(spoiler discussion) What do you think of the story?

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Tolvir said:

Hmm, I seriously thought it said he came back. Glad to know I was wrong then, probably should of double checked instead of spouting off based on recent memory.

I got the Archanea stuff from what familyplayer said, he was in a FE3 Manga in one of the cities in Archanea. I dont exactly hold it as canon, but Archanea is the only place he could logically go, since outside of that there really isnt any confirmed other continents around there. Just fan theories and speculation.

Regardless though, its one of the ending I hate the most. Like Ike's it just ends up creating more questions than it does any true ending to a story, which shouldnt be the case. We are never going to revisit these characters, Alm and Celica's story is over, there is no real reason to return. And I highly doubt a FE3 remake for the second time is likely. So there is really no reason to create so many questions that will never be answered for a character ending. You do that kind of ending in order to leave a few strings untied for a later story. This created new strings and then just dropped them on the floor.

Deen apparently went to explore a continent in the South with his original Gaiden ending. Maybe it was originally intended to be Archanea but that's now established firmly to be in the east. It wasn't in the remake so you could chalk it up to retcon. There's also Jugdral which is pretty firmly held as being on the same planet (I mean it's possible Naga and Gale went through the Outrealm Gate but we have no reason to believe they did especially with the Deadlords and Holy Weapons popping up in Awakening like they did). Though if there really is a southern continent I would expect it to have a vastly different climate to the other ones. Like Europe-Africa and North America-South America. Jugdral has the largest desert area in the series I believe but even that got really cold simply because of winter in a way not typical in the tropics...You know what I think I'll make a topic about the southern continent.

Edited June 4, 2017 by Jotari

[Tolvir]

10 hours ago, Jotari said:

Deen apparently went to explore a continent in the South with his original Gaiden ending. Maybe it was originally intended to be Archanea but that's now established firmly to be in the east. It wasn't in the remake so you could chalk it up to retcon. There's also Jugdral which is pretty firmly held as being on the same planet (I mean it's possible Naga and Gale went through the Outrealm Gate but we have no reason to believe they did especially with the Deadlords and Holy Weapons popping up in Awakening like they did). Though if there really is a southern continent I would expect it to have a vastly different climate to the other ones. Like Europe-Africa and North America-South America. Jugdral has the largest desert area in the series I believe but even that got really cold simply because of winter in a way not typical in the tropics...You know what I think I'll make a topic about the southern continent.

Sounds interesting. Didn't Kaga say Jugdral was supposed to be on the same continent? Could of sworn I have seen something from an interview or something like that.

[Locke087]

Personally I thought the story was pretty incredible for a NES game and the best one FE has had since 9. Full voice acting, actual world building, and characters who took themselves seriously helped prop it up to the best story in the series has had in a long time.  I really enjoyed being able to talk to characters in buildings as well it harkens back to the base conversations in FE 9 & 10, memory prisms were also really cool and I enjoyed them a lot. While it is not the best story in the series (though it is certainly up there as low of a standard some would argue that being) though I could see a argument for why it is and it has problems as does literally everything, but I'd argue the presentation for the story is in a league of its own as far as FE is concerned. Anything less than full voice acting would be a horrible thing to not have an all future games, and FE Switch has zero excuse not to include it. I also hope some of the storytelling feature this game finds its way to FE Switch such as being able to talk to villagers and companions outside of support conversations. 

Edited June 4, 2017 by Locke087

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Locke087 said:

Personally I thought the story was pretty incredible for a NES game and the best one FE has had since 9. Full voice acting, actual world building, and characters who took themselves seriously helped prop it up to the best story in the series has had in a long time.  I really enjoyed being able to talk to characters in buildings as well it harkens back to the base conversations in FE 9 & 10, memory prisms were also really cool and I enjoyed them a lot. While it is not the best story in the series (though it is certainly up there as low of a standard some would argue that being) though I could see a argument for why it is and it has problems as does literally everything, but I'd argue the presentation for the story is in a league of its own as far as FE is concerned. Anything less than full voice acting would be a horrible thing to not have an all future games, and FE Switch has zero excuse not to include it. I also hope some of the storytelling feature this game finds its way to FE Switch such as being able to talk to villagers and companions outside of support conversations. 

On that note (not sure if this is the place to discuss it but I don't feel like making a dedicated thread), was anyone else sorted of irritated that they didn't provide free roaming in villages and instead opted for that menu select system? You could free roam in the original Gaiden and the free roaming mechanics are already in there with the dungeons. All it did was save time on modelling the village areas (which they did pretty detailed anyway for the menu selection process). Just made the game feel like it was way lower budget than it is. It's the sort of thing I expect in a game like Phoenix Wright (where it's appropriate) or a piece of shovelware I picked up on the eshop for 2 bucks (where such a system is pretty unavoidable for the game's budget). Like if it was in any other Fire Emblem game I'd probably be fine with it but don't give me full control of my characters and then needlessly take it away! Especially egregious in the final dungeon where if you run through it again you randomly get taken to the talk/move/etc screen just because that's the spot where Fernand died or something.

