Should we have high expectations for the Story?

[Ivy Wife Supremacy]

After Echoes great reception I severely hope it follows suit in story, characters, gameplay and presentation but my expectations are very low for FE16 especially when Avatars are still on their mind and the whole pairing stuff I'd like a break from that to see if it is not necessary which it isn't I like established canon pairs which are natural and lovely over pairing random people just cause....

[Anacybele]

As others have said, my expectations are low due to Awakening and Fates. Awakening's story just sucks, imo, and while I thought Fates Birthright was an alright story, I then saw Conquest and Revelation get shit on all the time. I never played them fully, so I can't say this opinion myself, but it does hurt my expectations here.

The reason Nintendo seems to shy away from story in their games though, is probably Miyamoto's weird mindset that games don't need stories to be good. And while he IS correct here in a sense, it's been hurting series like Paper Mario and FE because they were previously loved for the stories they told (generally). I'm actually not a BIG fan of The Thousand-Year Door gameplay-wise, but I admit its story is excellent. Super Paper Mario has my favorite story in the Paper Mario series and one of my favorite video game stories ever. Tellius in FE has another one of my favorite video game stories ever. I also liked the story in Sacred Stones. But we haven't seen anything like that in a long time.

And another thing, while games may not necessarily NEED a story to be good, it certainly doesn't hurt them to have a good one, come the fuck on, Miyamoto. Would SMG2 REALLY have been a big failure if that little extra story bit on Rosalina had been included? And I bet you Paper Mario: Sticker Star wouldn't be one of the most hated games I've ever seen if he'd have just let IS do what they actually wanted with it and made new partner characters and more story.

Miyamoto doesn't control anything in the FE series, no, but I bet his mindset has rubbed off on some people who do.

Edited May 25, 2017 by Anacybele

[Spoiler Alert]

The thing about expectations is to keep them at a reasonable level.  Best case scenario you end up pleasantly surprised, and worst case scenario it’s a bummer but you get over it.  I generally expect a solid story out of Fire Emblem, and that's the attitude I'm going to try to maintain with whatever game comes next.  A few cliches here, a mild twist there, and an ending that’s generally satisfying.

Being ever the optimist, I think taking a low opinion of a story that hasn't happened yet doesn't really help anyone or anything.  It risks killing enthusiasm and looking for confirmation bias (You see, I knew it would be bad!).  Really, as long as the game is fun as a whole, story included, then I probably won’t be too disappointed with whatever Intelligent Systems comes up with.

[Harvey]

35 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

As others have said, my expectations are low due to Awakening and Fates. Awakening's story just sucks, imo, and while I thought Fates Birthright was an alright story, I then saw Conquest and Revelation get shit on all the time. I never played them fully, so I can't say this opinion myself, but it does hurt my expectations here.

The reason Nintendo seems to shy away from story in their games though, is probably Miyamoto's weird mindset that games don't need stories to be good. And while he IS correct here in a sense, it's been hurting series like Paper Mario and FE because they were previously loved for the stories they told (generally). I'm actually not a BIG fan of The Thousand-Year Door gameplay-wise, but I admit its story is excellent. Super Paper Mario has my favorite story in the Paper Mario series and one of my favorite video game stories ever. Tellius in FE has another one of my favorite video game stories ever. I also liked the story in Sacred Stones. But we haven't seen anything like that in a long time.

And another thing, while games may not necessarily NEED a story to be good, it certainly doesn't hurt them to have a good one, come the fuck on, Miyamoto. Would SMG2 REALLY have been a big failure if that little extra story bit on Rosalina had been included? And I bet you Paper Mario: Sticker Star wouldn't be one of the most hated games I've ever seen if he'd have just let IS do what they actually wanted with it and made new partner characters and more story.

Miyamoto doesn't control anything in the FE series, no, but I bet his mindset has rubbed off on some people who do.

Uhhh...ok the only thing right you got here is that he's not part of IS and the story thing...

But the rest of it makes no sense considering that IS intended to make fates have a better story after how people didn't like awakening's.

 

[Anacybele]

Just now, Harvey said:

But the rest of it makes no sense considering that IS intended to make fates have a better story after how people didn't like awakening's.

When did they say this? I don't remember such.

[Harvey]

It is mentioned in the Iwata asks interview. The writers kid didn't like awakenings story and then they also mentioned how they read feedback for awakenings story.

 

[Skynstein]

41 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

The reason Nintendo seems to shy away from story in their games though, is probably Miyamoto's weird mindset that games don't need stories to be good.

It's not a weird mindset. It's a correct one. :P

But RPG is a little different because it requires lore and likable characters and all that stuff that other genres could do without.

