Jump to content

Evidence to suggest Valentia was originally not a continent


Jotari
 Share

Recommended Posts

So as of Awakening Valentia is a proper continent the size of Archanea (however big that might be, it has a mountain range comparable to the Alps at any rate). Yet it's my personal belief (you might call it head canon) that when it was originally designed (in a game literally titled Side Story) as a smaller landmass than it's predecessor. My reasons for thinking such are as follows.

*The opening text refers to it as a "remote island". Remote means hard to access so not necessarily small, Australia you could class as a remote continent, but it doesn't seem to be the case with how close the two continents are depicted in Awakening. Something like New Zealand would match the phrase much better.

*Enemy density is much smaller in this game. You commonly fight armies that only have five or six more units than you and in a lot of battles you actually out number the foe. Just a gameplay quirk? Perhaps but also possibly an indication of the population (the small sizes of the towns I would not use as a fact in favor as that's more likely down to technical and time limitations).

*There's a giant sluice that runs from one end of the island to the other. Even for a relatively small island this would be a massive undertaking to build. Now consider something the size of Europe or Africa. And it's not just some small canal, it something that could flood the entire southern half of the island. You might wave this by saying it was built by the gods (and indeed Mila's Temple is built into it) but even that is a massive technical achievement beyond what we see the Manakete's of Archanea achieve (I also believe Doma and Mila were always intended to be Manaketes but that's a different matter).

*Rigel Castle and Doma's Tower, depicted on the map as being half the width of the continent away, are seemingly within walking distance. Either that or Celica was transported to Rigel Castle? (if so it was nice of Judah to send her army with her since she only had like three allies in the preceding battles).

**EDIT: Actually the Sage's Hamlet confirms that Falchion is below the Tower of Duma. So yes, Alm absolutely does walk across half the landmass by moving to the right a few screens in gameplay.

*The timeline is pretty specific in Gaiden. Alm fights Necrodragons in the volcano, Celica gives herself up to save Alm. We then see her brought to the place of the final battle. So while Alm finishes of Rudolf, three gameplay maps, and then travels to Duma Tower, throughout all that time Celica is fighting Duma and Jeddah. This makes far more sense the smaller the landmass is. If it's tiny Alm could have beaten RUdolf in a matter of hours after coming down from the volcano, but the bigger things get, the larger the travel time becomes until we get to a ridiculous scenario where Celica has been fighting Duma in a cave for weeks if it were a decent sized continent.

*Camus somehow washing off the west coast of Archanea and ending up on the west coast of Valencia. This is pretty ridiculous no matter how you squint at it, but at least if Valencia is a smaller island, there's less land for him to circumnavigate to reach the place where he washed up.

Now obviously this isn't the case in the modern games since as I mentioned, Valm's just right there in Awakening. But I also think it's pretty clear Awakening didn't give a toss about consistent geography when deciding Awakening should be set in Archanea's world since trying to match geographical locations is a major headache (Wyvern Valley in Valm? Wyverns didn't even exist in Gaiden!). So what do you think? Is that enough to suggest Valentia is something more along the lines of Ireland rather than Europe for you? Or probably more important, do you like the idea of this being a big fish in a small pond sort of story for how major the conflict is? Share your thoughts and opinions. But try to keep Shadows of Valentia spoilers to a minimum as this is more about how Gaiden was originally designed and how Awakening changed it.

Edited by Jotari
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Interesting observation. Awakening was meant to the final game, and you can really tell by the way they threw content from all the games in there. I like the idea of Valentia being a remote island. Gaiden's environment suggests it, and you thoroughly analyzed everything. Care to explain why you think Doma and Mila were dragons all along? I like the idea of  them being gods, like Ashera and Yune. Doma's original appearance was definitely not a dragon. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Køkø said:

Interesting observation. Awakening was meant to the final game, and you can really tell by the way they threw content from all the games in there. I like the idea of Valentia being a remote island. Gaiden's environment suggests it, and you thoroughly analyzed everything. Care to explain why you think Doma and Mila were dragons all along? I like the idea of  them being gods, like Ashera and Yune. Doma's original appearance was definitely not a dragon. 

