Fixing Fates story issues (spoilers)

[Sunwoo]

Yeah, that's one reason I don't want to bother with Nohr route until it's localized and I'm compelled to play it. I'm not bothered by the idea of characters I like dying in the story if their death has an impact. But Takumi's death and the circumstances surrounding it served only to kiss Kamui's ass one final time and did a severe injustice to his character. So no.

[Medeus]

While the event itself was poor writing, the rest is just kinda story telling. Kamui makes a decision in line with her character and with several chapters of build up. Then it results in more conflict. That's just how you write. I'd say Nohr has a lot more of these sorts of ups and downs than previous FEs, and it's one of even fewer to actually feel bleak at a few points though. So perhaps that's why this one feels so much worse than other FE installments to people.

Aqua, as plenty of people have pointed out, is a lot messier, but just because her poor decision was the catalyst for the Nohr/Hoshido plot, it really doesn't render every decision Kamui makes poorly written.

A bad decision or a decision you disagree with isn't necessarily a poorly written one.

It necessarily isn't, but that doesn't mean that the decision here wasn't a poorly written one. Again, you have to consider what the decision means for the plot as a whole as what leads up to it and what happens after it forms a major part of the story, and ultimately the effect it does have is a negative one. Kamui and Aqua look like idiots, alternate scenarios that would've been much less destructive were completely ignored, and many people suffer as a result. To add a sweet cherry on top of all that, Kamui and Aqua are let completely off of the hook for all of this as Takumi is vilified for his justified dislike of Kamui and what he does, and the sisters never call him out when by all rights, they should be pissed at them.

So for me at least, I don't feel that decision is poorly written because I disagree with it, I feel that decision is poorly written because it and the event leading up to it causes many problems for the plot as a whole.

[Ebony]

It necessarily isn't, but that doesn't mean that the decision here wasn't a poorly written one. Again, you have to consider what the decision means for the plot as a whole as what leads up to it and what happens after it forms a major part of the story, and ultimately the effect it does have is a negative one. Kamui and Aqua look like idiots, alternate scenarios that would've been much less destructive were completely ignored, and many people suffer as a result. To add a sweet cherry on top of all that, Kamui and Aqua are let completely off of the hook for all of this as Takumi is vilified for his justified dislike of Kamui and what he does, and the sisters never call him out when by all rights, they should be pissed at them.

So for me at least, I don't feel that decision is poorly written because I disagree with it, I feel that decision is poorly written because it and the event leading up to it causes many problems for the plot as a whole.

I do wanna say, even if I never met them, I'd be heartbroken and angry at Kamui if they were my sibling and yet betrayed me. They didn't take advantage of that. Fuck. They have so many plot points they could have done. It's... upsetting.

Also you're saying... #Takumididnothingwrong

[JupiterKnight]

The way the game treats Takumi's valid dislike for Kamui in the Nohr route is disgusting. Takumi has a lot of really good reasons for disliking Kamui esp when they invade Hoshido and kill some of his people, but instead of doing some good with his feelings he gets treated like he's being unreasonable, gets possessed, killed off, and his corpse gets turned into the final boss. Even then the game doesn't want to abandon the idea that Kamui can do no wrong no matter what.

I don't mind characters I like getting killed if it's done respectfully and has an impact, but the way Takumi's valid dislike towards Kamui gets treated and the way his death happens is a real injustice to his character. It makes me wary about playing the Nohr route to be quite honest.

He was possessed after the events of Chapter 6 on Nohr/Hoshido after falling into Invisible Kingdom. It's just Azura is able to help restore him on Hoshido, but still leaves him vulnerable by having Iago control him, while on Nohr none of that happens so Hydra is able to control him far easier. Combined with being a teenager who has other issues beyond his distrust of Kamui and he's ripe for possessing.

That's why Gunter, an older man who has more control over his emotions, is able to resist at the end despite having been under Hydra's control as long as Takumi has been.

