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"The Light That Shines in the Dark" - Nohr Story Discussion


Thane
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Hello everyone.

I'm finally done with both routes and I felt like discussing the story; since the Nohr version was hyped up a lot more, I felt it was appropriate to create a separate thread to discuss it at length.

For those of you who haven't spoiled yourselves or played through the game yet, please note that there will be major spoilers throughout the thread, some of which may not be in in spoiler tags since the name of the thread plus this warning should be enough to keep people from accidentally finding out about things they don't want to know.

Also, I should point out that my Japanese is poor and that I don't understand a lot of the details, but while I should know more than I do, I feel like I at least know enough to have a semi-informed opinion.

Now, where to begin...

I thought it was dumb.

Oh don't get me wrong, the premise they gave us is fantastic, the choice presented feels heavy and the game doesn't shy away from really making you feel like crap from choosing one side over the other - that's good, it makes us all feel something. When choosing the Nohr path, you decide to stop the invasion of Hoshido as quickly as you can, and the trailers and all the information we received before the release date talked about reforming the country from within, and I believe I heard the word revolution being mentioned several times.

However, that's just not true. After following your father's every whim for a while, you invade Hoshido - straight up invade Hoshido, still hoping to end the war quickly...by murdering people in droves. Oh sure, you try to save as many people as you can, but Iago and Ganz are there and they murder people Kamui want to let go no less than three times during the story, not only making me question why on earth the siblings don't just kill them since Garon doesn't seem to care about anything, but also makes me get tired of the story's attempt at being darker than it is. - We got it the first two times, and your evil monologues have made it very clear that you're evil. We get it.

The fact that the siblings hadn't even entertained the idea of killing Garon after seeing him being straight up evil and going against absolutely everything they believe in until before Kamui suggests it - right before you fight him - is beyond me. They also seem to be opposed to the idea for whatever reason, until they see that he's a slime monster, then it's okay to kill your old man.

Neat. Why are the Awakening kids serving these people again? I guess losing their world filled them with some kind of lust for revenge so they decided to ruin a country. But I digress, they're unimportant in the overall narrative.

Anyway, so you end up indirectly causing Ryouma's death simply because you don't like going against Iago's evil little plans. I know I'm simplifying things here, and I actually liked the scene where Iago threw Hinoka's spear down in front of Ryouma, but knowing that this entire battle could have been avoided if Kamui just gave him SOME kind of warning makes me roll my eyes. The fact that he believes Kamui after the battle when he can no longer move is also mind boggling - but that might just be because of my poor Japanese.

So how is Kamui okay with all this? Well, you see, Aqua, who tagged along for no particular reason and doesn't get her motives questioned nor explains why the hell she made a casual trip to a different dimension, had a magic crystal ball that showed us that Garon was a slime monster all along - then it explodes, meaning that you can't show it to your siblings and have them believe you.

How convenient. Now, let's not mention it to them until we're about to fight him anyway.

So Kamui and Aqua's master plan is to invade a nation and force the old man/flubber guy to sit his tender fanny on the Hoshido throne, which reveals a person's true self. That's so stupid that I don't even know where to begin, but I'll settle for "why the fuck couldn't you just tell your Nohrian siblings that, you fucking morons?" Leon even asks that, and hopefully Kamui gives a damn good explanation in like two lines of dialogue, because I didn't understand his reasoning.

And then when Mr. Personality is down, Takumi shows up to be the final boss.

Huh...I actually rather like that idea, maybe...

"That's not me. Please kill my body, brother."

...What.

Wait, no, seriously, WHAT?!

Not only does (Hoshido end game spoilers):

the EXACT same thing happen with Kamui passing out after having his Yatogami destroyed, which he later restores after some pep talk from his deceased loved ones.



However, unlike in that route, Kamui doesn't deserve it here. He's committed atrocities, or at least have let them happen. He wiped out Takumi's army, killed his subordinates and we're to believe Takumi of all people has forgiven him in that short amount of time? Why? Why would he? Even if he was "corrupted" for the lack of a better word during the whole route, he still never trusted or liked you in the beginning AND you killed his men after invading his homeland! Please tell me this is just because I misunderstood something vital, because this just left such a bad taste in my mouth.

