The Lost Art of Permadeath in Fire Emblem 

Love truly takes all forms.

Embrace generics and reject real units

For minimal gain and content.

@@Zerorenren4761 Jitaro my beloved.

After Cain Coin ™© crashed, the only solution was the nuclear one.

This is the huge reason why it's so difficult to convince someone who hasn't "taken the plunge" so to speak to try not reloading saves. It's just instinctual to want to have all your options open, and especially if you don't know what challenges are upcoming in the future. The difficulty permanent death faces is that it needs to convince people that characters are worth protecting, but also not worth wasting time on bringing back. Especially for a first play experience with a game, that balance may be impossible to ascertain if it is even there.

hi from a year later! i'm totally the same and i find that i love thinking about fire emblem as a puzzle game for that reason- i love playing the levels over and over to figure out how to make it through without losing more than one or two guys

@@ChrisTheFields Hey I know this is a year old but I'd like to chime in, the issue comes with a lot of us old veteran traditional RPG players, the future will kill you. I use my elixir and suddenly I need it for a later battle, so you save it without using it. Same terrible mindset with Fire Emblem, this character is scarce, its better to have them and not need them, then the opposite. Simply put I've been burned before with RPGs punishing me for playing like they wanted or using resources. Fire Emblem WANTING me to do one thing ain't gonna change that habit and your video highlights that its up in the air what philosophy they will take next, maybe I'll get replacements, maybe I'm screwed at the end game for letting too many units go to crits!

I think Final Fantasy Advance Tactics’ way of handling permanent death is the best, basically there were these specific areas that had no laws (laws were what’s stopping units from killing each other) so if your battle was in one of these areas you get more serious and stay more focused and when a character dies you kinda accept it, but when the entire game “has no laws” I tend to get kinda bored and not think too much about my moves which forces me to restart the entire chapter.

@@munto7410 Even in FFTA you can get them back if you act fast enough as there's a 3 turn time limit before they are dead dead. I think Valkirya Chronicles has done it right, a unit gets down and is unable to act, you have a chance to correct your mistake with them by rushing a unit to them and getting medic to save them, if though and enemy unit reaches them first they are done for, then it takes time before the unit is able to redeploy to the battle field. I think FE needs to adopt something like this. Drop Permadeath as the main mode make it so that the unit is outta battle for X battles. Where X is like thier level/2 or something with it being a minium of 1 battle. This would be a great way to A make tatical choices mean something snice you can lose someone strong mid-battle still, but still have some drawback for losing the strong unit, AND it could be a good way to make players use other units in side battles. Of course there would need to be random battles, I think something ala Awakening would work, after every battle the map has a chance to spawn those undead things, you could also use an item to draw them out.

I agree. I even curse if I loose a soldier as Nova in SC II CO-OP because they have names and her mechaniques make it possible to not loose anyone. That is why in Ghost Recon they made in game 2 the made Scott Mitchell. Because where they thought in first game, they make generic characters where the player made the story, instead people did not care as except the specialist they got replacement anyway.

I could imagine people resetting when an advance wars infantry died and it looks and sounds hilarious

It also helps that in most games these characters are limited. You won’t be able to get more easily and some serve unique niches that cannot be replaced.

And yet you REMEMBER THAT PLAYTHROUGH!

Gigachad Nolan

Reminds me of the time I got once got Path of radiance. At the time, I had only known Fire Emblem through Smash Bros, so when I see Ike on the cover, I think, "Oh, this is Ike's game. Smash Bros told me about it. I bet it will be like the Legend of Zelda." I played through the first few levels thinking, "ok, maybe the actual adventure game will start after I do these chess games" I proceeded to have everyone die and then returned the game. This is one of my biggest gamer regrets, as now that I've grown to like strategy games, I wish gave Path of Radiance an honest try back then.

My first run of Awakening probably would've been just that if I hadn't played on casual. Even so, a lot of resets for Chrom and Robin to the point I had them just hiding behind Sully and Cordelia respectively the entire game, as I couldn't strategize to save my life at the time.

@@SolarBrain4128bro that game costs like 200 bucks now

But you'll remember this run for ever

@@scarocci7333 I mean I'll remember it, sure, but only the first half. I can't remember a single story beat or gameplay event from after you reach the second continent

@@dragonslibrary9207 that’s also just a big flaw with awakening in general. The experience system means that it’s always most optimal to just pour all of your resources into a single character.

@@dragonslibrary9207 That sounds like a really raw oneshot story.

I think permadeath on awakening is fine on normal, on any of the higher difficulties it begins to test my patience. On normal, it makes me actually pay attention and makes unlucky situations force me to reconsider how I should approach the game. Higher difficulty settings make me extremely annoyed with the ambush spawns and makes keeping my units properly leveled through cycling them in and out ineffective.

imo the added story should be irrelevant. Yes, it is making more people reset, but the more important point from my perspective is that an ironman in newer games is not as viable of an option as in earlier titles. 3H is very much the most extreme example: every death is a monstrous blow which you have no options to recover from if you're past the timeskip. The problem isn't the narrative, permadeath just doesn't work gameplay-wise anymore due to how modern FE is designed.

