Humor & Dark Themes in Fire Emblem GBA ROM Hacking
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- Опубликовано: 3 ноя 2024
- When writing your Fire Emblem game, think about how you handle humor and dark themes. How we execute this is key in making a good experience for your player, who may have specific expectations when playing an FE game with GBA aesthetics. Let's talk about what we can do (and what we shouldn't do) to best use humor and edge appropriately.
"Can you withstand the spirit of one whose life has passed? The weight of the burden of that death? Weak souls succumb quickly to a strong spirit. Strong either is like a toxin to those whose bodies and minds are unfamiliar with such an overwhelming power. Kain, for just a moment, grant me that power!"
Everybody big meme until Storch drops the f-bomb
Can't believe I got called out by pandan on live tv.
A problem that a lot of Pokémon fan games and rom hacks, like Insurgence and Unbound, have is that their main focus is on being dark and edgy, to the point where the whole story just comes out as stupid. Like, in Unbound, there are multiple scenes of characters being burned alive, but I just couldn't help but laugh in a semi-uncomfortable, semi-confused manner, thinking, "haha, wow, that's brutal. But did I really need to be shown that?" It's not even like a graphic scene, it's just a flame sprite overlapping a character sprite, so it just looks silly. But anyway, yeah, I just think that a lot of Pokémon fan games are too edgy for their own good.
Just a sidenote Insurgence has an option to turn off the edgy story then it basically becomes a regular pokemon game, cultist become evil team grunts , death isn't mentioned etc.
@@mysteryman9488 That doesn't change the fact that the dark story is still just edgy for edgy's sake.
Pop culture references and memes are probably the easiest way to date a story and create a disconnect with the audience. Just look at the worse half of animated movies today or anything made by Illumination Studios.
Indeed
Struggling with story myself right now. Didn't expect you to hit this topic, but I thought you covered it really well and would love to hear more. As always, thank you for your humble insight.
I think most hackers should probably think about this. One of the toughest parts of the game making process is finding a hook to catch your audience on. It's one that I'm looking for myself. Anyhow, I'm so grateful for all of your videos on your process on making a hack. They've really inspired me to make something of my own.
26:05 That sounds like something i would write just for fun, but i wouldn't put it in a serious project of course.
7:55 damn you happy trees. You still haunt me till this day
I personally think a game should first up establish overall what tone it wants to have. If it'll be a light-hearted story or an edgy one. This should then be the focus in the main story. The other end of the writing scale should then only come out sparingly to not create too much of a disconnect. I personally have not played any Kirby games, but we can pretty much assume that it's a pretty comedic game, the characters are all very colorful and well......it's a kids game. But from the few things I've heard about it, it also sprinkles in a few more serious topics. Pretty sure it also covers topics like loss and betrayal. Now obviously those aren't too hard topics, but it's basically the right way to handle these things. Another example would be the Yakuza series. The story itself tends to be very serious. It handles torture, death, etc. But the side quests are these wacky, nonsensical stories, like having a chicken run your business.
Now the question is how to best implement these sprinkles. Well the best way are probably the supports. Forde from FE8 is a pretty good example of this. Sacred Stones kinda jumps in pretty screwed up things, but Forde himself is pretty chill in most of it. He literally jumps off his horse mid-battle and just starts to paint. In a war, that's some serious chill he got. He's one of those little sprinkler of light-heartedness. Others are like Joshua literally gambling with anyone he can talk to or everything L'Arachel does. And that's just in one game. That should probably work the other way as well. In a more light-hearted story one can add more depth to the characters in the supports. While the character itself might fit in more with the light-hearted nature of the adventure, their motivations might actually be quite serious. I guess all in all, alot could work, one just need to kind of gauge where to strategically place these sprinkles.
Quite honestly I am wondering though......while supports are very good for doing these, I wonder if gaiden chapter would also work.
I'm pretty sure I've never seen a gaiden chapter that differs from the tone of the main game. For example if you hadd a serious story, would a more light-hearted gaiden chapter work?
For how to do humor or serious topics, I totally agree with everything here. The best humor tends to come out of characters just doing their own thing. Being themselves and being inside their character. Serious things should be handled carefully and if you wanna do something more screwed up, don't show or tell the player. Allude to it. It's basic horror film theory. The most horrible thing you can show to the player, is actually nothing. The player itself is the one doing the work. They'll fill in the blanks with their own thoughts of what could've or might be about to happen. That's typically more effective than showing or telling the player explicitly.
Anyway.....if I agree with almost everything in this video I should probably wrap this up then. I mostly just wanted to add my own unique thoughts on this, maybe visualize a few things a bit better and spark discussions for what others might think.
Kirby Final bosses include a flying Bleeding eye that screams in terror upon being damaged.
Nostalgic farmers and cheese enthusiasts have gotta be my favorite genders
If you do a Fire Emblem in modern times then you can use modern words
Are there any modern/sci-fi romhacks?
@@wess1797 I don't know I don't know every hack on earth. I mean there could be one
In terms of the writing scale, I think it's better to separate "big meme" and "too edgy" into their own scales. It's possible for a hack to have tons of edgy comedy or to be completely serious and tame.
Fire Emblem The Last Promise 2
18:06 I don't see anything inherently wrong with including jokes about dark topics such as sexual assault in a FE Rom Hack. Provided the work has a consistently irreverent tone and players know what they're getting into.
I don't know why someone would WANT to do such a thing in a fan game, but I don't think dark, edgy or offensive humor is necessarily bad in a ROM Hack.