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.

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.

Some Extra Thoughts on Encouraging Teamwork

                          So after I wrote my last post about teamwork I felt like I had forgotten to add a few points so this point is here to cover the last remaining points that I wanted to make regarding teamwork.

• Increase the number of sub-objectives in a map: If a map has multiple objectives that require the player to move in multiple directions simultaneously that would definitely encourage team work because no matter how powerful your Jeigan archetype is they could only move in one direction and they couldn't be everywhere at once. The final level of Thracia 776 is a perfect example of an anti low manning level. You have multiple tiles throughout the entire level that you need to have one unit stand on. There are 6 tiles throughout the map and you have to stand on all 6 of them before the final boss's dungeon opens up. The map is big enough to where you have to use multiple units at a time and if you want to beat the map fast you have to use whoever is positioned on the side of the map that you have positioned there. It's a great example of the type of map that we need more of in future Fire Emblem games.

• Create an "item capacity" system: You want to know why Seliph is considered to be as powerful as he currently is? It's because the most optimal strategy in the second generation of Fe 4 is to stuff him with as many items and weapons that you can so that he can be uber powerful as quickly as possible. This really bugs me even to this day. If the optimal strategy is to give all your weapons and items to one unit and let them wreck everything then I think there's a major problem.

                   My solution to this problem is to create something like an "item capacity" system. Remember how in the Tellius games there's a skill capacity system? I would like for something like that to happen to items as well. The two most important items you can give to Seliph are the Leg Ring and the Paragon Ring. Now what if you could only pick one of them to give to him? Or maybe you could pick one of them OR have two stat-booster rings instead? This would cause more of a thought process on the part of the player and would require them to distribute the resources among the army, as opposed to giving everything to one unit and letting them solo the game. 

• Tamper with unit availability: So this is probably going to be the least popular idea I present here, but this is something that I've thought about and I want to see what you guys think. Imagine having a Fire Emblem game that decides to go the Game of Thrones route and will unpredictably kill off a player's character. You get no warning and you can't look this up on serenesforest.net or on any other Internet guide / walkthrough. Not only would this be shocking to the player, it could also heavily discourage low-manning. I mean, imagine trying to do a Robin solo in Awakening and all of a sudden the story killed off Robin. Suddenly, your Robin solo just got screwed over and you have to rely on the other units in your army. Some people may argue that this is unfair or it's too punishing, but then again if this aspect was advertised before the game came out and the player knew what to expect I think it wouldn't be as bad. Ideally, it would encourage the player to use multiple units because that way if one unit dies you still have plenty of other characters to fall back on. 

                               Even if you don't use this particular method you could try something like what Radiant Dawn did and split the player's army up into multiple different groups. This would be a lot harder to pull off, but again you would be forced to use multiple different units at a time and it would make soloing impossible to pull off.

                    I could see why someone wouldn't like the last point, but I believe that it's worth at least looking into and exploring.