1. Opening post
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Fallen Hero: Rebirth is a 380,000 word interactive novel by Malin Rydén released back in 2018 about a former superhero turning coat and becoming a brooding, angst-ridden supervillain. And at the start of this month a direct sequel, Fallen Hero: Retribution, was released that clocks in at a whopping 1.45 million words. I bought both games shortly after the release of Retribution, blew through them in a few days, and had an absolute blast doing so. Frankly, these are probably the best games in this entire genre. Even though all playthroughs will go through the same general story beats there's a frankly astonishing amount of reactivity in both of these games (especially because you're meant to port your Rebirth save over to Retribution), so after I finished Retribution with a self-hating wreck of a nominal supervillain I wanted to replay the whole thing and see if I could find some of the stuff I missed.
This is that replay.
Since my brain doesn't like it when I replay a game immediately after beating it, I've decided to kill two birds with one stone and share this playthrough with all of you. These are two absolutely phenomenal works of fiction with a very low price tag, and hopefully this'll convince a few more people to pick it up like I did. As per usual with LPs of these sorts of games, I'll be putting up choices to a vote like a Quest thread and, due to the large amount of individual choices, will attempt to post multiple times per day. So voting periods will likely be short and inconsistent. Occasionally I'll just
In regards to spoilers, I'd like them to be kept to a minimum. While I'm generally fine with people discussing the behind-the-scenes mechanics of individual choices as we get to them (ie picking X choice will increase Y stat while Z will decrease it) actual plot points are a big no-no. Especially because, y'know, I myself am unaware of a bunch of stuff, despite having completed both games. It's the sort of game that's got a lot of secrets buried within. Hell, there's an entire mechanic that my initial character was too mentally healthy to interact with.
Anyway, I'm not very good at this sort of thing so let's just begin.
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Los Diablos…
Whoever chose to rename Los Angeles after the Big One in 1980 was not far off. The quakes had ripped the entire West Coast infrastructure to shreds, destroying most of the historic districts. The San Andreas Fault had just finished rippling when the Cascadia subduction zone was triggered, and the entire coastline heaved like a shaken rug, sending tsunamis racing up and down the coast.
The seismic upheaval awoke the slumbering Mammoth Lake system, one of the continent's two dormant supervolcanos. Luckily—if such a word could be used for a disaster of that magnitude—the lava chamber under the dormant volcano had not filled completely, and the eruption was less disastrous than it could have been.
What the quakes had not destroyed, the resulting tsunami drowned. And when the ash had finally stopped falling, someone had looked at the ruins of Los Angeles and decided that this was no longer a place fit for angels.
Thus, Los Diablos was born.
At first, the government had tried to rebuild the ravaged coastline, but aftershocks and a crashing economy forced the politicians to focus on salvaging the Heartland and the East. The Midwest had been heavily affected by the falling ash, and the resulting food rationing made riots an everyday experience.
As the years passed, reclamation stalled. In 1992, the West Coast was finally declared a free economic zone in an attempt to incite the private industry to do what the government could not.
No taxes. No regulations. No federal government.
To everybody's surprise, it worked. Like the Wild West of old, the ravaged coastline attracted the adventurous and the foolhardy. Enough people wanted to live their lives without being held down by the heavy hand of big government so that the wave of refugees turned into a trickle of immigrants. Enough companies wanted to ply their trade without rules and regulations for money to flow in as well. The roads began to be repaired, and the cities, cleared of rubble.
And, right from the start, Los Diablos proved to be a haven for the Enhanced.
The so-called Hero drugs had first seen the light in the seventies—an unforeseen side-effect of an attempt to create the perfect diet pill. Corners had been cut and safety trials skipped, so the pill hit the market as a dietary supplement instead of a strictly controlled drug.
None was shocked that there were side effects, but the nature of those effects was a different story.
Many people died, but in some, the metabolic changes resulted in weird and wondrous transformations. The rumors became reality when a woman who could light fires with her mind demonstrated her talents on live television. The active compound was analyzed, purified, and modified until you had a drug strong enough to kill most people.
But the few survivors became far more than they had been.
The drug was banned, of course, declared an illegal narcotic in 1976. How many people could consider injecting something that had a roughly 95% chance of killing you or turning you into a cripple for life?
The answer was, surprisingly many.
They were the dreamers and the desperate, the thrill-seekers, the greedy, and the plain insane. Prices went through the roof.
The industry went underground, and when it resurfaced, it was in the reclaimed ruins of the West. The world had to relearn what it meant to be human; it had to adjust to masked heroes and villains battling it out in colorful costumes, with bombastic names. At first, the masks had been a way to preserve anonymity; the bank-robber's mask turned into the villain's horned helmet. Soon, the masks had begun to represent something else. A new life. A new destiny.
It was a new America, and it deserved new heroes.
The government tried to stem the tide, but it was too late. Putting the cat back in the box is harder than letting it out, and in the end, they just had to accept this new state of affairs. The drugs were undeniably lethal, but the military had been making enhanced humans since Vietnam. And as the research companies moved west in the nineties, the lack of regulations led to new discoveries. Progress that, admittedly, was built on human suffering—but nobody could make an omelet without cracking a few eggs.
