Jump to content

Why is the story of Awakening not so good according to you?


Recommended Posts

The characters are stupid and most of them are just walking stupid anime cliche. Half of the dialogues and supports are complete crap, but I can say that some of them are good, but they are very very rare to find, otherwise, if they are not just there, they're just dumb and/or centered on the humor and nothing else. Remember when humoristic supports were rare to find ?

The story is mindblowingly stupid, full of plotholes and deux ex machina, devoid of any quality, subtlety or common sense one would expect from a Fire Emblem game. Not gonna list them, it would be like talking about Naruto.

The story also seem determined to never ever use anything to it's potential. Chrom's father was a fanatical maniac ? Only one line is given and nothing else. Validar is Robin's father ? Only one line too. Walmart is a conqueror who's goal is world peace, and has apparently en empire behind him. How about you talk about it, stupid scenario ? Or at least, make sense about it ? Because with such stupid villains with him, it's hard to tell anything. Speaking of that, FEA love to tell you what to think instead of being smart.

And let's not even talk about all the villains that are so stupid and generic that it hurts.
Lucina want to kill Robin because she know that he'll kill Chrom ? Don't do it in the end because friendship, despite her actually saying and trying to do something smart for once. Time-travel that is never ever used to it's logical potential

All the so called 'crowning moment of awesomes' such as Emmeryn's 'sacrifice', Yen'fay wanting to protect his sister, and Robin's gambit have nothing awesome at all, in fact, they are so ridiculous, it's not even funny.

Oh yeah, and Awakening introduced the worst plot device ever called the Outrealm, that is so incoherent and dumb that we might as well talk about the Naruto's final arcs. Despite it not making any freaking kind of sense, some people persists is saying otherwise, and visibly IS agree. GG.

All in all, Awakening have the kind of story you'll expect from a crappy manga and nothing more.

Good thing I can ignore my dislike for this story when reading a fanfic, eh.

Edited by B.Leu
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 67
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

The Outrealm isn't a plot device and has nothing to do with Awakening's story, though. Regarding its making sense, dimensional portals in FE have a perfectly decent precedent in FE6, and most of the consistency problems that apply to it aren't exclusive to it within Awakening- sure, you can run off and ignore your quest to go to a beach, but you can also run off to go fight bandits in Ferox. Do you mind elaborating on your beef with it?

Also, what would you count as the "logical potential" of time travel?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I said it in another topic to someone, if you want to compare a portal that transport you to a specific location, and a portal that can transport you through time/space/world/whatever when the plot, the DLCs and the devs want at any time for completely BS reason, be my guest.

I might come as an ass in saying this, but the fact remains: The outrealm is a shitty poor ass plot device and it will remain as such no matter how much people want to deny it.

By logical potential, I mean this Laurent, by example, apparently landed on the main timeline one, wait, I just seen it on the wiki to be sure, THREE years before anyone else. Nothing is done with that, the dude apparently wandered in a desert all alone for three years, and he didn't thought about searching for Lucina or what ?...
Same for the other children, they seem contend in doing crap, instead of completing their main objective: Saving. The future. God forbid that those characters have a brain for once.

And I know, there must be the mariage first, for the child to be generated, otherwise it won't make sense, thing is, it doens't make sense in the other direction either.

Likewise, Lucina, well, she did shit too. like seriously, even after, it's established she come from the future.

And in the end, those idiots are useless, they are only saved because of random stupidities and deux ex machina that I'm supposed to take seriously.

Edited by B.Leu
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I get that you don't like the Outrealm Gate. What I asked was why.

Additionally, tracking down a person who's not on record for anything in a Victorian-era pair of continents is no mean feat. If anything, you should be complaining that they found eachother as easily as they did.

Not sure what you're talking about in regards to marriages.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the Gangrel arc was handled pretty well, however the rest of the story leaves alot to be desired. Valm feels pointless other then a Gaiden reference, (I do thank it for Say'ri however).

Valdar wasn't given enough screentime to establish himself, Chrom is like Sigurd in that he blindly throws himself at problems, however unlike Sigurd he isn't punished for it, and I don't mind stories being black & white, but some grey was told in the fact that Chrom's dad was apparently a douche, why couldn't we have more about that? Leaves a bit to be desired.

