When did Fates plot stop working for you?

[Quiver]

I'm something of an apologist for media. I'd prefer games to have GOOD stories, of course, but when I'm playing a game I like, or watching a show I enjoy, I will have a tendancy to fill in the blanks in my head; "Oh, this makes sense because the writer is doing X"; "Character Y isn't acting out of character, hypocrisy is a human flaw"; "Z is meant symbolically". 

I give that preamble to drive the fact that I was not engaged with Fates plotline home. 

The only route I've played to completion thus far as been Birthright, which was... fine. I guess. Nothing about it really hooked or engaged me, frankly; I didn't feel like the Royal Family really had that much depth or personality to them, particularly in the case of Ryoma. The maps where Corrin faced off against the Nohrian Royals at least showed some signs of internal conflict on both sides.
Meanwhile, the lack of a map like the one in Awakenings meant... I really couldn't judge where we were or how far our rebellion had gone from Hoshido. I felt sort of aimless, just going from map to map without any sense of where it fit into the big picture.

It's not that nothing about Birthright interested me; as I say, I had interesting scenes with the Nohrian nobles. But I found myself enjoying that story more for the head canons I was making from it. I liked Takumi's possession storyline and the connection he had with Azura, so I supported them as a pairing; that then made the sequence towards the end of the game where Takumi is fully possessed more dynamic for me. Similarly, I liked pairing Oboro with Silas, since that made for an interesting story regarding prejudice. I liked Hinoka's background as a sky knight, even though it never came up in the main plot line.

But... that was all me doing stuff outside the main story; grinding out supports, making supposition about characters feelings and intentions. For the main story itself, I just... didn't really care. It was a serviceable plot line, but there was nothing that really hooked or engaged me, no interesting conflicts or dynamics among the cast themselves. As I say, the most interesting part of the game came from certain support plotlines, and from Corrin's interaction with the Nohr nobles, rather than with his "real" family members. I kept playing through the plot of Birthright, waiting for the shoe to drop and for some major revelation to occur and... it never did. We just went on a straight path from point A to point B and finished the game. 

So characterization never really gripped me. In terms of plot mechanics and direction, however... it was probably the detour to the Rainbow Sage. While I was willing to roll with things until that point, that particularly side-step was so sudden, so out of the way of what we had previously been doing, it shot any suspension of disbelief I had left to bits.

I'm currently making my way through Conquest, so I don't really want to weigh in on that one just yet.

Edited April 5, 2017 by Quiver

[Etrurian emperor]

With Birthright I think the better question was when the plot started to work for me. Only once inside the walls of Garon's castle did I feel the plot truly went further then merely going from point A to B with some reasons to get into fights along the way. Its not that something dragged the plot down but that there was nothing to lift it up.

For conquest the plot stopped working me during the later half. For the first half I think there are some defenses to be made for Conquest. Corrin goes through a little crash course in managing Garon while finding his own way in how to go about that, and even Garon, GARON! has a moment where he is more or less reasonable, saying it doesn't matter if Corrin completed his task to the exact letter but that he achieved it at all. 
But in the later half Corrin turns into a complete doormat that clearly doesn't find his own way to fulfill daddy's orders and Garon turning out to be Gooron robs him of any chance of development or a chance of him showing interesting behavior and motivation.
The later half is also so intent of keeping Corrin's hands clear that the motivations of the enemy quickly turn nonsensical. Kotaro has no reason to stab Corrin in the back, in fact he has all the reason in the world NOT to do it. Fuuga on the other hand has every reason in the world to hate Norh, they attacked his village, killed his best friend and murdered his first love who is also the mother of his child. Despite this Fuuga only wants to fight as a test of strength and otherwise is pretty content on being buddies with the people who keep murdering his loved ones. 

[The DanMan]

I can't really say-- I dived right into spoilers and adjusted my expectations. I really only paid attention the plot out of first playthrough obligation and curiosity in little changes the localization may have made that makes things a bit better (there's a few).

