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The Reason for the Problems With Awakening


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I know you're all probably thinking "oh great, this topic again", and yeah, it is partially "this topic again", but I haven't seen anyone else bring up having the same take on it as I do, so...

Anyway, you'd have to be pretty out of it not to notice that lots of people have been complaining about Fire Emblem Awakening. Admittedly, a lot of the complaints they have about the game are valid. The story and worldbuilding are extremely lackluster compared to most other entries in the series; the characters are written in a much more lighthearted manner, with many of them seeming to be based on a particular trope or quirk; the chapter design is mostly bland and repetitive; Pair Up is a broken mechanic, etc., etc.

Now, my theory as to why this is is that the game was rushed.

In the Iwata Asks interview with the development team, they mentioned that by the time they got around to actually making the game itself, they didn't actually have a whole lot of time left to do it, at least for a game of its intended scope. Or at least, they implied it, mentioning that they were quite impressed that they were able to get done as much as they did in the time that they had.

However, as many have already noted, the game still lacks polish in a number of areas.

The storyline has many of the telltale signs of a rushed plot:

  • Little to no worldbuilding is given beyond what the audience absolutely needs to know to understand what's going on.
  • Partially as a result of these worldbuilding deficiencies, a lot of the characters come across as lacking some of the depth that the characters of earlier games had, because the lack of world detail restricts their backstories and character endings to being very basic or vague. The casts of other Fire Emblem games existed in worlds that were more fleshed-out, so each character sort of had a place in their world that helped them feel more connected to everything and contributed to making them more compelling. Awakening's characters don't have much of a world to have places in.
    I'm not saying this is the only problem with Awakening's cast, but it's definitely the one that sticks out most to me after some thought, considering that some of the other problems with the cast stem from it.
  • The first plot arc is the most fleshed-out and the best-constructed (although still not as well-thought out as it could be) with the arcs afterwards declining in detail and finesse.
  • Transitions from arc to arc are very poorly done and lead to one of the arcs feeling nearly completely disconnected from the other two and essentially unnecessary (beyond the fact that the threat in that arc isn't exactly something the protagonists could just ignore).
  • On a few occasions, characters show up who seem to be intended to be more important and/or impactful than the amount of screen time or development they get leads to them being. Ex. The Hierarch, Yen'fay, maybe Pheros and Mustafa. The Hierarch in particular seems like he's a remnant of a scrapped subplot.
  • A few important antagonists don't have their motivations fleshed out hardly at all in the main plot, with those motivations being revealed instead in optional conversations that are only unlocked long after the characters have stopped being relevant to the plot. These motivations aren't really hinted at in the main story, either.
  • The Avatar's involvement in the plot is very strange. The promotion for the game plays them up as being the player's presence in the world, and the ability to customize their stat balance and cosmetic traits would be consistent with this, as would be the fact that they are supposedly the one giving the orders to your troops to make their moves. However, for the purposes of the main plot, the Avatar is essentially a fixed character, with what few choices you get to make at major plot milestones having quite literally no effect on how things turn out whatsoever aside from what the next dozen or so lines of dialogue will be. The sole exception to this is the final decision, which does have an effect, although it's not really much of a choice.
    I think the problem with the Avatar isn't as much their existence as the fact that they haven't been done right yet. New Mystery attempted to shoehorn them (poorly) into an existing plot that was not designed to accommodate for their existence, and Awakening ended up half-assing the concept of a player-created main character.

Then there's the chapter design and gameplay features.

  • Pair Up was just not adequately balanced, plain and simple, but I think the chapter design has something to do with it, too, because there are very few chapters (I can think of just one. Out of fifty) wherein it's better to have a larger amount of adequate characters rather than a smaller amount of stronger characters, because...
  • Almost every chapter was made using the same basic design concept, which would've made things a lot easier on a development team pressed for time. That design concept is basically, "Player starts on one end of the map, enemies are sort of centralized on the other, you win by fighting your way across and killing all of them". Now granted, this sort of chapter design is pretty common in the series, but- well, firstly, many of the other games offset it by having it not be the only thing you're doing all-game- but Awakening seems to do it mostly the same way every time. There are a few interesting maps to navigate, but for the most part they're just pretty straightforward marches from one end to the other, and the game rarely gives you incentive to split up your team, which leads into...
  • The fact that Awakening's chapters rarely have much in the way of secondary objectives (villages to save, optional characters who can't just be easily recruited by the end of turn 2, etc.), and even fewer have secondary objectives which you're actually being seriously pressed to accomplish.
  • Granted, there are a few good chapter designs in there and there are some chapters where you do kinda have to get on it to accomplish secondary objectives (getting the treasure chests in Donnel's Paralogue is one example of the latter I can think of, as well as protecting Severa in her Paralogue, and I guess the three chapters where you're defending villagers could count, too, but one of those can be cleared in one turn pretty easily before the enemies can even act), but I think what it comes down to is too many of Awakening's chapters are too same-y in terms of what you're doing, and after a while it becomes a chore to do them rather than something that's fun.

