Backward Engineering Seisen no Keifu
Oct. 19th, 2013 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodelIt was originally planned that, in the 2nd Generation, only one child would be born per parent and their gender randomly selected (with the exception of Celice, Yuria, Leaf and Altenna). (source)
I've wondered about that for a long time. It seems like a pretty cool idea that would be a nightmare to implement. I mean, it's one thing if the kiddies fill a similar gameplay niche-- Arthur or Tinny, Larcei or Ulster. But to randomly get either Ced or Fee? Either Leen or Corple? Either Faval or Patty? Have fun rescuing villages without your Peg Knight. Have fun managing everyone's funds without a thief. Have fun doing anything time-sensitive without a dancer. Maybe the random kids were all of a type with Larcei/Ulster-- same class (or close enough given gender-exclusive classes) and same basic weapons. This could've been the same stage of development where troubadours and bards were basically the same thing (and Sylvia had blue hair and didn't look twelve).
Then again, there are only seven breeding pool females in Gen 1 anyway, so you'd have a mere seven kidlets to accompany the fixed characters. Even if they're all godly that's not a large army, and FE4 in its current state has a small cast available to the player at any one time. It might be workable if you had parity between the Gen 1 gals'n'guys-- ten/ten rather than the seven/thirteen split we got-- and then maybe, say, Ayra would still have twins for funsies.
I'd recommend someone try this for a hack, but based on the character-swap hacks I've seen I doubt it would work. It appears that once a character gets swapped out-- say, you put Azel and Tiltyu in place of Ethlyn and Quan-- you can't just randomly switch them back to their old roles. Azel and Tiltyu are now going to bail on you in Chapter 4 and march off to their deaths in Chapter 5, while Ethlyn and Quan instead will stick around to have the Chapter 4 and 5 conversations that belonged to Azel/Tiltyu.
So, if we did take an easy target-- hello, Midayle-- and decided to make him a female to get the m/f balance closer to parity, we're still operating under severe constraints in terms of the event conversations girl!Midayle would trigger, and then something totally goofy would happen in Gen2. I believe when existing female characters "marry" each other via hacking you get subkiddies for one half of the pairing? I don't think you can just reassign, say, Lester to have a different mother and not be Lana's brother, much less somehow provide a random girl!Lester to confuse the hell out of players. If somebody were to pull this off it would require a much greater effort than just tinkering with FE4 vanilla.
Mind you, there are indeed some crazy-elaborate hacks so maybe the fairly straightforward character-swap hacks like Genealogy of Ayra and Genealogy of Fala don't hint at the true possibilities of what a fan can do to/with FE4. And if that's the case...
So, who besides Midayle ought to be turned into a chick?
I've wondered about that for a long time. It seems like a pretty cool idea that would be a nightmare to implement. I mean, it's one thing if the kiddies fill a similar gameplay niche-- Arthur or Tinny, Larcei or Ulster. But to randomly get either Ced or Fee? Either Leen or Corple? Either Faval or Patty? Have fun rescuing villages without your Peg Knight. Have fun managing everyone's funds without a thief. Have fun doing anything time-sensitive without a dancer. Maybe the random kids were all of a type with Larcei/Ulster-- same class (or close enough given gender-exclusive classes) and same basic weapons. This could've been the same stage of development where troubadours and bards were basically the same thing (and Sylvia had blue hair and didn't look twelve).
Then again, there are only seven breeding pool females in Gen 1 anyway, so you'd have a mere seven kidlets to accompany the fixed characters. Even if they're all godly that's not a large army, and FE4 in its current state has a small cast available to the player at any one time. It might be workable if you had parity between the Gen 1 gals'n'guys-- ten/ten rather than the seven/thirteen split we got-- and then maybe, say, Ayra would still have twins for funsies.
I'd recommend someone try this for a hack, but based on the character-swap hacks I've seen I doubt it would work. It appears that once a character gets swapped out-- say, you put Azel and Tiltyu in place of Ethlyn and Quan-- you can't just randomly switch them back to their old roles. Azel and Tiltyu are now going to bail on you in Chapter 4 and march off to their deaths in Chapter 5, while Ethlyn and Quan instead will stick around to have the Chapter 4 and 5 conversations that belonged to Azel/Tiltyu.
So, if we did take an easy target-- hello, Midayle-- and decided to make him a female to get the m/f balance closer to parity, we're still operating under severe constraints in terms of the event conversations girl!Midayle would trigger, and then something totally goofy would happen in Gen2. I believe when existing female characters "marry" each other via hacking you get subkiddies for one half of the pairing? I don't think you can just reassign, say, Lester to have a different mother and not be Lana's brother, much less somehow provide a random girl!Lester to confuse the hell out of players. If somebody were to pull this off it would require a much greater effort than just tinkering with FE4 vanilla.
Mind you, there are indeed some crazy-elaborate hacks so maybe the fairly straightforward character-swap hacks like Genealogy of Ayra and Genealogy of Fala don't hint at the true possibilities of what a fan can do to/with FE4. And if that's the case...
So, who besides Midayle ought to be turned into a chick?
