General Banzai Posted December 11, 2022 Share Posted December 11, 2022 In 2011, Fire Emblem 7 (or Blazing Sword) was the most popular Fire Emblem among the tiny pre-Awakening Western fandom. I, however, disliked FE7. And since there's no better feeling than telling people they're wrong, I posted an 11,000-word essay on the subject titled QUINTESSENCE? DONT UNDERSTAND to Serenes Forest. Some controversy ensued. Although I haven't been active in the community since Awakening, I still play the games and check in sometimes to see what people are saying. Recently it seems the general perspective on FE7 has shifted; fans of pre-Awakening FE games tend to consider it flawed compared to the Kaga games or Sacred Stones. The prominent FE YouTuber Mekkah even consulted me to create a series of videos dissecting FE7's story. Obviously, the community is not a hivemind—and it's far larger and more robust now than 2011. I assume plenty would still ardently defend FE7. But given the general shift in opinion I wanted to revisit my original QUINTESSENCE essay. The essay was—pretty obviously—inspired by Red Letter Media's exhaustive videos on the Star Wars prequels. While in some ways similar to the "angry reviewers" who came before (Angry Video Game Nerd, Nostalgia Critic), the RLM videos marked the first time a freelance reviewer made such longform and in-depth content critiquing a pop media story. I wasn't the only person inspired by these videos, and nowadays it's possible to trace the entire medium of the video essay back to them. On any subject, any piece of media, you can go to YouTube and find an hour-long autopsy about why that media SUCKS. This ubiquity caused me to come to a conclusion: If you try hard enough, you can find inconsistencies or illogic in anything. If you yell loud enough, you can browbeat people into thinking these inconsistencies matter. They don't. The reasons why stories are considered "good" or "bad" has almost nothing to do with such details. I'd go so far as to say that these details are a symptom, rather than a cause. People only notice these inconsistencies if they've already lost interest in the story. Indeed, many of these video essayists can talk about something for an hour and not even allude to the real reason they disliked it. To an extent, my QUINTESSENCE essay was the same. The narrative hiccups I analyzed across paragraphs and paragraphs had nothing to do with why I disliked FE7's plot. So what was the real reason? That's what this essay is going to find out. But to do it, I have to talk about the Fire Emblem series as a whole. Thus, I won't start this essay on FE7 by talking about FE7. I'll start it by talking about: 1. Fire Emblem 1 through 6 In many ways, FE7's story is unique within the FE series, which is primarily a byproduct of most other FE games having similar stories. The template is familiar: "A young prince's country is invaded by an evil empire; his father is killed. The prince is thus forced by fate and circumstance to lead an army to defeat the empire, growing his forces over time by recruiting allies to his cause. Eventually, it is revealed that the evil empire is being manipulated by an evil sorcerer, who seeks to revive an evil god. The prince and his army defeat the evil empire, the evil sorcerer, and the evil god in turn, restoring peace to the land." Although many games adjust details, this plot generally fits most of them, and especially the games prior to FE7. 1, 3, and 6 follow it almost exactly; 2 and 4 add a few complications but otherwise deviate very little; and 5, as a midquel to 4, just reduces the scale. Serious fans of the series who have played every or nearly every game usually bemoan at one point or another the sheer repetition of FE storylines, but the constant reliance on this formula has a purpose: it leans on and in turn supports Fire Emblem's gameplay. As a game, Fire Emblem is a tactical RPG in which the player controls an army of units against another army across a series of maps. The tactical elements of the gameplay generally necessitate a plot on the scale of international war, and a main character who is the leader of a national army. The RPG elements of the gameplay (unique stats, progression systems, et cetera) demand individualized stories and personalities for the army's soldiers. Because the target audience is young adults, the protagonist should be young too. So how does a young character come to lead a national army? Make him a prince, and his father was killed, forcing him via birthright to take up the mantle. How do we introduce large numbers of unique characters without overwhelming the player? Design a story where your army starts small and builds over time as you gradually recruit allies, so you can stagger character introductions. The last notable element of the Fire Emblem plot, the evil sorcerer and evil god, serve as a general way to add plot complications and escalate the stakes within a medieval fantasy setting. In 1990, the year the first Fire Emblem was released, this story was revolutionary. Storytelling in video games was still in its infancy, and the narrative-driven games that did exist were primarily RPGs like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy that followed typical tabletop storylines of a group of heroes questing to rescue a princess or defeat a wicked dragon. Although Final Fantasy II (1988) had already broken ground with a plot more focused on international war and politics, the narrative innovations of FE1 were tailored to its gameplay in a way traditional "questing" RPGs with a limited party size couldn't replicate. There is another gameplay element that heavily impacts how the story of Fire Emblem is written: Permadeath. The main impact permadeath has on the story is its tone. Because any character except the hero can die for real at any time without ending the game, Fire Emblem generally trended toward a more serious, somber tone that treated war with gravitas and dignity. Comparing Fire Emblem to Shining Force (1992), a tactical RPG without permadeath that follows many FE plot beats, emphasizes this point. In Shining Force, comic relief is abundant, the music is cheerful, and the characters have more whimsical designs (centaurs, bird people, robots, and floating jellyfish). Abundant comic relief would be out of place in Fire Emblem, where the player could potentially have witnessed or even contributed to multiple character deaths. Appropriately, in early Fire Emblem games, most of the dialogue is serious tactical discussion between the prince protagonist and his aged, cynical advisor. The advisor character is the second major impact permadeath has on FE's story, although in a more circuitous way. Shining Force, despite being a tactical RPG with grid-based gameplay similar to FE, has almost no in-game discussion of what tactics the player should use for any given map. That's because there's no real need for serious tactics; without permadeath, the player is rarely punished for mistakes. In Fire Emblem, where mistakes matter more, in-game tactical advice is crucial to guide players onto the right path and minimize their frustration. To that end, most early FE games support the young protagonist with an advisor. In FE1, this advisor is Malledus. While Malledus performs an in-game tutorial role, that isn't his only function. He also provides a thematic counterpoint to the protagonist, an element that early FE games would increasingly lean into until their culmination in FE5. The dichotomy between the prince and his advisor is typically one of idealism versus cynicism. The prince is a traditional hero who wants to do the right thing and do it well enough that there are no downsides to doing it. The advisor is more pragmatic, with advice that is cognizant of the permadeath gameplay element. An interaction between Marth and his advisor Jagen in the final chapter of FE3, regarding the four brainwashed princesses protecting Medeus, demonstrates what I mean: Quote Marth: What should I do...? How can I save them? Please tell me, Jagen. Jagen: That... Not even I know. To defeat Medeus, there is probably no other way except to... Marth: ...! What, you want me to kill them!? Jagen: That is one way. The princesses cannot suffer any more. Taking their life is also a way of saving them. Marth: Jagen, are you SERIOUSLY telling me to make this decision? Jagen: As leader, there are times when you must make painful decisions. That is what I meant. Marth: Jagen, that's enough, I understand. I will not give up. There must be some other way. Until the very end, I will not give up!! Anyone who has played this map in New Mystery knows that murdering those defenseless princesses is by far the easiest way to win, but it is possible to save them from their fate with effort. Early FE games frequently present the player with similar types of challenges, establishing difficult side objectives (saving prospective allies or stopping villages from being razed by bandits) that are optional but presented as "morally correct." Tying new allies and items to these side objectives incentives moral behavior on the part of the player, but the difficulty involved likewise discourages them; both perspectives are accounted for in the gameplay. I recently saw a video by Professor Bopper that argued that permadeath is a powerful narrative tool and that the player should play through and not reset after losing a character, but I disagree with that. I think the dichotomy between playing the game without resetting and playing it "perfectly" has always existed, and dialogues between the prince and his advisor realize that dichotomy within the narrative text itself. A player who resets for a perfect outcome is Marth, whereas the Iron Manners and Professor Boppers of the world are Jagen. The value is not in whether playing one way or another is innately "more fun," but that players are allowed to make decisions that matter and play the game in ways that best suit how they want the story to go. Circling back to my original point, while the story formula of early FE games may come across as generic today due to overuse, the reason that formula exists is to wed the story to the gameplay. Every element of the narrative—plot, character, tone—is in service of the decisions that the player makes as they command their army. That marriage between narrative and gameplay is why the FE template plot has endured as long as it has, even through multiple changes in leadership and direction for the series. That template is foundational to FE's best stories, like Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance. And that template is missing in: 2. Fire Emblem 7 I kind of lied, though. Because at first glance, FE7 does follow the template. Sure, you have to replace "invading nation" with "assassin's guild" and "evil god" with "dragons," but it's more-or-less the same plot, right? Several Fire Emblem games that are bog standard plot-wise have made similar Mad Libs-style substitutions. In FE2, Alm isn't a prince (at first). In FE3, Marth has already been the leader of Altea for over a year. In FE5, there is