Key insights
- Games like Assassin's Creed 2 and Marvel's Midnight Suns show how the power of friendship can enhance gameplay and story.
- Final Fantasy 6 and Undertale highlight the importance of friendship in overcoming obstacles and achieving happy endings.
- Titles like Mass Effect 2 and Kingdom Hearts emphasize how building strong bonds with companions can impact the outcome of the game.
“The power of friendship” is a concept you would expect to see in children’s cartoons and television shows. But it actually appears in many different media, including video games. Of course, it's not always presented in the same way. After all, it doesn't always have to be so cute and cliche. You can tell stories about friends that are very serious and compelling.
Technically, any game that involves a group system could be considered a “power of friendship” game in some way, where you go on adventures together. However, some titles emphasize friendship even more by making it a central part of the story or gameplay. Here are some of the most notable examples.
8 Assassin's Creed 2
Traditionally, assassins are often portrayed as loners who work alone. But in Assassin's Creed 2, protagonist Ezio's success is partly thanks to his allies.
He spends the game tracking down and killing those responsible for the deaths of his father and brothers. With each elimination, he receives help from his friends to achieve his goal, be it his Uncle Mario, the thieves he befriends in Venice, the leader of the courtesans in Florentine, or his good friend Leonardo da Vinci. They all help him in different ways. If they didn't, he wouldn't be able to avenge his family. In fact, he may have died himself.
7 Marvel's Midnight Suns
In Marvel's Midnight Suns, you create a brand new Marvel hero who embarks on an escapade to stop her evil mother Lilith, who is threatening the world. You don't tackle this mission alone, but work together with various Avengers, members of the Midnight Suns and other Marvel characters. You all spend half your time completing missions.
The rest of your time will be devoted to building bonds with your allies. You chat, stargaze, play video games, and even form little clubs with your heroic friends. For example, you start a book club with Blade, Captain America, Captain Marvel and Wolverine. Becoming friends with different heroes can unlock additional abilities and hero combinations, so your friendship actually makes them better in battle.
6 Final Fantasy 6
Once you reach the final boss of Final Fantasy 6, you realize how important friendship and forming bonds are to the overall narrative. The main villain, Kefka, is an all-powerful evildoer who wants to destroy everything. In fact, that's the case, as he's one of the most successful Final Fantasy villains of all time. However, your group still has a chance of defeating him at the end of the game.
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Before doing so, however, your characters interrupt his nihilistic ramblings to talk about the bonds you've all formed and the importance of love and friendship. Then join forces to take on him. Even someone as strong as Kefka struggles against the power of friendship.
5 Grand Theft Auto 5
Most games about the power of friendship make a lot of sense. However, this is not the case with Grand Theft Auto 5. If you told the three protagonists, Franklin, Michael, and Trevor, that their adventure was about the “power of friendship,” you would actually get a bullet in the head.
The three friends take on many criminal assignments together over the course of the game. Some jobs are about making money, others are about getting rid of the government. Meanwhile, they argue a lot, especially Michael and Trevor, but they need each other. Because only if they stick together can they survive against the many enemies they make. This is certainly reflected in the good ending to the game.
4 Persona 4
Persona 4 features a mechanism called “Social Links,” which are special bonds you share with other characters. You improve your performance by spending time with them, saying the right things in conversations with them, and helping them.
Improving your friendship with party members will not only make you feel warm inside; it improves their fighting skills. So friendship strengthens your group and increases your chance of winning the game. If the villains had more friends, maybe they could stop you.
3 Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect 2 is a role-playing game about the customizable Commander Shepard as he attempts to save the galaxy from the threat of an alien race known as the Gatherers and their synthetic Reaper overlords. The hero can't do it alone, so he must spend the game recruiting a collection of great companions.
Not only do you recruit her, but you also get to know her and ultimately complete a mission for her that will make her completely loyal to you. In other words, you can make her your friend. This is important in the final mission of the game, as this loyalty increases the chance that she and other team members will survive the final quest. So becoming friends with all of them could literally save their lives.
2 Undertale
Undertale is set in an underground region full of strange and wonderful creatures. You play as a child stuck underground who is tasked with getting past these creatures to find his way back to the surface. Much of the story depends on how you deal with these beasts. You can kill them or spare them.
However, to achieve the game's truly pacifist ending, you'll need to do more than spare their lives. You have to befriend them all, which sometimes means hanging out with the creatures and getting to know them. By becoming friends with everyone, you get the happiest and perhaps best ending to the story and show how important friendship can be.
1 Kingdom Hearts
One of the best and most famous quotes in the entire Kingdom Hearts series is: “I don’t need a weapon. My friends are my power!” It comes from the protagonist Sora in one of the crucial moments of the first game.
That alone should show you how important friendship is to the main story of Kingdom Hearts. Sora's relationship with his long-time friends Riku and Kairi is an important part of the story, as is the development of his bond with people like Goofy and Donald Duck.
