How to tell apart all 596 Fire Emblem characters | Unraveled

Fire Emblem this magnificent franchise pushes the boundaries of gaming by daring to ask the question what if chess made you horny Fire Emblem is turning 30 next year and with 16 main games and a few spin-offs it's safe to say that it has grown into something extraordinary the games are packed with deep storylines and memorable characters like Marth that's not Mars Mars that's which one is Marth Mar the problem with having such a prolific series is that the characters start to blend together one needs only to look at the Super Smash Brothers roster to see that Fire Emblem characters are a bit hard to differentiate it's like trying to remember your co-workers names after meeting them once at a work mixer except in this case your co-workers all have swords and can only make one facial expression but do not worry there is an answer to this conundrum because today I am going to teach you how to tell apart every Fire Emblem character [Music] passage is not built for this expression first step in this process is to collect a list of the characters turns out even after trimming the non-playable ones and the ones from the Tokyo Mirage sessions there are nearly 600 Fire Emblem characters I cannot explain that many characters I have made that mistake before trying to categorize all 600 castlevania monsters was a bad idea but the beauty of making mistakes is that you can learn from them and I now understand that explaining 600 discrete characters wouldn't actually be helpful human beings aren't meant to remember 600 people perfectly if you don't believe me just try to remember something about every single person in your contact list I have a contact for someone named Zane and in the company it just says bocce ball who the [ __ ] is this but unlike my contact list fire emblems have plot lines and in my experience playing these games I noticed that a lot of these different characters fit similar roles in their respective games and I'm not the only one who's noticed this on the fire emblem wiki there is a whole list of archetypes based on different characters a list that I only found after spending a whole day trying to categorize them on my own and it's just so fun to realise that you've wasted a whole day of work but this list intrigued me stock characters in similar circumstances playing again and again in different stories does that remind you of anything of course it does it reminds you of the commedia dell'arte because it reminds me of the commedia dell'arte and it's so obviously the commedia dell'arte that i don't need to explain it but i will for the sake of extending this video the commedia dell'arte was an italian form of theatre that was big in the 16th to 18th centuries and it relied on stock characters wearing masks or costumes to designate who they were that way the audience could be like ah that dude's wearing a tight-fitting suit with a bunch of weird patches that must be our Latino the serving clown sometimes two two masters this brought the audience in immediately they knew what that character was about without any exposition in the same way Fire Emblem has dozens of purring characters that get you through each game and this is how we're going to tell them apart by defining their archetypes fire emblem goes one step further because these characters can not only serve the same story purpose but they can have a similar role in the gameplay and this goes to prove my theory that fire emblem is not only the spiritual successor to commedia dell'arte it is its natural evolution an elevated form I call the Commedia Dell anime the newer more perfect form of theater we just have to boil down the fire emblem personnel into syrupy stock characters let's begin with the archetypes that are standard Cain and Abel our battle bros they fight together but not in the biblical sense board and chords are similar except they're usually axe fighters Pegasus sisters are a trio of flying horses ladies you can't split these archetypes up into their solo characters because their bond is what defines them you can't have a waluigi without a Luigi and in the same way you can't have a board without a cord which is my favorite dr. Seuss book jaykins our mentors that are strong at the beginning and then you'll quickly outpace them and it's kind of sad like the first time you beat your dad in a basketball game boy phase are similar to jaykins except they'll keep dunking on you till you're dead Wendell's our mentors but for magic go toes they're mentors but only the last half of the game Beowulf's are mercenaries that you have to pay actual in-game currency to recruit and Augmon are mercenaries that usually decide to join you out of their own volition which is by definition not a mercenary Nevarez are silent moody sword swingers kind of like if that person who said they studied the blade actually studied the blade there are also a bunch of villains but for different reasons power ambition loyalty wyvern riding I guess and getting possessed which is a classic mistake some archetypes are based on their gameplay requirements very difficult to recruit usually recruited after they've been kidnapped late-game recruits that could be good but you have to work hard super low level villagers that could also be good and if you recruit one of these pairs you can't get the other kind of like if two of your friends start dating and then have a really messy breakup aliases are usually the parental figure to the main character and they have this nasty habit of getting axed super early on in the game it's kind of like Fire Emblem doesn't know how to make interesting characters without making them suffer traumatic parental death tactician z-- young female mages young female healers young male mages thieves charges do that thing where they pretend to be not important and then surprise I wasn't an old crone I was a magical witch the whole time except they're not very good at hiding the fact that they're important and the creepy version of the Georges the tikis usually they take the form of a small girl or adolescent except they're really 400 years old and a god or a dragon and I honestly do not have the time to unpack this [ __ ] these 29 archetypes are useful but they only cover 229 characters there are still 367 to go if we keep this up we're gonna end up with 75 archetypes the commedia dell'arte only has about 17 so before we move on let's combine some these six are all mentors to varying degrees of usefulness these are all defined by their villainy and only some of them become playable welcome to Kane siblings incorporated where we all have a sibling like bond and do the same job these all have very specific requirements for recruiting these both do that thing where they don't seem important and then surprise I'm important these are all hard to make good but they're worth it if you put the effort these are all precocious little magic babies and that leaves the navarre x' unconnected but that's because I'm changing the archetype to spicy swords because we can include so many other characters if we just expand the definitions to any sword wielder who's a little spicy in fact by combining these other archetypes there are now tons of other characters who fit into these expanded definitions we are left with 288 characters to categorize but before I get there I just want to commend fire emblem for having 596 playable characters and only repeating three names when I was hired from my first job at a climbing gym