There are some things that left me confused [SPOILERS]

[Calmy]

So a couple of months ago I finally beat FE Conquest, Birthright, and Revelations, when I reached the end of the game, I had a bittersweet taste towards how the game progressed up to that point, specifically speaking, about how some plot-points were left un-answered or how some things confused me or that I couldn't get a proper explanation of the event itself, the things that left me like that are listed below:

1 - What was the point of children? seriously, what was the point of children in terms of plot?, I'm sure some of you know that in previous FE games, children had much more relevance to the plot, especially in FE4, but in this game, it seems that the only role they fulfill is "extra units that will make harder settings more manageable", outside of DLC, they feel more like filler units, of course, powerful filler units if used properly, but they don't add any relevance to the main plot at all, so why have them there?

2 - Valla is the "forgotten kingdom" so naturally, any mention of it outside of that place will result in a curse that will kill the user, but during both Conquest and Birthright is shown that Azura gave slight details of the kingdom with her signature song (with some payback of course, but only until the end of the game where she dies in Birthright and Conquest), so, if you can say details in a way it doesn't refer to "Valla" itself, rather, something like the forgotten kingdom of "Villa, Vulla, Vella" etc. With all of this in account, wouldn't Corrin have had a much easier time explaining it to its allies and relatives in Revelations than "There's a hidden thing I want to show you in the Bottomless Canyon"?.

3 - the Last thing that left me confused is with the children's growth, and I believe, this is the most confusing aspect I have seen in this game, so, once you have paired up two units with an S support your unit will get married or engaged with another unit, specifically, a male and female unit (not counting in here the S supports with same genders) you produce a child, and this child is sent to an Outrealm or Pocket Dimension where time flows differently than the real time.

So is kinda like the Hyperbolic Time Chamber in DBZ, but instead of being a room solely designed to train people, this is a "dimension" or place where you can put your children, you let them grow by themselves and that's it, my concerns with this is the way how everything flies so quickly to the point that you can get a Paralogue to get your children all grown up, level 10 with inherited skills, now, this thing didn't bother me in Awakening nor FE4, the first game due to the characters not getting pregnant with the baby born (Except for Chrom) rather, they are your children that come from the future.

And the second one due to the need of children for an actual army (Blame Arvis for the lack of 1st generation units), but in this game, it seems that the woman in charge of the children went from.

a) Getting pregnant

b) Raising the child for 9 months

c) Put said kid in this special dimension.

d) Wait until said child is totally grown up

Oh, did i forgot that your units were in war?, not only that, who was in charge of this place?, I don't think the parents were there all the time to look over the kids, so, who was in charge of not only the place, but also the beings inside that place?, that's about the things that struck me the most with this game, otherwise, is fine to me.

[BANRYU]

I haven't beaten Revelations so I'm only skimming here, BUUUUT....

I 1000% agree about the kids. They are entirely extraneous to the plot of the main game (I haven't played Heirs of Fate either but that seems all right to me). I'm pretty sure they exist firstly and foremostly for the sake of gameplay, which I think is fine, but plotwise they have no right to be in anything. As much as I thought the time travel plot device for Awakening was kind of silly, this 'Deeprealms' thing is a million times dumber.

Forth both Fates AND Awakening, I would have vastly preferred that, if they WERE going to include the kids, they do it in a manner similar to what GotHW did and have the kids show up some time later.

Hell, in Awakening, what I think they should have done plotwise is: 1) keep the eugenics mechanics but don't make the kids recruitable on the main map, 2) have Robin go through some time portal thingamajigger to wind up in the future with ONLY the child units (moms unpaired at this point have the male equivalent of Chrom marrying the 'maiden') -- cue Future Past storyline, and 3) have Robin make it back at some point WITH the kid units (maybe have specific recruitment requirements for each one where, if not met, they're left behind) and cue the rest of the game from like... IDK... Ch23 onward.

...But in Fates, there's no reasonable way to justify the kids plot-wise. They're literally just there for the breeding mechanic IMO.

[Funky Tim]

Yup, neither the curse nor the children make any sense whatsoever. The children were shoehorned in because that mechanic was popular in Awakening, and the curse is a plot device without which neither Birthright nor Conquest would make any sense.

[Light Strategist]

So a couple of months ago I finally beat FE Conquest, Birthright, and Revelations, when I reached the end of the game, I had a bittersweet taste towards how the game progressed up to that point, specifically speaking, about how some plot-points were left un-answered or how some things confused me or that I couldn't get a proper explanation of the event itself, the things that left me like that are listed below:

1 - What was the point of children? seriously, what was the point of children in terms of plot?, I'm sure some of you know that in previous FE games, children had much more relevance to the plot, especially in FE4, but in this game, it seems that the only role they fulfill is "extra units that will make harder settings more manageable", outside of DLC, they feel more like filler units, of course, powerful filler units if used properly, but they don't add any relevance to the main plot at all, so why have them there?