It’s definitely both for me. Mechanically in 3 houses you have less characters to recruit, they’re frontloaded, they require more investment to be useful and more completely fill a slot in your line up. Also for things like the children mechanic in awakening and fates your new characters were tied to keeping your old units alive. But additionally what he was saying story wise: the support conversation, paralog chapters, dialogue you may get from them during cutscenes and home base conversations. You’re losing more than just the end credits card for them narratively now. Which is definitely not only a bigger percentage of the story but also a big reason why many new players interact with these characters in the first place.

Very well said. If IS is going to keep classic mode around (which I want them to), then I would like to see a game where the loss of a character is felt in the story. Taking your example, what if Gary dying unlocked a special mourning scene where Grella grieves for the loss her trusted ally and vows to keep moving forward to honor their sacrifice. If its significant enough, she could even gain a new skill to reflect how this big moment has affected her. What if even though Gary is dead, you still unlock his paralogue where you find his missing sister, but now instead of a happy reunion, the ending cutscene is a bitter-sweet of your lord explaining to the girl that her brother is dead and the teary-eyed girl pledging herself to your army to fight for the same cause as her brother. In this scenario, not only are you not losing out on story and game content, but you're actually unlocking a new unit with new supports that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. This is what I'd want to see in a future Fire Emblem game, one where the story and characters react to a tragic death, giving you new or alternate content instead of just locking off content. Ideally, I'd love to play a game where everyone except the main character and lord can die certain characters dying can alter the way the story progresses (ex. a character you recruit in chapter X acts as your guide and helps you beat the villain to the plot Mcguffin in chapter X+4, but if they die before that, you don't stop the villain from getting the special Mcguffin, leading to a much harder battle in that chapter)

I genuinely care less about most modern characters in the last 3 new entries than even generics in like the shadow dragon remake. Since awakening they characters have been hard to enjoy.

@@MathMasterism The problem is then what was already said in the video, that the game starts to reward you for losing your soldiers. If you do this, then completionists and optimizers will just start killing off "Gary" for these extra buffs and characters and swap him out for "Chad, the better axe guy".

In this case, you interpreted the quote too literally. There are only a few Fire Emblem games that even have additional endings beyond the standard ones. What Kaga was referring to being the "perfect ending" in context of the interview were the players too caught up making sure everyone survives at the end of the game.

Triangle Strategy does have a golden route though! And it's possible to get it on your first playthrough if you don't want to go through the other routes (but I don't think anyone would recommend it tbh)

@@KazuraiKoori I think what they're saying is that they don't like that Triangle Strategy has a perfect ending because they feel compelled to reach it, which effectively means they have to play with a guide in order to avoid replaying the game in full multiple times over.

Triangle strategy is the perfect strategy game

@@guy-sl3kr you need to get all the endings anyway, why buy a game and not fully complete it

Same with Valkyria Chronicles 4. When your character fallen in the battlefield, it can either attack for the last time or inspiring the whole team.

Hell, not only that, but if I remember correctly (haven't played in a long while). The "Legend" system allows you to bring back said charecters (with an increased cost to recruit) to another adventure, so really its "semi-perma" death.

@@blazichaos7181 That's true, although the character's story and relationships are gone, so it still feels like that original version is truly dead.

It's amazing how much more I've remembered from small little moments like these. My first time playing Fates-Conquest, I was at the very end of a chapter, and Arthur was about to die. I was getting ready to just reset right there, but Arthur (the unluckiest character in Fates) managed to dodge an 80% hit against him. It was just one incredible moment that lasted for only 3 seconds, but it says volumes I still remember it more than 5 years later.

If I remember correctly, Shadows of Valentia does have alternate character endings if certain characters are dead

The funniest part is that you don't need to make a special mourning scene, there's already a war end recap that tells what happens after, the dead characters only have "dude died lmao" instead of telling exactly what happened to their families and friends after their deaths.

@@XxLoonitickxX you make a good point. In hindsight I should have just said I want character deaths to unlock alternate content, that is to say content that serves the same purpose as the content you would get if a character were alive, but with its own unique context. Like most people don’t say the different routes in 3H are locking off content to players because every route has the same amount of mechanics and different varieties of units, it’s just the context you interact with them that’s different. As an example of what I want to see, imagine if you unlocked a unit’s paralouge regardless of whether they were alive or not. The context of the paralouge and how it ultimately resolves would change but you’d still get to experience the level and claim the rewards. As an example imagine Petra’s paralouge, but this time your going to Brigid to quell unrest as the Petra is dead and there is now a big succession crisis happening. This wouldn’t encourage people to intentionally kill Petra as it’s just a sadder version of her normal paralouge, but it would discourage reloading if Petra did die since you won’t get locked out of going to Brigid.

