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Ike's FE Megathread {15.5}


Integrity
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I still think Xavier's got the most bs recruitment, because even if you know how to do it, it's still tricky to pull off.

Orsin and Tanya's whole shtick is that they're tsundere for each other. They get another talk in 8x where they still act tsun to each other but Orsin shows a bit of his dere side at the end.

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Orsin and Tanya's whole shtick is that they're tsundere for each other. They get another talk in 8x where they still act tsun to each other but Orsin shows a bit of his dere side at the end.

what the fuck

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Of course Blaggi has priests that are not of His lineage. According to ancient Roman propaganda, the Julius family was descended from the goddess Venus - did that mean that only members of the Julius family could be priests of Venus? If the worship of Jugdral's gods was limited only to the gods' descendants, there'd be barely any religion at all.

you misunderstand my point

of course blaggi has priests of non-blaggian blood, that makes perfect sense - but why does only blaggi? do genealogy/thracia ever show priests that specifically worship any of the crusaders who aren't blaggi? EDIT: besides evil loptyr, natch

to follow up on your roman analogy it would be like if the julian family claimed to descend from venus and the claudian family from artemis (making shit up here, don't mind me!) but there were only temples to artemis in all of rome

Edited by Integrity
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Hey, wait. I don't think I remember you weighing in on Cuan and Ethlin's character/relationship beyond "child negligence". You saving that for Chapter 8x or 18 of this game?

Also, LOL at how August is shocked at Lifis using torture, and then Bucks IMMEDIATELY says August taught him that.

Edited by Alandrage
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you misunderstand my point

of course blaggi has priests of non-blaggian blood, that makes perfect sense - but why does only blaggi? do genealogy/thracia ever show priests that specifically worship any of the crusaders who aren't blaggi? EDIT: besides evil loptyr, natch

to follow up on your roman analogy it would be like if the julian family claimed to descend from venus and the claudian family from artemis (making shit up here, don't mind me!) but there were only temples to artemis in all of rome

You should check out Death Worship, which is very common in East Asia.

People worship a hero or some VIP in the past, or a whole sect worships its founder.

Edited by hanhnn
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You should check out Death Worship, which is very common in East Asia.

People worship a hero or some VIP in the past, or a whole sect worships its founder.

you are also missing the point my friend

it is not weird that the jugdrali worship blaggi.

it is strange to me that there are only temples to and priests of blaggi depicted, to the exception of all eleven other crusaders.

EDIT:

Hey, wait. I don't think I remember you weighing in on Cuan and Ethlin's character/relationship beyond "child negligence". You saving that for Chapter 8x or 18 of this game?

quan and ethlyn don't really have a remarkable relationship or characterization, honestly. ethlyn gets all of four conversations in fe4, and quan only has a few more with finn that i didn't cover, largely because i didn't have my shit together. i didn't have anything to say about either character or their relationship because none of those things were worth remarking on besides their one pivotal plot moment.

EDIT2: btw i haven't forgotten you guys the next fe5 update is being typed as we speak

Edited by Integrity
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it's not that bizarre, people headcanon the shit out of things and then forget they're not actual canon and things just happen that way - hell, i've beefed up a lot of the fe4 characters to be actual characters and not just cardboard cutouts in my head - but fact is quan and ethlyn just don't feature much in fe4 besides their questionable parenting.

what they are is an apparently stable, pre-existing relationship in a world that fucking sucks, though, so i guess that's remarkable

plus, they're both pretty. ours is a community that waifus characters like ishtar, who is a war criminal, and laylea/leen, who appear in the story a single time.

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ours is a community that waifus characters like ishtar, who is a war criminal, and laylea/leen, who appear in the story a single time.

well i mean in pretty much any community people will waifu a war criminal or a totally insignificant character as long as she's hot
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"Waifus" aside, character design does a lot to bring out a character's personality. Without a line of spoken dialogue, Quan could be nothing but some dark angry Seto Kaiba businessman with a legendary spear and people would find him cool and interesting. Ethlyn is a pink healer lady with a sword and some good strength, which both contrasts and complements him in good way as well. It was a bit of a necessity back then to rely on non-dialogue elements to show personality traits, what with cartridge space and all.*

But yeah, it's entirely reasonable to like a character based only on their art design and gameplay. It's just that for a LP focused on the story it doesn't have all that much value on its own.

* Although I'm noticing nowadays that more and more characters (FE9 Lethe, Henry or Camilla come to mind) spend a silly amount of lines re-establishing what their character design already told us, so at least there was some merit to the text limitation by enforcing concision.