Cybernetics had been used by the military since the fifties, but now they became compact and better-integrated with biology; armored suits grew sleeker and less prone to breakdowns. Washington made the decision that though the West was nominally considered a Free Territory, the government had to have some presence there to deal with the increasingly violent Enhanced.
Thus, in 1997, the Marshal system was instituted. Appointed by the president himself, the marshals were given the powers of judge and jury and sent into the West to create some semblance of order. Some were victims of the Hero drug, quickly nicknamed Boosts by the general populace. Others were rebuilt by the government or private contractors into cybernetic "enhanciles" armed with military hardware. They were heavily modified humans, their name soon shortened to Mods in the headlines of the East.
Now the public had heroes as well as villains, and the country turned from grieving its dead to looking towards a future dragged from the comic books of the past.
America was hiding under the blanket, reading comics with a flashlight, trying to forget the terrors of the world outside. And it worked. Nothing is more precious than a dream, and this was one that could resonate with enough people so that the trickle of immigrants moving west turned into a flood.
New cities grew on the corpses of the old ones, and though the quakes persisted, people learned to live with them. They learned to live with the danger because there was always the thrill as well. The thrill of living in a brand-new age where men and women flew like birds and called down rain from the clouds to end the incessant droughts.
People had a dream, and like a fool, you shared that dream. But that was then, and this is…
None was shocked that there were side effects, but the nature of those effects was a different story.
Many people died, but in some, the metabolic changes resulted in weird and wondrous transformations. The rumors became reality when a woman who could light fires with her mind demonstrated her talents on live television. The active compound was analyzed, purified, and modified until you had a drug strong enough to kill most people.
But the few survivors became far more than they had been.
The drug was banned, of course, declared an illegal narcotic in 1976. How many people could consider injecting something that had a roughly 95% chance of killing you or turning you into a cripple for life?
The answer was, surprisingly many.
They were the dreamers and the desperate, the thrill-seekers, the greedy, and the plain insane. Prices went through the roof.
The industry went underground, and when it resurfaced, it was in the reclaimed ruins of the West. The world had to relearn what it meant to be human; it had to adjust to masked heroes and villains battling it out in colorful costumes, with bombastic names. At first, the masks had been a way to preserve anonymity; the bank-robber's mask turned into the villain's horned helmet. Soon, the masks had begun to represent something else. A new life. A new destiny.
It was a new America, and it deserved new heroes.
The government tried to stem the tide, but it was too late. Putting the cat back in the box is harder than letting it out, and in the end, they just had to accept this new state of affairs. The drugs were undeniably lethal, but the military had been making enhanced humans since Vietnam. And as the research companies moved west in the nineties, the lack of regulations led to new discoveries. Progress that, admittedly, was built on human suffering—but nobody could make an omelet without cracking a few eggs.
Cybernetics had been used by the military since the fifties, but now they became compact and better-integrated with biology; armored suits grew sleeker and less prone to breakdowns. Washington made the decision that though the West was nominally considered a Free Territory, the government had to have some presence there to deal with the increasingly violent Enhanced.
Thus, in 1997, the Marshal system was instituted. Appointed by the president himself, the marshals were given the powers of judge and jury and sent into the West to create some semblance of order. Some were victims of the Hero drug, quickly nicknamed Boosts by the general populace. Others were rebuilt by the government or private contractors into cybernetic "enhanciles" armed with military hardware. They were heavily modified humans, their name soon shortened to Mods in the headlines of the East.
Now the public had heroes as well as villains, and the country turned from grieving its dead to looking towards a future dragged from the comic books of the past.
America was hiding under the blanket, reading comics with a flashlight, trying to forget the terrors of the world outside. And it worked. Nothing is more precious than a dream, and this was one that could resonate with enough people so that the trickle of immigrants moving west turned into a flood.
New cities grew on the corpses of the old ones, and though the quakes persisted, people learned to live with them. They learned to live with the danger because there was always the thrill as well. The thrill of living in a brand-new age where men and women flew like birds and called down rain from the clouds to end the incessant droughts.
People had a dream, and like a fool, you shared that dream. But that was then, and this is…
Now.
The tackle is brutal enough to tear the air from your lungs as it catapults you across the street. You just about manage to bite back the curse on your lips.
When you curse, your expletive of choice is usually…
[X] …hell.
[ ] …Christ.
[ ] Write-in
Hell. That hurt more than you thought it would.
The safety glass of the store window breaks with a sharp crack as you smack into it. Shards surround you like a crystal snowstorm as you are sent flying into the bridal store. Alarms blare to life as mannequins topple like bowling pins around you, their dismembered plastic torsos clad in extravagant dresses, flouncing like butterflies with their legs torn off.
An all-too-familiar sight…
Remembered bodies. Real this time. Broken on the ground. Broken by the fall. As you are about to break.
Or is this now? Was that then?
The memories threaten to overwhelm you, and for a moment you are not sure exactly where or who you are.
What do you do?
[X] I take a moment to catch my breath and make sure nothing is broken.
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