The Cavalry: A Personal History With My Favorite Trope

I was in college when Fire Emblem: Fates came out. Having become a fan during the Awakening boom, I found myself wanting to get a taste of the more “hardcore,” traditional Fire Emblem mechanics that the games prided themselves on—and that the fandom missed from the previous installment. That and a simple preference of knights over samurai pushed me in the direction of playing the Conquest story path first.

I certainly enjoyed it on the first playthrough, but nowadays, I consider Fates to be a bit of a guilty pleasure, mostly due to the very… convenient way the story is written. Aside from that, though, I found a lot to love in the gameplay aspects—and, specifically, I found love at first sight with what would become my favorite level in the series for the next three years: Conquest’s Chapter 6: A Dragon’s Decree.

At this point in the story, you’ve chosen which family you’ll stick by and return to the sinister king of Nohr and your adoptive father, Garon. He finds it infuriating that you survived after the sword he gave you was meant to blow up and assassinate Hoshidan Queen Mikoto, but after consoling with the dragon Anankos, he decides to task you with the quelling of a rebellion in his kingdom completely by yourself if only to assure that you will suffer.

And so, alone you go (never mind your dragon friend Lilith) into the Woods of the Forlorn and headfirst into a face-to-face confrontation with over a dozen monstrous faceless. If not for the unsanctioned intervention of your humble servant (Felicia for male avatar characters and Jakob for females), you would be dead in an instant, but as the battle begins, a 2v13/16/18 matchup (depending on difficulty) is hardly a fair fight.

But two turns later, backup arrives in earnest as your adoptive sister and an old friend come riding in, offering healing and offensive firepower and doubling your force. The next turn, further help arrives in the form of your sister’s retainers, both strong and sturdy enough to even the odds even further and turn certain death into a hard-earned victory.

Story begins at 2:20, gameplay at 12:37.

Between the dour circumstances thrown at you by turn 1 and the hype-generating, morale-boosting, tide-turning goodness of each ally swooping in to help, I found myself fawning over the idea of seizing victory from otherwise impossible scenarios with the help of surprise backup. It’s not an entirely new trope, as I’ll spend the next fifteen-hundred or so words explaining, and as a matter of fact, it’s more popular than ever before as a result of the success of Avengers Endgame’s portals moment, which does make all instances afterwards feel like they might be doing it because Endgame did it, too.

But I don’t want to just rattle off a list of those kinds of examples. I want to share the ones that I have a bit more of a personal connection to, because as it turns out, this trope works spectacularly in the context of video games, too.

So get ready, because I’m gonna talk about my favorite moments with the trope I like to call, “The Cavalry,” or, as TVTropes calls it… “The Cavalry?” Huh. I guess that’s really what it’s supposed to be called.

PART 1: WHOOPS! ALL STAR WARS!

Sorry, sorry! These two just ended up being the first ones I wanted to talk about. At least they’re Clone Wars-related, though, right? C’mon, everybody loves the Clone Wars!

Part 1.A: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (The 2002 Video Game)

Starting with this old gem I had for the Gamecube, the situation is as dire as you’d expect it to be in the leadup to the trope’s execution. Anakin Skywalker has been captured by Count Dooku, who has just gotten his hands on a dangerous old Sith toy. Imprisoned on one of Kashyyyk’s more remote moons, you are left disarmed and trapped in a cage as the frightening Force Harvester activates. As soon as the level starts, you have mere seconds to retrieve your lightsaber, free whatever prisoners you can, and escape on STAPs before the Force Harvester can rip out your life force as it begins to swallow forest.

You look at that big pink ball of death and tell me it wouldn’t frighten you as a kid!

With only a betrayed mercenary and a handful of angry Wookie locals to back him up, Anakin must embark on a mission to infiltrate the enemy base and send a message to the Republic. From there, they must hold out against the Separatist’s occupational force with little else but alien steeds and crafty traps.

It’s a long, hard fight for your lives, but survive long enough and you get to hear that Republic forces have arrived. Slowly, the Republic Acclamator assault ship cleaves through the draw distance and lands, unleashing a squad of tanks to zoom in and finish the fight.

