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chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Sjs00 posted:

Let's just take the creepiest element of the Fire Emblem franchise the incest and dial it to infinity
Boy am I glad I stopped at Shadow Dragon.

Awakening had some of the lowest incest levels in the whole series, though, at least in the localized version.

Like, there are multiple normal, healthy sibling relationships.

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chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



inthesto posted:

The two nations in Fates are just as cartoonishly good/evil as any other pair of rival states in the FE series. It's just that when you're on the side of the bad guys, the writers are incapable of making the characters look sympathetic, so the whole thing looks really god drat stupid as a result.

Nah, Fates doesn't even reach the usual low bar of "the good nation has done bad things and/or has bad people, and the bad nation has a clear reason for what they do, even if it's stupid."

I mean, Plegia worshiped Dragon Satan, while Ylisse was run by the nicest people in the world, but the game made a point that a decade or so back, Ylisse was a bunch of murderous assholes, and Plegia had legitimate grievances. Still pretty black and white, but worlds ahead of Fates.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Last Celebration posted:

I don't think it's been mentioned yet, but this story has a load of production issues, but that discussion's really for when we're balls-deep in Conquest since Birthright is mostly a middling Fire Emblem Story.

Middling implies middle of the road. I'm not sure if I'd level that compliment at Birthright.

If it wasn't for Conquest and Revelation I'd say that (allowing for system limitations and the like) it's probably the worst written game in the series.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Cythereal posted:

Like I said, I don't like overly anime games - Awakening was the only Fire Emblem game I enjoyed - and turn-based squad tactics can be pretty fun. Awakening, X-COM, and Shadowrun are all great games, and scratch a different itch for me than Civilization.

Still, will be reading this LP with interest. I think I heard some noise about it when it was released, that it's the first game in the series to acknowledge that gay people exist?

Not quite. There have been a lot of relationships in the series that have implied in that direction, ranging from Lyn and Florina and Raven and Lucius getting paired endings through Heather being an explicit lesbian and Ike and Soren maybe having something going on in Tellius, right through Awakening confirming that Kjelle is bi as all get-out with DLC dialog amounting to "Severa, my deepest innermost desire is to bang the holy hell out of you."

What sets Fates apart is that it's the first game that has explicit gay marriage. Each route has one bisexual character who can marry a Corrin of the same gender. Oddly, there's another bisexual character who can't marry anyone of the same gender, despite a pretty explicit preference.

But yeah. There was a lot of noise about it, in all directions.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



AradoBalanga posted:

The best way to explain some of the plot beats in Fates is that the writing process feels like the ending of a plot thread was written first, then the process of reaching that ending was written.

Take what just happened, for instance. The plot thread has been structured to end on "Mikoto dies shielding her child from the shrapnel of an exploding magical sword after being reunited for the first time in years." and then went about writing how the story gets there (all of chapter 4 and the lead-in to this chapter). Except, anyone who has written even a short story will tell you that is not how you write story progression. Mikoto was only just introduced to us as a character in the last chapter, let alone as Corrin's biological mother. And now she's dead, because the plot thread's ending has already been written and that is where the story must go.

Had this happened as say, the conclusion to the first act, it would not be as bad as it is. We would have had time to know Mikoto and perhaps learn more about what happened to Corrin in the past. But this chapter is essentially part 5 of the game's prologue, and now this important named character that we just met has died. We have had almost no time to get to know Mikoto and now the player is expected to feel sad that this person is dead because of her selfless sacrifice to protect her child. The problem is that Mikoto's death comes off as pointless and leaves the player confused as to what is going on, thus undermining her death's impact greatly.

And, as is often the case in Fates, Awakening is around to play Gallant.

While Emmeryn isn't the most interesting character in the game, she's around for long enough that the player knows her, and more importantly, probably cares about characters connected to her and has a stake in their reactions. Emm dying wasn't just about her. It was about what it did to Chrom, Frederick, and Lissa. Moreover, her death lead directly into some big narrative beats, rather than being almost forgotten once it was done. It had room to breathe.

Meanwhile, Fates just rushes through the opening to get to The Big Decision it's always playing up, and it means nothing feels like it has weight.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



loving love Fiona Apple posted:

Say what you want about the story in Fates, but the gameplay is up their with the best in the series.

Conquest, maybe.

Birthright and Revelation?

