Later FEs have made me appreciate this game's narrative. (SPOILERS FOR RD, AWAKENING, AND FATES)

[Alazen]

I remember back when this game was still hot that there were criticisms of its narrative. From Micaiah to Ike's role to the Blood Pact to the Dawn Brigade fading away to what have you. I see assorted criticisms and admit RD's narrative could be better.

Shadow Dragon and New Mystery are remakes so I can excuse them (although Kris is really problematic). Awakening and Fates aren't remakes though.

Whether its the focus on and worship of the Avatar characters, too many antagonists who are cartoon villains like Validar or underexplored despite maybe having interesting ideologies like Walhart, more apparent Black (or dark grey at best) and White morality for war between nations, or lower worldbuilding, the games after RD really took a step downward for all of RD's problems.

Edited October 5, 2015 by Alazen

[Jedi]

I still think the Bloodpact is one of the worst plot devices in the entire FE franchise lol, also for what little Shadow Dragon did have it did a good job in writing

[Alazen]

The Blood Pact is problematic, but it's not like ''No talking about Touma'' is noticeably better.

Edited October 5, 2015 by Alazen

[Irysa]

I think the problem with the Blood Pact isn't so much it being a plot contrivance (there are lots of these in many Fire Emblem games), but rather that it is an incredibly cheap trick to set up conflict between two non villanous parties. It's also especially insulting when you consider that Part 2 and Path of Radiance demonstrated the writers were perfectly capable of pitting characters against one another for reasons that are more to do with idealogies and perspectives rather than comically evil bad guys manipulating everything.

[BrightBow]

Ah yes, the good old days of me bitching about the Blood Pact. Good times.

The game was a bit of a disappointment to me when it came out. Not just with the Blood Pact but also with the irritating willingness of the heroes to burn down all diplomatic bridges that they build over the past years. But over the years I learned to appreciate the game's positive qualities. Like Part 2 being well rounded and awesome. And I like Part 4 as well. The extended scrip and a proper translation from the dialogue in the final cutscene helped a lot in that regard. As a result, Elincia and Yune ended up as some of my favourite characters in the franchise. Even Part 3 has at least some merits. For example, I like how it showed the problems of the Laguz society when it comes to their rulers, that letting the strongest give the orders is just as impractical as giving authority to people just because of their blood.

Edited October 5, 2015 by BrightBow

[Radiant head]

Yeah couldn't agree more. I've always been vocal about how I feel the plot in this game is a mess, but after Awakening and what I've read o Fates, I have a ton of newfound appreciation of all the things that RD did right. Even though a lot of it is owed to how solid PoR's narrative is.

[Anacybele]

Why is the blood pact hated so much? :( I thought it was really clever and fascinating, if not creepy.

[Radiant head]

Because of what Irysa said. Instead of coming up with an interesting nuanced way to have clashing protagonists, it's just the good guys vs the good guys who are extorted by one dimensional villains via cheap plot device.

I'm tempted to draw some comparisons to Fates, which is doing the two sides thing, but I know this forum is super strict about spoilers, so...

[shadowofchaos]

I personally just ignored the game during Part 4. This game feels amazing with gameplay, at least I feel so.

But yes, Part 2 was amazing and shows how much they were capable of in the same game.

While the new titles have more failure, it's pretty much each other's personal opinion how much of an offense the Blood Pact is.

[Anacybele]

Because of what Irysa said. Instead of coming up with an interesting nuanced way to have clashing protagonists, it's just the good guys vs the good guys who are extorted by one dimensional villains via cheap plot device.

I'm tempted to draw some comparisons to Fates, which is doing the two sides thing, but I know this forum is super strict about spoilers, so...

I still don't understand. A blood pact is a magic piece of parchment that when signed, places a curse on the one who signed it to cause their people to die one by one. That's just...wow. Who else would've thought of something like that? I thought it was a really good plot point.

Saying it's cheap also sounds completely opinionated. Also, it isn't like the blood pact came out of nowhere. It was hinted at in PoR already when it was revealed that some "plague" took out the Daein royal family except for Ashnard. It had some build up.

Edited October 5, 2015 by Anacybele

[-Cynthia-]

Meh, it would have been illogical for Daein to care much about the war between Begnion and the Laguz Alliance (since they don't like either of them really) so the Blood Pact was a necessity of sorts to keep Micaiah and co. relevant and tie things together for Part 4. It was hinted at in PoR too- I suppose it was contrived but it didn't offend me too much.

[Jave]

The Blood Pact honestly never bothered me much. What REALLY bothered me was:

- How every character that wasn't turned into stone were all the playable characters, the NPCs that ran the stores, and every other character with plot armor. How convenient.

