Fire Emblem Awakening - The invisible ties

Fire Emblem is based on two important aspects: The abstraction of the epic narrative within the videogame language, portrayed through the grid system to accentuate the scope of the conflict; and the human component, reflected in the permanent death alongside the characterization of the soldiers to provide gravity and seriousness to the strategic elements, according to the series creator Shouzo Kaga. His intention was to make a dramatization of warfare conflict, reminiscent to the epics of yesteryear that as an enthusiast of war history interested him. That's why even the first game has a Greco-Roman aesthetic, and the narrative style felt impersonal to the secondary characters. The presence of the world, and the repercussions of the war in the community took precedence to magnify the imponence of the conflict. In essence, Kaga was a classicist. After his departure from Intelligent Systems, Kouhei Maeda would join, who as main writer and later director would define a turning point on the series development. Maeda's style contrasts with Kaga's for a bigger concern towards the human component, a fixation on bonds, and the inner feelings. Blazing Sword deals with cycles of bloodshed perpetuated by revenge. Sacred Stones has as its emotional center the acceptance of a lost friendship. Shadow Dragon portrays the protagonist under an openly emotional perspective. They're novellas in practical terms. A narrative form born as a rejection to the classical form. That's why when Fire Emblem saw itself threatened by cancellation and a culmination of its most potent elements as a farewell game was proposed, Maeda and his team would opt to amplify their understanding of the series on a mechanical level to reformulate the meaning of Kaga's simulation role-playing game system. No longer to dramatize wars but rather to illustrate the connection between individuals. This is the basis that Awakening starts from that gives it an unique value within the series, more than Fates or Shadows of Valentia, which merely exist to polish established mechanics.

According to Awakening, bonds are relationships forged through shared experiences, and they work as a source of strength. This is seen in how the narrative sets its main conflict in the bonds that the player's Avatar, Robin, has made with his allies, how this is broken by treason, and how these ties mean more than the preset role for the Avatar. Robin is vitally connected with the antagonist, Grima, who is a dragon whose soul has to live in the Avatar's body, which was created for this specific purpose. In the most revelatory speech of the game, Robin states that one isn't a pawn of a written fate, but rather what defines the individual are the invisible ties that unites them with others. In other words, one being defined by their social relationships, which leads him to confront his own nature and avoid a tragic fate.

What's interesting is how this topic isn't just covered narratively but also mechanically. Bonds as a source of strength was a subtext in the background that existed since the introduction of the support system in Mystery of the Emblem, and the support conversations in Binding Blade, which gave a negligible boost to nearby units once they gathered support points by positioning themselves adjacent to each other. In Awakening, since this is brought to the foreground, the importance of supports is emphasized. In contrast to the rescue system in previous games that penalized your stats to save allies from danger, here a similar system called Pair-Up represents a team combat, with a main unit and a secondary one that boosts the stats of the first one, and there's even a chance that the secondary unit also attacks an enemy, or protects the main unit by saving them from an attack. Most of these advantages are also present if units find themselves in adjacent squares. Basically, the mechanics represent allies sharing near-death experiences in warfare.

Bonds as a source is just the starting point. Initially, the support system, due to its subtextual nature, was hidden as an unintuitive secret. In the Game Boy Advance games, the units obtain support points if when finishing the turn they find themselves in adjacent squares, and after enough turns they could have conversations after which they were given boosts. Since Awakening has the bonds as the focal point of the experience, opts to make the conversations more accessible, giving points after each battle if the units are paired-up or adjacent, which is intuitive given the advantages it offers. The game has different support levels between units: C, B, A and even S that is marriage. That's how the support mechanics tell how near-death shared experiences strengthen the bonds, and that's how they develop as individuals, reflected through the evolution that they go through after the conversations. This evolution is also reflected on the battlefield: The higher is the support system, or better said, the stronger is the bond between two units, the more boosts they get, and thus they're more adept to fight against opponents. That's how they receive strength and are defined in the battlefield through the relationships.