no dark god to fight. In FE6, Jahn isn't a sorcerer. The difference is that the changes FE7 makes, while not disrupting the high-level synopsis, do significantly affect how the story interfaces with the gameplay. The most obvious difference is that FE7, unlike its six predecessors, is not a story of international war. This change completely recontextualizes the tactical elements of the gameplay in a way that, say, Jahn being a dragon instead of a sorcerer does not. It also has significant impacts on the depiction of the story's main character. Eliwood, who I'll describe as the main character for now, is not a young man forced by fate and circumstance to lead an army. Instead, he is the leader of a small retinue of loyal knights who are seeking answers to a personal, small-scale mystery (Elbert's disappearance). Even as the story increases its scope and stakes, Eliwood and his crew are narratively limited; during the Bern arc, for instance, they are routinely depicted as undergoing stealth missions, suggesting their army is not particularly large or noticeable, nor even an army. In terms of raw realism, the army in any given Fire Emblem game is probably more accurately described as "a retinue of loyal knights" than an "army." Even in the games with the largest playable casts, the army is no more than 50 or 60 soldiers, which would not be considered an army in even the tiniest real wars, medieval or modern. Some FE games skirt this numeric oddity by suggesting that there are large crowds of generic soldiers supporting your forces that are simply not appearing on the map; for instance, in Shadow Dragon artwork, Marth is often shown surrounded by faceless fighters. However, realism is not the problem with FE7's presentation. The problem is how authentic it feels based on the expectations the story and gameplay have established. To the game's credit, the early chapters of FE7 do an excellent job of fostering the impression of a small group of knights against a small group of deadly assassins. The maps are cramped, even claustrophobic, taking up barely more than a single Gameboy Advance screen, and frequently involve high tension Defend objectives in which your soldiers are forced to spread out to cover multiple chokepoints. The introduction of Merlinus as a static unit who must be defended also splits up your army, especially because most early maps will spawn enemies that attack him if you don't leave a bodyguard. The narrative purpose of the map design becomes especially clear if you compare FE7's early maps to FE6's. In FE6, every objective is seize, and maps are designed in a large, linear fashion, forcing you to keep your forces together in one big formation that slowly proceeds to the throne. By constraining your tactics in this way, FE6 promotes the idea of Roy as the leader of a massive army, even if his "army" is the same size as Eliwood's loyal retinue in FE7. Here is Chapter 2 of FE6: https://i.imgur.com/SILe37Y.png This chapter immediately presents the player with a clustered enemy squadron evocative of a traditional military formation. Other than the village and shops behind the starting position, there is only one route, and the main side objective of this chapter (the introduction of Dieck and his mercenaries) is directly on that linear path, ensuring the two groups of playable units combine into one force prior to the final assault on the enemy stronghold. Thus, there is no impetus to split up Roy's soldiers, other than to send the combat-useless Merlinus on a village-visiting spree. The map effectively gives the impression of a pitched battle between two armies. By comparison, Chapter 12 of FE7: https://i.imgur.com/hKbF2Ry.png This map splits up the playable units into two sub-groups, but unlike FE6, these groups are not located on different locations of a linear path. Both sub-groups must fight immediately and the player has to decide whether they should even regroup at all or remain separate, as the enemies near the boss will stream south to fight Eliwood's group head on. The boss himself moves, eliminating the impression of a single primary objective on the map; the actual objective is to rout the enemy. On top of that, this chapter also has a village behind the spawn point, but as there is no obvious non-combat unit to send, the player has to shrink their effective fighting force even further if they want that Secret Book. Altogether, the map's design gives the impression of a few scattered fighters scrambling on all sides, even though the number of units, two split forces, and village behind the spawn are elements similar to both maps. I could outline many more examples from the early maps of FE6 and FE7, including differences in the Laus map in both games, but I'll continue to where FE7 starts to go astray. As the stakes and scale of the story ramp up, FE7 is not equipped to mirror that change while maintaining the union between the game's narrative and its design. For traditional Fire Emblem plots that focus on international war, larger maps with more enemies are enough to suggest the war is getting bigger and bigger. But in FE7, such changes run counter to the narrative of a small retinue of knights against a guild of assassins. FE7's later maps try to maintain that narrative with varied objectives and multiple routes that split the player's forces, but once the maps reach a certain size and enemy totals are 50 or higher, such tricks aren't enough to quash the impression that this is one army fighting another, instead of a small group of knights against an assassin's guild. The claustrophobic sense of immediate danger that allowed a story about mystery and assassins to succeed in the early chapters is lost when you are fighting massive battles on gigantic battlefields, with your larger-than-life heroes mowing down waves of flimsy foes. Consider, for instance, the chapter outside Bern Manse when you are attacked by Vaida. (Unfortunately, due to the Eliwood and Hector Mode split, it becomes difficult to consistently refer to chapters by their number.) On paper, this map has many of the same elements that made the smaller, earlier maps work. It's a Defend objective. Your team is split into multiple groups to suggest that you have been ambushed by the enemy. There is no clear, singular objective on the map; Vaida is an enemy who must be avoided due to her immense power. Enemy reinforcements appear from multiple directions, making efforts to unify your army difficult. However, by scaling up these elements into a larger map with more (and weaker, relative to your own units) foes, the sense of tension evaporates. This map is one of the game's easiest; it generally takes only a couple of turns to get the initial group of enemies under control, at which point your soldiers sit around waiting for reinforcements so they have something to do. Vaida, although dangerous, will do absolutely nothing if you stay out of her range. The chapter ends when Vaida herself gets bored and leaves. When you factor in this chapter's textual narrative, the problems become even more pronounced. Eliwood and friends are established to be incognito―being discovered could cause a huge war with Bern. Nonetheless, they sneak into Bern Manse, increasing the tension caused by the threat of discovery. As soon as they leave, they're ambushed by a powerful and bloodthirsty foe eager to scrap. The text has successfully established stakes for itself, but all of those stakes are thrown out the window when the fight actually starts. A large battle right outside Bern Manse isn't enough to expose Eliwood and friends, the battle itself is a cakewalk, and the "bloodthirsty foe eager to scrap" sits around idly in a corner. The story and gameplay aren't simply separated, they're at odds. The difficulty of scaling up FE7's story in conjunction with the gameplay also introduces narrative issues regarding the recruitment of allies. In traditional FE plots, acquiring allies serves both the gameplay and the story, as it suggests the increased prowess of the main character as a leader of a larger and larger force. But in FE7, the force you command never becomes a stand-in for a large national army, even though you recruit a comparable number of units. When you return to the Dread Isle for the final showdown against Nergal, you are commanding a squad that can ostensibly fit on a single pirate ship. You fly no national banner; in fact, your existence is secret to all nations. Your numbers have gone up, but you have not grown. Additionally, many allies you recruit in FE7―like Dart, Geitz, and Karel―seem to join for arbitrary reasons. Compared to a large international war that impacts everyone in the world, a secretive mystery plotline has far fewer reasons for 50 supporting characters to get involved. Many of the characters in FE1 are generic to the point of speaking not a single line, but as soldiers of countries at war Vyland and Tomas at least have an immediately understandable rationale for being part of your army. The same cannot be said for many FE7 characters. This problem ties into the narrative impact that recruiting allies has on the main character. In FE1, recruiting the Wolfguard represents a military alliance between Altea and Aurelis and demonstrates an increase in scale of Marth's leadership from just a few knights with whom he escaped Altea to an actual army. In FE7, recruiting Dart indicates that Dart "wanted to go sightseeing." Most Fire Emblem games will have a few of these arbitrary recruitments, but in FE7 even characters who have a strong initial reason for joining your army often no longer have a clear reason after the story has progressed a few chapters. Lyn and her Caelin knights initially fight for you to liberate Caelin from attack, but afterward Lyn seems to tag along with Eliwood and Hector out of mere friendship, rather than personal investment in the plot. The lack of narrative importance placed on recruiting allies and growing your army negatively impacts Eliwood's character. Few of the main characters in older FE games are anything but generic heroes in terms of personality, but the union of story and gameplay connects their growth to the player's growth. Eliwood's growth is not connected. Eliwood is not presented, either explicitly or implicitly, as needing to grow as a leader of an army—he is not leading an army at all. And because his personality is not more unique or varied to compensate for this lack, he becomes a static and flat character. Other lords like Marth and Roy, while identical to Eliwood in terms of personality, are imbued with dynamism and even moral nuance by virtue of the gameplay, if not the plot. Eliwood by contrast feels utterly vestigial to a story of which he is ostensibly the hero. What few gameplay metrics of growth might possibly be ascribed to him are ascribed instead to Mark the tactician, a silent self-insert character who has no impact on, bearing to, or even appearances in the actual story. Eliwood's uselessness is hammered home by the story essentially replacing him with Hector as the main character for Hector Mode, causing minimal changes