Awakening overall felt more like a celebration of the franchise rather then a serious narrative at points. (Although I don't quite mind the time traveling kids, DBZ bias for that.)

It's not the worst thing ever, but I do think its probably the weakest FE story.

Edited by Jedi
Link to comment
Share on other sites

what i wanna know is where exactly was the starting point that these kids were dropped off at.

not to mention no one except Lucina ever thought "hmmm, my parents were a part of the ylisse army, how about lets try going there".

Random/everywhere. Probably alongside a load of Risen.

Cynthia did try to find the Ylisse army... She just did a bad job of it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I get that you don't like the Outrealm Gate. What I asked was why.

Additionally, tracking down a person who's not on record for anything in a Victorian-era pair of continents is no mean feat. If anything, you should be complaining that they found eachother as easily as they did.

Not sure what you're talking about in regards to marriages.

I said it already, the outrealm is a stupid plot device that doesn't make sense. I killed myself into saying this multiple time...

You're going to tell me that none of the children knew that their parent were the Sheperds of Ylisse ? That's make them and the story even more stupid.

I know that informations are hard to find, but geez, it's their parent's job, not somekind of hard to find information, knowing about them and what they did, and they did the whole Walmart thing, is the bare minimum, especially if they want to 'save the future'.

That make Cynthia even more retarded than I though... or maybe actually smarter ?...

What I was saying for the mariage is that to have a kid generated, you must have two units married, thus in a way, it make sense that you don't hear about them gameplay-wise, but story-wise it doesn't make sense, since it's established that Lucina isn't the only children from the future. You see what I mean ?

You're not going to make me believe that it would take 4/5 years for one of the kid to go to Ylisse, especially for some kids that at this from it. It just don't work.

Edited by B.Leu
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The 2nd Gen was frankly shoehorned into Awakening. Even Lucina ends up serving as an expositionbot after she joins the army. I honestly say you could have cut them all from Awakening and just have Tiki as the link to the Fallen Timeline.

Among all of Awakening's narrative issues, one I'll het into is how major antagonists suffer from the following:

1. A lack of effectiveness.

2. Poorly handled to unknown ideologies and causes.

3. Lack of backstory.

Validar is a key example of the first issue. The man goes around getting beaten or otherwise outmanevured. It reaches the point where Validar dies for good as a failure, with Grima completing the ritual anyway in a blatant asspull.

Grima and the Grimleal are the key examples of the second. Grima is a dragon out to destroy humanity, yet what drives him to do so is never really explored. The Grimleal are a kingdomwide denomination that worships a dragon who is genocidal towards mankind. We are never told WHAT the Grimleal at large get out of helping Grima.

And of course, there's the lack of backstory which goes in line with Awakening's shoddy worldbuilding. We are never told where Grima came from, or how he can even speak and scheme while being descended from Earth Dragons (not mentioned in-game). We don't know how Grima worship took off in Plegia to begin with. And so on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Awakening overall felt more like a celebration of the franchise rather then a serious narrative at points. (Although I don't quite mind the time traveling kids, DBZ bias for that.)

Fire Emblem x DBZ. Time to recruit Future Trunks...

Glad to see I'm not the only one who likes the time traveling stuff.

Edited by LordTaco42
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's plot is weak, don't get me wrong, but it's plotholes stem more from a "when going against what was established in FE3" perspective than compared to its own story. I feel this game made the same screw-ups in plot that RD did, just on less of a scale. It requires you to have played Marth's and Alm's games to have a basis for Ylisse's history. Problem is, like RD, it doesn't elaborate enough on what happened in between events, and screws over those who know those games. Ironically there is reference to the event where the Shield of Seals and the Archenean empire broke apart in the game's script, so theres a conflict that caused this, but it isn't given much explanation.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, after you rescue Tiki in the Mila Tree, she asks where the gemstones are, to which Basilio replys that they scattered at the time of the schism, and the Regna Ferox was founded in said Schism.

Were Plegia and Ylisse founded at the same time, I think so, but the plot doesn't specify beyond that.

