Ike's Dissonance

[Augestein]

23 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I don't believe an actual reason is given why Sanaki can't use the Holy Guard instead- even though it seems to be under her direct control with little oversight by the Senate. Perhaps she could hide her actions better this way- the Senate would be suspicious of the Holy Guard doing things and demand an answer, even if they can't block such actions. Whereas Sanaki can just excuse whatever she's having Ike do as "I'm just testing Princess Crimea's escort to see if she's worthy of Our aid" and then not given an exact answer as to what exactly she's having Ike do under grounds of confidential diplomacy. A mercenary group from within Begnion wouldn't have worked- as the Senate could ask what the Apostle was doing consorting with lowly mercenaries.

We do have to ask ourselves when Sanaki first conceived of this plan though. Was it established by the time she taunts Elincia? Given the GMs saved her life, it's possible that Sanaki already had her plan in mind by the time of Ike's outburst, given a few days to travel from the coast to Sienne and then a little time waiting for the formal reception of Elincia. In which case, Ike, while still possibly in danger of losing his life had he acted like a complete beast, may have in hindsight had little to fear from his outburst in the first place.

This has me thinking- how was Sanaki inculcated with such guilt towards the Massacre? She's only a child. Does her youth and innocence play a role? Perhaps Sephiran bred it into her? 

There isn't. And needing Ike is a really weak reason. She's the empress of the most powerful nation in the known world. I find it especially hard to believe that she'd ever need any specific group. Having Ike's group do things doesn't really work as a guise any better than having her right hand man do work. I get that it's the point to keep Ike and co. Important, but that's largely the problem. The game never actually treats Ike like a commoner, and the game wants to pretend like he is, and the only reason he can get things done is because of his own competence, when the reality is that it's just the writer going way out of their way to make things work. 

 

Serenes Forest Massacre doesn't excuse Ike talking to Sanaki like that. It doesn't excuse anyone talking to anyone like that. It wasn't even her fault. 

[fangpoint333]

Serenes Massacre wasn't that long ago. It's still fresh in the mind of a lot of people. Most everyone feels guilty about it.

I assume she needed him for those missions because he has no ties to the senators and is loyal to Elincia and thus wouldn't compromise the mission by having a chance to be in their pocket. He's also sympathetic to the laguz which would also reduce the risk of him not carrying out the mission properly. Also since they're relatively unknown it would have helped them not stick out. If she just picked some of her holy guard, they would have stuck out like a sore thumb while busting up a slave trading ring. There's a good chance any soldiers would have a conflicting loyalty to the Senators.

[Baldrick]

49 minutes ago, fangpoint333 said:

There's a good chance any soldiers would have a conflicting loyalty to the Senators.

When Sanaki openly denounces the Senators in RD, it's noted that public opinion is split because the Senators are also believed to be chosen by the goddess. Even in PoR, it's implied they aren't on the best of terms, so Sanaki would want to be as discreet as possible when trying to stop the slave trade so as not to aggravate them.

[Jotari]

Yeah, the mere fact that Sanaki was successfully over thrown (rathe easily from what we could see) in the sequel is more than enough proof that the senators are people she has to deal with from a safe distance.

[ping]

@Augestein: Heh, and now I've been offline for like a week. In the meantime, NekoKnight summarized my opinion about this in this post better than I could. Your complaints seem like you wanted an enforced Murphy to take over the game - every scene should have had the worst thinkable outcome.

The GM should have been dispanded, even though the ones remaining don't really act OOC when they stay - Titania seems more comfortable in the role of an advisor, and the three bros see the GM as a replacement family. Mist and Rolf should have died because of Ike's grave misjudgement when he just chased after them. The dragons should just have incinerated Ike when he stepped on their soil. And Sanaki should just have Ike be beheaded, even though she's quite consistently shown to have rather 'modern' ethic standards, not only when dealing with Ike.

I'll concede that Ike is quite lucky over the course of his journey, but I do not think that the characters around him have to be bent and twisted in order for the story to not come to a sudden end despite his continued bluntness. It's rather that the 'good guys' in Tellius tend to be good, not lawful and not very vindictive (with the prominent and understandable exception of Reyson), which may be a valid point against Tellius's setting in general, but not really a sign that Ike gets special treatment.

[Augestein]

5 hours ago, ping said:

 

I'll concede that Ike is quite lucky over the course of his journey, but I do not think that the characters around him have to be bent and twisted in order for the story to not come to a sudden end despite his continued bluntness. It's rather that the 'good guys' in Tellius tend to be good, not lawful and not very vindictive (with the prominent and understandable exception of Reyson), which may be a valid point against Tellius's setting in general, but not really a sign that Ike gets special treatment.

Which honestly means that the characters in Tellius would be astoundingly one dimensional in that regard. I'm not even arguing that everything bad should happen to Ike, as there are runs of bad luck such as Chapter 11 where Ranulf gets revealed, and things go down south. The problem is that his good luck is to the point that it overlaps any real sort of conflict. IE, it doesn't matter what Ike does or doesn't do, it still works out. It's funny you mention Reyson, as he seems to be the best written character in Tellius-- or PoR at least. It might be why this story actually I don't... Find that good to be honest because of all of this. And the fact that the game treats Ike like he's so unique when his opinion is damn near identical to... Every character that isn't a villain in the game, or a laguz initially. The best thing Ike did over the course of the game is not attack the Black Knight. 

Like you have tacticians and strategist knowing "Ike always charges forward" in dialogue, yet no general / strategist is able to actually kill him despite the fact that people know what he does. It's even slightly lampshaded in the rock chapter. I don't know, I just felt that PoR was a bit bad in the storyline department, and even worse than other ones in the regard that luck is too huge of a factor in the game. 

[Etrurian emperor]

On 28-6-2017 at 5:08 AM, Interdimensional Observer said:

This has me thinking- how was Sanaki inculcated with such guilt towards the Massacre? She's only a child. Does her youth and innocence play a role? Perhaps Sephiran bred it into her? 

I think most of Begnion(Aside from the senators) feels that way. Sanaki says a lot of her subjects feel very, very terrible about what they did and the priest Ike meets seems to confirm her words. 
So its probably a cultural thing combined with Sanaki taking her role very seriously. 

[fangpoint333]

10 hours ago, Augestein said:

Which honestly means that the characters in Tellius would be astoundingly one dimensional in that regard. I'm not even arguing that everything bad should happen to Ike, as there are runs of bad luck such as Chapter 11 where Ranulf gets revealed, and things go down south. The problem is that his good luck is to the point that it overlaps any real sort of conflict. IE, it doesn't matter what Ike does or doesn't do, it still works out. It's funny you mention Reyson, as he seems to be the best written character in Tellius-- or PoR at least. It might be why this story actually I don't... Find that good to be honest because of all of this. And the fact that the game treats Ike like he's so unique when his opinion is damn near identical to... Every character that isn't a villain in the game, or a laguz initially. The best thing Ike did over the course of the game is not attack the Black Knight. 

Like you have tacticians and strategist knowing "Ike always charges forward" in dialogue, yet no general / strategist is able to actually kill him despite the fact that people know what he does. It's even slightly lampshaded in the rock chapter. I don't know, I just felt that PoR was a bit bad in the storyline department, and even worse than other ones in the regard that luck is too huge of a factor in the game. 

 

Most FE games have stuff like that to varying degree. The protagonist will screw up but something will happen to ensure he/she will make it to the end of the game (except Sigurd). Good luck is required to be a main character.

Michailis steals starlight and gives it to the heroes after they lose it.

Leaf gets saved by complete strangers when he gets captured.

Roy gets saved by Cecilia when the Bern army shows up after he retakes Ostia.

The FE7 Lords get saved by Nils showing up, Ephidel being an idiot and sending Jaffar away, and Nergal keeping Elbert alive for some reason when confronting the big bad whom they know nothing about at the final dungeon at the game's halfway point.

The FE8 Lords lose their stone by deciding to confront the DK's vessel alone but just happen to wind up to be going to the next stone location and only needing one to seal him again.

It's just protagonist syndrome. It's nothing new and it's not going away any time soon. Every other FE lord also just charges forward a lot. That's why the majority of maps have seize and rout objectives.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, fangpoint333 said:

 

Most FE games have stuff like that to varying degree. The protagonist will screw up but something will happen to ensure he/she will make it to the end of the game (except Sigurd). Good luck is required to be a main character.

Michailis steals starlight and gives it to the heroes after they lose it.

Leaf gets saved by complete strangers when he gets captured.

Roy gets saved by Cecilia when the Bern army shows up after he retakes Ostia.

The FE7 Lords get saved by Nils showing up, Ephidel being an idiot and sending Jaffar away, and Nergal keeping Elbert alive for some reason when confronting the big bad whom they know nothing about at the final dungeon at the game's halfway point.

The FE8 Lords lose their stone by deciding to confront the DK's vessel alone but just happen to wind up to be going to the next stone location and only needing one to seal him again.

It's just protagonist syndrome. It's nothing new and it's not going away any time soon. Every other FE lord also just charges forward a lot. That's why the majority of maps have seize and rout objectives.

I agree with you on most of those points but Cecilia saving Roy isn't a matter of good luck. He specifically called for Etruria's aid. Also Sigurd also has some slight luck when the Gran army shows up suddenly and five minutes later Silesia shows up out of nowhere and grants him asylum.

[Augestein]

16 hours ago, fangpoint333 said:

 

Most FE games have stuff like that to varying degree. The protagonist will screw up but something will happen to ensure he/she will make it to the end of the game (except Sigurd). Good luck is required to be a main character.

Michailis steals starlight and gives it to the heroes after they lose it.

Leaf gets saved by complete strangers when he gets captured.

Roy gets saved by Cecilia when the Bern army shows up after he retakes Ostia.

The FE7 Lords get saved by Nils showing up, Ephidel being an idiot and sending Jaffar away, and Nergal keeping Elbert alive for some reason when confronting the big bad whom they know nothing about at the final dungeon at the game's halfway point.

The FE8 Lords lose their stone by deciding to confront the DK's vessel alone but just happen to wind up to be going to the next stone location and only needing one to seal him again.

It's just protagonist syndrome. It's nothing new and it's not going away any time soon. Every other FE lord also just charges forward a lot. That's why the majority of maps have seize and rout objectives.

But most of those aren't even in the same. 

Leif is lucky, but not for the way you're saying it. The people were going to rescue the children that were being captured. Leif just so happens to be one of them. And considering that someone was already planning on rescuing Leif anyways, this isn't really luck at all. 

FE6, as stated, Roy petitions ahead of time about this. 

FE7. Nils showing up makes sense. Both his sister and his father figure are there. There's no reason for him not to show up. Elbert too is obvious for why he was kept alive. His quintessence. And part of the ritual for opening the dragons gate. We literally see this at the Dragon's Gate. Jaffar being sent away could be considered luck, especially since Ephidel blabbed about Bern, but considering that they were going to call a dragon to kill the lords, this isn't that bad. Nils showing up is the only lucky thing, and considering that he was on the originsl ship there, him following the lords isn't really luck. 

Them "just happening" to wind up going to the next stone location... Was their next location. So that's not luck at all. L'Rachel says as such. And only needing 1 stone actually isn't that bad either. It makes sense considering that each kingdom had 1 stone. It wouldn't make sense for only 1 kingdom to have a stone and be able to hold that over everyone else. 

 

None of these even come close to characters that shrug off what Ike says and accept it, or Ike's super luck. That's what I'm saying. 

Edited June 30, 2017 by Augestein

[Interdimensional Observer]

11 hours ago, Augestein said:

And only needing 1 stone actually isn't that bad either. It makes sense considering that each kingdom had 1 stone. It wouldn't make sense for only 1 kingdom to have a stone and be able to hold that over everyone else. 

And remember that all the 1 stone Eph and Eiri get is used only to seal the DK's mind and soul away. And the Grado stone had prior to its tampering by Lyon held the DK's soul for centuries no problem. The freshly resurrected DK wasn't likely at full power either, so the Renais twins being able to defeat him wasn't luck at all.

[fangpoint333]

20 hours ago, Augestein said:

But most of those aren't even in the same. 

Leif is lucky, but not for the way you're saying it. The people were going to rescue the children that were being captured. Leif just so happens to be one of them. And considering that someone was already planning on rescuing Leif anyways, this isn't really luck at all. 

FE6, as stated, Roy petitions ahead of time about this. 

FE7. Nils showing up makes sense. Both his sister and his father figure are there. There's no reason for him not to show up. Elbert too is obvious for why he was kept alive. His quintessence. And part of the ritual for opening the dragons gate. We literally see this at the Dragon's Gate. Jaffar being sent away could be considered luck, especially since Ephidel blabbed about Bern, but considering that they were going to call a dragon to kill the lords, this isn't that bad. Nils showing up is the only lucky thing, and considering that he was on the originsl ship there, him following the lords isn't really luck. 

Them "just happening" to wind up going to the next stone location... Was their next location. So that's not luck at all. L'Rachel says as such. And only needing 1 stone actually isn't that bad either. It makes sense considering that each kingdom had 1 stone. It wouldn't make sense for only 1 kingdom to have a stone and be able to hold that over everyone else. 

 

None of these even come close to characters that shrug off what Ike says and accept it, or Ike's super luck. That's what I'm saying. 

The timing is what makes those rescues lucky. There last minute rescues that that the protagonists had no idea would play out right then. You can just as easily explain away some of the rescues in FE9 and 10.

Leaf only got saved because another rescue attempt had already been planned to take place that was completely unalluded to before and happened to overlap with his capture. The goal wasn't originally to rescue him. Asvel didn't know he was in there. Sety was just all "Hey your old friend is in here. You should go help him out instead. Oh you seem surprised that he's here." It just seemed like something they learned while carrying out their original plan to rescue the children and thought it would probably be good to rescue him too.

Nils choose the exact perfect moment to show up when he should have been in hiding and should have had no idea what was going on inside the dragon's gate. That's lucky. He sensed something and ran back toward the enemy base he just escaped from with no knowledge that Eliwood's group was there and had already beat a good chunk of troops there. Elbert has strong quintessence yes but they've been shown every other time to collect it from the dead. You could argue that they might be getting more from a living person, but they've been shown to kill off injured members of the fangs that they could do the same thing with. They only kept him alive because the plot needed it.

Those weren't the only examples of course. I could go on to write about more examples of dumb luck or BS rescues. Does Ike have a lot of luck? Yes. Is there someone before Ike who could have been accused of being the title of luckiest lord? Yes. Will there be lords in the future who will contend for that title? Most definitely. 

[a bear]

Bear in mind this is a series where every game more or less expects zero casualties for your new recruits vs. armies of trained soldiers (par for RPGs in general, but whatever). Combine that with the countless examples of plot armor and any complaints of exceptional luck from a single title or character seems kinda silly.

Also I just remembered Percy exists, bless him and his Pit voice all day long.

[Baldrick]

On 6/29/2017 at 4:27 PM, ping said:

It's rather that the 'good guys' in Tellius tend to be good, not lawful and not very vindictive (with the prominent and understandable exception of Reyson), which may be a valid point against Tellius's setting in general,

I disagree. Among the GMs, there's Soren and Shinon. The Crimeans in the port chapter try to murder Ranulf, Lethe tries to murder Soren when he insults her, the Gallians in general are prejudiced against the Branded, the hawks share Reyson's view. In fact, the group closest to Ike's ideology is Shiharam's, who are 'bad guys'; he doesn't have any prejudice against Laguz, and left Begnion because of the Senate's corruption.

[ping]

@David Boey: Point taken, although I don't consider Soren, Shinon and Lethe (at least at the start of PoR) to be "good"; they just happen to be on Ike's side.

But the phrasing was rather bad on my part. I meant that characters that act "lawful", i.e. trying to uphold laws, protocol and social order, are usually on the wrong side of conflicts, not only when Ike is involved. The one big exception I can think of right now is Dheginsae (or however he may be spelled) who is actually correct in that a big revolution against the system would spell disaster for the whole continent. But even he ends up fighting for the right to be punished and therefore on the wrong side of the story.

But I guess another part of the picture is that laws and customs are pretty shit when it comes to the interaction between Beorc, Laguz and Branded, so trying to keep up the current order is automatically the wrong thing to do. ;)

You're right about the hawks, though. They certainly are all about revenge, and even with the Naesala's blood pact excuse, they're clearly pictured as way more reasonable than the more pragmatic ravens.

In the end, though, my main point was that Ike just doesn't really interact with many characters who take offense to his abrasive nature and meritocratic ideals. The laguz kings share his dislike for heriditable nobility and seem to appreciate his direct language, and Sanaki isn't too keen on keeping protocol, either. Neither of them has to act out of character or against their interests in order to support Ike.

[Augestein]

17 hours ago, fangpoint333 said:

The timing is what makes those rescues lucky. There last minute rescues that that the protagonists had no idea would play out right then. You can just as easily explain away some of the rescues in FE9 and 10.

Leaf only got saved because another rescue attempt had already been planned to take place that was completely unalluded to before and happened to overlap with his capture. The goal wasn't originally to rescue him. Asvel didn't know he was in there. Sety was just all "Hey your old friend is in here. You should go help him out instead. Oh you seem surprised that he's here." It just seemed like something they learned while carrying out their original plan to rescue the children and thought it would probably be good to rescue him too.

Nils choose the exact perfect moment to show up when he should have been in hiding and should have had no idea what was going on inside the dragon's gate. That's lucky. He sensed something and ran back toward the enemy base he just escaped from with no knowledge that Eliwood's group was there and had already beat a good chunk of troops there. Elbert has strong quintessence yes but they've been shown every other time to collect it from the dead. You could argue that they might be getting more from a living person, but they've been shown to kill off injured members of the fangs that they could do the same thing with. They only kept him alive because the plot needed it.

Those weren't the only examples of course. I could go on to write about more examples of dumb luck or BS rescues. Does Ike have a lot of luck? Yes. Is there someone before Ike who could have been accused of being the title of luckiest lord? Yes. Will there be lords in the future who will contend for that title? Most definitely. 

Not at all. 

Except people know who Leif is. So people were planning on rescuing him regardless. And IIRC, chapter 6 is where someone is surprised that Lief is already out because they were specifically looking for him. Lief gets rescued because of the events that were already happening. Just saying "he got rescued by strangers" is completely ignoring what was already happening. Here's an example of luck that works out that doesn't break disbelief. Lyndis asking Eliwood for help when Lungdren is petitioning other nobles to join in to defeat her. Eliwood helps her because he happens to like Lyndis, but it's double edged luck in the event that he actually cannot help her, but rather remain neutral with her

Nils showing up wasn't the perfect moment. If Nils waiting until Eliwood's father is being sacrificed is what you'd consider perfect, I don't even know what to say here. Eliwood's father is clearly being used as part of the ritual. Hence Ninian apologizing for what she did to Elbert. So no. It's not just because "the plot needed it." He was supposed to be the sacrifice. But he let Ninian go, and so they had to find her again. But Eliwood and company dragged Ninian BACK to Dread Isle and made it easier for Nergal. If anything, this is an example of bad luck, because they unwittingly did what the villain wanted without him having to devote any resources to getting her back. 

Ike's luck is far worse. Like... Even Corrin has less luck than Ike, and people always moan and groan about him. And the thing is, it wouldn't be so bad if Ike was Eirika levels of nice or had nobility or something, but he has nothing, and people just take it or find him remarkable because... They just do. And the thing is here, is that this is what I'm talking about when I see dissonance in Ike. It's fine if you like him, but for me, I find him pretty lousy because of things like this. It's like Hector without the status or the knowledge to calm down on occasion. 

17 hours ago, a bear said:

Bear in mind this is a series where every game more or less expects zero casualties for your new recruits vs. armies of trained soldiers (par for RPGs in general, but whatever). Combine that with the countless examples of plot armor and any complaints of exceptional luck from a single title or character seems kinda silly.

Also I just remembered Percy exists, bless him and his Pit voice all day long.

The difference is that none of those characters have to survive, and PoR even does a pretty decent job with this having various conversations and some endings alter based on who is dead or alive. The characters that die are dead, and the game doesn't magically make them revive because you lost. Sure you could argue casual mode, but realistically, you don't have to push reset every time someone dies. 

Edited July 1, 2017 by Augestein

[a bear]

29 minutes ago, Augestein said:

The difference is that none of those characters have to survive, and PoR even does a pretty decent job with this having various conversations and some endings alter based on who is dead or alive. The characters that die are dead, and the game doesn't magically make them revive because you lost. Sure you could argue casual mode, but realistically, you don't have to push reset every time someone dies. 

Let's not act like the games don't expect you to keep everyone alive (even without Casual). It's entirely extraordinary and really shouldn't be ignored in the context of extremely lucky protagonists.

Anywho, I'm not seeing how all these other FE examples are totally fine and anything with Ike goes too far unless you just plain don't like Ike/Tellius or can't remember the story as it is. Either one's fine, but you're definitely putting up a double standard with the arguments you've presented.

[fangpoint333]

18 minutes ago, Augestein said:

Not at all. 

Except people know who Leif is. So people were planning on rescuing him regardless. And IIRC, chapter 6 is where someone is surprised that Lief is already out because they were specifically looking for him. Lief gets rescued because of the events that were already happening. Just saying "he got rescued by strangers" is completely ignoring what was already happening. Here's an example of luck that works out that doesn't break disbelief. Lyndis asking Eliwood for help when Lungdren is petitioning other nobles to join in to defeat her. Eliwood helps her because he happens to like Lyndis, but it's double edged luck in the event that he actually cannot help her, but rather remain neutral with her

Nils showing up wasn't the perfect moment. If Nils waiting until Eliwood's father is being sacrificed is what you'd consider perfect, I don't even know what to say here. Eliwood's father is clearly being used as part of the ritual. Hence Ninian apologizing for what she did to Elbert. So no. It's not just because "the plot needed it." He was supposed to be the sacrifice. But he let Ninian go, and so they had to find her again. But Eliwood and company dragged Ninian BACK to Dread Isle and made it easier for Nergal. If anything, this is an example of bad luck, because they unwittingly did what the villain wanted without him having to devote any resources to getting her back. 

Ike's luck is far worse. Like... Even Corrin has less luck than Ike, and people always moan and groan about him. And the thing is, it wouldn't be so bad if Ike was Eirika levels of nice or had nobility or something, but he has nothing, and people just take it or find him remarkable because... They just do. And the thing is here, is that this is what I'm talking about when I see dissonance in Ike. It's fine if you like him, but for me, I find him pretty lousy because of things like this. It's like Hector without the status or the knowledge to calm down on occasion. 

The difference is that none of those characters have to survive, and PoR even does a pretty decent job with this having various conversations and some endings alter based on who is dead or alive. The characters that die are dead, and the game doesn't magically make them revive because you lost. Sure you could argue casual mode, but realistically, you don't have to push reset every time someone dies. 

They know who he is yes, but they didn't know he was there until they carried out the mission. The one who he met was August who was in the process of making his own plan to rescue Leaf which means the other plan happened completely independent of his plan. If Sety's plan didn't take place at the exact perfect time. Then Nanna doesn't get saved at the best time and something worse would probably have happened to her and maybe to Leif as well. I'm not saying all rescues break disbelief. Some do, some don't. This one was one of those that do. Same thing goes for FE9 and FE10. The heroes need to be rescued though. It's a necessary story element. They need to be in peril to have tension, and they sometimes need to put themselves in that peril so you know that they aren't infallible gods, but you can't also just kill the hero every time a slight danger pops up.

Elbert in particular wasn't necessary. Nergal did the ritual in the end without him and it worked fine. He just needs his quintessence which he could have gotten by killing him like how Limstella killed the fangs. It's also dumb luck that the person they chose for the ritual just happened to be his dad.

Yes it's their screw up that allowed the villain to achieve his plan. They acted without proper knowledge. That's my point. It took some Elbert and Nils BS to save them. Nils had to act on a feeling he had that required him acting against better judgment and with no other info to go on and Elbert just happened to be the one they kept alive and unproperly restrained.

Ike has some reasonable luck and some unreasonable luck. Just like everyone else. You just seem to be upset that he's not Elincia. All FE Heroes are nice and noble in their own way. Pretending like he is none of that is just silly. Some people like him because they have a reason to like him and some people like him without proper reason. Just like everyone else.

He is like Hector. He acts out of hand at some times and the person who is actually calling the shots (Eliwood/Elincia) have to restrain them. Elincia is just worse at it because of her personality. He was based off Hector after all. If you just replaced Ike with Hector with the same scenario, you would have near identical results. He's just more of the same that we've been getting for a while now. There's nothing that new about it. It's the same tropes and cliches we've been getting for the first 8 games but it seems different because of the story structure. He just meets all the important people he needs to make a good impression on for the quest to be completed by the halfway point of the story instead of spread out over the course of the game.

 

 

[Augestein]

2 minutes ago, a bear said:

Let's not act like the games don't expect you to keep everyone alive (even without Casual). It's entirely extraordinary and really shouldn't be ignored in the context of extremely lucky protagonists.

Anywho, I'm not seeing how all these other FE examples are totally fine and anything with Ike goes too far unless you just plain don't like Ike/Tellius or can't remember the story as it is. Either one's fine, but you're definitely putting up a double standard with the arguments you've presented.

But I can. The dialogue of PoR actually changes when people die. RD was the one that acted like no one died. But we're talking about PoR here. 

Because the plot doesn't just give up. Eliwood and company has bad luck in the example. So how does that show good luck? FE6 Roy actually did something ahead of time and had the foresight to take on what would happen. The FE8 one is just flat out wrong. Luck that's considered bad would be "oh, Nergal can kill us because he has enough power, but for some reason he does." Luckily this can *kinda* be excused as Nergal's unconscious mind might be trying to avoid killing people, but it still is pretty bad tbh. 

1 minute ago, fangpoint333 said:

They know who he is yes, but they didn't know he was there until they carried out the mission. The one who he met was August who was in the process of making his own plan to rescue Leaf which means the other plan happened completely independent of his plan. If Sety's plan didn't take place at the exact perfect time. Then Nanna doesn't get saved at the best time and something worse would probably have happened to her and maybe to Leif as well. I'm not saying all rescues break disbelief. Some do, some don't. This one was one of those that do. Same thing goes for FE9 and FE10. The heroes need to be rescued though. It's a necessary story element. They need to be in peril to have tension, and they sometimes need to put themselves in that peril so you know that they aren't infallible gods, but you can't also just kill the hero every time a slight danger pops up.

Elbert in particular wasn't necessary. Nergal did the ritual in the end without him and it worked fine. He just needs his quintessence which he could have gotten by killing him like how Limstella killed the fangs. It's also dumb luck that the person they chose for the ritual just happened to be his dad.

Yes it's their screw up that allowed the villain to achieve his plan. They acted without proper knowledge. That's my point. It took some Elbert and Nils BS to save them. Nils had to act on a feeling he had that required him acting against better judgment and with no other info to go on and Elbert just happened to be the one they kept alive and unproperly restrained.

Ike has some reasonable luck and some unreasonable luck. Just like everyone else. You just seem to be upset that he's not Elincia. All FE Heroes are nice and noble in their own way. Pretending like he is none of that is just silly. Some people like him because they have a reason to like him and some people like him without proper reason. Just like everyone else.

He is like Hector. He acts out of hand at some times and the person who is actually calling the shots (Eliwood/Elincia) have to restrain them. Elincia is just worse at it because of her personality. He was based off Hector after all. If you just replaced Ike with Hector with the same scenario, you would have near identical results. He's just more of the same that we've been getting for a while now. There's nothing that new about it. It's the same tropes and cliches we've been getting for the first 8 games but it seems different because of the story structure. He just meets all the important people he needs to make a good impression on for the quest to be completed by the halfway point of the story instead of spread out over the course of the game.

And it works. Because they are two factions doing different things. They didn't go in there to specifically find Lief. It's no more lucky than Ike's team breaking out Sephiran from prison when they were going to rescue the millitia. It's almost the same thing. They didn't go in there to rescue him, but they're already there, there's no reason not to. Same thing here. Unless we're now going to say "Sephiran being rescued is terrible writing." In which case, pretty much all of PoR is bad then. 

And it's the ending of the game where Nergal has far more quintessence than he had at the beginning  of the game. So that's still clear that he didn't have enough power even with Elbert's immediate death. If they did, they wouldn't have bothered going to Bern and that subplot wouldn't have matter at all. So once again, the  plot actually makes sense here. 

Nils has every reason to be there. Elbert has every reason to be there. There's no luck here. The same way Ike gets lucky with Titania taking the foresight to actually call Greil, Shinon and Gatrie to help save Rolf and Mist, it's luck that Shinon gets there in time, it's not luck that he's there. This is the Roy situation all over again, Titania had a plan. 

No. If that was the case, then I'd also dislike Micaiah, or Sanaki, or Sothe, or Geoffrey or... You know, any character that isn't Elincia. Which I don't. None of them go around doing the things Ike does. So there's a reason I have a dislike for Ike and not them. That's a complete red herring argument there. Especially since Sothe, like Ike, also isn't a noble and a main character, and I feel that Sothe is treated about right for being a bodyguard type character. Sothe RD is basically Ike but handled way better. 

Not really. Even Hector knew when to be civil. As seen in Bern where he didn't act out of line when they met the queen. And there was talk of Hector being a loudmouth, and people treated him as such. 

[fangpoint333]

1 minute ago, Augestein said:

But I can. The dialogue of PoR actually changes when people die. RD was the one that acted like no one died. But we're talking about PoR here. 

Because the plot doesn't just give up. Eliwood and company has bad luck in the example. So how does that show good luck? FE6 Roy actually did something ahead of time and had the foresight to take on what would happen. The FE8 one is just flat out wrong. Luck that's considered bad would be "oh, Nergal can kill us because he has enough power, but for some reason he does." Luckily this can *kinda* be excused as Nergal's unconscious mind might be trying to avoid killing people, but it still is pretty bad tbh. 

And it works. Because they are two factions doing different things. They didn't go in there to specifically find Lief. It's no more lucky than Ike's team breaking out Sephiran from prison when they were going to rescue the millitia. It's almost the same thing. They didn't go in there to rescue him, but they're already there, there's no reason not to. Same thing here. Unless we're now going to say "Sephiran being rescued is terrible writing." In which case, pretty much all of PoR is bad then. 

And it's the ending of the game where Nergal has far more quintessence than he had at the beginning  of the game. So that's still clear that he didn't have enough power even with Elbert's immediate death. If they did, they wouldn't have bothered going to Bern and that subplot wouldn't have matter at all. So once again, the  plot actually makes sense here. 

Nils has every reason to be there. Elbert has every reason to be there. There's no luck here. The same way Ike gets lucky with Titania taking the foresight to actually call Greil, Shinon and Gatrie to help save Rolf and Mist, it's luck that Shinon gets there in time, it's not luck that he's there. This is the Roy situation all over again, Titania had a plan. 

No. If that was the case, then I'd also dislike Micaiah, or Sanaki, or Sothe, or Geoffrey or... You know, any character that isn't Elincia. Which I don't. None of them go around doing the things Ike does. So there's a reason I have a dislike for Ike and not them. That's a complete red herring argument there. Especially since Sothe, like Ike, also isn't a noble and a main character, and I feel that Sothe is treated about right for being a bodyguard type character. Sothe RD is basically Ike but handled way better. 

Not really. Even Hector knew when to be civil. As seen in Bern where he didn't act out of line when they met the queen. And there was talk of Hector being a loudmouth, and people treated him as such. 

That rescue makes sense yes, but it's also dumb luck. The two aren't mutually exclusive. My point continues to be the same stuff we see in POR is the same stuff we've seen in the other games of the series but you seem to be focused on it being the worst stuff ever because IKE.

Nergal had more at the end yes. But he also had enough when they first meet him that's why he could open the gate the first time. He needed more because his ruined attempt made him lose a lot of it and he needed more to heal himself from the Elbert inflicted wound that kept him from being more active.

Nils had every reason to be there except for the fact that he had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHY he should have been there. He just hiding with no new information since he fell off the boat had a bad feeling and decided to check it out against all sense of self preservation. I feel like we're going in circles here. Elbert should also be there yes, but he shouldn't have been alive or within proper stabbing position for Nergal. Some of that is luck and some of that is pure bad writing. 

The luck between the Dragon's Gate scene and the saving Rolf scene are completely different. It's a reasonable, yet lucky rescue. It's way more probable that scene played out the way it did than Roy's rescue. That place where that battle took was much closer in proximity to where Shinon probably was than sending a messenger to a different country and having them show up with an army at the perfect time. The Dragon's Gate rescue was a bunch of BS just happening until the bad guys couldn't maintain the situation anymore.

I was only using Elincia as an example of a typical "nice" lord. Most of those characters never do the same things as Ike because they're never in similar situations. Sothe speaks out against Pelleas but it's still clear that Micaiah has most of the power as she's the person most people believe will bring the results so he's in a better position. There's a VERY clear difference between Ike and Sothe. The difference is that Elincia is a giant doormat in comparsion to Micaiah. Sothe just seems like he's handled better because Micaiah can stand up for herself while Elincia doesn't have her confidence yet. I don't feel like these are good comparisons.

The scene where they meet with the queen of Bern is completely different to the Sanaki meets Elincia scene. Eliwood is the one criticizing the queen for her not caring about her son who is a stranger to the main characters. While the other scene is Elincia being insulted in a room full of people and able to do nothing but bear it. These scenes are nothing alike. Ike steps in because someone he cares about is being insulted. While Hector doesn't do anything because Eliwood is insulting someone else.

 

[a bear]

2 hours ago, Augestein said:

But I can. The dialogue of PoR actually changes when people die. RD was the one that acted like no one died. But we're talking about PoR here. 

We're comparing PoR to every game in the series to see if it's really an outlier for exceptional luck (and briefly touched on the idealistic major characters that seemingly enable them). Every single game in this series uses the kidz vs. tons of professionals/monsters trope that we've seen in every medium for ages now. Furthermore, every game with a sequel outright states that every single recruitable character in a previous game not only joined, but made it through the entire campaign without death or injury. Even the character endings lean more towards "they led their country to a golden age" rather than "died in snowstorm, RIP." All of that falls under exceptional.

Mind you, this is without getting into the specific story examples beyond what other people have posted (we could be here for a while), nor making a distinction between fortune (Ike has connections to competent people) and luck (Ike discovers a shack full o' gold), or deciding whether those moments are really a big deal (finding gold is a silly contrivance) or not (war spoils are a thing and who cares, Volke's gonna lay some heavy). Good things happen to good people in the stories of Fire Emblem -- aside from Sigurd -- and they always get away with their mistakes. You can't say Ike is an exception unless you're getting stories wrong or you hold him to a double standard.

Of course, you could just say "nah, Ike sucks" and leave it at that. No one's gonna begrudge you for not liking something. Or maybe they will, I dunno, but fuck 'em.

[Augestein]

4 hours ago, fangpoint333 said:

That rescue makes sense yes, but it's also dumb luck. The two aren't mutually exclusive. My point continues to be the same stuff we see in POR is the same stuff we've seen in the other games of the series but you seem to be focused on it being the worst stuff ever because IKE.

Nergal had more at the end yes. But he also had enough when they first meet him that's why he could open the gate the first time. He needed more because his ruined attempt made him lose a lot of it and he needed more to heal himself from the Elbert inflicted wound that kept him from being more active.

Nils had every reason to be there except for the fact that he had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHY he should have been there. He just hiding with no new information since he fell off the boat had a bad feeling and decided to check it out against all sense of self preservation. I feel like we're going in circles here. Elbert should also be there yes, but he shouldn't have been alive or within proper stabbing position for Nergal. Some of that is luck and some of that is pure bad writing. 

The luck between the Dragon's Gate scene and the saving Rolf scene are completely different. It's a reasonable, yet lucky rescue. It's way more probable that scene played out the way it did than Roy's rescue. That place where that battle took was much closer in proximity to where Shinon probably was than sending a messenger to a different country and having them show up with an army at the perfect time. The Dragon's Gate rescue was a bunch of BS just happening until the bad guys couldn't maintain the situation anymore.

I was only using Elincia as an example of a typical "nice" lord. Most of those characters never do the same things as Ike because they're never in similar situations. Sothe speaks out against Pelleas but it's still clear that Micaiah has most of the power as she's the person most people believe will bring the results so he's in a better position. There's a VERY clear difference between Ike and Sothe. The difference is that Elincia is a giant doormat in comparsion to Micaiah. Sothe just seems like he's handled better because Micaiah can stand up for herself while Elincia doesn't have her confidence yet. I don't feel like these are good comparisons.

The scene where they meet with the queen of Bern is completely different to the Sanaki meets Elincia scene. Eliwood is the one criticizing the queen for her not caring about her son who is a stranger to the main characters. While the other scene is Elincia being insulted in a room full of people and able to do nothing but bear it. These scenes are nothing alike. Ike steps in because someone he cares about is being insulted. While Hector doesn't do anything because Eliwood is insulting someone else.

But that's the problem. It really isn't dumb luck. It happens because of the events of the game. If Leif had just smarted off to a knight, got captured and thrown in jail, and then someone just decided they wanted to do a jail break, THAT would be sheer dumb luck. 

Elbert. He does have a reason to be there. Elbert isn't with him. That's reason enough. And nor was his sister. Is he supposed to just abandon his sister? That's like saying that Ike shouldn't have gone to check up on Greil because he had a bad feeling and should have instead run back to the fortress because of self preservation. Or that Mist shouldn't have tried to help Ike fight the black knight because she should have tried to live. 

Roy's isn't though. He did it days ahead of time, and the dialogue takes note that his mentor was the only reason that arrived on time. Because she went out of her way to move as rapidly as possible and took advantage of the situation. Hence why he contacted her. 

All of the lords are supposed to be nice lords. That's some of the problem.I think the thing here is that whether Elincia is a doormat or not isn't the issue. As Ike is pretty aggressive in general. 

Oh, it is. Eliwood is criticizing the queen for not caring about her son when he could have actually died, and she was more concerned with the throne room. The thing is though, is that even when Eliwood, the de facto leader of the group, is giving someone a verbal lashing, he doesn't actually join in or anything. He remains silent. 

2 hours ago, a bear said:

We're comparing PoR to every game in the series to see if it's really an outlier for exceptional luck (and briefly touched on the idealistic major characters that seemingly enable them). Every single game in this series uses the kidz vs. tons of professionals/monsters trope that we've seen in every medium for ages now. Furthermore, every game with a sequel outright states that every single recruitable character in a previous game not only joined, but made it through the entire campaign without death or injury. Even the character endings lean more towards "they led their country to a golden age" rather than "died in snowstorm, RIP." All of that falls under exceptional.

Mind you, this is without getting into the specific story examples beyond what other people have posted (we could be here for a while), nor making a distinction between fortune (Ike has connections to competent people) and luck (Ike discovers a shack full o' gold), or deciding whether those moments are really a big deal (finding gold is a silly contrivance) or not (war spoils are a thing and who cares, Volke's gonna lay some heavy). Good things happen to good people in the stories of Fire Emblem -- aside from Sigurd -- and they always get away with their mistakes. You can't say Ike is an exception unless you're getting stories wrong or you hold him to a double standard.

Of course, you could just say "nah, Ike sucks" and leave it at that. No one's gonna begrudge you for not liking something. Or maybe they will, I dunno, but fuck 'em.

The ones that had sequels did, yes. And some like Fates, we can assume that Inigo, Owain and Severa are alive in some universe and the like. 

I can agree with that. My beef was Ike was literally "the amount" as I stated in the first post that I talked about it. I thought that was readily apparent. But people seem more focused on talking about the mere existence of luck. ... Which may be the first time I can actually say people are using Straw man arguments and not... Be saying that because I disagree with their arguments. 

[fangpoint333]

37 minutes ago, Augestein said:

But that's the problem. It really isn't dumb luck. It happens because of the events of the game. If Leif had just smarted off to a knight, got captured and thrown in jail, and then someone just decided they wanted to do a jail break, THAT would be sheer dumb luck. 

Elbert. He does have a reason to be there. Elbert isn't with him. That's reason enough. And nor was his sister. Is he supposed to just abandon his sister? That's like saying that Ike shouldn't have gone to check up on Greil because he had a bad feeling and should have instead run back to the fortress because of self preservation. Or that Mist shouldn't have tried to help Ike fight the black knight because she should have tried to live. 

Roy's isn't though. He did it days ahead of time, and the dialogue takes note that his mentor was the only reason that arrived on time. Because she went out of her way to move as rapidly as possible and took advantage of the situation. Hence why he contacted her. 

All of the lords are supposed to be nice lords. That's some of the problem.I think the thing here is that whether Elincia is a doormat or not isn't the issue. As Ike is pretty aggressive in general. 

Oh, it is. Eliwood is criticizing the queen for not caring about her son when he could have actually died, and she was more concerned with the throne room. The thing is though, is that even when Eliwood, the de facto leader of the group, is giving someone a verbal lashing, he doesn't actually join in or anything. He remains silent.

It is dumb luck because Leif had absolutely no idea that it would happen and it happened at the perfect time. Not dumb luck would have been Leif finding out that another group would be attacking to free the prison soon and letting himself get captured to avoid a fight he couldn't win and taking that risk.