[Rex Glacies]

When the games were first released Birthright was advertised as being easier and having a simpler story, while Conquest would be harder and have a more complex story. That would be why you found Birthright's story so lacking- it was meant to be small. It's incredibly unfortunate, as I found Birthright to be the best out of all three. It was mostly standard, yes, but a standard story is better than a bad story.

Conquest, on the other hand, was always going downhill, and fell into the Bottomless Canyon by Chapter 15 (small pun is intentional). i don't want to spoil anything, but that was the point when the plot stopped working. After that that chapter, Corrin just makes stupid decision after stupid decision, and somehow escapes unharmed and devoid of suspicion from Garon.

Revelations was chapter 7. Azura just tells Corrin some plot-breaking information that she apparently knew throughout the other games, yet never said, which made the entirety of Revelations seem like a joke and everything that happens in Birthright and Conquest irrelevant.

[John_of_Valentia]

When Corrin had unexplained amnesia Ch 1.

[greensea1997]

when corrin is the only person with pointy ears when others not

[SullyMcGully]

When Corrin meets Garon and doesn't immediately say, "hey peeps, this dude is apparently evil beyond belief. I don't want to be his son any mo'!"

Yeah, but Corrin's amnesia sucked and was never really explained satisfactorily.

[Jotari]

Conquest was fine up until the opera scene. Then they pulled the whole "Where's Azura? Oh look, a dancer. She's a witch! Kill all the dancers! oh hi Azura, did you see that dancer who  looks just like you?" Then they immediately managed to top it with the monstrously contrived "speak about this outside of here and you'll die" curse. It's like something a nine year old would write. And really, how much of the plot would have changed if there was no curse and Azura was just as in the dark about the Valla stuff as Corrin? Revelations gets off to a bad start by having this plot point from the get go but Birthright manages to be decent if a bit unambitious throughout, It's only real flaw being that it kind of ignores the whole war and just has you walking right up to Garon's throne room like a Zelda game or something.

[Refa]

As soon as I heard Corrin's voice acting.  This isn't just a Corrin problem, of course.  The voice acting in this game was such a step back from Awakening that it made it incredibly hard for me to initially get invested in any of the characters (and yes, I know this IS petty as fuck).  It's pretty hard to get engaged with an FE plot (for me, at least) when the characters have to surpass this initial barrier to click with me.

[shadowofchaos]

Birthright was pretty vanilla FE. So it wasn't as bad.

Conquest... yeeeeah. I threw out story pretty much immediately.

Rev... that curse. Yeah no.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

For Conquest it was when Corrin decided his Nohrian siblings can't handle the truth about their father and kept it from them. I also wanted to flip a table during Hinoka's line "it is what it is" during the ending. Corrin is a selfish brat and an unjust martyr.

I remember very little about what happens in Birthright, but I played that second and didn't know how to feel when they cured the final antagonist of conquest in like chapter 9. I wanted to object to such a simple solution but also felt the final antagonist in general for conquest was extremely contrived. Xander continuing to fight and die for his country is probably the more appropriate point to bring up.

Revelations gives away who the traitor is way too soon. And I feel the Nohrian siblings really should have had the dead parent chat with Garon's spirit, especially since Garon ends up affecting none of the plot in this story. It would have seriously redeemed Conquest if we got a firsthand example of Garon being a just ruler and father but that was too much to ask. Plus Corrin should not become king of Valla, Azura should rule since in this path she actually comes back to save her people. 

[Extrasolar]

Conquest: Corrin and Azura's "plot" to expose Garon, and how utterly stupid and destructive it is. I know, guys, let's completely conquer and destroy Hoshido because we can't even think about telling our siblings that our father who's obviously not acting like himself isn't the father that we knew and loved! Sorry, Hoshido, looks like we're throwing you all under the bus for this. It just went downhill from there.