I think 3 houses characters are mid tbh. I mostly agree with your sentiment but the way routes work in 3 houses shallows the characters for me significantly. And some characters i straight up laugh when i kill on other routes. Were they written better i woudn't be feeling this way. 3 Houses murdered permadeath in a certain ways that are beyond character progression of others and narrative punishment: Unit investment (character on level 20 you saw grow from evel 5 who you spent so long seeing grow just dying to a random crit who otherwise is a powerhouse) for exampe of one, and another being you recruit nearly all characters at the exact same time and place. If you lose a character in a niche you had prepared, you won't be getting any repacement. On my fe7 ironman run for example, my healer priscila died on one of last chapters but i pressed on. Why? Well, the same chapter Legault joined - a mysterious character that i usually pay no mind, became one of my mvps due to his high staff rank and even got A rank support with Lucius that i woudn't have considered otherwise, rewarding me due to limited supports for each character.

The problem with that would be that this means a exponential effort on the game dev with each additional character. It'll mean, by neccessity, a massively reduced rooster, which then again runs into the problem discussed in this video with game difficulty, where your run can become essentially doomed. I dont think thats a viable route for Fire Emblem to take. But a new roguelike spin on the genre where losing is half the point of the game could possibly pull it off. But again, dont expect the 30+ well written characters Fire emblem enjoys.

That would be great, but it would need some balancing to make it stick to the perma death part, like the character being unable to fight, be it for a few missions, or forever, so that you don't think because they can be saved, they should be thrown into harsh situations

I still remember screaming when she used my dodge tank Ingrid as a stepping stone to massacre my army. Never again.

The first time you meet the Black Knight in the Telius series and hear this music only he has. I think many players started with Path of Radiance or Radiant Dawn, they'll know what i mean.

@@kheasboroki3928 that shit still frightens me. The moment he steps onto the map i go into a frenzy to get the hell out of there.

Even without the turnwheel you can still have these moments. The dread when playing FE12's Chapter 8 and and watching the combat forecast say "0" as the enemies close in from all sides and you're just flat not supposed to fight them is something I won't forget easily. And besides, if Edelgard did that and actually killed four of your party members and made you reset, you'd probably be really pissed at the time, but you'd appreciate the game having the willingness to actually do that when looking back at it.

@@lefthandedscout9923 haha agreed and I'm really glad they did give edelgard something so powerful as an enemy. My point is the reset is inevitable though right? If by definition you were caught completely unaware by a map or character having something that strong that you couldn't have foreseen, turnwheel just saved you having to redo a whole map for the sake of an (admittedly fun) gotcha moment made by the devs. Also someone else in this reply chain mentioned the black knight in PoR. It got me thinking that it also lets you be a lot more experimental with seeking potential dialogue options knowing that you don't have to run back the whole level. I'd imagine this is how most people make discoveries in older emulated games using save states?

This is what I was trying to convey at 21:37 although I guess I didn't do as good of a job expressing that as I thought. Alas, there's only so much time in a video and not enough nuance to go around. But I suppose that's what clarification in the comments is for. Even if permadeath in modern FE doesn't understand why it was included in the first place, players still have to engage with the mechanics and risk to a degree far greater than is required on Casual Mode. I'd still rather have Casual Mode be there than absent. But it should stand to reason that a game that is fun to play with the intended difficulty on Classic Mode will also translate to a fun Casual Mode experience, where that doesn't work the other way around. And I'm not completely against the Turnwheel either. It's simply too versatile and convenient to use in it's current state. I think it still has a place in Classic mode. But in order for that to truly be compatible, it needs to be a strategic consideration rather than the obvious decision.

In vallyria chronicles at least is easier to save people honestly if defeating them 1 time was enough to kill your units it would be stupid hard. So there normally is not as a big Of a treath as in fe specially When the game lets you Save multiple times in a map

I'm not trying to argue that resetting a chapter to try new strategies isn't valid. But my point was more so that if everyone resets until every chapter is cleared perfectly, did anyone truly have a unique experience playing the game? The difference between Mario's Bottomless Pits and Fire Emblem's Death is that someone dying in Fire Emblem allows for that variance with outcomes. You could reset, but you could also keep going and shouldering the loss. The latter, I've grown to realize is just more interesting of an outcome. PS. Me not mentioning Path of Radiance wasn't necessarily code for "this game did well". It's more that the game didn't make any substantial alterations for or against Permanent Death, and I just didn't want to make the video longer than it needed to be as this was about the ways it has changed. It's the same reason I didn't go far into FE3, 5, or 8 either.