I was one of five employees named Brian and it was a small gym but I guess it's pretty easy to cut out repetitions when you use dope-ass names like screamer dag dar slew your Bell I can go on all day but I won't because it's time to get the rest of the archetypes on the wall that took like 30 minutes but let's begin the Honourable night like Fiona who cares passionately about her people and will always oppose cruelty to civilians which is way better than the loyal night like Trude who only is loyal to Pern and will do literally anything for him even though Pern is a bad dude but I'll get to that later these four archetypes are calm and aloof and the only thing that differentiates them is how much you would want to invite them to your birthday party I'm just gonna get the blank slate archetype out of the way now because Fire Emblem is a game with perma death and so sometimes you just need more meat for the grinder you know similar to the blank slate is the protagonist which is always relatively heroic but since there are conduit for the player they're all pretty vague I realized that by smashing them all together into one category I've made the majority of the Fire Emblem roster in Super Smash indistinguishable but that's not my fault Super Smash should have included more magic baby's arrogance hotheads and edge lords all have a mean side but arrogance like Vicki just think they're the best hotheads like Kaspar want to fight anything that moves and edge lords like Niles retweet Joker account son ironically a lot of these characters have rough childhoods but then turn out cheerful despite that and then there's the inferiority complex archetype which I could have just called the majority of children and Fire Emblem fates perfectionists mischief makers and flirts are all highly motivated but Tsubaki is motivated to meet high expectations Claude is motivated to make intricate schemes and Sylvain is motivated to be a fuck-boy buzzkills are just characters that aren't very fun to talk to and Fire Emblem I will never forgive you for naming an unemotional uber religious deadbeat dad Gilbert it also doesn't help that I look like Hanuman light Oh God am i a buzzkill a lot of these archetypes are based around one singular personality trait Scarlet's straightforward Val bars chill Lin Hart's lazy sooo Mia's clumsy Petra's a sweetie and ran off as a first dramatic painter and fashionable are defined by their love of the arts and how much it sucks that they gotta be a solider instead some archetypes upset the status quo by defying gender norms er by calling out the noble class that's why their comrades child soldier Karen is canonically 14 years old whoopsy but even if they are at a child's they could still be naive which brings around the overprotective archetype which is just essentially helicopter parents Manuela is constantly drinking and flirting and just being a hot mess and I love her for it and that makes her the president of vices the vice president but be careful not to do that around someone like astrum who is constantly accusing people of treason for no good reason there's a lot of characters in the meek murderer archetype because Fire Emblem loves to make characters that are quiet and shy and really self-conscious and then can wreck shop on the battlefield here's an archetype I call what the [ __ ] and it's the three characters that make me say what the [ __ ] Fire Emblem people like burn who is said to be a sweet Robin Hood type except he does kidnap a young girl and keeps her as his slave or Darja who practices curses on her own daughter or Roger who is actually he's not actually that bad but Fire Emblem does go out of their way to make his end screams say that he never gets a date and he stays single for the rest of his life and it's like what the [ __ ] Fire Emblem you didn't have to do him dirty like that the next archetype is called actually pretty interesting these characters are three-dimensional and well-developed people like Libra who struggles with his faith and has incredible self-doubt even though he's doing all he can to help those around him or Reese who dreams of being a sword fighter but his weak Constitution won't allow him to become one and so he helps in the ways he can but his whole story is one of unfulfilled dreams and that's it those are the only two interesting characters and Fire Emblem until we get to Raphael my sweet bulky boy who only cares about eating and training and not about studying the thing is the Fire Emblem world has moved past him bows and bimbos welcome to the age of them bows their 45 archetypes to help you differentiate the 596 Fire Emblem characters if you're a gosh-dang rocket scientist 45 is still too much we can combine these will take these six and combine them to create a new archetype that is as important as it is blamed these three can be more succinctly summarized in a category called holy [ __ ] why're you a soldier let's just go ahead and cordon off all of the [ __ ] and now we can take these straight talk and suck ups and call them teachers pets these three archetypes all have tough exteriors to break through these three archetypes really explore familial bonds which is a rare condition in this day whether it's a good or a bad reaction doesn't matter to this group they just want to be seen they're just too nice for all this these four archetypes will always be subverting expectations it's fairly surprising that these three archetypes were let in chill dudes gambling a bunch of hunks damn if these aren't fun to hang out with all three of these are going to timeout because they need to calm it down and there we go the 13 archetypes that make it possible to differentiate the Fire Emblem characters just 13 of them that is fewer than the commedia dell'arte it's only 13 which is not only an unlucky number but it is too large for your tiny child brains we can make it better we can combine more we can perfect this granted it's a little bit harder to combine these archetypes but just off the bat we can take look at me baby and making waves and just combine it into one thing trendsetters and the necessary but boring and the [ __ ] crew and the teachers pets and the calm it down they all fill me with a sense of ugh and obviously the too nice for this and the light on your resume and the holy [ __ ] why are you as soldiers are all just a bad choice for a war and that just leaves us with the characters that are hard to break the ice with and the ones that have family issues and the quiet ones and the ones that are fun to hang out with and that just sounds like a pretty run-of-the-mill awkward family reunion and when you think about it these ones are just they're strange characters that have that are good I mean if you include Dimitri in this he has an eyepatch a which is similar to these ones and violet have they rhyme we also ignore Thea how wears a hat until she grows out of the Hat about that don't even get me started on a bore oh I don't know who that is it pronounced die sword Issei and we can have a category called anime character with a singular personality trait and a penchant for violence and that's just the one category which proofs that the Fire Emblem characters are all essentially the same and that you cannot differentiate them mission complete what was this unraveled about again serving phone sometimes two two masters now Italian dudes when a tight-fitting suit with a bunch of wheat patches it must be our lucky nor the servant well sometimes the two two masters okay