2 - Valla is the "forgotten kingdom" so naturally, any mention of it outside of that place will result in a curse that will kill the user, but during both Conquest and Birthright is shown that Azura gave slight details of the kingdom with her signature song (with some payback of course, but only until the end of the game where she dies in Birthright and Conquest), so, if you can say details in a way it doesn't refer to "Valla" itself, rather, something like the forgotten kingdom of "Villa, Vulla, Vella" etc. With all of this in account, wouldn't Corrin have had a much easier time explaining it to its allies and relatives in Revelations than "There's a hidden thing I want to show you in the Bottomless Canyon"?.

3 - the Last thing that left me confused is with the children's growth, and I believe, this is the most confusing aspect I have seen in this game, so, once you have paired up two units with an S support your unit will get married or engaged with another unit, specifically, a male and female unit (not counting in here the S supports with same genders) you produce a child, and this child is sent to an Outrealm or Pocket Dimension where time flows differently than the real time.

So is kinda like the Hyperbolic Time Chamber in DBZ, but instead of being a room solely designed to train people, this is a "dimension" or place where you can put your children, you let them grow by themselves and that's it, my concerns with this is the way how everything flies so quickly to the point that you can get a Paralogue to get your children all grown up, level 10 with inherited skills, now, this thing didn't bother me in Awakening nor FE4, the first game due to the characters not getting pregnant with the baby born (Except for Chrom) rather, they are your children that come from the future.

And the second one due to the need of children for an actual army (Blame Arvis for the lack of 1st generation units), but in this game, it seems that the woman in charge of the children went from.

a) Getting pregnant

b) Raising the child for 9 months

c) Put said kid in this special dimension.

d) Wait until said child is totally grown up

Oh, did i forgot that your units were in war?, not only that, who was in charge of this place?, I don't think the parents were there all the time to look over the kids, so, who was in charge of not only the place, but also the beings inside that place?, that's about the things that struck me the most with this game, otherwise, is fine to me.

1. They're capitalizing on Awakening senselessly. They do absolutely nothing for the plot except Heirs of Fate which is centred around them instead.

2. What I don't get is this: Go to Valla, Write a Report about all of the important things about the place, Take it to Nohr and/or Hoshido and show Xander and Ryoma. Seriously, taking those steps would have made it easier as opposed to what was actually done.

3. Deeprealms. All it'd take is the female spending a Deeprealm's time zone of 9 months for the birthing process of the children at a bare minimum. What's unclear is actually the time difference between the Deeprealms and the world outside of them. It's suggested that the characters periodically check on their children but I'd find it difficult to calculate when they would based on time differences between realms. All of the kids had access to caretakers when they were growing, Shigure's were killed before he joins you, Dwyer's leave because he didn't really do anything to try and help them, Mitama's taught her poetry and so on.

There's more stuff left unanswered, but I hope that's clarification enough for what you've asked.

[Captain Karnage]

I'll save you the time Thane

reason

"it was a badly written story"

[NekoKnight]

1. Valla

Azura's (and Kamui's) reason for not talking doesn't make any sense and the curse is actually rather easy to circumvent. In Chapter 18 of Revelation, Kamui specifically mentions the curse, how it triggers and what it will do. But the other routes pretend that you can't even vaguely refer to it without killing yourself. Long story short, the 3rd route only exists because the story forces Azura to be secretive when she doesn't need to be.

2. Children

The more you think about the deep realms, the worse it gets. Let's try to name as many problems as we can:

• Why did anyone think it would be a good idea to have children in the middle of a war?
• Why did people continue to have children after they realized that there are invisible soldiers threatening them?
• Why would Kamui and a 2nd gen marry if they KNOW how horrible it will be for their children?
• Why isn't My Castle an acceptable place to store the kids?
• Why would any of their retainers spend decades in an alternate dimension just to raise your kids?
• Why do some deep realms age kids faster than others?
• Why do parents not raise their children (if they have more than one) in the same deep realm?
• How is it that we never notice the pregnancies of the characters? Does it happen instantaneously?
• Do the children (ahem "technically adults") have children of their own right after getting married?
• Why, oh why, are the parents such horrible people that they would be absent for the majority of their children's childhood?

To summarize how I feel about the story excuse, I'll quote HISHE quoting Suicide Squad, "I mean, it's not killing me, it's just hurting me, really, really, bad."

3. Deeprealms. All it'd take is the female spending a Deeprealm's time zone of 9 months for the birthing process of the children at a bare minimum. What's unclear is actually the time difference between the Deeprealms and the world outside of them. It's suggested that the characters periodically check on their children but I'd find it difficult to calculate when they would based on time differences between realms. All of the kids had access to caretakers when they were growing, Shigure's were killed before he joins you, Dwyer's leave because he didn't really do anything to try and help them, Mitama's taught her poetry and so on.

