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Scripted Deaths for Player Characters


NekoKnight
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Personally, I don't mind the case of loosing a playable character mid-game. Be it due to death or some other reason. Or maybe I'm just used to, having encountered in SRW, which is quite liberal on PC's joining and leaving. On the other hand, SRW is more flexible over issues like player-to-enemy strength balance, so you can't really screw yourself in making the game impossible to beat.

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On the subject of Final Fantasy and gameplay inconvenience, I got reminded on what the remakes of Final Fantasy II did. You had a four-party formation where three of the spots were permanent, with the fourth one rotating through characters joining and leaving. That in mind, it would dictate what you did with the temporal party members, since not being in the party forever, it limited what you did with them (FFII has a unique system, to FF at least, as to how to gained stats and stuff). The remakes would add a post-game where the party members who left due to dying would be the party of this post-game. Well, three of them were. The fourth wasn't a party member but still died. Anyway, due to that, it now made more worthwhile to do long-term investment with those temporal party members (still not to all; but it was still something), because they would still see some action later down the road.

Not the kind of thing you would see FE doing (specially the "those who died" part, considering things)... maybe; but it shows how you can still make a soon-to-leave party member worthwhile to invest on.

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Sounds like a neat idea on paper, but in practice I'd imagine that it would result in a lot of "don't bother using X, they're going to die anyway" advice being given. And if you had to invest in the character, then it might result in another Ilia VS Sacae situation, where instead of viewing it as an interesting split in the story that adds to the replayability, most people just saw it as "use/don't use characters X and Y to to get the better maps/items/characters/whatever". Ironman deaths also tend to have have the impact they do because for the majority of the time, it's the players fault for a unit falling (I say "majority" because enemies hitting/critting when they had a low chance to do so and/or bullcrap design like ambush spawns aren't entirely in the players control, although you can still improvise in how to deal with the sudden loss). Even if the moment is impactful from a story perspective, there will always be an element of cheapness if a character you used died simply because the plot said so, and not because they were weak or unlucky. Execution can most certainly soften that blow, though.

Recent Fire Emblem games have also had an issue with biting off more than they could chew in the writing department (Awakening has over 200 supports for Robin alone, Fates has the same situation while also trying to write three full stories in the same amount of time it takes to make one, and as great as the voice acting in Echoes is, it also meant they couldn't edit the story without spending some extra money, so some mistakes they may have wanted to fix had to be left in. I haven't played Three Houses, but it does sound like certain elements of the story were rushed or didn't get as much attention as they could have). As much as I like the idea of unit deaths affecting other characters, it is something that I can see them potentially going overboard with, which has the chance at coming at the cost of other aspects of the story. I also understand your point about making sure the character who dies is someone the player will like, but it doesn't really account for if the player likes a unit for gameplay reasons and could care less about their personality.

On a side note, I would rather that the player has a choice of whether or not they get a Jeigan unit or a character from a different archetype. That way, people who get a use out of Jeigans can take full advantage, while people who don't can get a unit they would prefer instead. Killing them off when I've already benched them won't have the same impact.

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People have rightly suggested it can work well with the Jeigan archtype. And we actually kind of get that in terms of gameplay in Radiant Dawn with the Black Knight. He doesn't die (well until the end game when he's an enemy), but you do permanently lose access to him after a few chapters. Orson too we get for one chapter before permanently losing. So if you make it a obviously really strong character where, if the player over uses them to the detriment of the rest of their army, they kind of only have themselves to blame, there's not much of an issue. 

However there's another possibility. Make the character utterly useless. Have them be so pisspoor in terms of gameplay, that the player would never decide to invest in them (well a small percentage would and might get pissed off, but I imagine the majority wouldn't, at least not on a blind playthrough). This is something I really wish they'd pulled for Elice in Birthright. Because the fact that she doesn't join you is a bit of a spoiler. In terms of the plot she is with you, helping everyone, I naturally assume I can now use her, only she's no where to be seen. And she would have worked perfectly for this. A)It's late game and she'd be starting as a tier 1 unit. B)She's a staff bot. If you want you can still deploy her and she can be useful (especially if she comes with a high staff rank), but aint no one's got time to exp grind a staff bot to promotion at that point in the game. Her dying doesn't feel like lost investment. I feel the fact that she's not playable means I've been spoilt by the interface and robbed of a larger sense of loss compared to if she was playable. Becuase even if I never deployed her once, the fact that she is deployable would enhance the feeling of losing something that can't be regained.