These elements as a whole is how the theme is developed through the mechanics. This system works because it allows a closer perception of the theme: The difference that units have without the supports is so big that the player feels their absence by being considerably impotent and vulnerable against enemies. In the Lunatic difficulty, the enemy paramaters are so high that almost all allies receive double-attacks from the enemies, and they potentially die in one round of combat, which is a deficit that can only be compensated through the Pair-Up system. Additionally, the game opting for the grid system allows the player to perceive the spatial closeness between units. In turn-based Japanese role-playing games, duels tend to be impersonal and distanced due to the menus, which is why the team effort of the characters and their relationships can be portrayed merely through presentation, but in Awakening, the support between units is better felt thanks to the potential teamwork to eliminate opponents from different sides, by being on the same square or being adjacent thanks to the Pair-Up system.

With this in mind, Awakening appears to be a mechanically coherent game with its theme, since the interactive premise and mechanics reinforce the point of its narrative. Thus, when the game expresses its deals through explicit narrative, these aren't so empty given that they work within the laws of the game. Awakening is in this way the first Fire Emblem since 1999 so devote to what it intends to communicate. However, even with all of this, there are two incongruities so enormous that they end up ruining the intent.

In Kaga's games, the warfare conflict was accentuated by the construction of the scenary and the mechanics that were alongside the game. Genealogy of the Holy War was a generational epic, reinforced by a marriage system to give consequence to the parents' decisions in the children's performance, and how the game opens space to enormous fields to provide anticipation to upcoming battles and give a sense of place and cohesiveness to the world. It's a war on a grand scale through the whole continent, and the maps are interconnected to each other to perceive the position and the progress of the campaign. In Thracia 776, the conflict consists on an exiled prince reclaiming the throne taken from his parents, and the aimed feeling is vulnerability by exile due to the lack of resources that you obtain by capturing enemies, the fatigue system, the escape objectives, the indoors, closed maps alongside darkness as a way to portray disorientation, and even urgency by throwing enemy reinforcements who can prevent accomplishing the side objectives of the map.

Maeda never understood this. His novella-like stories don't fit in a structure conceived to accentuate the epic narrative, which is why there was a disconnection between his narrative intent and the gameplay, and this reduced the games to complete levels to see what happens in the plot. They just opt to be simulation role-playing games because they're called Fire Emblem. The plot forces the battles to justify the gameplay part, and the battles are simplified for them not to interfere instead of them amplifying the feelings, hence why they don't resonate for this contradiction. These problems are shared by Awakening, but since this concern for the bonds is now intertwined to the gameplay, the divergence increases by how they impact the game and turn it into a power fantasy. For example, even in Lunatic mode, the stats bonuses are so high that enemies can have issues to eliminate the player. The Avatar's Veteran skill to increase the experience points received during Pair-Up make one find themselves several levels ahead of the enemies. A Sorcerer with Nosferatu, especially the Avatar, is undefeatable with a partner that gives speed like Chrom by recovering with each attack, which removes every sense of danger.

Since a power fantasy is counterproductive to convey danger, the need of strategy and any drama that could arise around it is offset completely. This is exacerbated by the saturation of mechanics as a result of the enthusiasm for it being the last game, alongside the little work behind the map design, with levels uncapable of resisting the player. Awakening allows to obtain skills by leveling up, changing classes and resetting the level to repeat the process. The female Avatar with Chrom's support, Nosferatu and the Armsthrift skill to prevent weapons from wearing out of uses can clear Lunatic mode by herself in about an hour. Or many maps in the second half of the game are cleared in one turn if the Avatar has the skill Galeforce to move again after killing an enemy, and thus accomplishing the main objective of killing the boss. In contrast to the aforementioned predecessors, the level design doesn't express this emotional gravity, but rather works against it, since it suggests that tactics don't matter, but rather the stats, devaluing in this way the player's decisions. The presence of a world map where one can gain experience, potions to increase stats temporarily, high growth rates and the pair-up system reinforce this perception. The sense of conquering a war is lost, and it becomes merely surviving each isolated battle in a predictable and insignificant way, without fear of future consequences by knowing ahead that inflated stats are enough for victory.

A proposed solution tends to be to balance the Pair-Up system and make the map design more intrincate, but this leads to what happens to its immediate successor, Fire Emblem Fates. The game reutilizes that system even if its story of the dilemma between biological and adoptive family has nothing to do with Awakening's theme, and it opts to reduce bonuses to undermine its decisiveness under the excuse of polishing the system. This leads to a worse perception of the formed bonds: The game might be more challenging in theory, but if the difference is less decided by the relationships that the player forms, the sense of bonds as a source of strength that the mechanic wants to convey is lost, ending up in a system that fits less in for failing in its purpose. At least in Awakening, the Pair-Up system giving advantages over the enemy works in service of its interactive premise, even if it's counterproductive to the tactical elements.

