Cordelia from Fire Emblem: Awakening

Cordelia

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Somewhere in the burning sands outside of Plegia castle, beneath an oppressively hot sun, the corpse of Cordelia's body was feeding a vulture. She was just one of many who had fallen in battle, destined to become a feast for crows in a lifeless landscape, but she was different from the others. She was my soldier.

I had plans for her. A vague notion of such, at least, for this is my first time truly playing a Fire Emblem game. I didn't really know what was in store for her, but I knew that she belonged. The last of her squad, having been forced to hear the dying screams of her sisters as she fled to warn her country of danger, I had known that she'd get along well with fellow Pegasus riding warrior Sumia.

Fire Emblem: Awakening is surprisingly similar in a lot of ways to Western tactical game XCOM: Enemy Unknown, a title which our very own podcast crew was quite taken with. Each title focuses on sending units forth into battle, and if they fall in a skirmish, they are gone for good. Just as in real life, death is permanent.

That is, as long as you're playing by those settings.

My first actual experience with Fire Emblem was Shadow Dragon on the Nintendo DS. However, I had only managed to play a few missions in it and no more. All I had time to learn was the permanency of death and the lethal nature of the game's combat. So when I started Fire Emblem: Awakening, the latest entry in the franchise on the Nintendo 3DS, I decided I wanted death to mean something. Surely enough, there was meaning to every soldier of mine that fell in battle.

It meant hitting the reset button.

I refused to accept such simple mistakes or turns of misfortune, to witness a potential warrior cut down before their prime in such an early skirmish. I was trying to play seriously, so how should I respond when the game deals me from the deck of capricious fate? No, it would not do at all!

There is a drawback to this play style. While the game tells me I've only played for about ten and a half hours total, my Nintendo 3DS has recorded every single second ticking on the clock. I've actually logged about sixteen hours into the game, meaning over five hours have been dedicated to repeating fights until my soldiers emerged bloody, battered, but breathing.

For the majority of those hours, Sumia had been flying over the battlefield alone, a vulnerable knight upon her Pegasus, wary of archers in the field. She was often vulnerable, and I never felt comfortable sending her far, even as a scout of sorts. Yet when Cordelia joined my ranks, another Pegasus Knight capable of soaring the skies, my heart leapt. Sumia would have a partner, a sister, to fly alongside.

For a few battles, their partnership was glorious. I'd send one on ahead, impaling a foe with a javelin to knock them off guard, weakening them, before sending the other to skewer the villain upon a spear. Together they secured villages, snatched items and treasures from the battlefield, and picked off lethal foes from a distance.

It all came to an end at Plegia castle, when a Wyvern rider soared in and thrust his axe into strong, beautiful Cordelia.

The fracture into Cordelia's bone was my inevitable breaking point. It was the moment that I had to stop, sigh, and just accept the inevitable. Not all of my characters were going to see it to the end of this game.

That's okay. The game granted me two brand new characters on that very battlefield, and I had been struggling to give each soldier a fair chance in this war. I was actually up to my armpits in varied, useful troops — all eager to fight under my command. Mechanically speaking, there was little lost with the passing of Cordelia.

Which struck me as odd, I must confess. Unlike XCOM, Fire Emblem provides characters with a varied set of personalities and character quirks that are developed as you play the game. Soldiers will establish relationships with each other based on how you use them in battle and how often you partner them up with other compatible units. Outside of combat you can listen to their small talk in the barracks, and once they've established enough of a repertoire, you can bear witness to more intimate interactions that provide a milestone in their relationships. If I was missing out on anything with Cordelia, this was it.

Yet still I did not feel sad, disappointed, or even frustrated. Before I could fully register the loss, Cordelia had been replaced, and I was focused on how well the new characters were intermingling with my old ones.

It felt as if Fire Emblem sabotaged itself. Perhaps it was because I didn't have Cordelia on my team for too long — that I didn't get the time to invest in her and her growth — that I was not sad to see her go. Maybe it was because I was already juggling so many characters that the loss of one meant little. Or, perhaps, the weariness of restarting battles had weighed upon me so heavily that it crushed all sense of attachment to these soldiers. As Iron Maiden once said, "If you're gonna die, die with your boots on!" At least she'd done that.

