Fire Emblem and the Heart of Mankind

[amielleon]

"There is but one thing to be said.

That is, if there ever comes a time when mankind once more grows arrogant in its pride,

the flames of conflict shall once more scorch the land.

All will be lost, or so it is said.

A most terrible and unseemly end.

That, perhaps, is what shall live on within the hearts of men."

- Fire Emblem: Gaiden, Epilogue.

Oh, Fire Emblem, you so want to be a dark brooding badass about the nature of evil. You want to be all Tales of Phantasia: "If there is evil in the world, it lies in the heart of mankind." You want to say, it's really all our fault. It's not about the gods, it's on us!

That's... exactly why the suggested solution is to hit the god with a sword?



Type A: 1/3/4/6/7/8/11/12) There are evil dragons awakened, but the real problem is the nobles they corrupt. The potential was all along in humankind! Don't focus your hate on individuals!
Resolution: Hit all the corrupted overlords with swords, and take in their cute squishy kids. Then hit the evil dragon with a sword. World peace!!

Type B: 2/9/10) Balance falls out of order between two gods with conflicting ideals; gods go to sleep and things are momentarily okay until someone is convinced that they need to wake one up to create their ideal militaristic society.
Resolution: Epic journeys ensue, some gods are hit by divine swords and agree to piss off. (Temporary) world peace!!

Type WTF Thracia: 5) Your country is ruled by evil dudes worshipping an evil god!
Resolution: Take your country back, then play the previous game!!
(... Right, how about we ignore Thracia for just a moment, it's pretty weird.)

Kaga, and all of his successors at IS, seem to love presenting the problem as complex. It's not the Absolute Evil, that's just a metaphor. It's humankind. It's the heart of darkness.

And yet, for what this complexity grant us, what does his intended solution suggest? What is the real-world analogue to hitting a god with a sword?

Genocide? The series seems to suggest that genocide is never justified... although curiously pre-Tellius the persecuted people (if present) were always somehow a potential danger and would become a menace to you by the time of the game: Dragons, Loptians, Thracians, Dragons. (Even in FE7, where your girlfriend is a dragon, you have no choice but to kill some dragons completely arbitrarily the moment they pass through the gate, because obviously they're about to destroy the world. I give FE7 the Worst Racial Morality Award.) The Absolute Evil was generally their boss in some way.

So, if we just wiped out all the dangerous people, obviously whatever evil is in mankind that's left is just like, bandits and shit and we can handle that. Right? Right.

My, Fire Emblem. My.

Or maybe they don't intend to suggest a solution beyond the metaphorical idea that we should fight it. Maybe they recognize that this has been a problem for ages, but they want a nice clincher for their story. (And if we're in Type B, they throw us some more shades of gray and say it's a temporary solution.)

"Dunno. There's this problem. It's hard. I don't really know how to do anything about this and make a satisfying story, so..."

"Here. Hit some gods with a sword."

Comments

[mark_asphodel]

Balance falls out of order between two gods with conflicting ideals

I kind of thought the point with FE2 was that the active interventions of gods brought out the worst in humanity and they were better off being forced to sort it out for themselves. It sounded to me like Doma and Mila preferred being sent to sleep for millennia.

Right, how about we ignore Thracia for just a moment, it's pretty weird.

It's more than weird. It's operating in a completely different framework.

[amielleon]

I kind of thought the point with FE2 was that the active interventions of gods brought out the worst in humanity and they were better off being forced to sort it out for themselves. It sounded to me like Doma and Mila preferred being sent to sleep for millennia.

And yet the active intervention was brought about by human action, and the effects of the gods' appearances are more direct upon nature than mankind. It seems to me that agency is still essentially in the hands of humanity.

Doma's desire to sleep doesn't seem to be strong enough that he can roll over and go back to bed before getting hit with a sword.

[mark_asphodel]

Doma's desire to sleep doesn't seem to be strong enough that he can roll over and go back to bed before getting hit with a sword.