to the narrative text. As an example, consider one formula trope FE7 does retain from the classic FE story: the death of the father. In older games, the father's death occurs either at the beginning of the game or before the game starts, and is the inciting incident for the main character taking control of the army and beginning his personal journey. Eliwood's journey too is initiated by the absence of his father, and yet when his father actually dies after the Dragon's Gate chapter, it does not cause any character change in Eliwood. He is sad, certainly, and the story dwells on his sadness over Elbert's death for a full chapter, even showing art of Eliwood sobbing over Elbert's corpse, but this death for all its pizazz does not have a long-term impact on Eliwood's character. He does not have to grow into the role Elbert had, the way Marth and Roy do for their absent fathers. Once he overcomes his sadness, he is identical to who he was before. The last major change FE7 makes to the traditional FE formula is its elimination of the advisor. In FE7, it doesn't make sense to have a tactical advisor, because the story isn't about tactical warfare. All tactical elements in the story are isolated to the silent Mark, who is a nonfactor in the narrative, and the fortuneteller, who provides direct tactical advice during battle preparations outside the domain of the actual story. Older and more experienced characters like Uther, Athos, and Pent do appear, but their role is typically to dispense lore and tell the protagonists where in the world to go next, not how to command their army. Their role is in service to the plot, but not also the gameplay. With no character filling the advisor role in the narrative, most of FE7's dialogue (outside of the aforementioned figures recounting history) involves Eliwood talking to his friends Hector and Lyn. This change is possibly FE7's most drastic departure from previous FE storylines. Such a significant portion of the dialogue in FE1 through 6 involves the main character speaking to his (older, cynical) advisor regarding tactical matters. The advisor's absence completely changes the tone and character of FE7's story. On a scene-by-scene basis, what FE7's story presents is fundamentally unlike its predecessors. Unfortunately, the characters that replace the advisor often struggle to foster the innate tension that the idealism-versus-cynicism argument did in past games. Lyn, for instance, is not a fundamentally different character from Eliwood in terms of personality. She says little that could not feasibly have been said by Eliwood. Her only notable unique traits revolve around her Sacaean heritage, which rarely manifest in the narrative except when she uses her skillset to track an enemy. But that is a difference in skill, not character, and does little to create a functional dynamic between Eliwood and Lyn. Eliwood already feels vestigial, so Lyn, who is a similar character but even less relevant to the plot, is atrocious in her uselessness. That leaves Hector, who does have a personality complementary to Eliwood. Hector is brash, ill-mannered, and reckless, compared to Eliwood's proper noble politeness. It's not hard to see why Hector became such a popular character among fans of FE7. He stands out, he steals the scenes he's in, and his down-to-earth attitude makes him more relatable to an ordinary audience. However, in my original QUINTESSENCE essay, I mentioned multiple times how Hector's juvenile worldview frustrated me. In that essay, I didn't explain what I meant well, so I'll revisit that point now. Hector's lackadaisical recklessness often undercuts the game's tone. In Eliwood Mode, he is introduced casually killing a soldier who was somewhat rude to him because Hector "was in a hurry." In contrast to Eliwood quaking during battle because he imagines the families of the people he's fighting, this introduction establishes a moral dynamic between the characters. But making light of death in a game where permadeath is a significant feature reduces how seriously the player can take permadeath as a narrative tool. FE7 never feels like a game where your allies can die, even though they can. You can trudge through a brutal map with Guy, Serra, and Lowen left as corpses on the battlefield and watch Hector crack jokes in the next scene. While no FE is without comic relief, it's rare to see this comic relief embodied in such a prominent character. FE7 is the first game in the series that seems to expect that the player is proceeding without any playable character dying, because tonally many of its scenes make no sense otherwise. I mentioned earlier how older FE games present players with a choice in how to play. Whether you kill the princesses at the end of FE3 or save them, the narrative is shaped to accept your decision. The player's gameplay experience fits the story, even though that experience can be radically different for each player. FE7, however, will spend large amounts of time bemoaning the death of a non-recruitable NPC like Leila or Elbert, while being blithely ignorant of the hardships the player might be experiencing in the gameplay. Even if Roy doesn't explicitly mention that, say, Bors just died in the previous map, Roy is consistently portrayed with enough gravitas that no matter when Bors died, Roy doesn't seem to trample over that death with his dialogue. When Hector ends a battle with a quip, it plays poorly if his good friend Matthew just died to the boss. Similarly, Eliwood and Hector's dynamic establishes a moral question that the player has no ability to act upon. How do we treat our enemies? Do we try to prevent needless death, or write foes off as evil and slaughter them without a second thought? Unlike FE5, the player cannot choose to spare enemies; there isn't even a character like FE6's Gale who the player is given a choice to kill or let live. As the narrative develops, Hector's brutish approach to his enemies culminates in his desire to kill Jaffar, but the player doesn't have the option to act on the choices the text presents. Jaffar never appears on the map as an enemy. You can fail to recruit him, or get unlucky on turn 2 of the Ursula chapter and watch him die to a Swordslayer, but you are not given an active role in Jaffar's fate. Thus, while there is a prominent character dynamic and a contrast of ideology between Hector and Eliwood/Lyn, this dynamic has a difficult time exceeding the superficial. Hector and Lyn will bicker, or someone will call Hector a "lout," but these conflicts and contrasts neither manifest in the gameplay nor manage to significantly affect the story. When it gets down to it, Hector is in agreement with Eliwood on how to proceed through the plot. He wants to find Eliwood's father, he wants to defeat Nergal. If Hector and Eliwood's dynamic cannot affect how the player plays the game, then it ought to affect the story. Yet it doesn't. Hector can become the main character instead of Eliwood and the story remains almost entirely unchanged. These are the insubstantial trappings of character conflict; in reality, nothing is here. In its superficiality, in its divorce from the gameplay, FE7's story ultimately failed to engage me. That was why, eleven years ago, I was driven to pick apart every single inconsistency. Of course, many of FE7's numerous plot holes are caused specifically by the story's separation from the gameplay; because the gameplay requires every chapter have an army of enemies to fight, the story will frequently scramble to provide a reason for that conflict at odds with the story's actual goals. After Elbert dies, the next three chapters contain lore-heavy scripts that are suddenly interrupted by a random Black Fang, or mercenary, or bandit attack; eventually, the justifications for conflict become threadbare, and holes naturally appear. Seeing a few holes, one stops taking the story so seriously, and disinterest leads to seeing more holes, and more, until the story looks like a tableau of Swiss cheese. To summarize, the fundamental separation of story and gameplay makes FE7 less interesting than earlier games with far more barebones scripts. That's why I wrote that essay eleven years ago. So why write this one? Opinions on FE7 are more generally aligned with mine now. There's no need to convince a community, to try and change their opinion. The real reason I'm writing this essay is because, despite its faults, FE7 is actually an extremely important story in the history of Fire Emblem. FE7 may have failed on its own merits, but it broke significant ground for Fire Emblem as a narrative-driven game. Many of the unique elements of FE7 that I just outlined as major flaws were revisited in later games, revised, and incorporated gracefully to craft some of the best stories the series has ever told. To understand FE7's place in the franchise, tracing the lineage of where Fire Emblem went after FE7 is as important as tracing its ancestry. It's time to talk about: 3. Fire Emblem 8, 9, and 10 Shouzou Kaga was a constant innovator―when it came to gameplay. One need only look at the last Fire Emblem games he worked on (4 and 5) or the games he made after he left Intelligent Systems (Tear Ring and Berwick Saga) to see that. When it came to story, however, Shouzou Kaga was stuck in a rut. That claim may possibly be the most controversial I've made yet, as a vocal and sizable contingent of hardcore FE fans seem to have placed Kaga, the father of Fire Emblem, on an untouchable pedestal. I myself even praised at length the typical Fire Emblem story formula in this very essay, and primarily criticized FE7's story in light of its deviations from that formula. Additionally, many would argue that FE4 and 5 show significant narrative innovations, delving into much darker and more mature subject matter than previous installments. However, becoming darker and more mature is only a difference in degree. FE1 and 3 were already solemn, political affairs more concerned with national alliances and troop movements than interpersonal strife. Adding detailed royal lineages and infanticide and incest is only leaning more heavily into the same type of story you have already told. The Mad Libs substitutions each game made to the formula were not making fundamental changes to what the story was, and Kaga was either unwilling or incapable of innovating in that regard (and if Berwick Saga is any indication―I'm not so familiar with Tear Ring or Vestaria―he continued this non-trend after leaving Intelligent Systems). Additionally, while the FE formula was an innovative step forward for video game storytelling in 1990, by the end of the 16-bit era Fire Emblem was being left behind by the big RPGs of the time. Video game stories were pushing boundaries via titles like Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, while Fire Emblem was treading water. What made the FE formula so initially successful―its careful marriage of narrative with gameplay―started to hamper it, because the series was reluctant to make narrative changes unless, like FE4's split-generation system, there was an immediate and clear