Edited June 4, 2017 by Jotari

[Locke087]

24 minutes ago, Jotari said:

On that note (not sure if this is the place to discuss it but I don't feel like making a dedicated thread), was anyone else sorted of irritated that they didn't provide free roaming in villages and instead opted for that menu select system? You could free roam in the original Gaiden and the free roaming mechanics are already in there with the dungeons. All it did was save time on modelling the village areas (which they did pretty detailed anyway for the menu selection process). Just made the game feel like it was way lower budget than it is. It's the sort of thing I expect in a game like Phoenix Wright (where it's appropriate) or a piece of shovelware I picked up on the eshop for 2 bucks (where such a system is pretty unavoidable for the game's budget). Like if it was in any other Fire Emblem game I'd probably be fine with it but don't give me full control of my characters and then needlessly take it away! Especially egregious in the final dungeon where if you run through it again you randomly get taken to the talk/move/etc screen just because that's the spot where Fernand died or something.

That definitely would've added to the experience and would be a large improvement over what's here. But it probably would've been well over there budgetary restrictions for this project. The developers probably only resorted to the current method because of a lack of time or money.  I think this is a decent compromise and definitely is a overall improvement over having neither. But maybe this can be something that a game with a more ambitious budget like FE Switch could do... a man can dream.  

Edit:  Another reason why this perhaps was done was to eliminate what would be a decently jarring transition between 3-D movement and the conversation system,  though they could find a way to work around this and make it feel natural.

Edited June 4, 2017 by Locke087

[r_n]

The villages being novel-esque is honestly a lot better. They could add more detail, made it easier to examine things and, honestly, free roaming the dungeons is kind of really clunky. Needing to manually travel all over a village to get places in this engine would be kind of....eughhh....
Really just for gameflow reasons, making the villages like they are now was for the best. Maybe if FE Switch refines all those mechanics and has more of a budget they can try it out, but here? Nah im good.

 

Anyway I just beat Berkut for the last and while I enjoy the story and dialog and so on 2 things bug me:

1. Celica is a bit too naive in thinking Jedah would uphold any part of his bargin, but this is a pretty well worn trope so whatever. At least the rest of her party goes "what no thats stupid you cant do that what are you thinking" even if it falls on deaf ears (twice). But it happened in Gaiden so I guess there's not much they could do here without rewriting the entire sequence from the ground up (which they probably should have done but whatever its no Conquest).

2. I don't like how Berkut's plotline ended. I really think it would have been better served if he had survived and atoned for what he did to Rinea (and also, to Alm to an extent). From the sound of things he was totally able to be saved until Rinea appeared and then he just gives up to be with her. And my is Rinea easily forgiving of her fiance sacrificing her soul to duma for petty revenge and a cool lance!

[FireEmblemFan93]

55 minutes ago, r_n said:

The villages being novel-esque is honestly a lot better. They could add more detail, made it easier to examine things and, honestly, free roaming the dungeons is kind of really clunky. Needing to manually travel all over a village to get places in this engine would be kind of....eughhh....
Really just for gameflow reasons, making the villages like they are now was for the best. Maybe if FE Switch refines all those mechanics and has more of a budget they can try it out, but here? Nah im good.

 

Anyway I just beat Berkut for the last and while I enjoy the story and dialog and so on 2 things bug me:

1. Celica is a bit too naive in thinking Jedah would uphold any part of his bargin, but this is a pretty well worn trope so whatever. At least the rest of her party goes "what no thats stupid you cant do that what are you thinking" even if it falls on deaf ears (twice). But it happened in Gaiden so I guess there's not much they could do here without rewriting the entire sequence from the ground up (which they probably should have done but whatever its no Conquest).

2. I don't like how Berkut's plotline ended. I really think it would have been better served if he had survived and atoned for what he did to Rinea (and also, to Alm to an extent). From the sound of things he was totally able to be saved until Rinea appeared and then he just gives up to be with her. And my is Rinea easily forgiving of her fiance sacrificing her soul to duma for petty revenge and a cool lance!

Well Rinea whole character sums up too 'I am nothing but a love interest and nothing more'

[r_n]

24 minutes ago, FireEmblemFan93 said:

Well Rinea whole character sums up too 'I am nothing but a love interest and nothing more'

There's hints of more to her but they're fleeting and probably just link right back to "i love only you berkut". Unfortunate on several levels.

[familyplayer]

Rinea's most unique trait is that she likes dancing and likes to do so in her garden. And this is only mentioned in a memory prism. 

Edited June 5, 2017 by familyplayer

[r_n]

10 hours ago, familyplayer said:

Rinea's most unique trait is that she likes dancing and likes to do so in her garden. And this is only mentioned in a memory prism. 

She doesn't care for battle judging by how she reacted to the whole zofia castle assault.

That's..................something!

