I have left a trail of dead behind me from the forests of Ivalice to the farmlands of North America.

In my defense, I only killed a few of them on purpose.

Characters die in games all the time, but when I am the one responsible for getting them killed, it tends to resonate with me a little more deeply.  I’m not talking about when someone gets dropped in battle and I have to throw a Mythic Bird Feather on them; I’m talking about when a character is dead and gone and not coming back. RPGs and story-driven FPSes can strike down a beloved character to try and tug at the player’s heartstrings, but these deaths are ultimately just stepping-stones in the storytelling process; no matter what choices I may make in the game, Aeris is still going to end up with a sword through her sternum.    

On the other side of things, you have strategy RPGs and tactical strategy games, where you serve as the commander of an army or squad of various units.  Now, these units are usually stay with you as you proceed through the game, but beyond a name and some statistics, there usually isn’t much to define them.  Often, they don’t even get to speak. While these characters may lack depth, they do have one very important feature: when they die, it’s probably my fault.

The trade-off here is pretty obvious. When it comes to story-entangled characters, games keep their lives and deaths out of our hands.  Conversely, when the player controls who lives or dies, it’s generally the lives of faceless blanks that are affected by their decisions. Well, perhaps the player feels a form of grief – even if I don’t know where Klaus Varner, random squad member #6 in X-Com, is from or what his family is like, I know that he’s my best heavy-weapons guy and I may shed a tear or two over his untimely death at the hands of the Mutons. I am not sad that he will never get back to Germany or Austria or wherever, I am sad because it’s going to take me a half-hour to get Alex Manning, recently-arrived recruit, up to Klaus’s level.

This brings us to Fire Emblem.  For those who have never played a FE game, it is a turn-based strategy RPG that’s been around since the the days of the NES.  One of the key features of a Fire Emblem game is the concept of permanent death for your characters.  If you lose a unit in battle, that’s it. It’s not coming back.  This is even more important because you can only gain units through recruiting them during the course of the story, so the pool of characters is limited.  Their deaths are also entirely on your hands as the player.  If your Pegasus Knight gets shot out of the sky by an enemy archer, it’s because you put them in a place where that could happen.  And when death is permanent, you feel the consequences of that choice acutely.

FE: Shadow Dragon, which came out last month,  is interesting because it’s a remake of a very early Fire Emblem title, and as such is a little short on some features — mainly, all of your units tend to be blank slates.  Beyond an initial scene when you recruit each character, they don’t get much in the way of personality. A few specific characters may get one or two additional scenes if you meet the right circumstances, but the vast majority will remain silent until, much like the Mute Swan, they cry out in their final moments.

Later Fire Emblem games took strides in remedying this by adding Support and Link systems.  In the most recent FE title on the Wii, Radiant Dawn, you units will interact with each other based on how often they serve together in battle. Between battles, for characters you have given a connection to, the player gets to see a series of scenes between them as the game plays out showing their relationships grow.  It’s a nice step in adding some depth to your soldiers, and it makes it more meaningful when you foolishly send them to their deaths.

Fire Emblem makes good efforts at making the player relate to their characters, but it still feels somewhat hollow because only certain characters can interact with certain other ones, and unless you go out of your way to set up the proper circumstances, some stories will just never be told. What I’d really like to see, though, is a game take it to the next step and provide us with characters that we care about because of who they are, not what they are, and to put the responsibility over their lives in our hands.  The death of a character is a powerful tool, one that can be made even more powerful by placing repsonsibility on the player. As I have said many times before, games offer us the possibility of choice, and having us feel the full weight of a beloved character dying and knowing it was because of our poor choices could create very powerful experiences.

Obviously, this is a very tricky storytelling feat to pull off.  Writing a every step of a story when certain characters may or may not be alive is a massive undertaking, and probably not one that anyone will be trying anytime soon. Many games have to take steps to actually protect some characters so that the player doesn’t mess up the story. Deus Ex makes certain characters invulnerable, because if you wiped them out, you’d have no way to finish the story. Truly scripted stories, such as a Final Fantasy, as of now simply can’t give the players full freedom over the fate of the characters involved.

I think, though,  there are small steps that can be taken, along the lines of what Fire Emblem tries.  Let’s say two of your Knights in Final Fantasy Tactics fight side-by-side in many battles; perhaps we get to see them share some words of support for each other between battles, urging each other on to face whatever lay ahead.  Or perhaps your Lancer is smitten by the White Mage that keeps saving his life; maybe their love grows deeper after each battle, and when you stupidly get him killed, she is so distraught that she leaves the party.  Now there are some real consequences for your actions, and probably a fairly poignent moment for the player-as-commander.

These are, obviously, complicated ideas to implement.  I do believe, though, that if a designer took the time and energy, they could create a very deep, very meaningful experience for a player if done well.  In the meantime, try to remember that your brave companions probably have families, and you probably should try to be a little more considerate with their lives.