JULY 2026 – Even Water Sleeps but the Hack Never Rests
Progress Report
- Got C15 ready to playtest (it will probably bite my head off as it stands)
- Saw Senegal 5-0 Iraq
- Went from being extremely far behind on battle quotes and camp dialogue to being extremely far ahead on these things
- Solidified the five endings
- That’s about it lol
Holidays are over and it’s back to the grind. Due to the nature of the time I had – that being separated from all of my stuff (and my save file!) and on a shitty backup laptop – it made the most sense to just keep on with conversations. So that’s what I did. While I haven’t made progress in terms of Complete Chapters, I was able to pour like 60+ man hours into the hack one way or another. It’s all about consistency.
Credit to Lumi as well, who used some of her own holiday time illustrating concepts for much of the cast.
Posting today because my holidays, well, end tomorrow. Back to the other grind. The one that keeps me in iced coffee and plastic crack…
You Should See the Other Guy
I’m pulling double duty in describing our foil, because I’m actually writing this first in order to create a design reference for him.
Something that I’ve always held is a very useful thing to think about is: what is the worst thing your protagonist has ever done? Well, one of the events that kick-starts the game is simple. Lindauer – currently being groomed by the Magistrate as a potential candidate for training as a dignitary – has noticed that her brother is reading illicit material and falling in line with rebel thoughts. Afraid of the consequences that are sure to follow if he is only caught after something terrible happens, Lindauer turns him over to the Guard. He avoids the noose, but he is branded as a traitor and press-ganged into a penal legion. At the beginning of the game, the sister is preparing to leave for Covenant in the Magistrate’s tow, while the brother is set to march south to the interminable quagmire war in Rijesca.
It is not a spoiler to confirm that that is not the last you will see of your brother.
The six years between the prologue and chapter 1 shape the siblings in very different ways. While Lindauer is a smooth, polished operative of the Confederation, Radek is a hardened warrior who has been doing the hard yards in the least glamorous corners of the Guard, proving his ability and, reluctantly, leadership, and working his way up the ranks. Both have found redemption in the eyes of the Confederation, through very different ways. And it has left scars on them both, too.
Radek has found some appreciation for the Confederation, sure, and his rebel tendencies have faded. But he still resents what the place has done to him, and what he’s been through, and… he has not forgotten who put him there, either, nor forgiven. Bouncing from battalion to battalion and battlefield to battlefield has given him a rather ramshackle assortment of heavy armour, and his natural build (visible in Prologue, that being: Lunk) has sharpened into a hulking, tigerish killing machine, a full-on linebacker. Beyond that, well, you’ll have to wait on what Lumi produces…
But as a person, Radek is someone who has risen to the moment… sort of. He found a way to work within the system, at the second time of asking. He did not throw away what he thought of as his second chance. But he did throw away his dreams of a better way of life, and is resigned to leaving all that to those above his head. He’ll lead, with some reluctance, by example, but his eyes are fixed at the ground and he’s just providing his men someone and something to rally around. He’s still alive, but he’s been ground down, and needs to remember he’s allowed to look up and notice the stars again. Trouble is, when he does have the chance to look up, he’ll instead find the entire reason he’s stuck in this hellhole to begin with.
What a great find for the Damned Cohort he shall make.
Finally, The Straight White Male Patiently Explains Gender Politics To You
And he’s gay. Radek, I mean. Not the straight white male. That’s me. This is probably not a surprise.
It’s overdue that there’s a significant Man With A Solely Male, Requited, Fulfilled Love Interest in an NQR campaign, something I have (please do trust me on this adjective) inadvertently swerved to date. Technically in The Documents Kalevi is bisexual, but there is no evidence for this in DoW itself; Jolyon is explicitly bisexual but his only requited love interest is a woman, while Arcus shoots him down; and while Hereward is gay and can have an MLM relationship, his only potential partner is a low-tier B-route prepromote whose movement doesn’t match and whose weapon types and statspread are redundant, so it’s unfortunately very rare to actually see in the wild. There’s a couple of ships between minor characters (Sander/Kestut, Conleth/Chester, Alexis/Stolypin), but that’s about it. Eyebrows have been raised, and accusations of a disparity are, honestly, completely fair.
I am probably the wrong person to speak at much length about this. But I am far from the first person to note that this disparity goes well beyond NQR and into the custom campaign scene as a whole. A large part of this stems from the environment we’re working in. We’re dealing with a strategy game from a more heteronormative and chauvinistic time, so of course we perceive a lack of significant women and a lack of gay people and work to consciously address it, and wind up drowning in lesbians. Even today, going into media as a whole and saying ‘there should be fewer lesbian relationships, actually’ would be psychotic. And, honestly, I can only think of a couple of campaigns which in isolation strike me as questionable in that regard. If you are reading this and are about to write a WLW protagonist, well, you certainly shouldn’t stop on my account. (Even if I somehow thought that, that is for several obvious reasons Not My Call. I’m presumptuous, but not that presumptuous.)
