With The Heart Of A Servant: The “Filler Arc” Of Radiant Dawn
I’ve been playing a sinful amount of Fire Emblem lately and there’s been a lot of joy and creative energy as a result. That’s odd to say about playing a bit commercial franchise there’s been a lot of thing of in terms of design and now I’m returning to freelancing (though who knows for how long) having some side games that keep my mind spinning has been very good.
We’ve documented some of this process already; first we explored Path of Radiance in depth and recently looked at the lofty story ambitions of its sequel Radiant Dawn’s opening chapters. I’ve been playing other games in the franchise side by side with these and while there’s plenty to love—and we’re gonna go over those titles eventually—I remain really impressed by how ambitious the games set in Tellius are. There’s something really great here.
When we initially looked at the game’s opening, there was a very clear aim to deconstruct and explore the implications of Path of Radiance’s grand heroics. What happens after a war? What does it mean to have national identity? What does it mean to lead? Where does the revolutionary spirit spring from?
These questions were initially explored using the rag-tag “Dawn Brigade” rebels. Radiant Dawn’s second act “elevates” our perspective, keeping players mostly in the realm of royals and knights for most of the action. This return to a more traditional Fire Emblem mode of queens and cavaliers, loyal retainers and sky-soaring pegasus knights also wants to explore what comes after a war is won.
In flipping our perspective to the victors of the previous game, we start to see a through-line in themes. Archetypes emerge and we see reflections of Dawn Brigade. The scenario inverts. Be you the “silver-haired maiden” of the revolution or a bright-eyed queen, heavy are the burdens history places on you.
This shit is hard!
So let’s explore this inversion and see what similarities we can find between our two factions. And in doing that, let’s take a look at what happens when Fire Emblem leans heavy on set-piece spectacle and shifting perspectives. Some folks call this small foray into Crimea a filler arc but though it’s short and the conflict over quickly, this is without a doubt where the game’s biggest ambitions emerge…
Persons of Lordly Caliber
When we started Radiant Dawn, our perspective was set in Daien. Players expecting to leap into the shoes of Ike and his mercenaries had to wait and spend time in the desperate cities of the nation they warred against in Path of Radiance. The chapter ended with princes and generals and knights but it started with the common people. Micaiah was a beloved prophet but neither she nor anyone in the initial Dawn Brigade roster held any position of rank or status. We carried out acts of populist insurrection until aligning with the larger army who wanted to restore the monarchy by placing Ashnard’s bastard son on the throne.
It is a similar story to the rise of Queen (then princess) Elincia in Path of Radiance. A hidden child of Crimea’s Ring Ramon, she first hired Ike and his comrades simply to protect her as she fled the Daien army towards friendly nations but eventually Ike led her army as it marched on Daien to end the war and restore the sovereignty of Crimea. Where Pelleas has Micaiah, the street prophet, Elincia has Ike and his ragged group of mercenaries. Her story was one of growing into her role and learning to lead on the battlefield, and when she restored Crimea there was a decision to make: what becomes of the enemy? how should the victors treat the defeated?
Elinica decides that her nation, too small and too scattered, cannot hold Daien and so turns stewardship of the county to her allies in the theocratic nation of Begnion. We’ve seen how this kicks off the conflict in Micaiah’s story. But what happens when a queen turns down shut power? What about those around her who were eager to see the nation expand and take all it could? What about those who want retribution?
Can what seems like a noble deed actually lead to nothing but more trouble and conflict? Nothing ever ends and Radiant Dawn’s deeply concerned with both the victors and losers of the last game. But there is a difference in these chapters which really colors the proceedings: this is a story far more concerned with royalty, retainers, adventurous knights, and the valor of combat than the Dawn Brigade’s tale was.
In some sense, this chapter feels like a return to familiar Fire Emblem staples. A shining kingdom on a hill, nobles scheming in the shadows, vows of fealty and worries about how heavy the crown is. Micaiah’s story had familiar beats and echoes with Path of Radiance’s story but here in Crimea you could swap out Elinicia for one of the series’ previous royals like Marth or Eirika and they’d fit pretty cleanly into the picture here.