Well. We can discuss that when we get there, I suppose. Game's handing out mechanics a bit slow to comment much on them.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Krumbsthumbs posted:

As someone who started up his very first run of this game today, I see it happening. Ryoma got the boss to a few hp left before I "secured" the kill.

It is one thing to see the story of this game in LP form, it is another to experience it on your own. The first five chapters have been... something.

Don't worry.

It gets worse.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



TheGreatEvilKing posted:

Trust me, Corrin is not the only stupid character here. Sure, he's incredibly stupid, but behind every great idiot there are a ton of enablers.

Looking forward to seeing these games as I got stuck in Conquest.

That's fairly common. Conquest is tough.

Also, felt like it was balanced around casual, but maybe it's just me there.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



mandatory lesbian posted:

Hoshido is the bad guys and Nohr is uh

i don't know what Purple means

Gaelio Bauduin.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



FELD1 posted:

Are we going to vote on who Corrin takes to Poundtown?

Could be tricky if Tae wants every character. See, Fates, in another show of the brilliance and attention to detail that gave us the entire plot, has the exact same number of fathers and potential mothers, barring Corrin. So, if Dude Corrin bangs someone who could be banging someone else, then one of the other kids won't be born.

Also, the supports aren't as obviously bad as the main plot, but man. This was the first Fire Emblem where I started to groan at getting new supports. A lot of them are worse than Yarne and Laurent levels of dull.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



CptWedgie posted:


Subaki, maybe you should take a step back and really look at yourself before you continue calling yourself "perfect." You're nowhere near strong enough to solo anything, you're apparently too stupid to consider bringing backup, and you can't even be bothered to keep track of your allies so you don't get isolated. I'd expect that sort of attitude to get you court-martialed in a real military.

Subaki compares interestingly with Cordelia, since they both have the whole "perfect" gimmick going.

It's just Cordelia being perfect meant you got an amazing unit with access to every weapon in the game, whose supports matched up with her reputation. Like, Kellam had nigh-supernatural stealth that no-one understands? Cordelia picks up the knack inside a month. She worked her rear end off to be the best, which made her bad at accepting when people said she was.

Subaki's the opposite. Same reputation, but he constantly talks it up while being a lovely unit and a not impressive person.

Robe for Rinkah, and Ditch Subaki.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



CptWedgie posted:


I have to admit, while I'm not particularly fond of Hayato, at least I like this support. I guess there's just something about the "writing home just to let them know you're okay" thing that appeals to me...


It's basically Robin and Ricken's support but (as is fitting the characters) much worse.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



FoolyCharged posted:

If memory serves you can grind up and kill Garon here. It changes absolutely nothing.

Which, to be fair, is pretty standard for JRPGs. But it is kind of a symptom of one of my (many, many) issues with Fates.

The battles don't matter.


Most Fire Emblems are, basically, a series of battles with the plot being around to explain why these dudes are beating the holy hell out of each other. The majority of important plot events take place on the maps, from recruiting to the death of characters. The series highwater mark is probably Genealogy, but it's generally how things work, barring a few unexplained survivals and the like. Awakening even displays the "battle forecast" at the bottom of the screen during cutscene fights to emphasize that (even when it isn't) the plot and the gameplay are using the same "rules".

Fates... does not do that. Generally, the plot treats the combat as non-events. At best, abstract representations of some conflict between armies, and more often just a wad of nothing. The gameplay is just an irritating side note to its masterful narrative, as far as the main plot is concerned. And when the plot is this bad...

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Hunt11 posted:

Also the supports. In fact the supports in general on the Nohr side are really strong.

Ehhh...

I mean, compared to Hoshido, yes, but by overall Fire Emblem standards, I wouldn't say it was all that great.

Too much neutral voice, the standard 3DS problems with repetition, Corrin... there's a lot of problems.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Cythereal posted:

I dunno, out of curiosity I looked up who's the series' first marriage option for queer women, a part of this game's cast, and holy crap who thought that was a good idea? I guess the likes of her and Sera are at least proving that gay and bi women in RPGs can be complete asshats and loving creepy. Equal opportunity.

I actually know how this whole thing came about! I mean, mostly. It's kind of an interesting chain of events.

So, like a lot in Fates, it all started with Awakening, the Last Fire Emblem (or so the dev team figured was a likely course, unless they made a blockbuster). They wanted a lovable cast of oddballs, going with a lot of broad tropes to start, and then filling in the details when actually writing a character.