Edit: It doesn't help that Kamui just met these siblings and knows them for a day or two at most. It's no surprise if he picked the family he actually knows other some guys he just met.

Also anyone who thinks Kamui isn't as naive on Hoshido is wrong. Kamui trusts Zoura even after Leo tells them they can't trust him. They do it anyways. Sure enough Zoura betrays them and botches a perfectly good plan to kill Garon. Then he gets killed for betraying Nohr because betraying Kamui is a death sentence.

Edited September 8, 2015 by JupiterKnight

[Sunwoo]

The fact that the plot needed him to be possessed so that the final boss could be a possessed Takumi while the actual Takumi is dead and has to apologize to Kamui for his perfectly justified hatred is pretty disgusting as it is. He could have still been possessed while his hatred towards Kamui was not portrayed as being "wrong" by the game.

[JupiterKnight]

Takumi is implied to have died when he jumped to his doom upon Hydra taking control, even if he disappeared. Plus there are two Takumis in the final battle, so I wouldn't be surprised if one's the body and the other his soul. However that works.

[Sunwoo]

I don't think you're seeing the issue that I have, or you just don't care at all.

[artishe]

I wouldn't say the dialogue even vilifies Takumi. On the Nohr route, he's treated as pitiable, and even at his first appearance after the route split, he's already clearly struggling with his possession. The sense that his actions/anger aren't completely his own and that he's clearly struggling with... something is pretty obvious, enough that even Kamui's like 'whoa let me help you.' For that matter, his hatred of Kamui isn't treated or claimed to be unjustified in any way. There's just a strong vibe of it not being as intense as it's portrayed, what with it being worsened by his possession.

He's not treated as any more of a villain than any of the other Hoshidans. Just a rather tragic casualty of the war.

Edit: Maybe Takumi sounds villainous if you've only read the plot summaries so far, but I thought the main dialogue made it pretty clear that he's not a villain.

Edited September 8, 2015 by artishe

[JupiterKnight]

You said it better than I could Artishe.

[artishe]

You said it better than I could Artishe.

Teamwork!

Really, though, the Nohr plotline sounds really ridiculous in some parts until you actually play it. The main dialogue works wonders. If you haven't/can't play the game but aren't avoiding spoilers, I totally recommend using the translation I linked. It's about half the game atm and includes the whole crystal ball/'we gotta put Garon on the throne' decision, which actually reading (and reading the chapters before) really helps understand.

There are still issues of course (Slime Garon is just sooooo much wasted potential and Aqua's a mess), but the actual dialogue will probably help clear up or at least improve some of the things people are bringing up. The plot summaries floating around really don't do the Nohr route justice. They remove a lot of the nuance, and unlike on Hoshido/IK which are more plot driven/straight-forward, it's a lot more important in Nohr to get word for word what the characters are saying.

Edited September 8, 2015 by artishe

[Alazen]

Reading the dialogue won't make Ganz and Macbeth less of the flat mustache twirlers they are or the war between kingdoms significantly greyer. Among other problems.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Alazen

[Ryo]

Reading the dialogues (both Japanese and translation) actually confirmed many of my interpretations with the major problems though, if not reinforce them even more than I expected (because I couldn't find anything in the script to justify these problems, while the dialogues describe them in details which is just painful to read). Some minor things that people've brought up are indeed partially cleared up, though I don't regard them as significant issues in the narrative.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Ryo

[JupiterKnight]

Reading the dialogue won't make Ganz and Macbeth less of the flat mustache twirlers they are or the war between kingdoms significantly greyer. Among other problems.

Yeah but they are like that on every route.

[artishe]

Reading the dialogue won't make Ganz and Macbeth less of the flat mustache twirlers they are or the war between kingdoms significantly greyer.

And the generic evil villains are another of my complaints.