- Ranulf ruining one of the game's biggest reveals. ("Yo, Ike, Zelgius is the Black Knight k thx bai")

But man, Zelda cycle is truly blending into the FE fandom. I stand by my prediction that by 2017 when everyone is through playing Fates multiple times, we'll start seeing the "You know, Awakening wasn't that bad a game after all."

[Radiant head]

I still don't understand. A blood pact is a magic piece of parchment that when signed, places a curse on the one who signed it to cause their people to die one by one. That's just...wow. Who else would've thought of something like that? I thought it was a really good plot point.

Wow, a magic piece of paper that forces the Dawn Brigade to fight the Greil Mercs. Brilliant stuff.

Edited October 5, 2015 by Radiant head

[Anacybele]

Wow, a magic piece of paper that forces the Dawn Brigade to fight the Greil Mercs. Brilliant stuff.

Uh, if you put it that way, of course it would sound worse. >_>

[Irysa]

I still don't understand. A blood pact is a magic piece of parchment that when signed, places a curse on the one who signed it to cause their people to die one by one. That's just...wow. Who else would've thought of something like that? I thought it was a really good plot point.

Saying it's cheap also sounds completely opinionated. Also, it isn't like the blood pact came out of nowhere. It was hinted at in PoR already when it was revealed that some "plague" took out the Daein royal family except for Ashnard. It had some build up.

I had a lot of :words: here about writing but I realised I was approaching this from the wrong angle.

Essentially, simple and complex conflicts do not really invoke the same kind of emotional or mental response from an audience. The more complex a scenario becomes, the more it invokes a degree of introspectiveness, or at least brings out the audience's own personal values. Difficult situations where characters oppose each other because of differences in ideals or politics create an empathetical connection because of the correlation to reality, and so have a greater potential to create more powerful responses. Art imitates life, as they say.

Simplistic stories are hardly without merit, but what can you do but cheer for the protagonist when they are fighting against an irredeemable villain? Nobody is challenged by such a portrayal of events. It is when you make that villain sympathetic that you can question the nature of the situation, and further still when you have no villain at all, merely characters acting in their own interests or according to their beliefs. In that case, people choose who they ally themselves to based on their own values and how they align with those characters.

Meh, it would have been illogical for Daein to care much about the war between Begnion and the Laguz Alliance (since they don't like either of them really) so the Blood Pact was a necessity of sorts to keep Micaiah and co. relevant and tie things together for Part 4. It was hinted at in PoR too- I suppose it was contrived but it didn't offend me too much.

That's a grander problem on the whole though and obviously a significant portion of the game would have to be rewritten to accomodate the removal of the Blood Contracts. But frankly, I think we could have done without Radiant Dawn entirely and somehow squeezed Mic and Part 4 into Path of Radiance and have been the better for it.

Or for a less crude fix, some alterations could have been made to create a situation where Daein was dependant on Begnion for donated resources to continue to feed it's population following the aftermath of the Mad King's War. Mic could be invoked to act to simply prevent her followers from starving.

Edited October 6, 2015 by Irysa

[-Cynthia-]

That's a grander problem on the whole though and obviously a significant portion of the game would have to be rewritten to accomodate the removal of the Blood Contracts. But frankly, I think we could have done without Radiant Dawn entirely and somehow squeezed Mic and Part 4 into Path of Radiance and have been the better for it.

Or for a less crude fix, some alterations could have been made to create a situation where Daein was dependant on Begnion for donated resources to continue to feed it's population following the aftermath of the Mad King's War. Mic could be invoked to act to simply prevent her followers from starving.

Path of Radiance is pretty long already, I'm not sure squeezing more big plot points in it would be a good idea.

That doesn't make sense within the context of Radiant Dawn's Part 1(if Daein needs Begnion's donated resources that badly, they wouldn't fight for independence to begin with). I suppose you could just axe Part 1, but then it becomes difficult to care much of anything about Micaiah and co. since they're introduced as the enemy. You'd also be substantially altering gameplay at this point.

Edited October 6, 2015 by -Cynthia-

[Radiant head]

For me, it's not about coming up with how RD should be altered to make more sense; it's just pointing out how inherently flawed the whole thing is.

[Anacybele]

...Yeah, now I'm even more lost here than before. But eh, doesn't seem like there's a point to debating this anyway. I'll just continue liking the blood pact and move on.

[Lord Raven]

...Yeah, now I'm even more lost here than before. But eh, doesn't seem like there's a point to debating this anyway. I'll just continue liking the blood pact and move on.

Irysa's argument is simply this;

There was a lot of nuance involved with you being torn between two sides of the conflict. In any given Part 3 chapter (save 3-9) you're either fighting with Daein/Bengnion back against Gallia or you're fighting as Gallia against Daein/Begnion (and eventually Crimea joins the conflict).