Tharja kicked off with "Hey, maybe an obsessive stalker would be funny.", which was followed by discussion of who she should be obsessed with. Since one was guaranteed to be around and alive, the Avatar was an obvious choice, especially since Chrom (the ostensible main character, at least for the first two acts) already had someone romantically obsessed with him. Since she was from the dark mage country, she wore the game's dark mage costume. Which, for both genders, was pretty revealing despite covering the whole body. Semi-transparent cloth will do that.

And, well, Tharja was a hit with fans. Big hit. Despite being an optional character (you can kill her off without ever knowing she's recruitable), she was one of the highest ranking characters in several popularity polls, with the most recent global popularity contest putting her as the fourth most popular character in the entire series (With Lyn, Lucina, and Ike taking gold, silver, and bronze, respectively.) People liked her, both for the obvious reasons, and because she's got some pretty good schtick aside from the stalking, both in her Aubrey Plaza style 'sunny' personality bouncing off the more upbeat members of the cast, and in her attempts to be the classic evil witch failing due to her own intrinsic (and unwanted) decency.

(It's worth noting her lowest showing in an Awakening poll at a respectable-but-not-impressive 11th place came in the Nintendo Dream results, which has a really loving lopsided gender ratio. Tharja's not unpopular with female fans, as far as the data goes, but she definitely ranks lower)

Of course, most dialog in Awakening is shared between the two versions of Robin, including most supports. So that meant that Tharja, despite showing no strong inclination towards other women, (and having marriages available with most of the men in the cast, with varying levels of enthusiasm) was still very interested in female Robin.

Cut forward to Fates, and there was a decision to bring back the most popular Awakening characters, as seen with "Laslow", despite the plot having nothing to do with Awakening, and it generally not meshing with the rest of the game. (Bad mimicry of Awakening, as we've seen already, was something of a pattern with Fates.)

Tharja was popular, so she got a poor copy as Hayato's kid.

Since Fates decided to have gay marriage, it made some level of sense, to the extent any of the Awakening mimicry made sense, to have players be able to actually tie the knot with Tharja, since they couldn't last time. The Japanese dialog also implied some reincarnation was going on, despite Corrin and Robin being very different characters, because pandering to the player is all Fates knows.

And then, in the interests of egalitarianism, the US release switched out the unique support with female Corrin for the male version, which played up the stalking even more.

Localization also further pushed Soleil as Actually Bi, which made her not being an option even weirder.


Basically, it's a complicated chain of decisions that lead to the disaster before us, not one bad intentioned decision.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



CptWedgie posted:

Pretty sure he was just talking personalities, not mechanically (which is, as you said, making a LOT of progress- hell, this game, in particular, actually has formerly gender-locked classes such as Pegasus Knights being opened to everyone!). Of course, my biggest problem with Awakening: Chrom's strangled support list. I mean, I can get some characters being incompatible (as an example: For the life of me I just can NOT figure out how Vaike and Miriel would even get together), but what about Cordelia? Her crush on him is so obvious that it's pointed out in nearly all of her other supports, but can they support? Of COURSE not, that'd take away from the unnecessary drama and pointless angst! And it's not like she couldn't muster the will to confess, either, since some of her other S-ranks have HER as the initiator.


It kind of is!

There's a DLC conversation with Chrom if Cordelia's unmarried. She tries to spit out the whole "Hey, Chrom! I like you!" thing, and basically passes out from stress. Chrom assumes she's got a serious medical condition and ends the scene by yelling for a cleric.

Like the saying goes, them as asks don't get.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Endorph posted:

does it really have to be complex?

And yeah, games can often have as many writers, and there's some compartmentalization to be sure, but the issue is how this game was written. shin kobayashi submitted a script, then they rewrote that, then they rewrote that, then they came up with revelations and rewrote that. that much we know for certain, since kobayashi's talked about what was in his original script and what wasn't (hinoka didn't exist, for instance). And revelations is, without spoiling anything, very obviously an extremely late addition.

Revelations and the supports were also all written out of house with no communication during the writing, far as I can tell. Which... does not do good things for coherence.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



AnAnonymousIdiot posted:

Fun fact regarding that Schroedinger's letter from Mother; almost every sibling gets this letter from Mom in their S Support excepting Ryoma. I'd like to think that every sibling just had that letter, clueless over why the hell their mother would give them a letter to begin with. Would've led to one hell of an awkward conversation.