Compare Awakening's level design to that of other Fire Emblem games, which have not only multiple objectives, but maps that make for different experiences in accomplishing the same objectives as you've seen before. Just a few examples off the top of my head are:

  • Chapter 8 of Sacred Stones, a Seize chapter which brings in Ephraim's team a turn or so into the battle such that your teams are split, and you're likely to end up taking on the map on both sides simultaneously with the respective halves of your team.
  • Chapter 18 in Shadow Dragon, another Seize chapter which has two bridges, separated by a small peninsula, connecting the north and south ends of the map, meaning that you need to keep your team together and have only a small space in which to navigate much of the map on the way to the castle.
  • Chapter 14 in Blazing Sword, a Rout chapter where you take on Erik's army on a central battlefield whilst rushing to save recruitable characters to the north and south as well as attempting to defend Merlinus from Pirate attacks.
  • Jerme's version of Chapter 25/27 in Blazing Sword, a different Rout chapter which presents a number of locked rooms, and tasks you with exploring and unlocking them to find and kill all the enemies.

Now, I'm not saying that all of these chapters have exemplary designs or anything, but they're proof that you can make two chapters play differently even if the objective is the same, something that Awakening didn't do nearly enough. Awakening may not be entirely devoid of chapter design variety, but the level of variety is not nearly high enough for fifty maps' worth of gameplay.

My point in making this thread is that a lot of posts I've seen criticizing Awakening and worrying about the future of the franchise don't seem to take into account the relatively short time the developers had in which to make the actual game. I had originally got to thinking about this when I came to the conclusion that I felt that Awakening's story wasn't necessarily bad in premise, but if someone were to hand it as it is in the final game to me for feedback, I would tell them that they weren't done working on it yet.

And I think that's really the reason for a lot of the problems with Fire Emblem Awakening. IS- even if we specify post-Kaga IS- has shown that they can do better than Awakening's plot depth and chapter design, so I doubt it's a matter of what they can or can't do as much as it is about the level of quality the development time allowed for. I'm fairly certain they didn't intend for Awakening to have the weaknesses that it did, but it ended up that way because of what they chose to prioritize doing in the time that they had to make the game.

Edited by Starlight36
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I think some of your points don't exactly explain why a plot is bad. Just to illustrate my point, I don't know if you've played Nier, but there wasn't much world building going on unless you viewed a shit ton of supplemental materials, but it still managed to be a beautiful game, just because it portrayed a conflict beautifully and I guess part of it is that the game can hit pretty close to home for some people. You don't quite know the antagonist's motivation until the second or third playthrough of the game, and even then you really don't have much of an ability to care, because the game spends a lot of time just focusing on Nier trying to save his daughter and making sure the people around him are safe.

The rest of your points are fine.

And I think that's really the reason for a lot of the problems with Fire Emblem Awakening. IS- even if we specify post-Kaga IS

I dunno about Berwick Saga, but based on Tear Ring Saga I think we should be somewhat glad that Kaga's not really a huge factor in a lot of FE games. Granted, those are a lot of fun and they do have quite a bit of tactical depth, but they just toss a whole bunch of pretty broken and downright strange things at you. Edited by Lord Raven
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a rushed development cycle might be an explanation for a game's flaws, but it's not a good enough justification. nintendo should - and usually does! - know better than to rush a game out to market before it's had the time to be even half-baked

and frankly i'm not convinced that this necessarily explains the writing problems or the characterisations. the waifu factor backing the characters and their designs feels far too calculated and intentional (actively seeking that sweet, sweet mass otaku dollar in the most efficient way possible) to have been just the product of limited time to come up with characters. as far as the writing goes, i suppose it's possible, but the degree of sloppiness and obsession with style over substance feels more like that coming up with a simpler story (note: the problem with fe13 absolutely isn't "simplicity", but bear with me) was their intent all along and everything just fell apart from there (this part possibly being where the rushed development comes in)

not to mention, many of the problems one can point to in fe13 have direct precursors in fe12, which doesn't seem to have been subject to a similar development problem