Edited by Miacis
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"Waifus" aside, character design does a lot to bring out a character's personality. Without a line of spoken dialogue, Quan could be nothing but some dark angry Seto Kaiba businessman with a legendary spear and people would find him cool and interesting. Ethlyn is a pink healer lady with a sword and some good strength, which both contrasts and complements him in good way as well. It was a bit of a necessity back then to rely on non-dialogue elements to show personality traits, what with cartridge space and all.*

But yeah, it's entirely reasonable to like a character based only on their art design and gameplay. It's just that for a LP focused on the story it doesn't have all that much value on its own.

* Although I'm noticing nowadays that more and more characters (FE9 Lethe, Henry or Camilla come to mind) spend a silly amount of lines re-establishing what their character design already told us, so at least there was some merit to the text limitation by enforcing concision.

Actually i think you bring a pretty fair point about visual strorytelling. I think fire emblem has a fairly limited reach in what it can do in that regard though. I dont think ive seen ike talk about it except for maybe map design as storytelling.

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you are also missing the point my friend

it is not weird that the jugdrali worship blaggi.

it is strange to me that there are only temples to and priests of blaggi depicted, to the exception of all eleven other crusaders.

Okay, I'll give you 2 examples:

1. Blagi was actually Kris/Avatar in his own game, and stole all the spotlight from Heim/Marth. He just simple didn't want to be in shadow.

2. Centuries ago, a general, who is also the king's cousin, he could kill the king and take the throne for himself but he refused to do so, instead he supported the king, then he successfully led the country to a victory again the great invaders.

The general got more worship than the king even until today. While the other generals/royalty got much less focus/worship.

I know it because it happens in my country.

Edited by hanhnn
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Okay, I'll give you 2 examples:

1. Blagi was actually Kris/Avatar in his own game, and stole all the spotlight from Heim/Marth. He just simple didn't want to be in shadow.

2. Centuries ago, a general, who is also the king's cousin, he could kill the king and take the throne for himself but he refused to do so, instead he supported the king, then he successfully led the country to a victory again the great invaders.

The general got more worship than the king even until today. While the other generals/royalty got much less focus/worship.

I know it because it happens in my country.

no?

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Okay, I'll give you 2 examples:

1. Blagi was actually Kris/Avatar in his own game, and stole all the spotlight from Heim/Marth. He just simple didn't want to be in shadow.

2. Centuries ago, a general, who is also the king's cousin, he could kill the king and take the throne for himself but he refused to do so, instead he supported the king, then he successfully led the country to a victory again the great invaders.

The general got more worship than the king even until today. While the other generals/royalty got much less focus/worship.

I know it because it happens in my country.

what lol

meanwhile, people of the thread, update was supposed to be today and then instead of 24 hay bales my folks came back with eighty-seven and i had to help unload them and it was pretty exhausting.

update is written to within a chapter of finishing though so it'll definitely post tomorrow

Edited by Integrity
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Welcome back, buckaroos.

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We hit the ground running today. Chapter 3 is when the narrative finally kicks into any kind of gear at all, but nothing actually happens in chapter 3. It’s one of those where the transcript for the chapter goes Map Text -> Opening Dialogue -> Ending Dialogue. Some of these chapters give Shadow Dragon a run for its money, I tell you what.

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Anyway, the opening text for this chapter does not change based on whether you did 2x or not; either you chased the pirates to their secret island base and exterminated them or Leif just called it a good job after he only let them destroy part of Ith.

Translation patch note, too: almost every single map text ends in an ellipsis. It’s not a black mark against the game, just something I found really funny.

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I do enjoy how casual Leidrick is about pretty much everything. They’ve rounded up all of the children in this corner of Thracia and are holding them in the dungeon. All of them. Child hunts are in full effect here. The whole Jugdral saga would have been distinctly improved if they’d just not been mentioned at any point, honestly.

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They’re holding the kids until the Loptyr cultists come to pick them up, and now we get our first mention of the Magi Group. The name’s a little silly, but it’s not as bad as things Jugdral has already given us – what is sad about the Magi Group is that they’re another example of Thracia’s spectacularly wasted potential, with a pretty great setup in the first handful of chapters and then complete radio silence for the rest of the game. They’re set up as basically what you are for Leinster, but for Manster. We meet them next chapter, and the next time they’re referenced in the narrative is a single line in chapter twenty-three. Coincidentally, it’s also the last time they’re referenced.

In any case, Leidrick announces that he’s going to sleep “without worry in this impregnable fort” and leaves Lobos (the other guy) in charge of shit. Time for us!

