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Reusing Maps, A Rant


Jotari
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So It's been about two years since I played New Mystery and since finishing it I haven't felt the slightest desire to replay it despite how good it's reputation for higher difficulties are. There are two main reasons for this. 1, there's so many times out there who has time to replay them? 2, It's minor and it's pretty, but the fact that it reuses maps from Shadow Dragon really irks me.

Now I'm not against them reusing a few maps here and there. I thought it was pretty cool in Radiant Dawn where you fought on the same bridge as Path of Radiance. Gave a sense that it really was the same world and that this is an important strategic location. It's the manner in which they do it that bothers me. The first time they do it, it's okay. The top half of chapter 7 is the bottom half Chapter 18 from Shadow Dragon. I've played Shadow Dragon a tonne so noticed this myself pretty quickly as I was playing the chapter and thought it was pretty cool in fact. But then, the next chapter was an exact tile for tile remake of chapter 18. Still, tis wasn't too bad. Like the Radiant Dawn example you're approaching the bridge from the opposite end so it's still a different experience. Astram chases you from behind and Marth gets his first encounter with Emperor Hardin. There's a massive castle that wasn't there in the previous game but that's not too big an issue.

However, then, in chapter 9 my opinion was changed entirely as we got another exact duplicate two chapters in a row with Chapter 9 being the exact same as Chapter 15 in Shadow Dragon. Before they had the excuse of geography but here it doesn't even make any sense. You approach Kaiden from the South East in Shadow Dragon, so naturally it makes sense that your goal is in the north west on the map. However, this time we're approaching from the other direction. It would have made a lot more sense for them to do what they did in Chapter 7 and have a small portion of the map be a duplicate but most of it being new content. It's not even like they tried to make the map much different since you start in basically the same area as Shadow Dragon leading to much the same experience. This trend continues throughout the game giving us the exact same map for for the Altea Chapter, Gra Chapter and Archanea Chapter. The Altea and Gra chapters manage to distinguish themselves by having gimmicks that weren't present in Shadow Dragon (and the implication is that these maps cover pretty much the entirety of the countries) but the Acrhanea Chapter one again ends up being identical to what it's like in Shadow Dragon (which is a bit of a slog truth be told). And then you go inside the castle itself and assault from the same entry point in then same direction even though the game makes it look like the castle is much bigger than what we see. And didn't BS Fire Emblem already give us a different map for Archanea's interior? They could have used a portion of that map and the old one to give a better sense of the castle. We end up having chapters in or near castle Ostia like six times between Fire Emblem 6 and 7 and they never doubled up on maps, though if you look carefully it does seem like the same throne room is used for the seize chapter in FE6 and the defence make in FE7, but like Chapter 7 of New Mystery, once again it's only a portion of the map.

Now I know this is a remake of an old game and back then they didn't have the memory space to make as many new maps (FE3 was two games in one after all). And some of these maps were even cut from Book 1 so it was a novelty to see them in Book 2. So I don't blame the original developers (much) but this was a remake. Twenty  years later I feel like it's something they should have changed. Give how much extra content they had to shove into FE12 to turn Book 2 into a full game, I don't think they were tight for time so much that they couldn't have modified some of these maps. Remakes shouldn't just be a coat of paint. They should actually be willingly to change things. And not just add things (as Fe12 inelegantly did for almost practically every Archanea character in existence) but actually change things that need changing. In my opinion these maps, particularly the Kaiden and the Archaean and the interior chapters felt very dull and uninspired. They had the right idea for how to do it with Chapter 7 but then just dropped it completely for the rest of the game. Anyway that's just my long winded rant on a topic that probably nobody else cares about. Feel free to post your opinion on the idea of reusing maps and how it should or should have been handled.

Edited by Jotari
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On 3/16/2017 at 7:37 AM, Flee Fleet! said:

Well, I dunno about all of the reusing thing, but is it also the case FE3 Book 2? Since New mystery is a remake of book 2.

Yeah Book 2 reused a lot of the maps from FE1/Book 1. Thought somewhat interestingly, the bridge chapter was one of the maps that was cut in Book 1. So if you only played FE3 you'd never no it was reused.

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1 hour ago, Robert of Normandy said:

Yeah Book 2 reused a lot of the maps from FE1/Book 1. Thought somewhat interestingly, the bridge chapter was one of the maps that was cut in Book 1. So if you only played FE3 you'd never no it was reused.

Tellius continues the proud tradition of re-using Bridge Maps.  I don't know why people hate that map so much.  Well, I guess it's from the pitfalls, but they never bothered me as much as I guess it does some.

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RD also adds Shine Barriers, which can make it impossible to cross the bridge without fliers for several turns IIRC.

I kinda wonder why the one bridge which seems to connect Daein and Crimea would be ridden with pitfalls is both games. Isn't that kinda bad?

On a logic note, wouldn't it have been better for the Laguz Alliance to treat the Oribes/Riven as a chokepoint and just stave off Daein assaults from their side of the bridge while Ike and the LA army invade Begnion again? If they encountered a Daein army in the field, it'd take much longer to recoup its losses and the Senators would have to acknowledge this- sort of saving lives from Daein, no? (Logic isn't the strong suit of late Part 3.)

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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On 3/17/2017 at 7:31 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

On a logic note, wouldn't it have been better for the Laguz Alliance to treat the Oribes/Riven as a chokepoint and just stave off Daein assaults from their side of the bridge while Ike and the LA army invade Begnion again? If they encountered a Daein army in the field, it'd take much longer to recoup its losses and the Senators would have to acknowledge this- sort of saving lives from Daein, no? (Logic isn't the strong suit of late Part 3.)

To be fair, this is what Daein tried to do in PoR and Ike was still able to break through their lines then, so reusing the same failed strategy probably isn't the best idea. In addition, I doubt the Laguz Alliance wanted to divide their forces before taking on the massive Begnion Central Army, and opted to hedge their bets on being able to convince Daein to back out of the war after winning a couple battles and proving that Daein had no chance in stopping them. 

If Ike and co. had known about the Blood Pact at this point, I'm sure they would have done exactly what you suggest, however. There was no way they could have expected Daein to fight an obviously losing battle on behalf of Begnion, especially so soon after the occupation. 

Edited by Radiant Dragon
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  • 2 weeks later...

Oh yeah, another example of reusing maps that managed to pull it off really well is Chapter 5x and Chapter 8 of Sacred Stones. Like 80% of that map is the same as the one played earlier but it's made completely different by the addition of that 20% and the fact that you approach the throne from a different direction. If you didn't know it was the same location thanks to the plot, I think a lot of players would outright miss the fact that it's basically the same map. The subtle differences go a long way.

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  • 1 year later...
On 3/17/2017 at 10:21 PM, Rezzy said:

Tellius continues the proud tradition of re-using Bridge Maps.  I don't know why people hate that map so much.  Well, I guess it's from the pitfalls, but they never bothered me as much as I guess it does some.

For me what made the map annoying was that in no other map in the game had pitfalls. It feels added just to make it slower for the players. The Magic barriers added more pain.

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4 hours ago, Jingle Bells said:

For me what made the map annoying was that in no other map in the game had pitfalls. It feels added just to make it slower for the players. The Magic barriers added more pain.

Well, for the rest of the game the players actions were the pitfalls, not in-game pitfalls.

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