Birthright!Zola likewise felt like an interface spoiler when he's hanging around all the main party and even gets their trust yet isn't available as a fighter. As a character he could also be suitable for comically useless to the point that no sane player would use him.

Someone mentioned Sothe earlier, and I think that could be a good way to approach it. If we have two armies that merge together, you can afford to kill a character from one of them, as the second army ensures the player should have enough capable units to finish the game.

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12 hours ago, Jotari said:

People have rightly suggested it can work well with the Jeigan archtype. And we actually kind of get that in terms of gameplay in Radiant Dawn with the Black Knight. He doesn't die (well until the end game when he's an enemy), but you do permanently lose access to him after a few chapters. Orson too we get for one chapter before permanently losing. So if you make it a obviously really strong character where, if the player over uses them to the detriment of the rest of their army, they kind of only have themselves to blame, there's not much of an issue. 

Funny that you mention Radiant Dawn, given how much I personally detested the way that game shuffled your roster around, taking away and forcing specific characters on you on a whim.

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I've never played RD but I've heard how awful the Dawn Brigade units are. If the devs had just decided, "oh, let's kill Edward," it wouldn't be impactful because 1: Edward is apparently crap, and 2: he's also apparently not much of a character.
I guess the point here is this: If you want to kill someone off, it's going to cost you SOMEONE'S respect. Kill off a flat, terrible or boring character (like, say, Trec) and no one gives a crap, but kill off a strong and/or fleshed out character (such as Gregor) and the world is suddenly staring you down. YOU CAN'T WIN. I also wholeheartedly believe in the "don't use X, he dies" thing- heck, I NEVER use Kaze in a BR run because I prefer Saizo and besides, Kaze is kind of flat as a character. Do you see the problems here? I want killable playable units, but I DON'T want them to be either ignorable or flat! It's impossible to find a middle ground!
Taking the FF7 approach could work, but honestly it doesn't really solve all of the problems AND introduces a few new ones. Why support this character when he'll die? Is their replacement as good of a character? How would their arrival, with the fallen soldier's equipment, be justified? And why is this obviously killable replacement nowhere near as plot-relevant as the killed unit when that character got a lot of screentime before his death?

To me, there really is no right answer.

On 10/24/2019 at 12:12 PM, Jotari said:

However there's another possibility. Make the character utterly useless. Have them be so pisspoor in terms of gameplay, that the player would never decide to invest in them (well a small percentage would and might get pissed off, but I imagine the majority wouldn't, at least not on a blind playthrough). This is something I really wish they'd pulled for Elise in Birthright. Because the fact that she doesn't join you is a bit of a spoiler. In terms of the plot she is with you, helping everyone, I naturally assume I can now use her, only she's no where to be seen. And she would have worked perfectly for this. A)It's late game and she'd be starting as a tier 1 unit. B)She's a staff bot. If you want you can still deploy her and she can be useful (especially if she comes with a high staff rank), but aint no one's got time to exp grind a staff bot to promotion at that point in the game. Her dying doesn't feel like lost investment. I feel the fact that she's not playable means I've been spoilt by the interface and robbed of a larger sense of loss compared to if she was playable. Becuase even if I never deployed her once, the fact that she is deployable would enhance the feeling of losing something that can't be regained.

I wholeheartedly agree. Elise should have been deployable. Heck, if they can give you Kaze and then kill him off, WHY COULDN'T THEY DO IT WITH ELISE? Is it because Elise isn't able to be saved? Frick, did IS really have to do that?
But that's not the worst part. In Revalation, Scarlet joins you for about the same amount of time as BR!Elise, yet is playable. And yet, she gets killed off in plot. Why her being both playabe and force-killed, but not Elise, is a thing is something I don't know. And I don't believe that Corrinsexuals are acceptable targets. Actually... I'll bet IS intentionally gave her no supports, because they knew she would die when making Revalation. Why those-

I'm getting ahead of myself here. My point is, it makes no logical sense, and IS really should have just done something different. I'll excuse Zola because, after he gains their trust, he isn't with the party for a whole chapter before betraying them. Elise, though? Makes no sense whatsoever.

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I don’t think scripted deaths should be used. I think it would be a good thing to change dialogue based on someone’s death, though that may only be a likely possibility to happen in a more difficult FE. Fair in difficulty, of course, but still. Would help to bring in mourning dialogue and specific character reactions to death like in Echoes.

This might be easier to do when we don’t have more than one long path to take throughout the course of a game (like with Fates or Three Houses). Makes me wonder if IS will still do something like that, given the great success of the games mentioned.

Then again, risks can be taken for good effect.

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