What happened to the revolution, or changing the country from the inside? You're not the "light that shines in the dark", you're the mother fucking right hand of darkness in the form of a yes-sayer who's constantly being told what to do and follows through with it even though it goes against everything you believe in!

Like I said before, I liked the premise and the choice, and there are many great scenes in the game and some genuine emotion, but the ending just doesn't add up. Kamui tried to save as many people as he could, but the fact that he can be happy at the end AND forgiven by Sakura and Hinoka is beyond me.

Hoshido spoilers:

contrary to Xander and Elise's death, where it was Xander's stubornness which caused them to die, Ryouma and Takumi died more or less because of Kamui's stupidity.



Also, I mentioned it briefly before but what does Aqua even do here? She tags along and instructs Kamui to do this or that, takes a casual trip to another dimension which isn't brought up again (if it were me, I'd be kind of curious) and then she dissolves or whatever after singing a song to weaken Takumi. Why is this character considered so important? Oh, she'll definitely be a major player in the third path, without a doubt, since it seems to be the path to explain EVERYTHING. Do the Hoshidian siblings even mention that she's gone, or care for that matter?

Hopefully, people will tell me I've got everything wrong and that it's my poor Japanese that has caused me to feel this way, which I sincerely hope since I DO want to like this route, but at this point, I just can't like the story with its awful ending.

What did you guys think?

Edited by Thane
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You should fix your spoiler tags. I write "spoilers" instead of "spoiler" all the time by accident too. xD

Your assessments of the scenes even with poor Japanese skill are still fairly accurate, as the little to no explanation on some of those points will not help how you feel about them already.

This is coming from somebody who understood most of the dialogue. xD

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Yeah, even with roughly zero reading of the text you can roughly tell what's going on

If we had more dialogue maybe we could see some more explanations.

Like, from what I can tell, around like Chap 22 or something?, Xander starts having doubts about the whole thing, which of course, once Ryoma "rips" makes everyone go "We're gonna confront Garon now" or something

Otherwise...what can I say...

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I disliked it a lot.

Not only was the deaths of the siblings so anti-climactic and really had no meaning unlike in Hoshido, the story was just so different from how it was promoted.

Kamui was a dipshit and I personally believe that Robin is better then him(I like him a lot more in Hoshido).Aqua's death was nothing compared to Hoshido's which had a full on cutscene.

I did like the characters a lot more though but that was it.

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I completely agree. IS failed on addressing Kamui's idea of "reforming Nohr from within". Not once does he do anything to change Nohr, he just blindly follows King Garon's orders, almost like he completely forgot why he joined Nohr in the first place. It's sad. If only IS made a more "complex" story and made sure that Kamui actually tried to rebel against Garon, it would've made FEif: Nohr a standout between the two other paths when combined with it's harder maps and objectives.

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Every story will tend to have it's flaws,

The Nohr campaign had a less signaficant even in Kamui's cause.

As Etern@lDawn mentioned, the goal of "Reforming Nohr from within," does not speak well.

Kamui very well would have ignored fighting the Hoshidans all around. But no, they still must invade Hoshido by the order of your "father".

Now if Kamui had grown a spine and actually went against Garon, perhaps the Nohr campaign had a better meaning.

Edited by Whitelock
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I think that I want to understand japanese. Give me your brain.

Eh, seriously though, I kinda figured out that Kamui would be pretty much a Yes-man that don't do shit and decide to rebel at the last moment because Metal-slime.

It's kind of annoying when the characters know perfectly well that their 'superior' is a dick, but do nothing against it, even if they perfectly can

.

Then again, how can you have a smart story when the main character is a dragon. I can't stress that word enough...
Btw, was his dragon transformation ever mentioned ? I don't think so but I ask anyways

Edited by B.Leu
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I agree with many of your points, OP. I felt like Kamui was unbelievably useless in some of the scenes, like '...WHAT ARE YOU DOING, DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!!!!!'