 

Well at least she had a neat design.

[FireEmblemFan93]

5 hours ago, r_n said:

She doesn't care for battle judging by how she reacted to the whole zofia castle assault.

That's..................something!

 

Well at least she had a neat design.

Pretty generic though ?

[Pixelman]

The story's good, but it's the voice work that makes it good, not the story itself

If there were no voice acting it'd probably just be alright, mediocre even.

[familyplayer]

13 hours ago, Pixelman said:

The story's good, but it's the voice work that makes it good, not the story itself

If there were no voice acting it'd probably just be alright, mediocre even.

I know that Berkut's story would probably have been less emotional to me if the VA for him hadn't been as amazing as he was. Hope mostly complete voice-acting becomes more common. 

[r_n]

14 hours ago, Pixelman said:

The story's good, but it's the voice work that makes it good, not the story itself

If there were no voice acting it'd probably just be alright, mediocre even.

Yeah this is my big takeaway. If it wsn't there, i'd still enjoy it because I enjoy "ok but serviceable" stories (I still enjoy awakening's story, for instance), but the voice work really brings it to life. It helps its all such nice voice work too; mediocre or bad VA would have ruined this.

 

 

So I beat the game last night, and while I had some issues with how quickly it wrapped up and how plot points were flung at you and celica's naivety i still pretty enjoyed it. I think it helps that there was SOME relative explanation and talking of different actions. 
But the most baffling thing to me was the end narration. Like that is some really depressing notes to leave off on, that man will grow slothful again and cause terrible wars that will kill many many people. Usually, when a story leaves on that note they then follow with something akin to "but, just as always, people will come together and stop it again just as much". Not here! There's going to be terrible people doing terrible wars and do terrible things to other people. No moral!

Which is weird since it's almost certainly meant to be a direct reference to Awakening where the war was, as always, stopped.

[SnowFire]

I largely liked Echos's story, especially after Fates had some major ball-drops in its plot.  Additionally, when the game has plot elements that might be weird or implausible, they at least have characters react like you might expect; Alm being offered leadership of the Deliverance is a good example.  Yes, this is a surprise, but Alm / Fernand are astonished, so sure, it's a surprise in-setting too.  Anyway, there's nitpicks and there's thematic problems.  Thematic problems are much harder to fix.  My two big theme complaints:

* As others have noted, Alm having royal blood undercuts Act I pretty hard.  This would be fine if characters had time to grapple with this and comment on it, but it could easily lead to "Oh, I guess commoners are scum after all, that explains why you're so awesome, Alm!  Welcome to the club!  Let's go oppress some peasants now."  There's interesting ways you could take this plot element, but as is, it's just have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too; Alm is a peasant hero who understands the working man's toil, but ALSO has super speshul magic tattoos and a destiny.  Pick one!

* Rudolf.  Ugh.  This is more of a "Japan" thing since Rudolf's plotline has showed up before, but the narrative is way, way too light on Rudolf.  Sure, you can argue the game lets Berkut off the hook too much for his later evil acts, but eh, deathbed repentance is a classic trope, and he had a good reason to be angry.  Rudolf is basically proto-Walhart, and he has the same problem: uhh, game, forcing a big war to force humanity to become stronger, and traumatizing his son & nephew, are NOT the acts of a nice or sane person!  Nor close!  The plot could have treated him as someone with the germ of a good idea who went crazy, or had him be possessed, or have him outright change sides halfway through and make C4 all about fighting the Duma Faithful (if he's so strong, shouldn't he be helping fight Duma, just as he beat up Mila?), or a number of other options.  Instead, the game insists that his plan was somehow rational and reasonable, endorsed by Mycen & all.  No!  No it's not!  Suicide-by-son is crazypants, so is driving your nephew insane, so is starting a big war which will make people weaker, not stronger!  Just write him as a villain, not a tragic hero.  Ugh.  At least Walhart was vaguely hinted that had he conquered the other continent, he'd have wrecked both of Grima / Naga in the process, hence the Grimleal not liking him either.  Rudolf seems to have totally forgotten what he was up to.  (And he's not willing to kill his son directly in battle, but he'll kill his sons friends?  Right, father of the year award here.)

The Rudolf one is bad.  Reminds me of how FE9 properly thought of the Black Knight as a villain, then FE10 flipped the script and decided that murdering Greil because he wanted an anime ultimate duel was perfectly rational and Ike gets it and it's no big deal.  No!  No no no!  Crazy motivations are fine, just write them as villains that need to be taken out!

[BrightBow]

Playing through the game a second time currently, I feel rather confident in saying that Celica's side is just bad. Not as infuriating awful like Awakening and Fates but still pretty bad.

Until Part 4 it essentially just feels like a sightseeing tour. Just a serious of random events with nothing to really connect them to a larger character arc or narrative. I get that Celica spends most of her time merely fighting bandits and pirates that don't matter in the large scale of things but Grieth's final line: "There’s gonna be…another me… There’s always…another…me… " definitely gives me the impression that they could have formed these parts of the game into a good story.

