How Fire Emblem Gaiden shows us the dangers of a national draft
Fire Emblem Gaiden (1992)
Fire Emblem Gaiden (1992)
It’s all going nuts again. Geopolitically, I mean. All the doom and gloomers are telling us to prepare for war. But that sentence doesn’t even date this piece - how many times in your life have you seen the headline “Tensions mount in Middle East”?
On any given day, some country or region is at it again. And because history has that wonderful habit of repeating itself, we can probably say that the same countries and regions will be at it again in 20 years’ time.
Or will there even be a 20 years time? I hate to join the doomers, but it starts to make your bum a bit twitchy when the usual suspects are at it, America and Russia are responding by proxy, the UK tries to chime in but gets completely ignored, and then fingers suddenly begin hovering over the big red button.
Before going nuclear though, the generals try to “exhaust all other options” by sacrificing as many pawns as possible across land, sea and sky. And when bodies start running out, new ones need to be drafted in.
I doubt I’ll ever become a victim to a military draft, living in Ireland. But what if Ireland ever needs to defend her borders again? These days, whenever Russian jets fly into our airspace for a spot of sabre-rattling, we need to ask the British RAF to help us. Our air-force guy has the day off on Fridays, and our nine (9) warships are usually laid up in the garage, getting patched up. So what would we do to defend ourselves?
It’ll have to be boots on the ground, if they ever invade Dublin. The government will need some of our finest men and women to join the Irish Defence Forces. And when those are “depleted” (torn asunder), they’ll turn to the medium men and women. Then the average men and women. Then the lacking men and women. Then finally, they’ll turn to the Burkeys.
Yes, this is all very unlikely, but God if the thought of it doesn't keep me up at night. Ireland’s military neutrality, keep in mind, isn’t through some treehugging wish for peace and love, but rather because we have next to no equipment. If I enlisted, I’d probably be taking my pick between a rusty antique rifle, or a tree branch. It’s not that Ireland doesn’t have a standing army either - we do - but you’d be more accurate calling it a resting army.
Case in point, I have some anecdotal evidence for you, which is always the best kind of evidence. But the boys in the Irish army, and maybe the 2 or 3 girls, in there are actually happy to be deployed to Lebanon and other such trendy destinations on peacekeeping missions. Why? Well, the alternative is sitting around, cleaning the toilets and marching out of step every so often. If the sirens started blaring, and these boys had to spring to action… I wouldn't be too confident, would you?
And then of course there’s national service, which still persists in some countries. I’m not talking about backwards joints either now, I’m on about mostly upright places like Finland and South Korea.
That’s at least a year of your life gone, for a battle that never happens. Instilling discipline? Forget it, let the parents do that. I suppose national service does the trick in making the Finns, Turks and Israelis into some pretty tough mothers. But I’d prefer a year or two of loafing around, personally.
It’s all about happiness at the end of the day, innit? And happiness is the absence of boredom, in my opinion. Could you just imagine the boredom of national service? You’d almost be crying out for the war to start, anything to keep you from sitting around lighting each other’s farts on fire, cleaning the head with a toothbrush, and laying in bed daydreaming about Mary-Jane Rottencrotch.
But you don’t really think it’s gonna get much funner out there on the battlefield, do you? It’s not exactly a laugh riot for the boys in Fire Emblem Gaiden who get drafted into the war, I know that much. And I was just starting to think of myself as a Fire Emblem expert, all caught up on my strategy RPGness and my vulneraries and my Aethers, but then they went and changed the rules again.
What is it with second instalment of NES games tearing up the rulebook? Gaiden, to be different, brings you around a world map, introduces you to towns and dungeons, and equips you with weapons that never break, none of which is par for the course in Fire Emblem. It even requires a bit of grinding to get ahead, which top-drawer Femblem players like me always advise against.
Even when you do finally level up, it’s almost always disappointing. Your guys and gals might get the tiniest boost to their defence or something, and that’s it. It’s the worst feeling you can get in the series. It’s common practice in Fire Emblem to reset if one of your patsies dies in battle, but resetting for better level ups? That’s a whole other level of torture.
There’s a hidden Easy Mode in the game actually, but this only really helps with increasing the amount of experience points gained. You need a button code to activate it, too. And so you’re thinking, was any of this stuff in the manual? Hell if I know, this was obviously another Japan-only game, and outside of a remake, Nintendo has never brought it out overseas.
And you can see why, because this is one monotonous game. Every battle is as slow as a week in the barracks, as you try to move your ragtag bunch of manual labourers across maps that are far too big and empty to bother with. You’ll really feel this as the enemies desperately try to clamber back to the healing squares, often resulting in the slowest, most tedious game of tag ever unfolding across the map as you try to pin them down.
The team you start out with are essentially farmhands and inbreds, the types of dopes you grew up with on your street. It’s a bit like when you’re at college getting drunk with engineers, as a doctor falls drunk at your feet and a future government minister is yakked out of his head on pills. You’re thinking, can this really be the future of our country’s workforce?
And that’s how it is for the dumb clots like me who get bullied into enlisting for the army. Could the future of the country really end up depending on me? Let’s face it, if our forward guard consisted of me, you, and the slowest kid in your year, then we’ve already fallen.
See, I actually enjoyed the first Fire Emblem game, even though it’s objectively pretty depressing to experience. But at least it’s a bit of history, a chance to play as Marth for the first time - a clunky, archaic old romp with your disjointed army through a number of missions, with lots of stuff going on.
I don’t feel any of that in Fire Emblem Gaiden, a game from 1992, far too late for the NES, or Famicom for that matter. Rather like the guns the Irish army are fiscally coerced into using, this game is far too old to pass inspection, obsolete the moment it arrived.
It might be that you can get a bit of play out of Fire Emblem Gaiden, if you use the fast-forward button on your emulator and mute the music immediately. Though you’d be much better off picking up the much needed 3DS remake, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia.
This version keeps the weird aspects of Gaiden intact, such as the dungeon adventuring, the towns, and the diamond-hard swords. You might even be able to enjoy a bit of StreetPass with the rest of your platoon. Anything to while away the hours and hours of waiting before being sent to your miserable death in combat, right?
15 March 2024