Made the entire ending feel hollow, because you kind of royally fucked over a completely innocent kingdom because you didn't think that your beloved siblings who have themselves noticed Garon's odd behavior wouldn't believe you unless they were staring proof right in the face? Did we have to wait until we literally saw Garon dripping all over the throne in order to take action against a crazy madman?

Birthright: I honestly have no complaints with this one. It made sense from start to finish, and nothing big really stuck out as stupid. Corrin joining Hoshido and bringing the fight to Garon after everything they've been through in the early game makes a lot of sense. It's safe, standard, and non-insulting good guys defeat bad guys. I'll take it any day over Conquest and even Revelations.

Even Xander's stubbornness at the end didn't bother me the first time around. I thought the tragic moment was well done for the most part, and the appropriately-easy battle worked for what had happened in the story, and it wasn't until I played Conquest that the Xander character assassination that spanned all of Fates' story, on every single path, became clear to me, and it lost a bit of its effect.

Revelations: Most definitely the curse. To me it felt like a contrived and lazy way to explain Azura's secretive nature. Oh, we never learned about this gigantic spanner in the works continent- and world-affecting mad god and his kingdom because you can't mention the name outside of the kingdom itself, or else you'll vanish into the aether! ...Like, are you kidding me? Lazy convenience never makes for a good story.

Edited April 5, 2017 by Extrasolar

[Etrurian emperor]

5 minutes ago, Extrasolar said:

Conquest: Corrin and Azura's "plot" to expose Garon, and how utterly stupid and destructive it is. I know, guys, let's completely conquer and destroy Hoshido because we can't even think about telling our siblings that our father who's obviously not acting like himself isn't the father that we knew and loved! Sorry, Hoshido, looks like we're throwing you all under the bus for this. It just went downhill from there.

Made the entire ending feel hollow, because you kind of royally fucked over a completely innocent kingdom because you didn't think that your beloved siblings who have themselves noticed Garon's odd behavior wouldn't believe you unless they were staring proof right in the face? Did we have to wait until we literally saw Garon dripping all over the throne in order to take action against a crazy madman?

 

To be fair the siblings don't really prove such thoughts wrong themselves. Before entering the Hoshidan throne room Xander even tells Corrin that they will turn on him if Garon doesn't turn out to be a blob monster after all.

The siblings did notice Garon was acting weird but for Xander and some extend Leo it really takes Garon being a blob monster or him saying he's going to destroy the world in front of them for them to do anything about it. 

[BrightBow]

Honestly, it was when it was announced that marriage would be in the game. Because if marriage was in the game, that meant you would be able to marry Camilla. And if IS was okay with letting you marry your siblings, then that would mean that they didn't give a shit about the story and it's supposed themes about family bonds.

So by the time I started Conquest, any positive expectations I had for this game's plot were long dead. Still, some of those scenes were nevertheless shocking, to think that they were not actually written with the intent of making the audience hate Corrin. I don't want get into specifics since the OP is still playing through Conquest but let's just say that the game went from cringy to utterly infuriating over time.

Edited April 5, 2017 by BrightBow

[Extrasolar]

5 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

To be fair the siblings don't really prove such thoughts wrong themselves. Before entering the Hoshidan throne room Xander even tells Corrin that they will turn on him if Garon doesn't turn out to be a blob monster after all.

The siblings did notice Garon was acting weird but for Xander and some extend Leo it really takes Garon being a blob monster or him saying he's going to destroy the world in front of them for them to do anything about it. 

Except they don't do anything about it until the very end, and that's only because they can pat themselves on the back and absolve themselves of any responsibility of being the tools of an evil madman because it wasn't really their dad.

Which makes it all the more frustrating. The siblings call themselves decent people and they clearly object to slime Garon's destructive orders, with Xander having the gall to say that the war at the end was pointless. It's like, yeah...no shit. You all knew that from the get-go, but were too scared to say or do anything about it until Hoshido is literally in flames.

