Genealogy of the Holy War

Fire Emblem is a dramatization of warfare and conflict, where the graveness of the conflict is amplified by the permanent death, forcing the player to deal with loss, and the movement in grid in long maps with emphasis on terrain to enhance the sense of scale. These elements inevitably polarize audiences by not conforming to modern console videogame design, but the result of inducing a mental commitment with the maps is an involving quality of Fire Emblem. What the Fire Emblem creator Shouzo Kaga then decides for the fourth game, even with the risk of polarizing players even further, is to expand the size of the maps and to construct them analogically to the world so that the progress through the continent is directly perceivable by the player in order to magnify the dramatic scale of the conflict. The anticipation to the battle alongside the sense of distance while the days in war pass by.

This decision in its planning is part of what makes Genealogy of the Holy War a dedicated approach to Shouzo Kaga's vision of constructing a generational epic, which is present in every aspect of the game. It is present in its narrative structure, which dedicates the whole first half of the story to contextualize the actual heroic journey to provide the player first-hand experience of the background of the protagonist of the second half of the game, Seliph, to create a more powerful bond with the events. It is present in the sense of loss, which Kaga takes further than previous games by depriving the player of almost every character they have worked on due to a tragic event, and puts in contrast the strength of the protagonist of the first half, Sigurd, with Seliph's initial weakness to increase the vulnerability of starting over. It is even present in the notion that the actions of the parents have repercussions in the new generations, one of the main themes of the game, which is manifested by each decision, each weapon that the player uses, each item or monetary gain of each character, each relationship that they develop, and each stat gain per level up having an impact in the performance of their successors in the second half of the game thanks to the inheritance system of parents and offsprings, which can happen in both sides, since story-wise the main antagonists take advantage of this logic as well, which is the cause of the main conflict.

All of these elements are in service of a story whose emotional center is the family, an important theme in Shouzo Kaga's Fire Emblem games. The protagonist, Seliph, is a young man whose childhood was taken away from him when he was a baby by a tragedy, to the point that he has to live as a refugee alongside war orphans for being the son of a falsely accused traitor, and the main goal, beyond restoring peace, is to re-establish the honor of his family. The adults surrounding him put all their hopes in him, but this weight causes him fear to not live up to the expectations, to not live up to the image they have of his father. However, Seliph goes on because he sees that his actions bring joy to others. That is why the most emotional moment in the game comes after the death of the bastard who betrayed his father. After accomplishing his goal, Seliph meets the ghosts of his parents again, and acts as if he turned back into a small child who missed his mother. He then hears from them for the first time in his life that they are proud of him. That is where the whole magic of Fire Emblem is condensed.