@@ChrisTheFields ahhhh makes sense. Yeah, I see your point why permadeath creates a new experience. But that's why I think Iron Man runs are interesting. I was once doing an Iron Man run of Path of Radiance. I didn't go far though. I stopped by myself, not because of a game over. I think experiencing your first playthrough with resets is perfectly fine, but I agree that retrying the game with an Iron Man run can be very interesting. Otherwise, you don't see the reason for new units that are weaker than your current ones. You're not SUPPOSED to use them, you're supposed to use them if your other units died. ANd I realize that the game Is fairly balanced that way. Notice how at the end of Path of Radiance, or almost any other FE game, your units are way stronger than the enemy? That's because you never had to replace them for inferior units, because of reset. In fact, that's what convinced me to try an Iron Man run of Path of Radiance. I realized the game was balanced that way. I wanted to experience the loss of a unit and having to replace them with alternatives I didn't find good. About the "having a unique experience playing the game". I totally understand, but I don't think someone just dying is enough. When someone dies, you only miss out on future content, nothing more. Sure, that's painful, but that's all. I wish you would get extra content if some of your units died. That might sound like fe11, but that's not what I mean at all. I'm not talking about an extra chapter or something. I'm talking about characters acknowledging deaths more than just immediately after. Something like this happens in Path of Radiance, where Muarim is mentioned in one of the support conversations and the dialogue is altered if he's dead. That's the kind of thing I want to see, but times 10. Many characters have relationships between each other, and those could be reflected with their deaths. Maybe some characters would have a different dialogue in the story if their partner died for example. What if Rolf wasn't willing to listen to Ike if you let Boyd die? What if Rolf would hate Ike, and have base conversations with him. When a unit that had an incomplete support, why not have base conversations that allow them to say what they think about that person they were growing closer to dying? Now, if THAT was a thing in the game, I would ALWAYS do an Iron Man run. Because then it would feel like my own personal experience. But when all I get is Ike making a disappointed face after the chapter and no mention of the character again, what did I get different from someone who reset? It's the same thing, except they got more content than me. Sure, that would require a lot more dialogue, but it would be so much worth it. I wish I had more examples, but I don't. Some characters that are very impulsive could end up hating Ike for the next few chapters and get their biorythm lowered. While other more optimistic characters would say they can't give up now that they lost so much, and get their byorythm boosted. What if every character got an ark with base conversations if their partner died? Or just more dialogue that reflects their deaths. In fact, a way to make it more impactful would be to wait a random number of chapters before having the loss brought up. What if at one point you have a base conversation with, say... Mist. She mentions how she's still sad about Brom dying, 6 chapters after his death. Even though Mist had no supports with Brom, she still knew he was fighting for his family and thinking about them everyday with his little stones. Ike and Mist start talking about Brom for the base conversation. Now THAT, would make it feel like a character really died. When someone dies in fire emblem, I always feel like it has no consequence in the story and characters, only in the gameplay. If this base conversation system was a thing, I'd feel like it had a big consequence in the characters. Plus, this could give more spotlight to characters who don't talk after their recruitment. It could be a character that had nothing to do with the dead unit, as long as they can give a reasonable reason why they would care about that character's death. Plus, you'd still learn about the unit you let die. You could have learned that stuff in a support conversation, but you learned about it in a base conversation instead. So to recap, you got: extra conversations that are personalized to the units you let die, a unit is now gone but can be replaced by a future one that will be recruited, background for the character that died. Or, you can keep the unit, get supports, and that's it. I think a system like that would be SO MUCH better. NOW, I'd feel like I'm playing a personalized playthrough. But as it is now, I don't see the consequences of letting someone die beyond missing content.

Resetting isn't a choice the game gives you resetting has to be there because the console needs a failsafe and this is my problem with reset advocates🤦

@@jokx4409 this won't work because the elitists killer a character purposely to get another character

@@cringekid3993 when you suspend your game, the game lets you choose between "resume chapter", or "restart chapter". Sure, it has to be there for when the lord dies, but still. Speaking of lords, what do you do when they die? Do you end your playthrough right there? No of course not. Everyone KNOWS you're going to restart the chapter (unless you're doing a challenged run, and this is not what the topic is about at all). So yes, resetting IS part of the game. That doesn't mean it's intended to be used when a unit dies though. But you can do it. And yes, sometimes, you'll get better characters later. That's not always the case though. If a unit is too important for your army, replacing isn't really a choice. And if you want to get a specific pairing for the lord at the end of the game, I'm not going to just let the game take that away from me. It's a choice. Do you want to keep going, but have that unit stay dead, or lose all your progress in that chapter until now to attempt to keep that unit alive. Believe it or not, this is an extremely well balanced system. In my very recent BInding Blade run, I let units that were useful die because I didn't think they were worth it. I didn't reset in hope that I'd get good units later on. But when a very important unit died, I couldn't let that go, and of course, I reset. So yes, resetting is a choice the game gives you. Because you can reset without even resetting the console or the game for most titles. And both choices have ups and downs. And besides, what does it matter to you? Play however you want, why do you try to force your mindset to other players?

i remember Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume’s permadeath mechanic having a full death scene for every character in the game that would play after the map, but i think that game’s playable cast isn’t even 30 chars

Yeah I think this is accurate to me. If I know a character can die I’m less likely to get attached.

FE3H was really, really not built for permadeath. I’ve played through it almost 5 times now and this run I lost Caspar. He still shows up in the monastery to taunt me that he’s still alive despite not appearing in any cutscenes.

@@sallywong5788 I find it hilarious the characters are still there talking, for some reason. It really does make it feel less impactful, though. I do like how they have a greyed out epilogue chapter, though.

@@sallywong5788 My head cannon is that they're ghosts. I think they disappear in the second half of the game.