The entire affair here in Crimea is heightened beyond what we saw in Daein. Elincia is our hero but at her side are her most loyal companions: the devoted swordsman Lucia, her gallant knight brother Geoffrey, and the verbose tactician diplomat Bastian. While Bastian is absent on what we are told is diplomatic business, many of our chapters treat Lucia and Geoffrey as our lead characters. There’s only one chapter, a side excursion in a small pastoral village, where we are not either playing with Elinicia as the head of our army or her most loyal retainers. The perspective is fairly patrician. Not only does this provide a contrast with the gritty tone of what we experiences in Micaiah’s chapters, this also fundamentally changes what the game is interested in attempting with map design and mechanics. Whereas our time with the Dawn Brigade was very interested in using battle scenarios (especially the initial maps where our units were most fragile) to make us feel how desperate the rebellions early stages were and see certain character bonds acted out in the interplay of unit dynamics, this chapter uses the more obviously high fantasy tone to deliver spectacle.
There’s not many scenarios here but they have much more specific constraints in order to capture a specific image or kind of moment. Whereas some Fire Emblem games try to achieve this with scale (think Genealogy of the Holy War’s massive maps) and others have opts for branching paths or decision points to add stakes to situations, the name of the game here is imagery. These maps should be thought of more like the scenes of a film than the puzzle-box tactical fields of old.
As a result, you are really limited on who is in your party at any given time or even what strategies are open to you. The obvious downside of this is that our adventures in Crimea are not particularly taxing or challenging as exercises of strategic thinking. Instead, they are tailored to really put us into a specific role and have us inhabit it with a bit more specificity than usual.
We can see this trend throughout the chapter. These are characters that players presumably know from the prior game and so Radiant Dawn isn’t really concerned with using mechanics to teach us how they relate to each other. Instead we are really sitting down with them and watching them work within their element. The result is that while maps are small, they’re memorable.
Take for instance our first map. Elinicia and the pegasus knight Marcia are soaring together when they see the laguz princess Leanne under attack by Begnion dracoknights. They ride to her aid and the result is a battle set entirely in the sky. You don’t have many characters (the fan-favorite wyvern. rider Haar can be recruited to help you here and that’s it) and there’s not any traditional terrain here. The map is an open plane dotted with clouds and the fight is a feast of spectacle. Battle animations have been tailored to this scene so when Marcia faces a Begnion rider, there’s a lot of pseudo-dog fighting movement as mounts dip and dive into range to strike each other. Elincia herself opts to hide her identity and instead fight in the battle so there’s a bit of risk and excitement here; this is a chance to show she’s not just a figurehead.
And those clouds? Well, you slip into them in order to gain evasion bonuses. You see the sky as a new type of tactical battlefield *because* you are playing as characters who live and breathe that reality. I can’t think of any other level in the series that narrows the scope like this and the result is quite immersive for a grid-based battle.
How about another map nearer the end of these chapters. After much backroom plotting, the leader at the head of a noble conspiracy to depose Elinicia has been brought to light. Geoffrey rids deep into his territory with his cavalry and drives the enemy forces to a small outpost. What follows is a relatively straight forward map. The enemy is entrenched and our team is composed mostly of different kind of horseback riders and a few spear fighters. To complete the map, you need to seize the capture point with Geoffrey. So the stage is set and the terms are clear.
There’s a certain kind of Fire Emblem player I can only call a “sicko.” They are the people who say a unit is unusable if they have one bad level up without getting the right stat increases and who otherwise see these games mostly as a chance to prove how clever they are. I have to imagine this map annoy them because there’s no real way to “trick” the game. The design forces you to inhabit Geoffrey’s role as lead of the mounted knights and approach the situation as he would. You charge forward, breaking open pathways and holding off your flank with the spearmen.
You know, kinda like how this would play out in a romantic history story or something. Fancy that! Where Path of Radiance encouraged roleplaying by rewarding bonus experience for completing specific objectives, Radiant Dawn constricts the map size and the possibility of options in order to push the player towards a solution that isn’t just mechanically sound but make sense for the characters. It probably not what most people *want* from Fire Emblem but I think these chapters achieve their goal well.
Hell, the bonus EXP thing continues. Geoffrey wants to avoid killing too many of his countrymen and you’ll get a truly astounding amount of experience points for keeping enemies *alive* on this map.
This continued push toward roleplaying both in scenario design and bonus EXP addresses the “retainer problem” that some games have in a unique way. Many games have royals join your party with a massive cadre of retainers and depending on the game this mostly amount to a large influx of units who don’t do much and don’t have a lot of personality besides a ~WILD~ devotion to their lord. I’m looking at you Fates. Here? That’s way less of a problem.
Lucia and the others aren’t simply characters that exist in Elincia’s orbit. Radiant Dawn’s willingness to shuffle your teams and tailor bespoke scenarios means that we get a chance to see how these people act to serve their queen. Be it through Lucia’s sneaky subterfuge-themed maps or Geoffrey’s grand heroic charges into enemy forts. It doesn’t always lead to the most difficult or engaging tactics but it does help these characters feel like people with skills and talents that exist outside support conversations.
All this noted it is in the character writing itself, embodied in one key choice Elincia makes, that this part of the game finds its message. Because damn it’s hard to be the queen…
Royalty Is A Fine Burial Shroud
Elincia never wanted this but they say that the best rulers are the reluctant ones. Path of Radiance already documented her rise from a scare young maiden into the speech-giving queen who rides her pegasus onto the battlefield. But outside of the war setting, outside of that function as the symbol for Crimeans to rally behind on their march, is she actually able to lead? That’s Radiant Dawn’s question.
While we cannot fault her intentions, Elincia does make a few decisions that while genuinely well-meaning set the stage for revolt. By passing on Daien’s stewardship to Begnion, she bears some fault for the pains and troubles we saw during our time with the Dawn Brigade. Free from the watchful eyes of their own empress, Begnion’s soldiers place the boot to Daien’s throat quite harshly. What was meant as a gesture of graciousness—Crimea is too small a nation to maintain a post-war Daien—nevertheless becomes a vessel for conflict abroad and at home.
In Crimea, many see this choice as weak-willed and indecisive. Poised with the chance to expand Crimea’s fortune, Elincia blinked. What restitution that might have come from claiming portions of Daien are lost and her act is seen as overly conciliatory to a country which had, to be clear, attacked and annexed her people without any obvious cause. It is a bold gesture of peace for her but to many people within her own nation, they cannot forget the pain of the Mad King’s War.
Within this chaos, a charismatic noble named Ludveck argues that Elincia is not prepared or able to lead. He has the backing of aristocrats but his movement is oddly populist as well. Throughout the country, many people have let the war ignite a poisonous nationalism in their heart. His ranks are full of young men and young who cling to stories from the war. Especially important is the story of Ike, the commoner who rose from nothing to become the glorious leader of the army. Could they too find such greatness? Ludveck certainly promises it. C’mon now, all it will take is a bit of regicide. You could be a hero too! You could be cool like Ike!
The sheer weight that this places on Elincia is very clear and I think she really holds this chapter together. We’ve already seen Micaiah endure the pains of her position and in Elincia there’s an important echo. She cannot be herself. She can be many things to many people ranging from the glorious icon of Crimea’s beauty to the foolish girl piloting the nation to ruin but she can’t really ever be “Elincia” to anyone. Perhaps maybe to Lucia, her closest retainer whom she has something of a romantically-tinged relationship, but even there she is the queen first and not her own person.
As a result, many of Einicia scenes are smaller in scale. When the laguz princess Leanne meets with her, Elincia breaks down in tears and falls to her knees. She didn’t want to be queen, she never asked for this and she never wanted to invite this trouble upon anyone. We see her cry and see her retreat into fields for moments of calm and silence. Her story is a romantic one on paper. Who doesn’t love it when the deposed princess returns to the throne, flanked by her loyal general and his shining blade? And yet...
The fable only tells the story up until the princess takes her throne but the politics never end and although these scenes humanize Elincia, they also are meant to plant doubts in our mind? Whenever the key moment against Ludveck comes, will she have the strength to stand firm in her convictions?
It’s an interesting way to look at the Fire Emblem formula. There've been sequel games before but Radiant Dawn’s not simply continuing the story of a setting so much as it wants to ask questions about the franchise and the medium. Cool, you did the thing and bested the Mad King and his dragons. Now what? Does that mean you’re actually good at this royalty shit?