But it’s about patterns. At some point we have to become conscious of the environment we’ve collectively built, and the community we’ve fostered. In that community there are a lot of WLW that are pleased to find WLW representation in custom campaigns, and that’s truly wonderful. I do not at all mean to downplay the significance of that. But… you’ve seen the same comments I have. People drooling over The Yuri, not even really for its own merits but simply just because it’s The Yuri. And, yes, some of the portrayals of women in custom campaigns (my own included! Unfortunately!) have the male gaze, if not necessarily front and centre, at least looming in the background. I’m obviously not saying people can’t or shouldn’t find characters attractive and relationships appealing. But at the very least, we should remain conscious of how all this looks on aggregate, and do our best to ensure that nobody experiencing our works feels like they’re an afterthought, or that their orientation wasn’t titillating to the author and so for that reason was sidelined or forgotten, or that their orientation was titillating and so for that reason was made prominent for the author’s benefit.
Anyway, Radek’s gay, there is a romance option lined up for him. Lindauer’s bi, there are male and female romance options open for her. There’s little romance between other squad members, in part because of base dialogue taking over from supports. I do not think I have been guilty of particular excess, but I have undeniably fed into a greater pattern. I am trying to remain conscious of my biases and those of the community on aggregate. This isn’t worthy of praise, it’s just what I should have done from the start. Better late than never, I guess.
Anyway. Enough about me. Let’s talk about You.
You
Here’s the question. In the eyes of the campaign, who is actually calling the shots here? Who does the player represent?
I often like to hearken back to old strategy games and, hey, I’m going to do that here. In those, the player was generally some nameless strategist figure. You always got a you. There was a sense of role-playing. What does that look like? Lead us away, Warcraft 1:
Blackhand has assigned you to an outpost in the Swamps of Sorrow. Your task is simple enough that even the War Chief feels that you are capable of it. Construct at least six farms, so that we may keep our troops well fed and ready to do battle. Only a fool would leave his treasures unguarded, so you must also build a barracks for the defense of these farms.
Sometimes this would later become a character. IIRC the You of C&C:RA1 is implied to be your commander in C&C:RA2. In Starcraft 1, ‘the Magistrate’ would become Matt Horner*, ‘the Executor’ (Tassadar has failed us; you must not…) would turn out to be Artanis, replaced by a new ‘the Executor’ in the next campaign, who would in turn become Selendis. Hilariously, in Campaign 2, You are a nameless overmind… which gets ganked like three maps into the next campaign. But ultimately you don’t really become a character who inhabits the world, and only by departing your control can a character be attributed Your past successes.
I know I just said it was an old-school thing but the sheer bluntness of ‘You are [Name Entry],’ is timeless, OK
So how does this apply to FE? Well, sometimes there’s a tactician, most obviously Mark, being the character You are inhabiting. In Mark’s case, they’re obviously denied any real characterisation of their own. Because… it’s You. And, hell, for 13-year old Daisuke handed his GameBoy Advance™, he probably just input his own name and gets to be the guy Lyn is expressing interest in and his decision to throw Bartre into a killing edge myrm because he might just hit this 27% (which absolutely has a 27% chance of happening, right?) is honoured by the game. Daisuke The Kid wills it, Daisuke The Character orders it, Bartre eats shit and Fir is evaporated from canon.
But I think most people will agree Mark in execution is kind of dumb. Not to say tactician characters can’t work. FE3, everyone’s favourite game to pretend to have played, has Malledus. But most FEs never attribute The Orders and The Management to any one guy and I don’t think they suffer for it. In part this is because of the scale and the fantasy being sold. Guy doesn’t need to be told to run at that bandit and run him through. Guy does it on his own. If anything, attributing these actions directly to a character strains disbelief. You are the vague spirit pushing the army forward. So one thinks yet again back to Blizzard RTSes, back to Warcraft 3, which never has any explicit character behind the cursor, and to the Priest’s declaration: I have been chosen by the big metal hand in the sky!
Not her, either, unless You is also You.
So ‘who are you’ is not really a question that matters or needs an answer in this genre… except that You, Behind The Camera, are asked for input a number of times in Day of Reckoning. Indeed, you are in Drums of War, too. Roxelana isn’t telling Andrea to advance three tiles and then use Courtain to vapourise some cunt from 2-range, but she’s probably deploying Andrea in her abstract elite guard (well, mine isn’t, but maybe yours does). Who is the one deciding to recruit or ditch people? Well, it’s Roxelana, but why is it different between playthroughs? Does any of this even fucking matter? What the fuck are we doing here?!