[Refa]

On 5/24/2017 at 1:16 AM, Thane said:

Anyway, I don't have high hopes for the story. Fire Emblem's overarching plots, at least in the games I've played, have all been relatively weak, with the best parts being the character interactions and subplots rather than the main goal of the adventure. While the storytelling has improved considerably in Echoes, the writing is really questionable in a lot of places, and many of the new characters fall absolutely flat on their faces. 

Keep in mind that basically every character in Echoes might as well be a new character considering how much dialogue they had in FE2.  Even if you hated every single new addition to the cast, that's still a lot more hits than misses by a significant margin.

[Thane]

10 minutes ago, Refa said:

Keep in mind that basically every character in Echoes might as well be a new character considering how much dialogue they had in FE2.  Even if you hated every single new addition to the cast, that's still a lot more hits than misses by a significant margin.

Oh for sure. However, what they directly added to improve the plot didn't do it for me.

[Refa]

1 minute ago, Thane said:

Oh for sure. However, what they directly added to improve the plot didn't do it for me.

So it didn't improve the plot then

I'm curious as to what you mean by that.  The only significant deviations from the source material were the additions of Berkut/Fernand and I know you dislike both of them, but is there anything else you have an issue with?  Nothing else comes to mind for me.

[Thane]

Just now, Refa said:

So it didn't improve the plot then

I'm curious as to what you mean by that.  The only significant deviations from the source material were the additions of Berkut/Fernand and I know you dislike both of them, but is there anything else you have an issue with?  Nothing else comes to mind for me.

I don't want to derail this thread, so send me a PM if you're okay with discussing Shadows of Valentia spoilers.

[Refa]

Sorry, my bad.  As for the thread topic itself, having high expectations for anything can only lead to disappointment.  It's better to go in with low expectations and if the end product (in this case, the story) is great, then that's great!  That's how I went into Echoes, anyways.

[TadpoleSuperHero]

On 5/24/2017 at 1:50 AM, Harvey said:

we are getting to the point that IS/Nintendo may just ditch out stories in future FE games

 

No way that's going to happen. Your perspective on the criticism is not as wide-reaching and extreme as you make it sound, to the point where IS would actually consider eliminating story entirely. And beyond that, it's clear that, even when the stories don't stick the landing (or completely explode into a flaming ball of garbage like Fates), the writers involved on each Fire Emblem game are trying to make a compelling narrative. They want great stories, even if they don't always succeed at it. And it's clear that writing groups change a lot over there, which likely bodes well for the series (especially judging from Echoes - the story is pretty simple and predictable, but that's not a bad thing when it's so incredibly well-written that it's engaging and enjoyable from beginning to end). Just because two games - Awakening and Fates - have, in the vocal part of the fandom's eyes, bad stories, doesn't mean that Intelligent Systems is approaching a breaking point where they'll just abandon story altogether. That's absurd, and also ignores that there are those who enjoy Awakening and Fates for their stories (I enjoy Awakening... but definitely not Fates). 

They'll simply keep trying with each game. Some games will have great stories, some will have good ones, and hopefully no more will have Fates-type-bad stories going forward. And even Fates, it seems clear if you look into it that the writers involved were trying very hard to craft something amazing, but they just failed on every single level (mostly from a management and planning standpoint, which can ruin even a great concept if handled poorly). Fates has some fantastic concepts and ideas, it's the execution that failed, for more reasons than we will likely ever know. 

It's definitely not time to preach doom and gloom for storywriting in Fire Emblem. That's just silly. As for whether to have high expectations, I always stick to the same mantra: "Have high hopes, and low expectations." Even when games, predictably, don't measure up to my high hopes, I'm rarely disappointed. Look forward to what could be, while tempering your expectations for what will be. 

[Thane]

2 minutes ago, TadpoleSuperHero said:

That's absurd, and also ignores that there are those who enjoy Awakening and Fates for their stories

Not only that, it ignores those who enjoy Fire Emblem in general. Without a proper context to what's happening, there's no need to get invested, and most certainly not in the individual, unique characters, which Nintendo itself has said is a major selling point. 

[shadowofchaos]

4 minutes ago, TadpoleSuperHero said:

*Many great points*

Remember when Radiant Dawn was considered by said vocal part of the fandom to be utter crap?

The vocal part of the fandom will always have problems with something.

[TadpoleSuperHero]

8 minutes ago, shadowofchaos said:

Remember when Radiant Dawn was considered by said vocal part of the fandom to be utter crap?

The vocal part of the fandom will always have problems with something.

