Welcome to the cKotch.Com blog. I’m Christopher Kotcher, and this is my second post for cKotch.Com’s special Videogame Month, all about games which have inspired my writing. This is a series I never thought I’d call one of my favorites.
Early to the System, Late to the Game
I have been a big Nintendo fan for a long time. Since the original Wii, I tend to grab their game systems on launch day. This included the Nintendo 3DS system.
Nintendo’s glasses-free 3D handheld gave me some good experiences right away. Few others were so excited with the system.
High prices and weird launch games led to few early adopters. Nintendo was pushed to give the 3DS a massive price cut after only a few months.
Normally, this would have annoyed me, but Nintendo decided to be considerate.
They created the Ambassador Program.
Those who bought a 3DS for the original price could download twenty classic games for free.
I found a few old favorites, but the best experience came from something new.
Fire Emblem, Nintendo’s strategic role-playing series once exclusive to Japan.
I had heard about the series here and there. Now was my chance to try one for free.
And so, I downloaded the Gameboy Advance classic Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones.
An Unexpected Timesink
The game started with an introduction to the game’s world, the fictional continent of Magvel.
Long ago, Magvel had been plagued by an evil demon king. His power and soul remained sealed in the land’s sacred stones. One was placed in every historic nation of the continent.
The story proper began with the fall of Magvel’s Kingdom of Renais. The kingdom’s ally, the Grado Empire, suddenly invades.
The princess of Renais, Eirika escapes north with her father’s general Seth. Her twin brother Ephraim goes underground to wage rebellion against Grado.
Eirika is the early game’s main character. You help her gather allies, find her brother, and eventually retake Renais.
Then the siblings split again. Eirika goes to protect the sacred stones, and Ephraim moves to defeat Grado’s emperor, Vigarde.
All the while, suspicions emerge surrounding Vigarde’s son and the twins’ childhood friend Lyon. He is a powerful sorcerer who seems to know more than he should.
Eventually the siblings reunite. Things come together with a final fight against the demon king’s monstrous forces.
Gameplay made this standard fantasy story stand out.
Levels were battlefields. Characters belonged to different classes affecting movement and weaponry.
Paladins charged across battlefields with lances and swords. Generals used all kinds of weapons as they soaked up enemy attacks. Mages and archers provided needed ranged support.
Victory depended on stopping enemy leaders, defeating all enemies, or escaping massive ambushes.
Your lose condition? Losing your lord character, Eirika or Ephraim. They lead your armies after all.
But these are not the only losses which matter.
Any playable character who dies will stay dead.
Some plot important characters will get wounded so they can still do what they need to do outside of battles. But they will succumb to wounds before you can see their individual endings during the credits.
You build up these characters. They are your army. You see them form friendships and relationships with each other. The game is ready to rip them away from you at any moment.
I lost quite a few characters. The feeling always stung.
By game’s end, I would restart whole levels just to keep from losing anyone else. I even restarted a thirty-minute level to keep from losing my favorite mage.
Fated Fandom Awakens
My time with Fire Emblem did not end with Eirika and Ephraim. I had enjoyed the strategic adventure and wanted more.
Lucky for me, the 3DS would soon get a whole new Fire Emblem game.
Fire Emblem Awakening took me to the continent of Ylisse.
Now I had a customizable avatar character. He would be my eyes into the forces of the Ylissean prince Chrom.
Awakening had a less unified plot than Sacred Stones. The story covered several conflicts over several years. Still, I enjoyed it.
Relationships between characters were emphasized. They could even marry each other. Time travel shenanigans would even allow you to recruit their future kids to your forces.
It all just made the characters’ lives more worth preserving. Losing any one of them could mean losing a member of the next generation.
After Awakening, Fire Emblem’s popularity exploded. More games would come for it on the 3DS.
The next game Fire Emblem: Fates was split into three. The games starred a prince kidnapped and raised by an enemy nation. Each game was based on his decision to return to his birth kingdom, support his adoptive kingdom, or resolve the kingdoms’ conflicts neutrally.
The final 3DS game Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia featured two armies. One fights an evil emperor, and the other works to stop suffering. The army leaders are also childhood friends, and their entanglements lead to many great moments.
Spinoffs, mobile games, and guest appearances in other games also marked this time. Honestly, there was no better time for me to become a fan.
Echoes of Inspiration
No game series merges gameplay and plot quite like Fire Emblem.
Fire Emblem makes characters people care about. The developers have to be good at it when so much hinges on trying not to lose anyone.
Naturally, that can lead to some good lessons in characterization for my own writing. As always, some things work better for a game than a book, but many things can work for both. Even when the series may stumble with the odd character here or there I can still learn from the game’s mistakes.
The series also does a good job regarding theme, the series’ grandest theme being mortality.
You care for the characters because you can lose them. The series’ heroes are those willing to give their lives for their world. The series’ villains typically aim to achieve some form of immortality no matter the cost to the world.
The demon king from Sacred Stones is a good example. Every conflict in that game stems from his lingering spirit manipulating people and creating monsters. He inspires wars to destroy the nations which wield the only things that can stop his revival. He only loses because heroes risk everything to stop him.
All writers should wish to have such developed ideas underlying their work.
These lessons and more make Fire Emblem one of the most valued game series for me as a writer. I eagerly await its future on the Nintendo Switch system.
Kotcher’s Call to Action
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