Well for one Duma clearly looks like a dragon if you look at his sprite. Made even more evident with his map sprite which has flapping wings. There's also the fact that he's slain with the same sword Marth used for dragon slaying purposes, you fight a load of dragons in his lair (and not just nerco dragons but the white, probably living, dragons too which are exclusive to that area) and Mila is depicted as having a human form (as we see her statues, also reinforced in the manga which also gives Duma very reptilian looking eyes in his monster form) just like Manaketes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

Well for one Duma clearly looks like a dragon if you look at his sprite. Made even more evident with his map sprite which has flapping wings. There's also the fact that he's slain with the same sword Marth used for dragon slaying purposes, you fight a load of dragons in his lair (and not just nerco dragons but the white, probably living, dragons too which are exclusive to that area) and Mila is depicted as having a human form (as we see her statues, also reinforced in the manga which also gives Duma very reptilian looking eyes in his monster form) just like Manaketes.

Bs_fe02_enemy_duma_fell_god_01.png 

 

Does that really look like a dragon to you? Fire Emblem doesn't explain much about gods but Yune could transform into a bird for some reason. Gargoyles have wings too, I don't think wings are exclusive to dragons and wyverns. The Valentian Falchion is different from Marth's version. Marth's Falchion is made from Naga's fang, and has effective damage against dragons. Alm's Falchion is effective against monsters, and Naga isn't mentioned in Valentia at all. They honestly should have named it something else. Fomortiis and Ashera have dragons in their service as well. Doma heavy usage of monsters such as Mogalls, Bonewalkers,and Gargoyles suggest he's akin to Fomortiis, rather than any dragon we've seen so far. Grima has Risen, but I don't consider Awakening canon. Do you think Fomortiis is a dragon too?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, I do think it looks like a dragon. It has some inspiration from the Lou Carcolh too but there's some definite draconic elements there.

Doma.png.0fcdc53c3baa532f8a2a459bb4cda6be.png

It's even more clear with his animated map sprite which is strangely hard to find online. If Formotiis looked so much like a dragon, was sealed by a dragon sealing sword and had actual living dragons hanging out in his cave then I'd be inclined to think him a dragon too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

Yes, I do think it looks like a dragon. It has some inspiration from the Lou Carcolh too but there's some definite draconic elements there.

Doma.png.0fcdc53c3baa532f8a2a459bb4cda6be.png

It's even more clear with his animated map sprite which is strangely hard to find online. If Formotiis looked so much like a dragon, was sealed by a dragon sealing sword and had actual living dragons hanging out in his cave then I'd be inclined to think him a dragon too.

Okay, I see what you're getting at. There's still the matter of the Falchion though. It's effective against monsters(not sure what exactly that refers to other than the non-human enemies), not dragons. Whatever element the monsters have, Doma possesses it too. It's the same in FE8, which was inspired by Gaiden. There's also the fact that none of the dragons in Gaiden are alive, they're corpses. Does this imply that Doma and Mila are the only two dragons on the continent? Why haven't they degenerated? There's definitely inspiration from the Lou Carcolh (slime,tentacles,snail shell), but eyeball beams? In Echoes he's stated to be a Divine Dragon. No Dragon of any kind is depicted this way. What's so special about Doma? 

Edited by Køkø
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Køkø said:

Okay, I see what you're getting at. There's still the matter of the Falchion though. It's effective against monsters(not sure what exactly that refers to other than the non-human enemies), not dragons. Whatever element the monsters have, Doma possesses it too. It's the same in FE8, which was inspired by Gaiden. There's also the fact that none of the dragons in Gaiden are alive, they're corpses. Does this imply that Doma and Mila are the only two dragons on the continent? Why haven't they degenerated? There's definitely inspiration from the Lou Carcolh (slime,tentacles,snail shell), but eyeball beams? In Echoes he's stated to be a Divine Dragon. No Dragon of any kind is depicted this way. What's so special about Doma? 

By the living dragons I mean the White Dragons you fight in the Treasury. I mean sure they still look a little off but I can pin that down to recoloring the sprite rather than making a whole new one. I think the mere fact that there are not Necro Dragons is meant to mean something. If they wanted to they could have just buffed the stats of regular necro dragons (although I doubt that would help much since Alm is probably tearing through everything by this point anyway) but instead they chose to assign a whole new enemy for that one very small role. I admit I could be wrong and they were intended to be just as dead as all the other dragons you fight in the game but considering they're made more explicably alive in the remake, I don't find it all unlikely that the original intention is that they were always living to begin with.

Course the question still remains as to what the white dragons are because they don't fit into any established dragon tribe in Archanea. Could they be weaker Divine Dragons somehow? Did Alm murder Duma's children!?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well retcon or not, Echoes is still a good game. I just hope they can expand beyond Lord vs. Evil Dragon and Evil Wizard. They've shown they're capable of it with Ike's games.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...