects of the war be a source of narrative and gameplay problems, rather than war being the cool thing the player is doing to save the world.
2-Severely nerf or straight up nuke unit progression tied to combat, as exists in vanila. Having Kidsoldier become super strong because he killed 40 enemies is completely against the anti war theme. If anything, you should reward solving maps killing as few enemies as possible. You could punish killing many enemies with PTSD events or the like, but if you want to keep the game fun, rewarding pacifist behavior sounds better.
I’ve seen some hacks implement a fatigue system that builds up every time a character participates in a chapter. When the fatigue reaches a certain level, that unit would be unable to be deployed.
I think it would be a measurable way to show how the horror of war and killing constantly would affect your characters, and the need for rest to reflect and to heal their mental scarring.
You could see if it’s possible for fatigue to build up faster after killing an enemy from an attack that the character initiates, rather than a kill when the character defends. This kinda simulates killing an enemy vs. self-defence leading to death which can affect the soldiers differently.
That being said, I like Alguin’s comment above about pacifist behaviour being rewarded. You can give all characters the capture skill so that they can end battles peacefully. Depending on how many you’ve killed vs. captured, it may trigger special events, both good and bad.
Personally I’m particularly fond of lasting injuries, mainly through characters losing stats, limbs, etc or getting visible scars. It’s not something that might really carry the theme on its own, but I like it a lot as a flourish to enhance what’s already been set down.
I think this would be easy to mitigate in theory through granting some kind of reward proportional to the amount of investment put into a unit. There could be, say, a memento system of some kind where when a unit dies to a scripted event, they leave behind an item whose strength is dependent on their levels or something like that.
Also AQOTWF is a banger read, I haven’t seen any of the film versions and I really should but I really enjoyed the book
A thought might be splitting the game between 2 armies. FE10 did it with the battle against the Laguz. You play as them for some chapters and then suddenly your playing then enemy sent to cut them down. I hated that chapter (on top of being a FoW map).
Playing with that idea, you could have it go back and forth between the 2. Being forced to kill NPCs from the others army while being powerless to rebel
Concept in itself reminds me heavily of Valkyrie Profile, TBH. A game where you’re encouraged to invest heavily in characters you’re going to lose regularly for a sort of ‘scoring’ system that determines ending.
I feel like with that sort of concept with OP’s theme anti-war theme, one could set story driven character loss into a ‘part two’ of sorts, very akin to FE4, with the now dead fighters dealing with some super natural event that may or may not be foreshadowed otherwise, and can no longer grow (as they are dead) and other limitations in the finale of the story.
I’ve thought about good ways to implement this mechanic successfully in my own game. I think one fair way to do it is to kill the ‘character’ but leave the unit. So basically the character is killed off, but a generic faceless unit with their stats/levels remains. This way everytime you use that generic unit you will remember the weight of the choices you made.
It’s not perfect, but I have really wanted to implement something like that as I feel it’s a powerful storytelling tool while still not punishing player investments.
One of my thoughts with an anti-war / more ‘humane’ game would be removing altogether the concept of a ‘lord’ in the sense of a leader.
Potentially maybe even removing the sense of permanency of units (characters get swapped out to another trench, or come back at a later chapter looking up way worse for wear. In a way, I do consider that a hack of this type should sell the fatigue and strain on people in a more visible way, through portraits and dialogue as well), or switching the general formula.
As someone mentioned before, having every enemy have a death quote (and a face) would sell the point of you killing people, but at the same time, you removing death quotes of your own characters and even their faces could also sell a different point - that your forces, the units you are using are expendable.
That this hack isn’t truly from the view from a soldier, but from the people in charge, who see these soldiers as but mere tools for victory. With support conversations working as a way to sparingly humanize them, they would be mainly seen as faceless soldiers charging on.
If it was me, I’d try to tell the story via dialogue, not via game-play. I’m the type of player that resets the chapter if a character dies. Even if it’s a character that I don’t like very much, I still reset.
Also AQOTWF is a banger read, I haven’t seen any of the film versions and I really should but I really enjoyed the book
It’s been a while that I haven’t read the books but it’s still very memorable ! I can really recommand the 1930 and 1979 movie adaptations, both very faithful to the soul of the books with two different approach, my favority being the 79 one !
And asides from that, thanks everyone for all your answers ! I will take notes
And I should really play your Host of the Dark @theghostcreator to see how you handle those subjects
I can only imagine a nonlinear narrative or one that’s intended to end with the player accepting a surrender at any given point, with a different outcome for each of the points at which they surrender.
Generally the best outcomes would be from immediate surrender, surrendering after acquiring leverage, and winning.
At that point it’s perfectly fine to incorporate forced deaths/loss of resources because going further isn’t so much completing the game as it is a challenge run.
This would also necessitate all parties being justified in the conflict and for the ultimate victor to just do whatever’s reasonable.
An Iron Emblem like approach that adds a thorough narrative just becomes too depressing tbh. I like anti-war pro-humanism messaging
To comment on the concept of a map getting more barren the more you’re brought back to it, FE has the advantage of terrain being a mechanic. Buildings change to ruins, a forest tile next to a river could change into a snag, a thicket can become thinner forests, maybe even a magic floor can dry up into a normal floor. I think it can be quite interesting to both the gameplay and theme, but one should still be wary it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
is there like a way to make the game to be entirely independent on levels so you don’t have to worry about the grind. like for example all units are just level 1 or something and don’t gain exp but at the same time allow them to promote at level 1 as well?
so in that way , the loss of a unit doesn’t hurt that much if the plot decides to kill them.
aside from that there’s no other solution to that problem , you just take that punishment like a champ or be salty about it for all the time and resources wasted on that unit.
yeeeaah…but still it’s not that big of a blow compared to losing a lvl 10 promoted unit who is rng blessed.
and tbh i never tried that sort of gameplay mechanic on a fire emblem game , are there any romhacks like that? I just kinda got used to playing advance wars where the stats are already preset.