Acceptance. That is what I believed, at least. Cordelia was gone, and it was time to get up and hustle on to the next battle. I excitedly promoted select characters, grinning ear to ear as I watched their stats improve (including Sumia, striking like a hawk from the skies above to pierce her unsuspecting prey through the heart). I completed some distractions on the side before continuing the story forward, the red-headed Valkyrie already an afterthought.

I was blind-sided by a cut-scene, not unlike Cordelia was blind-sided by the axe blade. As the protagonist, Chrom, was picking himself back up from an emotional defeat, the troops rallied. Suddenly silent characters, each of whom could have been dead at this point, all stepped forward with words of encouragement. Was there smoke in the air? My eyes were beginning to water as I read each and every soldier's vow of loyalty, because I knew there was one missing. That there would always be one missing.

I'd like to say something dramatic here, that I failed Cordelia or some such, but the truth is I don't quite know why I was almost brought to the point of tears. There was very little time to get attached to this fictional character, and until then I hadn't missed her fictitious soul one bit. Yet at that moment I couldn't help but wish I had hit the reset button. That, for Cordelia, I would have broken the laws of her reality just so she could have lived to see this cut-scene.

So here's to you, Cordelia. May my next playthrough see you march forward, hardened and scarred by battle, to the end credits.

Comments

The fracture into Cordelia's bone was my inevitable breaking point. It was the moment that I had to stop, sigh, and just accept the inevitable. Not all of my characters were going to see it to the end of this game.

I took a different approach when I hit my own breaking point: I started a new file, still on Difficult, but on Casual rather than Hardcore (or whatever the correct terms for those settings are in this game -- still difficult enemies, but no permadeath).

I didn't want to drop down to Normal difficulty because I'm a veteran of a couple of other Fire Emblem games and I like the challenge, but man, when Awakening says "Difficult", it isn't kidding. Particularly when enemy reinforcements semi-unpredictably appear on the map and then attack on that same turn, the going can be pretty brutal.

I'd like to say something dramatic here, that I failed Cordelia or some such, but the truth is I don't quite know why I was almost brought to the point of tears. There was very little time to get attached to this fictional character, and until then I hadn't missed her fictitious soul one bit. Yet at that moment I couldn't help but wish I had hit the reset button. That, for Cordelia, I would have broken the laws of her reality just so she could have lived to see this cut-scene.

Cause she's hot?

As per usual with FE games, Pegasus Knights can be the best class. Just have to get them through those first few levels when they are fragile, and once they rank up to a promoted class, look out. In FE:A, they can get the skill Galeforce as Dark Fliers, which lets you take another complete turn if you get a kill on your first turn. Once I got Sumia up to that point, and Cordelia as well, they wreak havoc all over the battlefield.

Been playing this game all the past week or two. Hard-Casual, because I didn't want to go through the inevitable string of resets playing on Classic will cause. Although when I finish this I am thinking about going back for a classic run. Definitely going to to at least one more run with a female main character on whatever difficulty I decide. The support relationships are great, and will be nice to see many of them flipped.

I was too much of a coward to play with permadeath.

I see a lot of players who play in Classic mode and then struggle to make sure all their troops stay alive. It's definitely an admirable challenge, but it shortcuts the narrative potential that comes with permanently losing troops, both in terms of emotional impact and in terms of personalization of gameplay.

You hadn't played for long with Cordelia before you lost her, but what if it had been one of the starting characters? Lyssa or Kellam or Frederick? What if it was half of one of your best pairings, or the spouse of your main character? If you let that happen, let that experience linger, the loss will be much more keenly felt.

Similarly, when you let characters die, it crafts a narrative for your playthrough above and beyond what's prescribed by the game's storyline, and it also serves to shift your strategic options. By letting characters die, you create, piece by piece, a playthrough that's distinctly yours: your game lost Sumia to an archer as soon as she was introduced, but your Vaike was a powerhouse when you ended up using him more because you didn't have a Pegasus Knight available. It's another layer of gameplay-driven storytelling on top of the pairing dynamics.