And, no, it doesn’t, really. But the sense of playing a role never really fits into DoW. These are the only choices Roxelana might make differently. Rena and Bronwyn don’t even get that. Lindauer, though? You’re routinely making calls for her that are 50:50. It’s not that she’s a blank slate; indeed, if you’re hoping to use her as a self-insert, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. The picture is not altogether flattering. She’s ambitious to a fault, loyal to causes that don’t deserve it, situationally ruthless, and she routinely lies through her teeth. There are many secrets she keeps that the player is not privy to. You don’t get to choose who Lindauer, at her core, is… but you can pick pivot points at times where some quantum version of Lindauer might go either way.
But I’ve already gone over her as my form of a slightly more RPGish Avatar. What’s new to this post and the point I’m getting around to is this:
Can I get away with saying ‘you’ here?
I tried to avoid it early on in the campaign, but there are just moments where it flows a lot better. And avoiding ‘you’ in these can come across like avoiding ‘I’ in an essay; like inefficient obfuscation that still leaves it pretty plain what’s been unspoken. At the same time… no, Lindauer isn’t your self-insert. That’s why she’s so set in stone in significant facets of her character. Why her backstory and personality are 90% the same no matter what. Why you choose between twelve names instead of just choosing your own. Does it go against that to ask what you would do in her shoes, and then have her do that?
And the answer, I think, is, uh, ‘no, but not fatally’.
Because you can still play a role with it being set in stone. After all, there’s always things set in stone in any roleplaying game. Daisuke The Tactician is still some dipshit in Lorca lands while Daisuke The Kid is still some dipshit who needs to improve his Maths grades. Ultima’s Avatar is you; you are not the Avatar. So asking the player to just commit that little bit more to being this cold-blooded Tudor lawyer type does not seem as though it fatally undermines the vision.
Is ‘fuck it, it doesn’t matter so I’ll go with the one that lets me write tighter sentences’ a very satisfying answer? No. Is it the one you’re getting? Yes.
On Endings
So what kind of choices do you get? Approaches in dialogue, some that matter, others that don’t. Romance options. Oh, yeah, and five endings.
Not five true endings. Not five equally happy endings. Nor is the true ending hidden, or hard to achieve. You don’t gotta collect the starsign stones. You don’t gotta not use the legendary weapons. 80-90% of players will get the best of the five endings. But you still need to choose them. And what’s the point in a choice when there isn’t an alternative? Why offer you choices only for inconsequential things, so long as Lindauer might plausibly follow along?
(You can see why thinking too much about What Lindauer Should Do leads to headaches.)
I hope you like when I bring up unrelated games. Suikoden 5! Like most people, I’ve only experienced it through the SomethingAwful LP, so here goes. There comes a point at which you’re beset by an enemy army. You are heavily encouraged by your insufferable Zhuge Liang expy advisor to ditch the stronghold and abandon it to the enemy, to do Schemes somewhere else. The game makes it really fucking obvious: She Is Right. But you can tell her to go fuck herself and hold your ground. It’s not a game over! It’s not even a bad ending! But in the attempt to hold your ground, you will lose a character (and, I think, get bailed out by Temu Zhuge’s backup plan anyway).
And of course Yggdra Union, which people (fairly) assume I like, but I don’t have particular thoughts about it beyond that I don’t love the aesthetic and that it beat the shit out of me when I was a kid, or at least the GBA version with its attrition mechanic did. My memory of the specifics is… vague… but there’s definitely something where you win the war, secure all your objectives, but you can keep fighting. There’s no story point to keeping on fighting and you get a worse ending; if you let momentum carry you on without purpose, you’ll pay for it. Rondo of Swords has something similar, too. Not the first time I’ve taken inspiration from something ending-related from that…
Unlike Wizardry IV, the true ending will not require a basic understanding of pop-culture Kabbalistic ritual.
So, endings. A through E; one Good, one Neutral (leaning positive), one Neutral (leaning negative), two pretty unambiguously Bad. A and B get you ending slides. C-E do not. There’s options if you want them. And it provides an opportunity to see the world from other perspectives. Is this an efficient use of time? No. But you should always colour one layer beneath the surface. And it’ll be fun.
What’s Next
Back to the grind. I need to get working on Chapters again, getting back up to speed at two or three a month. I’m ahead of writing, which means I can work on some of my other commitments with that time. What’s also very important is getting my schedule back in whack. I’m finding myself sleeping at 5 and waking up at 1. This will not do. 6-8 is when my writing time is, but even if I could push through, I’d be too tired to do anything then.
*This is explicitly not the case, but is such an insanely obvious missed opportunity that I refuse to accept the canon here.