Party Moth
-
Posts
333 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by Party Moth
-
-
Chapter 5. The moment where Corrin becomes a dragon, and no one even questions what that means to Corrin's parentage and blood relation. Followed by Corrin being magically chosen by the god-slaying sword of destiny that immediately implies that any fight against Corrin will ultimately be a failure (and Hoshido knows this).
Followed by the shoehorning in of My Castle.
-
3 hours ago, SlipperySlippy said:
Honestly, I completely disagree with a lot of the notions behind peoples disappointment towards Faye's ending.
Not to be rude, but I'm not sure what people expected. Faye, similar to Celica, was Alm's childhood friend and developed feelings for him at a very young age. Unlike Celica however, she continued to grow up into adolescence with him, forging various memories and that whole time, continuing to keep holding onto those feelings. Unlike Catria and Cordelia, Faye has much more reason to be in love with Alm. If she can't get over her unrequited feelings towards Alm, which let's be real here, is a very common occurrence, even in real life, of course she'll remain unhappy as her life progresses. The only way she'll be happy is if she develops feelings for someone else or move on from her current feelings, but honestly without any social support or psychological help, she wouldn't be able to make that step.
It sucks, it's sad, but it's the reality for her. She's not going to suddenly drop her feelings she held onto for years just because Alm doesn't love her, she needs time and support to heal. It was inevitable she'd be unhappy like that.
Frankly, it makes much more sense than Gray becoming an alcoholic because his best friend died since he still has a chick he loves and close friendships in Cliff/Alm/Faye at least.
It's less that her ending is disappointing and more that her entire character thus far seems to solely revolve around Alm. That, quite frankly, is unrealistic (or rather indicative of a one-note character starting and going nowhere). Considering that she's a brand new character not anchored to prior dialogue or endings, perhaps it's not completely unreasonable to expect an inch of development rather than her stubbornly clinging to one single trait and refusing to develop?
Granted, we haven't seen everything about her yet regarding dialogue. But the deck is not stacked in her favor based on everything we've seen so far in promotional materials and in-game content. I will accept her stubborn refusal to change if she can bother to exert any traits or thoughts outside of "Alm and I should get together and start a family in the village."
-
24 minutes ago, Jedor said:
I see something wrong with it just because it's a really atrocious song and I'd rather they re-used literally anything other than that :v
Is it atrocious because of the transparent orchestration, or just because you seem to have a strong aversion to dissonance?
I'd ask why they'd bother to appropriate Medeus-related material for the bonus dungeon despite going to great lengths to separate the boss from him, but Awakening has next to nothing to appropriate on the villain side of things.
-
1 minute ago, VincentASM said:
Endings are mostly unchanged. Just differ depending on character deaths.
Support conversations are restricted to 26 pairs. There are more support bonuses though.
That's good to hear. Thank you for compiling all of this.
-
6 minutes ago, Calico said:
Also, are paired endings in for any characters? I just want confirmation, and then I'm outta here.
This. Have they changed the canonical pairings or introduced other pairings into the mix?
-
-
2 hours ago, The Geek said:
Personally I have to go with Dvorak's 9th "The New World Symphony" AKA the song that definitely inspired the Lord of the Rings OST. I'm also fond of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (the song that plays during Donald and Daffy's piano duel in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?") and The Planets Suite.
Everyone should get a chance to listen to "Fanfare for the Common Man" and "The 1812 Overture" on a pair of big speakers. So. Much. BOOM.
1812 Overture is moot without real live cannons.
There's so much music from the common practice period that I'd be here all day listing classics. Wagner's operas are something else, nearly unrivaled in their complex sprawls of tonality, Der Ring des Nibelungen especially (though Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal are certainly no slouches). Beethoven's works are masterful in their construction (with his works really becoming their own by the time of his Eroica), and you can certainly never go wrong with just about anything attributed to Bach. If I had to single in on a specific Bach work, his Goldberg Variations would be in my mind one of many highlights. Schubert's Der Erlkönig is another fantastic work to check out if diving into his music. Further back, Monteverdi and Pezel are worth checking out, as is Lully if you can find performances with period instruments. I recently performed some of Pezel's tower music and attended a performance of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, all of which was wonderful.
