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Ways to make Permadeath more interesting/integral to the plot


Ottservia
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So we all know one of Fire emblem's main gimmick that sets it apart from most SRPGs is the idea of permadeath that the series is known for. When a unit dies, they're gone for good which has given the series a unique identity. Though I feel(especially with recent titles), Permadeath has sort of been more detriment to the series overall. Having to account for permadeath, makes it really hard to give other characters screentime within the main story and have them actually contribute to the plot because well the devs can't know if that character will be alive in any given playthrough. It's a great gameplay signature but as far as story telling is concerned, well it's only really a hindrance. So i just wanna know what suggestions you have for making Permadeath more interesting from a narrative standpoint.

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I think that Tellius had a fine balance to having to manage permadeath with being able to tell a story with significant player party participation.

There's the supports/script changes, as mentioned; but there was also the Base Conversations. I feel those were the right way to have the cast participate in the story to an extent without sacrificing the fact they were a cadre of red and mauve shirts.

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I don't see many ways to implement permadeath into the main story without several snags. Letting every character have their say on plot developments would either require having a smaller cast, which if not balanced correctly would mean that the game may not be very good for ironmanning, thus destroying the point, or a larger cast so permadeath works well in gameplay, but risks affecting the writing quality through overwriting, an issue I believe IS is struggling with lately. The game could also be written in such a way that characters would pipe in during certain conversations that otherwise work without their participation, as TearRing Saga does, but it has cases of it being done well and poorly (For instance, if Attrom dies on Holmes route, then the latter's treasure hunting comes off less like he's following legitimate clues and more like he's an open world protagonist being distracted by shiny treasure instead of continuing the story. Gameplaywise, it also locks you out of two healers, one of which has a warp staff that makes some of the worse designed swamp maps in a Fire Emblem-esque game significantly easier, but that's a different discussion).

I don't think it's impossible. Shadow Dragon for instance has the different scenes play if you manage to beat Chapter 20 without killing Camus or Chapter 23 without defeating Gharnef, as well as the ending changing slightly depending on if Caeda is alive or not, among other examples. Thing is, Shadow Dragon is also among the most linear games in the series, having next to none of the more open-ended aspects of the recent titles, and while there are some moments of accounting for which characters are alive or dead at certain points (such as the sacrifice in the prologue and who speaks after Marth dies), the game is infamous for the casts overall lack of characterization (even if I would say that the little we do get is pretty good). I would personally say it's the fire emblem game that handles permadeath the best gameplaywise (gaiden chapter requirements aside), but that does come at a cost of units having little impact on the overall story.

Side activites, such as supports, base conversations, and endings, on the other hand, are a lot more feasible for accounting for permadeath. Tellius showed the former two could be done successfully, and Gaiden/Echoes the latter. Since they (theoretically) require less resources than the main plot due to not having to care about cutscenes and being mostly text, there is more room to add alternative scenarios in the event that a character is dead, and if applied wisely, they could account for a surprising amount of scenarios if they plan ahead. Voice acting and Three Houses using models instead of artwork does bring into question how viable adding these alterations would be, though.

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Have scenes where our main characters react to the death of units we lost. Even if it's some dork villager we picked up, have that scene where we gotta come home and tell their ma.

Permadeath instantly justified.

Swapping out Jagen for Draug and then going down the list from there works too, I guess. But I agree permadeath ought to be part of the plot of a Fire Emblem game. Because in modern Fire Emblem, the only characters that die are the ones who show up with a neon sign saying "I'm content with just being motivation for the lord". One issue with my "add scenes for the units that died" idea is that the player is 99% likely to never see them. Especially with rewinding being as free as it is. People just...don't carry on after a unit's death unless they really don't like that guy. Maybe it's good enough to just have those heart wrenching scenes sit in CollectorTogami's playlist on Youtube? I dunno how to pitch that at the meeting for the next game.

I think the best thing narratively they've done with permadeath are the voice acted death quotes. Est in Echoes made me wanna cry. How else do you make somebody care about Est? You can't.

Edited by Glennstavos
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First the game need ironman mode because otherwise most people will just reset/turnwheel.

Second, i don't think this can be done whitout clogging the script even harder than Fates's supports. Instead of so many worthless "would you marry me" scenes we would get many "i am so sad this unit is dead" scenes. Eventually they will lost most of their meaning. And even if they are good, would it be right to reward the player for playing badly? 

I think a good option could be something similar the system employed in certain disgaea games. The lord would have a turn on the cynical side if more than x people are dead, and maybe going outright into "a milion is a statistic" mindset if a lot of people dies and among them there are their loved ones,paving the way for a tragic bad ending. Also, gaiden had a good idea whit the endings getting worse if a friend of the character dies. As it's only a page of text, it should not be hard to make many of those. 

In general, highly interactive storytelling can only be done if the baseline content is small enought. Valkirye Profile: covenant of the plume get to react to a lot of shit because the cast is small and there are not many maps, but even that games has some serious limitations.

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If a character is integral to the plot, then their death should trigger a game over, full stop. None of this "I cannot fall here, I must retreat" malarkey. But you don't want too many characters like this. So you can keep a non-playable "advisor" character, like Malledus or August. Then for other characters (who are significant, but not plot-crucial), you can rewrite scenes to accomodate their deaths, as Tellius did. I don't think most playable characters need their own big story role, supports and/or base conversations are enough.