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Welcome to the edge of Manster.

August: “It is small for a fort, but it is a place more frightening than hell for the people living around here.”

Leaf: “Why is that?”

August: “It is now the headquarters for the child hunting…”

Leaf: “Child hunting?”

August: “All children between the ages of 7 to 13 are kidnapped and sent to the Imperial capital of Barbara. Once there, they are reborn as followers of the dark god Lopto.”

Leaf: “What? No…”

Remember last chapter?

Saphy: “They even started the child hunting this year.”

Leaf: “Child hunting…”

There’s a few ways that this could be justifiable with better writing – honestly, a simple “Child hunting…?” to Safy that she breezes over because she has more important things to talk about would set up chapter 3 fine – but instead this goes the same way that a lot of exposition in video games goes, very often for the worse. Everybody but you knows what the child hunts are, therefore somebody has to be ignorant about them to give somebody else an excuse to tell “them” (read: you) about the child hunts. There’s no reason for Leif to not know about the child hunts (well, there is: they could have started up in the time he’s been in Fiana and outside news never makes it in) but somebody needs it explained to them and you’re guaranteed to have Leif around, so it’s pretty convenient.

August: “Yes… Then let me give one last bit of advice. You won’t be able to enter the fort on horseback, so dismount your horses before going in. Also, the children can’t move, so carry them back to their homes. The villagers will be very grateful to you if you do. Good luck, Prince Leaf.”

Leaf: “!? …August, you knew that I was the prince?”

August: “Of course. I wish to help you rise back to power, Prince Leaf. Farewell for now…let us meet again in Manster.”

August gives us some gameplay advice and then fucks off. I’m not sure why the children can’t move, but whatever. Also, of course he knew, Leif, everybody in the whole world knows now.

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Chapter 3 itself is a bit of a mess, but it’s not that bad. I think it kind of mishandles its point, but it does a decent enough job trying something different that I’m willing to excuse it for the most part.

Hell, that’s Thracia in a nutshell.

Anyway, those houses off to the right…

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…need these kids from the north. Reinforcements will harass you from the left. That’s pretty much it.

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We’ve got Lifis now, though. Thematically, he starts out without any weapons – we still don’t particularly trust him, after all – but he’s got a scroll. Scrolls are …a bad thing. They’re inventory items that just sit in someone’s backpack silently and improve their growths themed to the crusader they’re named after. This one, Hezul, is named for the guy who gave Eldigan and Ares their blood, so it gives a pile of HP growth (30%), a bit of strength growth (10%), and a 10% penalty to luck growth. Sounds like a pretty decent mechanic, honestly – you can use them to tailor your units to grow how you want, to a degree, and we only have the one. If Fire Emblem weren’t designed that your units snowballed out of reasonable existence, it’d be something you want to spread around and get some great benefit out of!

Problem is, there’s twelve of them eventually, and most of them straight up have zero drawbacks. Baldo, for instance, is just +5% to everything except magic. Much like with holy blood, they don’t really allow you to tailor units’ growths to your liking so much as they just make whoever you put them on better. Since Fire Emblem is a snowballer’s paradise, whoever has the scrolls keeps improving until they’re well out of control/need to take a day off, then you pass it on and create more murder machines. You can even ignore the growth parts of the scrolls – holding onto one gives the unit holding it immunity to random crits. Wrath still works, but by halfway through the game you’ll be able to field six or eight units who completely ignore one of Fire Emblem’s major random elements thanks to handy pieces of paper with no downside. It takes a game that deliberately tries to downplay the typical Fire Emblem “your whole army is comprised of übermenschen” thing and gives you the tools to easily create übermenschen.

I think scrolls, like a lot of Thracia, could be a good and fun mechanic with some tuning, but I’m far from a fan of their implementation in this game (except for that it lets me give Karin a huge strength growth really early on, natch.)

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Moving on, Safy comes with a unique staff – a five-use Repair staff. Items in Thracia, much like in Genealogy, don’t just disappear when they break; they revert to “broken X” status. The Repair staff can restore an item to full durability or, if it’s a broken X, make it into a fully repaired version of its original self. It’s another thing that tries to play into Thracia’s theme of looting and scavenging rather than just being supplied, how every weapon counts towards the war effort, and this super staff that can fix your weapons when they break is a big deal. It’s mostly successful.

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As usual, besides that there’s not much to say about the chapter. 4’s the first chapter that actually does anything particularly interesting with gameplay, and that’s even predicated by something Fun with a capital F.

