bookofholsety

Okay why does part of me want to see that, when/if she laughs in the game, her laughing sounds like a Lopunny's cry? .-.

Part of me is really hoping they pull a Jugdral and have a single base infantry sword-using class, merging the Mercenary and Myrmidon into a composite class merging aspects of the two. Then, its promotions would be the traditional promoted forms of the two, with a substantial deviation between the two buildways: the Hero, with access to axes and a bulkier build, and the Swordmaster, with the significantly increased crit rate with a fragile speedy build. That was one of the things I liked the most about the class array of the Jugdral duology, and I admit I've come to see the presence of both the Mercenary and Myrmidon together in other games as borderline redundant, so this seems like a pretty okay idea to me. In general, that sort of dichotomy of utility is something I really want to see in the branches of this game - back in Stones, I really did like the idea of branching promotions, but I felt that it wasn't utilised to its full potential in that there often wasn't substantial differentiation between choices of promotions. For example, Mage -> Sage/Mage Knight: one gets you an extra weapon type you'll likely never use, one gets you one more Movement point which isn't all that useful in the smaller map sizes of the game and especially the Creature Campaign, but beyond that they are basically the same thing; or the choice between Paladin and Great Knight, where all Paladins have in their favour is more Movement and maybe not having the armour weakness, but are otherwise pretty much outclassed. Point is, I'd like to see the branches being a decision worthy of some consideration with substantial consequences either way; if the Cleric -> Sage/Battle Cleric split is anything to go by, we may well be looking at that being a thing that happens, and that's excellent.

I think I'll take this opportunity to delve into the realm of pure hypothesis and mass guessing: The Miracle of Darna, which occurred in Gran Year 632, would obviously have happened in Naga's lifetime (Seisen kicks off in the year 757, 125 years later). Back in Archanea, Naga died 500 years before the formation of the Holy Kingdom of Archanea. Shadow Dragon et al. starts in the Archanean calendar year 604, 1104 years later. So at the absolute minimum, there is a 954 year gap between the start of Seisen and the start of Shadow Dragon (by which I mean Chapter 1, not the Prologue). Furthermore, consider that Loptous was originally an Earth Dragon of Archanea, and was a participant in the Earth Dragon/Divine Dragon war, which is stated by Archanea's timeline to have happened 740 years before Archanea's foundation (henceforth referred to as BAF for ease); the arrival of Bishop Galle, his blood pact with Loptous and the foundation of the Lopt Cult, events stated by the Jugdral timeline to have taken place in the Gran Year 440, happened in the course of that war. So, if my information and interpretation is correct, this synchronises the timelines at this point: Gran Year 440 for Jugdral, and 740 years BAF for, well, Archanea. In other words, this places the Miracle of Darna, which happened 164 years later, at 576 BAF; the death of Naga, which happened in 500 BAF, at Gran Year 708; and the beginning of Seisen, ie Gran Year 757, at 443 BAF. This means, assuming that my information and my interpretation and maths is correct, that there is a 1047-year gap between the start of Seisen and the start of Shadow Dragon. My head hurts. When compared to the development of the real world in the similarly medieval time period, that actually sounds like a pretty reasonable period of time, though given the presence of magic in the FE universe it's folly to compare these things and hope for accuracy; that presence is very likely to have changed the development direction of the world. It may be impossible to come up with an accurate gauge of the development of technology in the Arcalengdraliris universe over the course of it, given that we generally know nothing about it beyond what we see in game which is basically all war stuff, but I've come to interpret some things as a useful point of comparison: for example, compare the armour of Arden, an armourknight as of the modern Jugdral period, to that of Dolph and Macellan, armourknights of the "modern" Archanea period, to that of... er, whatever Callum is trying to wear. It's not exactly a massive leap in design, but Arden's does seem noticeably simpler than Dolph's and Macellan's, and they're all significantly simpler than Callum's... thing. Of course, from here we still have absolutely no idea how long the timeskip between Monshou and Kakusei is. So, er, I forgot the point I was making?

Upon consideration of the fact that the world of the game is practically identical to Archanea/Valencia, and that Jugdral is set in the ancient history of those worlds, that got me thinking, if working under several assumptions: that the world is indeed "future" Archanea/Valencia, and that Krom is indeed one of the dragon-marked heroes. First, to refer to an excerpt from the logo text: "Two heroes marked with the symbols of dragons." With Naga confirmed to be one of the dragons, this reminded me strongly of the Twelve Crusaders and their bloodlines, the descendents of which have identifying marks on their bodies. Naga bonded with one of the Crusaders, Heim, who proceeded to have quite a few descendants carrying the blood themselves. So from here, what I'm thinking is this: Somehow, in the presumed thousands of years since Monshou and Seisen's events, a descendant of the Heim line came to whatever the Kakusei continent is now called and had children with someone, whose eventual descendant is one of the prophecised heroes. Given that he has a dragonlike mark on his shoulder, combined with the standard trends for FE heroes, that could well be Krom and his family, and I guess that's the assumption I'm working under here: the royal family of Iris carries the Heim bloodline, aka the Naga bloodline, and that is the cause behind the dragon mark. Consider also that there are only two options for Heim ancestors here: Yuria and Celice, the latter of whom may be used as a way to tie yet another main character into this world (assuming you buy the Masked Marth thing); on the other hand, Celice only had minor Heim and thus, without him or his descendants marrying Yuria or her descendants, may not be able to sustain the line. This isn't really that fleshed-out a thought, and it does involve quite a few stretches of logic - there's no guarantee the Heim lineage even lasted that long - and assumptions based on other instances of pure speculation, and I'm not really expecting it to hold any weight, but there you go. Had to get it out. also Emelina will end up wielding the Naga tome

It's certainly not something to rule out, and it might be fun to see, but if BSFE and the FE12 downloadable episodes are anything to go by (given there's only seven of them all connected to the same game(s), they're probably not all that indicative of a trend), IntSys seems to like using bonus chapters in this vein to shine a light on the adventures of people who aren't the main characters. Given that, and again I think it may not be that strongly-founded a theory, I'm inclined to say no. I'm probably wrong, though, and I wouldn't mind it at all if I am.