Also, If outrealms are a bad plot device, then you hate the plots of FE6, FE7, and FE11. They have been established for a while now, tho they are only mentioned offhand in 6. I personally like them, since it calms down pairing wars, as all of them are made canon thru this

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe the reason why the kids wander around before being recruited is because they have to keep a low profile until it's safe for them to meet their parents (which is why Paralogues don't unlock until the corresponding mother is married), otherwise they could heavily change history and run the risk of being McFlyed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe the reason why the kids wander around before being recruited is because they have to keep a low profile until it's safe for them to meet their parents (which is why Paralogues don't unlock until the corresponding mother is married), otherwise they could heavily change history and run the risk of being McFlyed.

Yeah I think its a combination of ensuring their existence and the fact that wandering the world on foot alone to search for two people is quite the task.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The first arc had the most potential. . .and then it ended. I think fleshing out what was there would've made for a solid entry. Have the kids and whatnot show up in the second half without the parents, with replacement characters for those kids who don't exist (a la FE4), and skip the Walhart thing entirely.

as one of sf's most vocal critics of awakening (self-proclaimed of course), i agree. i replayed the game a couple weeks ago, and the game just becomes exponentially worse as it goes on from arc to arc. the plegia arc was the most solid overall, but it ended way too soon. in terms of characters, both gangrel and emmeryn weren't fleshed out enough (emmeryn being a borderline worthless character), chrom is just a meathead lol, and robin is a robot. ferox was kinda cool (the khans are undoubtedly the most interesting good guys in the game).

time travel doesn't make sense at all. according to the events of plegia, emmeryn dies sooner, chrom is incapacitated by like ch.5 (ie, very early on), and robin betrays them yet somehow the struggle against grima lasts 18 or whatever years after the events of the dragon table (awakening itself all takes place within the same year if i'm not mistaken). only then did naga/tiki aid them. that just doesn't make sense. grima won long before those children should have been able to grow up. also, validar fucking sucks and is boring.

valm was a joke. i only like walhart because he's a badass. the two highlighted characters, his right-hand-men, include a crazy "tactician" and a man obsessed with his moustache. there's also that cool female general that got one chapter of screen time, when really she should have gotten much more.

hands down the most interesting piece of the game is the yen'fay/say'ri dynamic. the handling of the "rebels" that were on the say'ri's side, then weren't, then were was a little stupid, but it can be forgiven. the dialogue/development that say'ri has just makes her character and the dynamic with yen'fay much more interesting. it lasted like three chapters though haha.

the writers didn't know what they were doing.

Edited by Phoenix Wright
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can tell Awakening really lacks narrative direction. From abandoned or underexplored plot points (see Falchion gleaming), shoehorning an entire continent in as a reference to Gaiden (Valm), the 2nd Gen's lack of significance, etc.

Frankly, the game should have been trimmed down. Get rid of one or more of the major antagonists. Cut the time travel or the 2nd Gen. If you need a 2nd Gen, then properly integrate it into the narrative with the consequences.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You're going to tell me that none of the children knew that their parent were the Sheperds of Ylisse ? That's make them and the story even more stupid.

I know that informations are hard to find, but geez, it's their parent's job, not somekind of hard to find information, knowing about them and what they did, and they did the whole Walmart thing, is the bare minimum, especially if they want to 'save the future'.

That make Cynthia even more retarded than I though... or maybe actually smarter ?...

OK. But what if they didn't want to find their parents?

Lucina is pretty interested in keeping her distance from your party, even though she finds you right off the bat- she cares more about hunting for gemstones and keeping important people safe than anything else, and is only "unmasked" by a sequence of mistakes. The rest of the children were probably in the same mindset (especially Gerome), and just a little easier to convince to join you when you ran into them (emphasis on you finding them and not the other way around).

What exactly they were doing is up in the air, and they may not have even made a plan before leaving (they were attacked during the ceremony to create the portal, after all, and left in a pretty big hurry).

time travel doesn't make sense at all. according to the events of plegia, emmeryn dies sooner, chrom is incapacitated by like ch.5 (ie, very early on), and robin betrays them yet somehow the struggle against grima lasts 18 or whatever years after the events of the dragon table (awakening itself all takes place within the same year if i'm not mistaken). only then did naga/tiki aid them. that just doesn't make sense. grima won long before those children should have been able to grow up.