Even if they thought Garon was real Garon, it's clear that he's too far gone to go back now. When he orders Xander to kill Corrin, it should be a tip-off, and that's at the beginning of the game. The siblings are clearly shown to be far closer to one another than Garon in the first place.

Edited April 5, 2017 by Extrasolar

[Thane]

It's hard to say. I quickly realized I wouldn't enjoy Fates' story when I played through it, and the more I thought about it the less sense it made and the more I understood the depths of how poorly it was written.

But the revelation (ZING) that the only thing that allowed the game to be split up in the first place was Azura's arbitrary silence in Birthright and Conquest was really the straw that broke the camel's back. 

[Quiver]

5 minutes ago, BrightBow said:

So by the time I started Conquest, any positive expectations I had for this game's plot were long dead. Still, some of those scenes were nevertheless shocking, to think that they were not actually written with the intent of making the audience hate Corrin. I don't want get into specifics since the OP is still playing through Conquest but let's just say that the game went from cringy to utterly infuriating over time.

On the topic of marriage...

Maybe it's just me, but I am having a really hard time getting supports done in Conquest. And the reason I say that's a problem is because I feel like I'm "supposed" to be using the supports to fill in the characterisation (and yes, set up marriages)... but the lack of being able to grind means I'm not really supporting very many characters. My Kamui is probably going to end up with Arthur, Silas or Leo for the sole reason of "I've happened to amass some supports with these guys". Which I don't think is the way it should have gone.

(I fully acknowledge this as my problem rather than the games though; I basically played things wrong. Still, locking characterisation behind a support system and limiting the ability to support doesn't sound like a good idea in this case, since Fates dilemma should be a character based one. It's a character-based story, where you have to work to get any sort of characterisation from the characters involved, which feels... misguided.)

[Extrasolar]

11 minutes ago, Quiver said:

On the topic of marriage...

Maybe it's just me, but I am having a really hard time getting supports done in Conquest. And the reason I say that's a problem is because I feel like I'm "supposed" to be using the supports to fill in the characterisation (and yes, set up marriages)... but the lack of being able to grind means I'm not really supporting very many characters. My Kamui is probably going to end up with Arthur, Silas or Leo for the sole reason of "I've happened to amass some supports with these guys". Which I don't think is the way it should have gone.

(I fully acknowledge this as my problem rather than the games though; I basically played things wrong. Still, locking characterisation behind a support system and limiting the ability to support doesn't sound like a good idea in this case, since Fates dilemma should be a character based one. It's a character-based story, where you have to work to get any sort of characterisation from the characters involved, which feels... misguided.)

You're not the only one. On my playthrough of Conquest, I found that it was very much "beat the chapter with all of the units alive first, and if you can, try to get the pairings you want." A lot of them in the end did come down to pure luck with people that happened to be standing next to each other during the mad scramble to stay alive. And like you said, in a character-based story, when the gameplay at times is an obstacle to the story progression, you've got some problems...

My Corrin ended up with Laslow just because Laslow is just such a beast that I could slap the two of them together no matter what happened, and go from there (granted, it worked out because I do like Laslow a lot). Before Laslow, I was gonna pair Corrin with Niles, since their support built pretty fast, as Niles' amazing use as a rare Conquest bow meant I spammed him as much as possible.

[Res]

2 hours ago, SullyMcGully said:

When Corrin meets Garon and doesn't immediately say, "hey peeps, this dude is apparently evil beyond belief. I don't want to be his son any mo'!"

This, honestly. The plot fell apart before it even started. And if Corrin is THAT naive, they have no business commanding an army. 

[Florete]

I would say the plot never really started to work for me in the first place.

I went through Conquest first, and for some time it was fine, nothing really wrong, but it didn't feel like the plot had really "begun" for a long time, much longer than it should have. Taking Garon's "tests," random filler chapters, and then eventually we hit Ch 21 and I felt like stuff was actually happening, but even then it rarely "worked."