@@lizagarnet7529 Yeah. They also get a short sentence in the ending explaining what happened to them post-timeskip. Usually they die, disappear, get married (with some unhappy implications), or otherwise are away from the fighting.

For me it was Raphael, but it was fairly early on and I had barely interacted with him, so I just convinced myself he wasn't worth going back for. I still feel awful about it

Awakening feels like the first FE that didn't care about permadeath at all when its gameplay was designed.

It's sad how the game that literally handled the storytelling best still has plenty of examples of how the permadeath stilts the character usage. They can have a couple "moments" like that to drive home when characters are dead, but the reality is Oscar and Boyd being capable of dying means that they can't really be alive in the plot either. They can't do or say ANYTHING that moves the plot forward leaving to them being "dead men walking" where they can't really do or say anything of importance because they might be dead. Of course the gameplay of Path of Radiance is also one of the worst games to lose a unit, with finite XP and units, losing those two could be RIP for the run.

@@SherrifOfNottingham I think that was going to be the purpose of Supports before it got changed. FE9's Supports do a whole lot in backending character progression and sometimes weaving it in with the main plot. It's not the best or anything, but I do think it was the great way to get both story and permadeath. So Oscar and Boyd don't need to be plot-important to be lovable and interesting characters. In fact, I think the characters being plot-important is helping ruin permadeath. What a lot of characters need to be is MC(s)-important. Where they have an impact on the MC(s)'s character development or any other important character's development. And some characters can have impacts on other units developing.

Thank you for the lengthy comment! The reason I didn't talk about how permadeath changes the story in context to what characters died is because... well, to be honest, I didn't think about it. My intended scope of the video was covering permadeath from the standpoint of a game mechanic. But I love the point you talk about in regards to the acknowledgement of character deaths to sell the narrative even further. Something you might not have realized is that FE9 actually DOES acknowledge character deaths, depending on the context. I know for sure that if Oscar and Boyd die within Chapters 1 or 2, Ike will apologize to Titania for being careless. When Rolf eventually joins, his recruitment dialogue says he wants to avenge his brother's death, rather than just saying he can protect himself. I've heard that if a lot of people died over the course of the game, Ike's dialogue reads like he's become bitter from the war. Though this much I'm not well learned about. You're right in the sense that it's not deeply complex, but unfortunate souls would see these snippets of dialogue. Even then, it's the most dynamic example in the series. Although most games don't even attempt to. The thing that makes it difficult to really encapsulate is that a solution is not as easy to pinpoint for how this could be implemented. This is something that Fire Emblem has always struggled with, even from the NES days. The easiest solution is for the playable characters to not be involved in the story. Though, most FE fans would not be down with that approach. You could replace characters like Seth with generic soldiers to say the intended dialogue as a stand in. But even then, what if those characters need to recite information that only Seth would know? Bottom line, a video game has too many factors of who can die when that a narrative would need to be designed around this consideration, and even theoretically that sounds like a logistical nightmare. And in my opinion, a game should be made with gameplay first. Either way, thank you again for the comment. This line of questioning could be the seed for a greater discussion on this focus.

