Ten Tips To Improve Fire Emblem # 6 - Fixing The Formula

                       Something I’ve noticed a lot recently is the abundance of Fire Emblem fans who only judge a Fire Emblem game based off its gameplay and nothing else. The reason for this point of view? None of the Fire Emblem games have a good story. I personally don’t agree with this viewpoint and it saddens me a little bit that people think this way. Unfortunately I can understand where these people are coming from.. I can only think of four Fire Emblem games whose stories I either loved or found some measure of enjoyment in: Holy War (FE 4), Path of Radiance (FE 9), Radiant Dawn (FE 10) and Blazing Sword (FE 7).  The rest of the games in the series either have poorly written stories (like Awakening) or their stories are straight-up boring (Binding Blade and the Marth games). Since this apparently is a huge issue among most games I thought it would be best to analyze where they go wrong and how we can fix the problem.

               One of the biggest problems to the stories of most Fire Emblem games revolves around the fact that they all adhere to the same formula. The formula works along the lines of this:

• The bad guy nation invades the good guy nation. If it’s not a nation then it’s bandits. Either way the bad guys always make the first move and attack the good guys.

• Either the good guy nation gets completely wrecked and the main character has to flee or the repelled invasion spurs the good guys into action.

• The protagonist seeks aid from allied nations in order to help them deal with the Big, Bad  Evil Empire. If it’s not an empire it’s usually a really powerful country hell-bent on world domination.

• Political machinations ensue, but the good guys press on gallivanting around the world weakening the enemy's hold, learning more about the mythology of their world and collecting their games’ regalia.

• Despite getting major victories over the bad guys, the Big Bad Evil Villain, usually a dragon or a deity (but it can also be a creepy dark magic wielding old dude), is about to enact their EVIL plan or else everybody’s screwed. Our main heroes barely defeat the Big, Bad and they all live happily ever after…..THE END! 
  
  
  

                        Now obviously, not every aspect of this formula gets followed to a T in every single game, but this pattern is prevalent throughout most of the games in the series. The games with the best stories either execute this concept really well (the Tellius games) or they tweak it in interesting ways (Holy War and Blazing Sword) but for the most part they all follow this formula. A huge factor in the quality of a game’s story revolves around the characters, but since there’s so much that can be said on this topic I’ve decided to reserve the topic of improving the characterization of the game's’ characters to a later post. Naturally one wonders how we can improve the stories of our beloved franchise. I have a few thoughts on the matter:

                Go the Game of Thrones route: So a lot of the suggestions that I’ve thought about can be summed up nicely with the phrase “be more like Game of Thrones”. Obviously this does not mean that we should copy / paste the story nor does it mean that we need to copy everything from Game of Thrones, but I do think that future Fire Emblem games can learn from what the show / books get right and can try to emulate that. For example….

             - Increase the focus on politics rather than the supernatural: Holy War has the biggest emphasis on politics in its story and it works to the game’s benefit. Political machinations make it easy to create intricate conflicts and complex situations that would make the stories of these games more interesting. If politics became the main crux of the story it would be easier to create more morally gray characters (this will be something I will discuss in more depth when I talk about improving the characters and characterization of future Fire Emblem games). An increased focus on politics could also help sell the medieval feel of the game’s world. This is something that Holy War did very well in my opinion and it worked to the game’s benefit.

                         -  Get Dark: Darker stories may not be automatically better than stories that aren’t dark, but they do carry an inherent set of advantages that would work in Fire Emblem’s benefit. For example, dark stories are not afraid of killing off the main character. This can shock or betray the player’s expectations since we’ve all caught on to the fact that the main characters are usually the most likely to survive in their stories. You don’t have to kill off the main character per se, but I personally believe that a portion of the characters in the player’s army, or characters that are on the good guy’s side, should be killed off. Fire Emblem is a game about war and in real life there are usually casualties on both sides whenever a war is being fought. The point here is that the player needs to feel a real sense of tension and suspense about these characters. If the player gets a general feeling that the main character is always going to win or survive no matter what dangerous situation the game puts them in then something very wrong is being done.

                Another way to get dark is to not have a happy ending. Maybe the villain wins after all, maybe the ending is a bittersweet one or maybe you could do something similar to what Inception does and leave the ending open to the interpretation of the player.

             Another idea is to actually have adult themes in the story. I know the word ‘adult’ in this context has come to mean more graphic violence and gratuitous sex scenes but when I say ‘adult’ I mean actually covering themes that are intended for an older audience and then portraying them in a tasteful manner. You don’t need blood or sex to make something appeal to an older audience, you just need the right subject matter and it all comes down to how you portray it too.                   