When I saw Ryouma's death scene, I was like 'If you hear him start with that samurai stuff, STOP HIM, GRAB HIS HAND, GRAB THE BLADE, DO SOMETHING! What is the point of reaching out to him after he already killed himself?'

Alas.

I'd like to remind everyone, though, to consider the cultural differences. In East Asian culture, their views on respect for authority figures or people in a higher position of power is different than the way it's viewed in the West. We talk about Kamui showing no spine in the Nohr path, and I would agree, but consider it from the Japanese audience's POV. Honestly, they may view it as spineless as well, but I don't think it'll be quite as jarring as for us.

Yep...I'm still really excited for all paths however. It's clear to see how much work that IS put into these games, and despite its flaws, I know that FEif will be a standout among its predecessors. :)

Agreed! The fact that they even made 3 paths, with diff maps, characters, and storylines, is just amazing.

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I'd like to remind everyone, though, to consider the cultural differences. In East Asian culture, their views on respect for authority figures or people in a higher position of power is different than the way it's viewed in the West. We talk about Kamui showing no spine in the Nohr path, and I would agree, but consider it from the Japanese audience's POV. Honestly, they may view it as spineless as well, but I don't think it'll be quite as jarring as for us.

And I'd like to remind you that he openly defies Garon in the very first chapter when he defends Suzukaze from the fire blast. It's not a matter of spine or not, it's just that he actually seems to believe he's doing the right thing when invading another country and serving a guy he know isn't even human anymore (and is planning killing him anyway once he could prove it to his siblings).

This has nothing to do with a cultural aspect, just poor writing.

He also goes along with a lot of what Iago is saying, and in terms of status, I believe Kamui outranks him, and Xander most definitely does.

Edited by Thane
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I thought Kamui apologized for that? And agreed to go scout the abandoned fortresses by dawn, when failure means death to atone for it? At any rate, I think that no matter what there will always be some cultural bias in the game's implementation. We can see that in various other character tropes and mechanics in the game. You are free to dislike the story as much as you want. I shall hold off on final verdict until the dialogue/scripts for all the paths are out, though it may take a long time.

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I agree with the OP.

One of the hardest things for authors to do is to compellingly write a point of view they disagree with. Writers are human, after all, and they'll be biased one way or another, and overcoming those biases can be really difficult.

It's too bad that IS wasn't able to make both sides equal, but at least they tried.

I also agree with mewyeon on the cultural differences she points out, which are true, although in the end, OP is right, the story has problems.

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Well, that's disappointing to hear. So what I'm getting here is that Nohr's story was a bit of a train wreck and that Kamui is dumb?

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That's quite unfortunate. I had high hopes and was expecting something more along the lines of "Kamooi and the siblings underhandedly undermine Garon from the shadows the entire time" instead of lol 26/27 sudden reversal. I can only read 30% of Japanese off whatever Kanji there is, but that's the feeling I got as well while watching the streams and I wished it wasn't like this since I can't read the other 70% and it's sad to see it confirmed.

Will still cry for lobster every time.

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I loved OP's point "Why are the awakening kids serving these guys again?"

Seriously, now that I think about it, that makes no sense at all. What went wrong in these kids lives that they looked at Garon and were like "this is the place for us!"

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I've mostly just skimmed through this thread, but from what I gleamed, is this correct?

1. Kamui is a moron.

2. Everyone blindly does what Garon orders even if it goes against everything they believe in.

3. No one considers turning against the CLEARLY EVIL MAN until the end of the game.

4. Though Kamui states he wants to end the war as fast as possible, he instead of killing Garon, who is the aggressor in this war, decides to cause even more death and kills innocent Hoshidans AND his Hoshidan siblings which is COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY.

Because if so, all hopes of having a deep story from Nohr have disappeared.

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Thats...unnerving. Let us hope the localization team at least gives us some more solid dialogue. :/ Im still going to play Nohr first though.

