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The Reason for the Problems With Awakening


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Eh, I've lost interest in this thread. Everyone's posts keep becoming tl;dr nitpicking at "what if's". And seeing someone bring up "The necromancers weren't getting paid enough" is just one big warning sign that productive conversation has ended.

You can claim your moral victory at any time, Knux. I'll just leave off that no matter what happens, I will never, ever respect or enjoy FE13 for as long as I live. I don't care if it sold enough to not get cancelled, I still found the game genuinely offensive to my tastes as a gamer, and for it to end up dictating the rest of the series is almost traumatic.

I need to work up the initiative to tear this game up Banzai-style.

Edited by Delphi Sage
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He did, without the Fire Emblem and the Jewels in Grima is permamently killable by Robin and can be sealed by the Exalted Falchion. If Grima or Validar had it and all the jewels then the Falchion can't be awakened and Robin would have been mind controlled and become Grima rendering Grima unkillable and unsealable.

Free his past body, raise an army, steamroll Ylisse, deal with the opposing armies who have no unleashed Falchion, win.

Instead Grima sat around for the Fire Emblem.

Excluding the Grimleal, members the plegian army that weren't sympathetic to Emmeryn's sacrifice were all killed when Gangrel was defeated. Ontop of that Validar would have no reason to attack Ylisse while Chrom & co. are in Valm because when they returned with 4/5 of the gems they wouldn't have been lured to the Plegian royal palace if Plegia was attacking them in their absense.

They didn't need the gems anyway.

The worshippers do not register the Shepherds' presence and can't even speak in coherent sentences. Obviously someone did something to them, probably dark magic, but it really isn't important to know exactly what. Who's going to tell the Shepherds anyway? Aversa? Validar?

The Grimleal are the servants of the final boss. I would expect their servitude to be properly addressed.

The Grimleal are a classic case of people driven to desperation by their circumstances. It happens all the time. Basically they think, "Well, how could things get worse? Let's see what this guy can do."

No, they're actually an attempt to imitate the Loptyrians, absent of what let them work.

That's twisting things a lot. They're not genocidal, they're imperialistic. To paraphrase Dalton, "Surrender absolutely and you'll live." They're out to conquer what they view as a weaker continent. Why bother negotiating when you're so much superior?

The Romans and Mongols took part in assorted negotiations. Temüjin himself was willing to push a peace treaty with the Khwarizmians.

He got pushed. Once it became clear Valm didn't want to negotiate what choice did Chrom have? Surrender?

One commander leads to the Valmese being beyond negotiations?

I thought Regna Ferox was supposed to watch Plegia, like Begnion occupied Daein for Crimea in Radiant Dawn. If that's the case you can't fault Flavia and Basilio for letting Validar, the chief Grimleal priest and likely the only one able to do so, take over the reins. They don't know that he tried to assassinate Emmeryn and died in the process.

Plegia has a history of hostilities with Ylisse. It is the act of a poor ruler to not keep a firm grip on Plegia.

Aside from the fact that it would gain them nothing and just draw attention to their evil plans.

1. Yes, I'm sure crippling or destroying a longtime foe wouldn't help them.

2. Chrom will drop the war in Valm, as soon as Ylisse is sacked?

I suspect that Grima didn't tell Validar his real plan. Most likely he only needed the sacrifices collected to restore his power. The reason for letting Validar snatch the Emblem was to prevent Chrom from performing the Awakening.

So, he let so many enemies (especially Lucina) run around.

This is all I say on this matter.

As long as you stop excusing how poorly written the Grimleal are.

And yet I was able to understand it just fine.

Not everybody assumes their way around faulty writing.

Exactly.It might be true that secretly, some of his commanders do not embrace Walhart's ideology, but there is nothing they can do about it.Poor Yen'fay had his sister taken hostage by the Valmese.

They didn't a good job with the hostage taking. Seeing as how Say'ri was running around with Ylisse's army by the time Yen'fay was a boss.

It's supposed to show that "Fight or Die" is not a choice.

So, Chrom doesn't actually follow his sister's words.

Ylisse was collecting the gemstones one by one. It was all planned by Grima.

And he didn't need them to win. So he screwed up.

arvilino answered this nicely.

He still didn't need them to win. Edited by Saladus
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Oh look, I managed to decipher something in all this tl;dr.

While we're on the topic of Validar needing the Emblem, may I just state that there's no reason for Chrom to need it, either. Naga's supposed to be a Good Guy God, so there's no way they'd let the Grimleal blow it up. So why the hell does it require the five nerfed Spheres to be inserted? Naga seems capable of doing whatever, as evidenced by being alive, teleporting the team onto Evil Dragon God #407's back, and fully healing the party when Yurius hits them with Heartless Angel. I'm sure they could just power up the not-Falchion anytime they'd like.