Since Emmeryn dies in Cht.6 in the future, the war with Plegia isn't cut short by her, and drags on for around 11 years (the children are born at the start of this). The chaos prevents the Grimleal from getting a grip on power. The war ends when Walhart finally invades (the reason he's late is because future Yen'fay didn't work with him and slowed down his conquest significantly). Presumably the same things as normal happen in the Valm arc- Basilio dies for real, and when Chrom gets back Validar is in charge of Plegia. He gets his Emblem, and at the Table Robin decides to become Grima (this is around 9 years after it happens in the game's timeline). However he isn't able to fully power up thanks to one of the Gemstones being "lost forever" (Lucina doesn't elaborate on how this happened), and in lieu of being able to simply trash the place as a giant dragon uses a flood of Risen to do so. Ylisse, Ferox and Valm fight back in a losing battle, which culminates many years later with the attack on Ylisse shown in Lucina's flashbacks, and on its way sees the deaths of all the first gen units sans Chrom, Robin and Tiki.

There are still a few big plotholes with that (namely, Cht.23: if missing a gemstone prevented Grima's full resurrection in the future, why didn't missing all of them thanks to Basilio prevent it in the present?), but I blame that more on Cht.23 than the future timeline since there are many other problems with it.

I think the writers knew what they were writing, they just forgot to properly present it properly (and then Cht.23, where they got carried away with making something "epic" and forgot to proofread it). They spent too much time on the "think with your heart, not with your head" model, even though they had plenty of material to tie everything together. There's too much stuff buried under piles of supports, DLC maps and official media that fits together too well for it to be the ramblings of some insane authors. A bigger problem, perhaps, is that it requires so much work to piece all of it together- only someone who's already really dedicated to the story can do it, and someone who dislikes it because of vagueness/plotholes/whatever never will. It's like how half of FE4's tale was told through supplementary material like interviews and books, except FE4 at base was good enough to make people like it without all that.

Part of me also thinks that the continents Awakening takes place on aren't even Akaneia and Valencia. If it weren't for a remark in a Tiki/Flavia convo somewhere in a Scramble map regarding the location where Tiki slept in FE3 to have been in present Ferox, it would even be possible that they weren't- as-is, there's much more separating their lores than there is tying them together. I think Awakening's story would be much stronger if they let it stand on its own.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK. But what if they didn't want to find their parents?

Lucina is pretty interested in keeping her distance from your party, even though she finds you right off the bat- she cares more about hunting for gemstones and keeping important people safe than anything else, and is only "unmasked" by a sequence of mistakes. The rest of the children were probably in the same mindset (especially Gerome), and just a little easier to convince to join you when you ran into them (emphasis on you finding them and not the other way around).

What exactly they were doing is up in the air, and they may not have even made a plan before leaving (they were attacked during the ceremony to create the portal, after all, and left in a pretty big hurry).

Since Emmeryn dies in Cht.6 in the future, the war with Plegia isn't cut short by her, and drags on for around 11 years (the children are born at the start of this). The chaos prevents the Grimleal from getting a grip on power. The war ends when Walhart finally invades (the reason he's late is because future Yen'fay didn't work with him and slowed down his conquest significantly). Presumably the same things as normal happen in the Valm arc- Basilio dies for real, and when Chrom gets back Validar is in charge of Plegia. He gets his Emblem, and at the Table Robin decides to become Grima (this is around 9 years after it happens in the game's timeline). However he isn't able to fully power up thanks to one of the Gemstones being "lost forever" (Lucina doesn't elaborate on how this happened), and in lieu of being able to simply trash the place as a giant dragon uses a flood of Risen to do so. Ylisse, Ferox and Valm fight back in a losing battle, which culminates many years later with the attack on Ylisse shown in Lucina's flashbacks, and on its way sees the deaths of all the first gen units sans Chrom, Robin and Tiki.

There are still a few big plotholes with that (namely, Cht.23: if missing a gemstone prevented Grima's full resurrection in the future, why didn't missing all of them thanks to Basilio prevent it in the present?), but I blame that more on Cht.23 than the future timeline since there are many other problems with it.

I think the writers knew what they were writing, they just forgot to properly present it properly (and then Cht.23, where they got carried away with making something "epic" and forgot to proofread it). They spent too much time on the "think with your heart, not with your head" model, even though they had plenty of material to tie everything together. There's too much stuff buried under piles of supports, DLC maps and official media that fits together too well for it to be the ramblings of some insane authors. A bigger problem, perhaps, is that it requires so much work to piece all of it together- only someone who's already really dedicated to the story can do it, and someone who dislikes it because of vagueness/plotholes/whatever never will. It's like how half of FE4's tale was told through supplementary material like interviews and books, except FE4 at base was good enough to make people like it without all that.