For 20th century works, Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 is a haunting piece that is only aided by its context. Prokofiev's Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution is a less popular work due to the connotation of being a celebration of the USSR, but it's worth a listen if you can find a recording where the percussionists properly imitate machine-gun fire with the snares. Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie calls back to the Tristan myth that Wagner took interest in, approaching it from a radically different angle yet always returning to that core love theme. I could probably talk about Mahler for hours, but my personal favorite is his Symphony No. 6 in A minor. For something perhaps more raucous, early Stravinsky or Strauss will do (Rite of Spring or Electra, for example), but when I want to listen even more contemporary than that I will turn to Stockhausen or Schnittke, particularly Gesang der Jünglinge or Concerto Grosso No. 1.
There's so much more to list that the fifteen-or-so pieces listed here are only a paltry sum of what classical music has to offer. I haven't even mentioned Bartok, Britten, Vaughen Williams, Ravel, Berlioz, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Antheil, Copland, Glinka, Mussorgsky, Mozart, Brahms, Haydn, Ives, etc. None of this even dips into the complex harmonic schemes, symbolic content, and articulate nuances of the structure, orchestration and context of these works. To study and perform classical music is enough work for multiple lifetimes.
-
18 minutes ago, The DanMan said:
...You know, wasn't Gotoh called the Star Sage? I may be grossly mis-remembering things, though. Then again, considering he's a manakete that, in dragon form was probably roughly on par with the "Divine Dragons", Mila respecting him would make perfect sense.
Gotoh is the White Sage, though i don't blame you for making the connection due to him being the one who forges Starlight and is repeatedly sending Marth after the Starsphere.
-
Jake, Anna's one true boyfriend.If we went a bit deeper, then I'd say it'd be interesting to see Dorias in all his one-armed glory.
-
Localization is a tricky subject, in that what sort of changes are "better" for a work can be highly subjective. A major example of this is Ghost Stories, an anime that was localized by Steven Foster to be more of a black comedy than a supernatural horror story due to ad-libbed lines by the voice actors. The original work is regarded as fairly dry and boring, especially when put next to the somewhat offensive dub. It's a completely different show in English than Japanese.
Is this a good localization change? Many seem to think so, even though it strongly refuses to remain faithful to the source material. But it begs the question of when such drastic localization measure should be called for, as I highly doubt people would enjoy, say, Ghost in the Shell if all of its ideas were replaced with crass humor. This is an extreme example, of course, but less extreme examples tend to be much murkier on their subjective worth.
-
If you're focusing on noting which artists have contributed to Fire Emblem, Izuka Daisuke should be noted for being an artist for Shadow Dragon (gaiden chapter character artwork), New Mystery (majority of the official art), Awakening (Bride!Eirika DLC), involvement in multiple prior titles (Graphic Designer for Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, 2-D Art Director for Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, various credits for Radiant Dawn in general), as well as being a repeated contributor to Cipher. Mostly thought it odd that you'd reference Gate over all the multitude of FE work he's done.
-
I think that generally greyer conflicts would go a long way toward making a number of character archetypes and plot points more interesting, the Camus archetype especially. Xander, for example, would be much easier to get behind if Nohr and its conflict was generally written with a stronger sense of desperation on their end rather than Garon simply being ridiculously war-happy and keeping around a bunch of evil stooges. Fates especially had an excellent opportunity to establish functional Camus characters with its very premise, but as they say the devil is in the details.
Really, though, all you need for a Camus is to present a character who comes across as fairly upstanding and has no sufficiently compelling reason to abandon his/her people greater than their reasons to stay, unlike characters you can recruit. A Camus should have every reason to remain on the enemy side despite the wrongdoings inflicted on the protagonist's people, emphasizing the point that there are good men on both sides of a war. Whether that comes through cultural means (protagonists invading leading to noticeable destruction of their beliefs and way of life), political means (knowledge that their contributions to the current political regime are a major factor keeping other nobles exploiting the people, which could be invoked and last potentially months after surrendering to the heroes), or otherwise doesn't necessarily matter so long as it is compelling and can't be solved by simply defecting to the heroes' side.
-
A tangential note to consider related to Ike's "leaving forever" character ending: If you choose to give Ike and Mist an A support in Radiant Dawn, Mist has support lines specifically for Ike. The A reads as such...
Mist: Ike, you idiot… I told you we’ll be together to the end. Stay with me forever.
...which then leads to Ike ignoring her request, setting off for Ashera-knows-where, and Mist not having an A support with Boyd and thus living alone. Not related to the shipping poll necessarily, but I think it speaks miles of Ike's strange urge to just up and leave Tellius regardless of connections to friends and family.
As for who I ship Ike with (to keep on topic), it changes without much consistency. Elincia, Soren, Lethe...I'm not one to hold characters to a single pairing most of the time with a few exceptions here and there. Ike's one of those characters who's difficult to interpret due to him simply not being explicit in his affections in general.