gameplay purpose for it. The place where the formula really started to suffer was in its characters. The protagonist serving as a colorless stand-in for the player worked well in the NES era, when Mario was king, but the SNES was the time of Sonic the Hedgehog, of characters with attitude and larger-than-life personalities. These characters weren't just player stand-ins; if the player didn't play fast enough to Sonic's liking, he tapped his foot and looked at the player impatiently. In the world of RPGs, characters were undergoing intense personal struggles; Final Fantasy 4's Cecil literally fights himself to purge his sins, while Final Fantasy 6's Celes dramatically attempts suicide after losing all hope. Fire Emblem, meanwhile, presented heroes such as Sigurd and Leaf and Roy, interchangeable young men with personality traits limited to "morally good" and "idealistic" and backstories limited to "father is dead." While these games did try to flesh out the supporting cast more with FE4's romance system or FE6's support system, the majority of your army's members were bland soldiers with personalities defined more by their in-game class than by unique individual traits. Most damning, the scripts themselves remained barebones, only a handful of lines of dialogue before and after each fight, with most of those lines being the explanation of where and why the fight was happening and utilitarian discussion of tactics. Marrying story and gameplay allowed the stories to make the most out of these minimalist scripts, but the sheer lack of text prevented creativity beyond that framework. By the time Kaga left the company during the development of FE6, Fire Emblem had done this same story six times. It was time for change. FE6 reset Kaga's gameplay innovations back to basics. From there, Intelligent Systems demonstrated a clear focus on innovating the narrative. Across the history of the series, FE7 is―with FE12 the only competitor―the installment with the fewest gameplay differences compared to its direct predecessor. It uses mostly the same sprites and mechanics with no notable new features whatsoever. Where FE7 does innovate is entirely within its narrative. In sheer word count, FE7 dwarfs all its predecessors; there is simply far more writing. The need for more words makes sense in a story that is divorced from the gameplay and thus cannot use gameplay to fill the blanks. Plot threads and backstory need to be established that aren't inherently explained by what the player is doing on the map. On top of that, because the characters aren't only talking about tactical advice, they need more dialogue to make them come alive as characters. Mekkah, in his series of videos about FE7's story, ascribes most of its deviations from prior FE storytelling to the lead scenario writer, Kouhei Maeda, who would later become the lead scenario writer for Awakening and Fates. Given the context of the other games Maeda spearheaded and their poor reputation in terms of story, it's easy to put forward an argument whereby Maeda is simply a bad writer who has done little for the series except create its most logically inconsistent, most anime-inspired games. And while I would agree that the three games Maeda wrote are the three black sheep of the family, the three that feel the least "Fire Emblem," the infusion of Maeda's fresh ideas paved the way for better writers to refine his ideas and craft stronger narratives than could have ever existed in a Kaga game. Maeda has an eye for crafting big, emotionally impactful character moments―even if he cannot always stick the landing. I mentioned earlier how Elbert's death falls flat because it doesn't change Eliwood as a character. But when taken in a vacuum, Elbert's death was, at the time it occurred, the most emotional moment that had ever been in a Fire Emblem game. Old FE stories hadn't shied away from killing characters; FE4 famously kills most of your playable cast halfway in. But those stories failed to make those scenes emotional. Consider Hector's death at the beginning of FE6. This death has a significant narrative impact on Roy, because he is appointed the leader of the Lycian army afterward. In effect, it's the classic moment where the young hero is forced to rise to the occasion, the inciting incident that underlies the death of every Fire Emblem father (even if Hector is Roy's girlfriend's father instead). But the scene itself is written with comparatively little emotional weight. Roy's acceptance of the death is nearly stoic, with him saying nothing more emotional than "Lord Hector!" while most of the scene itself is actually expository in nature: Quote Roy: Lord Hector! What an awful wound...! We must treat it! Here, lean on my shoulder... Hector: No, it's all right... I won't last much longer... Roy: Lord Hector... Hector: We were taken by surprise... I never would have guessed that Bern had resurrected the Dragons...! Roy: Dragons!? Hector: Yes... the Dragons that mankind fought in the Scouring... [Hector and Roy exposit about dragons and the Eight Heroes for the next eight lines.] Hector: Cough, cough... Roy: Lord Hector! Hector: Roy... go to Ostia...! ...You must... lead what is left of the Lycia Alliance Army... in my place... Roy: Me...? But... Hector: Don't worry... In Ostia... we have a weapon... that is effective against the Dragons... Roy: A weapon...? Hector: I have already told Lilina where it is hidden... Take care of her, too... She... may seem strong... but she is still a child... Give her your support... Roy: ...Yes, I will. Hector: ...Lilina... one... more...... time... Guh... Roy: Lord Hector! [The scene ends.] If this scene isn't compelling enough evidence because Hector isn't Roy's actual father, the scene where Sigurd watches his father die is slightly more emotionally charged but even more abrupt, with much of it dedicated to expository matters: Quote Sigurd: F, father! Is that you!? You're alright! Byron: Sigurd... I see you've grown into a fine young man. (Cough... cough...) Sigurd: Father! Hang in there!! Byron: Son, I'm afraid I'm at death's door, so listen up. Langobalt killed Prince Kurth, not I. And just above him in the chain of command is Leptor. Please inform His Majesty of this. I'm not afraid to die, son. But I must live long enough see our good name restored! Sigurd: I knew it! Don't worry, father. I will restore your honor in the kingdom. Rest assured! Byron: Son, I'm sorry. My negligence has led to all the hardships you're currently facing. Here, take this from me. It's the Holy Tyrfing. Sigurd: The Holy Tyrfing! But father, you can still... Byron: Take it! And restore our good name! Sigurd: Father! C'mon, hang in there for me. Father! Oifey: Sir... Sigurd: I've had it with those two! Leptor and Langobalt... I'm taking you both out!! In contrast to these brisk, semi-expository scenes, Eliwood is shown screaming in despair for Elbert's death. He cradles his lifeless father's hand on the boat ride back to the continent. In the next scene, Ninian and Nils recount Elbert's kindness and courage in an attempt to help Eliwood process his grief. Only after this lengthy series of scenes is out of the way does the story move to an expository discussion of Nergal's goals and powers; and once that scene finishes, Eliwood and Ninian speak privately about Elbert's father once more, at which point Eliwood tells Ninian she is not to blame and thus appears to have finally overcome his own grief. Do the scenes of Eliwood's immense grief matter from the utilitarian perspective of making Eliwood grow as a leader, or moving forward the plot? No. Are they weighty and emotional? Yes. The same goes for the dialogue between Eliwood, Hector, and Lyn, which I described previously as superficial fluff. It's true that none of that dialogue matters to either the plot or the gameplay, but it humanizes those characters in a way that the stuffy, formal lords of games past were never allowed. It makes those characters feel more alive, more relatable, as though you're reading a conversation between your own friends (that is, until someone uses old-fashioned diction like "lout" or "dastard"). With that in mind, I understand now why so many people enjoyed FE7's story. It wasn't just because FE7 was the first game most pre-Awakening fans played. It was because the game had a humanity to it that previous games lacked. That's what Maeda was able to inject into a franchise that until then had been stiff, utilitarian, and political: the human element. FE8, 9, and 10 kept Maeda's emotional ethos while refining its connection to the gameplay. FE8 and FE9 in summary are both blatant returns to the traditional FE plot formula, focusing on international conflicts and young heroes who must rise to the occasion and lead an army against an evil empire/sorcerer/god. But both games are not content to leave that skeleton a skeleton; they flesh out the emotional potency of the formula to its fullest. FE8 (or Sacred Stones), for instance, strongly imbues its villain Lyon with tragedy. It's worth noting right away that FE8's premise of "a former friend who is corrupted by evil to kickstart the plot" is lifted wholesale from a traditional Kaga game, FE3. Yet while the tragedy of FE3's Hardin is explored across maybe three or four lines, in FE8 that drama is front and center. FE8 lingers on flashbacks showing Lyon and the twins as friends before the war (Marth and Hardin meanwhile share a single conversation before Hardin's evil turn), iterates and reiterates the protagonists' feelings about Lyon before and after his transformation, and builds up the mystery around Lyon's involvement until 75 percent of the way through the game (whereas Hardin abruptly shows up sporting an evil sprite in a random chapter early in FE3 Book 2). In writing FE3, Kaga logically understands that there is tragedy in an ally turning evil, but he can't draw out the emotional weight of that concept; his tale is too focused on facilitating the player's journey to deviate for more than a few lines. FE8, which exists in a post-FE7 world where the main character is allowed to emote and say things that aren't directly relevant to the next map, turns this tragedy into the crux of an entire emotional climax. Likewise learning from FE7's mistakes, FE8 takes the tonal dissonance caused by youthful heroes joking around during a war and uses it to its advantage. The aforementioned flashbacks of Lyon and the twins show the characters bantering and bickering, cracking jokes and making light of everything; these flashbacks are juxtaposed with the present, where war has forced the twins to Kaga-esque solemnity. The juxtaposition forces the gravity of the situation to stand out more, deepening its emotional impact instead of making seriousness feel like simply a default state. The twins themselves are also juxtaposed against one another. Eirika follows the traditional FE hero's journey; her country is invaded, her father killed, and although she was neither a fighter nor a commander before, she must rise to the occasion to lead. This puts her in contrast with Ephraim, a preternaturally skilled fighter