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Is it right to call FE characters 'playable'?


AnonymousSpeed
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So, whenever I'm reading a wiki on Fire Emblem, because hey, what else am I going to do with my time? Get a life? Pfft, no!

Anyway, whenever I read an article about a unit the player obtains, it describes them as playable. Is that right? Now, I don't mean that in the sense of if that's morally right, as that would fall under your conundrums of philosophy. No, I mean, from a textbook perspective, isn't it incorrect to call units in FE playable?

You do indeed control them to an extend, but it's more like you tell them where to go and what to do, in my eyes, rather than controlling them to do that thing. You know what I mean? In my opinion the FE player is the strategist, which begs the question of if you play as the tactics character, but (Awakening loosely not withstanding) even then you don't seem to 'be' any unit in particular, you just command the whole army from your little aerial perch outside the fourth wall.

Thoughts?

Edited by AnonymousSpeed
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i move that we call all player-controlled units "the purple team"

because "the blue team" is far too obvious

Purple paint is harder to come by though.

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The way you describe the units I would think they're more like, say, one's party in Persona 3 or some such- where you don't actually give all the orders to them that you would to any other character, you just give them general directions and hope they get/do the gist of what you want.

Beyond percent activations for attacks, dodges, skills and levelups and stuff, you control every action they take, and while on the battlefield it's easy to get invested in them emotionally, at least for me moreso than for the enemy (so trying to take a "I have no more connection to the units on the player's team than any others" sort of position sounds kinda silly to me). You are "playing their parts" in the part of the action that Fire Emblem chooses to use for its gameplay.

It's close enough to fit the common definition pretty readily, I think. And I'd say there's a sizable enough number of games where you control the actions of what's referred to as the "playable characters" during less than 100% of their day (for example, just through a level, thus not having direct control of them in transitions or during cutscenes) that it's not really like Fire Emblem is particularly unusual here IMO. (see: almost every arcadey level-structured game ever, "cinematic" games, the better share of JRPGs, list goes on)

Edited by Rehab
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Don't really see why "playable" doesn't work for you, but maybe you would prefer the term "player controlled"

This.

Another thing worth mentioning: Soren is a tactician, so...

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Fire Emblem is a strategy game, and you play an entire army, not a single character, in a strategy game.

"Playable" works just fine for the individual characters in the army that you play.

Edited by Paper Jam
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