-
6 hours ago, bufkus said:
weeaboos. they still prefer to hear and see everything in japanese, despite having a native language that is not japanese.
If they were potentially hiring actors on the level of Orson Welles, then maybe I would enjoy the English performances more. As it stands, the current voice acting industry is so damn over the top in its hammy delivery and poor voice directing that I'd rather take a different language, be it French, Italian, or Japanese. The Witcher 3 in Polish is quite enjoyable, for example.
Don't use aggressive terminology to start fights with people, or you'll get the answers you weren't asking for.
-
24 minutes ago, Dragonage2ftw said:
Robin barely had anything to do with Awakening.
What? Robin is pretty much central to the endgame arc, all the way up to literally causing a secondary ending due to their "sacrifice". How does that constitute "barely anything" and not "literally kills the final boss"?
As for Corrin........
Corrin: You intend to buy peace with death? Madness! *proceeds with the second half of Conquest*
-
19 hours ago, Slyfox said:
What did you not like about about the OST? Among the sea of games out there, the Fates OST is comfortably above the average quality of video game music (and not just video games honestly)
Perhaps the OST isn't all that consistent, and some tracks fall flat. That's really all I can think of.
And what do you think about the Awakening OST, which I consider overall superior to the one in Fates.
I'd say some of my favorite composers are Yuzo Koshiro, Michiru Yamane and Yoko Kanno. Although, that list would be longer if I added people from around the world.
The OST suffers from having five composers tackling the music, some of different levels of compositional prowess than others. Of the contributors, I find Kondoh and Morishita from Awakening's OST to be better composers overall, though I'd only trust Kondoh with handling Japanese instruments and their integration into the orchestra. Another major issue is aesthetic choices: the score is trying to be an homage to traditional European folk music, and homage to traditional Japanese music, a more electronic venture with the Valla material, and an orchestral ensemble somewhere in between to try to tie all these aspects together. The main component tying it all together is the "Lost in Thoughts All Alone" motif, a theme often obnoxiously integrated into every other track with little alteration to the mostly pentatonic melody.
As for Awakening's OST, I hold it in much higher regard due to it having a more concise orchestration overall as well as integrating and balancing multiple motifs (especially in the first half of the game). Despite hiccups here and there, the score has a much stronger identity overall since it's not being pulled in five different directions.
It also gets bonus points for not having "Are You Listening" and its combo of string bass, timpani, accordion(!) and cuica. That made the orchestrator in me cringe deeply.I've talked about it elsewhere in more detail.There are decent tracks in Fates, sometimes even genuinely well written and impressive ones. Running through the VGMDB page of the soundtrack, they were usually from Awakening's composers. Kanazaki has potential, but simply needs more experience to hone his writing skills.
-
My strong dislike for the game has transitioned from frothing rage to a cooled disowning of it. I will say that for all the headache and heartache the game gave me, I at least got a kick out of seeing others express their disbelief of the game (in real life, where not a single gamer I know personally bought the game for various reasons regardless of proximity to my FE preferences). I turned Fates' OST into a weekly game of "dissect this poor orchestration and motivic development" among my composition classmates. Trying to piece together a way to fix the abomination of a narrative was also fun, even if it came at the caveat of the narrative being a swiss cheese plot.
At least other people were able to enjoy it. Unfortunately, I can't be counted among them.
-
I calmly await the glorious arrival of Jake.
-
On 2/17/2017 at 1:54 AM, InfinityAlex said:
While I love the Awakening and Fates OSTs, I think Fates relied far too heavily on the leitmotif of Lost In Thoughts All Alone, in comparison to Awakening and its main theme. Also, I agree that some of the tracks are sub-par for me in both OSTs, but Don't Speak Her Name is never one I had a problem with. Strangely, the big thing I miss is Id~Serenity. Not only was it nice for the Avatar to get their own confession music, it was just a good piece of music, whereas the generic confession theme in Fates just feels very sappy. I often play Id~Serenity in the background when I'm drawing because of the calm, tranquil feelings it evokes, as well as a kind of nostalgia. On the other hand, I can barely stand Fates' confession theme.
Mechanically speaking, keep the current duality soundtrack we have going. While the series does have some great battle themes, I've never been a fan of the disconnect between one piece stopping and another one starting. Speaking of, I want an arrangement of Land of Sorrow to be in the game with both a Calm and an Ablaze/Roar/Fire/Blast/Flow mix. Can't get enough of that track.