5 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Have scenes where our main characters react to the death of units we lost. Even if it's some dork villager we picked up, have that scene where we gotta come home and tell their ma.

I'm intrigued by this idea, for sure, but doesn't it sort of conflict with

5 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

One issue with my "add scenes for the units that died" idea is that the player is 99% likely to never see them. Especially with rewinding being as free as it is. People just...don't carry on after a unit's death unless they really don't like that guy.

For the record, I think they can be worth having even if they're unlikely to be seen. I like little details like that, such as "Desaix's double" if you get the Dracoshield, or how Flayn and Seteth will have their Sacred Weapons if you didn't do their paralogue.

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8 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Have scenes where our main characters react to the death of units we lost. Even if it's some dork villager we picked up, have that scene where we gotta come home and tell their ma.

Permadeath instantly justified.

I am so annoyed that as far as I can tell, FE7 is literally the only game in the series that does that. I loved that aspect of the game, especially since it was my first game and I wound up losing so many units due to not wanting to repeat a chapter that took me ages, so I saw that feature a LOT.

Edited by Alastor15243
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Berwick Saga doesn't really have any sappy cutscenes where people cry over the dead, but you can visit the gravestones of your fallen units, and they all have their own epitaphs. It's a small detail, but one that I really loved. Those graves will remain there all game, as a permanent reminder of your mistakes. And people do die - aside from a very specific exception (that makes sense in context) and two game-over units (Reese and Ward), everybody dies when they are killed. None of this "ugh, I just got obliterated by a magical nuke - better run" nonsense.

Aside from that, the game gives every character screentime and backstory via character-specific sidequests and events. Think supports but with a lot more freedom, as they aren't forced to three conversations between two specific, playable characters. These aren't restricted to playable characters - a few characters interact with NPCs more than with other playables, and there are even events that involve no playable characters! Four characters even have their own Three Houses styled paralogues, long before Three Houses was even an idea!

If you don't use a unit, though, you probably won't see too many of their events, as most of them require increasing the hidden happiness stat. It is raised by using them a lot, mostly, though there are other means.

They also made promoting and recruiting a lot deeper. Rather than just using an item on your favourite guy, you have to train their weapon ranks, or kill X enemies, or fulfill an/some event/s. Then, there's a whole scene for the promotion - and there's characterization there, too. Some characters' arcs are concluded when they promote! As for recruiting, over half of the game's cast can only be hired as mercenaries for gold at first. You have to raise their happiness and unlock events for them as you go, and eventually they will find a reason to join your army permanently. It feels more organic and satisfying than just "hey, you wanna tag along? Sure!".

In summary, characters get more screentime the more you use them, and if they die, then everything's fine, you just don't get to see those extra scenes. It's not always perfect (sometimes you'll have a character's arc left unresolved because you benched them, sometimes a plotpoint is set up early on in the game and is only resolved much later...), but I think it works extremely well, all things considered.

Another thing that helps is that the game's setting (throughout most of it you use a city called Navarron as your base of operations and home - think Garreg Mach but way better and way less tedious) allows for a rich cast of NPCs that never gets stale. Reese has more than enough unkillables to talk to, unlike say, Roy, who spends all his game speaking to Merlinus, Guinivere and Elphin.

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A simple way to make permadeath integral is adding mourning quotes from people that character is supposed to be close or has high rank in supports, also if it's a major character that appears in cutscenes, substitute them  instead of making them retreat. 

Edited by Mylady
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/13/2020 at 10:32 AM, eclipse said:

Do what Tellius did, and change the script/supports accordingly.  It's a lot of work to keep things consistent, though.

I feel like that's not really enough. Most people who play the series either A) Won't know they exist because they'll probably reset anyway or B) Just look them up on Youtube or read the script to see them. I certainly know that's the way I've reacted to them. I think a more tangible benefit needs to exist so people can eat the death of a character. Despite the hate, Shadow Dragon had some semblance of a good idea by having maps that depended on characters dying. They just went waaay too extreme with it and didn't make it character specific aside from the Nagi map. We shouldn't get rewards for straight up slaughtering our army, but alternate maps that offer more diverse gameplay opportunities could work. Think Ilya/Sacae, only instead of being based off of level, one of them is the default route and the other occurs if the characters associated with that route are dead. Alternative recruitment for characters is another thing that could be done. Like we mentioned before in some topic the potential of recruiting the parents of the Three Houses characters if their children were dead. As bad as Shadow Dragon's paralogues were for encouraging mass slaughter, the Nagi one is an example of one that works well in this regard. Lose both Tiki and the Falchion and you get compensated in some way. It's not quite rewarding failure, nor does it feel like it's locking off a part of the game because there's an extant reason for it to happen (unlike all the other Gaidens which just happen without rhyme or reason).

A dedicated built in Iron Man mode would also go a long way towards encouraging characters to experience death in the franchise without it being a self imposed challenge. I know I'd certainly do it more often if it were a genuine mode in the game.

 

Edited by Jotari
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