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We do get to dismount in this chapter, though. Finn’s great on a horse, but lock him to swords and drop a bunch of his stats and suddenly Orsin and Halvan are looking pretty good. It’s a great, clean, elegant way to put a downside on cavalry being as good as they logically ought to be and I have no idea why Fire Emblem dropped it.

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Orsin just sort of accidentally deletes the boss.

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I don’t think I mentioned stealing in the last update, but a thief can still any item whose weight is lower than the thief’s build, even if it’s equipped by the enemy. Stats in Thracia cap out at 20. This Meteor tome (what’s Fire Emblem without silly amounts of enemy siege?) is unstealable.

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That’s why you have Marty. Capture this promoted dude, take his hella sick magic, your mage will thank you after you get him.

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Each village has dialogue telling you which kid goes where. Carpool (yes, that Carpool, I have no idea why he’s in this game) goes here. Rewards include a character, a scroll, a ring, and some other shit. Rings are consumable statboosters now, by the way, no trading shenanigans.

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The final part of the chapter is a huge inventory shuffling game because you don’t have a convoy yet (spoilers: it’s coming) and the party explodes presently, with everybody taking whatever’s on them at the time. Generally, you’ll probably be fine, but there’s wildly varying degrees of how well or poorly you can come out of this. You get it all back eventually, though.

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Bang.

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We’re winners. We killed the entire present garrison, walked the kids out of the castle, took them home, fought some bandits that attacked from behind, fucked around for a few turns on the throne, then-

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Well, Leidrick shows up. It’s pretty bare-bones; Leidrick commends us on taking his fort (while he was there) and slaughtering the garrison (while he was there) but unfortunately he has Nanna as a hostage, ha ha!

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Leif caves immediately and throws his weapons down and is taken hostage. Lifis gets nicked with him, and Evayle decides to go with. Everybody else runs away.

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They do have lines for this, though, so revel in them.

Eyvel: “What… Lord Leaf has been captured? …All right, then I will go with him. I want you people to escape for now and rescue the prince later. Understood?”

Finn: “Eyvel said that? All right, we’ll have to retreat for now. Lord Leaf, I promise I will go rescue you!”

Halvan: “Damn, is this it…?”

Othin: “Damn… Leaf! We’ll go rescue you. You better not die until then!”

Saphy: “Dear God, please protect the prince…”

Dagda: “What, the prince was captured? Damn… Guys! Let’s pull back to Purple Dragon Mountain. Guess we’ll have to gather all the boys and attack Manster by force.”

I was wrong. Ronan doesn’t say anything when they all run off. Dagda is great, though: his solution is to just go home and get the ladz together and go fuck Manster up. He’s not the kind of guy to do nothing while shit goes down. Dagda is good.

With that, we close the book on the first arc of Thracia’s story, the prologue. What happened in it? What was set up for the rest of the story? …not much, honestly. We were introduced to a good number of potentially cool characters that are going to be gone for various amounts of time and, once they’re back, will become nonentities. August and Leif are both long-term relevant characters. There was a little bit of setting Leidrick up as our antagonist, but in three chapters Leidrick only did one thing. Even though it was uneventful, the only real pace-breaker in this was 2x, which felt entirely tacked on and broke up the urgency of what we’re doing. Granted, it’s an optional chapter that doesn’t necessarily need to be held to the same narrative standards, but it’s so easy to get that it sticks out, and other optional chapters don’t hurt quite as much.

I think the first bit of Thracia’s story is competent, even if it kind of whiffs at building much tension or setting much up, and it feels longer than it really is. Fortunately, we’re going to shrug off almost everything that the initial few chapters set up and start almost afresh!

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Chapter 4 could almost work as the starting point of the game. Leif’s in prison, we’re about to meet a new and pretty righteous cool set of characters that will, much like the previous set of characters, be coolly defined and then tossed out for others.

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Blume’s got a new portrait though! Holler at our boy. Freege is our general overantagonist here, so we’ll get to do some interacting with people who aren’t midbosses – people who aren’t just Leidrick. We’ve actually got a few familiar faces coming in pretty soon here. Also of note, this map text reveals to us that Leidrick was from Connaught – you’ll remember that as the place where we finally killed Blume in chapter 8 of Genealogy, so Leidrick is a North Thracian who’s fully complicit in helping the oppression. Jerk.

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Leidrick’s pretty elated, since he’s captured Prince Leif of Leinster. He’s looking forward to a promotion to …uh, what, exactly? Dude’s the step below Blume, and Blume isn’t going to promote him to occupier of Thracia and go home to Freege to hang out.

