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In this piece: How does the Fire Emblem series underutilize its colorful characters? Drawing on the author Samuel Delany's discussion on characterization, Mashiyat Zaman considers how Fire Emblem's eclectic cast could better distinguish themselves in plot.
An Abundance of Ests: Archetypes in Fire Emblem
Each installment of the tactical RPG Fire Emblem reliably follows the same formula: lead a small army of soldiers, who each have their own strengths and weaknesses, against hordes of enemies through turn-based combat over the course of a few dozen grid-like maps. Most of your 30-40 allies join you as the game progresses, but others may only join upon meeting certain conditions, which could be as simple as speaking with them on the battlefield, or as contrived as landing on a specific spot on the map with the right character. While not every character serves a prominent role in the plot, their conversations and decisions throughout help illustrate a story filled with love, magic, and political drama.
Last summer's record-breaking release of Fire Emblem: Three Houses brought the franchise's cast of playable characters to a staggering list of 596 heroes. Observing that some characters have similar roles in their respective games, Polygon's Brian David Gilbert attempts to sort every single one into a set of tropes à la the commedia dell'arte, an early form of Italian theater featuring recurring characters. But through his constant reshuffling of names and categories over the course of a fifteen-minute video, he suggests that even these tropes have few differences between them.
Fans have long since proposed character archetypes based on gameplay elements such as when and how the character is recruited, their strengths and specializations, or their performance in battle. Intriguingly, these details tend to pair with personality traits, too. For example, the Est archetype joins late in the game as a relatively weak combatant but can quickly become among the most powerful in your army. In the story, she also tends to be a cheerful prodigy, coddled because of her inexperience in war.
From left to right: The namesake of the Est archetype herself, the Pegasus knight Est (Shadows of Valentia), and her spiritual successors Nino (Blazing Blade) and Ewan (Sacred Stones). Intriguingly, "Est" characters tend to be young mages unlike their predecessor. (Images: Fire Emblem Wiki)
But these 29 archetypes leave out over 300 members of the roster, spurring Gilbert to combine categories and create others. He combines the Est, Julian, and Kliff archetypes into a single group of characters who become capable fighters after some investment; he makes the franchise's protagonists their own archetype, given their heroism and inoffensiveness as the player's in-game proxy. Eventually, he fits all 596 characters into 45 categories, which he distills until just thirteen are left.
Still unsatisfied, however, Gilbert condenses these tropes even further. Through a montage of pushpins on fabric and frantic outbursts (i.e., "Don't even get me started on Oboro – I don't know who that is!"), he produces his ultimate list: a single category titled, Anime Character With a Singular Personality Trait and a Penchant for Violence. "Which proves," he concludes, somewhat on edge, "that the Fire Emblem characters are all essentially the same, and that you cannot differentiate them!"
In his series Unraveled, Brian David Gilbert shows us how we can(not) tell apart all 596 Fire Emblem characters.
Psychological Veracity & Action in Fire Emblem: Blazing Blade
We can spend hours picking out the details that make each character in the series compelling, but having a transparent or uncomplicated personality doesn't necessarily mean that they are uninteresting in the first place. Moreover, in a game with such a large cast, characters with familiar traits are more accessible to players as they don't demand as much exposition. Nevertheless, Gilbert's (lighthearted) criticism is clear —most of these characters, however dear to us, are easy to overlook because of how similar they are to others. I'd like to suggest that their lack of distinction is not an issue with the characters themselves, but rather with plots that do not push them into making unique decisions.
The writer and literary critic Samuel R. Delany describes two components of characterization in fiction: psychological veracity and action. Psychological veracity is how well new information about a character is congruent with what the reader (or player) already knows about them. According to Delany, "Any two facts clustered around a single pronoun begin to generate a character in the reader's mind," and all subsequent information "exists in the gap between these two facts." When tension arises between new information and our sense of psychological veracity, we need context and further explanation, which should move the story in turn.
Action is what the character does to maintain our sense of psychological veracity, especially when prompted by things outside them. Delany considers three types of actions that make a character seem more real: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. For a character to demonstrate these actions, the writer must expose them to different situations and "give [them] space enough to react in a way both individual and within the limits of psychological veracity." Delany observes that to keep the story's momentum, writers may forget to include such opportunities for their characters.
