Poster for Fallen Hero: Rebirth, featuring Sidestep.
Written by Malin Rydén and published by Choice of Games' user submitted "Hosted Games" label, the Fallen Hero series follows the adventures of the Player Character who, as the title suggests, is a Fallen Hero. In a world filled with superheroes, supervillains, and people with abilities, the Player Character was originally a superhero named Sidestep. Possessing telepathic abilities, they helped the Super Team, the Rangers, during numerous missions. That is, until something happened to them. Now, the PC is on the path towards villainy, and plans on becoming the most feared villain in Los Diablos.
The first game, Fallen Hero: Rebirth, was released on March 15, 2018. After being presumed dead for years, the PC is nearing the final stages of their plan to become a supervillain. However, before they can do that, they have to obtain specific items in order for Dr. Mortum to create their powered suit. Unfortunately, things don't go as smoothly as expected when the PC becomes entangled with their former teammate Ortega, and the Rangers once again. It is available here.
The second game, Retribution, came out in February of 2023, and two more games titled Revelations and Revolution are also planned.
Has a character sheet.
This series contains the following tropes:
- Age-Gap Romance: Ortega is eight years older than the protagonist, and is nearly two decades older than their puppet. The protagonist can rib them about this, much to their chagrin.
- Ambiguously Brown: Discussed, depending on the race you select for your puppet. As they were checked into the hospital as a John/Jane Doe and are too braindead to make a statement on the matter, you only have a broad-strokes idea of their race and ethnicity (eg, if you decide the puppet is Asian, the narration notes that they could plausibly have pretty much any East or South Asian heritage, but you don't know).
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Re-Genes have blue-gray skin to further distinguish them from normal humans. Averted with Infiltrator Re-genes, who have human skin tones so that they can better blend in with the general population.
- A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Features heavily as the cause of much of the protagonist's misanthropy—it's hard to like people after seeing what is in their head.
- Apocalypse How: The US suffers a Regional Class one in the 1980s: the West Coast and the Midwest get completely ravaged after a massive quake sets off a chain reaction of volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. Los Diablos, the setting of the game, was founded from the remains of what used to be Los Angeles.
- Artificial Human: The Re-Genes. While on paper they're supposed to be mindless stem cell clones who exist solely to be organ donation fodder, the US government routinely use them as super soldiers by outfitting them with AI minds and superpowers. The protagonist was once one of the latter group, and one of their possible motivations for going villain is to expose the government's shady dealings to the world.
- Bad Boss: Dr. Mortum's view of the protagonist, after the events of the first game.
- Body Snatcher: The protagonist can telepathically take over someone's consciousness to achieve this effect. Notably their former Ranger teammates are not aware of this aspect of their power—the protagonist either downplayed their abilities considerably while working with them, or got some upgrades when abducted.
- Brown Note: The nature of the Heartbreak Incident. Some sort of signal caused the inhabitants of an apartment complex to kill themselves, with the signal's radius spreading. The Rangers, consisting of Steel, Ortega, the MC, and Anathema were sent to stop it. Unfortunately, Anathema was unable to resist and ended up using their own acidic abilities to kill themselves, while the protagonist threw themselves through a window. Only Ortega was immune due to being epileptic, while Steel was (mostly) protected by a psychic dampener his exosuit was powering.
- Commonality Connection: Sidestep and Chen can finally bury the hatchet over their mutual love of dogs and the shared trauma that leads them to prefer man's best friend over people.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The entire gala fight can be this for the Rangers. The protagonist can potentially break Herald's knee, beat Ortega within an inch of their life and defeat Argent in combat TWICE while managing to take a trophy the second time around, all the while not even getting wounded Hint: Armor, Strength, Fighter and Risk.
- Cyborg: The Enhanced become superheroes by integrating technology to give them more powers.
- Dead Person Impersonation: What happens when you take on your old hero name as your villain name. Ortega and Herald are outraged by this as they want to preserve and honor your legacy as a hero.
- You can also take on Anathema's name as your villain name.
- Death Faked for You: The shadowy group which captured the protagonist in the aftermath of the Heartbreak Incident made sure that the world at large believed they were dead, down to autopsy photos.
- Destination Defenestration: The protagonist falls to their apparent death after being thrown out of a skyscraper window during their last mission with the Rangers.
