Narrative Analysis: Fire Emblem Awakening and Breath of the Wild

All games tell a story. It can be a grand epic of heroes saving the world from darkness; a tale of a simple farmer growing their crops; or just a story that the players tell themselves as they wander about a vast world. Fire Emblem Awakening and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are two games that tell incredibly compelling narratives, but in their own unique ways.

Fire Emblem Awakening seeks to transport the player to a distant land, where they can watch an epic drama unfold before their eyes, lead by the heroic Chrom and their own avatar fight against the forces of darkness.

Breath of the Wild, on the other hand, seeks to immerse the player in a fantastical world, where if you can imagine it, you can probably do it. There is a story of heroes fighting a great evil, but it takes a back seat to the story of the player wandering a vast and fantastic land, and the secrets they uncover along the way.

In terms of genre, the two games are incredibly different. Fire Emblem is a turn based strategy game, meaning its narrative is conveyed in cutscenes between maps, and the conversations between its characters. Breath of the Wild, on the other hand, is an open world RPG, lending itself to emergent narratives as the player wanders around, meeting new people, and encountering wondrous sights.

Fire Emblem's main plot is pretty straightforward in its presentation. You beat a map, get a bunch of dialogue, beat another map, get more dialogue, etc. However, the way it develops its vast array of supporting characters is incredible. Most characters outside the main few of Chrom, Robin, and other NPCs don't show up in the main story. Instead, they are fleshed out through Support Conversations that reveal more about the characters and the world around them.

When two units fight side by side on the battlefield, they gain an invisible score between the two of them called "Support." When this score reaches certain limits, they "Support Rank" between the two units will increase, from no rank to C, to B, to A, and in certain cases to S. After reaching a new rank, a Support Conversation between the two units is unlocked and can be viewed between maps.

These conversations vary wildly, from funny, to sad, to heartwarming, but always flesh out the two characters together. But it doesn't stop there. The support conversations represent the bonds between characters growing closer, but this is actually represented on the battlefield. Two characters with support give stat boosts to each other when paired up on the battlefield. These boosts increase with the Support Rank. High rank support boosts is equivalent to several levels worth of stats! Additionally, two units with high support have an increased chance of performing follow-up attacks and blocking blows for each other. Truly, the narrative of comrades growing closer together, laughing, crying, and learning is reflected in the very gameplay of Fire Emblem. Two close units fighting together are so much more powerful than units that fight alone.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is very different, Instead of telling the player a story, it seeks to allow the player to tell their own story. Breath of the Wild's openness and willingness to let the player make their own rules really enables the player to find their own way.

The world of Zelda lends itself to this philosophy of letting the player make their own story. Instead of carefully crafted experiences, the world was built to feel organic, with a focus on physics and chemistry systems. These systems allow the player to know if something is going to work ahead of time if they know the systems well enough. Fire Arrow + Exploding Barrel? Of course. Ride a bear? You know it. Time freeze a rock, hit it a few times, jump on, and let the momentum carry you into the sky? Yup.

This level of freedom is thanks in part to the fact that players gain all abilities almost right away. Once the player exits the "tutorial" area, the entire world is open to them, including the final boss. Everything the player does from this point on is up to them. No quest markers (besides the final boss), no invisible walls, no barriers, nothing. The only thing stopping the player is themselves. Thanks to this open design, and the way the game sets up what little story it has, every single thing the player does is part of the main story. Every single thing they do works towards preparing Link for his confrontation with Ganon.

All of this leads to every single gamer's experience of Breath of the Wild's story to be their own. One player might get off the plateau and run straight to Ganon, ignoring everything. Someone else might wander around a bit, complete some optional quests, run into an assassin, ride a deer, complete some shrines, then go to the final boss. Another person might scour the entire kingdom for every last secret, every last Korrok Seed, every last weird rock cropping. In the end, it's up to the player what path they take, what story they tell.

Both games have sold incredibly well, in large part thanks to their narratives. Fire Emblem Awakening actually saved its entire franchise. Fire Emblem's deep narrative, interesting characters and rewarding gameplay helped it become one of the best-selling Fire Emblem games ever. Breath of the Wild's massive, open-ended world and total freedom for players to tell their own story caused it to outsell the system it was released on. Both have been lauded for the stories they tell, and both will go down in history.

It would be unfair to directly compare the two, asking "which one is better," because both deliver drastically different things. Fire Emblem Awakening tells a compelling story, full of wondrous and wacky characters tied together with tight, tactical gameplay. Breath of the Wild, on the other hand, grants its players almost total freedom to tell their own story, to explore and discover the world at their own pace. The land of Hyrule is the main character besides Link, and gamers can spend as much or as little time as they want getting to know it. Both are incredibly games, with incredible narratives, it just matters what you, as a gamer, are looking for exactly.

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