Fire Emblem 15's Imbalanced Storytelling

Why was Fire Emblem 15 split in half between Alm and Celica?  They are clearly not equals from the narrative’s standpoint.  FE15 treats Alm as the protagonist it was designed to have, but Celica feels more like a secondary cast member who was promoted to a narrative position she wasn’t qualified for.  In terms of being the heroes of the story, Alm and Celica are grossly imbalanced.

First of all, look at the level of relevance Alm and Celica’s respective journeys have to the plot as a whole.  Once the prologue is over and done with, and the game has started properly, Alm is caught up in and spearheading the major, action-driven part of the plot in which a resistance-turned-invasion army turns back an enemy army, then marches straight into the heart of enemy territory.  The momentum of the plot carries Alm along from answering the call to serve as defender of his nation, to recapturing the capitol, to striking out into the hostile northern empire with the intent of ending the war once and for all, which takes him directly to the game’s finale.  While there are plenty of steps along the way that are minor ventures of liberating and/or capturing territory, it’s all clearly, logically part of a plot in motion that connects to and accomplishes the narrative of Alm’s attempt to achieve peace through force.

And then look at Celica.  Where Alm is marching from 1 story goalpost to the next from Day 1, Celica spends a truly indefensible amount of time dicking around with pirates that are functionally irrelevant.  Seriously, it’s basically all she does in her whole half of the game’s first dual-act chapter.  Fire Emblem 15 clearly just doesn’t need Celica to really be doing anything for the majority of the first third of its tale.  Whereas the story of how Alm rose to military prominence, established himself a capable leader, defied the social system by (supposedly) being a peasant whose virtues outclass those of a noble, and took back his country’s freedom from the invaders is one which easily fills the span of the first chapter, all FE15 actually NEEDS from Celica is to display her kind nature and connect it to a determination to better the lives of all people, for her to be established as a competent crusader herself,* and for her to arrive at the capitol at roughly the same time as Alm so they can meet.

The problem is that that list doesn’t need a full chapter to accomplish.  A mere 2 detours against marauding pirates are ALL that you need to cement Celica’s nature inasmuch as has relevance to her position in the plot, and her fighting prowess (as well as establish the setting lore that conditions are bad all over the country by this point, which is a valuable secondary priority).  The pirates themselves don’t have any relevance to the game’s story, not the way squads of soldiers from Rigel do--the latter are a necessary gear in the machine of a story of Alm’s military conquests, but there’s no overarching part of the plot that the pirates actually relate to.  They’re just there to be tools of Celica’s character development, and once that’s done with, they’re no more than filler.  As such, Celica spends the majority of her first act wasting time.

Now, once the first chapter is done, both Alm and Celica each have a more competitive pace of moving toward their respective journeys’ goals, at least.  Although it does still feel like Alm is more steadily progressing forward in a sequence of story events, while Celica has spurts of starts and stops with it.  Still, her futzing around with pirates just for the hell of it is finally over.  But even once the pacing problem is fixed, Alm and Celica are still drastically mismatched as protagonists.

Once they’ve had their extremely forced parting of ways, Alm’s plan is to continue to fight for the safety of his homeland and end the war through force, while Celica's plan is to save everyone by getting the goddess to step in. Now obviously, trying to end things without extra bloodshed is the preferable option!  But in practice...Celica's plan turns out to be total bupkis, because Mila's not only unavailable via kidnap, but starting to go malevolently nuts anyway.  So even if she'd been around for Celica to petition, Mila wouldn't have been able to actually do anything useful.

So, Alm's approach succeeds, and continues to succeed fully as he marches straight into the enemy capitol and defeats the emperor...while Celica's approach achieves nothing beyond putting her in a necessary position for mucking about with self-sacrifice.**  And let me tell you, getting a magical plot girl into position for a weepy self-sacrifice is not exactly a difficult thing to accomplish in an RPG.  Fucking Kemco can do it without much effort.