An uncomplicated or predictable character is not incomplete. By design, they require less context to fulfill our sense of psychological veracity. However, without a story that engages their experiences or pushes them into novel situations, they struggle to make any decisions that let them stand out, which happens to be the fate of many Fire Emblem characters, including protagonists.
“Any two facts clustered around a single pronoun begin to generate a character in the reader’s mind...All subsequent information about our character has to be more or less congruent with what already exists in the gap between these two facts.”– Excerpt from Samuel R. Delany, "About Writing."
Take Lyn, one of the three protagonists of Fire Emblem: Blazing Blade (2003), the seventh entry in the series. Between the beginning and end of the game, we see a drastic shift in the level of her characterization through her relationship with the plot. Lyn is the main character of the game's first arc, in which she rescues her ill grandfather, the marquess of Caelin, from a usurper threatened by her birthright. When the player character, a wandering tactician, first meets her, all we can gather is that she's a young woman living in the plains of Sacae. She proves to be skilled in battle and suggests joining us in our travels. But when asked to let her parents know, she explains that bandits had killed them and the rest of her tribe. With their deaths still fresh in her mind, she vows to avenge them and insists that she will not become stronger alone, thus beginning her journey.
Parental death and revenge in the Fire Emblem series are as tragic as they are common, but both Lyn's pride in her heritage and loneliness since her loss inspire key moments throughout the story. When a marquess offering aid and assistance denigrates Lyn's tribal heritage, she outright refuses his help. When she finally meets her bedridden grandfather, the two are brought to tears as they realize that they still have family. These encounters show us that throughout her journey, Lyn overcomes the obstacles placed before her as a Sacaean, and moves on from the heartbreak she has suffered since her family's death. That is, the context we learn about Lyn weaves seamlessly into her adventure, rather than being exposition that we experience in vacuum.
From left to right: Lyn brings the player to her home after finding them unconscious in the plains. She shares a heartfelt reunion with her grandfather the marquess of Caelin after defeating the usurper Lundgren. After taking on responsibilities at the castle as her grandfather's heir, she stares wistfully at the home in the distant plains. (Images: Fire Emblem: Blazing Blade)
Beginning in the game's second arc, however, Lyn takes a backseat to her fellow protagonists Eliwood and Hector. After Eliwood and Hector help Lyn capture Castle Caelin and rescue her grandfather once again, she and her companions join their army to help Eliwood find his father. While her willingness to help others does not necessarily violate our sense of psychological veracity, her decision to leave behind her only family undermines the vision we had built, especially after we spent the first few hours of the game fighting alongside her to reach him. Without properly reflecting her experiences into the story, Lyn's motivation begins to feel vague — we're all but told to accept that she will unquestioningly lend her help, even to a pair of noblemen she barely knows.
This lack of clarity persists to the end. When fighting the game's penultimate villain, she says, "The nomads of the plains do not abandon their fellow tribespeople. Eliwood and Hector are my dear friends. Their sorrow is my sorrow. Their anger is my anger." It's not surprising that over the course of their travels the three protagonists became close enough for Lyn to consider them like family. However, we never understand why Lyn had set out on this journey in the first place, before she could consider Eliwood and Hector her friends. At this point, the gap between Lyn and the story has long been overlooked, creating what Delany might call "a fine and exciting tale moving around a [Lyn]-shaped hole." As Lyn seems to act on behalf of her companions' feelings instead of her own, she is also missing the space to react in a way that is individual. The result is a character who, despite her promising introduction, is overshadowed by the grander ambitions of her male companions.
Throughout her journey, Lyn is able to enjoy lighthearted moments with her friends. From left to right: Lyn's ragtag group of companions officially name themselves "Lyndis's Legions." She watches as Hector forcefully offers the young bard Nils a ride on his shoulders. She, Eliwood, and Hector enjoy a breath of fresh air after their last battle. (Images: Fire Emblem: Blazing Blade)
Filling in the Holes at Garreg Mach
How do we craft a story that integrates its characters without creating "Lyn-shaped holes"? More importantly, does the genre and Fire Emblem's tried-and-tested formula even allow for it? Delany remarks that the more the plot drives characterization and vice versa, the longer the work becomes. "This is what writers mean when they say characters can run away with the story," he explains. In the case of video games, only so much writing may fit before it becomes detrimental to the experience of gameplay itself. The typical Fire Emblem game not only relies on dialogue to convey information, but also has at least thirty characters to consider, many of whom will not receive the same amount of opportunities to speak as its protagonists.