Why are they fighting each other? Daein is now independent and their efforts should be focused on rebuilding their country. Why are they siding with Begnion, their former oppressors?

Naturally, from playing FE9, you are very familiar with the Greil Mercenaries and you can at the very least sympathize with them. You have this feeling that whatever cause they're fighting is not a bad cause.

So what gives? Why are these two fighting against one another? It makes zero sense. Micaiah went off the deep end in a somewhat natural way. Daein is rebuilding but entered the war for some reason. Here's the reason: they signed a pact that's a case of "you do this or you die." By villains who basically have zero reasons why an audience would sympathize them; they literally just have a God complex. They're unequivocally evil and must be stopped.

Let's think about this real quick; what other FE games have had enemies that were unequivocably evil? The only things I can think of are FE1 and FE13 and one has the plot/dialogue standards of the 1990s to excuse it while the other has been very critically panned.

In every other FE game, the villains had sympathetic qualities. Any sort of clashing between two friends has been due to contrasting ideologies at worst. Corruption and warmongering resulted from the ideals of people, or people driven mad trying to fulfill their own goals. Over here, we have probably one of the most tense conflicts in all of FE - involving both sides of your playable characters being forced to square off each other - being reconciled because the villains behind this were evil. For the record, I'm not talking about Lehran as a main bad guy here, I'm talking specifically about the Begnion Senators who arranged for the Blood Pact. They have absolutely no redeeming qualities that makes you understand them. They're basically just like the Joker and the combined forces of Part 4 are Batman.

Maybe it isn't a bad plot point. Maybe it's absolutely shit. But it was completely underwhelming given the nature of the situation. It made Micaiah's actions seem justified and made her character one dimensional. It turns her into what amounts to a puppet, who is doing these morally ambiguous actions because she was forced to do it to save Daein, and it took away her sense of individuality in performing these actions. It cheapens her character.

And you know how Naesala's a complete fuckwitted bastard who keeps betraying everyone for money? Then sorta comes to his senses towards the end of FE9? They nullified that aspect of his personality due to the blood pact that he had to sign.

You know how Ashnard rose to power? They said it was by slaying all of his family and rising to power through force - which agrees with his personality ideology of those with power shall rule. Except now it was retconned to say that he did not use straight force, he used a blood pact, which nullifies him personifying his ideology.

etc etc etc

It really just cheapens the plot. Part 3 was called intersecting vows but Micaiah made no vows or had any ideals, she was just forced to do what she did and she's absolved of her war crimes.

[Anacybele]

Well then, it sounds to me like the villains were the ones who weren't done very well (and I do agree that Lekain and Jarod weren't really written well), not the blood pact. I'm saying that I liked the idea of the blood pact itself.

And PoR specifically stated that a strange "plague" killed the Daein royals except for Ashnard. It never actually said that Ashnard killed them with his own hand. He later reveals to Bryce that he was the one that caused the plague. How are you going to later explain how he caused this "plague" without it being something boring and cliche like "he slipped poison into their drinks"?

Edited October 6, 2015 by Anacybele

[Alazen]

In light of what RD tells about the Blood Pact, what was stopping Lekain or whoever from getting Elincia to sign one? I'm assuming the pact doesn't flat-out say ''Your nation will be enslaved and if you defy the pact owner everybody in said nation dies'' so Lekain or another Senator could spin signing one as a gesture of friendship.

Edited October 6, 2015 by Alazen

[Lord Raven]

Well then, it sounds to me like the villains were the ones who weren't done very well (and I do agree that Lekain and Jarod weren't really written well), not the blood pact. I'm saying that I liked the idea of the blood pact itself.

The blood pact is part of the poor writing. The Senators had no real reason to give them a blood pact other than control them so they could progress their own rotten goals. Now if the senators themselves had nuanced goals then SURE but it still cheapens Micaiah's character considerably and it's still an extremely underwhelming way to justify a conflict between Daein and Gallia.

And PoR specifically stated that a strange "plague" killed the Daein royals except for Ashnard. It never actually said that Ashnard killed them with his own hand. He later reveals to Bryce that he was the one that caused the plague. How are you going to later explain how he caused this "plague" without it being something boring and cliche like "he slipped poison into their drinks"?

You think Ashnard would say "oh btw i killed everyone in my family so I'll just take my seat right here and rule over you"? No, because he'd lose the trust of his people quickly and probably get some accusations of regicide. Nobody would take that shit. It's easier to spread some sort of propaganda and lie to the masses so that it's some tragedy that'll allow him to take the mantle.