So maybe in the future instead of vowing to save Cordelia you let her die. Let them all die and craft a narrative of your own war against the Risen. An imperfect and bloody narrative where the wrong people die at the wrong times, but a narrative that no one else will ever experience.

ClockworkHouse, that sounds like an interesting way to play through the game. I might give that a shot next time.

It would be an interesting option if there were a "super hardcore" mode, where the game autosaves (and overwrites the previous save) after each character action, such that there IS no restarting a mission; if someone dies, that's it, and there's no rewinding possible (short of restarting the entire game).

Who was it who said that every video game character has the superpower to reset time?

I'm really, really attached to games that force you to make your choices permanent in one way or another, but they have to be designed to be playable like that. A permadeath game ironically has to have gentler failure conditions to take into account the fact that you're going to suffer some losses along the way. Playing that way requires an acceptance of loss that's sometimes at odds with the more common approaches to play (and life, really).

I should note that I am actually much, much further in the game now than when I originally wrote the first draft to this article, but I felt the feelings in here were worth preserving and didn't bother updating it with my later experiences.

I've lost Stahl, who was a valuable character to me. I've also lost a couple others, but none that were as bad ass as Stahl. Worse yet, I didn't have to lose him. I put him in a position of being a sacrifice and didn't realize until he had fallen that I didn't need to. So now I have to live with that choice for the rest of the game.

I am currently doing some prep work before starting chapter 20. Don't know how much more chapters there are, I'm anticipating somewhere along the lines of 40 because that's simply how modern JRPG's go.

Ah I'm just barely ahead of you then, at chapter 22.

ClockworkHouse has really opened my eyes. Where would we be if some of the the character arcs of our favorite fantasy novels weren't cut short? I could list a few that affected me, affected the plot, and most importantly - affected the other characters. The first one to come to mind is from that first set of Hickman/Weis novels, but there are deaths in Covenant Chronicles, LoTR, and of course A Song of Ice and Fire that saddened or enraged me.

They are important characters, and the world would not be as rich (and certainly wouldn't seem as dangerous) if they all lived.

Thinking about this further, "super hardcore" mode (no restarting missions allowed) would actually be pretty tough for the game to pull off, because: What happens if Chrom dies or if the tactician dies? They're both plot-critical characters, such that an immediate Game Over occurs if either of them is lost.

It would be pretty infuriating to lose an entire playthrough (as opposed to just the current mission) in the event that one of those characters was lost to a surprise attack or some other mishap.

On the other hand, that's pretty much how hardcore mode works in the Diablo series, and I guess it works all right there.

Instead of saving after every action, I'd say just save after a character dies. That way if the Tactician or Chrom die, then you're simply reset to the last time you saved.

That might work. Although it would still give a player a little wiggle room to "cheat": If you realize that you've put a character into a hopeless situation before ending turn and having that character actually die (assuming you realize it's going to happen ahead of time), you'd still have a window to reset the game at that point.

Ah, Clocky, you just wrote an entire post about my love for SRPGs like this. Fire Emblem and Tactics Ogre sit at the top of SRPGs fir me specifically because death had an impact. The games are challenging enough without being stupid brutal (usually) that I let people die about half the time I play. The other half of the time is in part because I don't feel like sloughing through another half hour or hour battle again. That gets frustrating.

I raise my glass to the legion of fallen. May you ever rest in peace as we live in the splendor of your sacrifice.

The one nagging thing for me with Fire Emblem, which I don't see in other squad-based tactics games that thrive on permadeath, is that its battles often seem very puzzle-y and, thus, very vulnerable to "insta-fail" moments if you fail to ace the combat puzzle immediately.

I felt like I could reasonably attempt blind permadeath plays through Tactics Ogre and XCOM because they offered more opportunities for improvisation and recovery, both in and outside of combat. Even in Fire Emblem: Awakening on Normal difficulty, though, it usually seemed like I really needed to know the secret handshake to survive a level without permanently losing half my squad. Sure, Fire Emblem will supplement your losses with replacement characters, but it won't matter if you're taking on those kinds of losses each time out.

