Does anyone else prefer Zeke over Camus?

[Etrurian emperor]

I never really had a high opinion of Camus. Not that I disliked him but he never interested me either. All in all I found Camus rather dull and not all that much smarter than Eldigan either. 

But to my surprise I actually really liked Zeke once I met him in Echoes. This is doubly surprising because I never thought about Zeke at all...since I never thought about Gaiden in general. 

Part of the reason is that I'm shallow enough for a suitably baddass sounding voice actor to completely sell me on a character but there are other reasons too.

Even if she has her issues I think Tatiana really adds something to Camus. Its a bit funny for the big baddass black knight to act all lovey dovey around his wife without losing any of his serious demeanor. I prefer the two of them over Camus and Nyna, the both of them are fairly joyless persons so them ending up together would just be depressing. Tatiana on the other hand is already perky herself, seems to greatly brighten Zeke's mood and with that arrangement only Nyna is left to be depressed about things. 

I also respect Zeke's Camus tendency's more. He has every reason to be loyal to Rudolf because aside from being a good man Rudolf is also pretty much his daddy. Even if he joins Alm Zeke's still Rudolf's vassal. The king of Grust on the other hand is a despicable guy and we never get an indication that he and Camus had any sort of bond. 

Anyone else only just recently started to appreciate Camus?

[DragonFlames]

I always found Camus pretty badass due to his intimidating artwork in Shadow Dragon and Awakening by proxy, his Gradivus and the awesome music that is his battle theme (Clash of two Virtues). But, like almost every other character in Shadow Dragon, he was too shallow in terms of personality for me to get behind him, if that makes sense.
His archetype is also liable to produce some of the worst characters in FE history *coughcoughXanderunconvincingcough* and I always thought the whole *my country / king / boss over reason and common sense* thing is the sign of a coward and pretty stupid as well.

Meeting Zeke, whom I immediately suspected was Camus based on his looks (I haven't read up anything on Echoes / Gaiden prior to playing the game for myself), I found him to be extremely likeable from the get go. He's a badass guy with a soft side and yes, I too prefer the Zeke x Tatiana pairing over the Camus x Nyna deal, because let's face it, aside from Marth x Shiida, none of Shadow Dragon's / New Mystery's pairings make any sort of sense, since they didn't get any buildup whatsoever.

14 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I also respect Zeke's Camus tendency's more. He has every reason to be loyal to Rudolf because aside from being a good man Rudolf is also pretty much his daddy. Even if he joins Alm Zeke's still Rudolf's vassal. The king of Grust on the other hand is a despicable guy and we never get an indication that he and Camus had any sort of bond.

This, too.

Note: I refer mostly to the remakes since those are the versions I've played and I don't want to, much less can make any assumptions and / or arguments based on the original versions (other than that the artwork wasn't very good back then in my humble opinion).

Edited June 28, 2017 by DragonFlames

[N30]

Yes, I do prefer Camus over Camus

Zeke's cool I guess, but not as cool as Sirius :^)

[ChibiToastExplosion]

I like all three versions of the man; but the original is still my favorite. I will definitely agree that the side Tatiana brings out for him is also very nice. Even though he comes to rescue Nyna in Mystery, it's important to remember that he goes back to Tatiana in the end.

Also, Camus' hangup probably wasn't to the king himself; he likely grew up in Grust, and was loved and adored by the people as their knight. In the right or wrong, Marth did kind of invade the kingdom, and a lot of commoners probably paid the price for their king's transgressions. Camus swore to defend those people, and even if he knew Marth was ultimately in the right he had to stand up for what he believed in - and that doesn't mean it had to be the king.

[Jotari]

The massive contrivance that is needed to fit Zeke into Valentia's story kind of breaks my suspension of disbelief a lot. It wasn't too bad when Gaiden was first released since it could have been set anytime after Shadow Dragon. But with Mystery being set just three years after Marth's first adventure, it forces Zeke's story to cram a lot ito a very short time period. He needs to some how cross the ocean, end up on a completely illogical position on the continent (Grust is to the east of Sofia's coast, he finds himself in Rigel, way to the north, and ends up living on the western coast for some reason). Then he needs to befriend Rudolf, and some how become a major ranking general. Those things should take more time. Zeke is just way too established in Rigel for the year and a half or so in which he's been there.

It is pretty badass that he can apparently cross oceans without sustenance and only suffer some temporary memory loss.

Edited June 30, 2017 by Jotari

[bottlegnomes]

A little bit. I like getting to see more of him, and a major part of it is that I like his art more than any other incarnation of Camus's art. I do agree with @ChibiToastExplosion on Camus's reasoning and understanding where he was coming from. But mostly, Camus has always been one of my favorite characters, and that only went up with how awesome his art in Heroes was. Then, on top of that, I get Zeke, who's literally playable Camus with even more awesome art.

On a side note, both versions of Camus have much deeper voices than I expected.