Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

I was just thinking about Fire Emblem and how permadeath is a mechanic that doesn't quite work in this series if you ask me. It's a great idea in theory: it stops you from just using brute force and sacrificing units, it adds tension and emotional weight to every decision you make, and it makes your playthrough of the game different from most other people's. But in reality, only the first of these points is completely true.

Most players, even hardcore fans of the series, just reset or load a save state when a character dies. This makes perfect sense to do, because losing a character is strategically and emotionally devastating, and can easily happen due to a single mistake. Nintendo knows this, which is why they've been making it easier to reset in recent games, particularly with the Divine Pulse in Three Houses. But permadeath is supposed to be part of the game. It's supposed to have an impact on the player and their playthrough. Rewinding the game to an earlier point to avoid a death is not only tedious, it defeats the point of the game to an extent.

Three Houses almost seems to be an attempt to steer the series' focus away from permadeath. Not only is there the casual mode, introduced in Awakening, that cuts the mechanic altogether (which is fine if you want to play that way) and the aforementioned Divine Pulse which makes it very easy to avoid deaths, but the game's narrative just isn't designed to accommodate it. This game has a much smaller cast of playable characters than most FE games and most of them show up regularly in cutscenes, so if they 'die' they actually stick around and you just can't use them any more. Previous games do this too with major characters, but in 3H it's barely acknowledged when someone 'dies' iirc.

I think Fire Emblem needs to keep permadeath as a hallmark of the series, but make it more forgiving somehow. I'm not sure how this could be achieved exactly, or how it could be reconciled with Three Houses' increased character focus, but anything that gives the player a chance to think on their feet and recover from mistakes, rather than just rewinding the game and pretending they never happened, would be better in my opinion.

(I should probably clarify that I've only played four Fire Emblem games so far - Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, Shadow Dragon and Three Houses - and have only done one playthrough in the latter, on normal difficulty. Let me know if any of the other games handle this mechanic differently.)

@DarthNocturnal Ah yeah I vaguely remember that from Shadow Dragon. That would help a bit with making it more forgiving.

Another idea I just thought of: maybe enemies could capture your units instead of killing them immediately, then you'd have to rescue them in a set number of turns otherwise they die. I don't know how well this would work in practice, but it would give you a chance to fix your mistakes instead of just losing someone in a single turn.

I'm not hugely into permadeath in the first place, but it actively annoyed me when I played Sacred Stones, had built up support conversations between this guy and his son, the guy died next to his son, and his son made no reference to this ever happening.

Honestly, I wish permadeath had effects on the game's story, but it would be hard to actually work around something like that.

That's a good point too, the characters who die are usually completely ignored for the rest of the game. Obviously it would be very difficult for the developers to create adaptive dialogue for every situation but the character relationships would be more believable if they actually cared about people dying. (Though I suppose then there's a risk of the game becoming incredibly depressing )

@Dogorilla I mean, the game is about war, and war is depressing.

@Dogorilla I play permadeath but I agree with your point - at least that, as the series goes on, permadeath seems to blend less and less with the story and other gameplay elements. Personally I'm so invested in the characters that the only time I move on if my characters die is if its the final battle.

I was going to suggest what Valkyria Chronicles does, which is similar to what you suggest. When a unit falls they can survive if rescued before either (i) a set number of turns pass, or (ii) an enemy unit approaches and finishes them off.

Although this would be an interesting gameplay mechanic I'm not sure it makes permadeath blend in better with the wider story though. Personally I'm sure I'll still be resetting until a have a no death run.

Personally, I think a consolation would be for deaths to add to the story somehow - e. g. characters acknowledge the death in cutscenes or exclusive interactions.

My unpopular opinion is that the word permadeath has no reason to exist. It's just death. You don't get extra lives, resurrection spells or the ability to re-wind time in the real world. It's only in the skewed media of video games where death is expected to be a minor inconvenience.