But the biggest falling of that part of the story is that it fails to properly develop Celcia as a character. I mean, it starts out promising. Before she leaves, Nomah asks her if she wants to wait a little longer to listen to the bell that rings due to her father's dead, to which she responds that she will never see that guy as her father. But this is never really elaborated on. Why does she hate her father? What are her father's failing according to her? I mean, in her reunion with Alm at the end of the Part 2 he really pisses her off when he unknowingly insults her father, which causes her to aggressively defend him and throw accusations at Alm:

Alm: Do you think I WANTED this fight? This all started because Lima IV went and angered the empire. If you wish to point fingers, point them at the ruler who failed his people. It’s his fault we’re in this mess.

Celica: That’s not… Well, so what if it is? Maybe you should go become king if it’s such a damnably easy job!

...

Celica: You’re awfully free with accusations for a boy with no idea what royalty entails! And now that you’re a “hero,” I imagine the throne is next on the list, is that it?

So clearly she doesn't consider him to be a completely horrible person. Either way, this is never really followed up upon as far as I can tell. We have one scene where she basically says: "Fuck that guy!" And another where she almost literally says "Well, why don't you do better if it's that fucking easy?!" with nothing to really give context to those two very different reactions.

I never really got a sense of why she does what she does. Like, what does royalty entail according to her? She does a lot of good on her journey but I never got the impression that she does this out of some sort of responsibility to protect her people or anything like that. Alm gets challenged a lot on his journey, which gives him good opportunities to show what makes him tick and why he fights on. But I don't see Celica getting moments like that. Like, when Grieth reveals that he knows that she is the princess of Zofia and sarcastically thanks her for letting the country decay into a place where men like him can thrive, she simply says "You may think yourself something fine… but your days as a predator are done." What's the point of giving Grieth this elaborate speech when Celica isn't affected by it in any way and gives such a shallow stock response?

The Grieth part and those other little scenarios that make up Celica's journey feel utterly inconsequential, which includes Celica's character development. Which becomes a problem once Part 4 comes around. Her actions in that part are highly controversial to say the least and I find myself unable to defend them. Towards her friends' concerns, she merely responds aggressively, telling them that they don't know how she is feeling. And unfortunately I think that Celica leaves the audience just as much in the dark as she does her friends. To me it just ends up looking like she acts the way she does out of plot convenience. At the end of the day, the only thing I feel like I really know about Celica is that she likes Alm a lot. For everything else I'm left to guess.

The addition of the Conrad part doesn't help either. The story makes Celica act like a dumbass just so that Conrad can look like a hero and save her. And the last thing Celica's story needed were more moments of plot-contrived idiocy like that.

 

What makes the story's failure to develop Celica particular damning is that her entire journey is completely inconsequential. I mean, her whole mission was to find/save Mila. Which she failed to do. In the end her journey merely leads to her being captured and becoming a damsel for Alm to save. So with no real character arc or anything else to give her journey meaning, her story ends up just being a huge waste of time. Jedah could have just kidnapped Celica right at the beginning and the story would not have lost anything of value.

Edited June 8, 2017 by BrightBow

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, BrightBow said:

Playing through the game a second time currently, I feel rather confident in saying that Celica's side is just bad. Not as infuriating awful like Awakening and Fates but still pretty bad.

Until Part 4 it essentially just feels like a sightseeing tour. Just a serious of random events with nothing to really connect them to a larger character arc or narrative. I get that Celica spends most of her time merely fighting bandits and pirates that don't matter in the large scale of things but Grieth's final line: "There’s gonna be…another me… There’s always…another…me… " definitely gives me the impression that they could have formed these parts of the game into a good story.

But the biggest falling of that part of the story is that it fails to properly develop Celcia as a character. I mean, it starts out promising. Before she leaves, Nomah asks her if she wants to wait a little longer to listen to the bell that rings due to her father's dead, to which she responds that she will never see that guy as her father. But this is never really elaborated on. Why does she hate her father? What are her father's failing according to her? I mean, in her reunion with Alm at the end of the Part 2 he really pisses her off when he unknowingly insults her father, which causes her to aggressively defend him and throw accusations at Alm:

Alm: Do you think I WANTED this fight? This all started because Lima IV went and angered the empire. If you wish to point fingers, point them at the ruler who failed his people. It’s his fault we’re in this mess.

Celica: That’s not… Well, so what if it is? Maybe you should go become king if it’s such a damnably easy job!

...

Celica: You’re awfully free with accusations for a boy with no idea what royalty entails! And now that you’re a “hero,” I imagine the throne is next on the list, is that it?

So clearly she doesn't consider him to be a completely horrible person. Either way, this is never really followed up upon as far as I can tell. We have one scene where she basically says: "Fuck that guy!" And another where she almost literally says "Well, why don't you do better if it's that fucking easy?!" with nothing to really give context to those two very different reactions.