• Let the main character experience hardship and failure: One of the many reasons why the stories in the Marth games are profoundly boring has to do with the fact that Marth rarely experiences hardship and failure. Sure he gets exiled to Talys, but that happened before the game’s story officially begins. The story of Fire Emblem 1 and its remakes revolves around Marth moving from country to country steamrolling over bad guys without ever losing a fight. In addition to being completely unrealistic, that’s a really boring story. Fire Emblem 3 & 12 do a slightly better job in this area, but despite getting his homeland wrecked again, Marth doesn’t really get held back from this defeat and he still continues to steamroll Hardin and all the bad guys that oppose him. Sadly, the story of the second generation in Holy War does this as well, although it’s a little more warranted in context. Binding Blade also goes this route too, to the detriment of the game.

                                A good example of a story that illustrates what I’m talking about is Thracia 776’s story. I won’t spoil anything for those who haven’t played the game, but basically Leif and co. have it much harder than the majority of the other protagonists in the series. For starters there are a good chunk of chapters where Leif and co. are all running for their lives as the Grandbell Empire relentlessly chases after them. Leif makes a huge strategical error toward the end of the game and he has to suffer the consequences. There’s also a point earlier in the game where the bad guys get the upper hand on Leif in a pretty major way and the player has to deal with it.

                         Do not let the main character win every fight. If they do, they become perfect and unrelatable and you don’t want that. Also, let the main character make mistakes that have actual consequences. Even when the good guys win when they need to earn their victories. This will make the character’s triumphs more memorable and the player will feel a greater sense of satisfaction as well as they experience the story.

                

• Make the fantasy world more diverse: Ever notice how most countries in Fire Emblem tend to be a generic quasi-European country and somewhat similar? Well, one way to set the game’s story apart is to have a diverse world of different cultures and nations. Why not have a country based on the Persian Empire? Or the Ottoman Empire? Or just some country from that region of the world? How about making a country similar to the Aztec Empire? Fates already made a nation based off of feudal Japan so why not next have a country based off of China, Thailand or Korea? Or heck, instead of one country why not have a whole continent based off of a non-Europe continent?

                        I’m not saying that basing a country off of medieval Europe is inherently bad, but my point is that Fire Emblem games need to branch out and try something different. If you do want to make a country look European that’s fine, but base it off of an actual specific European country instead. Create a country like the Holy Roman Empire or Spain or the Italian states, or creating a country based off of the Polish–Lithuanian

Commonwealth?  The point is, there’s a ton of things you could do to spice up the world-building. Heck, why not make a female led / female dominated country? That would be cool and different.

                     Other ideas include giving each country a different governmental structure rather than making them all monarchies, actually giving a diverse selection of religions or philosophies that these people adhere to, different customs, different cultures, different “war orthodoxies” (Realm of Ascension is the poster child for this. Ask Daniel Robert Payne for more details on this brilliant idea) different foods that they eat, different economies, different climates, etc. The more details you can add the more immersive and lifelike the world will feel.  

                      Also, make sure there are more than just two or three different countries in the game’s world. Fates kind of gets away with it because of the interesting things it’s doing (although I still want to see more world-building though) but what’s Gaiden’s excuse? No matter how much different the two countries are, it’s a lot harder to have interesting world-building with just two different countries. Some of you may be saying that previous Fire Emblem games have done these things, but there’s always room for improvement.

• Get rid of My Unit: My Unit may be a popular idea among the general Fire Emblem fanbase, but from a story standpoint they all suck. Not a single game has benefited from the presence of My Unit. In fact, all three of them have suffered because they had My Units in them. That’s right, I said all three. Everybody who has played Fates have pretty much all stated that Corrin is a terrible main character and that he / she drags the story down. Fire Emblem 12 had to invent a new sub-plot just to give Chris something to do because Chris is literally inserted into a story that didn’t originally have him / her in the plot. Robin is implemented better into the story of Awakening than Chris was in 12, but even then Robin tends to drag the story down with him / her.

                   My Units are all textbook examples of Mary Sues, they’re bland, boring, perfect, unrelatable and their presence reduces the cast into fetish fuel in the games where the marriage system is available. I have personally never felt that any of them actually represented me in either 12 or 13. Considering the fact that Corrin is considered to be worse than Robin by people who have beaten Fates I am bracing myself for impact when Fates comes out.          

                Chris and Robin stole the spotlight from Marth and Chrom and it felt like Marth and Chrom’s characters got shafted in order to make the My Units look good. Too much of Fire Emblems 12 & 13 revolve around My Unit worship and in the case of Fates it has been said that a large percentage of the cast are too “Corrin-centric”. Some of the character’s personalities (based on what I’ve read of their descriptions) seem a little too defined by Corrin. Takumi doesn’t trust Corrin, Camila is super protective of Corrin and nobody else.  By getting rid of My Unit, Fire Emblem can go back to having main characters with defined personalities that hopefully will not get worshiped by the entire cast.

                   This list is by no means comprehensive, but hopefully these ideas can help improve the stories of future releases. Of course, you can’t have a good story without good characters which is why I intend to talk about that next.