The grand finale of Fire Emblem: Awakening made me feel things. Emotional things. In fact, it made me feel so many things it kinda knocked me out. This was unexpected.
It took me about 27 hours to complete the game. If, about halfway through, you had told me that the ending was going to make me feel proud and sad and thrilled and bittersweet, I wouldnât have believed you. Thatâs because halfway through, the story seemed like total nonsense. It was a mess of warring kingdoms with gobbledegook names, prophecies that didnât make sense, mysterious doppelgĂ€ngers and all sorts of time-traveling nonsense, all hinging onâyou guessed it!âan ancient evil, poised to awake.
But somehow, over the course of the final three or four chapters, Awakening pulled it all together and delivered one of the most cathartic conclusions of any game Iâve recently played.
Spoilers follow for the end of Fire Emblem: Awakening
Looking at the story going into the final showdown with the evil wizard Validar, it all seemed way too convoluted to ever come together in a meaningful way. It seemed unlikely that this many threads could make a single tapestry. But right around the time when Shin (my red-headed protagonist, who happens to look exactly like SentarĆ from Kids on the Slope) and his best friend Chrom faked out Validar by reenacting the fateful vision from the start of the game, the story got some real traction.
What initially seemed like a plotline from Passions (Time-traveling children! Evil twins! Demonic blood!) actually wound up making a fair amount of sense, or at least as much sense as any time-travel story can. See, it turned out that my amnesiac protagonist was actually Grima, a massive dragon demigod monster who is the key to all evil in the world. (Arenât they always.) A good all-powerful dragon named Naga explained that in order to defeat his twin, who had traveled back in time to ensure that Shin became evil in this timeline, Shin would need to strike his future-self downâGrima can only die by his âownâ handâbut in so doing, Shin himself would cease to exist.
All pretty basic fantasy time-travel junk. But then, it was revealed that there was a chanceâa tiny chanceâthat Shin would survive, if his ties to this world were strong enough. (Sorry for the jank pictures in this post: itâs the best I can do for the 3DS.)
That was when I started to think, âHmm, this ending might turn out to be pretty good.â Not because the story was so original, but because I was getting an inkling that the gameâs designers were about to fall back on the thing Fire Emblem does better than almost any game of its ilk: It lets players control and become invested in the charactersâ relationships.
In all our talk of this game over the past month or so, we keep coming back to one thing: Awakening is about smart, well-designed battlefield strategy, but itâs also about love and friendship. As characters level up and get stronger, their relationships with one another also level up and become stronger. You arrange your characters on the battlefield according to who theyâre friends with, or falling in love with. And each time they successfully fight together, their friendship deepens.
https://lastchance.cc/in-fire-emblem-marriage-can-be-a-fate-worse-than-death-5981884%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
This is such brilliant designâit ties the âstory stuffâ to the âgame stuffâ in a way that makes characters more than just window dressing. Itâs a more complete loop than the well-regarded Persona gamesânot only does an increased social status make characters more effective in combat, it goes both ways: fighting well together improves their relationships. The side effect is that as all that happens, you really come to like them
https://lastchance.cc/forget-the-most-powerful-characters-use-the-ones-you-l-5984033%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Here Shin stands, leading his battle-hardened squad of 14 of his finest warriors. Each one is armed with the finest weaponry and possesses the most high-level abilities, each one fighting hand in hand with a husband, a wife, a best friend. Theyâve climbed onto the back of a massive, island-sized dragon, prepared to fight their way its head and kill it. But the dragon casts a powerful spell, and every character is instantly, gravely wounded. Then, Shin is sucked into a vortex by his evil twin and, in some dark shadowy in-between place, heâs laid low. Heâs powerless to resist. Hope is lost.
But then, he hears a voice.
And this music begins to play:
(Itâs very worth listening to this music for full effect. This is some really, really good music.)
Shin starts to make out what the voices are saying:
And then, one by one, his friends call out to him, bringing him back from the darkness.