@@ChrisTheFields Whoa, I never knew FE9 actually acknowledges the deaths like that, that's awesome! I always reset for deaths and only saw this particular example because I was practicing a chapter and played through to the cutscene out of curiousity. I would love for FE to do more of that! Not writing a pathed script and keeping characters who appear in cutscenes alive is easiest, but you could do some incredible narrative stuff if you did, like Ike becoming more bitter is an amazing touch. The gameplay vs story concern is a very good point-- some characters, like our example of Seth, would really change too much to feasibly permakill, and it probably wouldn't be a good idea to try to write in deaths for EVERY character besides the lords/avatars. But some effort could be put into removing or replacing other characters who DO speak up past their recruitment chapter. I actually looked up who gets a get-out-of-death-free pass in FE13 and FE14 instead of relying on my vague impression, and man, giving first gen women in Awakening and first gen men in Fates an automatic pass immediately knocks out half of the mandatory cast. After that, in Fates there's all the female royal siblings, Felicia, Rinkah, Gunter, Yukimura, and Scarlet. In Awakening, it's Frederick, the Feroxians, Say'ri, and... Virion? Some of these are very fair, the Fates royals are obviously crucial to the plot and Frederick would be a lot of work to replace, but the others, I dunno about some of them. You could probably have random soldiers share information these characters did in a lot of these cases. The sparing of Rinkah's life took place long before she was recruitable, and lol what did Virion even do after you recruited him that couldn't be cut or replaced? Fates dads' immortality, btw, didn't make sense to me at first, because it's not like there's any potential time paradoxes. But then I realized that it's because they play such a large role in their childrens' recruitment chapters-- and that's probably the real reason the potential moms of Awakening can't die either. I think a potential workaround could have been giving patents *conditional* immortality-- if their child has been unlocked but has not yet been recruited, they merely retreat, but otherwise, chop chop they go. There's precedent somewhat-- nobody dies in Lyn's Story, but they can die in Eliwood's/Hector's. But if the writers had been willing to put in the time and work, I think child recruitment chapters where the main parent is dead could have made for some really moving scenes. Just imagine what it would have been like for the Awakening kids-- they finally made it to a world where their parent(s) should have still been alive, but instead, they were too late. And the Fates kids must have been waiting till the day they could join their parents in the main world instead of having just those occasional visits throughout their upbringings, but now their parent(s) are gone, and they'll never be able to. What missed opportunities from a writing standpoint! Something else I thought of is that, if the script does acknowledge deaths or changes things-- most players wouldn't even see those changes, because I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of players, when one of their units dies, reset the game. But what would all players see? Their unit dying, and that character's heartbreaking last words. You brought up that FE is classified as a simulation game in Japan, and that's really interesting to me when considering this aspect. Because your units in this war simulator aren't nameless, faceless soldiers. These aren't just military units, shrunken little faceless sprites. These are characters, with names and faces and stories, that the game gets you to know and love. And the game puts the lives of these characters in your hands. It makes you get attached to them, and then it makes you work to make sure they don't die. That's, I think, the real reason why almost everyone resets, and why it's so hard to keep going after a death. Not just for gameplay reasons, but emotional ones. You don't just want to keep them alive because you've invested your time and resources into them and don't want to have to play without them. You want to keep them alive because you love them. And if they die, it's your fault. That, to me, is one thing that makes Fire Emblem stand out from any other game. It's always been a part of its heart. And I think a lot of that has been undermined, at least in the two post-mainstreamification FEs I've played. It's not because the game has become more accessable-- its increased accessability in "casual" mode is unrelated to the changes made in "classic" mode. The changes in permadeath from the non-gameplay standpoint are unnecessary, and feel like they're coming from a place of... not being willing to put in the work, and quite possibly, the changes in what the dev team considers to be "Fire Emblem-ness." I would LOVE to see you explore this topic in a video, I'm sure you would have a really interesting analysis! I need to check out your other videos, I see you are a man of culture with those Golden Sun videos! (Though, I've never played Dark Dawn-- I got a copy at release but never got around to it...) This video actually made me want to pick up my copies of all my FE games and finally beat em, I've only beaten FE13 and FE14 despite being into the series since they first came to the states almost 2 decades ago! Usually I go overboard with grinding and then get bored, lol. Maybe this time I'll finally do it!

I'm pretty sure every character in 3H, post time skip, actually dies. The death quotes in that game are absolutely heart wrenching

The reality is the opposite however, the characters either have to be "crippled" and "dead" for the sake of combat but still alive to keep the plot functional, or you get the one sided nature of their interactions from Path of Radiance where nobody ever interacts with each other _too_ directly because the game has to be written like a telltale game, once a character has the ability to die, they turn into a dead man walking. At best the writers can put a scene in the game that players that lost that character will just never see, but mostly the character will spend the rest of their time in the story dropping one liners that nobody even directly acknowledges. The reality is the older games set up "reminder" scenes to try and hit you in the feels when somebody is dead altering entire dialogue exchanges, but it's still just that, a quick exchange to remind you that YOU lost a unit. I play Rimworld and I'm no stranger to losing characters I love, while I don't use the "ironman" modes in Rimworld in case something truly unfair happens (and when you have over 300 mods installed to rimworld this happens often enough to make ironman mode a liability) I usually don't reload a save just because I lost somebody. But the way the story is told there is just fundamentally different, being that the story is entirely emergent. I'm not opposed to "permadeath" when done right. The problem with Fire Emblem is that there's no real story impact when you lose a character, but because there's a lack of generic units you can refill your roster with, there's a massive gameplay impact for losing them... which frankly is not a good impact. All the characters are either written to be easily dropped from the script, or they literally don't even die from the permadeath mechanic anyway, but the problem is you can end up in the "hero limp" near the end of the game when you enter the fight with some underleveled units carried by the characters that force a reset whenever they die. Eventually yeah, you can end up in a situation where it's impossible to beat the game because you lost too many units, and many entries into the series have a finite amount of XP leading to even more restrictive strategic decisions. Essentially, despite my love for the games, Fire Emblem games are actually not very well designed games, we love them sure but they're honestly not great games. These are flagrant issues with the core design, perma death in most fire emblem games don't work, awakening had the ability to play through DLCs multiple times so you never ran out of encounters and the DLC also brought with it a LOAD of characters you could bring into battle. So you lose a character, that's fine go grab Micah and spend some time in the XP and Money grinding levels, overuse a weapon then go into the item DLC to get some replacements for the legendary weapons. It's funny how these "pay to win" DLCs really ended up making this game one of the better permadeath games, while simultaneously making half the roster unable to die in permadeath anyway so they can stick around for the story.