Reading the dialogue should probably help make it apparent that the goal in the main plot isn't to write a grey war though. Like I said earlier, it felt way more focused on greater good vs. loved ones, so muddying up Nohr/Hoshido to be equally worthy routes would remove this conflict by removing the greater good portion. It's a pretty common theme, too, and the Nohr characters + Kamui at least almost all struggle with it, so some thought obviously went in to connecting it to everything on the Nohr route, at the least.

If FE14 was purely a war story without any kind of moral question, then I would've been a lot more disappointed that the kingdoms were black/white. But it's pretty clearly not and greying the conflict only hurts what's currently written given the direction IS decided to take the plot.

Edit:

@Ryo: There were definitely still issues, slime Garon, Aqua, crystal ball contrivance, generic villains, etc, but some of the stuff I've seen brought up I didn't find at all. I had actually popped on the thread before playing the game, and based on people's posts, expected the game to be a mess... but I ended up being pleasantly surprised. Takumi and Leon aren't the only important/developed/etc siblings, Kamui's not plot ruining, Marx (and all the other Nohr royals + Kamui) makes sense, the Nohr route has a plotline that's generally solid, sure the conflict's not grey vs grey but the story's not worse for it. Etc.

It just sounds to me like a lot of people expected a certain type of story and are now trying to fit the one we were given to their expectations. Which makes sense for the people working out their AUs but doesn't work if you're trying to criticize the plot for being poorly written.

Edited September 8, 2015 by artishe

[Alazen]

Except past FEs had muddier conflicts between nations than Fates. Or at least did a better job presenting dirty spots in the Lord's nation. Dark Sage already mentioned Thracia 776. I'll bring up Gaiden, which did "Green Kingdom VS Rugged Kingdom" first yet still muddier than Fates. That's what you call a step backwards.

War between nations is not black and white. Assorted examples of war IN nations (see the French Revolution) aren't either.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Alazen

[artishe]

Except past FEs had muddier conflicts between nations than Fates. Or at least did a better job presenting dirty spots in the Lord's nation. Dark Sage already mentioned Thracia 776. That's what you call a step backwards.

War among nations is not between black and white.

Yeah, but Fates didn't try to present a muddy conflict. The goal of the story wasn't to show that war among nations isn't black and white. I haven't played Thracia 776 so I can't speak well on it, but I can only assume that a muddy war helped whatever theme (or maybe was the theme) of the game.

For Fates, this just isn't the case. They picked a different focal point for the story than showing how war among nations isn't black and white. The game doesn't read like that in the slightest, and it doesn't try to. Of course Fates is going to be a crummy representation of a grey war, seeing as showing this wasn't their goal in the slightest. If the game read like it actually tried to show a grey vs grey conflict and failed miserably, then I'd be a lot more disappointed in the plot. Instead, it's pretty clearly not even a side goal of the story.

Trying to fit Fates into the grey vs grey conflict does it no favors because it makes no effort to be there. It reads like a lot of writing and development was put into taking the story in a different angle. If you haven't read what you can find of the Nohr route yet, at least, reading will probably help, provided you aren't trying to squish the story into that grey war thing while you read.

Edited September 8, 2015 by artishe

[Alazen]

So it has a flater setting and/or conflict on purpose. I'm supposed to praise that?

[artishe]

So it has a flater setting and/or conflict on purpose. I'm supposed to praise that?

Well, the black vs white decision helps emphasize the conflict IS decided to focus on, so from a writing standpoint, it makes sense.

Whether or not it was the better theme to focus on is purely personal preference.

[JupiterKnight]

So it has a flater setting and/or conflict on purpose. I'm supposed to praise that?

It seemed like the setting was trying to go for a foil type deal in order to give a form of balance, right down to the siblings, retainers, and nations.

This is brought up in the IK support between Kamui and Aqua, but otherwise you won't see any ingame statement about it.