So far as Fire Emblem goes, the way to play them has always been to savescum until you get to the last map, then everyone's free to die a hero's death. Divine pulse just speeds that up considerably.

@Matt_Barber The only reason it's called "Permadeath" is to save confusion, since most rpg's call being knocked out "death". Like final fantasy, if your party member faints, they literally die. You need to use a phoenix down to bring them back.

That's my point. It's those other games that should be using a different word for something that's very clearly not death.

@Matt_Barber But they technically stop breathing. They're technically dead, unless you actually revive them with magic. Permadeath is effectively used when Healing Magic only heals, and doesn't revive. Heck, in Fire Emblem's normal mode, it's just being injured.

I don't have a problem with that in gameplay terms, as there's no requirement for mechanics to be realistic. However, I'd think that that's the sort of thing you need a new word for, not dying and not coming back.

Only a few of the recent Fire Emblem games have casual mode too. In the ones prior to Awakening, death is pretty much the end barring some exceptional magic with very limited use.

@Matt_Barber @VoidofLight I think permadeath is a useful word only if there’s a game mode choice between normal mode and this. No Man’s Sky has this, if you die even once you’ll be returned to the main menu and your save will be wiped. Fire Emblem’s way is interesting because in Normal Mode they just retreat.

I do like the idea of making it permadeath only for the final battle though. It can really change the dynamic of the story.

But I remember watching a Game Theory video on Phoenix Downs, I really don’t think you die in Final Fantasy games. For one if phoenix downs did bring people back to life then why couldn’t Cloud use one on Aerith? My theory is that Phoenix Down’s help you regain consciousness. Or that they only work within a specific amount of time for cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

@TheJGG That's true.. never actually thought about the instance where characters never really use them in the stories.

@VoidofLight If it did bring people back to life it would absolutely destroy various plots involving death. It would allow people to cheat it and thus makes a significant plot hole for the whole series...

@TheJGG True. So it'd make more sense if it were more just a tool to revive someone who got knocked out or something, with the enemies able to kill if the whole party gets knocked out.

@TheJGG That sounds more like an Ironman mode. You've generally got to be pretty good at a game before playing it like that and the Fire Emblem games are especially tough that way because of all the random elements in them.

In terms of weird RPG conventions, another one is how you can often run away from a battle with all but one of your characters knocked out, yet the survivor will someone managed to gather up all their bodies, revive them and heal them back to full heath - without even necessarily having any healing skills in battle - and collect all their weapons and items into the bargain.

I can get why games play like this, because it'd be a massive inconvenience if you had to deal with those kinds of setbacks whenever you lost or ran away from a battle. Still, it doesn't half stick out like a sore thumb whenever there's a plot point about someone dying or a key item gets lost or stolen.

@timleon I haven't played Valkyria Chronicles but that sounds like a good system. In my opinion it's much more enjoyable when games let you continue when you make a mistake, so you can adapt to the situation and try to fix it. So if FE had a mechanic like that instead of just 'oh no, a character died, time to reset' I think that would be a lot better.

And as you say, characters acknowledging deaths would be good too. I think part of the reason why most of us reset when someone dies is because it feels like something that's not supposed to happen: the character is either never mentioned again or, if they're an important character, they're just there as usual in cutscenes but you're supposed to believe they're severely wounded or something. If deaths and 'injuries' were more naturally integrated into dialogue, maybe players would be more inclined to let their mistakes stand and carry on without their fallen heroes.

Keep the permadeath so you can kill off all the waifus in Fire Emblem! ;p

It's a clever mechanic which I like and as others have said it's close to pulling off the intention, it's meant to make you care about your losses from battles but it not there just yet. Thing is with the last few FEs you have to replay them with slightly different routes so masterfully ensuring you playthrough to make sure everyone gets through means less as you still got to play the game another 3 times and see those other characters you like again.

@Dogorilla Nailed it on the head. It changes almost nothing so there's little emotional weight.