Fire Emblem and The Trolley Problem
It’s been five years since I last saw Claude, but it might as well have been five days. He hardly seems to have changed at all; even with a blade at his throat, a smile never seems far from his lips, and despite standing against me in battle he still insists on calling me “Professor”. Though maybe, just maybe… is that a hint of fear in his voice? His back to the ocean, his commanders all slain by my troops, no clever scheme to fall back on, and finally the facade cracks ever so slightly. He doesn’t want to die. But what consequences will there be if he doesn’t? Do I put my own people at risk by sparing him? Can I justify taking one life if it might save a thousand?
After three long months, I’ve finally finished the Black Eagles route of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Some of you reading this might remember that I wrote my first piece on the game within a month of starting it, and expressed interest in following up with my thoughts once I’d finished. So why did it take me so long?
The answer is complicated. Mechanically, the game was nearly perfect for me. Every battle felt fair, even when the game threw me curve balls like enemy reinforcements or generals with obscenely high crit rates; there was always another path to take, another strategy to put into action. Meanwhile, my bonds to each character grew stronger with every support conversation I unlocked, as I came to more clearly understand their fears and motivations. It wasn’t just a good Fire Emblem, it was a good game period.
But with good characters come complicated questions, ones I started to raise in my last feature. Is it fair to make them level weapons against people they once called classmates? Can I order them to fight a war that will cost each of them so much personally? As I played on and grappled constantly with the moral dilemmas the game thrust upon me, I realised something — FE: Three Houses is, at its heart, an exploration of the trolley problem.
For those of you who don’t know (see: those of you who haven’t watched The Good Place), the trolley problem is a commonly discussed thought experiment in ethics. In the problem, a trolley is hurtling towards a crowd of five incapacitated people and will definitely kill them if you don’t act on their behalf. You can pull a lever that will swap the trolley onto a new track and save their lives. However, there is one person on the new track who will be killed by your actions. So do you pull the lever, and kill one person to save five? Is it morally defensible to directly cause another person’s death in pursuit of a better outcome? These are the questions the trolley problem poses, and to this day they’re hotly debated. Variations on the problem pose different scenarios; maybe the person who will be killed if you switch tracks is a relative of yours, or maybe the five people are elderly while the one is a baby. These variations are where the water gets murky, and where the plot of Three Houses hits its stride. Please note, there are *serious spoilers* for the Black Eagles route ahead.
In the Black Eagles route, right before the five-year time-skip, you’re given a choice: trust Edelgard, although she has betrayed your trust by keeping her identity as The Flame Emperor secret from you, or side with the Church and kill her before she can cause any more harm. This is the first time in the game we’re forced to make a serious, morally significant decision, and our answers speak volumes. On the one hand, siding with Edelgard means staying loyal to your closest friends, but doing so will launch a crusade that involves dismantling the Church by any means necessary. On the other hand, siding with the Church means you have to kill Edelgard, one of the first people you meet in the game and a close friend, but doing so nets you new allies and you don’t have to dismantle a religion in the process — not to mention the sense of personal vindication to be rid of the person who lied to you for so long. Whatever choice you make requires personal sacrifice in service of a brighter future, and neither choice leaves your hands entirely clean.
Everything that happens next is a direct result of this decision, and so one trolley problem spawns a dozen more. On one map, Ignatz blocked my most direct path to victory, guarding his commander studiously with a bow and arrow. I could spend valuable time getting around him, putting my troops in jeopardy as enemy reinforcements moved to flank us, or I could attack him directly, giving us the best chance at winning the battle with the fewest casualties…
So, with no small amount of guilt, I decided to take him out myself. He was the first former student I had made a conscious choice to kill, and without a doubt, it weighed on me. It wasn’t that long ago I was sneaking him art books to encourage his hidden passion for painting; now here I was, driving a sword through him to further an Emperor’s crusade. Had I made the right decision? Was it worth killing Ignatz to protect my own comrades? Would spilling his blood lead to a better future further down the line?
These were questions that didn’t have solid answers, questions which weighed all the more heavily the further I progressed through the campaign. Three Houses was never afraid to make me confront my decisions; every character I killed uttered some final words of defiance, of fear, even of love, forcing me to wonder at what might have been if I had let them live. Would they have tried to kill me? Let me pass as long as I didn’t stray too close? Even joined me? With each command I gave, I changed which track our proverbial trolley rode, careening at ever-higher speeds with no end in sight. All I could do was hope that I was doing enough good to outweigh the bad. I ended up sparing Claude and sending him into exile when I might have killed him. I recruited Lysithea to our cause after defeating her in battle, giving her a chance at redemption. And eventually, I brought down the Church, exposing the corruption that festered within.
When the conflict finally came to an end with Archbishop Rhea’s defeat, when Edelgard sat unopposed on her rightful throne, and my other students scattered like leaves in an autumn wind, I was left to ponder where we had ended up. Maybe there was another way, a more peaceful way, to have ended up where I did.
But that’s the thing about Three Houses, and about the trolley problem. They both force you to make immediate decisions, putting others’ lives in your hands whether you feel ready or not; and it’s only later, when the dust has settled and the blood is pooled at your feet, that you realise you might have to live with your decision.
Thank you so much if you stuck it out to the end of this story, it was undoubtedly a labour of love. I adored Three Houses and the way it made me consider my own morality, while nonetheless remaining an absolute joy to play, and I would recommend it to any of you readers who might not have given it a go.
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