Zoran posted:

Honestly it seems like Claude just ends up on the Church's side out of inertia, and he really could be convinced to join Edelgard if they had one good conversation.

cheetah7071 posted:

Dimitri and Edelgard could have been easy allies too if she knew how to communicate

Smirking_Serpent posted:

I've heard mixed things about getting epilogues between characters, some say it's your first A support, others says it goes based on support points listed in Close Allies. Does anyone know for sure?

cheetah7071 posted:

edelgard did some things wrong

Endorph posted:

yeah but if dimitri was real hed have a blue lives matter bumpersticker and claude is a centrist on every issue but border security

cheetah7071 posted:

that is a very bad read on dimitri imo and also if edelgard was real she'd invade iran

Endorph posted:

yeah but if dimitri was real hed have a blue lives matter bumpersticker and claude is a centrist on every issue but border security

Zoran posted:

Honestly it seems like Claude just ends up on the Church's side out of inertia, and he really could be convinced to join Edelgard if they had one good conversation.

ChrisBTY posted:

I like that we can have this conversation.
Unlike 'evil dad removes all moral ambiguity from this game' in Fates.

Eimi posted:

The A support that's highest under close allies.

indigi posted:

Edelgard is real and strong and she's my friend

Endorph posted:

poo poo even ignoring garon the morality in fates was stupid. like regardless of your take on edelgard at least she has an actual consistent moral stance that makes sense, as opposed to xander standing around talking about how justice is an illusion while iago and hans beat an old woman to death for no reason two feet to his left

Smirking_Serpent posted:

okay cool, so I don't have to worry about getting an A with someone early, as long as I grind the preferred spouse later?

cheetah7071 posted:

edelgard did some things wrong

Endorph posted:

poo poo even ignoring garon the morality in fates was stupid. like regardless of your take on edelgard at least she has an actual consistent moral stance that makes sense, as opposed to xander standing around talking about how justice is an illusion while iago and hans beat an old woman to death for no reason two feet to his left

Endorph posted:

basically characters in three houses have actual moral and political goals and beliefs that they act on while characters in fates just really like standing around passively talking about what their morals are, theoretically, while making no attempt to actually materially change anything even though they have the power to. even conquest route corrin's master plan is 'do nothing until we get a chance to kill garon.' thats why conquest route takumi is the best character in fates, hes the only one who feels like hes actively doing something because he believes in it. so of course they make that because demon.

cheetah7071 posted:

edelgard did some things wrong

Deified Data posted:

Part 2 of this game is getting into political arguments on facebook with the dumb people you went to highschool with. And then killing them

Zoran posted:

Honestly it seems like Claude just ends up on the Church's side out of inertia, and he really could be convinced to join Edelgard if they had one good conversation.

cheetah7071 posted:

indigi posted:

a lot of that critique ignores that she's got a ticking clock, not to mention the fact that the empire's war machine was already rolling the second she gave the order means she did a lot of work cleaning up imperial nobility behind the scenes already. plus it's easier to enact the sort of grand sweeping reforms she wants once everyone's personal retinues are beat to gently caress and she has a large class of merit-based commanders and troops that are loyal directly to her

it's not a perfect plan by any means but she's said she's willing to trade perfection for expediency

Eimi posted:

Yeah, and it's unknown how much of it was under her control. She was raised under the thumb of the Slitherers and they have been planning this war for a while, I think a lot of it is her basically trying to seize control of their already in motion plan, rather than oppose it from a position of absolute weakness. I think people see the term Emperor and think Augustus when they are like the emperor of Japan pre Meiji, just basically there to look pretty while the ministers/shogun do the real work of governance.

cheetah7071 posted:

I'm gonna disagree with this, with the caveat that I've only finished Lions and Edelgard routes and Edelgard is a massively bad communicater and might have extra information that is only told to the player in the other two that makes her make more sense

Her thrust seems to be "Fodlan's class system is hosed up. The crests are what everybody points to as reasons nobles are inherently superior, so dismantling the class system requires me to destroy crests first". I'm with her so far. But then, instead of doing any of that, she just starts fighting everybody??? Like I guess she wanted to dismantle the aristocracy of all of Fodlan and not just the empire but it still seems kinda rear end-backwards to me. And she never draws the connection between dismantling the church and her goal, she just says "hey guys Rhea's a dragon we gotta kill her". That's the part I most suspect is just missing information that she doesn't tell you, because I can imagine much deeper connections between the church and crests than what has actually been depicted on screen thus far.

I feel like this is especially egregious in her paralogue. You beat up the Almyran army and she goes "we don't have to conquer Almyra because they don't worship the goddess. Defending against them is enough." Not "we don't have to conquer Almyra because their class system is fair" or "we don't have to conquer Almyra cause they don't have crests". She literally lays out that the reason her ambitions end at Fodlan is because Fodlan is where Sothis is worshipped. Her war has nothing to do with her stated goals of making a just world; if that were the case she'd clean up her own backyard in Adrestia first and not ally with the slitherers. She causes mass amounts of death in a big-rear end war because she posts on r/atheism

e: this debate being possible proves your deeper point of "the characters are complex and have layered motivations that are fun to think about" though

indigi posted:

her origin story goes to prove that last point as well

Endorph posted:

the church of sothis is literally hitler tho, you're really underselling her with the r/atheism thing. they slaughter in droves anyone who remotely disagrees with them, the crest system is inherently supported by their religion. the number one thing making the world unjust is the church. its not that she hates religion its that the religion being practiced is completely and utterly rotten to the core to the point that there's no redeeming it. its only slight better than the loptyr cult in jugdral, because the child murder is implicit instead of explicit

Endorph posted:

yeah but if dimitri was real hed have a blue lives matter bumpersticker and claude is a centrist on every issue but border security

cheetah7071 posted:

Idk I feel like this might be one of the spots where the plot being split across four routes is making some things not quite make sense because that absolutely was not communicated to the extent you're saying in the Edelgard route. The church is absolutely shady but "only slightly better than Loptyr" is absolutely not depicted on screen, in that route. Rhea causes way less death than Edelgard does, probably by orders of magnitude. As I said earlier, I'm still mostly unspoiled on the revelations from the two routes I haven't played so my opinions could change. The only opinion that won't change is that Edelgard is very bad at communicating her intentions clearly to the player.

Endorph posted:

i mean idk what routes its explained in but the slithers' deal made me think even they're kind of justified even if the ones you meet and the things you hear them doing are basically cartoon villainy so yeah we might have different angles here

indigi posted:

I wonder why Sothis is so wholly ineffectual at the period the game takes place

indigi posted:

I wonder why Sothis is so wholly ineffectual at the period the game takes place

Harrow posted:

She's super dead and has been so for a very long time. Her consciousness hangs out in Byleth's body but she has nowhere near her full power. Even when you merge and gain her power you're probably only a shadow of what she once was.

Blaziken386 posted:

there's so many moments in this game where it seems like it could've gone one way or the other, that I can't help but feel the story DLC is gonna be a "unite the houses" plot or something.

indigi posted:

why though