The Cavalry arrives at the 06:05 mark.

Although I have the words to describe my love for it now, five-year-old Sean could only marvel away with wide eyes and a smile in the wake of such a spectacle (even though I was technically using invincibility cheat codes).

Part 1.B: Star Wars: Republic Commando

Some years later, my dad and I rented and later purchased Republic Commando for the Xbox. Between my age and his lack of motor skills when playing with a controller, we didn’t make it very far at first, but I found myself loving the game and how it forced you to squeeze all you could out of the game’s squad system in order to accomplish your high-stakes missions once I was old enough to do so.

Back on topic, if you’ve played the game before, you probably know which level I’m about to tell you about. If not, allow me to introduce you to Deus Ex Machina.

This level is the last aboard the Prosecutor, a Republic Acclamator and your “first home.” After the ship was found suddenly, adrift in space, and nowhere near where it vanished, your squad is tasked with scouring the ship, finding whatever data you can, and bringing the ship back into Republic hands without springing any potential traps. Shortly after coming aboard, however, you find the ship overtaken by Trandoshan mercenaries who planned to turn the ship over to the Separatists in exchange for battle droids.

After a rough welcome, you and your brothers manage to purge the Trandoshan threat, but not in time to thwart the arrival of a Separatist capital ship intent on claiming its prize. With assurance that help is on the way, your squad fights desperately to seal off the hangars, but the droid army arrives to swarm the ship all the same. Worse, having been fully denied their prize, the Separatist ship resorts to obliterating you, opening fire on your unmanned ship.

As the last clones aboard the Prosecutor, your last hope lies in two places: the targeting consoles of one of the ship’s gunnery stations, and the timely arrival of your only available reinforcements, the RAS Arrestor. Neither on its own will be enough to save you; you and your squad must activate the ship’s automated guns while finding off against a nigh-endless horde of battle droids—potentially all by yourself if you assign all three of your squad members to the consoles for the sake of time—before your miracle backup is forced to retreat, if your own ship isn’t destroyed first.

The challenge is the most daunting it’s ever been thus far, but as the final console is sliced, the gratification is instant: the screen saturates with bright light and booming sound as the turbolasers finally come online. The soundtrack sings the glorious main theme as the Arrestor’s captain reports on the certain demise of the Separatist attackers. Then, as the battle droids shut down, you are left to enjoy the serene schadenfreude of watching the enemy’s flagship break into pieces, realizing that you just singlehandedly saved an entire ship against impossible odds.

I like the implication that Talbot doesn’t even realize the Prosecutor only has four men aboard.

I suppose Republic Commando’s example of the trope is interesting in that the arrival of the Cavalry isn’t technically the moment the tide turns. Instead, the game tells you loud and clear that you need to pull your weight and earn your victory.

The Takeaway: These couple of examples were fun to explore because when I first played through them way back when, I didn’t fully realize what they were examples of. Rather, they’re relics from a time when all things ever needed to be for me to like them was “cool.” It’s a relief to see that, corny and dated as some aspects may be, I’m able to realize what made them so cool in the first place, and how it ends up tying back to my present tastes.

That, I suppose, and the fact that Acclamators are super awesome ships.

PART 2: SEA OF THIEVES: A PIRATE’S LIFE

Ok, so this one is technically a contemporary (or at least a post-Endgame) example. Doesn’t take away from anything, though.

The trope manifests itself during the final chapter of the Pirates of the Carribean crossover story, “Lords of the Sea.” After uncovering Davy Jones’s plot to take over the Sea of Thieves by seizing Sea of the Damned and controlling which souls would be allowed back into the land of the living, you set off for Jones’s stronghold with the ghost of Captain Jack Sparrow aboard and ready to help you confront him and his Dark Brethren once and for all.

Upon arrival, you immediately engage in a maritime battle against phantom ships, giant siren statues, and the occasional boarding party of ocean crawlers. In the midst of the chaos, Sparrow leaps into the ocean and resurfaces at the helm of his iconic Black Pearl. This alone isn’t enough to stop Jones, however.