If Validar wanted it just to keep it away from Chrom, he would have done well to have hidden the not-Darksphere, or at the very least not attach it to the Emblem in Chapter 21.

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Free his past body, raise an army, steamroll Ylisse, deal with the opposing armies who have no unleashed Falchion, win.

Instead Grima sat around for the Fire Emblem.

Because that's the one thing that can defeat him via the Awakening. He wanted to secure it first.

They didn't need the gems anyway.

Awakening.

The Grimleal are the servants of the final boss. I expect their servitude to be properly addressed.

I don't get what about my explanation was insufficient. Do you want Grima to flat-out say "I brainwashed them" to your face?

The Romans and Mongols took part in assorted negotiations. Temüjin himself was willing to push a peace treaty with the Khwarizmians.

Negotiations were the exception to the rule unless they involved the enemy accepting the dominance of Rome or the Mongols. In addition, as I said before, the Valmese consider themselves so much more powerful than Ylisse that they see no reason to negotiate when they can take everything.

One commander leads to the Valmese being beyond negotiations?

Given how Walhart chose Dalton to make first contact, I would say yes. Cervantes and Pheros, both very high-ranking commanders, clearly believe that Walhart is in the right. Everyone does as he says, willingly or not.

Plegia has a history of hostilities with Ylisse. It is the act of a poor ruler to not keep a firm grip on Plegia.

A military occupation would guarantee Plegia becoming hostile, as Chrom would be acting like his father. Besides, I'm pretty sure it was Regna Ferox's duty to watch over Plegia. IS did it before in RD.

1. Yes, I'm sure crippling or destroying a longtime foe wouldn't help them.

2. Chrom will drop the war in Valm, as soon as Ylisse is sacked?

The whole reason Plegia did nothing was so that Ylisse, Regna Ferox, and Valm would kill each other off, ensuring that there would be no effective resistance to Grima's return.

So, he let so many enemies (especially Lucina) run around.

How is he supposed to track her down?

As long as you stop excusing how poorly written the Grimleal are.

They're fine. Not great, but hardly as bad as you say they are.

Not everybody assumes their way around faulty writing.

Not everyone sees faults in everything. Nor does everyone require a good story to enjoy gameplay.

They didn't a good job with the hostage taking. Seeing as how Say'ri was running around with Ylisse's army by the time Yen'fay was a boss.

I chalk this up to Excellus being an arrogant idiot.

So, Chrom doesn't actually follow his sister's words.

No. Emmeryn's pacifism treads dangerously close to stupidity, as pointed out after Chapter 7 when she decides to return to Ylisstol. Chrom likes her ideals, but he is more realistic by being willing to fight. That's how he was when she was alive and how he was when she was "dead". No real change.

And he didn't need them to win. So he screwed up.arvilino answered this nicely.

He still didn't need them to win.

No, but having the gems would secure his victory by preventing the Awakening.

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Re: the Daein/Plegia comparison, Begnion didn't allow Ashnard's right-hand men to remain in charge, let alone do as they please. Daein was only given independence after three years, and it may have been longer if not for abuses from the occupation army inciting a rebellion.

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Because that's the one thing that can defeat him via the Awakening. He wanted to secure it first.

So Grima's method of securing the only thing that can defeat him if allowing his enemies to run around with it and do as they please. Since we've already established that he doesn't need the completed emblem to return, why didn't he just awaken on his own (since he is capable of this), attack Ylisse when they were at their weakest and take the emblem, this ensuring that nothing could defeat him?

Let me answer that for you. It's because Grima is a dumb villain and the writers are incompetent. It's not like we don't have cases of villains not acting when they should have (Gharnef, Nergal, etc) and letting the heroes do as they please but Grima takes it to while new levels of stupid while people rush to defend or justify his idiocy.

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And you claim NOT to be taking a holier-than-thou stance. Stop using font.

I see one more complaint about a post's font, even though it is perfectly readable, and I WILL warn you. This is a poor reason to get on someone's case. I shudder to think of the trauma that would be inflicted if Raven/Freohr posted in this topic.

You can claim your moral victory at any time, Knux. I'll just leave off that no matter what happens, I will never, ever respect or enjoy FE13 for as long as I live. I don't care if it sold enough to not get cancelled, I still found the game genuinely offensive to my tastes as a gamer, and for it to end up dictating the rest of the series is almost traumatic.

