A quick note before we begin

While this piece is nonfiction, it relies on a lot of speculation and educated guesses, especially in the second half. Please keep in mind that while the discoveries I (and many others) have made are factual (things like "this is how the model appears on the disc" and "Tellius Recollection says such and such"), we can never be 100% certain about any of the conclusions I've drawn unless they're later confirmed (or denied) by someone who worked on the game.

 

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Each playable laguz in Path of Radiance is assigned four different models: a low-poly map model and a combat model for each of their forms (transformed and untransformed). Giffca’s combat models and their associated textures clearly do not correspond to his actual design and greatly resemble Caineghis’ instead, and this article will be diving deep, datamining, digesting, and discussing all evidence I can find that is presently available that suggests that Caineghis was originally meant to be playable instead of Giffca.

 

Unless otherwise stated, I will always be talking about Path of Radiance. In-game screenshots of Giffca’s battle models were taken in the debug combat model viewer and screenshots of his map models were taken using Dolphin’s free-cam mode so I could get better angles than what the game normally allows.

If you’d like to use the model viewer yourself, the models you’re looking for are 獅子 (“Lion”, transformed, a little past halfway down the first menu) and 獣牙族 (“Beast Fang Tribe” (localized as “Beast Tribe”), untransformed, sixth from the bottom). These names are consistent with how other models are named in the menu ([Class] [Name], usually forgoing the name for the first entry) and I don’t think him going unnamed here means anything in particular.

 

Let’s begin by briefly recapping what Giffca and Caineghis are supposed to look like. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re already at least passingly familiar with their designs, but it’s important that we’re clear on the developer intent.

The Tellius games (Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn) received two artbooks: Tellius Recollection Volume 1 (which focused on PoR) and Volume 2 (which focused on RD). Giffca doesn’t have a dedicated concept art section in Volume 1 (this might mean nothing since plenty of other (and more notable) characters also got skipped), but he gets one in Volume 2 on page 194. Caineghis actually has much more concept art than what I’m showing here (he has dedicated sections in both (pg. 146 in Vol. 1 and pg. 192 in Vol. 2)), though his section in Volume 2 doesn’t reveal anything new so I’ve skipped putting it and some redundant sketches from Volume 1 here. Giffca also has an early face design on pg. 250 of Vol. 2, but the only real difference is that his ears are pointier (and possibly scarred? The image is tiny so it’s unclear), so I’ve also skipped including it.

Their concept art more or less lines up with how they appear in portraits and official art for both games, and as well as in their map and combat models in Radiant Dawn (while Caineghis doesn’t have any combat models in Path of Radiance (because he does not appear in battle), he does appear in both forms in one of the pre-rendered cutscenes using the same designs he uses everywhere else). The armor Giffca wears is a little different and the shirt design underneath is simplified in his concept art (so perhaps it predates his design in PoR), but aside from that their individual designs are fairly consistent between concept art, in-game art, and official art. The concept art is very clearly what they were referencing when implementing them into the game (which they do outright tell us in the artbook, but it’s good to be sure).

You may notice that the concept art for their transformed forms use the same base art with character-specific details and color added on top. This is because the concept art present in both volumes mostly consists of model sheets, meant to be used as references for creating the in-game combat models (so it’s unrelated to my overall thesis). Since nearly all classes in the final game use one or two base models with different textures applied, it saves time and effort during development to draw, for instance, the base shape of the lion class and then put Giffca and Caineghis’ accessories and colors on top (you can see this happen with several other characters in both artbooks).

 

The last piece of concept art for either is found on Page 162 of Volume 1, where there is a size comparison chart that was used to compare members of the same class to each other (and a handful of characters to Ike) for the purposes of model creation.

You may have to squint to see it, but the art of Giffca here has the same markings and accessories (the wrist guards and the mantle clasp, though he’s missing the belt) as Caineghis, which is to say that it’s not reflecting Giffca’s actual, final design. At first glance this may seem like an error in the art book, but the tiger and cat comparisons directly above them are also (recolored) carbon copies of each other despite Lethe/Ranulf/Generic Cat and Mordecai/Muarim/Generic Tiger having their own distinct wrist guards and markings in their concept art (remember this). Like how the model design sheets used copy-pasted lineart that then gets embellished with character-specific details, this is probably another cost/time/effort-saving measure and possibly not an indicator of anything in particular.

That is, of course, neglecting to account for the fact that it’s also what Giffca looks like in-game.

 

Giffca Oddities

Surprise! Giffca’s transformed (and untransformed, but we’ll get to that later) combat model is completely different from how he looks in his concept art and in Radiant Dawn. It’s not a 1:1 Caineghis recolor since they took the time to hide the belt, but the markings and other accessories are exactly what they should be on Caineghis (and not what they should be on Giffca). There are also some weird bits sticking out and odd coloration around where the belt would be (these are much more obvious in motion), but more on that later.

The markings being the same between the two of them is not something exclusive to Giffca, however. In the final game itself, tigers all use the same markings (corresponding to Mordecai’s), as do cats (corresponding to Ranulf’s), so Giffca having Caineghis’ markings is almost certainly an intentional choice and not an error.

We can’t even assume that the intent is that the markings were shared among a given group of Laguz as a cost-saving measure (like on the size chart page), since not only are Lethe and Ranulf are the only ones who are the same type of Laguz who also appear transformed in concept art outside of the size chart, but Lethe’s arms (where the markings would be) are completely covered by her arm guards, making any comparison impossible.

Maybe they were cost-saving measures. Maybe in PoR Laguz all used the same markings and Intelligent Systems changed their minds about that for Radiant Dawn. Maybe they forgot to change them and it’s entirely an accident. Maybe my disc is haunted. We don’t really have a way to know, and this is a place where actual concept art for Giffca in Volume 1 would have been very helpful.

On the other hand, non-generic tigers and cats wear accessories that correspond to their own outfit and not to another character’s outfit, so there’s still something going on here. In Radiant Dawn, Giffca’s arm guards are just part of the texture of his arms, so why have additional parts that correspond to Caineghis’ outfit when they had no trouble removing the belt? Well…

 

Astute readers may have noticed a strange shadow sticking out from his abdomen in the screenshot of Giffca t-posing (the first photo), roughly around where the belt would be. It doesn’t correspond to any visible geometry, but it’s gone once he’s in the middle of an animation (like in the second photo) so it’s gotta be something that’s rigged to his actual model, right?

Fortunately, cat imaging technology has progressed greatly and we don’t have to settle for mere guessing.

The shadow is cast by the beads that hang from Caineghis’ belt (which stick out straight while t-posing and are posed closer to the body when animated), and all the geometry for the belt itself is still present despite this being Giffca (who does not wear Caineghis’ outfit). If you go back and look really closely, you can see not just the shadow of the beads, but also the shadow of the belt itself in the first in-engine image since it hovers a bit off of his body. The texture is transparent in those sections, which is why it’s not visible even if the geometry is still there, and when compared to the RD textures, it’s very clear that those sections were simply deleted.

I’ve put them together here side by side for easy comparison (the textures are stored as 256x256 images, so note that the top and bottom halves are two separate images). Interestingly enough, Giffca’s FE10 texture adds those sections back in (though the beads are now one of the straps that goes around his abdomen), even if the chain textures (and the metal wrist guards) end up totally unused because that geometry has been removed to more accurately reflect his actual design.

 

Wrapping up his transformed battle model, the little bits sticking out that I mentioned and the discolored parts are the result of UV mapping errors. The discoloration comes from it mapping a fraction of a pixel of his wrist guard, and the bits sticking out are from mapping a fraction of a pixel of the skin texture surrounding the chain onto the chain geometry (and hovering a little bit offset from his skin as a result (as mentioned earlier, this is more noticeable in motion)). I’ve highlighted the specific vertices that are causing this issue and where they appear on the model here:

Since these errors are fixed on the RD model, I’m inclined to believe that they’re more the result of an actual production mistake rather than a sign of some sort of mid-development change (like I will be asserting for some of the other oddities later). Sure, the bits sticking out wouldn’t be an issue if they had removed the chain geometry, but the discoloration on his pelvis would still be there (and is still there if you slap Caineghis’ RD textures onto the model).

 

While I’m in the neighborhood, I’ll point out that his transformed map models in each game use the design his transformed combat models use, so there’s not much to add about them. He’s still a Caineghis recolor in PoR, and he’s using his own design in RD.

 

 

Before I move on to his untransformed models, I’d like to take a detour to talk about some parts of PoR’s filesystem.

The images used for textures are compressed into .tpl files. The images themselves are pngs and are 256x256 pixels large, and each .tpl corresponds to one complete set of textures for a given model. Most folders that contain battle models have several duplicate .tpl files in addition to the ones used in-game, and it’s unclear why (the folder for Giffca’s untransformed model, for instance, has five copies of the same texture).

Models and their animations are usually compressed into .pak or .cmp files, and are divided into animation (.ga), mesh (.gs), and bone (.g) files. Map models have the animations uncompressed and the textures compressed with the mesh and bones, while combat models have the .tpls floating around in the folder and the animation, mesh, and bone files compressed together.

Map models are stored in folders in /ymu/, and combat models are stored in folders in /zu/. These models are grouped by the ‘base’ model used, usually corresponding to a character’s class. Plenty of classes have more than one model, several characters get unique models, and each of these models gets their own folder (for example: paladin has three battle models (pal1/pal2/pal3) and Titania (also a paladin) gets a unique model in /zu/timt/). Laguz generally share their transformed (and often their untransformed) models with other members of the same class, though some exceptions apply (Mordecai gets his own folder for his transformed battle model because he is a little bigger, and Tibarn and Naesala have their own untransformed map/battle models but get grouped with hawks and ravens respectively while transformed).

Battle models also have entirely separate .pak files for each of a class’s different weapons types, probably because those weapons use different animations and the game packs those animations with the model data (for example: Titania has five variants of her model within /zu/timt/: one for axes, thrown axes, lances, thrown lances, and when she's unequipped). Even though Laguz normally can’t unequip their weapon (it’s attached to their body), they still have a model for when the weapon is equipped and when it is unequipped (though I haven’t noticed any actual difference between these two models).

 

Because Giffca has two forms and a map model and a combat model for each, we care about four folders total (plus one folder for Caineghis’ untransformed map model (which I’ll talk about later)):

/ymu/beast_li/: Transformed lion map model. “Li” probably stands for lion. As far as I can tell, all transformed map models are grouped by class (since unique models were generally reserved for their untransformed forms or for their battle models) so it’s not particularly weird that it’s named after the class instead of Giffca… Huh. Why’s there also a texture for Caineghis in here? He never shows up on the map.

/ymu/lion/: Untransformed Caineghis map model. Like before, that’s a little weird since he never appears in a 3D scene.

/ymu/lion_gi/: Untransformed Giffca map model. “Gi” probably stands for Giffca. It’s kinda strange that he’s not the ‘default’ Lion map model when he’s the only one that’s actually used. Like most map models, his uses a simplified version of his actual design. Since I have nothing else to add about it, I’ll also put it here:

/zu/beli/: Transformed Giffca combat model. Given the other folders in /zu/ and their contents, “beli” probably stands for “beast lion”, so this is a class folder and not a personal folder. As mentioned before, Path of Radiance has separate models/bones/animations (grouped in .pak files) for each weapon a class can equip, plus a model for it without anything equipped (even if the game doesn’t let you unequip their weapon). Lions in particular get beli_cr.pak and beli_no.pak. The _no is the suffix classes use for when they’re unequipped, so _cr appears to be an abbreviation of “claw” (the weapon Beast Laguz use). And again, I haven’t found any differences between the two models.

/zu/cain/: Untransformed Giffca combat model. “cain” is probably short for Caineghis… wait a minute.

 

If you’ve done the counterintuitive action of removing the equipment that transforms Giffca (making him now useless in combat, since untransformed Laguz don’t attack or counterattack in this game) and then threw him into combat with animations on (or if you’ve looked closely enough at his wiki page :P), you already know this one:

Giffca’s untransformed combat model doesn’t use his own outfit and instead uses what appears to be a recolor of Caineghis’ model with some things removed (they also didn’t recolor his ears). As it’s rendered in game, it’s missing the mantle and the beads that hang from his belt (though the mantle clasp remains, likely since it’s not a separate piece of geometry that you could easily remove from both the model and the texture), and the belt design has changed from the chain to one that more closely resembles what Giffca actually wears. The geometry for his hair was also very clearly changed to be both shorter and flatter (so it actually looks like him), but aside from that, this looks pretty similar to a complete and total Caineghis recolor, doesn’t it?

 

If we take into account how the actual textures for the missing parts aren’t transparent and the lack of a massive shadow around his right shoulder, we can assume that they aren’t using the same transparency trick that they used for the belt in his transformed form. Maybe they actually deleted the geometry this time?

They did not. This is what the model in /zu/cain/ is as it is stored on the disc.

In addition to the mantle and beads, he also has the geometry for Caineghis’ beard. The only change made to the mesh itself was his hair, which (as pointed out earlier) needed to be both shorter and flatter to remotely resemble the character that the model is supposed to represent. This is a model that very clearly wasn’t originally intended to depict Giffca, which would explain why the folder name also refers to a completely different character.

I don’t have the tools to check or mod exactly how it’s displayed in game, but a quick hypothesis on why his in-game appearance is different from his appearance on the disc: 3D models can be stored in parts (left hand, right hand, etc.) without having those meshes fused together, and Path of Radiance actually uses this method for both its combat and map models. If you hide four of the sixteen parts of his model (mantle, mantle fringe, beard, and belt beads (though note that these are only numbered and not named in the files themselves)), you get this:

Which is exactly how his model appears in-game. At some point in the pipeline from disc to screen, the game tells the console to not show those four parts. Probably.

Another thing to note regarding his untransformed model, though it doesn’t really confirm anything new by this point, is that the bones for Caineghis’ longer hair are still present despite the relevant parts of the model having been removed. Since there aren’t any vertices that are associated with them, they don’t do anything anymore, but… they sure exist, and sure aren’t meant for a character with shoulder-length hair! If you’re keeping score at home, Caineghis actually gets two more bones for his hair in RD, while Giffca’s model only uses one.

(One thing to be aware of here is that the bones in Path of Radiance are massive, a little over eight times the size of the model that they’re animating. I’ve scaled up the model here so it’s easier to tell which parts of the model the bones are meant to be linked to, but on the disc the actual model is around ankle-height relative to the bones.)

 

 

The last thing I want to cover is his untransformed battle animations. Giffca has seven animations while untransformed: 待機 (standing 1), 構え (standing 2), ダメージ (regular damage), ダメージ 回避 (heavy damage (for tanking certain skill activations and critical hits)), 死亡 (defeat), 回避 (dodge start) and 回避_回避 (dodge end). Dodge start and end are two halves of the same motion (I take a moment to show this off), but the one I want to focus on is the regular damage animation. The model viewer lets us review the animation frame by frame, and it makes it easier to see exactly what’s going on with the weird dark spot that appears.

In order to avoid having a hole in the model where his collarbone is exposed by Caineghis’ outfit, the head part of Giffca’s model (and Caineghis’ in RD) extends down into his chest. I imagine this is done so it’s a continuous piece of geometry (compared to using separate pieces for the head/neck and the chest underneath the robe), but it has the side effect of the chest part sticking out of the clothes that cover it if the model distorts too much (like in his regular damage animation). This, like his right elbow turning inside out during his defeat animation and his torso kinda collapsing into his abdomen while he’s animated (which is most noticable around his appendix, since that’s where the mantle clasp and belt are folding into each other), would probably be covered up if the model didn’t hide the mantle (which the model wouldn’t need to do if it was Caineghis’).

 

Unused Caineghis Content + Thesis

As mentioned previously, Caineghis has unused map models (technically speaking, the transformed ‘model’ is just a texture applied to the model they use for all members of the lion class), and they’re pretty much exactly what you’d expect.

In addition to those models, he has an unused set of stats and growths (found in /system.cmp/fe8data.bin/).

While they aren’t an exact copy, his stats are exceedingly similar to Giffca’s to the point where it would be unsurprising if they were copied at some point and later tweaked, and this isn’t without precedent (a certain NPC’s stats are a 1:1 copy of the Black Knight’s). Compare this to Radiant Dawn, where their transformed stats (while inflated slightly to account for RD having an additional tier of classes and a higher level cap for laguz) differ by 17 points overall and growths differ by 70 percentage points overall:

These are not new discoveries and also not surefire indicators of past playability when taken on their own (Dheginsea has a map model, Hetzel and Lekain have stats, none of them appear in a way that would use them, and given their roles in the story I can’t imagine they were ever planned to be playable), but it is certainly a sign that assets were developed for him to appear on the map and possibly in-battle.

 

Anyway, with all that out of the way, let’s recap:

 

So.

One possibility that I’ve entertained is that Giffca’s design was changed between PoR and RD and that at the time of release his appearance in Path of Radiance was what the developers wanted it to be. While it is possible that laguz were meant to share markings and Intelligent Systems changed their minds about that before Radiant Dawn, I think we have overwhelming evidence that suggests that most of these oddities are not the result of a design change.

Since we have PoR concept art for Caineghis’ transformed design (and it corresponds to the design used in RD and in cutscenes), I think that it’s safe to say that this discrepancy between PoR and RD isn’t entirely the result of Intelligent Systems changing Giffca’s design between games. While we don’t know exactly how IntSys intended for Giffca to look like while transformed in Path of Radiance (due to the lack of concept art and the uncertainty about the markings), we do know what he shouldn’t look like since the accessories non-generic laguz wear while transformed are unique and directly correspond to what they wear while untransformed (Lethe has a collar with a ribbon, Mordecai has white bandages around his arms, etc.). Giffca shouldn’t be wearing Caineghis’ metal wrist guards or the mantle clasp around his neck because his untransformed design uses a completely different outfit that lacks those accessories entirely, and yet he does. And that’s not even getting into him wearing the wrong outfit in his untransformed battle model (which we can assert with certainty is wrong because he’s wearing the correct one in his map model).

The lack of concept art specifically for Path of Radiance makes it more difficult to draw a solid conclusion, but the first one we might come to is that the discrepancies between his models in PoR and his actual design are errors. Being specifically a recolor of Caineghis in three out of four of his models and having base stats that could very well have been copied, however, points to a slightly different conclusion. A few conclusions.

 

The first conclusion to draw is that Giffca’s 3D assets (minus his untransformed map model) use Caineghis’ as a base. Given the following, this is fairly self-evident:

And for Giffca to have used Caineghis as a base, this requires two things:

Given the assets that are either based off of Caineghis (battle models + bones) or clearly still Caineghis (his unused map models), he likely was nearly fully implemented (the only thing I’m not entirely convinced on is his animations, which probably would’ve been the same between him and Giffca anyway since they share a class).

 

Putting aside that Caineghis isn’t in the game anymore, Giffca using him as a base for his transformed model isn’t too weird given how other characters are treated, right? As mentioned earlier, most members of the same class use the same model and textures as a base in Path of Radiance, so it’s not like there’s no precedent that explains why Giffca reuses Caineghis’ transformed models (and textures). Looking at his transformed model, it’s basically still recognizable as Giffca, even if some details are wrong, right?

But, while it’s not as if every other battle model is perfect, they generally try to come close to their designs, right? Mordecai and Muarim use the same model while untransformed because they generally have the same shape even if there are subtle differences in their official art, and paladins (that don’t have unique models) use the same model for the same reason. That being said, going off of how they appear in Radiant Dawn (and in every single two-dimensional depiction of them), Caineghis and Giffca probably should’ve each used unique untransformed models in Path of Radiance instead of Giffca reusing Caineghis’. Instead we get this weird hybrid between the two. There still really isn’t really an easy explanation for why his accessories while transformed aren’t his own or why he didn’t get his own untransformed battle model.

 

(I’ve used his Radiant Dawn textures here (which map very nicely to his PoR model since the models are nearly identical) to help visualize what I’m talking about better since it has the deleted parts of the textures either reused (the sections for the mantle clasp and belt beads are now used for the straps on his waist) or restored (the chain texture is restored despite being unused on the RD model).)

As we saw with his untransformed model, Path of Radiance is capable of hiding specific parts of models. I initially thought that they didn’t hide the parts for the chain and the wrist guards and the mantle clasp because of some technical limitation (like how the mantle clasp on his untransformed battle model isn’t actually its own part), but as I have demonstrated above, they are separate and can be hidden just like the parts on his untransformed model. The four parts that I’ve hidden are the belt/beads, the mantle clasp, the wrist guards, and the straps for the wrist guards. Aside from lacking the straps around his waist (since the RD model uses a part the PoR model doesn’t have) it’s pretty close to his actual design once the Caineghis-specific parts are hidden, right?

Instead of hiding the Caineghis parts, the final game just makes the belt (and only the belt) transparent, color-shifts the rest of the texture, and calls it a day. There are no actual changes to the model, and the changes to the texture are minimal.

His untransformed battle model is… it’s not like I was asking for a perfect adaptation of his official art, but while more work was clearly done than with his transformed one (they changed the hair mesh, redrew parts of the texture, and hid a bunch of parts of the model), it’s still… not really Giffca, is it? It’s like taking the head off of a doll and putting it on another doll: the result isn’t the first one or the second one, but rather a combination of the two that isn’t entirely one or the other.

 

Why? Why do this? Why not give him his own battle models? Maybe there’s something I’m missing that prevents them from hiding the parts on his transformed model, but why not at least also make Caineghis’ wrist guards and mantle clasp transparent? Why not recolor his ears while untransformed? Why not give him shoes instead of making his sandals and his feet the same color and hoping people didn't notice?

Well. To begin with, I lied about there not being an easy answer for this (so I could talk about other stuff first). There are a few, and one I lean towards more than the others.

If you’re cynical, you could chalk this up to the developers just not caring. “They reused a bunch of Caineghis’ assets for Giffca because artistic integrity has been dead ever since Wrys got cut from Mystery of the Emblem!” Or whatever.

I don’t think it’s that, though. This revolves around some things that I’ll go into more depth in a little bit, but why go through the trouble of not using Caineghis (who as far as we can tell was basically already finished) if you didn’t care about the final product? There must have been a compelling enough reason to change from Caineghis to Giffca mid-development (otherwise they wouldn’t have done it), and that doesn’t really scream ‘I’m just here for the paycheck’, right? Reading the developer commentary in the artbooks it’s clear the people working on the game cared about it, so I don’t buy that they reused Caineghis’ models out of disinterest in the quality of the final product.

I’m personally partial to the idea that they just ran out of time. That and combination of “people have no reason to ever notice this” (for the hidden parts of his untransformed battle model, which you can’t see unless you look at the files themselves) and “Giffca is only playable for one map and people will probably not look close enough to notice this” (for the accessories on his transformed model).

Running out of time is fairly easy to rationalize. If the decision to remove Caineghis or add Giffca was a late-development choice (and it probably wasn’t an early choice, since Caineghis was practically done), they might not have had the time (or staff on hand) to do much more than what they ended up doing. This could also explain the inconsistencies in how the models hide parts that clearly go to Caineghis and not to Giffca from the player in game, since they may have been in a rush to get the models adequate enough to not have to delay releasing the game. Nothing I can ever really assert for sure, but it’s an explanation that doesn’t contradict the evidence we’ve seen, right?

 

Going back a little, if we assume characters are implemented into the game to be used in the game, it then begs the question of how Caineghis would’ve been used (and why he wasn’t). If you know Path of Radiance, you can probably skim thorough this part.

In the final game, Caineghis never appears on the map and only appears in 2D cutscenes (lots of side characters are like this), and characters with 3D assets use those assets when they appear either on the map or in battle (no character appears only in battle and not on the map, though I don’t think it would be impossible for the engine to handle).

Characters who appear on the map fall into one or more of these four categories: cutscene-only characters (like Kurthnaga), playable characters, enemies, and “Other”/“Friend”-allied units (while Other-allied units (like Tibarn and friends during Day Breaks) can’t be given directions like Friend-allied units (like the generic units Tanith summons), they are otherwise functionally identical). These aren’t static designations (Tibarn later becomes playable, Gatrie and Shinon both jump around a little, some characters appear to be cutscene-only but end up playable later on, etc.), but since they’re each used differently in game, they’re helpful for understand what a character was intended to be used for.

If we assume that 3D assets were made for the purpose of being used (and not for fun, or whatever), we can rule out Caineghis being cutscene-only since he wouldn’t need a combat model and there shouldn’t be traces of his combat models if he was cutscene only. It would have been odd for Kurthnaga, for instance, to have a combat model in Path of Radiance since he only ever appears in cutscenes and never in battle, right?

Other-allied and Friend-allied units also don’t use combat models since the game will not play combat animations for them. We can’t rule out Caineghis being both Other-allied and playable since most Other-allied characters also end up playable later, but since he has a battle model it feels safe to say that he wouldn’t just be Other-allied.

Finally, given his role in the story of Path of Radiance and how by the end of Radiant Dawn he and Ike have yet to engage in combat (though that detail could’ve easily been decided upon much later), Caineghis almost certainly would not have been an enemy unit. By process of elimination, we can then conclude that he would’ve been implemented as a playable character.

 

That of course begs the question of where he would have been playable. Since his statline is nearly identical to Giffca’s, he probably would’ve appeared where Giffca does (either alongside or replacing him), and there’re plenty of other reasons to believe this. The rest of the justification for this is going to be immediately self-evident for a lot of you at home, but for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with the end of Path of Radiance or Fire Emblem in general:

Fire Emblem games tend to give the player a strong character on the last map (or shortly beforehand), colloquially called a ‘Gotoh’ after the character from the first game who fills this role. Since Fire Emblem games use both permadeath and random level-ups, Gotohs exist mechanically to make it harder for a player to have put themselves in an unwinnable scenario on the final map. Narratively, they generally exist to let you see that cool super op mage (or swordmaster, or lion) who helped you advance the plot at a critical juncture 10-20 chapters ago actually do stuff.

Path of Radiance has an additional unwinnable scenario: The final boss is wearing special armor that can only be damaged by weapons that are blessed by the goddess. The only weapon that the game gives you that is blessed is the sword Ike wields, and since you can’t give that sword to someone else, you’re somewhat dependent on him having rolled high enough stats (and the correct stats) to be able to deal with the final boss without exploding immediately.

For unclear narrative reasons and very clear gameplay reasons, Path of Radiance also lets you damage the final boss with Ena/Nasir (they’re sorta like… quasi-Gotohs) and with your Gotoh. However, instead of giving you a single character as a Gotoh, it will allow the player to call upon one of three characters: Tibarn (King of Phoenicis), Naesala (King of Kilvas), and Giffca (right hand/envoy/proxy/trusted confidant/etc. of Caineghis, King of Gallia).

Giffca is clearly the odd one out here for a million different reasons. While he first appears much earlier in the game than Tibarn and Naesala, he never directly interacts with any members of your party until the very final chapter (and when he does interact with anyone, it’s on Caineghis’ behalf). The most Gotoh thing about him is that he’s strong as hell, but narratively he’s just kinda some guy you know nothing about (I cannot emphasize enough how little information the games give us about him as a person beyond his professional relationship with Caineghis) who works for the guy you probably spent the whole game thinking would actually be the Gotoh (Caineghis even reappears a few chapters before this, so he would be fresh in your mind).

Tibarn and Naesala, on the other hand, are central characters in the third quarter of the game and both show up in battle before the final chapter, though neither is ever outright aligned with your cause (they’re both helping you primarily because Reyson has aligned himself with you and/or because the final boss living is generally bad news). They do end up feeling pretty Gotoh-y since they’re important people and are decently strong, but they’re lacking some oomph because Giffca is stronger in combat (though they have the benefit of flight to make up for this) and you’ve seen them in action already.

To contrast with the three characters that you actually get, Caineghis would have been the perfect Gotoh in Path of Radiance. He’s your (Ike’s) father’s close friend and is personally invested in your (Ike’s) endeavors, the support he provides early in the game is vital for creating a path forward for your party, he continues to aid you throughout the game (Giffca on the other hand does not directly help until two thirds of the way through the sequel unless you call him to be your Gotoh in Path of Radiance), he’s head honcho of the country he’s representing (unlike Giffca), he’s personally invested in restoring the throne of Crimea beyond simply stopping the final boss, and, perhaps most vital to the Cool Factor of being a Gotoh, he doesn’t stand center-stage at any point before the final chapter.

The only place to put someone with his stats and with his role and with his immenseness is at the very end of the game, and yet he’s not even playable in this game, much less as the Gotoh.

Therefore: if Caineghis were originally meant to be playable (and is no longer playable), and Giffca is filling the role he would have been in instead (and had not originally been playable), Giffca replaced Caineghis.

 

That leads directly into how I would like to wrap this piece up: by talking about why Intelligent Systems might’ve chosen to cut Caineghis and to replace him with Giffca. Just like how you don’t make a 3D model for no reason, you don’t choose to not use it (or rework it so it can pass as a completely different character if you squint hard enough) for no reason either, right? There either needs to be a reason why using Caineghis during the final map makes the game worse, or a reason why not using him would make the game better, right?

Narratively, replacing him with Giffca instead of cutting him and just leaving that slot empty is pretty simple: Gallia has been a major source of support throughout the entire game, and it would be weird for them to suddenly not help out in the final moments of your journey. Sure, they (and a bunch of other characters, including the Gotohs you don't call) are off-screen preventing Daein’s troops from storming the castle, but that’d be a bit of an anti-climactic final note for a country that’s supported you from day one and is arguably your greatest ally, right?

At this point, the only two Gallians we know of that aren’t playable are Caineghis and Giffca, and even if you include the ones we meet in Radiant Dawn, none of them really measure up to the two of them in either strength or importance (which is also assuming that those characters even existed at this point). If they have a reason to not use Caineghis, then the role of tearing the final boss to shreds would then fall on Giffca.

The game even provides an in-universe explanation for this choice: Giffca says, to the final boss’ face, that he is too weak for Caineghis to need to step in. If he wants to fight Caineghis, he needs to defeat Giffca first.

Giffca is already pretty cool since he’s super strong and only felt like he needed to help us directly when we’re facing off against a power-hungry maniac that commands the divine, and you’re telling me there’s someone even stronger than him? Wow, this Caineghis guy sounds pretty cool! I wonder if they’ll ever let me use him… too bad this is the last map of the game, huh?

 

Path of Radiance, unlike most Fire Emblem games, has a direct sequel. While it was not made specifically with the expectation that there would be a sequel (Senri Kita’s commentary on page 249 of TR Vol. 2 makes it sound like RD planning started after PoR came out), so much was left out of Path of Radiance (like the identity of Ike’s father’s killer, the person Sothe is looking for, and why Naesala stabs everyone in the back), on the flip side we can't really assume that it was made from start to finish with the expectation that the game would never have a sequel either. They had every reason to be confident and expect one, too: PoR (as a higher-budget console title) happened specifically because Fire Emblem 7 (the first one to be localized) was successful in the west. Why expect it to do poorly?

