Fire Emblem: Marth's Regret
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon is a 2009 remake of the first Fire Emblem game ever made, and the first time we ever got to know what happened with Marth in the first place to know why he deserved to be in Super Smash Bros. Among the enhancements to the game that was made was with the addition of Gaiden chapters.
Gaiden Chapters, for those who don't know, are essentially sidequest chapters that normally can only be unlocked by accomplishing certain conditions in the chapter. They started in Thracia 776 and were in a way essential as characters you failed to recruit in Thracia 776's gaiden chapters would later show up as enemies, and if you failed to complete the gaiden chapters in 6, you would not get the true ending.
Thankfully, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon didn't do anything rude like that. However, the "dick move" by Intelligent Systems was the fact that in order to unlock the chapters, you had to do something that no fire emblem player ever wants to do.
To unlock the gaiden chapters, you had to intentionally let enough characters die that you had fewer than 15 in your total party by certain chapters in the game. Players complained hugely about this because that is contrary to Fire Emblem tradition.
Let me pause the description to explain a bit why they don't like this. Fire Emblem is a strategy game more based around individual units, a little more comparable to Chess, where every piece has their own purposes. However, compared to other games like Shining Force, if you ever lost a character, they were permanently gone. As a result, players approach Fire Emblem much more conservatively than other games that often reward more Machiavellian strategies where you sacrifice your own men in order to win the map, because you can easily replace them by hiring or creating more soldiers. This is not the case in Fire Emblem. As a result, most players go through Fire Emblem with a 100% survival rate. To draw comparisons between chess again, think of it as having no pawns whatsoever so every piece is a crucial part of your plan.
While you always do have room to let a few people die in Fire Emblem, people would sooner bench these excess characters or "Dead weight" than let them fall in battle. Anyways, back to the pasta.
These were plans for a 'fan remake' of Shadow Dragon. Rather, how they believed Shadow Dragon should have been. However, they wanted to make an expansion of the added plots, too, this included something a bit breaking the fourth wall. Something tells me these guys were trying to get an entry onto Creepypasta.
After you beat the game, depending on how many gaiden chapters you unlocked, you would have gotten a change to the ending. If all of your characters survived, you got a happy ending. If only a handful of characters died or you only unlocked one gaiden chapter (the first one), the victory was more bittersweet, with Marth getting over the loss of those who helped him by erecting a memorial to them in Altea.
However, if you unlocked all the gaiden chapters or lost a lot of characters (They never told me how much), you would get an even more bittersweet ending. Marth was deeply damaged by the loss of all the people who died on his side during the war, or how little survived. He ruled, but soon passed the throne to his son after spiraling into a deep depression. (If Caeda survived, then it would have been between him and her; if she didn't, then Marth's wife would be an unnamed Queen Consort.) And then, you would get a playable scene in the epilogue.
This chapter was untitled, and Marth found himself in a surprisingly misty place, not unlike a castle. The objective was clear – "Sieze Throne," but you can barely see anything because for some odd reason, it's a Fog of War map. The player could only move him forwards, and then during the enemy phase, nothing would happen. But then you would get another phase...other phase. A few people would appear to emerge from the fog of war, and then Marth would be surrounded by units who immediately initiate conversation with him.
The player would now see exactly who these units are – they were units who died in battle. All of them would describe their regrets and how they couldn't have joined life. A few would also have been angered that they couldn't have gotten revenge for their homeland, served Marth, or got to be with their loved ones. Even if they were together in death, they regret not being able to have formed a family.
Marth would likewise express regret at letting some of these people die, and he keeps going forward and forward. Eventually the fog of war got less and less, showing a bunch of generic enemies that do not approach you. You cannot attack them, being unarmed, and are separated by walls. The only units that can access you are the units that died over the course of the game. Eventually, you find the throne, and before the player phase, a cutscene played.
The scene that would play next depends on some prior knowledge of the game. Sorry to interrupt, but here's the context this scene is in. If you played the game on normal, you were required to sacrifice a unit in the prologue. The one unit that you could not save, no matter what. They had to disguise themselves as Marth and run away, letting Marth and the rest of his men live.
Marth calls the name of the sacrifice, and he gets no response. He continues to call the man who gave up his life for Marth and his comrades, only for nothing to happen. Eventually, the scene's interrupted.
The man you sacrificed then says his quote at the end of the chapter, and the leader of the squad that went to search for Marth ordered his soldiers to kill him. You see the portrait of the sacrifice shake a bit as he closed his eyes, shouting, "Ow! Ow!" before eventually vanishing. This implies that he fell, since the primitive 'cutscenes' of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon don't show violence outside of actual battles.
The generic portraits then appear, and they say that the Altenean scum had finally fallen. They ask what to do next, only for the captain to say, "Leave him. We have no use for prince wannabes."
Then it would show another scene with the sacrifice, eyes closed saying, "...I'm alive... it worked... h...help me..." It would show the map view of the sacrifice gradually walking off the map. Then he eventually makes it to a house and stops, saying, "...h-help..."
Next a villager portrait would show up and say, "!! It's a man! An altean soldier! Quick! Call the curate! Help! Anybody!"
Then it would fade to white again, showing the sacrifice talking to the villager.
"I'm... alive..." he would say.
"Hide in the basement," The villager would have said, "You need to disguise yourself as a farmer. You're our new farmhand."
And finally, it would cut back to Marth, who finally smiles, for the first time that chapter.
"That's it...at least one of them lived," He would say. Finally he could seize the throne. When he did, he would appear to sit down, and then be surrounded by the 'other' units and enemies, who then turn blue.
Then something would show up, a dialogue message implying everyone on the screen saying something at once.
"Hail Prince Marth! All Hail the Prince of Ghosts!"
Credited to PurpleShirt
Originally uploaded on May 30, 2012
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