I need to work up the initiative to tear this game up Banzai-style.

If you hate the game that much, kindly get out of this subforum. I see no reason why you'd hang around somewhere that's dedicated to something you dislike.

BTW, this goes for several of you.

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are you saying that people aren't allowed to dislike awakening?

or if they do, they should take their dislike to the general fire emblem section and not the awakening board itself?

trust me, its better to let there be an containment for this kind of posting then to try to contain all of it, it'll just explode to other areas.

hell i bet this could be solved with a legit sticky thread about awakening hate and only posts regarding to hating the game should be posted there, with posts about hating awakening appearing in other threads resulting in a warning.

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are you saying that people aren't allowed to dislike awakening?

or if they do, they should take their dislike to the general fire emblem section and not the awakening board itself?

trust me, its better to let there be an containment for this kind of posting then to try to contain all of it, it'll just explode to other areas.

hell i bet this could be solved with a legit sticky thread about awakening hate and only posts regarding to hating the game should be posted there, with posts about hating awakening appearing in other threads resulting in a warning.

If your sole reason for posting in this forum is to bitch about how bad Awakening is, then what's the point? If that's literally the only thing I remember from someone who posts, that's really bad. Also, complaining about it does. . .what, exactly? It's not like IS will follow the whims of SF, and make a game to please everyone (hint: it's impossible).

In other words, it lowers the overall mood, while accomplishing nothing of importance. Keeping one's mouth shut works wonders - I can't mod something that's not posted.

No mak, you shouldn't hate on the game that saved the series!!!!

IMO keep it to constructive criticism only.

Something like this would work. At least attempt to be fair - if everything about Awakening is terrible, then there's no point in hanging around a subforum dedicated to it. Unless you're the type that frequents restaurants that always get your order wrong, just so you can complain about them.

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I don't mean to be rude, but I think that whilst there are legitimate, glaring problems with some of Awakening's writing, people like Delphi Sage and Saladus are employing an excessively rigorous examination of the plot. There's an ulterior motive going on here.

The most obvious flaws combined with the high praise the game recieved by many others leads to disgruntlement and a desire to try to justify a position of altogether not being impressed by the narrative. The discussion has devolved into a bunch of dumb hypothetical excuses because the discussion stemmed from a bunch of dumb hypothetical scenarios in the first place. Whilst I do not claim that stories cannot be better, I think it's extremely hypocritical to hyperanalyze character decisions and present more rational "what if?" scenarios and then simulteanously complain that the counterarguments you get are from the same branch.

Awakening has issues with properly conveying character agency at times, and has somewhat awkward interactions with it's lore since it wants to reference it without paying due dividends. It also uses an exaggerated approach to portraying most of it's side characters, which although past games have done, they have not really put the same kind of constant emphasis or exposure on it as Awakening has. I wrote a post about this a while ago. All of this adds up to breaking a suspension of disbelief for a larger amount of people, which leads to the situation we have currently. So basically, I don't think the main issue is really "Awakening's core plot is bad/not developed enough", it's that "Awakening falters in maintaining an effective suspension of disbelief", which is not exclusively a writing problem.

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Constuctive criticism, eh?

Okay then. How about instead of Validar being ridiculously obvious in his evil, he instead gets a redesign to make him seem nicer looking, probably getting some similarity to the default MU. Then make him completely open and nice with the protagonists in Chapter 13, explaining to everyone about how MU is his kid, and giving the party troops in the form of Henry.

Then get rid of Yurius almost entirely. Make Chapter 23 end with Validar pulling a Nergal and reviving Grima as he dies. They can then use Yurius the same way he's used in the final level as a last-minute hype raiser.

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Robin's skin tone

Since when have Africans, Chinese or South Americans ever lived in Japan?

Besides, the point of Validar's dark skin is just to make him look even more evil, that's all.

Edited by Delphi Sage
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Hmm I dunno about that, maybe they were trying to make dark skinned characters from Plegia because it's a desert- that might explain Validar and Aversa. The other darker skinned characters are Basilio and Flavia from snowy Regna Ferox and the other Plegians(Tharja and Henry) are very light skinned so...yeah I dunno.

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I've heard (and I agree with this) that the reason for Validar's skin color is his intense involvement in dark magic as well as Grimleal activities. This combo of both is not seen in such large proportions with any other character in the game. MAYBE Aversa, but she was not prepared as a vessel for Grima, and she did not participate in nearly so many dark activities as Validar did. Just my two cents.