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a rushed development cycle might be an explanation for a game's flaws, but it's not a good enough justification. nintendo should - and usually does! - know better than to rush a game out to market before it's had the time to be even half-baked

and frankly i'm not convinced that this necessarily explains the writing problems or the characterisations. the waifu factor backing the characters and their designs feels far too calculated and intentional (actively seeking that sweet, sweet mass otaku dollar in the most efficient way possible) to have been just the product of limited time to come up with characters. as far as the writing goes, i suppose it's possible, but the degree of sloppiness and obsession with style over substance feels more like that coming up with a simpler story (note: the problem with fe13 absolutely isn't "simplicity", but bear with me) was their intent all along and everything just fell apart from there (this part possibly being where the rushed development comes in)

not to mention, many of the problems one can point to in fe13 have direct precursors in fe12, which doesn't seem to have been subject to a similar development problem

I wasn't intending to say that it was justification, just that I felt it was probably a significant factor in the way things turned out.

I will cede that it seems like Awakening's overall direction was to be more lighthearted than most Fire Emblem games, which is probably a factor in the trope-y characters and higher ratio of silly support conversations. It's pretty noticeable after a while that... I'm not sure how else to word this other than, "Most Fire Emblem games' casts feel like they're the cast of characters for a story, whereas Awakening's cast of playable characters feel like they were made to be your party members". I don't know if the distinction I'm trying to get at with that makes sense, though.

EDIT: Ack, something else just occurred to me... They were also making this game essentially under threat of cancellation if it didn't sell well, which is probably a factor in why they tried to seek "that sweet, sweet otaku dollar", because they knew that that would increase sales and prevent the series from getting cancelled. That's also probably not the only factor, but it's something worth considering, at least.

That is true, but New Mystery had its own set of problems it presented, which is that they tried to cram a bunch of things into a remake of a game that really did not accommodate them well. Although, I suppose I should say that I'm sure that their own ideas for the direction of the game are also a factor in how things turned out, too, and I really should have acknowledged that more in the OP.

Edited by Starlight36
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You bring up some valid points. Although I think you're centered more on the story and world development. If this game was rushed (which if thats the case I think its hard to tell) then it would be logical for Nintendo and IS to focus on getting the gameplay mechanics down first rather than the story. Ninty has almost always put gameplay above all else even story. I consider myself a black sheep because I actually find some merits with the story in Awakening because I think it is very difficult to damn near impossible to even put together an avatar story in the first place (plus im a sucker for time traveling badasses like Link, Trunks, Lucina, Terminator etc). I've only seen one game exceed at it and thats Mass Effect and even then they had to at a minimum establish a fixed name to a character and limit a few things.

Could more have been done to explore the world of Awakening? Absoulutely and I think if they ever revisit Valm/Archanea I'd love for them to expand on the world lore with things revolving around Tiki, Chon'sin, and perhaps even how Ylisse came to be after Marth had supposedly united the entire continent under his rule after FE3. That being said I don't think Awakening's story is bad just more could of been done with it and they missed some opportunities in there to make it something truely spectacular.

Now as far as gameplay I think if they just vary mission objectives that will naturally lend itself to more varied maps improving two birds with one stone.

Edited by LordTaco42
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I'm going to play IF before evaluating your argument, as IF probably got enough resources due to how popular the franchise is. If it has the same treights, i will be liable to disagree. (granted, if might have better writing simply due to head writer change, but the writing team in awakening was so big that i find it unlikely that changing one member would do much.)

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I've only seen one game exceed at it and thats Mass Effect and even then they had to at a minimum establish a fixed name to a character and limit a few things.

You should try Explorers of Sky.

Pair Up is a broken mechanic, etc., etc.

No it isn't. There's nothing wrong with pairup.

There's a good deal wrong with the exp formula, and when pairing up is when it shows most. But paired up units being extremely strong is a symptom of the exp formula making it too easy to get ahead of the stat curve, not of anything to do with the mechanic itself. Think about it: when will an extra +5 Str make the biggest difference? If it lets you go from a 4HKO to a 3HKO, or from a 2HKO to an OHKO? When will an extra +5 Def make the most difference, when it takes you from being 6HKOed to 4HKOed or from being 10HKOed to being invincible?

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You know, I've noticed the rushed plot in a number of other spots before... One thing that particularly has always bothered me is the one scene where "Marth" is unmasked and defends Emmeryn with you. There's a line and a fancy screen where she says "Falchion is gleaming..." And when asked says "It's none of your concern."

