Valkyria Chronicles 4 Permadeath

[Manases Yatnalkar]

Alot of veteran Fire Emblem fans swear by classic mode and permadeath, but not me. Despite having been with the series for 20 years, I think FE would be better off without permadeath going forward. The first problem I have with it is how restrictive it is for story-telling: you can't have just any character be involved in the story because once they're under the player's control, they could be dead at any point in time. And the characters who are involved in the story either don't actually die when they're killed, defeating the narrative purpose of the mechanic altogether, or force a game over, bringing us to the second problem with permadeath that ultimately encouraged the eventual inclusion of casual mode: permadeath is something that usually just causes players to reset.

To be fair, a lot of earlier Fire Emblem games are designed under the assumption that the player will be regularly losing units by regularly giving them new allies. But in practice, this mostly doesn't stop players from just resetting anyway, because no one wants to permanently lose a character they've invested a lot of time and resources into and might also have an emotional connection to. The developers recognized this and started giving characters more personality and distinctive appearances.

Many people think Awakening or New Mystery (where casual was introduced) is when the series started moving away from permadeath as a core mechanic, but I think it goes back further. Much further. I dare say it was all the way back at Genealogy of the Holy War where the series began moving away from permadeath. Yes, that game and many after it still had the mechanic with no way to turn it off, but that game with its match-making feature was the first time a Fire Emblem title really seemed to expect players to be keeping characters alive, and ever since there have been more and more things that seem to go against the idea of permadeath, from smaller casts in Blazing Blade and Sacred Stones to Awakening and Fates not actually killing half the characters who die to Three Houses not giving players any new recruits in the second half of the game. Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, however, do temporarily tread back into permadeath-focused waters, especially the latter with its massive cast and lack of characterization for most of them.

So then, as per the title, if I have these issues with classic mode and permadeath, why am I still playing it? Because casual mode isn't quite what I want either, and turn rewind mechanics make classic the closest to the experience I want with Fire Emblem.

What's wrong with casual mode? Well, classic mode isn't all bad: what I like about classic is that it incentivizes not letting your units fall in battle. I think the punishment for failing that objective is too harsh in classic mode, but I also don't like that casual mode has little to no punishment whatsoever. There is a middle ground, though, and I've seen it done in another game.

Banner of the Maid is a game that wears its Fire Emblem inspiration on its sleeve. Check it out if you haven't, seriously. But on topic, Banner of the Maid doesn't have permadeath. However, you also can't just let your units fall in battle willy-nilly. Units who fall in battle will return next chapter as they were, just like casual mode in Fire Emblem, but if you let 3-4 units (varies based on progress) fall in one map you get a game over, and you get a gold bonus at the end of chapters for not letting units fall. This is, in my opinion, better than anything Fire Emblem has done. I don't want to let units fall in Banner of the Maid, but if they do, I also don't feel like I need to immediately reset. Characters can appear in the story as much as the writers want because no one is going to be randomly dead. BotM's way isn't the only way of going about it, of course. What's important is that the player should want to keep their units standing, but not feel strongly compelled to hit the reset button (or be forced to reset) if something goes wrong.

The best FE has done to mitigate the problem is the introduction of turn rewind mechanics. Without turn rewind I would be playing casual in modern FE because I just don't have the energy to deal with either permanently losing a unit or restarting a whole map like I once did. While not as good as what Banner of the Maid does, turn rewind is still a decent middle ground that lets me keep the feeling of not wanting to lose units in battle while not pushing me to restart a whole chapter if one does. Turn rewind in limited capacity is also just a great feature in general that I think I would want to keep even if FE adopted a system like BotM's.

Those of you players who swear by permadeath, I encourage you to think about what it is you actually like about permadeath and consider if you could still get that in some way, but without permadeath. Maybe how Banner of the Maid does it, maybe some other way.

Most people defend Casual mode by saying "It's an extra setting. If you don't want to play that way, just select Classic". Well I'm going to defend Classic mode using the same argument. Why remove this option from future Fire Emblem games? What is gained? All you're doing is alienating players that expect this mechanic. And closing the door for developers to write some incredible scripted events for players to discover. The first time I heard Est call out to her sisters when I got her killed, I felt like I was falling in love with Fire Emblem again - even though I turnwheeled that death a second later. Such a heart wrenching scene made possible only because of permadeath. Only because I was playing Fire Emblem.

Now if you asked me why permadeath ought to stay in Fire Emblem (this is my opinion, no one feel compelled to agree or disagree) is because it is part of the series identity. It's what makes it unique among a sea of SRPGs that certainly aren't Fire Emblem. The first time I realized my dead units are really dead, it made me more invested, not less. I'm willing to bet a majority of people who have ever browsed this website felt that way too when they first played. I have indeed played Banner of the Maid, but I would instead take its game over state and put it on Casual mode. Keeping units alive should be incentivized in every mode of fire emblem, not just Classic.

Also what do you mean with FE4? Sure the units became more fleshed out characters, but they also created the idea of Substitute units so that you're not understaffed in Gen 2. FE4 is one of the most iron man-friendly games in the series because of how much work the developers put in to support this style of play. New character portraits, default skills and inventories, re-written dialogue. They never tried anything like that again until FE11 but the difference is that there's a non-zero chance you'll have substitute units in your army without intentionally trying to get them.

Most people defend Casual mode by saying "It's an extra setting. If you don't want to play that way, just select Classic". Well I'm going to defend Classic mode using the same argument. Why remove this option from future Fire Emblem games? What is gained?

I answered this in the first paragraph. Permadeath is restrictive for story-telling. Removing it would allow any character to be involved in the story at any time. You've played Banner of the Maid, so you've seen that a lot of characters in that get screen time beyond their introduction, something that can't happen in Fire Emblem.

What I meant is that it's the first game where they expected most players to keep units alive to the best of their ability. What I didn't say is that they fully expected that no one would ever let anyone die. It was still designed with permadeath in mind, but it was the first step (of a lot of steps) toward leaving it behind.

The problem I have with this is that we haven't had a story I thought would be made better or even good without permadeath in about two decades. Until the series starts demonstrating any competence with storytelling again, there's no earthly way I'd consider a radical gameplay overhaul worthwhile even if you were right that the story would be improved.

I mean, they haven't had the chance, because permadeath has always existed. You can't just say "Well this story wouldn't be better even if permadeath was gone" because lack of permadeath is a pretty big change.

I'm saying storytelling hasn't been a strong suit of the series since the Tellius games, so sacrificing what makes the games unique to improve what it has sucked at for nearly twenty years feels like a pointless and massive gamble.

Say a character falls in Chapter 1. For Chapter 2, they are now considered heavily injured and cannot be deployed (and maybe you'd have to sideline an additional character to be their caretaker, which would build some support). In Chapter 3, the fallen unit would be considered "recovering" and can be used again, but with stat debuffs and the caveat that they will die permanently if they fall in this chapter. By Chapter 4, they would be back to normal. Perhaps certain bosses or weapons could still cause death rather than injury to raise stakes on certain chapters, idk.

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