and commander already, whose introduction has him capturing an enemy castle with three men, but who is reluctant to shoulder the burden of true leadership that his father's death has placed upon him. After all, in attacking Grado directly, Ephraim has shirked his duty in defending his country; in FE8's opening cutscene, Ephraim's dereliction is depicted as "compounding his father's worries," rather than the heroic bravado Ephraim believes it to be. This contrast causes Eirika's traditional position to stand out more in both explicit and implicit ways, magnifying the emotional potency via the narrative where past FE games had been content to lean almost entirely on the gameplay-narrative connection. And unlike FE7, FE8 makes these emotional impacts without putting the story at odds with the gameplay. While Eirika and Ephraim are depicted in contrasting ways, both of their storylines revolve around them growing as leaders of an army. Their journeys thus maintain all of the gameplay connections that made the protagonists of FE1 through 6 dynamic and meaningful to the player's actions. But FE8 was a small game developed by a B team. Most of Intelligent System's main staff was engaged in their most ambitious narrative title yet: FE9, or Path of Radiance. By now, the past two FE titles as well as the studio's other works like Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (2004) had established Intelligent Systems as the premier RPG and storytelling company among Nintendo's slate of second parties. To live up to this reputation, Intelligent Systems would begin to push the envelope even further with darker narrative-driven titles like Super Paper Mario (2007) and Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (2008); the Radiance saga was no exception to this trend. FE8 told a serious, text-heavy story with emotional impact, but its plot still revolved around magical corruption, undead monsters, sacred stones, and other fantastical elements. FE9 would still be a fantasy story, but its thematic target had far more real-world weight: Prejudice, both on class and racial lines. Earlier games in the series dabbled in these topics, but none made them so central and prevalent in the narrative as FE9, nor treated them with as much nuance and sophistication. By bringing such a serious real-world theme to the forefront, FE9 in many ways aped the more mature direction Kaga had pushed the stories of FE4 and 5. However, unlike the complex realistic political landscape of those games, FE9's theme was one that enabled the narrative to plunge deeper into its characters. In FE4, an individual character and his or her personal reaction to their role in the world is of far less importance than their bloodline and the fiefdom they reign over. By comparison, the political tableau of FE9 is relatively simplistic, with only a handful of nations (and many of those peripheral in importance), but even politically unremarkable characters are given thorough storylines exploring their relationship to the prejudice they encounter or even propagate. FE9 most clearly demonstrates this shift in focus away from serious international politics toward serious interpersonal politics in its most striking and obvious deviation from the traditional Fire Emblem narrative formula. Ike, the protagonist, is not a young prince but a young mercenary, of low birth. Like the tweaks previous games made to the formula, this does not change much of the plot in abstract. The evil nation still invades the good nation, the father still dies, the true purpose behind the evil king's war is still to revive an evil god. In fact, Ike's personal character journey is identical to those of the young princes of games past, and often even more explicitly so. Great emphasis is placed on Ike becoming the leader of the mercenary group after his father is killed; some members of the mercenaries even leave in protest and can only be recruited again later, emphasizing Ike's starting position as a greenhorn who must grow into his role. Later, additional emphasis is placed on Ike rising from leader of a group of mercenaries to leader of an army. Ike's biggest motivation throughout the game is to defeat the man who killed his father, whereas previous games in the series had mostly ignored the question of revenge; when Ike finally does best the Black Knight, it suggests that he has not merely matched his father but exceeded him, serving as a culmination of his character growth. Additionally, Ike has not one but two advisor characters, Titania and Soren, with the former being more idealistic and the latter being cynical. Their advice both instructs the player on how to play individual maps and guides Ike's narrative actions across the story in a consistent way. (FE8 also reintroduced the advisor character in the form of Seth, but Seth rarely if ever gave direct tactical advice useful for completing maps.) Like earlier games, the union of story and gameplay invests the player in Ike's character because the player's development is, to an extent, Ike's development. Unlike earlier games, the repositioning of Ike from prince to mercenary allows him to uniquely interact with the game's overall theme of prejudice, giving him a narrative life of his own that is not solely defined by the gameplay. And unlike FE7, which attempted similar innovations to the formula, Ike's existence as a unique and distinctive character is not at odds with the gameplay. FE9 is able to use the strengths of both Kaga and Maeda's approaches to their full advantage, unifying them in a way that exceeds what either was able to do on his own. It's also able to make more meaningful changes to the Fire Emblem narrative formula and explore narrative angles unfamiliar to the franchise, without eliminating why the formula worked in the first place. At the same time, gameplay innovations like time-gated supports and base conversations allowed the supporting cast, usually constrained by the gameplay to cease mattering to the story the moment they joined the army, to undergo their own fulfilling narrative arcs. (Jill is the primary example of this.) Under the auspices of a consistent thematic focus―prejudice―these storylines often supplement the main narrative in ways the support conversations of past games did not. Fire Emblem finally did it. It finally caught back up with the boundary-pushing RPG narratives that outpaced it during the 16-bit era. FE9 was serious, mature, but also human. It had ample amounts of writing, but also complemented the gameplay and vice versa. It took eight games and a few lead writers to reach this point, but the dry old formula had finally been revitalized. The future looked brighter than it ever had. The game sold like dogshit. Wikipedia describes the game's sales as follows: "In Japan during its opening week, Path of Radiance sold 100,357 copies, selling through 64.16% of its initial shipment. By the end of 2005, the game had sold 156,413 copies. In its UK debut, it reached the top of the GameCube charts. Although no exact sales figures have been published, Nintendo cited the game as being among its successful GameCube titles for 2005. According to the developers, the fact that it was released near the end of the GameCube's lifespan affected sales, but it still managed to help sell the hardware and convinced Nintendo that Fire Emblem had selling power on home consoles." FE9 released in April 2005 (in Japan). Although it put up a respectable opening week, in the next eight months it would sell only slightly above 50,000 copies. For comparison, FE8 released in October 2004, selling 97,842 units on its opening *day* and 233,280 units by the end of the year―only two months later. FE8 was a quick game developed by a B team reusing the engine and visual assets from two games prior. FE9, the studio's golden child, was built from scratch. It transitioned the game―and the studio―to 3D, added full motion cutscenes, and fielded a much larger staff. In short, it cost far more to produce and sold far less. Given that context, it's clear that the talk about how FE9 "convinced Nintendo that Fire Emblem had selling power" is marketing fluff. The excuse about being released at the end of the GameCube's lifespan probably did give Nintendo enough confidence to reuse the engine and most of the assets for FE10, but that game's similar financial failure meant that the narrative-driven direction of the franchise, and Intelligent Systems as a whole, was no longer tenable. It was time for a new direction entirely. Before I continue, I suppose I should discuss FE10's story, because it's kind of a mess in a way that was unique for the series at least until Fates; even FE7 feels more cohesive. FE10 was not the first Fire Emblem to have an unusual development cycle―FE5 being released for the SNES in 1999 raises even more red flags―but the circumstances of its development certainly impacted its narrative. Behind-the-scenes information on Fire Emblem games is always difficult to come by, making much of what I'm saying speculative at best, but it seems clear to me that the decision to split FE9 into two games came very late in FE9's development. As such, FE9 is mostly a complete narrative with a single anticlimactic final chapter; FE10, on the other hand, is a climactic final chapter with an entire game's worth of nonsense tacked on. Plot confusions aside, where FE10 truly suffers is in its characters, as most of them (even the supporting crew) already had complete narrative arcs in FE9, and thus start FE10 lacking anywhere else to go. There are a few exceptions, like Elincia, who if FE9 were a purely formulaic Fire Emblem would have been its protagonist. Because Ike takes over Elincia's "development as a leader" plotline in FE9, Elincia's leadership is able to be challenged during her small arc in FE10. For some reason, the Western release of FE10 cut a lot of the most interesting dialogue exploring Elincia's leadership, but even considering that dialogue, her role in the story as a whole is too tertiary for her arc to feel meaningful, and because FE10 lacks a cohesive thematic direction, she can't even contribute to a greater narrative whole. Micaiah, as a new character, gets some of the traditional Fire Emblem protagonist arc, but her arc is also abbreviated and her rise to triumph too short to succeed the way similar characters had in the past. Those two are only side characters anyway. Ike is the main character again, except he's already a great leader, so he has nowhere else to go as a character. FE10 digs up his old nemesis the Black Knight to retread some of the same ground FE9 already tread, but it's hollow repetition that adds little beyond unmasking the Black Knight's true identity. (Said true identity is not important to Ike as a character.) The need to fill space, and also bring back every character from FE9, causes this confused mess of plots that leaves FE10 disjointed and purposeless until its final act. These issues don't strike me as a change in narrative focus, only technical struggles given the unusual conception of FE10 as a whole. The gigantic scale and