Fire Emblem Awakening, Story, and Context

I never gave Fire Emblem Awakening a fair shake when I first played it, really. I played it, I enjoyed it, I talked about it, and then I moved on to other stuff. I'm fairly certain it's one of the last games I played before I really got into looking at games critically. And that's something I regret. When I played Awakening in 2014, I determined it was a great game. I was so, so wrong.

It's a fucking masterpiece, and I do not say that lightly. Awakening gets everything so, so right, and it goes above and beyond even that. You've got a complex battle system where paring up and relationships factor into it, where the weapons triangle and ranged attacks make for hugely strategic thinking, alongside having to manage levels, gear, and classes outside of combat. The gameplay is amazing, and the story, well, that's what we're here to talk about today. I think it'd be best to show this with the most impact story beat in the entire game, and you already know what I mean if you've played it. Let's talk about chapter 12.

Spoilers if you somehow haven't played this game yet. I'm also going to assume you know what happens, otherwise you'll be very confused.
So I think it's important to preface this by making special note of how this part of the story doesn't really revolve around themes or making the player think or anything like that. While that might seem like an odd thing to note, it's actually quite an anomaly in games writing to have a story purely ride on the quality of its plot. That's something I want to get into at a later date, but suffice to say games often have issues with making a plot that feels good because the player can by the very nature of the medium influence the pacing, thereby making it easier and less risky to ride on themes and making the player think. The point is it's already notable from the start to take a plot approach to it.

Of course, I say chapter 12 but really you can't ignore chapter 11 in this equation. Chapter 11 up to the end is much like any other chapter, with standard gameplay. The standout difference is the hostage situation around it, but hell, you even had a similar situation beforehand in chapter _. And even if you ignore that you've made it through assassination plots and overwhelming odds time and time again before this. The precedent of this game's tone has been set: serious, but not grave, a war story where the nation is at stake but your individual lives are not at the whim of the plot.

And then it all just... breaks. It's business as usual in the 11^th chapter up until you've cleared out all the enemies, and then Gangrel decides to raise the stakes by having arrows drawn at her. This is actually a big deal in the overall narrative, because it's the first time such an action has been taken. There are a lot of firsts to the story in 11, actually, and it's what I consider the big shift in the game. Before this you're presented with scenarios with the ideals of success and victory, and every challenge is meant to be overcome. This is the first time in the game where your agency and success is ripped out of your hands.

Speaking of choice, let's talk about your lack thereof. Right before Emmeryn takes it out of your hands, you're given a menu and 2 choices: hand the Emblem over or Emmeryn dies. Of course it doesn't matter what you chose, as I mentioned, because she takes matters into her own hands and sacrifices herself. Now I wanna be frank here, because I usually despise when games do this false choice stuff, where the devs obviously wanted you to feel like you're having an influence on the story but didn't want to actually change it, as that's just lazy most of the time and a bad use of the medium. Tropes and tools aren't bad, though.

See, I usually get annoyed when games do this because it's a very cheap tool, where you're often given a menu that essentially boils down to "Yes" and "Yes but I'm not happy" or something similar. It's fake choice that's just going to frustrate players when they find out that their choice never mattered. BUT it is possible to do a fake choice correctly, and by golly Awakening sure knows how to.

 Narratively there's really only one clear way to use the fake choice, and that's to have the point of the choice be your lack of choice. The player has no agency in this scene but it's all for a good, sensible story reason. Emmeryn is the type of person who'd sacrifice herself. Chrom can't do anything because the enemy has the upper hand, and he'd never willingly sacrifice his sister. It's important to make sure there are no contrivances when it comes to scenes like these, because when you take agency away you cannot have the player feel cheated in any way. This is really just a complicated way to say the game has good writing, but it really, really does.

How many shooting games have you played where the enemy took a hostage and suddenly you're unable to shoot them, despite shots being instant and in gameplay before your accuracy was perfect? It's stupid and frustrating when gameplay mechanics clash with the story. Now compare to Fire Emblem.

Could you shoot the archers down? No, you don't have enough to kill the dozens of them surrounding Emmeryn.

Flying units? No, the game has already established that those units take increased damage from archer shots, it's far too risky. Your army is mostly ground bound, anyway, so they would have no backup.