The reason why in awakening no girls can die is not because of the kids - the fathers of every child can die after recruitment and that counts. The reason is because whoever Chrom marries basically becomes a secondary main character, appearing in several cutscenes that make no sense if they're not there. That being said, I really dislike Awakening's handling of this for the same reason as you, and wish it only applied after someone got to S with Chrom. That would be far less egregious. Though on that subject, Awakening has a far worse example of this in my opinion; Virion, the archer you get at the start of the game, appears in one cutscene in Chapter 13, and this means he isn't allowed to die for the entire fucking game. Like, really? REALLY? And to make matters worse, because of all the rest of the stuff with Awakening, Virion is the straw that breaks the camel's back and ensures that out of the team you have in the prologue and Chapter 1, not even ONE of them can actually die for real.

That's exactly why I said the potential removal of Classic Mode would be controversial, but potentially beneficial. I don't know if Intelligent Systems will ever be brave enough to make that call, as it would be completely taking out something linked to the identity of the series for over 30 years. But I would actually be willing to entertain what a "Casual Mode Only" Fire Emblem game looks like, as it could allow for some interesting shake ups, even if only for just one new experimental entry.

It would be really simple for them to just design without casual and turnwheel in mind. Make the game expecting players to lose units. That way the turnwheel isn't basically mandatory. We have seen what designing a game without permadeath is like and many aspects of gameplay suffer. I don't think they should commit to casual either because there are plenty of other games without permadeath that people can play.

As someone who has only tried a handful of Fire Emblem games (All three Fates, Echoes, Awakening, Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, Three Houses) and has actively disliked all of them except Three Houses, I think removing permadeath would be a horrible idea and kill my interest in any future games. Losing a unit in Three Houses is so crippling that you'll pretty much always want to restart but I don't think that defeats the point of permadeath. Having to restart is still punishment and even knowing you're going to do it if you fail, it encourages you to play much smarter and more tactically, thinking carefully about your moves so you can avoid having to do that. And for the times an enemy gets a dumb 1% crit or your unit misses a 98% hit, I think Divine Pulse is a great solution, though I wish they'd limit the amount of pulses you could get more like in Cindered Shadows. I'm currently doing a Maddening Classic run of Crimson Flower and I restart if I lose my Divine Pulses and then lose a unit. Yet I'm still having an absolute blast. It just wouldn't be as fun or satisfying without Permadeath having that threat of needing to restart and start from 0 and it's made me a much better player than Maddening Casual would have. At this point I don't think I could even go back to Normal or Hard because of how boringly easy it is by comparison lol.

@@zyvan3179 This. The devs should design the gameplay without considering the mechanics that negate permadeath's impact as well as give us an option to disable them should we so wish.

But can you reset the combat encounter? Or will I have to start a new game every time one of my units dies?

@@abderianagelast7868 this question doesn't make sense in the context of how Wildermyth works... Check out a review

Because they are incredibly dumb.

You just perfectly described my experience with ALL of these games. The only difference is that I don't think the punishment being minimal is the right choice for the game, but unfortunately, I have so many games I want to play, stuff I want to watch, and work I got to do, that I can't allow myself to play a game that punishes me to a point where I might have to play the whole game again, be it for different endings or the literal game over that XCOM has. I wish I had the time and patience to play FE7 with no resets, but I don't.

The moment Reynauld the insane cleptamiac died I felt It, maybe I get easily atached by graphics and numbers, but seing the hunter withouth his insane Knight friend was sad

@@keyman245 Oh, Dismas didn't survive all that much longer. I don't remember exactly when he died, but he was the first. I have his head now, it's a fantastic item.

@@abderianagelast7868 In my run I preserved my firts team like family, always together, the only one that died was the Knight

I think you encapsulated the difference between different types of games with permadeath. -Disposable, no unit is significantly different from others and losses are replaceable. -Technically/tactically valuable, a character is either more powerful than others or effectively irreplaceable. The loss of a character makes the game harder looking forward. It may achieve this by costing the player in-game abilities and/or resources or out of game resources like time. -Emotionally valuable, as players develop emotional connections with characters they are compelled into taking better care of their units.

The question is, will it be optional and some people use it. Or force it and we go back to the old, something didnt go as i wanted, i reload. I enjoy permadeath but i have to admit, if i liked a character i reloaded my saves when they died. So it would need a lot of player will to not fall back to the reloading save tactic when it didnt went as wanted.

@@TheFjne I think I'm fine with still having the option to do a mode without this. Maybe have three difficulties Classic, Phoenix, and this idea I'm pitching which would be the default. Something that still punishes you if you're careless on the battlefield, but not as harsh as immediate permadeath. Instead of losing your unit forever the first time their health reaches zero you just get a slap on the wrist and a warning. Then the second or third time you let them die, which is when I think you should be able to know better, *then* they're out of the game for good. They can still come up in cutscenes. Basically it'd be like in the classic games where some units are implied to just be out of the fight because they were hurt so badly from the chapter where they "died". Or maybe there's just a cutscene of them getting fed up with you mistreating them on the battlefield and quitting outright. Only taking part in story cutscenes outside of combat. There's a lot you could really play around with here.