I wasn't hanging out on forums or involved with the fandom around Radiant Dawn's release, just quietly playing the games and loving them all by myself, so I had no idea there was a vocal group that hated Radiant Dawn. Doesn't surprise me, though. 

 

10 minutes ago, Thane said:

Not only that, it ignores those who enjoy Fire Emblem in general. Without a proper context to what's happening, there's no need to get invested, and most certainly not in the individual, unique characters, which Nintendo itself has said is a major selling point. 

Right! And the ones who are upset about certain stories in recent entries aren't making any kind of argument that stories should vanish. They are angry precisely BECAUSE they want great stories, and expect that from FE's history of having some pretty great stories, so when a newer game doesn't deliver, they're angry. Not because story should disappear, but because they want it to be better. 

[Thane]

1 minute ago, TadpoleSuperHero said:

Right! And the ones who are upset about certain stories in recent entries aren't making any kind of argument that stories should vanish. They are angry precisely BECAUSE they want great stories, and expect that from FE's history of having some pretty great stories, so when a newer game doesn't deliver, they're angry. Not because story should disappear, but because they want it to be better. 

That is indeed why I've got a bit of a reputation when it comes to criticizing stories in Fire Emblem; I want them to be as good as they can be, because they've got such amazing potential. I only want Intelligent Systems to really nail it, and also move away from so many of the series' traditions which often seem to come back to bite them. 

While maybe not all of them are feasible, it's incredible what kind of story suggestions you can see every once in a while on the forum which would fit beautifully in a Fire Emblem game. 

[Corrobin]

I'll just say that I'm hoping for the best and expecting the worst, and leave it at that.

[Harvey]

9 hours ago, Thane said:

Not only that, it ignores those who enjoy Fire Emblem in general. Without a proper context to what's happening, there's no need to get invested, and most certainly not in the individual, unique characters, which Nintendo itself has said is a major selling point. 

There are some games that don't tend to have forgettable characters so I don't see how well developed characters can be done without a story that makes them well developed.

Hector's character wouldn't have been well thought had it not been for the story. And the same goes for Ike as well.

 

[Slumber]

45 minutes ago, Harvey said:

There are some games that don't tend to have forgettable characters so I don't see how well developed characters can be done without a story that makes them well developed.

Hector's character wouldn't have been well thought had it not been for the story. And the same goes for Ike as well.

 

This is why Echoes does characters well.

Many characters have a lot of lines in the main story.

A smaller, tighter cast than what we've been getting since RD would be a good idea, I think. SoV has like... 30ish characters? I think a little more than that with an FE that has a larger budget would be the sweet spot.

As much as people keep saying "MORE MORE MORE" in regards to like... everything in FE, with 60-70 characters per game, the characters end up getting stretched super thin.

[Thane]

1 hour ago, Harvey said:

There are some games that don't tend to have forgettable characters so I don't see how well developed characters can be done without a story that makes them well developed.

Hector's character wouldn't have been well thought had it not been for the story. And the same goes for Ike as well.

I'm unsure what you're trying to say. Are you agreeing with me? Because I said a story is needed to contextualize the characters.

[Harvey]

27 minutes ago, Thane said:

I'm unsure what you're trying to say. Are you agreeing with me? Because I said a story is needed to contextualize the characters.

Oh sorry then my bad.

 

[Ivy Wife Supremacy]

On 5/25/2017 at 7:06 AM, SlipperySlippy said:

Whilst I agree that Avatars have always negatively impacted the story in terms of the Fire Emblem franchise, I am actually interested in an Avatar for Switch since customisation potential will hopefully be increased with the updated graphical capabilities on the Switch.

I wish it'll be similar to Sonic Forces custom hero in the sense you can choose races like human, manaketes, shape shifters etc and portrait appearance that'll reflect in game of course better hairstyles and accessories for male and include eye color options.

[The DanMan]

Nope. They've struck out three times in a row with crap (Awakening), crappier (Fates), and slightly less than crappier (SoV). Unless they fire their whole writing staff I don't see improvements in the near future.

[Nobody]

As someone who doesn't care about the story in Fire Emblem at all, since I see them once and them skim them at like every other playthorugh of the games (and i replay them a lot, before echoes came out I just beat conquest for the 15th time or so), I do think Intelligent Systems SHOULD try to write a story as good as possible for their games, as long as it doesn't deviate resources from the gameplay, which I doubt would even happen. So, yeah, we should expect a good story, and people should call out bad stories if they want to. I'd much rather have a fire emblem game with utter crap story and great gameplay (Conquest), than the opposite, BUT, there's no correlation between having a bad story and good gameplay, it's possible for both to be good in a game.