This really does seem to be an important point that was dropped. It's never brought up again, but it might have been related to details as to why Falchion changed design between Marth's sword and the present day sword. Unfortunately, even after the children are introduced, that event is never again mentioned in the entire game.

There's a few other points but I think a number of them have already been mentioned. That one in particular has just always stood out to me.

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but it might have been related to details as to why Falchion changed design between Marth's sword and the present day sword.

That's explained in Owain and Lucina's supports, if you're curious.

Mhm, Awakening feels like it has a bunch of loose ends. The Hierarch really feels like this. He literally comes out of nowhere from the player's perspective. He could've appeared in the meeting at the start of the game, somewhere, but they did nothing with him and he came from nowhere.

The Hierarch doesn't even have a name.

That's actually another minor peeve of mine about Awakening: all the location names stink. Maybe I just really like high fantasy, but there's no way a place called Border Pass is going to match up with Lefcandith Gauntlet.

It might have to do with Awakening not really having any historical parallels (and if it does, they're too generic to count). All of the past FEs are heavily rooted in certain mythologies and wind up borrowing a lot of names from them, which gives a distinct flavor and a rich set of detail that would take a huge amount of time and effort to come up with originally. FE1? Greek/Classical. FE4? Celtic/Nordic. FE6? Arthurian. FE13? Not much of anything.

Edited by Czar_Yoshi
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  • 2 weeks later...

Well it seemed like the game was rushed, especially since you can visibly see the game losing its polish 1 chapter at a time, and by the end, the story was a mess. I think what happened was they spread themselves too thin.

I do not think that a 3 part story is inherently bad, but I think that the writers were overextending trying to write a 3 part story to a game w/ less than intended developement time.

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Spreading yourself too thin is not necessarily caused by being rushed. There have just been plenty of good arguments against that, so if you still think it was rushed then please elaborate. A lot.

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I think they were more focused on the gameplay and the fanservice (not the kind you are probably thinking of, I mean all the references to past FE's) than the story honestly. Which does show, the gameplay is solid and really fun, the story however was lacking at points, some bits and pieces like the first arc are done pretty well though.

Edited by Jedi
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In my estimation: I've never been particularly impressed by a FE story - it's always been a gameplay series to me. I thought Awakening was passable as are most of the entries - what are the entries that you consider to be particularly adept at storytelling/world building?

I will agree that I thought map/mission design was way too homogeneous to be good. There are far too many "route the enemy" maps. I'd like to see a return of more hold/protect/seize/escape/etc. I'm not sure how I feel about pairup - it's obviously strong, but it's also obviously not going away. I think there were bigger problems than pairup that I'd like worked on anyway.

Either way I have high hopes for FE:if - I feel like they have the bulk of the design/artstyle/assets (and I enjoyed the aesthetic of Awakening) there already which means they'll have more time for all the things that you bring up as being potentially rushed in Awakening - tweaking formulas/statcaps/etc. and putting some extra oomph into mission design and story.

Edited by ckc22
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what are the entries that you consider to be particularly adept at storytelling/world building?

Probably not directed at me but 4 had the best story base, 7 was the best told and 8 had such a good villain it didn't even care.

Wrt pairup: it may be strong, but power bloat in and of itself isn't bad. If the exp formula was a little less friendly to getting ahead of the curve, those extra boosts wouldn't be very gamebreaking at all.

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Probably not directed at me but 4 had the best story base, 7 was the best told and 8 had such a good villain it didn't even care.

Wrt pairup: it may be strong, but power bloat in and of itself isn't bad. If the exp formula was a little less friendly to getting ahead of the curve, those extra boosts wouldn't be very gamebreaking at all.

It was an open question - just looking for opinions. I've been meaning to play 4 for a while but haven't yet.

I like 7 and 8 but I haven't played them in a while. My memory doesn't place them as being leagues ahead of Awakening, but like I said I think FE stories are sort of inherently limited by their gameplay - you need a huge number of characters to pull off the unique army/permadeath which inevitably leads to some being less than influential.

I'm fine with pairup. I know a lot of people say it's broken but I think many of the early chapters encourage you to not pairup (in Normal you can't even do it til 4 I think? I haven't ever actually played a normal run) if you're running more of a traditional game. It's not something that couldn't be "fixed" by some stat/exp/Dual event calculation tweaks like you mention.

Edited by ckc22
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I'm fine with pairup. I know a lot of people say it's broken but I think many of the early chapters encourage you to not pairup (in Normal you can't even do it til 4 I think? I haven't ever actually played a normal run)

I believe that's chapter 3. There's specific dialogue to introduce the concept after Sumia does her little cinematic thing (even on higher difficulties).