- Double Standard: Rape, Sci-Fi: Discussed in the second game. If you are in a romantic relationship with Mortum and tell them the truth, they will point out that the MC sleeping with them while in their puppet body counts as rape since Mortum knew the truth they wouldn't have consented. The MC will acknowledge this but try to explain that how they were trained meant they didn't have any understanding of consent when their relationship started and was just doing what they thought would make Mortum happy. Mortum comes to accept this as they realise that they flirted with the MC first and they genuinely didn't understand what they were doing wrong, but their relationship is left in a difficult place.
- The Dreaded: The player character's villain persona can become this towards Herald and Ortega, depending on the choices made during their debut.
- Escaped from the Lab: The protagonist has done this twice. They managed to escape the Special Directive's clutches and strike out on their own, becoming Sidestep, but were recaptured in the aftermath of the Heartbreak Incident. They then manage to escape again roughly two years before the events of the first game. The second game reveals that Shroud is also an escapee.
- Face–Heel Turn: Whatever happened either during or in the aftermath of the Heartbreak Incident led you to this.
- Fallen Hero: The protagonist was originally a hero before something caused them to turn down the path to villainy.
- Flaw Exploitation: The protagonist can trigger an epileptic attack in Ortega to get the upper hand during their fight. However, as Ortega's epilepsy was a very closely guarded secret, this leads them to strongly suspect that the protagonist was the mysterious villain they were facing.
- Frame-Up: If you don't pretend to have lost your telepathy, your other option to throw off suspicion for Lady Argent's possession is to "help" her "recover" some memories of running into Locus, a high-level telepath who recently went missing.
- Friendship Denial: You, possibly, with Ortega and Mortum.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Downplayed in that Sidestep was not exactly your average person but, depending on your choices, Sidestep can potentially start as Ortega's sidekick only to end up as one of the most notorious villains Los Diablos has encountered.
- Gay Option: Both love interests in the game, Ortega and Mortum, can be romanced by a Protagonist of any gender. In the second game, Lady Argent and Herald are likewise romanceable by all genders, while Chen is an option for male (or, potentially, nonbinary) player characters.
- Guide Dang It!: Some of the harder to find features require the player to go through extremely specific and sometimes nonintuitive hoops in order to reach them.
- Hired to Hunt Yourself: The Rangers need your help: a new telepathic villain has appeared on the scene, they mind-controlled Lady Argent and seem to have a nefarious plan in motion. Who could this incredibly cunning and good looking individual be?
- Hollywood Acid: Anathema is a Boost that has the ability to generate corrosive acid. But they lack immunity to their own acid, which leads to their downfall when they're mind controlled into dissolving their own face.
- Interservice Rivalry: Between the Government appointed Rangers and the city appointed LDPD along with the mayor hand picked hero team the Guardians.
- Kick Them While They Are Down: The protagonist has the opportunity to do this several times when facing Herald. If they choose not to, it's explicitly because they've invoked this trope many a time during their stint with the Rangers - getting the villain to focus on them to give their team an opening.
- Living Bodysuit: The protagonist's puppet body. The protagonist mainly pilots them to act as a go between to them and whatever people they enlist the services of, but also uses the new identity the puppet gives them to get closer to the Rangers without causing suspicion.
- Loves My Alter Ego: Occurs if the protagonist romances either Ortega or Dr. Mortum solely using their puppet body. This is especially so for Mortum, who absolutely despises your real persona due to them believing that you're a Bad Boss towards the puppet.
- Man of Kryptonite: The former Marshal has epilepsy, making them immune to the player's telepathy.
- Motive Rant: You can deliver a few of them during the climactic battle.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Psychopathor. The protagonist's villain name can also be this.
- Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Touring the museum near the end of the game has you reminisce about how the actual ends for a number of heroes got swept under the rug to keep their good names intact.They don't tell those stories here. The mannequins wearing the suits stand tall with washboard stomachs, no trace of the scars that history has left on the people you once knew. They just tell the memories. The pretty lies.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: You can deliver one to Herald if you so please, going so far as to Kick Them While They Are Down. Coupled with a The Reason You Suck speech."Don't you get it yet? You are a failure. You were one before you lucked out with the hero drugs, and you are one now. You've lost."
- Oh, Crap!: The protagonist's reaction in the second game, upon learning that the Rangers likely don't know about the Government Conspiracy, and are thus Unwitting Pawns in the entire affair.