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Dalsin, a guy whose name I have no idea how I prefer to localize, is the prison guard here. We can rescue his little sister or something last chapter and he’ll join us in this one. Dalsin is cool in that he both has a good reason to work for the empire, and he has a good reason to turn on the empire and work for us – but only if we helped him out earlier. It’s a subtle thing, but something Fire Emblem doesn’t always nail for character motivations.

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The short of it is that Leidrick threw Leif (and, optionally, Lifis) into the dungeons and took Evayle with him, and now he’s going to go show her Nanna fighting in a sick deathmatch or whatever.

Eyvel: “Me? Why…”

Reidric: “Don’t you want to see the girls?”

Eyvel: “Girls? …Mareeta and Nanna?”

Reidric: “That’s right. They are doing quite well. Don’t worry, I haven’t laid a finger on them.”

Eyvel: “…Are you really going to let me see them?”

Reidric: “You have my word.”

Eyvel: “…All right. Please show me to them…”

Reidric: “Of course, my lady. Hehehe…”

Eyvel: “……”

Evayle severely abuses her ellipses privilege here, natch, but we’re setting up chapter 5. It’s a little cheesy, but I’ll take “a little cheesy” after whatever Genealogy became. One may also note Evayle’s total personality 180 from strong leader of the resistance to not really putting up even token resistance to Leidrick. You’d expect at least some fire but nah, you get nothing. She’ll be more-or-less back to form next chapter, so this might just be some translational liberties that weren’t reined in by an editor, which this patch didn’t have.

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CEDRIC

This is probably the highest hotness coefficient scene we’ll get in Thracia 776, so savor this screenshot. We all know good old Ced, on the left – his story was loosely explained and hinted at in Genealogy, that he liberated Manster from the evil empire and shit, and we’re going to …mostly not explore it at all in this game. We’ll experience it on a lower level than Genealogy’s super high look, but Ced’s struggle is entirely in the background. Brighton’s on the right, he’s a good enough lad, but we’ll get into the politics of the party soon.

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Rounding out the team are Lara and Makua. Lara is your non-Lifis thief and actual child, Makua is …honestly I don’t remember her all that much. We’ll explore together!

Brighton: “If someone attacks you, just take his weapons. You can do that much.”

Lara: “Well, that’s easier said than done. I can’t carry heavy weapons like you can.”

Machua: “Don’t worry, Lara. Brighton and I will protect you. Let’s go!”

Together, they form the MAGI SQUAD we’ve heard scattered bits about in Genealogy and in this game so far. The Magi Squad is Ced’s rebel army taking Manster, and this is their only appearance. The named members will all be folded into our army and will never leave. I don’t know if the Magi Squad ever accomplishes anything. Let’s move on.

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Your loot that was on Lifis and Leif is scattered in chests, Lifis himself is in the bottom-right, and Leif is in the bottom-left. The map objective – leave with Leif – is in the top middle, guarded by Dalsin and a lot of daves.

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This chapter and the next have actual things happening in them, unlike the last few that have been <Opening text> <Ending text>. Lifis hears all the commotion outside and convinces the other thugs in his cell that it’s his boys coming to get him out, and one of them recognizes him as Lifis.

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Any excuse to post his glorious, smug mug. The bandits, sadly, don’t join you forever as generics after you pop Lifis’ door open, they just stay green and go at men. Use them as meatshields! War crimes!

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In the other half of the map, Leif meets his new cellmates. This scene’s honestly pretty good, in that it starts with Leif just getting to know the guys he got thrown in jail with and Leif eventually comes around to the notion that he could probably get these guys behind him.

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Basically, some dude was harassing some chick and Fergus smacked his ass down and Karin got caught up in the middle of it. That’s their story. Karin’s also here, wink wink, to find Prince Ced and take him back to Silesia to, like, rule the country on account of the country isn’t being ruled at the moment.

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It’s a good conversation that makes contextual sense to be happening (something Fire Emblem struggles with a lot) and does a decent job introducing two new characters with more than paper-thing personalities, because it runs more than five lines without dragging. I’ll dump the text of it in a spoiler for your perusal.

[spoiler=leif karin fergus] Fergus: “Looks like everyone’s getting excited now. So what did you do to get caught?”

Leaf: “…Who are you?”

Fergus: “I’m Fergus, a traveling mercenary. Back in the city, I saw some soldiers harrassing a girl, so I went in to stop them. And the next thing I know, I get thrown in here. Great, huh?”

Karin: “You call that just ