Giffca oddities in Path of Radiance

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), though Giffca’s combat models and their associated textures clearly do not correspond to his actual design and greatly resemble Caineghis’s instead. Why?

 

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. If you’d like to use the model viewer yourself, the models we’ll be looking at are labeled 獅子 and 獣牙族.^,

 

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 still important that we’re clear on the developer’s intent.

The Tellius games received two artbooks: Tellius Recollection Volume 1 and Volume 2, which respectively focused on Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. Giffca doesn’t have a dedicated concept art section in Volume 1, but he gets one in Volume 2 on page 194 and Caineghis has a ton of concept art in both volumes.

Their concept art more or less lines up with how they appear in their portraits and official art, as well as in their map and combat models in Radiant Dawn. The armor Giffca wears is a little different and the shirt design underneath is simplified in his final design, but aside from that their individual designs are consistent between concept art, in-game art, and official art.

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. 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’s accessories and colors on top or to draw one Falcon Knight and color it to match Marcia and Tanith.

The last piece of concept art we need to look at 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 the design that appears in Radiant Dawn or in Volume 2. At first glance this may seem like an error, but the tiger and cat comparisons directly above them are recolors of the same base design despite the concept art for Mordecai, Lethe, and Ranulf on page 146 and 147 showing off their distinct wrist guards and markings. Like how the model design sheets used copy-pasted lineart that then gets embellished with character-specific details, choosing to ignore those details here 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, in addition to this size chart, it’s also what Giffca looks like in Path of Radiance.

Giffca Oddities

Giffca’s transformed combat model differs from how he looks in his concept art in Volume 2 and in Radiant Dawn. It’s not a 1:1 Caineghis recolor since they took the time to remove 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, but for now let’s focus on his overall design.

It should be noted that the markings being the same between the two of them is not something exclusive to Giffca. In the released, completed version of Path of Radiance tigers all use the same markings, as do cats, so Giffca having Caineghis’s markings comes off more as an intentional choice and not an error, but since their concept art shows them with the markings that they use in Radiant Dawn we’re still left to wonder why it’s inconsistent between games.

Maybe in Path of Radiance the plan always was for laguz to all use 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 and everyone else gets to play a normal version of Path of Radiance where Giffca looks as he should. 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 still 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’s 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 while transformed, 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’s 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 model ostensibly depicting Giffca. 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 Radiant Dawn textures it’s very clear that those sections were simply deleted.

Transparent pixels have been edited to be white to increase visibility

I’ve put them together here side by side for easy comparison. Interestingly enough, Giffca’s Radiant Dawn texture adds those sections back in even though 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 highlighted earlier 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. 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 Radiant Dawn model, I’m inclined to believe that they’re the result of a production mistake. 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’s Radiant Dawn textures onto this model.

While we’re in the neighborhood, I’ll point out that his transformed map models in both games use the design his transformed combat model uses in that game, so there’s not much to add about them. He’s still a Caineghis recolor in Path of Radiance, and he’s using his own design in Radiant Dawn.

 

Before we move on to his untransformed models, let’s take a detour to talk about some parts of Path of Radiance’s filesystem.

The images used for textures are compressed into .tpl files, a format used by a lot of other Gamecube and Wii games. The images for these models 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.

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 instead.

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. Laguz generally share their transformed and often their untransformed models with other members of the same class, though some exceptions apply.

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 compresses those animations with the model data. Even though laguz normally can’t unequip their weapon they still have a model for when the weapon is equipped and when it is unequipped.

Because Giffca has two forms and a map model and a combat model for each, we’d expect to care about four folders total.

The folder /ymu/beast_li/ contains the transformed lion map model and the textures that get applied to it. 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.

The folder /ymu/lion/ contains an untransformed Caineghis map model. Like before, that’s more than a little weird since he never appears in a 3D scene and it goes totally unused.

The folder /ymu/lion_gi/ contains Giffca’s untransformed map model. The naming scheme here suggests that Caineghis’s model came first, and 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 there’s not much else to note about it, I’ll also put it here:

The folder /zu/beli/ contains Giffca’s transformed 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), and lions get beli_cr.pak and beli_no.pak. “_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).

The folder /zu/cain/ contains Giffca’s untransformed combat model. “cain” is probably short for Caineghis, which… 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, you already know this:

Giffca’s untransformed combat model doesn’t use his own outfit and instead uses what appears to be a recolor of Caineghis’s model with a few things removed. And they didn’t recolor his ears. As it is rendered in game, it’s missing the mantle and the beads that hang from his belt, 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 textures for the missing parts aren’t transparent (as with the previous textures, I’ve changed transparent to white so they’re more visible) 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’s beard. The only change made to the mesh was his hair, which needed to be both shorter and flatter to remotely resemble the character that the model ostensibly represents. This is a model that very clearly wasn’t originally intended to depict Giffca, which seems to explain why the folder name also refers to a completely different character and then begs several additional questions.