the melodramatic gauntlet of tragic final bosses in the climax indicate that FE10 was, as best as it could, following the cues placed for it by FE9. The storytelling goals were to combine the human with the political, to tell a story that both complemented the gameplay but also spread out to tell a story with real ambition beyond utilitarianism. FE8, and even more so FE9, succeeded in those goals. That success came at the cost of profit. Which meant it was now time for— 4. FE11 through 13. All of Intelligent Systems, not just the Fire Emblem franchise, was struggling. The dark, narrative-driven Advance Wars: Days of Ruin sold poorly, which would kill that franchise for over a decade. And while Super Paper Mario actually sold better than any game in the Paper Mario series before and since, the game received (unjustified) fan backlash and, according to rumor, invoked the ire of Shigeru Miyamoto, who (again according to rumor) restricted Intelligent Systems from creating new Mario characters in future Paper Mario titles. Paper Mario became a shell of itself, and for the next six years, Fire Emblem was relegated to a couple of dry remakes of the early games, mostly graphical updates with a few new mechanical features and some sparse additional scenes. There's nothing to say about FE11 (Shadow Dragon). But FE12 (New Mystery), freeing up some budget and development work by reusing nearly all of FE11's graphical assets, made one narrative innovation of interest. Of interest because it would serve as the testing ground for the franchise's future, and of interest because it was, in fact, not an innovation at all. It was taken directly from FE7. It was the player avatar character. In my long discussion of FE7 in both my previous essay and this one so far, I have spoken only cursorily about Mark the tactician, a silent avatar who directly stands in for the player more than even the most milquetoast lord. Earlier, I dismissed Mark as serving only to separate the tactical elements of the gameplay from the narrative experience of the main characters, while having an almost nonexistent narrative impact himself; this is an entirely correct assessment that I will not revise. Like many of FE7's narrative innovations, it is an innovation poorly implemented and poorly understanding of how it affects the balance of story and gameplay in Fire Emblem. FE12 implements the player avatar into the story, giving them a face, a role, and ample dialogue. While these changes don't fundamentally change FE3's story (it often feels like a fanfic that just retells the original story but with a random OC standing around and commenting on the action), they did set the stage for Fire Emblem's monumental resurgence as a franchise. Fire Emblem had never seen a character like Robin before. The most fascinating thing about Robin is that they are, in fact, a character. This isn't Mark or My Unit. Robin threads an almost outrageous needle, being both a self-insert and fundamentally core to the story of FE13 (Awakening). FE13 tends to get a terrible reputation among people like me, people who started playing Fire Emblem in 2005, but while it's easy to dig in and eviscerate the plot's tenuous logic, like FE7 it does a lot of things right that had never before been done in the franchise. FE7 struggled because its narrative had little do with its gameplay. Not only did this make the gameplay less narratively meaningful, but it led to FE7 needing to stretch its narrative in odd directions to explain a steady stream of tactical maps. Furthermore, it's difficult to pin down what FE7 is about thematically. While even the most basic early Fire Emblem can lean on being a "coming of age story about a young man becoming a leader," FE7's attempt to deviate from the formula meant it lost that core arc without replacing it with something else. FE13 also moves away from that core arc, although not entirely. Chrom retains many of the familiar elements of a classic Fire Emblem protagonist, for instance. But Robin's arc is completely different while also being a fundamental aspect of Fire Emblem's gameplay. The word used again and again in FE13 is "bond." The game is fundamentally concerned about the bonds between units. This aspect of Fire Emblem's gameplay had been introduced as early as FE4 and only grew in relevance across all of the games I previously mentioned. In FE13, though, developing bonds between characters was emphasized in both the gameplay and the story simultaneously. The support system is more robust and more important than ever before, as many units cannot even be recruited without other characters first reaching a max support rank. The pair-up system brings these support elements into the tactical minutiae and heavily incentivize supports as never before. And in the narrative itself, Robin's character is defined by their bonds with their allies; it is these bonds that ultimately allow Robin to prevent the fate of Grima's continual resurrection. It's easy to read FE13 allegorically: The plot is about an ancient evil that keeps coming back, and so too was the Fire Emblem story formula told and retold again, every time a new dark god there to threaten the land, defeated in the end only to manifest once more in the franchise's subsequent installment. (The game's general celebration of the Fire Emblem franchise with characters like Tiki and Anna, ample references to earlier games, and the ability to recruit old characters via DLC, add to this allegorical lens.) Robin and their friends, through the bonds they forge, are able to break free from this vicious cycle. Similarly, by changing the core thematic arc of the franchise from "young prince becomes a leader" to "young tactician makes friends," Maeda accomplished what he tried and failed to do in FE7 by finally steering Fire Emblem in a completely new direction. This direction is probably what annoys so many old fans about FE13, while also being what caused the game's explosive popularity among new fans. A mostly lighthearted tone, pumped with ample comedic relief, is far less out of place in a story that often feels more like a dating simulator than a political drama. The joking, down-to-earth conversations that Eliwood, Hector, and Lyn had in FE7 are given new life in FE13's script, no longer jarringly out-of-place but active contributors to the story's themes of bond-building and friendship. Maeda took what didn't work in FE7 and made it work in FE13. (It helps that Casual mode also allowed Maeda to more realistically expect that these lighthearted moments aren't directly contradicting a tragic character death in the gameplay.) Obviously, some people prefer a serious political drama to a teenage slice of life. Hence the significant blowback from old Fire Emblem fans; this new style was simply not what they liked about the franchise. But the new style was internally consistent in a way FE7 was not. That's why the game worked, that's why it became so popular. And without the failings of FE7, I find it hard to believe that Maeda could have adjusted course and stuck the landing with FE13. The franchise has continued since then. I could talk about FE14 (Fates) or FE16 (Three Houses), and I think I'd have some interesting things to say about both of them: How FE14 failed due to a lack of a cohesive creative vision, how FE16 takes FE7's slice-of-life mystery plotline and successfully expands it into a political war story in a way FE7 failed to do. I could even talk about the ethos behind the significant additions to the story of FE15 (Shadows of Valentia), and how that ethos demonstrates a clear evolution from the ethos of Kaga's games. But this essay is now reaching the 11,000 word total of my original essay, and I believe I've made my point. I still consider FE7 a narrative failure. I still consider it a bad story. But its failure stems from an attempt to do something new and not fully understanding how to execute on that vision, and the franchise would take its narrative innovations and build on them to not only craft some of the best Fire Emblem stories in FE8 and FE9, but also to save Fire Emblem as a whole from financial ruin in FE13. While Kaga is king in hardcore Fire Emblem fandom circles, Maeda deserves more credit for his eye for emotional moments (both happy and sad), which elevate Fire Emblem beyond the dry, barebones plot formula that Kaga never moved on from. Kaga, successful, never needed to push his narratives past their basic confines (despite the constant pressure he placed on the gameplay). Maeda, failing, had to grow. And he did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eclipse Posted December 11, 2022 Share Posted December 11, 2022 Moving this to FE7, since that's the main focus of this essay. Which I'm not reading, since I have a lot of other things that need my attention. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ping Posted December 11, 2022 Share Posted December 11, 2022 I haven't read it yet, but I definitely will when I find the time. The fact alone that you're making such an elaborate follow-up to an 11-years-old essay is honestly really impressive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunwoo Posted December 12, 2022 Share Posted December 12, 2022 I didn't realize you still existed. Welcome back? This is an interesting read and an interesting take on not just FE7, but FE as a series in general. I agree with some of your points, even if I don't always come to the same conclusion on some of those things, but I'm always interested in seeing what other people's takes on what the series is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Banzai Posted December 12, 2022 Author Share Posted December 12, 2022 1 hour ago, Sunwoo said: I didn't realize you still existed. General Banzai is eternal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunwoo Posted December 12, 2022 Share Posted December 12, 2022 6 minutes ago, General Banzai said: General Banzai is eternal But is Folgore Black eternal Would be interesting to see you do a similar essay on some of the later FE games, like Fates and 3H, to see what you think about those. Particularly, whether you think 3H did what it wanted to do well enough, or if it got bogged down by other things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Banzai Posted December 12, 2022 Author Share Posted December 12, 2022 56 minutes ago, Sunwoo said: But is Folgore Black eternal Would be interesting to see you do a similar essay on some of the later FE games, like Fates and 3H, to see what you think about those. Particularly, whether you think 3H did what it wanted to do well enough, or if it got bogged down by other things. I'm always interested in the oldhead response to the newer games. When I was working with Mekkah on his FE7 videos I brought up how I thought Shadows of Valentia had an extremely good story and he looked at me like I was nuts. 3H is certainly a level of sophistication in FE storytelling we haven't seen since Radiance saga, and it certainly sticks the landing better than Radiant Dawn did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sunwoo Posted