Awakening's apologists would argue that this failure in warfare dramatization doesn't have a big repercussion in the communicative intent. However, these same aspects lead to the second problem. Due to this cumbersome design, the proposed vision is sentimental, because the concept of ties strengthening individuals loses maturity by turning the process in a power fantasy designed to the player's convenience. Alongside this, the story doesn't react to the loss of the player's units or their defeat more than a death line and the potential "Game Over" screen, which makes clear that the authors' assumption is that the player has been victorious without deaths. Basically, it perceives ties as a chain of benefits and nothing else, which is optimist, but it fails to capture the wide spectrum of the possibilities of relationships.

This implication is also reflected in how support conversations are developed. Maeda and his team are really bad at creating characters, trusting primarily in archetypes of Japanese animation of dubious quality as their most attractive trait. The clumsy girl, the timid girl, the unrequited lover, the crazy girl that would die for the protagonist, the dumb but good-hearted guy, etc., with a few lines that appeal to the feelings to justify their lack of depth. All of them can marry the Avatar regardless of the player's personality, and with few exceptions, all of them can get along or marry to each other. The only characters that don't have bonds are the enemies, which by the developers' own words, don't understand these concepts. These qualities make the game's perspective more childish. Awakening's defenders could argue that these problems are shared by previous games in the series, but it's irrelevant whether or not it's true. That Awakening, the game that consists the most out of them all on portraying the importance of bonds, ends up neglecting the quality of development in them in favor of being more easily accepted only degrades the value of the expression that the game reaches through its mechanics to mere optimism out of adolescent fiction, without a message or revelation.

This is a disappointment because in the context of the medium and outside of the insularity of the series, the introspection on how bonds are created or make us stronger has been already implemented, and with more nuance. Ico constructs an allegory with a couple of children helping each other to escape from a prison, alluding to the ties forged by the necessity of liberating of one's own jails. By reducing the player's flexibility when holding hands with their partner, the implication is that one is free without her, who can feel like a burden, but without the other, they can't escape from their prison. Left Behind turns the shooter-mechanics to capture moments of connection of two friends, thus portraying intimate moments that suggest the possibility of growing up in a hopeless world through bonds. These examples resonate due to the bitterness of their implications that gives beauty to the relationships between characters. By idealizing everything, Awakening doesn't.

Because of the incompatibility of both approaches, the mechanical decisions behind Awakening destroy their warfare simulation and nullify its strategic merits in favor of focusing on bonds as a key part of the experience. This would be forgivable given that its main point is conveyed coherently through interactivity, but the promise of connecting with the relationships is hampered by the repellent puerilitude of its authorial vision. Even if I don't think it's a good videogame anymore, Awakening is representative that Fire Emblem has potential for a great narrative and mechanics working in tandem, but they're dilluted by banal gratification or conservatism. This game is a victim of that, but at least it serves to prove the system's capability to convey different ideas with the game's own language, which in more talented hands, without corporative vices or maniacs at charge could be more potent in the future.

*SPOILERS*

Speaking of future, such hope on it is one that Awakening itself professes. By the end of the game, Robin has two options: Allowing Chrom to seal Grima, basically prolonging what's inevitable, or defeating them by themselves. Only they can eliminate Grima due to their connection, but this would cause their own death. In other words, a fear of the Avatar's identity being so tied to their origins is suggested. That if these origins disappear, everything is over for them. After the credits, Robin awakes in the field where they appeared at the beginning, with the brand of their origin nowhere to be seen, and the hope of reforming their turbulent life thanks to the opportunity that their friends give them. Awakening was going to be the last game in the series. Intelligent Systems could only make a farewell game, and it bet all on this one. Maybe the sentimentality is due to the hope of the game in this context? The longing for a better future? From the very beginning it was there. The hope to overcome the fate for the characters in the plot, and for Fire Emblem at the sight of their creators. In any case, the world gave another chance to the series, just like Robin got one, and I look forward to know what decision will take the developers: To stagnate and delay their disappearance, or to advance towards the future. I also want to hope.