I don’t have the tools or know-how to check 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 uses this method for both its combat and map models. If we hide four of the sixteen parts of his model (the mantle, mantle fringe, beard, and belt beads), we 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, is that the bones for Caineghis’s 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!

The final oddities to cover are 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’s outfit, the head part of Giffca’s model extends down into his chest. I imagine this is done so it’s a continuous piece of geometry (instead of 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, would probably be concealed better if the model didn’t hide the mantle.

Unused Caineghis Content

As mentioned previously, Caineghis has unused map models 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 in development and later tweaked like the models were, and we know for certain that something like this isn’t without precedent as the Black Knight’s stats are a shared with the (unviewable) stats of a certain NPC. Compare this to Radiant Dawn, where their transformed stats 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, but it is certainly a sign that assets were developed for him to appear on the map and likely in-battle.

Analysis

To quickly recap before we continue:

One possibility that I’ve entertained for these oddities is that Giffca’s design was changed between Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn 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 his design changing after the fact.

Since we have concept art for Caineghis’ transformed design and it corresponds to the design used in Path of Radiance and in Radiant Dawn, I think that it’s safe to say that this discrepancy between Giffca’s Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn designs isn’t entirely the result of Intelligent Systems changing it between games. While we don’t know exactly how IntSys intended for Giffca to appear while transformed in Path of Radiance due to the lack of concept art specifically attributable to Path of Radiance’s development 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, a design choice that was otherwise consistently followed in both games. Giffca shouldn’t be wearing Caineghis’s metal wrist guards or the mantle clasp around his neck because his untransformed design uses a completely different outfit that lacks those accessories, and yet he does wear them. 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 and portraits.

The lack of concept art for Giffca 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 Path of Radiance 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 somewhat more complex conclusion than just that.

We can first conclude that Giffca’s 3D assets with the exception of his untransformed map model use Caineghis’s 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:

Putting aside that Caineghis isn’t in the game anymore, Giffca using him as a base for his transformed model isn’t too strange given how other characters are treated, right? 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 to explain why Giffca would reuse Caineghis’s transformed models and textures. Looking at his transformed model, it’s basically still recognizable as Giffca, even if some details are wrong.

But, while it’s not as if every other battle model is perfect, they generally try to come close to their designs. Mordecai and Muarim use the same model while untransformed because they have the same general shape even if they have distinct designs in their official art, while Mordecai and Ranulf don’t because they don’t. That being said, going off of how they appear in Radiant Dawn and in every single two-dimensional depiction of them, Caineghis and Giffca should’ve each used unique untransformed models in Path of Radiance instead of Giffca reusing Caineghis’s. It would be understandable for Giffca’s model to be altered from Caineghis’s (sharing the bones and general body shape, but altering the clothes to match Giffca), but instead we get this weird hybrid between the two, and there still really isn’t really an easy explanation for why he’s not wearing his own accessories while transformed 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 Path of Radiance 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 Radiant Dawn 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, 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 Radiant Dawn model uses a part the Path of Radiance model doesn’t have) it’s far less obviously repurposed once the Caineghis-specific parts are hidden.

Instead of hiding the Caineghis parts, the final game just makes the belt (and not the wrist guards) transparent, recolors the rest of the texture, and calls it a day. There are no actual changes to the model and the changes to the textures are minimal.

His untransformed battle model is… it’s not like I’m asking for a perfect adaptation of his official art, but while more work was clearly done than with his transformed one by changing the hair mesh, redrawing parts of the texture, and hiding 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’s wrist guards and mantle clasp transparent? Why not recolor his ears while untransformed? Why not give him shoes instead of making Caineghis’s sandals and his feet the same color and hoping people didn’t notice?

To begin with, I lied about there not being an easy answer for this. There are definitely a few and one I certainly 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’s 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 we’ll go over in 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 reason to bother changing from Caineghis to Giffca mid-development, and that doesn’t really scream ‘I’m just here for the paycheck’, does it? 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’s 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, in this specific instance, a combination of “we have no reason to believe that people will ever know about this” and “Giffca is only playable for one map and people will probably not look closely enough to notice this”.

Running out of time is fairly easy to rationalize. If the decision to remove Caineghis or add Giffca was a late-development choice, they might not have had the time or staff on hand to do much more than what they ended up doing (which could also explain the inconsistencies in how the models hide parts from the player in game). Nothing I can ever really assert for sure, but it’s an explanation that doesn’t contradict the evidence we’ve seen.

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’re familiar with the gameplay of Path of Radiance, you can probably skim thorough some this part.