- People Puppets: While the protagonist mainly chooses to Body Surf into their chosen pawn and control them that way, they can telepathically take over and command a group of people to do their bidding.
- Playing with Syringes: All Re-Genes are subjected to extensive experimentation and modification while they're in the Farm's tender clutches, as the protagonist's trauma filled nightmares prove.
- Protagonist Journey to Villain: The main plot of the story.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: The Heartbreak incident involved the Rangers trying to take down a villain who could induce this on a massive scale. Anathema dies after being compelled to melt their own face off, and depending on their choices the protagonist very nearly eats their gun before they are compelled to fling themselves out of a skyscraper window.
- The Reason You Suck: During their villainous debut, the protagonist can monologue and deliver two of these against Herald and Ortega (the one directed to the latter changes according to the PC's motivations). However this tends to bite them later, as the first speech towards Herald allows Ortega to ambush them, and the latter one towards Ortega lets Argent get the jump on them as well. Of course, you can also do all this without really being punished, just see curb-stomp battle above.
- Required Secondary Powers:
- As nastily demonstrated during the Heartbreak incident, Anathema very much does not have these. The acid they create hurts them as much as anyone else, which suggests using it must have been a pretty delicate exercise.
- Lady Argent has super-toughness but lacks super-pain-blocking—getting thrown through a wall doesn't do her any damage, but it sure hurts like it does. The second game reveals that her symbiotic nanovores are constantly numbing her and acting as a Healing Factor.
- Running Gag: If Ortega is male, Sidestep complaining about his mustache becomes this.
- Shout-Out: One achievement is called Days of Our Lives. You get it by being romantically involved with Ortega as both Sidestep and the Puppet, then visiting the Puppet in the hospital while they're in a coma. In true Soap Opera fashion.
- Signs of Disrepair: The article for the hero museum mentions that the W is the only surviving letter from the Hollywood sign.
- Super Serum: Boosts get their special abilities from ingesting a special "Hero Drug", originally designed as a diet pill.
- Super-Soldier: Thanks to the prevalence of both cybernetics and a Super Serum, the US Government have been employing them since Vietnam. In the present day the most elite group of these are the Re-genes, a highly classified special ops group of artificial humans that the protagonist was originally part of.
- Super Team: The Rangers are this, being a team of trained superheroes who fight crime. They even have their own building. Longtime members include Ortega and Steel. Other current members include Herald and Lady Argent. In the past, Anathema was also a member before they died. The protagonist, while having worked with the Rangers was never actually part of them.
- There's a covert-ops group known as the Special Directive. They generally get deployed into war-zones or as assassins, and are comprised of Re-Genes, who were vat-grown as superheroes with all the powers, but none of the rights.
- Superpower Lottery: Given a bit of a lampshade, as Herald is mentioned as having bet against the house and hit the jackpot by becoming a Flying Brick.
- That Man Is Dead: You to your identity before the Heartbreak Incident."Sidestep is dead."
- There Are No Therapists: Averted. Ortega actually recommends that you visit one, as it helped them after your death. Whether you decide to follow through with that suggestion or not is up to you. Dr. Finch turns out to be pretty good at her job, although she's unknowingly hamstrung by the fact you can't tell her the truth about 90% of your problems.
- Video Game Caring Potential: If your aim is to play something of an Anti-Villain, there are plenty of opportunities to minimize the fallout from what you do.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You are playing as a Villain Protagonist, after all.
- We ARE Struggling Together: The Rangers have a bit of a team cohesion problem in Rebirth (as handily demonstrated by how disastrously the gala goes for them if you play your cards right), which develops into a full-blown case of this in Retribution. Lady Argent is barely on speaking terms with Herald after their breakup and prefers working with lower-level vigilantes to the other Rangers, Chen still doesn't fully trust Lady Argent, and you note with some confusion that it's been months since you've seen the team take on a threat as, well, a team. Ortega explains that they don't actually have a lot of choices about who gets to join—very few people are both qualified and able to pass the stringent security checks. So to stay at full strength, which they badly need in Los Diablos, the Rangers can't be selective based on a little thing like "works well with the rest of the team".
- What You Are in the Dark: The Rangers call upon your help to nail the new telepathic villain in town. What they don't know however...
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Ortega uses a variant, saying that your telepathic abilities are stronger than you remember them - suffice to say, this is something you're keenly aware of.