I love the idea Hinoka has doubts about some other relationship, so she opens the letter...

and gets a huge explanation of how it's totally okay she wants to bang Corrin.

Better yet, imagine Takumi opening that letter.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



MightyPretenders posted:

I'm pretty sure that talk about the castle not being safe is referring to a set of bonus maps that we've been ignoring. The menu options labeled "Invasion." One guess what kind of enemies show up in them.

The simplest explanation for the Deeprealms is that they're actually the same kind of pocket dimensions as the one My Castle is in. Maybe they're further from the main world, I don't know.



And if you've followed those two premises to their logical conclusion, congratulations. You're both smarter and much better parents than the entire cast is.

To be fair, that's not saying much. Goku is smarter and a better parent, and two of his defining traits are "Idiot" and "bad father".

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Cythereal posted:

Gingers are not terrible.

Red hair can look quite nice, but the way the game handles color palettes means that it doesn't work as well here as in Awakening. But then, everything about the kids is half-assed.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



CptWedgie posted:

Kinda surprising how Rinkah's apparently getting locked in (as opposed to Ryoma, a higher-tier unit, getting locked out) considering how much trouble she was having before.

People love a good comeback story, and she's got a cool design.

As for Kana, I've tried to use her and given up. She's basically just shittier Corrin from a gameplay standpoint. Worse growths, no unique weapon, less class access. Plus you're sending a 12 year old out to kill people for you, and that just feels awkward.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Lord Koth posted:

Corrin (either sex) has no canon partner. This isn't like Awakening where the actual opening shows Sumia as Chrom's wife. I mean, it's easy to see Azura as the main non-Avatar character given how prominent she is in all the routes, and the primary characters hooking up isn't exactly an uncommon occurrence in JRPGs/Anime, but the game itself never pushes her as far as I recall.

I felt like the game was pushing her in the same way that it pushes Chrom and Robin, you know, the "We're so close" thing, if less well written. But there's no actual relevant content changes, like Lucina's choice in Awakening or the marriage scene at the end of chapter 11. The game's story and supports are much less interlinked than in Awakening.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Black Feather posted:

"My son is in mortal danger because of me! Should I explain things properly? ...naaaaahh"


The child system in Fire Emblem Fates exists primarily to make Tharja feel like a good parent, but even by those standards Azura is terrible.

I am pretty sure throwing an infant at Aqua from Konosuba would give you a better role model for motherhood. And there is a better than even chance she would try to sell it for booze money.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Endorph posted:

by that standard every character in the game is bad, because they're all total monsters when it comes to their kids

Eh... I mean, they're all horrible parents, but the level of bad varies.

Some are just at "Cat's in the cradle", some are worse than that.

And Azura's... Azura's kinda the worst.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Tae posted:

C Support

You're a...a... TEENAGER!


Just figured it was worth noting that Shigure, one of the oldest of the kids, is 19 at the oldest, and Kana is 12 or younger. And these are firm locked numbers.

Morgan, the youngest of the Awakening kids (unless she was the oldest by centuries) was probably sixteenish. About the same age as the youngest of the "adults", and there was a decent argument that the other kids were 18 or older.

Basically, I'm noting again that Awakening's kids fit much better, because all of them felt old enough to go a slaughtering in a pseudo-medieval society and/or get hitched.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Do any Birthright maps really deserve more respect than that?

God speed you, black emperor.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Endorph posted:

Because writing a video game is freaking impossible. Pretty much every possible good idea you can have inevitably gets sacrificed for the sake of gameplay, or marketing, or whatever. Fates is just an incredibly egregious example, but even games I think are well-written have more than a few moments of filler, odd pacing, or half-finished ideas.

I don't really envy the writers, and I don't really blame them, either. Blame whatever chucklehead thought the three games gimmick was a good idea and that they also needed to get those three games out in under two years.

I'm not sure I'd go quite so far as impossible, it just means that you have to work a lot of angles from the ground up, like how the skills that make for a good novel don't make for a compelling screenplay. Of course, it's worse because it's a young medium, without the cheat sheet films picked up from the stage, but there's starting to be ground mapped out.

Of course, Fates doesn't get the usual excuses like Uncharted, where there's decent writing, and decent gameplay, and they kind of totally fail to mesh. Fates pretty much entirely disconnects the gameplay and the narrative most of the time, and the story is still garbage even by videogame standards.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



LEGO Genetics posted:

Cutscenes: The number one killer in any RPG

Cutscenes in RPGs turn every grunt with a pistol from an imperial stormtrooper to Chirico Cuvie.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Carlosologist posted:

your Corrin's poor stat gains just prove that F!Corrin is better, much like F!Robin was

F!Robin got the inferior Morgan.