I really don’t know if I can believe that they would’ve chosen to cut something like revealing the Black Knight’s identity (something that’s very important, as it is the conclusion to Ike’s arc) if they didn’t intend to put it somewhere else. They even make his supposed ‘death’ happen offscreen (in a collapsing castle), which let them have the flexibility to either kill him off for good and have Ike emerge eternally victorious if there was no sequel or bring him back in a (at the time hypothetical) sequel to follow through on all the questions surrounding him. Intelligent Systems may not have had a concrete plan, or may not have had the project greenlit by Nintendo yet, or whatever, but surely the people working on the game looked at the massive pile of stuff getting cut from the final game and at one point had the thought “Hey, we could probably make a second game with all of this!”, even if they didn’t know if that second game was actually going to be made.

 

Caineghis was cut. I don’t think there’s any other possible explanation for his leftover assets at this point, and I think choosing to cut Caineghis was a bit of a gamble, with Intelligent Systems betting on there being a second game to use him in (more on this in a moment). Even then, Path of Radiance is not made particularly worse because Giffca is playable instead of Caineghis. Mechanically there is no difference between the two, and it is in character for Caineghis to not help you out directly (the game, no less than three times, tells you he’s beholden to the interests of ministers, retainers, and elder statesmen that are not quite as fond of Crimea as he is). If there was no sequel? Caineghis would just be a background character that’s textually strong but never gets the chance to show it off, and it’s not like Fire Emblem has had a shortage of those before or since.

But the bet paid off! In Radiant Dawn, Caineghis is finally playable, and he gets to be your Gotoh.

Okay. Sure. You get access to a bunch of characters at the start of Radiant Dawn’s endgame, and there are a handful of characters who you recruit halfway through endgame, but Caineghis is the only one that’s really Gotoh-y. Giffca, Ena, and Nasir all lend a hand in Path of Radiance, and Kurthnaga, Renning, and Gareth aren’t as helpful as you’d really want a Gotoh to be. Ena and Nasir (and Gareth, I guess) are helpful, but more as units that buff your other units and less as units that make your foes explode, so they’re still lacking that oomph that you really expect from a Gotoh.

Giffca, to his credit, can pull his weight just as well as Caineghis can and is clearly meant to be equivalent to a second Caineghis that has a slightly different statline. While in Radiant Dawn Laguz sovereigns (like Caineghis) get bonuses other Laguz usually don’t (an exclusive skill that allows them to transform at will and a higher skill capacity) the game goes out of its way to give Giffca the same boosted skill capacity and an item that almost completely replicates the effect of the exclusive skill Caineghis gets (though you can give that item to anyone if you felt like it). It’s not really a super hard and fast rule that Gotohs need to never be playable before endgame (this is a made-up category that fans use to describe a recurring type of unit, after all), and he wasn’t even playable in Radiant Dawn itself up until this point, so sure, we can call him a Gotoh if we want.

But Caineghis? Now that’s what I call a Gotoh. He stands back throughout two whole games until it’s his time to shine, and boy howdy does he shine.

 

I think this is why they cut him in favor of Giffca in Path of Radiance: to have more time to build up to him being playable in Radiant Dawn. It didn’t hurt Path of Radiance significantly, and it makes him stand a bit taller in Radiant Dawn. All’s well that ends well, right?

This would be a change that would happen fairly late in development, once they had a solid enough ‘sequel, maybe?’ idea built up (since I’m proceeding under the assumption that that was what drove the change). That lines up with why Giffca probably reuses Caineghis’ models: they just didn’t have enough time to implement him fully. He recieved a map model, and a haircut for his untransformed battle model, and the textures were recolored and repainted in a few places, but he’s mostly using repurposed and borderline unmodified assets for the parts that actually make him playable. Path of Radiance is a game made by people who clearly cared about it and I have no doubt that they would’ve made him his own custom battle models if they could have, and I think that they just hoped people wouldn’t notice minor UV mapping errors in Giffca’s transformed battle model and start datamining the game in response.

To their credit, nobody did for almost twenty years.

 

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Special Thanks:

 

The Cutting Room Floor and its editors for researching and compiling unused content (especially the model viewer and debug menu), a lot of which comes from (now deleted) research done by Serenes Forest

Kantopia for scanning and translating the artbooks

Serenes Forest and FE Wiki for often saving me from having to boot up the game whenever I wanted to double check something

wildshifter for pointing me towards several file ripping tools I was missing, without which this article could only ever be half-complete

Specific tools I used:

tellius-cmp-pak.exe by HeartlessSeph (decompress CMP/PAK files)
Noesis by Rich Whitehouse (view/convert model and bone files)
Noesis-Plugins by Zheneq (plugins to make Noesis support fe9/10's model files)
wigmt (decompress TPL files)
Dolphin (extracting specific files and folders off the disc + running the game with the codes for the debug menu and model viewer)

Everyone who helped keep me sane as I worked on this