I recommend if you are getting both games to play Nohr first. I did it this way, and personally felt it helped make Hoshido more emotional, as those you spent time with for an entire game are now your enemy, and their harsh words at your betrayal will sink in even deeper. xD I don't think the same effect would happen the other way around because Nohr's emotional moments do not compare as much to the Hoshido ones even if you didn't play Nohr first...

I think that I want to understand japanese. Give me your brain.

Eh, seriously though, I kinda figured out that Kamui would be pretty much a Yes-man that don't do shit and decide to rebel at the last moment because Metal-slime.

It's kind of annoying when the characters know perfectly well that their 'superior' is a dick, but do nothing against it, even if they perfectly can

.

Then again, how can you have a smart story when the main character is a dragon. I can't stress that word enough...

Btw, was his dragon transformation ever mentioned ? I don't think so but I ask anyways

Not really, that seems to be a third path thing. It was in the early chapters, but then neither path addressed it at all after the split.

Yep...I'm still really excited for all paths however. It's clear to see how much work that IS put into these games, and despite its flaws, I know that FEif will be a standout among its predecessors. :)

Keep in mind that if the OP is posting out flaws on the story and such, it certainly is not an attack on the game. : )

I thought Kamui apologized for that? And agreed to go scout the abandoned fortresses by dawn, when failure means death to atone for it? At any rate, I think that no matter what there will always be some cultural bias in the game's implementation. We can see that in various other character tropes and mechanics in the game. You are free to dislike the story as much as you want. I shall hold off on final verdict until the dialogue/scripts for all the paths are out, though it may take a long time.

Kamui apologized, but Garon ordered to be executed by Marx on the spot anyway. After much deliberation, Kamui managed to wiggle their way out. So he was beaten into subservience by the constant in fear of being executed the rest of the game from then on. xD It's what they keep using to get them to do what Garon wants. Garon too uses them as a tool for this reason.

Well, that's disappointing to hear. So what I'm getting here is that Nohr's story was a bit of a train wreck and that Kamui is dumb?

It's not so much a train wreck as it is weaker than the Hoshido story in several aspects. : )

I agree with the OP.

One of the hardest things for authors to do is to compellingly write a point of view they disagree with. Writers are human, after all, and they'll be biased one way or another, and overcoming those biases can be really difficult.

It's too bad that IS wasn't able to make both sides equal, but at least they tried.

I also agree with mewyeon on the cultural differences she points out, which are true, although in the end, OP is right, the story has problems.

I am sure there are cultural differences with respect to authority (and especially family). This would be considered both. But I am sure it is not the sole factor in shaping it to be this way. That, and why would they place these values in the western oriented culture? It makes sense if Garon were a Hoshidian King, but...

I suppose you could say it's in Kamui's blood. xD

That's quite unfortunate. I had high hopes and was expecting something more along the lines of "Kamooi and the siblings underhandedly undermine Garon from the shadows the entire time" instead of lol 26/27 sudden reversal. I can only read 30% of Japanese off whatever Kanji there is, but that's the feeling I got as well while watching the streams and I wished it wasn't like this since I can't read the other 70% and it's sad to see it confirmed.

Will still cry for lobster every time.

Unfortunately it was not that. It was more Garon (and Macbeth/Iago) make Kamui's life miserable because they're quite the pushover. xD

I've mostly just skimmed through this thread, but from what I gleamed, is this correct?

1. Kamui is a moron.

2. Everyone blindly does what Garon orders even if it goes against everything they believe in.

3. No one considers turning against the CLEARLY EVIL MAN until the end of the game.

4. Though Kamui states he wants to end the war as fast as possible, he instead of killing Garon, who is the aggressor in this war, decides to cause even more death and kills innocent Hoshidans AND his Hoshidan siblings which is COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY.

Because if so, all hopes of having a deep story from Nohr have disappeared.

1 - I would say naive, more than that. xD Fitting given the upbringing

2 - This is unfortunately true. Kamui under threat of execution due to treason, and the siblings because they believe it is right.

