vanguard333

I agree. Incidentally, what did you think of the video?

Yeah; Clone Wars was good. It was especially interesting to see General Grievous as a genuinely scary villain. Wait; "Clone Trooper discovers the Order 66 plot"? That wasn't in the micro-series. …Oh; you're talking about The Clone Wars: the 2008 cartoon, not Clone Wars: the 2003 micro-series. Never mind. Incidentally, I would say that both are good shows and good prequels, albeit in different ways.

Understandable. I don't think the idea was that there's no value in surprising the audience; just that there is also value in knowing about the event in advance. Incidentally, I learned about Hitchcock's analogy from this video that was a very interesting discussion about plot twists and "subverting expectations (i.e. trying to surprise the audience)": …Okay; my point remains that moments like Zack's last stand wouldn't have been nearly as effective if the game had been an entirely new, unpredictable, story and not a game about the events leading up to Zack's death. As far as I know, most people who play Crisis Core don't play it for the stuff about Genesis; they play it for moments like Zack's last stand.

It feels weird being indirectly referenced like this in a brand new topic. Well, since I just confirmed that I'm the commenter who disagreed with what the Fire Emblem writer said, I think my opinion has already been stated. Anyway, one additional thing I will say, as an aspiring writer, is that, if I publish one of my books, and someone figures out a plotline or upcoming reveal in advance, I will be thinking, "Good; that means at least some of the audience noticed the clues and foreshadowing that I left and they understood what's going on". In other words, I'll take someone being able to predict what I'm about to write as evidence that I'm doing something right. I think it's easy to see being able to predict what's going on as evidence of the writer doing something wrong, but I think seeing it that way is a mistake. I love that quote. It does a great job illustrating what I was saying above about how, if those that read my book when I finally publish it can figure out what's going to happen, then it means that I've done something right. I disagree; I think that a prequel that explores events we already know can work very well, as there can be value in seeing how the pieces moved into place for those events to happen. One analogy for this that I once heard is as follows: If you write that there's a bomb in a room full of characters and it blows up, the audience has ten seconds of shock. If the audience is shown that there's a bomb in that room and it will blow up in ten minutes, the audience has ten minutes of suspense. I think this analogy does a good job summing up what this kind of prequel can do really well. For all the Star Wars prequel trilogy's many, many faults, being a story about the fall of the Jedi and the rise of the Sith Empire was not one of them; the best moments in those three films were the moments that illustrated the rot within the Republic and how the Jedi had lost their way, and the moments of Palpatine's scheming and Anakin gradually becoming Darth Vader. I think prequel video games have a greater advantage than other forms of media in this regard, as the audience isn't just seeing the events unfold; they're experiencing the events as the player character. There's a reason why a lot of these prequels, such as Halo Reach and Final Fantasy Crisis Core, usually end on an unwinnable mission that's usually the player character's last stand; if any other type of game ended on an unwinnable last stand where the player character fights until they run out of health, it wouldn't really work, but in this type of prequel, not only does the player know going in that it's going to happen, but everything is leading up to it, so it works. And it isn't just prequels that can do this; a lot of Shakespeare's tragedies tell the audience upfront that the main characters are doomed. Romeo and Juliet opens by referring to the titular couple as "star-crossed (ill-fated, i.e. doomed) lovers", so you know it's all going to end tragically, and it wouldn't work as well if the audience didn't know in advance that the characters are doomed.

Indeed. Plus, the name Rauru is obviously a reference to the Sage of Light from Ocarina of Time; he even has light magic. Speaking of which, TOTK Rauru is a lot smarter than the Ocarina of Time King of Hyrule:

True. In the case of the Temple of Time; I imagine that was at least in part because existing fans would have in their head an image of what the temple should look like; the same reason there's the ruins of Lon Lon Ranch (which is still there in Tears of the Kingdom).

I understand. I personally just think it makes sense; I think it was clear as early as Breath of the Wild that the Zelda team wants to wipe their hands clean of all the timeline stuff and start fresh, and how they've written this version of Ganondorf comes across to me as an example of that desire. I just hope that at least one phase of the final boss fight has him still be mummified; I think it's a lot scarier than how he looked in any of the flashbacks (and I have seen all of the dragon's tear flashbacks).

The moment she introduced herself as Sidon's fiancée, I laughed and immediately thought, "The Sidon x Link shippers are going to be furious." Anyway, she's a cool character, and I like Sidon's arc of needing to overcome his fear of losing another loved one, but I do wonder if it would've been better for her to have been the new sage of water rather than Sidon.

Ah. I don't consider saying who the focus character is to be a spoiler. Just so you're prepared for the next two areas: the Rito area, sadly, is the exception rather than the rule for focus characters. The Zora area does introduce a new character that's cool and helps out, but Sidon is the focus character again.

There's a sidequest where you help a travelling band at the stable near the crossroad to Death Mountain and Korok Forest. You have to fix their wagon, attach one of your horses to the wagon, and escort them to the nearby Great Fairy. Once you do so, that specific Great Fairy will emerge from her flower. Only after that can you unlock the other Great Fairies. For all the rest of the Great Fairies, the process is as follows: 1. Find the missing band member in the region where the Great Fairy resides. 2. Go to the stables in that region that's closest to the Great Fairy 3. Fix the band's wagon 4. Escort the band to the Great Fairy's flower. I only know this because I went to the Gorons after completing the Rito dungeon. Incidentally, the Gerudo region is the only one I haven't been to yet (I completed the Rito, Goron and Zora dungeons in that order). Without spoilers, what's that region like?

I've never actually played Golden Sun. I guessed that the video is fan-made, but I couldn't tell if there actually was supposed to be an anime or not.

Honestly, both have their different strengths and weaknesses and I don't prefer one over the other. To me, what matters is that the combat makes me think about what I'm doing; I've seen mindless examples of action combat, and I've seen mindless examples of turn-based combat.

Oh. Never mind then. Is there anything I miss if I get the Houses Emblem that early in the game? Or can I just leave it unused for a while and have nothing really change?

I think the lack of attention CF received compared to other routes by the fact that, when it was conceived, it was originally conceived as essentially a hidden bonus route, and hidden bonus campaigns in games generally don't receive as much attention because most players won't see it; it's the same reason final levels in video games often receive less attention than earlier content. Then the decision was made to make unlocking Crimson Flower a lot more obvious. I suppose; I guess we will never truly know for certain until someone on the dev team actually outright says how early on in development Crimson Flower was included in the game. Thank you. And it's not just Shakespeare plays; any prequel may as well have the tagline, "From the beginning, you know how it ends"; in fact, that was literally Halo Reach's tagline, and that game received widespread acclaim.