In the final game, Caineghis never appears on the map and only appears in 2D cutscenes 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 have any reason to believe it would be impossible for the engine to handle.

In Path of Radiance, characters who appear on the map fall into one or more of these four categories: cutscene-only characters, playable characters, enemies, and “Other”/“Friend”-allied units. These aren’t static designations, 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 funsies, 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, Caineghis almost certainly would not have been an enemy unit. By process of elimination, we can 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 unused 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 very 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.

While every Fire Emblem presents the player with the risk of running out of enough units to beat the game with, Path of Radiance is notable for having an additional unwinnable scenario because 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 anyone else you’re pretty reliant 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 or Nasir 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 whenever he does interact with anyone it’s always on Caineghis’s behalf. The most Gotoh thing about him is that he’s strong as hell, but narratively he’s some guy you saw twice 20 hours ago and otherwise know nothing about who works for the guy you probably spent the whole game thinking would actually be the Gotoh.

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 do still end up feeling pretty Gotoh-y since they’re important people and are strong and on your team, 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 to choose from, Caineghis would have been the perfect solo 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, he’s head honcho of the country he’s representing, he’s personally and politically 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. We can therefore conclude that if Caineghis was originally meant to be playable and is no longer playable (which sure seems to be the case), and if Giffca is filling that role instead and had not originally been playable, Giffca directly 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 for no reason. There would either need to be a reason why using Caineghis during the final map makes the game worse or a reason why choosing to not use him would make the game better.

Narratively, replacing Caineghis 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 odd for them to 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 staunchest supporter, right?

At this point, the only two Gallians we’ve seen 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. If they have a reason to not use Caineghis, then the role of tearing the final boss to shreds would naturally fall on Giffca. This is true even within the text: Giffca says to the final boss’s 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.

Waow. Giffca is already pretty cool since he’s super strong and doesnt afraid of anything, 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… It’s too bad this is the last map of the game...

Path of Radiance, unlike many Fire Emblem games, has a direct sequel. While it was not made specifically with the expectation that there would be a sequel, so much was left out of Path of Radiance that we can’t ever 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: Path of Radiance as a higher-budget console title happened specifically because Fire Emblem 7 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 if they didn’t intend to put it somewhere else. Intelligent Systems may not have had a concrete plan, or may not have had the project greenlit by Nintendo yet, or whatever, but surely at some point the people working on the game looked at the massive pile of ideas being cut from the game and 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 had been a bit of a gamble, with Intelligent Systems betting on there being a second game to use him in. Even then, Path of Radiance is not made notably worse because Giffca is playable instead of Caineghis, as mechanically there is no difference between the two and it is in character for Caineghis to not help you out directly. 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 gamble paid off! In Radiant Dawn, Caineghis is finally playable and he gets to be your Gotoh.

Okay. Sure. Fine. A Gotoh.

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 one that’s the most Gotoh-y. Nailah, Tibarn, and Naesala are mandatory deployments earlier in the game, Giffca, Ena, and Nasir can each lend a hand in Path of Radiance, and Kurthnaga, Renning, and Gareth aren’t quite as impactful as you’d expect a Gotoh to be. Your dragons 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 roughly just as well as Caineghis can and is clearly meant to be equivalent to a second Caineghis that has a slightly different statline. While Radiant Dawn’s laguz sovereigns get bonuses other laguz otherwise don’t the game goes out of its way to give Giffca a custom class that has the same boosted skill capacity and an item that almost completely replicates the effect of Formshift, effectively making him a fifth or, at worst, fourth-and-a-half sovereign. 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 really want to. And, y’know, the other laguz sovereigns can also throw their weight around just as well and do have those perks that only they get, so it’d be dishonest to try to say that they couldn’t be Gotohs.

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 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 a possible sequel. It didn’t hurt Path of Radiance significantly and denying the player access to him 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 a solid enough ‘sequel, maybe?’ feeling had built up. That lines up with why Giffca probably reuses Caineghis’ models: they just didn’t have enough time to implement him fully. He received 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, assuming they even knew about them, I think that they just hoped people wouldn’t notice minor UV mapping errors that are barely visible at the resolution the Gamecube outputs at and start digging through the game’s files 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

Xiurkan 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)

