The Girl Who Died

[SonofaJohannes]

I've never beaten a Fire Emblem game. I'm a terrible tactician and I refuse to continue with casualties, so I restart until I give up. I get invested, and everytime a character dies I feel like I've failed them, so this article was one that I could really relate to. The fear of death, and the knowledge that it would haunt me if I continued is too much for me to ever finish a game. Great article, really good.

Captcha: broken heart.
Oh so many times, when playing these games.

 

[AbsoluteVirtue18]

... and this is why I put sold my copy of Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced after three battles.

Fuck permadeath. It serves no useful purpose other than to ruin a game.

If you disagree - good for you. There is clearly a following for such games. Enjoy them.

I will never, ever play one.

Tactics Advance only had permadeath if you fought in a Jagd. Otherwise you could go the whole battle with everyone except one character down the whole battle and everyone would still be alive afterwards. Which I actually did several times during story battles, using only Marche to make the battles seem more difficult.

OT: Yes, the Fire Emblem games are nerve-wracking. At least the original Tactics gave you three turns to revive characters. Of course, if you failed to revive them and they died anyway it felt much more like the death was your fault, as opposed to Fire Emblem where it feels like it was out of your control.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Tactics Advance only had permadeath if you fought in a Jagd. Otherwise you could go the whole battle with everyone except one character down the whole battle and everyone would still be alive afterwards. Which I actually did several times during story battles, using only Marche to make the battles seem more difficult.

Maybe it was just Tactics, not Tactics Advanced? It was the one ported to PSP. I honestly can't remember - like I said, I traded it almost immediately.

 

[Ekim Takusan]

This article makes you think doesn't it? Then again most games with perma-death elements do. We will go out of our way, to ridiculous lengths in some cases, to save a character from the white light at the end of the tunnel.

Yet these characters are only bits of code...

Why do we do it? Why do we 'save scum'? (I believe that is the proper derogatory nomenclature)

For example, why did I reload a save and lose almost four hours of my life to keep Dogmeat from Fallout alive?

Maybe it's because we fear death.

Maybe we hope that when it's one of our own real loved ones that is in danger or near death, maybe the almighty will throw them a mulligan.

Or maybe it's just me, and I just have a hard time letting go. I, for one, have buried a lot of friends, family, and loved ones. If given a thin sliver of a chance to go back and save anyone, I'd take it in an instant.

Certain characters are destined to die, yet we rage against it.

How hard did people try to save and/or bring back Aerith Gainsborough? (Final Fantasy 7) Even going so far as to hack/mod the game to get her back.

How about Shinjiro Aragaki? (Persona 3) The outcry was so loud that in the PSP re-release the creators gave us a way to save him.

We fight it ruthlessly even at play. I think the best way I can sum it up is with, as with most things, a quote.

?There is only one god and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: ?Not today.?
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

 

[zanzarra]

Isn't it a bit redundant to pick the permadeath option and then reset every time a soldier dies? That just means you're playing normal mode, only it's a bit more complicated to reload an autosave ( assuming it works similar to ironman in XCOM )

 

[AuronFtw]

Not sure what difficult level author is playing on, but archers are complete trash past normal and any dragon units (including Nah) are incredibly powerful in the midgame (only outpaced in lategame/DLC maps because their super low speed cap prevents them from double attacking anything).

In normal, who cares? You can get through with mostly unpromoted units.

But yeah, on topic, FE has never done permanent death well. It feels hollow, forced and very very artificial, like they heard once on the phone what difficulty meant but never quite grasped the concept in full. Protip; replaying the first 20 minutes of a mission because 4 guys spawned within walking distance of your backline units and got kills on the very first turn before I could even react is not "challenging," it's "utter bullshit, go the fuck back to game design 101 before making any more shitty games."

FE could learn a hell of a lot from XCom, too; the earlier FE games with fog of war were absolute bullshit, because it was like the spawned units but you just couldn't see the entire map and thus a single unit could get picked off from 9 spaces away from gargoyles flying in from waaaay out of vision range. In xcom your choice of cover actually matters, and the game gives you tools to deal with unknown enemy locations and lots of fog. FE didn't, and suffered greatly because of it. At least they figured that out and didn't put any fog in awakening - at least one person in that company still has a working brain. He needs to lead an armed insurrection to overthrow all the dipshits that think permadeath from spawned units/walls opening up at random is good design, cos that shit is still holding FE back from being a truly great series. It's right on the cusp; a little improvement could go a long way. But they keep bringing back all the stupid bullshit from the earlier titles in service to brand, completely ignorant of what makes a "good" TBS game.

