What’s a story or a game if its protagonist is designed in isolation from the world, themes, and gameplay? The protagonists in Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Byleth, Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude - aren’t just designed that way because sword lords are the norm. Their designs reflect their histories, cultures, and the game’s mechanics. Byleth, for instance, uses a sword because he’s a sellsword, but as he grows, his supportive magic and teaching skills encourage team-building, highlighting the game’s themes of connection and growth. Claude’s bow… You get the idea. The mechanics push you to form bonds across houses, showing how breaking loyalty to countries and systems like Crests fosters stronger unity.
In Awakening, Robin’s choices seem futile, mirroring the despair of a doomed world, until the game’s climax, where your actions do matter, proving bonds and selflessness can defy fate. Robin can be anything, this deepens this connection, aligning gameplay with the narrative of choice and significance. Even something like Alm’s game’s mechanics encouraging you to choose practicality over symbolism, such as using a Killer Bow any commoner can use instead of his super special sword of chosen one importance, aligns with his down-to-earth personality.
Contrast this with Fates where Corrin, whose lack of meaningful ties to either nation’s culture and thematic depth weakens the story. Despite a setup ripe for exploring themes like identity, family, and moral dilemmas, the game sidesteps these opportunities, making Corrin’s actions feel hollow. His divine gifts and naïveté are framed as aspirational, but the narrative doesn’t engage with their implications, leaving his role flat compared to more nuanced Lords. Corrin’s “genius plan” for dealing with a traitor is to get betrayed and expect his friends to bail him out, friends who literally don’t trust him to be left alone.
Intentional design ties gameplay and story and characterization together. A tome hits hard, and it’s not a sword, but it still just hits hard as any weapon does. What’s special about that, outside of stories where being a tome user is special due to the setting? (Such as a story where magic is for the chosen few and that tome was hand-crafted in defiance of cultural norms). Imagine a Staff Lord supporting allies in unique ways. This isn’t just a novel gameplay mechanic but an opportunity to weave gameplay, character growth, and narrative significance into something cohesive. A character who leads by supporting allies instead of surpassing them all in direct combat potential could embody ideals that resonate in a world desperate for them. And it doesn’t make units who fill his niche but worse irrelevant.
sorry didnt realize the post was getting that long
Come to think of it, what is a story if its protagonist is designed in isolation from the story’s world, themes, plot, and characters? What is a game if its protagonist is designed in isolation from the intended role in gameplay?
Byleth and Edelgard and Dimitri and Claude aren’t the way they are because “Well I guess it would be novel if we did things the previous games didn’t”. Maybe designing them started that way(Lords using Lances and Axes and Bows instead of Swords are unusual for the series), but there’s more to them than that.
They’re shaped by their pasts, their families, locations in this world, cultures in this world, events in this world’s history. Byleth uses a sword because he’s a sellsword, and if he grows from who he was at the start of the story (requiring change and growth, learning and taking advantage of the school setting, reaching out to others and trusting other instructors to teach him, and fusing with the sleeping deity within) his supportive magic benefits the whole team more than he would if he just kept using a sword. His Personal Skill helps allies learn faster encouraging you to use him to assist allies and think about who needs teaching right now, and if his Personal Skill just increased his own combat effectiveness he’d just be one more combat unit of many. Byleth learns and uses whatever’s useful, he’ll use a bow so his teammates can use his Personal Skill with a 1-range weapon and he’ll raise his stats specifically to recruit a kid his House needs. Each House is missing something encouraging you to recruit from outside the House and form connections stronger than loyalty to countries, the weight of the past, and the pressures of the Crest system. Who can’t you poach from other houses? People with a reason for their unbreakable loyalty to specific people. The mechanics, the gameplay, the characters, it’s all connected.
Awakening’s Robin gets to make choices, so you get to make choices, and they don’t matter because they build upon the idea that maybe choices in this doomed world don’t matter, and they add weight to the final choice he does get to make. Chrom, Robin, Lucina, Basilio, and you… It really seems like you can’t change fate. The Valm arc, where it seems inevitable that the Conqueror will win… You get to change that fate and prove Chrom’s way of forming bonds is better than Walhart’s way of narcissism and coercion. You get to overcome Grima and everything he represents. Whether you would sacrifice Emmeryn for the Emblem or vice reversa, Chrom says no. Whether you would sacrifice yourself to Lucina just in case it prevents your potential betrayal in the future, Chrom says no. Robin’s choices, your choices, seem to never matter until they do, when the game asks you if you’re ready to put the game down and sacrifice the all-important avatar for a happier ending, if you’re ready to do something selfless for the good of others someone selfish would never see coming. And then get better after sacrificing yourself because bonds are just that good and we need the ending to be even happier I guess. Everything is predestined and your choices don’t matter and Grima might be right, the game says… Right until you change destiny and prove him right and get to prove your actions do have significance and you’re not Grima and you’re not going to sacrifice others for yourself now or in the future. You can customize Robin because he doesn’t have to finish the game as a Sorceror paired with Chrom, but even if you do, there is still significance in that.