One emotional reminder that Davy Jones is a sympathetic bad guy later, we finally get our beautiful Endgame moment as captains long-dead from across Sea of Thieves’ previous stories rise up from the ocean in their ships to join your battle as a triumphant orchestration of “A Pirate’s Life For Me” plays. Once Jones’s fleet has been given enough of a black eye, you finally get the chance to climb the coral spire and take the battle straight to Jones and his ship, the Flying Dutchman.

When victory is fleeting, bring a fleet.

The Takeaway: This one is by far my favorite post-Endgame instance of the Cavalry. Serving as a callback, a tribute to both franchises, and a climactic end to an episodic adventure, it checks all the boxes it needs to in order to be successful. What separates Lords of the Sea from the rest of its ilk, though, is the fact that this moment can (and SHOULD) be shared with a friend or three, allowing you and your buddy to share in the spectacle together.

…Now that I think about it, though, would the Smash Bros Ultimate E3 trailer count as an example of this trope? Ehhhhh… I could probably spin it that way if I tried hard enough, but I’m better off leaving well enough alone.

PART 3: FIRE EMBLEM: THREE HOUSES

Well, we started with a Fire Emblem game and what used to be my favorite level, so I may as well go over what I consider to be its perfect successor. Just for the record, my first route was Azure Moon, so while I may refer to other routes, just know which one ended up being the first one I went for and experienced this moment in.

 The chapter in question is none other than Chapter 13: Reunion at Dawn (Sorry Crimson Flower fans). After spending the past 12 chapters serving as a teacher for your selected class, war comes abruptly to the Monastery you’ve worked at and the students you’ve raised and bonded with. During the defense of the Monastery, however, you find yourself blasted off a cliff and are forced into a slumber spanning five long years. When you wake up, the entirety of Fodlan has become engulfed in war.

In the lead-up to the release of Three Houses, the timeskip became one of the most hyped-up elements of the game. We were given brief glimpses of the dramatic changes which the world and characters would undergo while the rest we’d have to discover for ourselves. By this point, we’ve finally reached that long-awaited moment as the day you awaken marks the reunion day that you and your students promised to have five years prior.

It all starts with an encounter with your house leader that will either be heartfelt or tragic, depending on your chosen route. From there, the game drops an epic exposition explaining the state of Fodlan’s nations to give you a peek at how everyone else is doing, before dropping you into the ruins of Garag Mach Monastery on a mission to clear out the thieves and pillagers who have made themselves at home.

Just like dragon’s decree, it’s 2 vs a whole lot of bad guys as new music plays and the dim light of daybreak shines on, and within the first handful of turns, you are joined by reinforcements. What makes Reunion at Dawn even greater than its predecessor though, is that your reinforcements aren’t newly-introduced characters, but instead your old students, arriving from the maw of war-torn Fodlan to make good on their half-decade-old promise.

From reuniting a class to restoring a kingdom.

The music, the setting, the narrative twists and turns, seeing all those faces you worked so hard to train all grown up—it’s as wonderful and inspiring as it is a somber reminder of the flow of time.

And the best part? This is no climactic finale or conclusion like the examples shown above, but instead an introduction to the next phase of the whole game. In Fodlan’s darkest hour, you and the fruits of all your labors and promises gather together in the hopes of bringing this terrible war to a decisive end.

The Takeaway: The Cavalry doesn’t always have to be about grand-scale and/or insurmountable odds. Sometimes, the greater importance lies in the faces of those who come to the rescue and watching as your connections bring about a greater destiny than any one character alone could never fulfill. To that end, such examples like this one still accomplish what the Cavalry is all about.

CONCLUSION:

At its best, the Cavalry not only makes a scene more epic, but also inspires the reader or player with emotional beats, friendly faces, and push the player to seek the light at the end of the tunnel as it finally begins to gleam. There’s no better feeling than realizing that you’re not alone and realizing that the impossible can be made possible with the help of some backup.

Maybe modern media has this trope feeling a bit like a fad, or maybe I’m dense and only now seeing it as mainstream. Either way, I just can’t help but have a little fun sharing what makes it so special to me.