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Palarran

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    Radiant Dawn

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  1. When people look for "realism", what they mean is probably closer to "internal consistency". The quick way of putting it: if the story establishes certain rules, they need to remain rules. If a story claims "this superweapon can only fire once a day" and later has that superweapon fire twice in five minutes, that's a violation of internal consistency (a blatant one, but this is just an example to illustrate the idea). Some inconsistencies are minor, which is to be expected (writers are human, and make mistakes), but glaring holes big enough to drive cars through are another problem. Character portrayals/interpretations are more subjective than events, so that's more open to debate. Characters in stories being idiots can happen sometimes, and that's fine. What's not fine is when they contradict their previously established characters to be idiots for the sake of advancing whatever plot the author is aiming for. A military genius being caught by a clever deception is allowable; a military genius who gets himself trapped in a very obviously telegraphed ambush despite prior warnings is a giant red flag.
  2. A longtime lurker here, who finally decided to make an account so I could reply to this with my own arguments. I think that a lot of the complaints about the story of Fates stem from all the potential it had. I know that when I look at it, I see something that could have been great with some more time and critical thought in developing the story; I think just about every point in all three paths (except the Deeprealms, short of extending the game to at least a multi-year war rather than something that ended in a few months) could have been plausibly justified with better worldbuilding and non-idiot moments from characters. I'm not going to try and attack all those points here (I'd go replay the games again before I tried something fully comprehensive), but I'll list a couple of big ones here. . Garon makes an excellent example: build his character properly, and you would avoid a wide swathe of the criticisms around Conquest. It wouldn't take much for him to be something less than hideously obvious with his evil; ruthless is fine, but he doesn't even pretend to dress up the war as anything other than conquest for its own sake. Birthright offers the reason for Nohr to go to war: lack of food. That should have been expanded and exploited at multiple points in Conquest to drive the point home: people might not like the idea of using bloodshed to secure access to food, but that is a logical course of action for a military nation with a peaceful breadbasket for a neighbor. It's cold-hearted, certainly, but it would be enough to reasonably justify the war as far as Corrin and the Nohrian siblings go; however much they might dislike a war, seeing their people starving in the streets is a powerful incentive to act. Bonus points if you mix in a tale of Hoshidan treachery in a previous attempt to negotiate a trade deal, to counter that natural proposal; it doesn't have to be truth, but Hoshido (presumably) is training its hordes of ninjas for covert operations that often need to stay out of public perception, not merely because people think ninjas look cool. Garon should also have been less obvious about trying to get Corrin killed: the trick with the Ganglari (setting him up to be captured) is bad enough, but the mission to the Ice Tribe basically screamed it, and later behavior didn't really change that impression. Garon being distant or cold is fine, even harsh with disciplinary moves: threatening to kill any of his children out of hand for daring to voice a question is ridiculously excessive. It's sorely out of place when Corrin is presented as being both compassionate and yet loyal to his/her (their) "father"; the fact that Corrin swallows that treatment repeatedly, even after they knew they had been sent to their death more than once, makes it hard to see them as anything other than idiotic, which is not good when they are the main protagonist and an avatar character. . Corrin's dragon transformation is another huge sticking point to my mind (its appearance is a matter of personal taste, although I find the useless wings and limitation to head-butting attacks to be issues). Out-of-universe, I'm pretty sure this is the result of it being added too late in development to go back and rewrite the story, but it's definitely a worthwhile example regardless. Nohr and Hoshido both revere dragons in the distant sense, as legendary figures: from everything Fates indicates, they had vanished from the world until Corrin abruptly transformed into one. This should have been a huge, world-shaking event to a great many people, that a dragon had manifested once more. It would most assuredly draw attention to Corrin's parentage; Ryoma at least knew that Sumeragi was not Corrin's father (as indicated by his S-support with Corrin), which would raise a lot of questions about who was. The fact that Azura somehow knows exactly how to deal with this, can identify it for what it is instantly, and even possesses or can create a dragonstone (I'm not sure which, but my reading of that scene and the one with Kana's recruitment is that she can draw on her pendant's power to create the stone), is worth another few dozen questions that never get even hinted at by characters who really should not have been instantly accepting it at face value without any trace of doubts. More to the