The issue with "Lost in Thoughts All Alone" and Azura's leitmotif is that the motif itself is extremely easy to implement due to the intervals used in the first phrase. This meant that they could throw it in everywhere with little rhyme or reason, leading to places where it feels inappropriate to quote it. Awakening handled this better overall, as noted by the fact that there are indeed three major Awakening motifs besides the Id theme. Each of these motifs were written so that they could both adjust to different tonalities as well as flow between one another quite well.
The culmination of this is the next topic I'd like to address, "Don't Speak Her Name!". I believe that it is one of the best written pieces in the soundtrack, but its placement so early in the game is a detriment to the rest of the game's score. The three motifs (the obvious main title theme, the secondary Shepherd material as heard the Prelude and at the start of "And what if I can't? What if I'm not worthy of her ideals?", and the final motif that often follows or accompanies it as featured in the violin in the aforementioned ideals track) intermingle fully in "Don't Speak Her Name!", an obvious arrival point of the three identities. It's a piece that should have been further into the narrative as much of the later music loses its steam and begins to focus on the Id material instead (note that none of these prior Shepherd identities are present in, say, the final battle). This can largely be attributed to the messy narrative goals of Awakening, which seeps into other aspects of the game. I'm in agreement with Slumber that the piece is poorly placed in the narrative, but disagree on his comment regarding subtlety as it seems the motivic development in the early game is easily missed by many fans.
That said, I have much less love for Fates, which feels much sloppier than Awakening due to orchestration issues, sample quality, muddy motivic writing, and overall general confusion on tone due to both too many composers and too many instrumental aesthetics attempted. Less composers and less music aiming at a consistent tone would create an overall better soundtrack in my eyes.
-
I want Masato Kouda far away from the Fire Emblem series. His contributions to Fates were middle-of-the-road at best, atrocious at worst. Kanazaki and Morishita can stay, but only if they're kept away from the Japanese instruments (and especially the European folk ones). Kondoh's cool, and he and Morishita work well together.
That said, I quickly grow tired of Morishita and Kondoh's rhythmic tendencies and instrumental samples, so maybe someone new wouldn't be so bad. That, or bring Tsujiyoko back.
-
26 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:
I Honestly, I find people who refuse to like anything about the newer games to be rather unreasonable. I've met someone who not only dislikes the system changes, but also hates things like the "Ablaze" battle music and crit quotes, pretty much just because they were introduced in Awakening. It's understandable to reject a game based on its mechanics, but I find it hard to wrap my head around hating on things that do nothing but add polish to a game.
As someone who's mixed on the "Ablaze" variations of the newer titles, I feel like I should respond to the statement that they "do nothing but add polish to a game." While they lead to more cohesive looping through giving a map very smooth transitions between battle and map music, they tend to make for rather dull listening away from the game itself due to dynamic contrast and instrumental contrast being somewhat limited to separate tracks. They force climactic points to occasionally occur in places where the cadential phrases don't line up. I'm not for or against either the Ablaze variations or the older methods, but there's certainly pros and cons to be found with both.
That said, I agree that some can be fairly strongly against either the newer or older games. I myself have very strong opinions against the more recent games (largely an abandonment of many aspects I found of value in the older games), but credit should be given where credit is due.
-
Battle 1 plays it too safe in the new version, save for the baffling decision to have consistent eighth note bass drum kicks in the 5/4. Why lessen the contrast between the 5/4 and 3/4 like that?
Celica's Departure, on the other hand, is more in line with the prior tracks we've heard, with a slightly more intimate scoring of the orchestra. I can dig it.
-
https://events.fire-emblem-heroes.com/vote/result
Full results here for anyone interested.
-
I'm not too concerned about arrangements, as the few tunes we've heard so far are fairly faithful to the source material even as they expand the duration of the tracks. What I'm more concerned about is new material and whether it will mesh well with the old motifs and Tsujiyoko's writing style. Tonal consistency was a massive issue with Fates' soundtrack, with too many chefs in the kitchen and too many different aesthetic directions yanking the OST around. I fear another soundtrack as disappointing as Fates'.
Do we have any confirmation on who's scoring this game?
When did Fates plot stop working for you?
in Fire Emblem Fates
Posted
Considering the ability to transform into a dragon is normally locked to manaketes and (usually) their immediate offspring based on prior titles, the plot stopped working for me there as it attempts to force itself into the continuity of the rest of the series. I suppose I'd chalk it up to my own discrepancy and expectactions rather than the plot's, but the thread title is asking when the plot stopped working for you. That's where it stopped for me.