I never really got a sense of why she does what she does. Like, what does royalty entail according to her? She does a lot of good on her journey but I never got the impression that she does this out of some sort of responsibility to protect her people or anything like that. Alm gets challenged a lot on his journey, which gives him good opportunities to show what makes him tick and why he fights on. But I don't see Celica getting moments like that. Like, when Grieth reveals that he knows that she is the princess of Zofia and sarcastically thanks her for letting the country decay into a place where men like him can thrive, she simply says "You may think yourself something fine… but your days as a predator are done." What's the point of giving Grieth this elaborate speech when Celica isn't affected by it in any way and gives such a shallow stock response?

The Grieth part and those other little scenarios that make up Celica's journey feel utterly inconsequential, which includes Celica's character development. Which becomes a problem once Part 4 comes around. Her actions in that part are highly controversial to say the least and I find myself unable to defend them. Towards her friends' concerns, she merely responds aggressively, telling them that they don't know how she is feeling. And unfortunately I think that Celica leaves the audience just as much in the dark as she does her friends. To me it just ends up looking like she acts the way she does out of plot convenience. At the end of the day, the only thing I feel like I really know about Celica is that she likes Alm a lot. For everything else I'm left to guess.

The addition of the Conrad part doesn't help either. The story makes Celica act like a dumbass just so that Conrad can look like a hero and save her. And the last thing Celica's story needed were more moments of plot-contrived idiocy like that.

 

What makes the story's failure to develop Celica particular damning is that her entire journey is completely inconsequential. I mean, her whole mission was to find/save Mila. Which she failed to do. In the end her journey merely leads to her being captured and becoming a damsel for Alm to save. So with no real character arc or anything else to give her journey meaning, her story ends up just being a huge waste of time. Jedah could have just kidnapped Celica right at the beginning and the story would not have lost anything of value.

It could have been expanded on a bit better but I think Celica has very mixed feelings towards her father. To the extend that I don't think the two cited reactions are really all mutually exclusive. Sure, he was a massive dick who kind of raped her mother but he still was her father. That's not a defense per se and a lot of people would dismiss it or to make it further grounds to hate someone but I think a lot of people would hold it in stock. No matter what happens you're never going to have a blood parent other than the ones that did make you, no matter how much you might or might not wish it (or claim to wish it). She does make a third reference to him in the ending that shows the middle point of her feelings a bit clearer I think. She says something along the lines of "If I was by his side then perhaps things would have turned out differently." Which gives me the impression that she now pities him more than anything else.

One character I'm really surprised they didn't expand upon is Nomah. He's basically to Celica what Mycen is to Alm. An elder mentor figure who sort of raised them. Yet Nomah's role in the plot is to see Celica off and then...randomly show up in the Temple of Mila without an adequately explained reason as to why he didn't just go with her in the first place? I mean him getting lost is sort of funny but I still feel his character deserves a bit better than that.

[DIO]

On 6/7/2017 at 2:25 AM, SnowFire said:

I largely liked Echos's story, especially after Fates had some major ball-drops in its plot.  Additionally, when the game has plot elements that might be weird or implausible, they at least have characters react like you might expect; Alm being offered leadership of the Deliverance is a good example.  Yes, this is a surprise, but Alm / Fernand are astonished, so sure, it's a surprise in-setting too.  Anyway, there's nitpicks and there's thematic problems.  Thematic problems are much harder to fix.  My two big theme complaints:

* As others have noted, Alm having royal blood undercuts Act I pretty hard.  This would be fine if characters had time to grapple with this and comment on it, but it could easily lead to "Oh, I guess commoners are scum after all, that explains why you're so awesome, Alm!  Welcome to the club!  Let's go oppress some peasants now."  There's interesting ways you could take this plot element, but as is, it's just have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too; Alm is a peasant hero who understands the working man's toil, but ALSO has super speshul magic tattoos and a destiny.  Pick one!

* Rudolf.  Ugh.  This is more of a "Japan" thing since Rudolf's plotline has showed up before, but the narrative is way, way too light on Rudolf.  Sure, you can argue the game lets Berkut off the hook too much for his later evil acts, but eh, deathbed repentance is a classic trope, and he had a good reason to be angry.  Rudolf is basically proto-Walhart, and he has the same problem: uhh, game, forcing a big war to force humanity to become stronger, and traumatizing his son & nephew, are NOT the acts of a nice or sane person!  Nor close!  The plot could have treated him as someone with the germ of a good idea who went crazy, or had him be possessed, or have him outright change sides halfway through and make C4 all about fighting the Duma Faithful (if he's so strong, shouldn't he be helping fight Duma, just as he beat up Mila?), or a number of other options.  Instead, the game insists that his plan was somehow rational and reasonable, endorsed by Mycen & all.  No!  No it's not!  Suicide-by-son is crazypants, so is driving your nephew insane, so is starting a big war which will make people weaker, not stronger!  Just write him as a villain, not a tragic hero.  Ugh.  At least Walhart was vaguely hinted that had he conquered the other continent, he'd have wrecked both of Grima / Naga in the process, hence the Grimleal not liking him either.  Rudolf seems to have totally forgotten what he was up to.  (And he's not willing to kill his son directly in battle, but he'll kill his sons friends?  Right, father of the year award here.)

