Indoor games are build on randomness.
From cards to craps, these games are built around the concept of chance.
But is that dying out?
Should games still have elements of chance in them?
Should random crits be removed from video games entirely?
Well, no.
I was always someone who thought randomness is never a good thing in video games.
As video games transition to resembling real life sports, the question of what makes a
game fair has been up in the air in recent years.
Why did the enemy soldier have to kill everyone because of one critical rocket?
How is that fair?
People generally agree that it isn't fair.
And that's why fewer and fewer games are having elements that can give you an advantage
with the roll of a dice… or random generation of a number.
If your high school algebra class didn't beat it into you head enough, variables are
kind of a bad thing.
And that makes sense, if one player on a team just accidentally does three times as much
damage with a shot, how is that fair?
People get pissed off over random accidental victories, especially in more serious game
settings.
That's the reason people love playing Smash Bros. competitively, but people aren't very
excited to spectate competitive Mario Party.
Mario Party is all about luck, and people don't find that a very interesting competition
of skill.
Going hand-in-hand with a lot of the elitism in the fandom, there is a lot of talk about
how Fire Emblem is a very skill based strategy series.
But how can that be the case?
A video game that relies heavily on random values can never be something that you can
get good at, or can it?
Fire Emblem is the kind of game that challenges this notion.
People talk about it like it's the zenith of tactical nuance in video games.
But how?
How can a game with critical hits and accuracy rates be strategic?
Well, the answer is actually quite complicated.
The thing about Fire Emblem is that you rarely know what's going to happen every turn.
You could miss, the enemy could get a critical hit and kill one of your units, and you can't
do anything to change that.
But there's one thing that makes it different.
When you provoke a unit, you'll be given a bunch of information.
Stuff like damage numbers, hit rates, and critical rates and in some games more.
Will you get a hit or will it miss?
You don't know.
But you know your chances; and that's important.
And this is what makes things interesting.
If Fire Emblem was a game where every attack hit and there were no critical hits, it wouldn't
be very fun.
And that's something that is really weird when you think about it.
People often talk about how shitty random critical hits are in Team Fortress 2; and
they're right.
But what makes it different in Fire Emblem?
Well, the big thing is that Fire Emblem is not a game where you can dominate with mechanical
skill.
Fire Emblem is not a game you can get "skilled at".
You can be good at Fire Emblem and be used to playing it.
But you don't need aim or positioning or anything like that.
A game where you have no mechanical obligations is pretty boring to watch.
At least, without any surprises.
What Fire Emblem does to make things interesting is adding an RNG.
Sometimes, you'll get a critical hit.
Other times, you'll miss an attack.
And this is where Fire Emblem's RNG finds its purpose.
Adding an RNG into any video game is always risky business; when the RNG makes you lose
it's hard to feel like it was your own fault.
But I like to think that Fire Emblem did it right, because you know what risks you're
taking when you approach that annoying ass myrmidon with a killer edge.
Fire Emblem gives you the numbers and makes sure you know what you're getting into when
you provoke an enemy.
And that's actually quite a good thing.
It makes the "skill" of the game about having a strategy for all the possible scenarios
that could happen.
It transitions to how good you are in combat to how adaptive you are.
And adaptability is arguably more useful than raw power.
It's definitely unique and it challenges what is "fair" in games, but I like to
think that Fire Emblem innovates what we consider to be skill in video games.
Although sometimes the RNG works against you in an unfair way, I think it's essential
to the Fire Emblem series and things wouldn't be the same without it.
So yeah, it's impressive if you beat the games on hard mode.
Sometimes you may have won because you got a critical hit, but that could have worked
against you.
What do you think?
Does Fire Emblem need its RNG?
Or does it make things unfair?
Feel free to leave your take on things in the comment section below, it's always appreciated.
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