AnonymousSpeed

One of the most interesting parts of FE6 is how it's very clearly supposed to a "re-interpretation" of FE1 (I say "very clearly", but as far as I know this is just a fan-theory which which I've adopted because I like it). I would've been interested to see the series attempt that same idea- build a new game from the ground up using the same basic skeleton and tropes as another game. The franchise has increased its number of explicit references, but the spirit has changed, whereas Roy's journey is in clear parallel to Marth's right down to getting into Melee. Completely unrelated, but I've heard it said American interest in FE wasn't because of Marth in Melee, but Roy. Sure, Marth is higher tier and is remembered better now, but Roy's design is more appealing to western tastes. Then again, you have to unlock Marth first, so maybe not. The greatest localization patch in the history of localizations, maybe ever.

I would like to re-iterate that, as a tactics game usually concerned with international politics, the personal desires and motives of Mercenary #3 are not actually important to the overarching plot to invade Finland and stop the Lohikäärme from being resurrected, so any good storytelling involving him will necessarily be relegated to subplots. You could, but I think that goes against a level of self-efficacy which players can fairly expect by this point. Y'know, that makes sense, I'd be alright with that. Only LTChads would deploy a shovebot who acts as reusable bait, but it would be fun. I also don't remember if it was just you or someone else who said it, but base conversations and gaidens are a good way to lend some extra characterization to your scrubs. I will reject, a priori, any view of anything which says talking head games like Fire Emblem should have full voice acting. aw yeah man i really love my fantasy epic looking like a low budget youtube commentary channel I would legitimately rather read a book, the medium which is entirely about conveying ideas with reading. I am not inclined to think giving more freedom and responsibility to writers who made bad lines will suddenly make them produce good lines. The very fact that August and Dryas were good implies it's not an issue with concept but execution, which Fire Emblem has always had struggles with. I have a confession to make. I didn't remember why Dryas was named, so I left him out of the thread. I refused to look it up. I am a fake fan.

Y'know, something a little looser and more non-competitive might have a good chance of getting some more attention. It has new thread smell, which helps too. Alas, now that Soul's on mission I do lose some of the fun of making FE fanfiction where wizards and conspiracy theorists travel from one dimension to another.

this n[my lawyers have advised me not to finish this remark] doesn't believe in gameplay story integration, at which point why even have the story at all? The link could not be embedded because www.youtube.com does not allow embedding of that video.

I'm sure we've all heard permadeath be critiqued, at one point or another, on the grounds that it negatively affects the plot by requiring no characters be necessary. There are many examples (or at least I assume many) of me talking about the emergent narrative in Fire Emblem being more important, but we'll ignore that. I just want to say why this is a silly objection and why it would not only be easy to fix, but has been concretely fixed. Look, guys. The solution really isn't that hard. Just have Malledus. Y'know, make the non-lord characters in the story ones that can't be deployed on the map. FE games actually used to do this all the time, and it was the general logic which the series operated on for the first six games. The main lord gives you a game-over when they die, and everyone else stayed dead. Supporting characters who showed up throughout the game were not deployable units, and their numbers counted Malledus, August, and Guinevere. It was not until that dreaded creature FE7 was released that the series really started ignoring this idea. Oswin and characters from FE6 all retreated when they died, and it continued to spiral out of control from there. The role of the "advisor" was essentially folded into the Jeigan from that point onward (with a few twists and variations that were all still deployable units). Having a plot-important character that isn't on the map is something of a lost art in Fire Emblem. Look, I get it. The weebs and nerds want to see their favorite waifus and husbandos get the spotlight and do cool things, they want Guinevere to girlboss around like she does in the trial maps, but if that's our goal then we should stop talking about the plot in this self-serious manner entirely. Honestly, the hilarious part about it to me is how little these characters actually do with their never-ending retreat quotes. A bunch of characters in Engage retreat, but they don't do anything besides talk in cutscenes and they don't even say or contribute anything interesting. The Emblems do most of the actual hero-side plot development, while Diamant and Ivy are just there to stand around and affirm the player character. Malledus had a clear function- he provided exposition to Marth and therefore the player. The only guy who cares about Thracia's plot likes August a lot. Merlinus exists to always be wrong and comically wrong at that, but he at least provides a foil to Roy. Ignoring the permadeath element has actually made the characters more like bumps on a log than when they were actually just advisors. Probably because narrative agency for every individual doesn't make sense in a tactics game.

