Drakengard/Gameplay

The Empire rules far and wide with their mass armies and devastating machinery, the Emperor is a corrupted child, taken by power and sinister glory, and the only thing that the Empire wants is… war.

The game's protagonists are Caim, his best friend Inuart, and their companions. The plot revolves around a war between the Union and the Empire in a somewhat altered medieval Earth. Every playable character makes a pact with a powerful beast, and pays a price for joining the pact. This concept in the Drakengard series is called "pact pricing". In the process of forging such a pact, humans are branded with a mark called a "pact emblem", which appears on a part of their body associated with the price they pay – they either lose use of a physical attribute or can lose attributes altogether, such as one's joy, or ability to age. However, the bonds that tie a human with the magical creature he/she made the pact with in life, also binds them both in death as long as the creature allows it so.