point, though, this should have been given tremendous amounts of narrative attention; a real live dragon, on the battlefield, would make a massive inspirational figure. Any number of scenes should have brought this up as a critical point: any transformation in Chapter 6 would have stopped the Nohrian siblings in their tracks, likely rattling them enough that Corrin could get them to listen (especially notable in the Revelations choice). In Conquest, the siblings should have questioned him at some length about it; one might say that this was covered out-of-view on the trip back to Krakenburg, but there should at least have been some kind of report to Garon by Corrin and/or the siblings about something that extraordinary. There should have been tales told by encountered enemies, warnings by allies of those enemies about such an opponent, and so on. Any encounter with the Rainbow Sage should have put that transformation front and center, giving him the chance to provide some kind of explanation. But instead, any indication of Corrin being a dragon vanishes after the chapter it appears in (Chapter 5). Outside of that and Kana's paralogue, the only mention whatsoever I've found in main story dialogue is a blink-and-miss-it throwaway line in Conquest Chapter 7 where Corrin says something about not having time to transform to fight the Faceless he's just run into (I can't remember the precise words offhand). I can't recall that any of Corrin's supports ever touched upon it either; I haven't read them all, so perhaps there are one or two mentions hiding in there, and Kana's supports probably raise the matter a few times, but that's a pretty pitiful contribution. This was a tremendous story and worldbuilding opportunity here, and the writers threw it away in a rather silly fashion. . There's also the way that Conquest gets effectively derailed by Chapter 15 (in terms of story: as a strategic challenge, I think that was a wonderful premise). Before that, you have Corrin setting the seeds of a resistance to Garon's cruelty, trying to provoke reform. The Ice Tribe gets set up as a faction of supporters for Corrin. Notre Sagesse is another example of how he's trying to drive a change in Nohrian methods and perception of Nohr by Hoshidans; the complete lack of serious injuries is rather excessive, but the principle was sound. Cheve shows how it can end badly, with Hans executing the prisoners; he really should have gotten killed off sooner than the final chapters, with the way he was flouting the orders of Corrin (who was effectively his commander at the time), but it spurs Corrin on. Cyrkensia shows Garon's paranoia and ruthlessness, which is savage, but you also get shown how the siblings do their best behind the scenes to avoid casualties. This is a wonderful recipe for a rebellion of some sort to occur within the Nohrian army as soldiers take sides, Corrin and presumably Xander on one side versus King Garon on the other. But after Chapter 15, that plan gets completely dumped by the wayside. We don't even see Corrin go about the abrupt change of plans very smartly; the scene at the end of Chapter 15, where Corrin slaps down and threatens Iago very effectively and in precisely the sort of character Garon and Iago wanted to see, was brilliant, but the interactions with them and Hans during the invasion completely failed to build on that promising start. The self-pity Corrin feels about being "forced" to invade Hoshido is also excessive, given their position as a commander of the invading force, and it certainly doesn't create a good impression of Corrin. Chapter 26 does show Iago and Hans getting dealt with, finally, but it doesn't have any actual follow-up from the earlier threads of rebellion or reform set up by the first half of Conquest. This would be a rather difficult point to properly fix, admittedly, entailing a fair chunk of dialogue changes and probably an entirely new take on Chapter 26 at the least. Still, if properly planned out early on, before the level design really got rolling and it became too expensive to make significant changes, it could have been done. . One last point I'd like to raise. Something else I've noticed here is the frequent criticism of Xander for inconsistency between supports and the story. This one, notably, I don't see as a big plot hole (in apparent contradiction to a lot of other opinions). I haven't seen all his supports, but I've seen enough to understand that he's generally shown as being much more reasonable and compassionate there. I would argue that that is Xander when he feels free to act as himself, to speak his mind and say what he would like to do given the opportunity. What you see in the story, time and again, is the crown prince, bound by duty and family ties both to carry out his king's commands. Whatever he might feel about those commands, in that position, is irrelevant, since he places his country and king above all else; compare him to Camus or perhaps Bryce, who would never break their fealty to their sworn lord regardless of their own feelings. By Xander's beliefs, as the crown prince, he is not free to act in any way contrary to Nohr's interests, as defined by the king (who is also his father, compounding the point of obedience), for his life and choices are not truly his own to make and can be overruled by the king's decree at any time. To us, perhaps, that is an excessive degree of obedience and loyalty, but Garon is king and father both, which certainly makes rebellion seem unthinkable; such obedience does match his established character.
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