Channel: Polygon

Views: 2,223,696

Rating: 4.961381 out of 5

Keywords: fire emblem, unraveled, brian david gilbert, bdg, fire emblem three houses, three houses, smash bros, ssbu, super smash bros, super smash bros ultimate, Nintendo, videogames, video games, polygon, claude, edelgard, dmitri, marth, roy, commedia dell'arte, archetype, characters, how to, ridiculous, stock characters, fire emblem fates, fire emblem awakening, fire emblem birthright, byleth, ike, switch, corrin, chrom, robin, funny, meme, fire emblem heroes

Id: EMVjPDqrkyg

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 25 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/rainmcfae]

Brian David Gilbert and FE in one video? Holy fucking shit.

Edgelord: Cherche

...Wait, what?

[u/Mikeataros]

When did Hanneman escape into our dimension and get a job at Polygon?

[u/TakenRedditName]

I shouldn't nitpick, this video is just for fun.

Blank Slate choices but especially Igrene and Astolfo.

WELL LISTEN HERE, BUB.

[u/AlwaysDragons]

Brian does realize there is already archtype list for all the char--

He only found out about it AFTER he tried grouping them himself

Ah, there we go.

[u/godryan1]

How can one video be so much harmless fun yet make me want to take up drinking and violence at the same time?

[u/redditguy37]

“They only reused 3 names” yeah right

[u/do-you-like-darkness]

Much like others have commented, it was a challenge not to nitpick. However, I am glad that Fire Emblem is mainstream enough to be the subject of an Unraveled episode. I love BDG, but I think I like the episodes where I don't know the series he's talking about, so I don't get caught up in the details he gets wrong.

All that aside, I would bet good money that he played Golden Deer (and only Golden Deer).

[u/somasora7]

note: Fire Emblem does not actually know how to make interesting characters without making them suffer traumatic parental death

Well now...

Edit:

Isadora in Blank Slate

Ok see, now we've gotta fight

[u/PMMeYourSpeedForce]

Nanna

Blank Slate

Why does this hurt me?