Ashnard reveals that he himself killed his family, he doesn't say he caused a plague.

Ashnard

The thing that killed my father was not plague, nor was it another illness. It was me.

Bryce

Wh-what?

Ashnard

Oh, but it doesn't end there. There was my stepmother, too. And every brother who stood to be a legitimate heir...All of them died by my hand.

This was in the final chapter.

Anyway, it's outright contradictory, and again slipping poison into their drinks or causing some sort of weird plague that only affects a royal family is much less of a tangible representation of his ideology than outright killing them by his hand.

Edited October 6, 2015 by Lord Raven

[Baldrick]

He later reveals to Bryce that he was the one that caused the plague. How are you going to later explain how he caused this "plague" without it being something boring and cliche like "he slipped poison into their drinks"?

Ashnard claims he killed them with his own hands. The most likely explanation is that he murdered them all and blamed it on the plague.

[-Cynthia-]

In light of what RD tells about the Blood Pact, what was stopping Lekain or whoever from getting Elincia to sign one? I'm assuming the pact doesn't flat-out say ''Your nation will be enslaved and if you defy the pact owner everybody in said nation dies'' so Lekain or another Senator could spin signing one as a gesture of friendship.

I think it does say that(probably in more confusing legal language), but Izuka convinced Pelleas to sign it. The Begnions don't have that kind of insider in the Crimean court.

Now as to the senators' motivations- do they really need to be 'nuanced'? They don't like how Daein and Crimea aren't under Begnion rule anymore, they don't like how laguz aren't slaves anymore(and more specifically how laguz are coming into Begnion and killing them currently). Sanaki doesn't see these things as problems and so they remove her from power. Their motivations are simple, but it's not like they're evil just because.

[Radiant head]

Irysa's argument is simply this;

There was a lot of nuance involved with you being torn between two sides of the conflict. In any given Part 3 chapter (save 3-9) you're either fighting with Daein/Bengnion back against Gallia or you're fighting as Gallia against Daein/Begnion (and eventually Crimea joins the conflict).

Why are they fighting each other? Daein is now independent and their efforts should be focused on rebuilding their country. Why are they siding with Begnion, their former oppressors?

Naturally, from playing FE9, you are very familiar with the Greil Mercenaries and you can at the very least sympathize with them. You have this feeling that whatever cause they're fighting is not a bad cause.

So what gives? Why are these two fighting against one another? It makes zero sense. Micaiah went off the deep end in a somewhat natural way. Daein is rebuilding but entered the war for some reason. Here's the reason: they signed a pact that's a case of "you do this or you die." By villains who basically have zero reasons why an audience would sympathize them; they literally just have a God complex. They're unequivocally evil and must be stopped.

Let's think about this real quick; what other FE games have had enemies that were unequivocably evil? The only things I can think of are FE1 and FE13 and one has the plot/dialogue standards of the 1990s to excuse it while the other has been very critically panned.

In every other FE game, the villains had sympathetic qualities. Any sort of clashing between two friends has been due to contrasting ideologies at worst. Corruption and warmongering resulted from the ideals of people, or people driven mad trying to fulfill their own goals. Over here, we have probably one of the most tense conflicts in all of FE - involving both sides of your playable characters being forced to square off each other - being reconciled because the villains behind this were evil. For the record, I'm not talking about Lehran as a main bad guy here, I'm talking specifically about the Begnion Senators who arranged for the Blood Pact. They have absolutely no redeeming qualities that makes you understand them. They're basically just like the Joker and the combined forces of Part 4 are Batman.

Maybe it isn't a bad plot point. Maybe it's absolutely shit. But it was completely underwhelming given the nature of the situation. It made Micaiah's actions seem justified and made her character one dimensional. It turns her into what amounts to a puppet, who is doing these morally ambiguous actions because she was forced to do it to save Daein, and it took away her sense of individuality in performing these actions. It cheapens her character.

And you know how Naesala's a complete fuckwitted bastard who keeps betraying everyone for money? Then sorta comes to his senses towards the end of FE9? They nullified that aspect of his personality due to the blood pact that he had to sign.

You know how Ashnard rose to power? They said it was by slaying all of his family and rising to power through force - which agrees with his personality ideology of those with power shall rule. Except now it was retconned to say that he did not use straight force, he used a blood pact, which nullifies him personifying his ideology.

etc etc etc

It really just cheapens the plot. Part 3 was called intersecting vows but Micaiah made no vows or had any ideals, she was just forced to do what she did and she's absolved of her war crimes.

Good post. Especially the bit about Naesala. He went from the morally ambiguous trickster into yet another victim of the Senate and their stupid plot device.

Edited October 6, 2015 by Radiant head