Edited September 8, 2015 by JupiterKnight

[Medeus]

Not all stories have to be gray vs. gray morality, that much is true, however, I don't think Fates even succeeded as a black and white story either. Even if the perspective was supposed to be Nohr is the generic evil empire and Hoshido the generic defending army, the former is horribly developed in that regard and gets nothing in the way of being a fleshed out nation. The Nohr siblings have motives, but they're underdeveloped and tossed aside as soon as Slime Garon gets into the picture, any sympathetic angles that could've been developed like the lack of resources thing is barely given any attention, and three of Nohr's top villains are generic mustache twirlers with no character to them otherwise.

So with that in mind, I don't feel Fates succeeded in either respects, whether it'd be as a gray morality story or a black and white one because one of the nations and its characters aren't fleshed out well enough and have a lot of untapped potential. This is especially the case if we look at previous Fire Emblem games like Sacred Stones, which managed to flesh out its evil nation and the villains there better by giving them more personal and detailed motives then what we got with Fates, and Sacred Stones didn't have the luxury of us being able to play as that nation to understand them. So I don't think Nohr should get a pass just because the intention may've been to be a "black" nation, because it's not done well enough to really stand out even in comparison to older examples in the franchise.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Medeus

[NekoKnight]

Also anyone who thinks Kamui isn't as naive on Hoshido is wrong. Kamui trusts Zoura even after Leo tells them they can't trust him. They do it anyways. Sure enough Zoura betrays them and botches a perfectly good plan to kill Garon. Then he gets killed for betraying Nohr because betraying Kamui is a death sentence.

Initially trusting Zoura may have been naive but he does prove himself later by protecting Takumi. Even after betraying you, he still vouches for you so apparently Kamui's mercy had a lasting effect.

Well, the black vs white decision helps emphasize the conflict IS decided to focus on, so from a writing standpoint, it makes sense.

Whether or not it was the better theme to focus on is purely personal preference.

You talk about "focus" like they can only do one thing well. It can be a character focused story and still give us interesting villains and a nuanced conflict. Personal preference? Well yeah, I hope the stories I read have villains with greater motivations than making the protagonist sad, that the world is detailed and multifaceted, and that the protagonist makes progress towards the world they want to live in.

Saying "Fates' story isn't bad, it's just not what you wanted" is taking "subjective" to a whole new level.

[Alazen]

Tell me how a muddier conflict would clash with the "greater good or not" shtick. You seem to be using "greater good" as an alternative for white.

Since Kamui and the Dastardly Trio really aren't written well, among other problems such as how unimportant the royal sisters are, it's not like they did a good job with the direction they've been claimed to take.

I mean really, can you seriously claim Kamui is up there with say, Micaiah (who certainly has a problematic handling in the narrative) as a character?

Edited September 8, 2015 by Alazen

[JupiterKnight]

Initially trusting Zoura may have been naive but he does prove himself later by protecting Takumi. Even after betraying you, he still vouches for you so apparently Kamui's mercy had a lasting effect.

Still didn't stop him from screwing up the one chance they had at an assassination attempt to kill Garon, which to me says more of his actions since he's too cowardly to defy his superiors in Nohr. Even Leo kills him on Nohr because he knows he would reveal that they saved the Hoshido siblings out of fear and taking Sakura hostage on IK that also gets him killed by Leo for tactics he considers cowardly. His fear of his superiors will always triumph, even if he tries to put in a good word for them.

Edited September 8, 2015 by JupiterKnight

[Sunwoo]

I'm not sure if it was even Zoura who betrayed Kamui in chapter 14. When I talked to Kirokan quite some time ago, I believe it was said that the actual person who was leaking information was Takumi - under the effects of mind control. In other words, if this is true, then Zoura never betrayed Kamui and may have only pretended to be a spy to convince Garon to spare Kamui's life.

[JupiterKnight]

He wouldn't have gone up right to Garon if he wasn't still reporting to them. It's just that they had multiple people working alongside Kamui as part of their schemes. Zoura, mind controlled Takumi due to Hydra's possession of him, and Flora.