3 - They could not even think about turning against their father until they saw he...was just a glob of goo and not their father at all

4 - Kamui invades Hoshido to speed up the invasion as much as possible to get Garon to sit on the throne. They aimed to subdue some of the Hoshido siblings but gets them killed anyway. They naively thought that it would be like Sakura (who they capture fine and alive), but then things take a bad turn when Garon orders them to kill the older siblings in front of him.

So Kamui's invasion was built on naive ideals, rather than the reality that Garon may take sadistic pleasure in watching Kamui suffer. xD

Edited by Kirokan
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Unfortunately it was not that. It was more Garon (and Macbeth/Iago) make Kamui's life miserable because they're quite the pushover. xD

Damn. The entire time I just wanted Marx to lob off Iago's head and be done with it

Really wish Kamooi was more competent/strong-willed/steadfast etc. Alas.

Edit: Thanks Boron for the word

Edited by Thor Odinson
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...Well, this is going to be interesting, as I... really didn't like Hoshido from what I saw. Like, it was good, please don't get me wrong, but it was pretty rare I was surprised by anything, even without knowing what they were saying, and even the support conversations aren't making me really interested in the characters aside from a small handful. Elise and Xander deaths hit hard, but that was probably the only time it got a reaction out of me? Oh dear...

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I completely agree. IS failed on addressing Kamui's idea of "reforming Nohr from within". Not once does he do anything to change Nohr, he just blindly follows King Garon's orders, almost like he completely forgot why he joined Nohr in the first place. It's sad. If only IS made a more "complex" story and made sure that Kamui actually tried to rebel against Garon, it would've made FEif: Nohr a standout between the two other paths when combined with it's harder maps and objectives.

Rebelling against Garon from the start would have made it little different from Hoshido's story, or the usual FE story though. In the end, based on various reviews, it seems like they failed to actually show Kamui's actions having impact and significance before the final chapters, but "reforming the country from inside" really shouldn't result in a campaign where you spend 80% of the time with "create my own army to take down the evil empire". There's nothing "reforming from inside" about that.

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I guess that shows that a darker story isn't always better, althought I actually sorta expected Hoshido would be the more emotional story, I mean, think about it, what's more dramatic? Fighting against sibilings you barely know or fighting against ones you knew your entire life.

Maybe if they reversed the roles of the nations, making Hoshido the "evil" nation and Nohr the"good" one the story would have been better.

Edited by Water Mage
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Man this sounds really disappointing......I might still play Nohr first just for the emotional weight when I choose Hoshido and then from there on to Third Path.

I was really expecting more from Conquest but as I said I wont judge it until I played it myself.

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I largely agree with you, judging from what I know about the plot so far.

Honestly, after all the promotion of Nohr's story being so very exceptional in contrast to Hoshido's standard we-get-invaded-and-fight-back-stuff, I'm kind of disappointed with what we got:

Mindlessly following evil slime dad's order's even though it's totally obvious that he's a bad guy. Yay.

Considering the whole "light in the darkness"-business, Kamui doesn't do enough to stand up to this reputation. Because well, he mainly seems to just roll along with what's going on.

And if the part about Aqua's crystal ball first showing the truth about Garon and then exploding is true, so that Kamui actually decides that he can't talk with his siblings to convince them, but needs to push the invasion even further in order to reach the Hoshiadan throne faster...

I hope this is explained in some good way that I don't know about yet, or it is one of the dumbest plot devices I ever heard of.

So Kamui's invasion was built on naive ideals, rather than the reality that Garon may take sadistic pleasure in watching Kamui suffer. xD

I can definitely see both. :)

But yeah, Kamui is terribly naive in the Nohr route. And this makes quite a bit of the problems/drama seem to be avoidable.

All in all, I dunno. I guess I'll just have to wait for the translation.

Or maybe I'll do another post about what I was hoping for the story to be later on.

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It's funny how Nohr was advertised to have the more 'complex' story compared to Hoshido's more 'traditional' story when looking at this Nohr's story seems like a giant mess.

Not gonna change my views of the Nohrian characters though, still love them all to death.

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