Caeda obviously could have convinced Camus- to die! Forged Wing Spear baby, let's go!

Someone's gotta be.

I don't even like splitting magic into light and dark.

Funny as I found this, I do feel like it's beating a dead horse. A more effective strategy to "combat misinformation" (cringe) than making negative assertions about Mir are to provide positive assertions- not to the contrary of what he says but in general, so that the people know FE6 exists as a good game whether Mir hates it or not. I actually dispute most of these points. A lot of people look at these things and call them flaws because they don't adhere to conventions from recent games, and don't really think about how they work in the whole rather than in a superficial comparison. A few points: The biggest argument for ambush spawns in the Tiki paralogue in Engage. Trying to do that chapter early is hellish and the reinforcements on that chapter are especially awful. However, they aren't ambush spawns, so you can just camp around the entrance to the temple for thirty turns until they run out. This is the most reliable strategy for the map. I won't dispute that most characters are worse than Rutger, but they almost all have uses and niches. Since FE6 is from the era still designed with ironmans in mind, having a large number of characters who vary in quality and ease of recruitment makes perfect sense. Low hit rates are the billed disadvantage of axes. In games where hit rates don't matter, axes are better than everything else and swords are always worse. Swordmasters are actually good in FE6 because hit is a valuable stat like damage. You have to make trade-offs between power and reliability, which the game senses to be designed around. Compared to something like Conquest, the action economy and stat-thresholds in FE6 aren't very exacting. Instead of formulating a perfectly reliable strategy, FE6 challenges you do build a plan that can handle something going wrong. Would the game somehow be better if you just didn't get to use the Binding Blade?

I think a lot of people can be melodramatic about permadeath, but I know people who just like it better without that and I support adding the feature at any arbitrary historical point for those people. I like Fire Emblem with permadeath and I think there's something to be said for forcing the players hand, but I'm not too worried about it currently. Wow that section was a mess, let me re-write that. Some people are melodramatic about permadeath. However, I know people and have friends who simply enjoy the game more without permadeath and are very reasonable about it. For the sake of them, I am fine with the idea of casual mode being in any given game. There is something to be said for forcing a player's hand (such as making them play with permadeath on), so I won't say it "should" have been added earlier. Truly the first modern Fire Emblem game. It makes sense, considering it was the first one Maeda directed. See above. I'm assuming those two things are related, but I couldn't say for sure.

@Arvis4Prez C'mon baby Arvis-Rockefeller 1964 Judgral is is filled to the brim with Wagner-esque names. I think their clear alignment is with Franco Spain. Franco also liked churches so this kinda works in a weird way.

Us, the virgin incel designerlets- "How should Ike use Urvan?" Super Sakurai Gigachad Videogamesman- "How should Ike fight?" He didn't decide Captain Falcon's moveset by deciding how to have him use a car.

Shoutouts to @Eltosian Kadath for fighting the good fight for permadeath and carving your own story in my absence. Shoutouts to all the cool dudes doing so.

Fallen Edelgard didn't kill herself.

I'm gonna tl;dr this whole thread because, and maybe this is just since I'm on mobile, it looks really long. So, with apologies for all the interesting discussion I skipped, I'll just be talking about what I saw glancing at the OP and some other posts. "Fire Emblem does not Fire Emblem: Engage with permadeath as a mechanic because you just reset" is an extremely luke-warm take that should be spewed out of your mouth. It's like saying that it doesn't meaningfully engage with growth rates because you reset on bad level-ups. You have to intentionally exclude ironmans from your perception entirely, and I get that not everyone likes them, but they have real value as a way to play the game. It's the same value that you get out of Rogue-likes but on a much grander scale. I kind of resent the implication that the lack of alternate dialogue when characters die means that the game doesn't engage with the mechanic. I've written about this before, but a huge part of the fun in Fire Emblem is your own choices over the army. You formulate your own story of your favorite shallow anime characters becoming the real MVPs of the army through hard work and heavy investment, or your best unit dying tragically and needing to be replaced, or someone unexpectedly becoming a super-star. Furthermore, Fire Emblem is a game and we should care about it's gameplay. Even without alternate dialogue, a dead unit presents alternate gameplay decisions because you can no longer use that unit. Now, I know that many later Fire Emblem games have stepped away from the ironman-emphasized days of Shadow Dragon, Binding Blade, and Thracia. Yet even Conquest can be irommanned and people have had interesting experiences because they were forced to adapt to not having Camilla. I feel like saying a unit death is just "another failure condition" is a poor assessment. Firstly, because failure conditions are not actually a bad thing. They are in fact critical to most games. The enemy taking the seize point in a defend map is also an alternate failure condition. If the fun of a game comes from overcoming the challenges it puts before you, then we expect there to be conditions where you don't meet the challenge. It's also fine for those conditions to change. The other issue is simply that it's not true. You don't have to reset. You're welcome to, but that's your decision. You can determine how much you care about that unit and whether you want to reset for them. Again, this let's you create a personalized narrative of your own campaign determined by your own luck, determination, and preferences. In short, the thread is too long and I made it worse with another long post.