December 12, 2022 Share Posted December 12, 2022 Haha, that's certainly a take I don't think I've really heard too much? I might not agree with that, but I'm always up for seeing why other people might feel differently towards something than I do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mekkah Posted December 12, 2022 Share Posted December 12, 2022 I'm like halfway through but I just wanted to say hi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aircalipoor Posted December 12, 2022 Share Posted December 12, 2022 (edited) On 12/11/2022 at 3:27 AM, General Banzai said: This ubiquity caused me to come to a conclusion: If you try hard enough, you can find inconsistencies or illogic in anything. If you yell loud enough, you can browbeat people into thinking these inconsistencies matter. They don't. The reasons why stories are considered "good" or "bad" has almost nothing to do with such details. I'd go so far as to say that these details are a symptom, rather than a cause. People only notice these inconsistencies if they've already lost interest in the story. It isn't the presence of inconsistencies, but the absence of consistency that dooms a work. If a work merely has one or two outstanding features that convince and engage its consumers, it can negate multiple flaws about the work - to an extent. Quote FE12 implements the player avatar into the story, giving them a face, a role, and ample dialogue. While these changes don't fundamentally change FE3's story (it often feels like a fanfic that just retells the original story but with a random OC standing around and commenting on the action), they did set the stage for Fire Emblem's monumental resurgence as a franchise. As rightfully criticized Chris is, his impact opened a number of benefits for the games and its successors' writing. Being a gary-sueish character universally loved and popular in-game is grating, it also enabled to give even minor characters three base conversations to flesh them out, because the game has that bland every-(wo)man available to talk to. FE1-5 pale in front of the support and base conversations that FE6-12 (minus 10 and 11) developed. While the gaiden chapters that center around him and Katarina are irrelevant plotwise, they add personal low-stakes. They are both story and gameplay-wise a change from the huge war battles and seizes, being small, claustrophobic maps. To lead back at FE7, the FE12 tutorial is reminiscent of that game's step-up from past FEs, focusing on a smaller cast. FE7 Lyn mode is still the best, most effective tutorial in the franchise. Lyns' rise is a microcosm of the usual Lord's story, the focus of a few members to flesh out their personalities to enhance the dramatic and personal journey is as effective as it could be if cramped in 12 short chapters. Gameplay-wise, the mechanics are explained down to the smallest detail, the foolish Sain actively demonstrating what happens if a lance user attacks an axe user in a forest beats every dry game manual. Your observation of gameplay and story combination rather than segregation throughout the franchise's development and success/failure is spot on. This is a key for video games to immerse the player in the world, rather than estrange them and make them lose their interest. As well as the deduction, how humans, players aren't entirely logically, as much as we like to, but very vulnerable to emotional pay-offs. FE7 delivered them much more so than the rather subdued ones in FE6. Hectors' death was always bland, while FE7 lets us know who he was and gives his departure with the knowledge that he will die a somber note. Nino/Jaffars side story may be cliched, overblown and cheesy, her empathy with Zephiels misery is much more engaging and relatable than the entirety of FE6s spoonfeeding Zephiels backstory through Guinevere that fails to convince the player to feel sympathy or even understanding for this madman. Her simple act to spare a boys life leading to a near worldending desaster is more personal and nuanced than FE6 Zephiels ramblings of how some war dragons make better rulers than humans because his father was allegedly a dick (while FE7 showed it, rather than merely told it). Eery, how FE7 improved FE6, while simultaneously struggling to distance itself from it. Edited December 12, 2022 by Aircalipoor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Banzai Posted December 12, 2022 Author Share Posted December 12, 2022 4 hours ago, Aircalipoor said: It isn't the presence of inconsistencies, but the absence of consistency that dooms a work. If a work merely has one or two outstanding features that convince and engage its consumers, it can negate multiple flaws about the work - to an extent. Perfect way of putting it. People like a work because of what it's doing right, not the absence of doing things wrong. That's probably why FE7 was so popular compared to 8 or 9 in the pre-Awakening days of the fandom. People liked its more lighthearted tone, its dialogue that felt like a group of friends hanging out instead of a dour tactical deadmarch, and the elaborate mystery elements of the story. That's what mattered to them, and so plot hole stuff doesn't stand out to them. Similarly, Kaga fans find Kaga's serious, political tone appealing, and don't mind the relatively minimalistic writing and characters. Nitpicking every logical inconsistency in a work is easy content to make (see all those aforementioned video essays, Cinema Sins, or my original essay), but doesn't actually engage with why people like or dislike a work. Even the idea of longform media criticism resolving itself into a thesis of either "Thing bad" or, more uncommonly, "Thing good" is a somewhat irrelevant exercise that itself only engages an audience if the audience already agrees with your thesis beforehand. RLM's Star Wars prequel videos broke ground for the format but were able to do so mainly because those prequels were already so universally reviled by Star Wars fans. If you look at early "angry reviewer" content, it's almost always potshots at consensus terrible media (ET the video game or Battlefield Earth or whatever). The modern audience for video essays has expanded enough that more controversial takes are capable of finding an audience. But the fact remains that a video essay on why, say, Steven Universe is bad will primarily be watched by people who already think Steven Universe is bad, with a lot less engagement from people who like Steven Universe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irysa Posted January 25, 2023 Share Posted January 25, 2023 Hey, I finally got around to reading this. I think you make some excellent points and I would agree wholeheartedly that Awakening basically nailed thematically what FE7 fails at, because for all that game's issues, I think it felt complete and I enjoyed the story a lot more than I enjoyed FE7. I also relate to your earlier points about the experience of writing the original essay and how it became too easy to get bogged down in the inconsistencies, and the influence from RLM in that regard, since I wrote a lot of what ended up getting used in Mekkah's critical FE7 series. These days I am much lighter on the story and in a way I think it was a way just to get the frustration out and it definitely also helped evolve my views on the series and games more in a way that isn't quite as bitter as it might have sounded. Appreciate you putting this together, it's cool we that there's still so much that can be said about FE7 today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tamagoon Posted January 31, 2023 Share Posted January 31, 2023 (edited) I read the original Quintessence essay and while I agreed with some of it, it also come off as needlessly nitpicky. This essay is a massive improvement and while I don't personally know you, it feels like you've matured a lot in how you think about media. I always had the inkling that a lot of FE7's writing problems came about because of its smaller-scale approach, something it was forced into doing because it was a prequel. Frankly, I'm not sure why they didn't just do a sequel, it would be more interesting because they'd have to tackle the issue of dragons finding peace with humanity, though I guess that's exactly why they didn't wanna do it. It's telling that FE7 is the only one that lets you change lords while still experiencing the same story: the lord doesn't grow, so it doesn't matter who you experience the story with. All I really have left to add is your point about the "humanity" element: I think the early games lacking it was largely due to space limitations. Tear Ring Saga has a lot more scenes where characters can just breathe and be themselves, and you're even forced to keep the lords' love interests alive (compared to FE1/3/4 Gen 2/5 where you can let them die) so the lords can have someone else to talk to besides their advisors. Still, it's a very small cast compared to a lot of modern FEs, and the tone is still noticeably more serious on the whole. Edited January 31, 2023 by Tamagoon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ARMADS!!! Posted February 1, 2023 Share Posted February 1, 2023 On 12/12/2022 at 5:11 PM, General Banzai said: (...). But the fact remains that a video essay on why, say, Steven Universe is bad will primarily be watched by people who already think Steven Universe is bad, with a lot less engagement from people who like Steven Universe. While this is mainly correct, I think that there is actually a lot of engagement from people who really like the thing that you're ranting about as well. like, if I make an essay on why Steven Universe is shit, not only Steven Universe's haters will watch it but also lots of super fans, that'll only come there to watch it and see "how wrong" I am or how my "evidence" doesn't hold up, and go to the comments to try to fight every point I made on the video. That's what makes this kind of video even more popular, because when you state something as a fact, you'll get the views of people who agree with you and of those who heavily disagree, if the title of the essay is "Why Steven Universe sucks"(or stuff on the same line such as "Steven Universe doesn't make sense" or "Why Steven Universe is the worst cartoon ever made", "Everything wrong with Steven Universe", etc) I'm pretty sure that it'll have way more views than if the same video was called "Why I don't like Steven Universe" or "A list of things that I disagree with in Steven Universe (my personal opinion)", it works as rage bait as well. And this is not only when you state as a fact that something is good or bad, it can be anything that has some valid and popular arguments that go to both sides or can easily be interpreted both ways, like if I make a video called "Definitive proof that Ike and Soren are gay and IS was afraid to make it canon" I'm pretty sure that not only who supports the pairing or believes in the possibilily will come to my video, quite the opposite even (same goes if I did the other way around, "a 20 minutes essay on why Ike is straight"), or any other thing really: "Why Phoenix Wright was