Fire Emblem presents the support mechanic as a potential solution. "Supports" are optional conversations between pairs of characters accessed by improving their relationship, usually ranked C to A. The mechanic has become better integrated with gameplay over time, especially as of Three Houses, making these conversations easier to unlock. However, they tend to be unconnected to concurrent events in the story and could even feel inappropriate or anachronistic depending on when they occur. Nevertheless, they can provide insight into a character's background by placing them in unique scenarios with others. But occasionally they feel gratuitous.
Most of Raphael's support conversations have something to do with his love of eating. (Screenshot: Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
For example, in Three Houses, the jolly Raphael spends half of his conversations with his allies either eating or training, which is the same way he is introduced in the beginning of the game. Similarly, Bernadetta apologizes profusely or runs away in fright; Sylvain flirts, unless he is rebuked for already having done so; Linhardt falls asleep; and so on. Far from confronting these characters with a variety of new situations, most supports reinforce what we have already seen. These conversations maintain our sense of psychological veracity, but without exploring that space further, they also struggle to leave a memorable impression of either character involved.
Therefore, simply adding more dialogue does not necessarily amount to better characterization. When it fails to take account of the character's already established identity, it can make them difficult to read, as was the case for Lyn in the second arc of Blazing Blade. But when it forces the character to repeatedly partake in the same behavior, it makes them overly predictable, like in the support conversations of Three Houses.
Sharing a meal with your companions at Garreg Mach gives us a glimpse into their everyday lives. Their comments may change depending on both the food and their company. (Screenshot: Nintendo Switch)
But Three Houses suggests another promising solution for improving characterization through the Garreg Mach Monastery, the player's base of operations. In Garreg Mach, characters might confide in the player about the story's events and respond positively or negatively depending on the player's dialogue choice. They will typically spend time where they are most comfortable – Raphael is often in the mess hall, Bernadetta holed up in her room, and Lindhardt in the library. They can participate in activities together, ranging from training to sharing meals. They will also accept gifts, many that are specific to their interests.
Through these diverse contexts, we catch a glimpse of each character's purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous behaviors in a way we never could in earlier entries. However, the activities themselves rarely feel connected to the story, even less so than supports, and amount to no more than a line or two of conversation. They mostly serve as colorful coating for the player's mundane resource management tasks at the base. But perhaps if they also reflected the events taking place in-game, we would have some intriguing insights into how, for example, a war-weary army would respond to pastimes like fishing and gardening.
To More Maps and Drama
The support mechanic and a Garreg Mach-like home base can provide Fire Emblem's characters spaces to express themselves as they are. Unconnected to the events of story, however, they can feel more like fan service, meant to amuse or distract, than opportunities to portray a character who lives and breathes in this world. But the sheer size of Three Houses, with enough content across its multiple storylines to last hundreds of hours, suggests that a lack of space isn't the problem that it once was. Perhaps adding more content – from personal quests, to entire story arcs, to standalone campaigns like the Cindered Shadows DLC – is still a valid way of giving agency to dozens of characters. According to Delaney, it would mean turning a short story into a novel, and between the two, Fire Emblem is most certainly a novel.
Whether we will get to see such ambitious storytelling, however, or enhancements to other mechanics in future installments is really anyone's guess. Not even director of Three Houses Toshiyuki Kusakihara seems to know, as he explains in an interview, "When we develop the game, we just strive to make it something beyond what people can imagine." But no matter how adventurous the Intelligent Systems team gets, we can probably count on a few things staying the same – map-based battle, a roster of 30-40 mostly teenaged heroes, brightly-colored hair, and parental death, just to name a few.
A lot of characters. Can you name them all? Source
Three Houses succeeds at making us wish we could spend more time with the students of Garreg Mach. The game's worldwide success, from its critical acclaim to the fandom it inspired, begs the question of whether stronger characterization matters. If anything, it doesn't hurt — but at best it will bring the franchise to even greater heights.
Mashiyat Zaman is a Tokyo-based machine learning engineer and member of The Centre for Environmental and Minority Policy Studies. He received his BA from Amherst College, where he studied physics, astronomy, and Japan studies. He wrote his thesis on the use of genre as a character-defining tool in the anime Cowboy Bebop.
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