I always see the hacks and I wonder why there are no avatars in the hack roms. Could you put them in, for example, using reincarnation so that they are there or appear there in a dream? I know that they are hated in the community, but it would be very interesting since their presence could change things, like being on the side of the villains, following their own path, or making their own army?
My assumption is that it might be difficult to implement any sort of visual customization in GBA emblem- I certainly would be turned off by another static appearance Avatar like Byleth.
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I know, I don’t like it and how sad since with that concept you can do many things or just put a skin like the soldier or the general, anyway, it’s worth dreaming
Avatar creation means choosing certain traits about a character yourself and saving these. However, many things that you want to edit for an avatar are in Read Only Memory (ROM):
- Growth rates
- Portrait
- Palette
- Affinity
- Gender
It wouldn’t be tough to make a barebones menu to choose your starting class and/or a stat to boost, as these are saved in ram. But everything in ROM requires additional hacks, and it gets out of hand very quickly. If I ever made an avatar creation menu, it would be incompatible with default skillsys, and that’s out of my control. (I don’t intend to make one, in case anyone was hoping, sorry.)
It comes down to poor compatibility and high complexity. But Legends of Avenir has one, so check out that project if you’re interested.
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We’re all grognards who hearken back to the good old days (when we were in the target audience) and not the shit current days (when other people are in the target audience).
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…Avatars are rather difficult to balance around honestly. The main series is a good example of how things can easily get out of hand just by the sheer options avatars are given.
Though, having the avatar on oposing sides could be interesting. You’d have to figure something out to make it fun, and not be a bunch of cutscenes. Perhaps having the avatar be a strategist for the villain, and the player is provided questions that change enemy layout, loot, soldier types, etc.
You really got me thinkin’ here.
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Avatars are just boring asf sometimes, from kris to byleth, they were always just blank slates used so other characters could prop them up so you would feel good, i feel like alear and robin are honestly the best from avatars we have, while they suffer from the usual avatar worship, robin has their qualities of having their personality in how they interact with the cast in their supports and how they and chrom work together to prop eachother up in the narrative just works( male robin should be able to S chrom, do it for the remake i.s.) and alear… alear is just funny, in any other game, they would have been a corrin devoid of anything, just guy or gal thrusted into a position people are obligated to worship, but in engage, alear is just literally dragon jesus, so the avatar worship feels ok and warranted, their blandness honestly elevates them by proxy of everybody in engage being a level of crazy, that when they have to deal with them, its just makes you laugh, ivy’s sudden confesion, goldmary breaking down bc she failed at wooing them, having to interact with the weird british child that for the first time ever, isn’t tiki, their supports usually just puts them in the straight man role against a sea of lovable weirdos and fanatics + the magic man who appears with ibuprofen, so to finish this text dump, if ya really want a avatar, just make a oc and skip their avatar all together, character dynamics are much better than just going “…” everytime albino female lelouch strikes up a conversation with you
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counterargument, dressup fun
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“being on the side of the villains”
Is not really about avatar but more of being able to choose-your-own-adventure, alignment routes no?
I approve for more hacks doing this. It would be easier to do so in SRPG studio with the amount of conditional checks the engine is capable of, though.
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As a creator and writer, my point of view is that you are the player/reader, viewing a story that I am conveying through dialogue and gameplay. You do not need to have a player character within the game to experience and appreciate the story nor to be the main character of it, though I would not preclude that there should never be stories and projects where the player can be represented - it just needs to be tailored to that purpose instead of thrown in to a story that it doesn’t fit with.
Having a cast where all of their details - their personalities, habits, traits, visual looks, etc. - are set in stone means that the writing can always account for those things, without the possibility of the player feeling like the character who represents them is not doing what they would do in a certain scenario (which is a problem with FE’s implementation of the system, since the Avatars aren’t true player characters due to a lack of dialogue choices that the player can select, often being as blank/bland/positive as necessary in order to move the story forward without clashing and conflicting with too many players’ wants, etc.).
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