Characters for VN death messages

[Random]

A question for VN players. It's kind of a weird one, but whatever.

In a visual novel, as you know, there are almost always messages after your protagonist dies that range from "git gud lol" to "You fucked up and here's why". These can be hilarious, frustrating, or, in some particularly sadistic games, vital to advancing.

As an amateur programmer, my question is what kind of character(s) would be ideal for giving these messages. I had considered having the protagonist himself give them at one point (most of them being along the lines of "what the fuck, dude, I could have avoided this") but I'm not really sure one way or another.

 

[York]

Hmm, I suppose this would depend on what sort of tone you're going for. If it was a silly one, it could range from some joke character popping in and breaking the news, to just some text from some unknown person comedically berating the player.

However, if you were taking a more serious route, perhaps the strongest way to send the message is for the story to more or less "follow" the events that happen after the protaganist's death, and perhaps some sort of heartfelt message or something at the end, maybe a hint hidden somewhere x.x

 

[AutumnWyvern]

As already said it's hard to say without more context. For a more serious tone you don't even really need a "character" it could easily be a dark screen or a grayscale cg with a narration explaining the aftermath/what happened/a quip/etc.
But sometimes the example you gave works too a nice "i could have easily avoided this why did i do this" before a fade out or something.
Of course sometimes you don't really need anything other than just showing the bad end itself.

I'm trying to think of more ideas/examples to pull from but all I can think of right now is the axe ending from 999. I dont know why

 

[Random]

I like where you're going with this.

I suppose a big part of the dilemma is that I'm not sure quite what the tone should be. It's a dark story, that's for sure, to the point where it would be difficult to write a meaningful aftermath since everyone it would affect would probably be dead either already or in short order. The deaths themselves probably won't be too family-friendly either (underwater disembowelment and crushed skulls come to mind, among other things).

That said, the protagonist's narration is particularly snarky and the main cast certainly have their witty banter throughout, so the question is whether or not to preserve the tone and impact of the scene or offer respite from the reasonably grim setting.

What I do know is that I definitely want room to put in hints, since I'd like for a lot of the decisions players make to have subtle consequences that they might not necessarily understand playing through any given route for the first time, but from experience I can attest that can very easily devolve into a series of "get fucked or start over" scenarios if you're not sure what killed you.

 

[York]

I like where you're going with this.

I suppose a big part of the dilemma is that I'm not sure quite what the tone should be. It's a dark story, that's for sure, to the point where it would be difficult to write a meaningful aftermath since everyone it would affect would probably be dead either already or in short order. The deaths themselves probably won't be too family-friendly either (underwater disembowelment and crushed skulls come to mind, among other things).

That said, the protagonist's narration is particularly snarky and the main cast certainly have their witty banter throughout, so the question is whether or not to preserve the tone and impact of the scene or offer respite from the reasonably grim setting.

What I do know is that I definitely want room to put in hints, since I'd like for a lot of the decisions players make to have subtle consequences that they might not necessarily understand playing through any given route for the first time, but from experience I can attest that can very easily devolve into a series of "get fucked or start over" scenarios if you're not sure what killed you.

Hmm, you could try having the protag give some sort of "from the grave" dialogue, narrating what happens after his own death with some snark and stuff, and then maybe going a little meta if you want to.