Kinda depends on the state of the old game. Shadows of Valentia is criticized for being too loyal to the original gameplay, but Gaiden is so wretchedly archaic that I think it was a good idea to make that same experience but tolerable. I just wish it took some of that approach with the story, which is really overwritten by comparison. If they remade Sacred Stones, I'd be fine with them taking more liberties, since the original game is still perfectly playable. I've stuck to Fire Emblem examples here, but the thought process applies elsewhere.

My boy Barst, My boy @JimmyBeans's boy Bord. My other boy @Shaky Jones's boy Cord. We triangle attack in this household. I also really like Castor and I want him and his mother to be happy, so he stays.

That would conflict with the existing mechanics, so you might have to make adjustments to that. It mostly matters for children, I guess.

Indeed. I am in great demand for more war criminals, and Fire Emblem has not been giving me what I need.

I kinda like Melee Marth and his continuation in the series. Obviously a lot of people do, since it's not only the definitive image of the character for many people, but it's also bled back into mainline FE and Heroes- Engage has essentially made Blade Dance and Shieldbreaker canonical abilities, the Melee design is used for the DS games and everything after, etc. I think there's something very appealing about the suavity, the elegance, of Melee Marth. It's not a perfect fit for how he acts in the main series, but I think there's something very interesting about that aloofness as its own character. The use of the shield would probably render him bulkier, more serious, less regally vain, and ultimately detract from the personality of the Smash moveset. Counter is not merely a counter, it is a parry of perfect precision. A shield is not necessary for a prince with such swiftness and finesse. So, to take it back to the original question- I don't think he should use the shield in Smash. I like the design already. Besides, how's he gonna grab you from afar with the shield taking up his hand?

I go away for six hours and you guys double the post-count on this thread to repeat an argument you've already had.

Dolph and Macellan in shambles right now. Those are the ones you forgot, aren't they? Draug, Roger, and Lorenz you remember, but Dolph and Macellan? You forget them, like trash, you monster. This is the main one you really don't need, since you're using a billion wyverns and re-classing bunch of paladins into wyverns anyway.

I'll take a tangential opinion that the "hub" should be something you can run entirely through menus, but maintain a lot of the weird little things recent games have had. I actually like how, in Fates, different units have different cooking proficiencies, shop bonuses, etc. I'd like to see that mechanic expanded on. Instead of having the chef be random, let me assign units to cooking duty and pick the apothecary for the day. If a task requires multiple people, having synergy between them could boost their effectiveness and they would gain support points from working together. Even a unit who's bad at a task might still be a good candidate if they provide a boost to a more effective unit that you want to build support with. I'd even like to see it taken even further in that direction. Let me pick what units are dedicated to harvesting which materials, and like with cooking have different fishing/hunting/gathering/farming/scavenging/mining/etc proficiencies. Perhaps have finite allotments of land to dedicate to producing certain resources, so you have to pick whether to grow peaches or cherries or build a fishing pond of whatever. Basically, I'd like to see it expanded into a resource/labor management game in itself. I still don't want to run around an awkward 3D environment to access these places.

I feel like some ancient treasure for forgotten proto-Indo-European root word has been uncovered. Good job, adventurer. I mean, it's possible the Warriors writers did just take it off the wiki, though. Pretty sure that's what the Heroes writers do.