True, but it seemed to me like part of the plot was to create a human hero (Alm) so that Doma and Mila could take a nap, and having Doma whacked with the Mila sword was the McGuffin plot they concocted. I could be reading it totally wrong, but I felt that Doma was kind of complicit in his own "fall" in a way that Medeus, Loptous, etc would never be.

[The create-a-hero thing is one concept that Thracia DOES have in common with FE2.]

[amielleon]

Mm, I could believe that. My memory of FE2 is honestly too hazy to argue much about the nuances of its moral implications.

I would compare Doma and Mila to Yune and Ashera before any of the more black-and-white evil gods, though. And while Ashera was not exactly complicit in her slaying, you get this sense that after her defeat, she came around to agreeing with Yune/the masses.

Or at least, that's what I believe the return of Ashunera is meant to represent.

[blankspectrum]

So, if we just wiped out all the dangerous people, obviously whatever evil is in mankind that's left is just like, bandits and shit and we can handle that. Right? Right.

Why does this sound so familiar... :D;

[kyusil]

I hate to be that person here, but there is also the fact that every video game needs a Big Epic Final Boss, and seeing as FE is lacking in the giant robot department, it does what it can. I personally find most of the Final Final Boss fights in FE to be rather anticlimactic, as a sense of visual scale isn't particularly important in a story-driven SRPG, but the tradition still stands.

Also, does FE8 quite fit in with the first group? That one strikes me as a bit closer to the whole man vs. himself problem. I'm not sure how well it fits in with canon but I'm a big fan of the theory about the DK being actually created out of Lyon's personal darkness, rather than just some big Final Boss he dug up and played host to. IIRC it's not quite clear-cut enough to go one way or the other, but I might be wrong. I guess you can't really cleanly divide into two groups, but I understand that you did it for sake of the argument.

[amielleon]

As I suggested, "Maybe [...] they want a nice clincher for their story." In terms of story I can understand caving into the easy method of finding a climax -- but failing to be responsible for your implications is also a story-related problem.

I think in turns of pure game design, it's quite possible to have a final chapter that's plenty epic and not based around beating One Big Epic Final Boss. In FE1/11 for instance, I think the epicness of the final chapter was not the presence of Medeus, but the layout and the incredibly powerful swarms of mundane enemies. Every other person around here seems to agree -- final bosses in FE are kind of disappointingly easy. They're not the fights you really remember.

I'm not sure how well it fits in with canon but I'm a big fan of the theory about the DK being actually created out of Lyon's personal darkness, rather than just some big Final Boss he dug up and played host to.

How does that theory run? If I recall it's quite clear that there was indeed an ancient demon king and he's trapped in the Sacred Stone. As for Lyon's acts "under the influence," I definitely buy that those are at least partly based on Lyon's own flaws.

But in any event, killing Lyon wasn't the final solution. If anything, it set up the reincarnation of the Big Evil God. Which you then need to hit with a sword.

That one strikes me as a bit closer to the whole man vs. himself problem.

That's what I'm saying though -- the evil within humanity itself is always presented as the problem. And then the solution presented is a bit... discontinuous.

[kyusil]

Well, that all is probably why FE's not a series considered very revolutionary or notable for its story, despite whatever it does/whether it does anything well, I guess. Follow-through's important and all. I wasn't saying I or anyone in particular liked how the final boss fights were set up, but more that it's just a thing in most games that the developers might've felt they had to adhere to.

The Lyon thing... eh, looks like I wasn't remembering the game well enough. There might be a way to make it make sense but those aren't hoops I feel like jumping through.

[amielleon]

Naw, FE's overall not considered very revolutionary... but you can kind of tell the developers wanted it to be deep. They just were at a loss of how to pull off everything they wanted, I think.

[mark_asphodel]

but the layout and the incredibly powerful swarms of mundane enemies

That chapter is amazing. I love it.

If anything, it set up the reincarnation of the Big Evil God. Which you then need to hit with a sword.

Yeah. But FE8 has its own kind of incoherence going on wrt: Lyon.

[amielleon]

I think someone thought Lyon was just too damn adorable, and couldn't manage to zoom out and take another look at the bigger picture they were presenting.