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	“Lion”, transformed, a little past halfway down the first menu.
	“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 it doesn’t seem like Giffca going unnamed here means anything in particular.
	I’m inclined to believe that this doesn’t really mean much in particular, since plenty of other characters also got skipped in Volume 1 and instead get sections in Volume 2.
	This isn’t all of the concept art for Caineghis, but the other pieces don’t really show us anything new. If you’d like to look at them, Caineghis has sections on pg. 146 of Volume 1 and pg. 192 of Volume 2. Giffca also has an early face design on pg. 250, but also doesn’t reveal anything his dedicated section hadn’t already told us.
	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.
	Perhaps the concept art in Volume 2 predates his design in Path of Radiance?
	These stand out much more when in motion, so I recommend looking at him in the model viewer if you want to take a closer look.
	Corresponding to Mordecai’s.
	Corresponding to Ranulf’s.
	The first image.
	Who, as we know, does not wear Caineghis’ outfit.
	As an example, the folder for Giffca’s untransformed model has five copies of the same texture.
	As an example, Paladin has three ‘shared’ battle models (pal1, pal2, and pal3) and Titania (also a paladin) gets a unique model in /zu/timt/
	Mordecai gets his own folder for his transformed battle model because he is a smidge larger than other tigers, and Tibarn and Naesala have their own untransformed map/battle models but get grouped with hawks and ravens respectively while transformed.
	As an example, Titania has five variants of her model within /zu/timt/: one each for axes, thrown axes, lances, thrown lances, and when she’s unequipped.
	Though I’ve yet to notice any actual difference between these two models.
	Or if you’ve looked at the header on this page :P
	The mantle clasp remains, but this is likely because it’s not a separate piece of geometry that could be easily removed (it’s attached directly to his body and you would need to redo the UV map and the mesh in order to remove it).
	If you’re keeping score at home, Caineghis gets two more bones for his hair in Radiant Dawn while Giffca’s model only uses one.
	This is most noticeable around his appendix, since that’s where the mantle clasp and belt are folding into each other.
	FE9 is referred to as FE8 internally (and vice versa) because FE9 started development first (and took longer to come out).
	Dheginsea has a map model and 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.
	Mordecai has bandages on his forearms in both forms, Lethe is wearing a collar with a bell and ribbon in both forms, and so on.
	It’s not impossible for the stats to have been copied from Giffca to Caineghis instead, but that seems exceedingly unlikely given all the evidence that suggests that Caineghis was made first.
	Like how the mantle clasp on his untransformed battle model couldn’t be easily removed because it’s not a sepearate part.
	Mostly so I could talk about other stuff first.
	For the hidden parts of his untransformed battle model, which you can’t see unless you look at the files themselves.
	For the accessories on his transformed model, which are small and nigh-impossible to see on original hardware.
	It probably wasn’t an early choice, since Caineghis was practically done.
	Lots of side characters are like this.
	Like Kurthnaga.
	While Other-allied units (like Tibarn's party during Day Breaks) can’t be given directions like Friend-allied units (like the generic units Tanith summons), they are otherwise functionally identical.
	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.
	I think people tend to overstate the risk of this, but it’s nonetheless a game that wants you to have an Ike capable of going toe-to-toe with Ashnard and it’s nonetheless a game that can’t guarantee that that situation is possible.
	They’re sorta like… quasi-Gotohs? Their mechanical role is more along the lines of a ‘backup Ike’ rather than a ‘really strong unit that you’d want to use instead of Ike’.
	I cannot emphasize enough how little information the games give us about him as a person beyond his professional relationship with Caineghis.
	Caineghis even reappears a few chapters before this, so he would be fresh in your mind.
	They’re both helping you primarily because Reyson has aligned himself with you and/or because the final boss living is generally undesirable.
	Giffca, on the other hand, does not directly help anyone you’re in control of until two thirds of the way through the sequel if you forego calling upon him in Path of Radiance.
	A tangible quality that can be empirically measured.
	Lyre is mentioned by name in Lethe’s supports but does not appear until the sequel.
	Which is also assuming that Kezhda, Kyza, and Skrimir even existed conceptually at this point.
	The interview in the April 2007 issue of Nintendo Dream clearly states that Radiant Dawn began development in May 2005.
	Like the identity of Ike’s father’s killer, the person Sothe is looking for, and why Naesala stabs everyone in the back.
	This is also discussed in the interview in Nintendo Dream.
	They even go out of their way to make his supposed ‘death’ happen offscreen, 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 to bring him back in an at the time hypothetical sequel to follow through on all the questions surrounding him.
	The game tells you he’s beholden to the interests of ministers, retainers, and elder statesmen that are not quite as fond of Crimea on no fewer than three occasions.
	Caineghis, Nailah, Tibarn, and Naesala. In Radiant Dawn. There is no equivalent mechanical distinction made between Giffca and Tibarn or Naesala in Path of Radiance.
	A higher skill capacity and an exclusive skill that allows them to transform at will (Formshift).
	Though unlike Formshift and its equivalent in the previous game (the Laguz Band, which can only be used by your Gotoh), you are able to give that item to someone else.
	The only thing stopping Caineghis from being an archetypical Gotoh is the fact that Radiant Dawn chooses to throw three and a half other totally busted units at you at the same time and you can choose to deploy all of them.