And Celica’s penchant for being wrong is only further underscored with her decision to accept Jedah’s terms and be his sacrificial soul.  I mean, it’s an absurdly stupid, shortsighted decision to begin with, and it only gets worse as the game pads the closing to Celica’s story out by making it more and more clear how untrustworthy Jedah is by having him throw up obstacles to his own plan as he attempts to kill Celica’s allies in front of her.  While Alm is closing in on the emperor’s throne and forcefully uniting the 2 countries, Celica is hemming and hawing about selling her soul to an insane dark god, and moronically swallowing every lie an obvious villain is feeding her like she’s a prototype for Edelgard.

I mean, just, like, contrast the final climax of Alm and Celica’s respective journeys.  Alm defeats the emperor in battle, discovers the truth of his own origins, takes the Rigellian throne through both victory and birthright, and puts an end to the war between his nations.  Celica...willingly offers her soul to an insane god at the urging of a cult leader, mistakenly believing that it will get the dark god to calm his fucking tits for 2 seconds.  Alm is successful in his aim and achieves a demonstrable, significant positive result, while Celica’s entire journey has all been leading up to her voluntarily falling into the clutches of the game’s villain.  That’s what half of the game has been about!  Futzing around with pirates, doing a Twitter drama with Alm, fruitlessly trying to petition and then rescue Mila, following Jedah and trying to get him to concentrate on something other than random murder for long enough to make his sales pitch...ALL of it, to the end goal of having this “protagonist” get duped by the main bad guy.

I’m really supposed to buy that Celica is an equal partner in this game’s story?  Her major role in the course of Fire Emblem 15’s events is to be the idiot who donates her body to science a dark god, an action designed specifically for the purpose of allowing Alm to get the magic hero sword, do the magic hero things, and stab some basic fucking sense into her.  How exactly does FE15 expect me to look at Celica as a protagonist, when the entirety of her role as such is to be a mirror and vehicle for someone else’s heroics?

She doesn’t even work as a protagonist on a meta level.  Fire Emblem 15’s story is, in largest part, a message about the importance of we human beings relying upon ourselves to resolve our conflicts and govern our affairs, and that we can’t trust higher powers like gods to lead our species.  Alm’s story of a (supposed) peasant leading a resistance to forcibly unite warring nations, a human settling human matters without divine interference, is in perfect thematic alignment with this moral.  Celica’s entire story, on the other hand, is nothing but a series of follies that serve to underscore the idea that trusting in the gods rather than humanity is hopeless.  She is the goddamn Goofus to Alm’s Gallant.

Now, sure, it’s quite possible to have a very effective protagonist and successful story when the work’s message is made through a protagonist’s repeated failures rather than success--but that’s only gonna work when there’s 1 protagonist to work with.  When you’ve got 2 main characters, and 1 of them is always right as he proves the overall theme by successfully implementing its ideals, and 1 of them is always wrong as she proves the overall theme by acting against its ideals and consistently failing, then obviously the guy who actually embodies the story’s message is going to seem far more genuinely the protagonist of the game!

Hell, Celica’s side of the story isn’t even fun to play.  I mean, sure, it’s an RPG, so it’s not fun anyway, but there’s no denying that having to deal with poison terrain and mob spawns over and over in Celica’s story makes it far more of a slog than Alm’s.

Fire Emblem 15 presents itself as a joint story of multiple protagonists each journeying to save the world in their own way, but Treasure of the Rudras this ain’t.  Alm and Celica’s individual worth as protagonists is just completely lopsided.  The fact of the matter is that FE15 is just a regular RPG story of a hero and a supporting magical plot girl that he’s ultimately responsible for babysitting.













* And honestly, even this is kind of just unnecessary.  Since her goal is to find a non-violent means to end the war, first by appealing to a mother goddess and then by agreeing to a really, really stupid deal, Celica’s being a capable fighter and military leader isn’t actually important the way it is for Alm to be.


** Which, by the way, annoys me greatly from an ethical standpoint.  While I accept that there are times when a peaceful solution to international conflict is simply not possible, Fire Emblem 15 seems eager to make the case that attempting a diplomatic solution is invariably so ineffectual that it’s pointless to even try.  This is a game where crushing your enemies and annexing their territory is how peace is achieved, while attempting to involve greater powers as mediators and treating with your enemies only worsens the situation.  Yeah, very healthy perspective to have, Nintendo, thanks a bunch for the great insight.