Published on December 11, 2025

Trails in the Sky and How to Build a Community

It’s mental health innit

A phrase that has been making waves in my friend group this year is “if you want a village then you need to be a villager”. A little trite, I know, but it has been a helpful reframing of what has felt like the popular opinion of people who are seriously thinking about their and others’ mental health. For a few years I have heard an abundance of thought gesturing at holding firm on every boundary possible, never doing something that you find annoying, not “owing” your friends anything. To some extent, I get the energy here. If you have spent a lifetime already being a people pleaser, already saying yes to things you desperately want to say no to, living for someone else, then this paradigm can feel like a salve. Suddenly you are allowed to care about yourself in a way that perhaps you were not before. I am in favor of that. However, I have also seen that pattern of thought isolate people under the guise of self care. I too think it is annoying to take someone to the airport, but if I shift that interpretation to be “today I am going to be a villager”, it helps. It also means that when someone offers to do the same for me, I can accept their care with open arms rather than worrying about how I will be able to repay them.

How on earth does this relate to video games?

This year I have played and beaten both The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky and its remake Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter. It is a game series that I did not know I could love. On the outside it appears to be a bog-standard RPG, filled with tropey characters and a meandering story. In some sense, this is true, but in the same way you would be wrong to assume that the tropey characters in Fire Emblem: Three Houses are static and unchanging, you would also be wrong about Trails. The entire cast of characters may begin as molds of characters you have seen before, but they eventually go on to show that they are fully formed individuals. I became incredibly fond of Estelle, Joshua, and the rotating cast that cycles in and out of their party. The way that they show up for their community and every community they visit is inspiring. It is almost like they are acting like… villagers.

For those not in the know, the main characters in Trails in the Sky FC, Estelle and Joshua, begin the game by becoming Junior Bracers. A Bracer in this world is someone who takes requests from the community and solves problems. It can be as small scale as “help me find my lost trinket” to “help me solve corruption in the local government”.

Some of the requests that you can take on are for people that Estelle and Joshua care deeply about. They are people who have grown up with them, who have depended on them and been depended on. In these cases Estelle and Joshua are thrilled to be able to help out. There are also requests that Estelle and Joshua (mostly Estelle) are deeply annoyed by. It might be someone they do not like asking for something they do not want to do, a person who was rude to them needing help, or a request that is a huge undertaking that will take a long time. If one of these requests happens to be a side quest, you as the player can simply opt to not complete these missions. However, if you do complete them you will be rewarded, and if you manage to complete the majority of the requests you are given hugely helpful gear in the late game. Put differently, the game wants you to show up for the community, and there is a direct benefit in doing so.

Trails is also a game that thrives on returning faces. I have begun playing the sequel Trails in the Sky Second Chapter, and whenever a familiar character shows up it is hard not to imitate the Leonardo DiCaprio gif from Wolf of Wall Street, snapping at the screen in recognition. “I know them! Oh my god!” It is like seeing an old friend and wanting to catch up. So, in a way, the side quests have another reward: you are endeared to the people of this world. In seeing familiar faces, you see a buoy of comfort in a world that is not always kind. To reiterate, this is only possible if you have invested the time in doing a number of requests for the guild, some of which were likely annoying.

How is that different from any other game?

Side quests are nothing new, nor are returning characters in a video game. However, in the vast majority of video games, these characters and quests are more mechanical than anything else. The game asks you to deposit 10 boar tusks and you are given a new tunic. Who is asking for those tusks is often irrelevant, and the place they live in, even more so. I have played a small mountain of hours of World of Warcraft, completed thousands of quests, and I barely remember any NPCs for whom I had gathered their desperately needed leather hides. That said, I know exactly who Vogt from Varenne Lighthouse is because of Trails. He is annoying, too proud to ask for help, rude to Estelle and Joshua, and yet he needed help clearing out the lighthouse. Of course I helped him.

So you loved every moment of this game right?

A dose of reality: it took a while for these games to click for me. The West is prone to telling stories about rugged individuals, one good dude who can solve even the largest crisis. If we were just a little more like Doom Guy, we could shoot every demon in hell and fix our problems. So the whiplash of being shown community first, being endeared to a place before we are shown the big scary one-winged angel, took some adjustment. I wanted stakes before character, and Trails gave me the opposite. This approach ends up paying off in huge ways, but that was not clear to me when Estelle was complaining about her new brother at the beginning of the game.

To that end, I have often wished for community myself. I have dreamed of a place where I could be accepted, celebrated, and seen for the person I am. To a shy and soft-spoken kid, it was hard to imagine how exactly to get there. It has taken nearly 35 years of my life to see that community and belonging are not received or gifted, they are cultivated. It is a mutual agreement to show up and be shown up for. Yes, I will take you to the airport, yes, I will clear the monsters out of your lighthouse. Today, we choose to be a villager in hopes that tomorrow we can have a village. Think about it!