The Rudolf one is bad.  Reminds me of how FE9 properly thought of the Black Knight as a villain, then FE10 flipped the script and decided that murdering Greil because he wanted an anime ultimate duel was perfectly rational and Ike gets it and it's no big deal.  No!  No no no!  Crazy motivations are fine, just write them as villains that need to be taken out!

Funny, I could've sworn writing characters as 'villains that need to be taken out' was one of the more vocal criticisms the 3DS generation of games has been knocking with. It's not like Rudolf PLANNED for Berkut to go nuts; just an unfortunate side-effect of having to deceive his nephew to keep his son safe. The point is that Rudolf wasn't nice, but he DID know what was coming and what would need to be done in the not-so-distant future. Say he decides to take matters directly into his own hands; he slays Mila and Duma and becomes a tyrant, meaning that his bloodline and the peace he took upon himself from insane gods would be wiped out at most shortly after his inevitable death. What he did by orchestrating his son; a boy that was born with the Brand that would mark him as a unique player in the final rounds of the dragon's rule over Valentia, to be given a normal life with his 'grandfather' and one day become the face of a rebellion and the most popular choice for the throne, was the most calculated and best-case scenario that he could've asked for.

 

Rudolf sacrificed a chance of being a father and what's surely his place in history as a noble and just ruler in order to give his son the means to truly unite the lands and free them from the reign of Gods. The Duma Faithful are just as much threats to Rudolf as they are to the Zofian/Deliverance side of things. the Faithful want to not only keep mankind under the claws of dragons, but specifically Duma. And he KNEW that if Alm was revealed with the brand, the Faithful would kill his son or try to sacrifice him to bring about their ambitions. Remember that Duma's teachings favor might; the strong survive, the weak cower. Whatever scores of bodies lain cold will be balanced or succeeded by the few that earn their survival.

[SnowFire]

DIO: Different issue.  I think the complaint is too many "rargh I eat babies and enjoy evil" enemies (e.g. Garon, Iago, Validar, Medeus, Gharnef, etc.).  Having a few is fine, but sure, too many of those are bad; Shadow Dragon & New Mystery were both offenders here, having half the villains be "I'm here to commit evil for no particular reason" and half "Mind-controlled by the bad guys."  However, there's another type of bad character: the villain who's supposed to be the sympathetic one who Isn't Really A Villain where the authorial narrative makes it clear this guy is super-cool and all the characters fawn over them, despite their actions being actually super-evil.  Something like Conquest Corrin & Azura, for example; they're SUPPOSED to be the good guys, but clearly shouldn't qualify.  They either should have been written darker, or else have had a plan with less causalties & collateral damage.  (Trails of Cold Steel has another nasty example of this, but spoilers.)

The problem is a combination of Rudolf's plan making zero sense and it being a morally abominable plan even if we grant it as making sense to begin with.  Killing Mila makes sense, sure, and sending off Alm...  well, that's a classic plot trope that is older than Moses, so sure, people love hidden princes in the countryside.  The whole war with Zofia part and fighting Alm rather than the Duma Faithful part if his true enemy was Duma is the problem.  If we suppose that he DID want to unite the lands, all he had to do was do it; he's the boss!  Announce that Alm is his son and the new ruler of a combined Valentia.  Done.   It's not clear why this would have less legitimacy than Alm killing him and taking the throne by right of might or something.  The story doesn't claim that Rigel is like the Game of Thrones Greyjoys where they force new kings to fight it out and swear to pay the Iron Price or something; presumably there's been peaceful succession of power before.  But fine, let's say Rigel does, and Alm needs to murder him in single-combat to unite the lands.  That still doesn't let him off the hook for starting a vast war that was basically an excuse to level-up Alm.  Presumably there were a bunch of off-screen causalties on both sides, and there were on-screen casualties from the Rigelians and Desaix supporters!  While I question the idea of war actually making man stronger so that they can fight Gods in the first place (plenty of examples of war ruining a country, not making it stronger...), even if it DID make them strong enough to fight Duma, we're still talking some dark anti-hero plotlines here.  Talk about a terrible sacrifice to accomplish what you wanted.  If rather than war, Rudolf had arranged some kind of mass human sacrifice that had the power to kill Duma that killed the same number of people as the war, would that read as more obviously villainous?  I don't think the narrative would have wise nodding with Mycen explaining "Yup, our only choice was to throw all these innocents into the cauldron, screaming, to get a magic spell powerful enough to take Duma out."