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alright lets go for criticism in this post.

why did they think that bringing back emm was a good idea to her sacrifice, granted i don't think it was well done, but having her live ruins what emotional impact that has.

let me compair this to HnK, Yuria commits suicide in the same way Emm does, by jumping really far to her death and for most of the series its assumed she's dead, turns out she's not only alive but in perfect condition.

i wanna say it was a rip off but the motives for both are different and emm actually does suffer something (Brain Damage) so awakening does actually improve this, kinda wish they further improved on this by making her stay dead as it really does take down some of the emotion from "don't speak her name", which is sad because this is a very solid track that i want to love, but i can't.

i wouldn't rag on so much about this if she at least stayed dead, yeah noone's forcing you to to the extra side content, but the point is a sacrifice isn't a sacrifice if the person going threw with it lives anyways, which also happens with Bastillo's fake death and one of the two endings that Robin has, which thats another thing i don't really understand, they made a semi difficult choice near the end, but one choice has negative effects and the other doesn't so once again, its pointless. more or less we shouldn't have sacrifices that don't actually sacrifice something, then again i actually have to say that the Emm thing is much better then the other two, because she never recovers back to the same person that she once was.

so you know what, ironically while i was typing this out it was about how bad Emm's thing was, but as i thought more and more about it, her thing was the closest to a legit Sacrifice in this game, therefore its BETTER written then the ending and that Bastillo plot and as i mentioned did the almost exact same thing better then Fist of the North Star.

EDIT: hell i might even go as far to defend that scene in the future just because in comparison to everything else that goes on in this game, its not that badly done.

still a better ending then mass effect 3 tho since the ending does change based on which of the two choices you make.

is this the kind of quality posting that you want from me? cause bam i just threw up some legit constructive criticism and even gave it some praise, sure i can chose to disregard my heart and lie to an internet forum that i actually like the game and i was pretending to be retarded the whole time, but momma told me to not lie.

Edited by HF Makalov Fanboy Kai
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If a person happens to live through an action that they thought was going to be a sacrifice, that still doesn't diminish what their intent was or that they sincerely thought that they'd be sacrificing themselves.

It doesn't diminish the fact that they were WILLING to make the ultimate sacrifice in the pursuit of whatever goal, nor does it diminish that they were in the middle of an action that was probably going to cause it.

Things just worked out differently than expected and they didn't actually die from their sacrifices, but the more important point was that they were willing enough to actually attempt the sacrifice in the first place.

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If a person happens to live through an action that they thought was going to be a sacrifice, that still doesn't diminish what their intent was or that they sincerely thought that they'd be sacrificing themselves.

It doesn't diminish the fact that they were WILLING to make the ultimate sacrifice in the pursuit of whatever goal, nor does it diminish that they were in the middle of an action that was probably going to cause it.

Things just worked out differently than expected and they didn't actually die from their sacrifices, but the more important point was that they were willing enough to actually attempt the sacrifice in the first place.

Perhaps, but the point is that there were no real consequences of that sacrifice.

Emmeryn still lives, almost all of Plegia surrenders, its fringe groups are mowed down, and etc.

Honestly, I could've been able to still take it seriously with Emmeryn being alove. They could've taken it where she may still live, but she'll never be the same person again. She can have a new life free of the 18 years of stress she suffered as Queen of Archanea as a reward for said stress. Her gaiden would end with Chrom realizing this, declaring her not to be Emmeryn and just let her live in peace. And for christ's sake, NOT have that speech impediment at all!

Instead, they pretend her only injury was to her ability to speak, she joins the party, and I have to profusely vomit as I subconsciously know that there are people out there that find brain-damaged vegetables sexually appealing. It's like Katawa Shoujo, only without the inherent self-awareness of being literally spawned by 4chan.

Edited by Delphi Sage
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katawa shoujo was a pretty touching VN tho, while it did appeal to some fetishes, i feel like it was well written enough for me to overlook that.

as i said before for now i'm giving the emm thing a pass because something was actually loss with her case, heck if bastillo lost an arm or his other eye then that would be a legit sacrifice too, heck if Robin lost the ability to speak (a.k.a, a bond forming tool) it'd be a legit sacrifice as well.

at this point i'm not asking for people to die, just lose something to make it more emotional and meaningful.

speaking about the ending, its about the most upbeat and happy ending of a fire emblem that I've seen with no real negative consequences outside of Emm's mental disability, which isn't a bad thing, and most likely fits with the tone they were going for, i still think it could use a small touch of loss tho.

EDIT: and when i say loss i don't mean the control alt delete comic and its many edits

Edited by HF Makalov Fanboy Kai
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