awesome in Apollo Justice, an essay on great character progression"/"Hobo Phoenix: and example of atrocious character assassination", "Phoenix and Edgeworth: The secret canon couple of Ace Attorney"/"Why Phoenix and Edgeworth are just friends", "The new Velma cartoon is awesome and way better than you think"/"'Velma' is the worst Scooby Doo incarnation EVER", etc... Anyway, I think that you can get my point, I just thought that it'd be more clear with some popular examples, on this kind of video they get a hige amount of views with rage bait (or "curiosity bait": "I watched the new Velma cartoon, Is it that bad?" and then the whole video is an essay on why the guy loves it or hates it). Just to give a final example, I've actually seen some people pretty salty over your first essay, I guess that they liked the game a lot because one of them even wrote a whole ass response essay on Reddit to your post (not sure if you already gave it a read) some years ago I think (it also has some really valid points while others sound like nitpicking too(either nitpicking your essay or "nitpicking"(for lack of a better word) in favour of the game)) that's already prove enought that some people purpousefully read stuff that they know that they're gonna disagree with or be salty about. On 1/31/2023 at 3:40 PM, Tamagoon said: I read the original Quintessence essay and while I agreed with some of it, it also come off as needlessly nitpicky. This essay is a massive improvement and while I don't personally know you, it feels like you've matured a lot in how you think about media. I always had the inkling that a lot of FE7's writing problems came about because of its smaller-scale approach, something it was forced into doing because it was a prequel. Frankly, I'm not sure why they didn't just do a sequel, it would be more interesting because they'd have to tackle the issue of dragons finding peace with humanity, though I guess that's exactly why they didn't wanna do it. It's telling that FE7 is the only one that lets you change lords while still experiencing the same story: the lord doesn't grow, so it doesn't matter who you experience the story with. All I really have left to add is your point about the "humanity" element: I think the early games lacking it was largely due to space limitations. Tear Ring Saga has a lot more scenes where characters can just breathe and be themselves, and you're even forced to keep the lords' love interests alive (compared to FE1/3/4 Gen 2/5 where you can let them die) so the lords can have someone else to talk to besides their advisors. Still, it's a very small cast compared to a lot of modern FEs, and the tone is still noticeably more serious on the whole. I also read it (when i just played FE7 actually) and had the same impression as you of the essay, it had some really good points but at the same time it looked like they tried to milk more arguments to make the game look more flawed than it was because it was running out of good points to make, which made it look pretty nitpicky, but it was a good read anyway. And yeah, this now really gives off the impression that General Banzai view on media has grown a lot over the years, and I'm very happy that they wrote another essay so we can learn what they learnt on the past 12 years by reading a text (it is... a hell of a long text, but for 12 years of knowledge it's as short as it can be I guess, I still haven't managed to read it all yet but I will as soon as I can, I guarantee that) Also, on your other point, in FE7 they let you kill off Ninian but she'll still keep showing up on the cutscenes, you will just not be able to deploy her (or Nils) on battle anymore. It was an intelligent way of dealing with the situation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt. Fargus Posted February 2, 2023 Share Posted February 2, 2023 Dunno if the long article is the OP’s words or he’s citing somebody else so I wont criticize him directly, but I happen to enjoy FE7 as “flawed” as some might think it is so far as Im concerned haters gonna hate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paper Jam Posted February 12, 2023 Share Posted February 12, 2023 (edited) On 12/10/2022 at 8:27 PM, General Banzai said: Hector's lackadaisical recklessness often undercuts the game's tone. In Eliwood Mode, he is introduced casually killing a soldier who was somewhat rude to him because Hector "was in a hurry." We actually don't know whether Hector's attack on the soldier was lethal or not, but I think it's safe to say that Oswin and Serra would have had a much bigger problem with it if it were. They only call it "violence," after all, not "murder." Edited February 12, 2023 by Paper Jam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Original Alear Posted February 13, 2023 Share Posted February 13, 2023 I'm not sure that FE7's decision to have characters like Dart join for weird reasons like "adventure" - people actually do still in the modern world do dangerous things at least ostensibly for adventure. I have actually gone on a 4 week or so canoe trip and a 1 week dogsledding trip for reasons I don't particularly understand - it just seemed like the cool thing to do, I guess. Now that I'm older I don't do those things so much anymore. Considering that there are mercenaries in the world, I'm not surprised that there would be travelers willing to fight for their life during their adventures, too, especially if they can believe there's a noble purpose for it. I think it's not a particularly compelling or dramatic reason to do something, but with a large cast of characters it's not unreasonable to have some doing it. I also think Lyn accompanying Eliwood out of friendship doesn't count as a "mere" reason, there was a time when I wanted to hang out with friends all the time (if only to keep myself from being solitary and exposed). I haven't ever read the play (though I do have a picture book for kids), but I'm pretty sure FE7 was inspired somewhat strongly by Shakespeare's The Tempest, and it's possible that the themes FE7 is working on are rooted in that. I haven't read the play, and I probably should. I wonder if careful reading of the play will reveal any themes that aren't already fairly apparent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Banzai Posted February 13, 2023 Author Share Posted February 13, 2023 16 minutes ago, Original Alear said: I haven't ever read the play (though I do have a picture book for kids), but I'm pretty sure FE7 was inspired somewhat strongly by Shakespeare's The Tempest In what way? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Original Alear Posted February 14, 2023 Share Posted February 14, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, General Banzai said: In what way? I'll tell you a few of the things I've noticed. -Dread Isle = Isle in the Tempest. -Nergal: definitely inspired by Prospero. In the Tempest, Prospero's turn to the esoteric does result in his inexperience in more human concerns, but he always loves his daughter, in his asides notices the love between Miranda and Ferdinand and seems to decide to foster it, and he is able to forgive the nobles who betrayed him. In FE7, Nergal's esoteric research corrupts him and he forgets why he is trying to get his power, and his "betrayal" that wounded his eye is pretty justified considering he was killing people (just dragons or people too?) in Arcadia. I went on wikipedia tbh and the theme/question of Prospero's status as a divine power with his magic conflicting with his humanity is something they actually go into for a few paragraphs just in an entry, and I'm sure writers/critics besides the ones they quote have discussed the issue as well. -The Tempest itself causes an inferno = Foreblaze, as the storm specifically sets the ship on fire and terrifies the crew and passengers, most of them leaping into the sea. -Ariel = Limstella. Limstella is Nergal's favorite morph, the most beautiful, and wields fimbulvetr, a magic that precedes ragnarok - the final battle in Norse myths. In FE7, Limstella comes right before the final battle and right before the player obtains Athos and Foreblaze and the fire dragons threaten to destroy the world (though Kishuna's gaiden chapter constitutes an interruption between Limstella's chapter and Athos's entrance as playable...give me a break here). The significance of Foreblaze in this investigation is that Ragnarok ends in fire. -Kishuna = Caliban, Kishuna is the first attempt Nergal makes at creating a human while in the Tempest, is the only human (I think the play does identify Caliban as a human when it states that he was the sole prior inhabitant) to inhabit the island before Prospero and Miranda land there (and after his mother passes away). Kishuna IS I suppose more threatening than Caliban to Nergal specifically insofar as he has the magic deadening field. -Eliwood and Ninian = Ferdinand and Miranda. Miranda doesn't know anything about her past, btw, while Ninian can't bring herself to tell Eliwood her secrets until after they're revealed and she's gone from the story til the end of the game. Elbert is Alonso. Not sure if anyone qualifies as Prospero's brother - maybe Athos, just that what Athos did was much more justified. -No one in FE7 but pirates are willing to travel to the Dread Isle, in the Tempest, one of the characters says he'd give up the entire ocean for a tiny plot of land (because he's worried he's going to drown in the storm). -Athos isn't as strongly inspired by Prospero insofar as he doesn't have a backstory where he was betrayed or a family to attend to, and there isn't a hint of corruption in his use of magic (besides corruption like saying that he's potentially weaker than he used to be?). But in the epilogue of the play, Prospero says "all the strength that is left is my own, which isn't much" (paraphrasing), saying he relies on the audience to free him because he doesn't have any magic to command, while Athos says "looks like I've exhausted all my strength." Athos doesn't return to the mainland, he dies in a foreign land (but according to his ending finds true peace), while over the duration of The Tempest Prospero lives in a Foreign Land and finally gets to return home at the very end. -Gonzalo is in the Tempest and Gonzalez is in Fe6, there has to be some kind of connection. -I just noticed that Hector calls Eliwood "ninny," I bet that is totally a reference to Eliwood and Ninian becoming one. I know most of these connections are somewhat negative, but they're negative enough and frequent enough in their inversion that they constitute inspiration. Edited February 14, 2023 by Original Alear Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magically Inclined Dunmer Posted August 1, 2023 Share Posted August 1, 2023 On 12/10/2022 at 9:27 PM, General Banzai said: The infusion of Maeda's fresh ideas paved the way for better writers to refine his ideas and craft stronger narratives than could have ever existed in a Kaga game. Tear Ring Saga disagrees. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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