Finally, if the real threat was the Duma Faithful, and war makes man strong or something, then wouldn't fighting the Duma Faithful also do the trick?  Make it so he bans them in Chapter 4 and fights them with Alm.  You can claim that half his soldiers desert or something, and if you don't want to let him join the party have there be an assassination attempt that wounds/kills him, but presumably fighting Duma would be easier if more people were doing it.  Alm's forces + Rudolf loyalists vs. DF seems better than Alm's forces vs. Rudolf's army + DF.

Vanilla evil villains are bad, but villains whose plots are also evil but the game acts like is sensible annoy me.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, SnowFire said:

DIO: Different issue.  I think the complaint is too many "rargh I eat babies and enjoy evil" enemies (e.g. Garon, Iago, Validar, Medeus, Gharnef, etc.).  Having a few is fine, but sure, too many of those are bad; Shadow Dragon & New Mystery were both offenders here, having half the villains be "I'm here to commit evil for no particular reason" and half "Mind-controlled by the bad guys."  However, there's another type of bad character: the villain who's supposed to be the sympathetic one who Isn't Really A Villain where the authorial narrative makes it clear this guy is super-cool and all the characters fawn over them, despite their actions being actually super-evil.  Something like Conquest Corrin & Azura, for example; they're SUPPOSED to be the good guys, but clearly shouldn't qualify.  They either should have been written darker, or else have had a plan with less causalties & collateral damage.  (Trails of Cold Steel has another nasty example of this, but spoilers.)

The problem is a combination of Rudolf's plan making zero sense and it being a morally abominable plan even if we grant it as making sense to begin with.  Killing Mila makes sense, sure, and sending off Alm...  well, that's a classic plot trope that is older than Moses, so sure, people love hidden princes in the countryside.  The whole war with Zofia part and fighting Alm rather than the Duma Faithful part if his true enemy was Duma is the problem.  If we suppose that he DID want to unite the lands, all he had to do was do it; he's the boss!  Announce that Alm is his son and the new ruler of a combined Valentia.  Done.   It's not clear why this would have less legitimacy than Alm killing him and taking the throne by right of might or something.  The story doesn't claim that Rigel is like the Game of Thrones Greyjoys where they force new kings to fight it out and swear to pay the Iron Price or something; presumably there's been peaceful succession of power before.  But fine, let's say Rigel does, and Alm needs to murder him in single-combat to unite the lands.  That still doesn't let him off the hook for starting a vast war that was basically an excuse to level-up Alm.  Presumably there were a bunch of off-screen causalties on both sides, and there were on-screen casualties from the Rigelians and Desaix supporters!  While I question the idea of war actually making man stronger so that they can fight Gods in the first place (plenty of examples of war ruining a country, not making it stronger...), even if it DID make them strong enough to fight Duma, we're still talking some dark anti-hero plotlines here.  Talk about a terrible sacrifice to accomplish what you wanted.  If rather than war, Rudolf had arranged some kind of mass human sacrifice that had the power to kill Duma that killed the same number of people as the war, would that read as more obviously villainous?  I don't think the narrative would have wise nodding with Mycen explaining "Yup, our only choice was to throw all these innocents into the cauldron, screaming, to get a magic spell powerful enough to take Duma out."

Finally, if the real threat was the Duma Faithful, and war makes man strong or something, then wouldn't fighting the Duma Faithful also do the trick?  Make it so he bans them in Chapter 4 and fights them with Alm.  You can claim that half his soldiers desert or something, and if you don't want to let him join the party have there be an assassination attempt that wounds/kills him, but presumably fighting Duma would be easier if more people were doing it.  Alm's forces + Rudolf loyalists vs. DF seems better than Alm's forces vs. Rudolf's army + DF.

Vanilla evil villains are bad, but villains whose plots are also evil but the game acts like is sensible annoy me.

The only legitimately "rargh I eat babies and enjoy evil" villain in Shadow Dragon are Gharnef. Medes isn't much better with his sit on the throne and do nothing attitude but the rest are quite nuanced in their depiction. Jiol is a brute but his motivations are pretty limited to making sure his country prospers. He's not sacrificing anyone to dark cults or opressing people. Camus is the face of conflicting loyalties (however stupid you might find it) and Micahilies is a less brutish version of Jiol, willing to kill for his kingdom's prosperity and actually said to be, on the whole a good king and a reasonable man. That might fall into the second complaint you're making but personally I rather like how the narrative showed both his good and bad traits in plain light. He was definitely still a villain all things said and done. Just not an inherently evil one.

New mystery fairs worse having significantly less villains. Whatshisname Lang is a pretty standard massive dick for the sake of it, Gharnef is as even as evil as ever and Medeus is as actionless as ever. The orphanage woman is being controlled by Gharnef and is rather boring but I think her underlings manage to have a bit of nuance to them. And then there's Hardin who sort of is a "argh I eat babies and enjoy evil" villain but one resulting from a tragic backstory and manipulation that a lot of people like.

 

Also the Greyjoys in Game of Thrones don't fight each other for leadership. They have inheritance just like everyone else. In fact in lieu of a clear heir they very progressively vote on the matter.

