Topic: Fire Emblem Awakening Team Discusses Casual Mode

[Traveller]

The decision to include a more casual way to play Fire Emblem was met with skepticism initially. 

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/33723

The team behind Fire Emblem Awakening discussed the implementation of the Casual mode and the difficulties behind making such a decision in a recent developer interview.

When the idea was first brought up, some of the team members were against the idea. However, the team realised that many people were intimidated by the series because of the fact that party members die permanently. Adding in a casual mode where players do not have to worry about such a consequence has meant that more people are willing to try Fire Emblem. Although they did also acknowledge that some of the fun of the series is in the possibility of losing a much loved character, the consensus was that both play styles have their advantages and that is why the mode was implemented.

While the team thinks that they will still implement a casual mode in future games, the director from Nintendo, Genki Yokota, gave a hypothetical example for an instance in which not having a casual mode might be beneficial. "let's say we wanted to depict a really big and serious war scene. In a situation like that, having permadeath would help lend weight to everything; it'd be much more tense and meaningful to players if their characters' lives were truly on the line, just like in a real war. So it really depends."

[leahsdad]

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I LOVE permadeath, and I think people who play casual mode are really missing out.  The way that permadeath affects how the player defines "winning" and "losing," and the difficulty and tension it adds to the game, cannot be understated.   I get how a lot of people get frustrated with having to restart a mission, 5, 10, or even 20 times.   According to the game, I've played the game for 5 hours.   According to my 3DS Activity Log, I've played for 19 hours.   So I get the frustration.   But I'm fine with restarting a game 20 times (which I just did with Chapter 6, the assassination attempt on Emmeryn), because I know that I will beat that mission eventually, which I just did with Chapter 6.  And I've got to tell you, I had this big grin on my face for hours afterwards because I finally beat it.   Making victory (or at least, my "leave no man behind" definition of victory) so hard-won makes that eventual success so sweet.   If I had beaten that same mission in just 1 or 2 tries, it would have made it far less meaningful.

[pokepal148]

i disagree, permadeath is just horribly handled in fire emblem, while i do wish the Ai took a higher priority in attacking chrom/robin i think permadeath falls under the category of artificial difficulty

[Traveller]

I wish the permadeath had more of an impact on the story, it would be much more interesting if losing certain characters changed the direction of the story. I think if there were alternate storylines that appeared, people wouldn't need to reset as much as it could lead to things you haven't seen before. As it is now I believe all that losing a character does is take away some possible story elements.


Permadeath should be linked to alternate/more storylines.

[Tween20]

To me, the benefit of casual mode is not the elimination of permadeath, but the ability to save anywhere.  This greatly increased the ability to experiment and maximize characters and character relationships.  I played on casual mode but committed to not losing anyone.  I played each level until I had recruited all recruitable characters, saved everyone that needed saving, and made sure all my characters had survived.  But I saved after turns like crazy.

[Mop it up]

The example the person gave can still exist with an easy mode present as an option. Let the players decide which experience they want.