I think you mean Nils. And like I stated before he had no idea where his sister was. He didn't know if she escaped to safety or got caught again. He had no clue on the situation and acted on a feeling. Ike's bad feeling made more sense because Greil was acting out of character ever since seeing the Black Knight. He had observed that something was wrong and acted on it. Nils just had a feeling despite being isolated from all other information. There's a difference. 

Like I said before the distance between Etruria and Lycia is huge. A lot of things could have gone wrong between sending the message and for them to arrive. There's a big difference in between that and hoping one of your fellow mercenaries happens to be nearby to help with an incident happening nearby your base.

The difference between Ike and Sothe's quality as bodyguards is obviously dependent on their relationship with the one that they protect. Ike takes a more active role since Elincia isn't capable of standing up for herself. Sothe doesn't do that as much because Micaiah is more headstrong and doesn't follow his advice.

It isn't. It's a lot easier to stand up for someone when they being attacked. People can do that reflexively. People don't easily join up with their friends when they're calling someone else out that they may not feel as strongly about. Here's a simple comparison. You seeing people picking on your friend. Most people would help out regardless of the risk because you want to protect your friend. You see your friend picking a fight with someone else over something you don't feel as strongly about as they do. You don't just jump in and ganging up on the other person. People act differently when they're trying to protect someone vs. when they're on the aggressor's side. I don't know how this is a hard concept to grasp.

[Jotari]

8 hours ago, Augestein said:

But I can. The dialogue of PoR actually changes when people die. RD was the one that acted like no one died. But we're talking about PoR here. 

Because the plot doesn't just give up. Eliwood and company has bad luck in the example. So how does that show good luck? FE6 Roy actually did something ahead of time and had the foresight to take on what would happen. The FE8 one is just flat out wrong. Luck that's considered bad would be "oh, Nergal can kill us because he has enough power, but for some reason he does." Luckily this can *kinda* be excused as Nergal's unconscious mind might be trying to avoid killing people, but it still is pretty bad tbh. 

And it works. Because they are two factions doing different things. They didn't go in there to specifically find Lief. It's no more lucky than Ike's team breaking out Sephiran from prison when they were going to rescue the millitia. It's almost the same thing. They didn't go in there to rescue him, but they're already there, there's no reason not to. Same thing here. Unless we're now going to say "Sephiran being rescued is terrible writing." In which case, pretty much all of PoR is bad then. 

And it's the ending of the game where Nergal has far more quintessence than he had at the beginning  of the game. So that's still clear that he didn't have enough power even with Elbert's immediate death. If they did, they wouldn't have bothered going to Bern and that subplot wouldn't have matter at all. So once again, the  plot actually makes sense here. 

Nils has every reason to be there. Elbert has every reason to be there. There's no luck here. The same way Ike gets lucky with Titania taking the foresight to actually call Greil, Shinon and Gatrie to help save Rolf and Mist, it's luck that Shinon gets there in time, it's not luck that he's there. This is the Roy situation all over again, Titania had a plan. 

No. If that was the case, then I'd also dislike Micaiah, or Sanaki, or Sothe, or Geoffrey or... You know, any character that isn't Elincia. Which I don't. None of them go around doing the things Ike does. So there's a reason I have a dislike for Ike and not them. That's a complete red herring argument there. Especially since Sothe, like Ike, also isn't a noble and a main character, and I feel that Sothe is treated about right for being a bodyguard type character. Sothe RD is basically Ike but handled way better. 

Not really. Even Hector knew when to be civil. As seen in Bern where he didn't act out of line when they met the queen. And there was talk of Hector being a loudmouth, and people treated him as such. 

Sephiran being rescued by Ike is lucky from his perspective. I mean some hero comes out of nowhere and saves him with no precedence or action on his part. That is luck plain and simple. I don't see why that needs to be equated to bad writing though. Some people do get lucky. It's only when it's excessive does it become bad writing (and even then if it's intentional if you pull it off. I remember hearing Charles Dickens used a tonne of cosmic coincidences in his books because he observed it as something that happens in real life, and it does happen. Just the other day I randomly selected a person in a new friends phone and it turns out we had a mutual acquaintance. Four degrees of separation discovered on a pure random selection. It was amazing. This is a foreign country for me too so it's not like I know a lot of people either).

Anyway, on the luck battle, Sephiran is raised as a very good point. Ike happens to attack a prison, that just happens to have the secret prime minister of Begnion in it that also just happens to be the master of the Black Knight and can save them from him a few chapters later. That's pretty lucky, especially when we discover who Sephiran is and it becomes bizarre that he'd even find himself trapped in a cell in the first place. Overall I'm more agreeing with Fangpoint during this debate but that is a pretty egregious case in Path of Radiance I don't think has been pointed out yet.

[Interdimensional Observer]

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Anyway, on the luck battle, Sephiran is raised as a very good point. Ike happens to attack a prison, that just happens to have the secret prime minister of Begnion in it that also just happens to be the master of the Black Knight and can save them from him a few chapters later. That's pretty lucky, especially when we discover who Sephiran is and it becomes bizarre that he'd even find himself trapped in a cell in the first place. Overall I'm more agreeing with Fangpoint during this debate but that is a pretty egregious case in Path of Radiance I don't think has been pointed out yet.

Yeah that is pretty bad. Also, why didn't Sephiran break himself out of jail sooner? He seems to be a very patient fellow, and I can understand why he is patient, but this is bizarre.

And as I pointed out in a different topic, the events of the night of the Serenes Massacre involves 10^100 luck. The forest is set aflame to, Lehran falls into despair and after getting the Medallion comes to the conclusion that Laguz and Beorc are hopeless and Ashera needs to save them from themselves. Afterwards, in what can be no more than a few hours, conceives of using a fairly obscure prince of Daein named Ashnard to break the Medallion's seal. And, for some inexplicable reason, Ashnard is in the vicinity of Serenes, buys into what Lehran tells him, takes the Medallion and then kidnaps Lilia. All of this must unfold within like ~12 hours.