I was amazedâamazed!âat how genuinely caught up in all this I was. Itâs somewhat well-worn territory, of course: Itâs always darkest before the dawn, Trinity kissing Neo, Gandalf riding down the mountain at Helmâs Deep, etc. But man⊠as âthat momentâ goes, it was really well-done.
These people, whom Iâd let risk their lives (because remember, in this game death has consequences), people whom Iâd watched putter around in the barracks, celebrate their birthdays, train and laugh together, bicker and fall in love⊠they were all there, calling me back.
And Shin came back, and the music changed:
(Hit play, trust me.)
And Naga healed my party, and itâs once more into the breach, dear friends, up the dragonâs back to land the killing blow and save the world.
As I fought, that music was playing, and what a piece of music it was. Iâve written before about how Hiroki Morishita and Rei Kendohâs score is great, and the wonderfully shifting musical milieu of combat, but this final piece of music goes above and beyond. Like the story at this point, it ties together several of the scoreâs motifs into something thatâs at once rousing, melancholy, romantic and energizing, and oddly sad. Itâs a play on the accordion riff that plays when you first meet Chrom and his shepards at the start of the game. The accordion represents so much in this game: friendship, unity, teamwork, sacrifice. But in this instance, the accordion is layered on top of a much more driving, heroic chord progression. And then, of course, thereâs a choir, because choirs are awesome.
https://lastchance.cc/the-music-in-fire-emblem-awakening-is-so-hot-5977233%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
https://lastchance.cc/fire-emblem-awakenings-amazing-musical-milieu-5983555%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
The first loss was the biggest joltâFrederick, who had been my overpowered protector in the early goings, was struck down. Then fell Kellam, the warrior that no one noticedâand without him to protect her, his wife Miriel died shortly thereafter. Frederickâs wife Cordelia, now alone, was easy pickings for the unstoppable hordes. Flavia and her husband Basilio, late additions to my party whoâd nonetheless had won me over during the course of the story, died as well.
And all the while, that music was playing. Here we go now, to our deaths, to save the world. And their sacrifices werenât in vain, the gambit workedâShin struck down Grima, and sacrificed himself to ensure the dragon would stay dead forever. As he began to disappear, Shin said goodbye:
Then came the closing credits, a marvelous postscript to all that had come before. Through written epilogues, I got to find out what happened to my favorite characters. I learned that Virion was a pariah in his home country of Rosanne, but was forgiven because people were so impressed by his wife (and my favorite character) Sully. I learned that the animal-woman Panne was happy to accompany her husband Lonâqu back to his icy homeland, and that Donnel returned home to his mother and never fought in another battle. I learned what became of Chrom and his wife Sumia, and of all the characters that I didnât get to know that well, but who still fought by my side for a time.
And then, one final footnote: that lovely, ambiguous cutscene. I awakened to see Chrom through Shinâs eyes once more. A scene very similar to the one near the start of the game played out a second time, minus one very important detailâthe mark of Grima was no longer visible on Shinâs hand. That accordion was playing. âWelcome back,â said Chrom. âItâs over now.â Theyâd found him, after all. And the loop closed.
If youâd told me at the outset that Iâd get this emotionally invested in Fire Emblem: Awakening, I wouldnât have believed you. Itâs fantasy malarky, I wouldâve said. Itâs just dragons and spells, itâs nothing I havenât seen before. That was true, after all: I hadnât seen it before, this was my first Fire Emblem game. Iâd yet to experience the seriesâ unique brand of emotional attachment.
Now I have. So with the world saved, I did what any self-respecting master tactician would do: I loaded up a new game and started all over again. Maybe this time Iâll focus on having a totally different party, and Iâll watch new characters fall in love, get married, and fight alongside their children. Iâll lead them in battle like I always do, and weâll win the day, like we always do. And when the bitter end comes, Iâll have a whole new group of friends to pull me back from the edge before we plunge over it together.