Birthright didn't have the same problem, I was just never invested in the plot there.

Revelation was banking on the stupidity that was Valla and while I didn't consciously think of it at the time, deep down I knew it was doomed from the start. Eventually it just became laughable, and to this day I don't really know what Corrin is supposed to be the queen of or who lives there.

[Thane]

3 minutes ago, Florete said:

Revelation was banking on the stupidity that was Valla and while I didn't consciously think of it at the time, deep down I knew it was doomed from the start. Eventually it just became laughable, and to this day I don't really know what Corrin is supposed to be the queen of or who lives there.

This has got to be the most random event in the entire series. Apparently Ryouma and Xander donate land or something, but for what purpose? When did this get decided? Not once did Corrin go "you know what? Ruling a nation would be sweet". I mean who does he think he is, Kamui? 

Wait...

[Augestein]

For me. I felt like this: 

Revelations: this was the first path I did, so I didn't really know what to expect. However, I'd say the story started to get a bit boring around the time that you get to Valla. The plot curse is a silly premise, but at least it continues to roll with it. Even if it IS stupid. 

Conquest: It was kinda weak all around, but what killed it for me was Ch. 15 where you realize that you're in ... Valla. 

Birthright: is a bad joke that goes on for hours. It's bland, boring, and still manages to have things that still reach the levels of stupid that are in Revelations and Conquest. Which honestly makes it worse in my opinion. It's safe AND bad. 

 

 

[r_n]

The exact moment Azura pulled out a magic orb and decided to show only Corrin and literally no one else at which point the remnants of the plot became 'we must support garon's war so we can get him on the magical chair that will reveal his true colors' and it only got stupider and more infuriating from there. There's just. SO many things wrong with Conquest's plot in particular and i still think about how much I hate it months later.

Actually no that's a lie, i was starting to drop off when Leo tried to present "we'll stall for time, letting SOME of the dancers escape!" as a noble and good thing that hte siblings do to rebel against garon withotu actually doing thing

ACTUALLY WAIT NO the plot started to lose me at the decision point. Conquest Corrin's reasoning for going back to Nohr (i have to hear from garon the truth of what happened) is nonsensical considering everything outlined in Birthright. And then it just......doesn't matter! Garon goes "nope didnt no such a tragedy, ok kill him" then we spend 5 chapters sending Corrin into death and this line of reasoning is never mentioned again.

There were so many different possible, interesting ways to go about conquest and they went with none of them.

 

Birthright was fine. The worst thing that happens is it feels kind of just going to set piece to set piece and corrin doesn't do much. It's just kind of boring most of the time. But I was significantly more invested in Corrin & the war despite this because it had things like, like...talking to people! I had pathos for his sibling conversations, damn it! The only other exceptionally stupid plot thing is xander (the worst) at the end and that's less plot and more character moment.

Revelation was more my brand of stupid, one I can more easily forgive. Even if the curse is still as stupid as it was in the other routes.

[Sasori]

In my opinion conquest's story stopped working when the invasion of Hoshido begin. I actually thinked the early part of conquest worked out pretty well. Corrin tries to be a reforming factor and his goody two shoes act works initially, then his hopes get brutally crushed in Chev and after that on the advice of Leo Corrin decides to pretend loyalty, while trying to play damage controll when Garon isn't looking.

And then the plot started to make a nosedive when they decided to attack Hoshido.

Birthrights plot was boring, but functional, but I think it stopped working whenever Xander showed up. Garon is such a cartoonishly evil villain that whatever Xander had to say in defense of Nohr stopped having any vallue.

[Hero_Lucina]

Either when Scarlet was killed off or when how badly the Anthony arc was executed. I have two ways of that going. One where he's essentially Team Rocket and the other where Rev is rewritten entirely and the whole thing makes more sense.