Alm’s probably going to use a Killer Bow instead of his super special chosen one sword because in most scenarios that’s the better option. In-character, he seems like someone who would do that, doesn’t he? It’s been a long time since I played his game but if the game allowed Berkut to notice Alm using a bow anyone can use instead of something special and important for the special and important only he’d probably really, really hate seeing this.
Corrin fails as a character because he’s an amnesiac self-sired by divinity adopted by two royal families at war over him and in a boring good vs evil war and the story can’t make sense of itself and give real emotional weight and thematic and narrative significance to anything. Corrin isn’t emotionally affected by the Concubine War like Camilla is. He doesn’t remember his own childhood friend and the retainers of his siblings, let alone dead family members. This world was ruined by a mad evil Dragon being evil for no reason because when Dragons get too old and strong they go mad or die, but let’s not think about that and make Corrin stronger and give him more power and importance so he can fix anything through force. Corrin doesn’t have anything to say about hypocrisy and Ryoma attacking when the Nohrians needed medicine for Elise. Corrin doesn’t have anything to say about a spooky forest full of Faceless created by the Nohrians and just left there to hurt innocent Nohrians, a consequence of warmongering ignored by those in power. Corrin doesn’t have anything to say about Hoshidans taking Nohrian land to “guard” the Rainbow Sage from Nohrians who want his aid. (You don’t yet know Garon wants him dead). The story wants to present Corrin as someone aspirational. He’s so kind! He heals “birds” who turn out to be magic Dragons! He is so naive and trusting and that’s a good thing! Look how great he is when he beats Anthony’s trap by walking right into it and trusting his friends to not trust him alone at all and rush in to save him! Look how good he is when he defeats or oppresses people without killing them! It contrasts with Iago and Hans who are mean about it and scheme and kill sometimes! It doesn’t even mean anything from a character standpoint when he goes from using his Dragonstone to defend and support his allies while being a great combat unit to using his holy super sword of extreme predestined significance while also defending and supporting his allies and being a great combat unit. Both are things he was gifted from someone else. Did he ever explore that idea meaningfully? He’s linked to Anankos, who you don’t even learn about on most routes. When is it right for a child to overthrow their father, or for a mortal to overthrow their God? What is and isn’t family? What does it mean for Nohrians and Hoshidans to work together to overthrow the evil deity Nohr worships when on most playthroughs it’s Takumi’s corpse you put down in the end with Takumi’s spirit’s blessing?
It would be neat if there was another Tome Lord to hit people with magic damage. You don’t often see those, and Robin from Awakening was awesome, especially when he did a lot of Attack Stance attacks and eventually became a Sorceror to trivialize the game. But if Robin becomes a Sage to Heal and Warp his allies or a Rallybot to enhance his allies in a way only he (and his kids) can, that’s something special created for the story through the gameplay.
Gameplay-wise it’s better for the Lord to support allies the player chooses to use, otherwise the player might say “The Lord is a good enough sword combat unit, why use another good sword combat unit? I don’t have any reason to recruit or use Felix because Byleth can hit people with a sword just fine and other combat units provide more utility, especially bow users. And utility units provide even more utility”. But if a Lord was designed to use a Tome or Staff or gain extra weapons upon promotion I’d want there to be thematic and narrative significance to it and to his or her relations to other characters and the world and journey. Sure, I’d love the challenge of a FE game where the Lord can only use Staves and Rallies and exclusive utility-based Combat Arts and the difficulty is so high you have to think carefully about who you use and why and when, but it would be elevated if there was more to the character than a gameplay function, and his gameplay function and story role was in harmony with who he is and who he becomes, if the character was someone who actually would fight like that on a battlefield to aid his allies instead of swinging a weapon himself, and the enemies he overcame and the ideals he fought for in a world in dire need of them mattered to who he is.