You want to blindside and permakill units? Okay, let me recruit them from somewhere. You want to throw fog of war everywhere? Okay, give me cover to hide behind (and 1 castle per map that the boss is afk on doesn't count). It's not that FE is a "hard" game, because it really isn't; most of the strategy is dealing with the outdated rock paper scissors faffery and making sure your dudes skirt around the edge of enemy attack range so they don't get buttfucked. The game just becomes complete shit in a waffle pan when they decide "hah, fuck these players, I'm just gonna kill that healer because I'm feeling vindictive, and there's nothing they can do about it except soft reset and play that first 20 minutes over again."

Fuck you, Fire Emblem: Awakening. When you actually get good, give me another call; until then I'll be playing far superior TBS games.

 

[Urgh76]

Isn't it a bit redundant to pick the permadeath option and then reset every time a soldier dies? That just means you're playing normal mode, only it's a bit more complicated to reload an autosave ( assuming it works similar to ironman in XCOM )

Just because you like the added tension of having the possibility of losing a character forever, it doesn't mean you want it to happen.

And this article really hit home here, as I've been restarting the same chapter for around 2 weeks now trying to get around it

EDIT: Dammit man, you really had to put Maribelle's umbrella on the grave too, didn't you? ;_;

 

[zanzarra]

But there is no tension when a character death has the same consequences as in normal mode - none, if you choose so.

 

[ImBigBob]

But there is no tension when a character death has the same consequences as in normal mode - none, if you choose so.

Restarting a chapter isn't the same as saving mid-battle. To save a character, you sometimes have to be willing to lose up to 45 minutes worth of progress.

 

[Omnicrom]

Maybe it was just Tactics, not Tactics Advanced? It was the one ported to PSP. I honestly can't remember - like I said, I traded it almost immediately.

That was the original Tactics. And Tactics was amazingly generous when it came to permadeath. It's a measly 90 JP to get Phoenix Down, they're cheap to purchase in large quantities, and even if the character is offed again you've still reset the turn count. Even if you had someone die in the middle of battle with absolutely no one who could revive them in almost all circumstances you could just finish the battle in 4 turns and you'd be golden. In Tactics permadeath was actually set up in YOUR favor, if you waited for enemies to die and crystalize you could steal their abilities for free or use them as full heals. With the small maps, the many paths to make optimized characters, and the relative speed of fights Permadeath is never an issue.

As for Fire Emblem it's more of an issue, but especially for Awakening you're given more than enough tools to prevent that. It's not merely casual mode either, FE13 lets you buy rescue staves and grind up stats and skills. In many ways with the exception of Lunatic and Lunatic+ the game is one of the easier FE games. Fire Emblem in general touts permadeath, but really they do expect you to get everyone out alive. It's a massive departure that FE11/Shadow Dragon had secrets unlocked by intentionally killing characters and even replaced death characters with generic allies. Oh and if you killed enough of them eventually the generic allies would be mocking names like "wymp", "owend", "laime" and "auffle"

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

It's a measly 90 JP to get Phoenix Down,

Wasn't there a very strict time limit on using Phoenix Downs? Like 3 turns or they're gone? There was something about I had to get over to a character in so many turns to use the Phoenix Down or Permadeath.

This has been a while ago. I'm trying to remember exactly how it went, but mostly what I remember was a character falling, my remaining characters all rushing over to help, no one making it in time, and my rushing over opening my flank up and losing another character. I was also annoyed by how slowly everyone moved.

Also, I seem to remember a battle where someone fell. I raised them. They fell again. I raised them. This went on until I ran out of Phoenix Downs.

My experience with this game was absolutely awful.

And it isn't that I dislike Strategy games. I love Jeanne d'Arc (also on PSP).

 

[BehattedWanderer]

I was never able to finish a Fire Emblem game. They all had to live, and I had to recruit every person possible. Granted, I've only played two of them, on the GC and the Wii, but I didn't finish either of them. I'd get reckless, or ambushed, and favorite characters would die (with the fancy and expensive weapon I'd just bought them, no less), and it would be twenty to thirty minutes I'd have to start anew.

That said, I commend you for your decision to let one die, to finish. That you didn't lose more is fine, and I like that her death had unexpected consequences for your team. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Towels]

Why is Permadeath such a popular mechanic in Tactical RPGs?

There's also Suikoden Tactics. Fallen combatants are immediately removed from play during that battle, but are also subject to a single roll of the dice to determine if they were injured with a recovery time or permakilled. Characters significant to the main story were exempt from permadeath, and this encouraged their usage much more so than others. Suikoden gives an effort to try and make permakilled characters signficance to the atmosphere by having a graveyard you can choose to visit just to remember, but other than that there's no significance to their death other than to be a statistic.

I like that the OT mentioned XCOM. I you can invest so much energy in a character, but they can die easily without the frustrating loss of potential narrative.