Of course, Fire Emblem: Awakening also revealed that wearing the kid gloves in Casual mode was even less satisfying than that, since you could simply take a meat shield approach with a couple of characters and rocket through every battle without any strategic consequences at all.

Oh there are certainly some reinforcement waves on FE:A that feel cheap. The enemy does always say something in dialog about it. But sometimes it's one, two, or three waves before the reinforcements actually arrive. And sometimes they keep arriving until you finish the level. Other times they seem to stop after one wave from each position. So it's hard to really cover the stairs that they usually appear from, or know which ones, or if it is safe to move after that, or whatever.

I have found some times that I'm in a great position for the enemies that I can see, using the enemy attack range display, and know that I can handle the next wave no problem. And then boom, 4 new guys, closer than I thought, and things go to hell quickly.

I may just dig this out as my pile game for June

Donan wrote:

(or in other words I can't really can't go buy a 3DS for one game:)

Well, I could tell you plenty of other games to get a 3DS for...

Donan wrote:

O.k., o.k. enough! You folks have me all in a dither about this game. I don't have a 3DS system (btw, you folks mostly have 3DS or the XL version?). So what I would like to know if I may do some 'sacrilege' here, is what 5 games come closest to this experience on these platforms:
PC, PS 3 or Xbox 360? (or in other words I can't really can't go buy a 3DS for one game:)

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (and it's sequel/expansion, Enemy Within) is probably the closest analogue that you'll find for this sort of play and it's on 360, PS3, PC, and Vita*. It's a fantastic game anyway, even without trying a permadeath run.

[size=9]* But is it better on Vita?[/size]

PS3 has all 5 Disgaea games (first two on PSN as PS2 classics). They are SRPGs but without the permadeath. I believe Valkyria Chronicles is also an SRPG but I have not played it.

Stele wrote:

PS3 has all 5 Disgaea games (first two on PSN as PS2 classics). They are SRPGs but without the permadeath. I believe Valkyria Chronicles is also an SRPG but I have not played it.

Valkyria Chronicles is an appropriate pick for a comparable experience to Fire Emblem.

ccesarano wrote:
Donan wrote:

(or in other words I can't really can't go buy a 3DS for one game:)

Well, I could tell you plenty of other games to get a 3DS for...

Now you're talking. Enablement, the lifeforce of every Goodjer.

m0nk3yboy wrote:
ccesarano wrote:
Donan wrote:

(or in other words I can't really can't go buy a 3DS for one game:)

Well, I could tell you plenty of other games to get a 3DS for...

Now you're talking. Enablement, the lifeforce of every Goodjer. ;)

LOL...oh yes...o.k. to keep the tradition strong, ccesarano tell me the others (and why, you can't enable without a little work;)

Why's, eh? I might have to get back to you after the weekend, because that's gonna be quite a chunk of time. For a short list, though: Kid Icarus: Uprising, Luigi's Mansion, Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Super Mario 3D Land, Bravely Default, Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy, Crimson Shroud, Starship Damrey, Pokemon X/Y, Phoenix Wright 5, and I'm tapping out so Clocky can list a bunch of dungeon crawlers and such that I don't play.

Mario 3D Land alone is worth buying a 3DS for.

Stele wrote:

Mario 3D Land alone is worth buying a 3DS for.

ccesarano wrote:

Why's, eh? I might have to get back to you after the weekend, because that's gonna be quite a chunk of time. For a short list, though: Kid Icarus: Uprising, Luigi's Mansion, Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Super Mario 3D Land, Bravely Default, Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy, Crimson Shroud, Starship Damrey, Pokemon X/Y, Phoenix Wright 5, and I'm tapping out so Clocky can list a bunch of dungeon crawlers and such that I don't play.