It's little details like that that show how thought and care has gone into how the story is presented alongside the gameplay, and that even the smallest things like a binary meaningless choice from a menu is used to great effect. It's a pretty sad and disempowering moment when you realize Emmeryn would have done this no matter what, that despite all your battlefield prowess you were doomed to fail this mission from the start.

And speaking of which, let's touch on Emmeryn's actual sacrifice too. Now obviously the idea of a character sacrificing their life for the sake of the others is nothing new, you've seen it done dozens of times by now, surely. It's all in the execution, however, and the little details are important nowadays to really sell such a scene.

Perhaps not minor, but in this case motivation is important, and it's important precisely because the motivation in universe is smart as all hell. It's not just forcing the power of the Fire Emblem out of Gangrel's hands, but forcing his army against him in the process. This is continuing Emmeryn's characterization, mainly for the player. She's always been presented as a wise and intelligent leader that had a good read on her allies and enemies. The problem with this can often be the fact that the player has to control the game, and qualities like this can get pushed to the sides. Another issue the story thus far has presented is that her kingdom is pretty much at a point where she only ever has one option to take at most times. These 2 are obviously good story and gameplay design, but it leaves her characterization and importance in a fairly awkward spot, since there isn't really a good way to show this that gels well with these practices.

So really it's a great story beat to have her qualities like these emphasized at the moment of her death, and to have that death be a sacrifice. Putting down one's own life is a great way to show wisdom, bravery, leadership, and similar stuff in a single instant. Put simply, it is in many ways the biggest and most dramatic way you can show a lot of serious character traits for a character already well established, and one you want to/need to kill off.

It's not like Fire Emblem is doing anything new with this, but it's doing it very well. With this action we see how much Emmeryn cares for her kingdom. We also see her caring for family, not wanting them to bargain for her life. Her independence and quick thinking is taken from an implied skill to being shown off. And she is also seen as incredibly smart, as her sacrifice motivates her allies, keeps power away from her enemies, and crushes the spirit of their army in one move.

So we've got the game batting a nice score with the story so far, and it's just getting started. Let's move over to gameplay and chapter 12.

Chapter 12 is a bit odd, since it's not very plot focused compared to previous events. It's just one battle, with the only important plot being the framing of said battle. Up until now, Awakening has been riding on the quality of its story. Now, it needs to make its gameplay mean something.

What's most impact about this chapter is how the gameplay doesn't change, or rather, how it cannot change. Everything around you is different. The mood is somber. The setup screen has no music, and the only sound filling your ears is the gentle patter of rain pouring down all upon you. There's nothing heroic here, no smart planning to be made, no tactical enjoyment to be found, no relaxing or tense music. Yet, the physical, gameplay process you go through to begin a battle will not change.

Nothing in the battle changes, either. You guide your units, attack the enemy, and nothing has realistically changed. And yet, everything has changed. Nobody really wants to fight. You're caught behind enemy lines, forced to carve your way out. The enemy is unwilling to fight after such a horrid display by their own leader and such bravery by the enemy, yet they must under threat of death. And you of course have this music playing, which is such a deviation from the heroic music you fought to beforehand. You can't even call it battle music, it's more of a reflective and emotionally out of control piece. It is flat out one of the most brilliant musical pieces I have ever heard.

I can't say how any one player will react to all this. Perhaps you're angry. Maybe you're in tears. You could be trying to avoid a fight. You could resign yourself to it. Maybe you're just numb to the proceedings and aren't even sure what to think. It's not my place to assume how a single person will react to this, but the one thing I can confidently say is that this will not make you feel heroic. It runs in opposition to the grand battles of before, the feeling of overcoming the odds and an evil. Nothing has changed in what you do, but really, everything has changed.

At the end of the day, Fire Emblem Awakening doesn't take any grand strides in video game storytelling, not really. However, the fact of the matter is that good writing by itself is rare in this industry, let alone good writing that interacts with the gameplay well. It's one of the best signs to me that a good story is something that is very important to the fabric of a great game. It doesn't have to be complex (A sad fight in the rain isn't a high level concept). It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't even have to change the gameplay. At the end of the day, what this one chapter from Awakening shows us is that story can make a good game truly great.