Part of me also thinks that the continents Awakening takes place on aren't even Akaneia and Valencia. If it weren't for a remark in a Tiki/Flavia convo somewhere in a Scramble map regarding the location where Tiki slept in FE3 to have been in present Ferox, it would even be possible that they weren't- as-is, there's much more separating their lores than there is tying them together. I think Awakening's story would be much stronger if they let it stand on its own.

This all actually really helps explain alot of things. Thanks for the long post.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since Emmeryn dies in Cht.6 in the future, the war with Plegia isn't cut short by her, and drags on for around 11 years (the children are born at the start of this). The chaos prevents the Grimleal from getting a grip on power. The war ends when Walhart finally invades (the reason he's late is because future Yen'fay didn't work with him and slowed down his conquest significantly). Presumably the same things as normal happen in the Valm arc- Basilio dies for real, and when Chrom gets back Validar is in charge of Plegia. He gets his Emblem, and at the Table Robin decides to become Grima (this is around 9 years after it happens in the game's timeline). However he isn't able to fully power up thanks to one of the Gemstones being "lost forever" (Lucina doesn't elaborate on how this happened), and in lieu of being able to simply trash the place as a giant dragon uses a flood of Risen to do so. Ylisse, Ferox and Valm fight back in a losing battle, which culminates many years later with the attack on Ylisse shown in Lucina's flashbacks, and on its way sees the deaths of all the first gen units sans Chrom, Robin and Tiki.

where/when is this explained?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^Lucina's unmasking scene for the details of the war with Plegia, tho reading between the lines is needed, but I'm not sure about Valm. If I had to guess I'd say the artbook or when Lucy tries to get Basilio to not fight Walmart, just again with reading between the lines needed. There's also that artbook that covers Grima's backstory that possibly had these details better explained.

Dear God, this game really needed the between chapter world map exposition scenes of the previous games. I can assure you we would not be having this conversation, if this game just followed the old games style of chapter transitions

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dear God, this game really needed the between chapter world map exposition scenes of the previous games. I can assure you we would not be having this conversation, if this game just followed the old games style of chapter transitions

i think i'd have less complaints in general if we had this, i have no idea why this was removed in the first place

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK. But what if they didn't want to find their parents?

That make it even more stupid, and put (another) plothole in the game, since the main reason to why they traveled in the past was to change the future. How can can they change the future if they're not willing to work just a little ?

If they didn't wanted to in the first place, that only make the entire timetravel thing even more pointless and mindblowingly stupid than it was in the first place, and holy crap, we're already beyond the bottom of stupidity here.

Give it up guys, the plot is not good and it will never be.

Edited by B.Leu
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Uh, no, Lucina herself says that she didn't reveal who she was to avoid altering history more than necessary. While the others I can't speak for what they were doing exactly, their goal was simple, and directly stated by Lucina herself, they only sought to change events that directly led to Grima's return(granted they royally screwed this up). Gerome is a special case, since he wanted to free Minerva of the past from Cherche, he shought out his parents using his knowledge of the old timeline in Wyvern Valley. Due to Valm happening sooner however, he winds up found by Chrom and pretty much conscripted into the army. The plot is good(bar CHT 23), but flawed in one area, which is that the details that tie everything together are hidden amongst 60 something chapters(counting DLC), art books, and a crapton of supplementary materials that aren't easily sorted thru.

I still feel it's the second worst written game in the series mostly due to the lack of world map narration to better explain things and chap.23, but I think it is a good plot when you ACTUALLY know all the hidden details in the supplementary materials or your on your first run. Like RD, lack of proper explanation of things is what hurts it, but at least it actually does explain this stuff. You just have to dig REALLY deep.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^Once again, this is explained, but you just have to dig really deep.

Grima straight out says in Chap.23 that he tried to free his sealed body as soon as he got to the past, but Robin's heart was too weak at time to contain Grima's power, knocking Robin outcold and giving him/her amnesia.

He keeps on trying(and failing) thruout the rest of the plot, causing Robin to commonly suffer extreme headaches. (tho one headache was caused by Validar)

Edited by MCProductions
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...