Nah, never mind about the why's. Let's just narrow it down to things like Fire Emblem. Never been much of a Mario fan (that's why the Wii never did much for me). More strategy, dialogue etc. Like X-Com (which I loved). I like a good story with strategic and tactical aspects. Use to not like the square/hexagonal combat (but played allot of course back in the day), but if done right it can be good (King's Bounty). I'm playing, ' Banner Saga' on Mac right now which is good imho. Anyway...

If I recall, the Ghost-Recon game for the 3DS was done with the original XCom guy behind it? Clocky knows more about that one. It, too, was a tactical RPG.

If you're looking for that genre specifically, then I'm afraid those two games are the extent of my knowledge on the 3DS. However, where I once knew every big title on the system, that is no longer the case. The library has slowly expanded more and more. So it's quite likely there are some games I'm not aware of.

Turn-based tactical RPGs like Fire Emblem and XCOM are actually a very popular genre in Japan, and there's enough overlap that they're localized fairly frequently. On the 3DS, the three most prominent would be Fire Emblem: Awakening, which is the subject of this article; Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, designed by Julian Gollop, fairly similar to XCOM with a bit less depth; and Devil Survivor Overlocked, a tactics game from the Shin Megami Tensei franchise that has a high level of difficulty and a lengthy, branching narrative.

But if you like tactical RPGs and aren't put off by anime aesthetics, the PSP would actually be the system to get (or the Vita, since it's backward compatible with most downloadable PSP games). It's home to the heavy-hitters of the genre like Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, both of which heavily inspired The Banner Saga, but it also has a number of entries from the Disgaea series, Phantom Brave, Gungnir, Growlanser, Jeanne D'Arc, Wild Arms XF, and a good dozen or more that I can't even think of right now.

The degree of mechanical complexity and overall seriousness varies considerably from title to title, but if you're looking for a single platform that would give you a lot of options for tactical gameplay, it'd be hard to beat the PSP/Vita.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Turn-based tactical RPGs like Fire Emblem and XCOM are actually a very popular genre in Japan, and there's enough overlap that they're localized fairly frequently. On the 3DS, the three most prominent would be Fire Emblem: Awakening, which is the subject of this article; Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, designed by Julian Gollop, fairly similar to XCOM with a bit less depth; and Devil Survivor Overlocked, a tactics game from the Shin Megami Tensei franchise that has a high level of difficulty and a lengthy, branching narrative.

But if you like tactical RPGs and aren't put off by anime aesthetics, the PSP would actually be the system to get (or the Vita, since it's backward compatible with most downloadable PSP games). It's home to the heavy-hitters of the genre like Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, both of which heavily inspired The Banner Saga, but it also has a number of entries from the Disgaea series, Phantom Brave, Gungnir, Growlanser, Jeanne D'Arc, Wild Arms XF, and a good dozen or more that I can't even think of right now.

The degree of mechanical complexity and overall seriousness varies considerably from title to title, but if you're looking for a single platform that would give you a lot of options for tactical gameplay, it'd be hard to beat the PSP/Vita.

I bought a PSP when, 'MLB: The Show' came out on it several years ago. I do believe I played
Jeanne D'Arc on it too. But for one reason or another (mood?) I sold it.

What I like from what I've seen of Fire Emblem is not just the tactical, but a map that allows a wider story to be told, and the dialogue that encompasses it. (eg. 'Banner Saga'). Although X-?Com is great, but dialogue is minimal, it does give choices on so many levels is wonderful, before you get to the great tactical arena. I guess I'm saying I like many parts that make the whole. Just not tactical. (and a dialogue that invests you into characters and story)

Project X Zone if you like your SRPGs over the top in terms of crossovers.

Donan wrote:

Although X-?Com is great, but dialogue is minimal, it does give choices on so many levels is wonderful, before you get to the great tactical arena. I guess I'm saying I like many parts that make the whole. Just not tactical. (and a dialogue that invests you into characters and story)

I think XCOM has the opportunity to do it, what with the way they handle dynamic cinematics in combat and trigger stuff in missions (like capturing an alien commander, etc.) Wasn't really a focus of the design, though. I'd love a game that took XCOM's stuff and threw in procedurally-generated character moments.