Edited June 9, 2017 by Jotari

[RJWalker]

Nobody is saying Rudolf's plan is morally correct. The game doesn't either. But it was 100% necessary. Make no mistake, had Mila and Duma been allowed to contine as they were, the results would have been far more devastating. Draconic degeneration is very real. Tiki, a freaking newborn child, was sealed away for eternity (and would have remained sealed if not for Bantu) as the damage she could cause if she went mad was just that serious. What two full powered divine dragons would have to done to the world is on a whole new level.

I don't know why people keep bringing up the question of why Rudolf didn't just go after the Duma Faithful. Did theses people completely miss the point? Getting rid of the Duma Faithful from the start would solve nothing. Absolutely nothing. Rudolf cannot unite the continent just by slaying gods. That would just cause more chaos.

[DIO]

4 hours ago, RJWalker said:

Nobody is saying Rudolf's plan is morally correct. The game doesn't either. But it was 100% necessary. Make no mistake, had Mila and Duma been allowed to contine as they were, the results would have been far more devastating. Draconic degeneration is very real. Tiki, a freaking newborn child, was sealed away for eternity (and would have remained sealed if not for Bantu) as the damage she could cause if she went mad was just that serious. What two full powered divine dragons would have to done to the world is on a whole new level.

I don't know why people keep bringing up the question of why Rudolf didn't just go after the Duma Faithful. Did theses people completely miss the point? Getting rid of the Duma Faithful from the start would solve nothing. Absolutely nothing. Rudolf cannot unite the continent just by slaying gods. That would just cause more chaos.

It's kind of funny; for all this prater about grounded villains and relate able experiences, the truth is the majority of the Fire Emblem worlds are just one moody dragon's rampage away from utter annihilation. the Rigelian empire, the Duma Faithful, Desaix's little power play, they don't mean SQUAT when a dragon finally succumbs to its maddness and gives into baser instinct. 'Go after the Faithful', they're nothing more than cultists; they have the connections and means and are indeed quite a threat, but nothing, NOTHING compared to the powers of the dragons. Not to mention the fact people don't seem to understand that Rudolf might know what was going to happen, but he also knew that he was NOT the one that could make the transition smooth or peaceful. Like thinking that the Emperor announcing some bumpkin from their hated enemies is his son and worthy of their trust; actions speak louder than words, especially in Rigel...

[SnowFire]

RJWalker / Dio: Sure, I'm not contesting that the game has Duma as a big threat.  (And by "attack the Duma Faithful" I meant "attack Duma too."  Basically Celica's Act 4 + Act 5.)  I'm contesting the "attack Zofia and fight Alm" strategy for dealing with Duma that Rudolf adopts. 

Let's take another scenario.  I enter a room where Alice & Bob are fighting.  I know that Bob is a huge danger.  So...  I punch Alice in the face?  Then after Alice stabs me back, I tell Alice to go take out Bob?  Why didn't I just attack Bob to begin with and at least attempt to form an alliance with Alice?  (Replace "Alice" with "Alm" and "Bob" with "Duma".)

Re RJWalker's point, the ending implies the continent is largely happily united under Alm & Celica via the classic strategy of "marry the scions of the two royal families."  Which is fine!  This is something that, historically, has happened quite a bit, for a rare case of realism (England & Scotland, Castile & Aragon, even Spain & Portugal for a time). If it worked after a brutal war, why couldn't it have worked without a brutal war?  Doesn't everybody talk about how awesome Rudolf is, and Zeke even follows his instructions to help out Alm?  It'd have been worth a shot.  (Answer: Because then it wouldn't be a Fire Emblem game and there'd be less gameplay.  So it's not like I'm asking them to rewrite the plot to remove the war, just not write the war as actually having a bizarre heroic excuse despite it being a war between two sides that hypothetically agree Duma is the real enemy who needs to be taken down...)

[RJWalker]

Your analogy is completely off the mark.

And wrong. Duma is not the real 'enemy'.

Attacking Duma first accomplished nothing. Rudolf's goal is to unite the continent under the leadership of someone that both sides accept. This is impossible without the war.

And you also completely misunderstood the political marriage thing. Alm and Celica's marriage is not a political one. Celica is irrelevant to the picture. Zofia already sees Alm as their liberator and are perfectly willing to accept him as their king. You ask why this wouldn't work without a brutal war? do you think Rudolf would be able to kill Duma, then go kill Mila and then still be seen as anything but a monster by both Rigel and Zofia? Why would they accept his son as ruler?

It really seems that most people critical of Rudolf's plan simply do not understand Archanea's lore. 

Rudolf attacking Duma first would not do anything because then he would be in no position to seal Mila since he would lose the support of the Duma Faithful. The war has to happen because Zofia and Rigel cannot unite without one.

Edited June 11, 2017 by RJWalker

[eclipse]

The story was okay.  Definitely a product of another time, though.  It says something when my favorite character in the game was Conrad.