Ten Tips to Improve Fire Emblem # 7 - Fixing the Formula Part 2 - Fixing the Characters

Crispin Freeman (the voice actor of Alucard from Hellsing & Hellsing Ultimate) once said in an interview,

                    “A lot of people want to think about plot and character as if they are two independent things, but they’re not. Character is revealed through plot. Your character doesn’t have a personality until we see them in action and a plot can’t move forward without characters. Nothing can happen unless there’s someone there to do something.”

                    Characters are crucial to the plot so naturally if we want to fix the story we need to fix the characters. One of the problems that Fire Emblem games run into is the fact that there are so many darn characters in each of their games. Fire Emblem games average between 40 - 70 characters. It’s easy to develop a cast of 4 or 5 main characters in a game, but developing a cast of 40 characters would be a Herculean effort that would require insane amounts of time and energy. Most Fire Emblem characters are not complex. In fact, in the few games that actually bother to create a good story a character will have a small handful of personality traits and maybe a gimmick or two and that will be it.

                   Personally I am a huge believer that Fire Emblem can do better. The fact of the matter is that every Fire Emblem fan (including myself) all have their list of favorite characters that they enjoy. These characters make the game more enjoyable for us and help us get attached to each of the games so it would be in our best efforts to make improvements on these characters. So how do we go about doing that?

• Make the cast more morally ambiguous: Moral ambiguity is something that Fire Emblem would do well to make a bigger priority of. Don’t make the hero the perfect paragon of virtue and holiness. Give them flaws that have real consequences throughout the story, let them actually make mistakes like I mentioned in my previous post.

                      Moral ambiguity also needs to apply to the villain as well. The villain should have a more compelling motivation than world domination. We’ve seen world domination a billion times before, try something new for a change. Give the villain valid points. One idea would be to have the villain try to solve some major social inequality but they’re doing it in an extremist manner. You could try what Fates is trying to do and create a major moral dilemma. That would be interesting. 

                  Since we’re on this topic, don’t make the villain appear too obviously evil. Take Garon’s picture for example. Does anyone actually believe that this guy is a conflicted, tormented individual? I seriously doubt that. You can look at Garon and his design pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this character, which in my opinion is a very bad thing. So by painting shades of gray on both the hero and the villain you can make more compelling conflicts in future releases that will actually keep the player hooked into your story.

• How to fix the main character: Ever notice how each main character tends to follow a certain pattern in almost every game?
  
  

• They usually have blue hair. Obviously not all of them have blue hair, but the vast majority of them do.
• They wield a sword.
• They’re either a prince or a nobleman.
• They’re usually teenagers.
• A sad chunk of them don’t have compelling personalities.

                    Since the main character drives the plot of each game it would be in our best interest to make the main character more interesting. Fortunately, all of the previous things mentioned above can be easily remedied.

• Don’t give the main character blue hair anymore. Why not have a character with blond or black hair? We haven’t seen a protagonist with that before.

• Have them start the game with a weapon that they don’t normally wield, or a weapon that at least doesn’t get used a lot by other lords. If you have your main character wield a sword don’t make them sword-locked. Have them use swords in addition to a weapon type that’s never been used before. Case and point: Corrin in Fates.

• Make this main character come from a different walk of life. So far we only have one main character (Ike) who isn’t a nobleman. There are a lot of different things you could make your main character: A dangerous outlaw, a high ranking member of their country’s military, a member of a secret society, a religious leader, an apprentice to a knight or wealthy gentleman (a.k.a. someone like Finn from the Jugdral games), etc. There are a lot of different things you could do that would make the game interesting. You don’t have to make the main character nobility or royalty.

• Make the main character older. Have this character be in their 20’s, that would be cool. Having an older main character (and an older cast in general) would make the game a little more believable too. It would also give room for interesting backstories since the characters will have lived for a longer period of time.

• As far as compelling personalities go there’s a lot of things you could do here: Flaws, weaknesses, conflicts and struggles are critical here. You could have a main character with a bigger focus on intelligence and strategy rather than on brawn. In fact, I think making a main character like Lelouch from Code Geass would be perfect for a Fire Emblem setting. Someone who’s a clear cut anti-hero who fights dirty for a good cause and who’s wicked intelligent would make for a very compelling game. 
  
  
  
  
  

                     Another major idea is to have a game with a solo female lead character. Sure we have the My Unit characters, but a solo female lead (meaning that she doesn’t share the spotlight with a male main character) would be a way to make the game more different from all the other ones.

• Fixing Support Conversations: So the main way in which Fire Emblem characterizes its cast is through the support system. Some games do this well, others not so much. If I had to pick a game that I could use as my main example of how to do supports correctly I would definitely pick Path of Radiance. Why? Well, support conversations aren’t hard to get, unlike the GBA games, the supports themselves are pretty good at revealing the character’s personalities and backstories and in some cases they give meaningful boosts to a character’s stats. So how do we make good support conversations?

• Limit them: With supports less is more. Every Fire Emblem game that allowed every character in the game to support one another have suffered for it. The characterization isn’t as good because there are way too many scripts that you have to write. By contrast, limiting the supports gives room for more variety.

• Give characters multiple traits: One of the best critiques that most people have is the fact that so many characters have 1 or 2 traits and that’s all there is to them. So the best way to solve this problem is to give characters more personality traits and to let them experience the full gamut of emotions. Let them feel anger, fear, happiness, joy, frustration, etc. This will help them to feel more human. Also, give them more than one hobby or interest too. Have each support highlight and focus on a different attribute. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Backstories: Give a lot of your characters a fleshed out backstory. It makes the characters more interesting and it will give the player a greater desire to learn more about them. Good examples of this are Renault and Legault. 
  
  

                             Before I end I would like to point out that there are a ton of different ways to make compelling characters. The sky's the limit and it is up to the imagination and talent of the writer to make better characters. I believe that by making better characters we will have better Fire Emblem games since it would add extra tension on the player’s part to keep these characters alive.