M!Robin is therefore superior.

It's basic science.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012




You know. That knight you get really early on.

Kellam.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Tae posted:


...Practically over? Corrin, never talk again to enemies after this.


A brief reminder of some lines from past lords in similar situations:

"Perhaps this explains why your own soldiers refuse to stand behind you? You are a poison. A festering wound. And I will do what my sister could not."

"Enough! I don't require every detail of your twisted philosophy. You're a villain and a murderer, plain and simple. And I am the justice you deserve."

"I tell you again: I make my own future. And it's one you'll not live to see!"

Corrin really should have someone else write his speeches.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



LEGO Genetics posted:

Gunter doesn't even get a cameo in the afterlife huh?

F!Corrin shall be named Dagger because I am unoriginal.

Hinoka gets more characterization in Conquest then Birthright, all because she was one of the last Hoshido nobles added and Kagero was originally going to be the elder sister.

I'm pretty sure this is only half true. Front half, yeah, she was (as far as I can find) a Kozaki design that just got crammed in to the game to even the numbers of siblings, but the Kagero stuff is just a rumor that seemed to explain some minor oddities, without any real basis in fact.

Then again, there's a lot of confusing bullshit flying around, since this game's writing process? Kind of a clusterfuck!

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Carlioo posted:

Just name her Robin, since this game so desperately wants its characters to be like the ones from Awakening.

Nah.

Orbir.

Keep with the pattern and all.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Siselmo posted:

I'm terribly unoriginal, so I'm voting for this. And seems fitting considering how much the game and characters bend over to make Corrin look good.

That's one way to put it.

Another is that Corrin makes Robin of Plegia (the white haired divine blooded amnesiac super-genius who immediately befriends a prince before winning three wars) look like Willy Loman.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Carlosologist posted:

jeez, and this is considered the better of the three plots. can't wait for the ultimate test of one's patience for a plot, otherwise known as Conquest

I'll give Conquest's plot one point in its favor.

While Birthright is merely boring and incompetent, Conquest manages to occasionally grab your attention, if only due to how much it fucks up.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Endorph posted:

you know if i was azura i might want to spend my last moments with my husband and two sons and not the random fuckhead that cried about songs for the past two years(?)

I think it's more like the past month or two. The timeline for Fates is pretty compressed.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



TheKingofSprings posted:

Much like Robin, Corrin was the product of generations of inbreeding

You know those selective breeding practices that they do with, say, dogs? Where you spend generation after generation with a specific goal in mind, and in the end you get, like, a greyhound or something that is just king poo poo at its area of expertise?

Robin's that.

Corrin is one of the hideously deformed puppies that born midway through the process when everyone's still not quite sure what they're doing.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Endorph posted:


because most everyone's second seal option is flavor-based, not gameplay-based. iunno why people keep not getting that. effie has troubadour because elise.

Because the game already has mechanics for Effie getting troubadour because Elise with A+ supports. When there's an explicit mechanic for a character picking up the same class as a friend, giving them mechanically lovely options by default feels much worse. I mean, Awakening had a few points of precedent like Cherche, but for the most part people got classes that were both relevant to them and useful.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



W.T. Fits posted:

I forget which of her supports it's mentioned in, but Cherche had Cleric and Troubadour as her reclass options in Awakening because she was in training to be a cleric before she encounter Minerva and realized her destiny of flying around and murdering people with an axe. So there is an actual backstory justification for her having those class options despite being mechanically ill-suited to them.

I might have been less clear than I meant to be there.

My intent was to say that Cherche has character related classes that don't work well for her as a unit, like with Effie. Not that Cherche's classes made no sense.

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chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



AnAnonymousIdiot posted:

Fun Fact: that Samurai is so committed to his pattern that as long as Azura is out of his range, he won't even home in on her once he sees her. And the way the map is laid out there are safe zones where Azura can hide in as the unit makes his patrol. You also don't need to worry about Azura being in his line of sight; he sees as far as he moves.

Yep. It's how you're supposed to use the dragon vein, I'm pretty sure. Stealth her up to it and reduce the enemy forces before making your proper attack.

Not essential, obviously, but it can be useful.

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