I've played a game like that. I think it was called Rondo of Swords. You lost a unit? They were injured the entire next map. Reduced stats, couldn't go on side quests to class change/shopping missions, etc. They basically were force benched. They wouldn't die if you deployed them injured, but the penalty made battles so much harder, you were likely to injure other units keeping them alive. The only perma-death in the game was optional and caused a split path, but the only reason to ever choose it (IMO) was to see the other plotline once and never again because you give up such a powerful unit to get it (it was also the evil route, now that I think about it)

If permadeath is removed, you just need to make the game harder overall to compensate for allowing people to die. Triangle Strategy allows your units to die, but enemy units are actually a decent threat and take multiple hits to kill and none of your own units are stupidly OP. In Triangle Strategy, if you tried doing something like throwing the Dimitri/Byleth equivalent into a 1v3, they’d get annihilated. So when you lose a unit during battle, it really hurts because you were dealt a heavy blow to your strategy (losing a crucial healer, DPS, a tank, etc) and the enemy numbers can snowball and overwhelm the rest of your army.

@@NerdMiGerd yeah but what if one of your characters dies because the enemy got a lucky 1% critical hit? Am I suppose to punished for that? even after i made sure to not have anyone die off?

More notably, you have near infinite replacements. Every FE game has a limited cast, and players can only recruit so many characters- XCOM can generate as many as you need, so long as you don't blatantly game over.

I think i enjoy permadeath in games like XCOM more because the units are infinitely replaceable, but it also hurts much more to lose them since i made them, i gave them a backstory, a design, a personality, i got attached to these characters because i made them and saw them become stronger alongside me, and to then see them die is honestly fucking sad as shit.

I remember on time i lost my best sniper.

@@Hopper_Arts same

I mean drones are optimal in X-com 2. Why bother with fragile humans?

I went to tiermaker.com and manually compiled a custom tierlist of all the games that I personally played.

This really isn't the improvement you think it is.

yeah, one of the big things that demonstrate how the newer games aren't built around permadeath is that the recruitable characters are very frontloaded, require a bunch of training, and few units you get later just aren't up to snuff. I mean, compare units like Say'ri and Alois to units like Niime or FE3 Samson

@@DuelingShade I mean in all fairness those late game characters aren’t for filling up the entire roster of dead units. They’re just meant to allow you to progress and win. That’s why you get an overpowered unit in the final maps for so many of the older games. Those units are meant to allow you a fighting chance. They aren’t guaranteed going to replace a unit that was trained, but they should be able to do damage and allow for a comeback. All those units you listed still have their uses and places even if they aren’t killing machines like a fully trained Dimitri, FE7 Marcus, Perceval, Athos, etc. It’s definitely hard to switch to using units mostly to gang up on enemies instead of one or two clearly a hallway alone, but it’s always possible because of those late game units

@@anthonynguyen1289 Yup that's pretty much what i meant, and why I brought up units like Niime rather than Perceval. Sure, units like Niime, Echidna and Douglas won't compare to a trained Raigh, Deke, or Bors, but they can at least take the spot, and they join right before you'll need their respective abilities. Compare that to conquest, if you lose one of your dark mages in chapter 13 or something, who's gonna take their spot? The one you didn't use that's still at level 9, a reclassed unit with E-rank tomes, or will you wait until chapter 23 and spend your dragon points to upgrade your hotspring to level 3 to get Izana? It genuinely seems like the game expects you to grind, or just not play classic.

@@DuelingShade oh yeah I get what you were saying. I honestly didn’t replay any of the 3ds ones so I never noticed. I think three houses while having horrible balancing did make recruiting those units very late game sorta worth it stat wise while they would lose the utility of a bunch of different class skills. So it did it in an interesting way where you could recruit them early to have them learn lots of different skills or hold off in case you need them to replace a high level unit dying randomly. I recruited Catherine super late and she was definitely serviceable. Most of the church cast have really useful utility even without class skills like Manuela warp or Shamir good arts

It’s incredibly based to play classic mode just to kill characters you don’t like.

There's a select number of units where this essentially happens anyway. In fe7 any unit that would appear in the fe6 story doesn't actually die, but are no longer usable in battle. In the case of marcus and oswin they continue to play a significant role in eliwood and hectors stories even while being unusable

typo KEKW

I think people are unfair to Three houses in this regard. It is very different but, it went for a different style and I think it achieved it for the most part. It was so different overall i doubt its going to be done again though.

Agreed, for me personally I find the main protagonists the hottest so I don’t really suffer from that. I mainly suffer from the lack of viable replacement units, the only option available is to train my level five Ricken in chapter 18.

This is an interesting idea however if anyone is playing on one difficulty then you have to balance the difficultly for novices and veterans and those three difficulties wouldn't be enough to keep giving you a challenge, but it would always be nice to look for more ways to make things difficult then the generic level increase.

The problem with your system is that people would still probably kill someone who’s easy to level up (like probably the Jagen character in the early game) to give all their stats and abilities to a character who starts weaker but can get better.

The way 3H dances around this issue by essentially giving you mini savestates says it all I think.

And I love The Tellius and Jugdral game for their story and with the second games on the two mini series the difficulty

Awakening was the first one released outside of Japan to have casual mode.

@@yujiro424 Ah I see.