Also, how much it encourages people to pair up really depends on difficulty. On the majority of Lunatic(+), unpaired characters won't have the stats to survive a single round of combat against most enemies.

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In my estimation: I've never been particularly impressed by a FE story - it's always been a gameplay series to me. I thought Awakening was passable as are most of the entries - what are the entries that you consider to be particularly adept at storytelling/world building?

FEs 9, 8, 4 and 5 in particular are really solid stories. FE9 is probably the best written out of the entire series.

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I believe that's chapter 3. There's specific dialogue to introduce the concept after Sumia does her little cinematic thing (even on higher difficulties).

Also, how much it encourages people to pair up really depends on difficulty. On the majority of Lunatic(+), unpaired characters won't have the stats to survive a single round of combat against most enemies.

I think the argument that you need it to survive in L+ would be in favor of it not being broken?

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I like 7 and 8 but I haven't played them in a while. My memory doesn't place them as being leagues ahead of Awakening

You need to play both routes of FE8 sequentially to properly get why it's so good so if you haven't done that then that's probably why it's not memorable.

I forgot about FE9, I haven't played it personally but pretty much everyone I've spoken to who has loves its writing.

I think the argument that you need it to survive in L+ would be in favor of it not being broken?

You need a good many things to survive in Lunatic+ so it's not alone there.

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You need to play both routes of FE8 sequentially to properly get why it's so good so if you haven't done that then that's probably why it's not memorable.

I forgot about FE9, I haven't played it personally but pretty much everyone I've spoken to who has loves its writing.

I played both routes of FE8, it's just been a really really long time - at least 10 years. Some runs through older FE games are on my list right after I finish up Zelda: OoT and MM.

I've never played the Tellius games before I think I'll put them at the top of my list.

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I think the argument that you need it to survive in L+ would be in favor of it not being broken?

Yes, I'm in the camp that thinks pairup stat boosts aren't broken. Even dual guards aren't really broken, since they have such a low chance of happening. Dual strikes can arguably be thought of as bordeline broken because it's almost guaranteed later and just contributes to the "one strong pair steamrolls" design. Lunatic+ tries to compensate for this, but really only succeeds with some of its more extreme Pavise+/Aegis+ distributions, which makes the scenario extremely rough for any strategy that doesn't lean on them.

Personally, I think the EXP formula itself is fine. It's EXP multiplier skills like Veteran (and Paragon, historically) that tend to turn characters into ridiculous monsters. When one balances the game around a certain EXP rate, then suddenly throws +50% free extra EXP at 2-3 characters, well... I'm not sure what they expected, if not Robin and kids totally dominating.

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Honestly? IntSys just wanted to make the game more accessible for the newer players/potential fans coming into the series thanks to SSB, and other promotional media. I wouldn't consider Awakening bad (it's still pretty damn good), nor even the worst in the series (which isn't saying much, since a bad FE game is still a good game). The Pair-Up concept obviously wasn't balanced out very well in-relation to the core/campaign of the game using a more "classic" set-up in terms of enemy unit placement, and map layout (all of which were very uninspired mind-you due to lack of varying objectives). But once you got into the post-game? Well, that gets pretty interesting. Would I say Pair-Up is broken? Certainly not. Only on the lower difficulties (Normal, and Hard) does it seem that way. On Lunatic, and up. Well, it can get downright nasty pre-grind.

Do I miss the magic-triangle of FE4? Sure I do.

Do I miss differing map objectives? You bet.

All-in-all, I enjoyed some of the newer things IntSys tried to do or implement in Awakening (especially free-range reclassing). I especially loved the return of the MU (it's nice having a character you can customize as you wish in your party; all class options, unique-specialization class available to the MU, etc...). And I'm definitely looking forward to FE14 perfecting aforementioned newer concepts. Additionally, FE13 had some pretty awesome DLC. Hope they release a Season Pass next time for FE14.

Addendum: While on the topic of story telling. I think the Jugdral series handled the story-telling aspect of the FE series the best. It had everything: heroism, sacrifice, great battles, politics, Dovahkiinne, love, loss, tragedy, and betrayal.

Edited by Kye
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Pair up boosts seem pretty balanced in Lunatic, but overkill on lower difficulties. There are a few other imbalanced things (like Veteran), but most FEs have those. The story isn't great and some characters are too gimmicky for my tastes, but it was ok overall.

I think the map design could be a bit better though, super high enemy density on an open plain does not exactly promote a wide variety of strategies.

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