Because Elinicia has at the very least learned the war of war well. Coming off Path of Radiance, she makes an impression on the battlefield. Resplendent armor, flying steed. She’s not your most powerful unit (that’s probably the expatriate Daien wyvern rider Haar) but she’s still fairly useful. Armed with Amiti, a Crimean royal blade that allows her to always attack twice, she does much better mechanically than you might think. With the added benefit of high mobility, this means that she can soar around the battlefield with an ease that particular suits her to finishing off weakened foes.
This is particularly clear in the chapter’s final map, a massive defensive stall against Ludveck’s forces where pretty much all of your soldiers gather to form a huge wall between the enemy and Elincia’s position. The goal is simply to protect that portion of the map, which means that Elincia is free (if you want to risk it) to fly from behind her soldiers to strike stray enemies or even, if you dare for the most dramatic version of events, attack Ludveck himself. No one doubts her bravery, the question here is whether or not she will fold when the pressure reaches a fever pitch. The moment comes swiftly.
Although Ludveck is captured in the final battle, the rebels have similarly taken Lucia hostage and threaten to kill her. Ludveck sees this as his moment. There’s no way that Elicina will hold firm, no way that she’ll let someone so close to her suffer. In fact, he’s sure that they could all come to an arrangement if only Elinicia makes some concessions. And for a moment, we think of those moments where she’s broken down from the burden of it all and ask: “will she fold?”
She doesn’t. Elincia leaves Ludveck in prison; there’s no way that she can let him go without completely validating all of her detractors’ judgements and she knows this. So she stands tall on the castle walls and denies the rebels any chance for negotiation. Kill Lucia if you must but you have taken up arms against me and therefore taken up arms against Crimea itself. Go fuck yourselves.
Lucia laughs aloud at the decision. The rebels miscalculated and although her fate is sealed, the unmistakable pride she bears towards her queen has become one of my favorite moments in the franchise. The bond they share is too deep to be wounded by something as silly as imminent death. If that’s what the queen wants, if Lucia must die for her country, she will do it with a smile. Great stuff!
Elinicia really comes into her own here. Yeah, it sucks to be the queen and you’re gonna need to make decisions with painful repercussions but someone has to. Be it through bad luck or royal blood or anything else, someone wears the crown. If you’re lucky they’re someone with goddamn convictions.
Those convictions are rewarded as Ike and the rest of the Greil Mercenaries arrive to rescue Lucia and scatter the rebels. It’s been maybe ten to twelve hours of playtime and we’ve not seen them at all. That frustration ends here in a big heroic swoop down from above. The third of Elincia’s advisors, Bastian, has been working in secret to find Ike and the others. The queen has triumphed mostly on her own already but as Path of Radiance’s unlikely hero leaps into the fray, the day is won.
It’s an interesting contrast to how we knew them all in the last game. Players have seen Ike and his friends rise from frontier mercenaries to larger than life figures. He arrives with all the ferocity of a general from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. A radiant hero with the swirl of history around him.
And there is a tension that now he’s here. Okay, what’s next? What will history toss a *this* tough motherfucker?
Ludveck’s rebellion is over quickly. There’s only five maps to this chapter but plenty to chew on. It’s unclear how this ties into larger events. It’s clear that someone is stoking conflict in Daien but the trouble in Crimea is more self contained. Instead, the scenario holds a mirror to our experiences with the Dawn Brigade. There is a way in which history rhymes. Elincia and Ike, Pelleas and Micaiah. A hidden royal and their radiant general. Shattered kingdoms reforged anew.
This is sometimes called a “filler” arc for the game but contrast matters for what’s to come.
It’s like we said: things never end. There’s always something after the fable, after the flashpoint. So here stand two nations tied together by trials past, both led by reluctant leaders. We understand both of these places well, have a sense of their leadership and their convictions. We’ve guided rebels in their quest for self-determination. We led royal knights on heroic charges brimming with national pride. The stage is set now for these sides to crash into each other. We just need the right spark.
What will come isn’t a simple match’s flame but an explosion as old pains and unanswered crimes drag another party to the nation stage, kick-starting a war that will imperil not just one or two nations but the entire world…