I believe it's stated (at least for the first kid) that the threats to the children only showed up AFTER they were born, which means they spent their pregnancy in the real world.

Edited October 2, 2016 by NekoKnight

[Light Strategist]

I believe it's stated (at least for the first kid) that the threats to the children only showed up AFTER they were born, which means they spent their pregnancy in the real world.

But that's a little absurd. If you consider the kids being born into the war just between Hoshido and Nohr without the deeprealms issue, they'd needlessly risk the lives of the children by just being at a base that could get attacked by enemies at any time.

Then again... this is the Fates cast we're talking about...

Actually, I don't see why the parents didn't decide to start training their kids when they could learn to fight at an earlier age. True, they don't want them involved in a war but self-defense is at least a viable reason AND it'd justify the combat prowess of some of them. Ophelia, Soleil, Siegbert and Hisame are examples of the kids having trained in some way, however look at Dwyer, Mitama, Kana and Midori. I'm quite sure they never had to lift a finger regarding combat and they're suddenly somehow potent in fighting to some degree.

I'm gonna stop thinking about Fates' utter stupidity... it's giving me a headache...

[Ertrick36]

Yeah, the Valla curse is a terribly veiled plot device. Given that so many people can come up with so many different ways for Corrin and Azura to tell Ryoma and Xander about it while also avoiding the curse just goes to show how terribly thin and pointless it is. And this aspect does wonders to totally ruin Azura's character. So it's overall just a detriment, rather than it is a compelling plot point.

The children are literally just fanservice, and another flaw in Fates' story. Like others have said, 2nd Gen armies had much more plot relevance in other FE games. In Genealogy, the second half of the game is the story of the second generation. In the first two GBA games, there were two different generations; first we had Roy's generation in the first game, then the next game went to the previous generation, which included Roy's father, Eliwood. And in Awakening, they come to stop a blighted future. Also in Awakening, there were DLC stories that focused on an alternate future where the kids still have a fighting chance.

But main story Fates doesn't give them much of a reason to fight other than just "I wanna help daddy save the world". You could go through the entire game without them, and the story would be completely unchanged. They did it solely because people liked it in Awakening, but unlike how it was done in Awakening, they put absolutely no thought into how they'd be integrated into the story.

The more you think about the deep realms, the worse it gets. Let's try to name as many problems as we can:

• Why did anyone think it would be a good idea to have children in the middle of a war?
• Why did people continue to have children after they realized that there are invisible soldiers threatening them?
• Why would Kamui and a 2nd gen marry if they KNOW how horrible it will be for their children?
• Why isn't My Castle an acceptable place to store the kids?
• Why would any of their retainers spend decades in an alternate dimension just to raise your kids?
• Why do some deep realms age kids faster than others?
• Why do parents not raise their children (if they have more than one) in the same deep realm?
• How is it that we never notice the pregnancies of the characters? Does it happen instantaneously?
• Do the children (ahem "technically adults") have children of their own right after getting married?
• Why, oh why, are the parents such horrible people that they would be absent for the majority of their children's childhood?

These are all great questions, though I'd say for the variance in aging, it's more because the children were recruited after different spans of time, rather than the deep realms themselves aging the children quicker or more slowly. But then again, you might have married Corrin off very early (like I did in BR), while Ryoma gets married much later on, but then get the children at about the same time, and since it's implied that they have the children as soon as they marry, Shiro should actually be much younger than Kana here if my rationale was applied here, but he clearly is not. So really, it's anyone's guess how exactly this hellhole of a plot device works.

It's like... all the plot devices only serve to make the characters seem really, really stupid. Though then again, I suppose it's good if they are, indeed, very stupid, because if they acquired any modicum of intellect in these regards, they'd all suffer severe brain aneurysms due to the stupidity of all these situations and how they've been treating them.

[Sentinel07]

This is zero point for the kids being there. From what I can tell, it's obvious that they were not originally planned for the game, but Intelligent Systems caved to put them in to avoid offending any Awakening fans who fell in love with the kids machanic.

[SalShich10N]

1) Popular feature from awakening. Also they don't exactly make harder settings more manageable, they're barely any better than their parents

2) That'd require the characters to have IQ above the double digits. Look at Azura's dance sequence in Conquest to see that is clearly not the case

3) Middle finger to the gestation period. Developer thoughts that the lack of children, a popular feature form awakening would compromise the sales.

Everything can be explained with money. They added the features that would maximized profit and cut short budget on areas such as hiring a good writer for the whole thing. They did hire a not-so-popular manga artist for the outline of the story, however I've also heard they didn't stick to the outline very much.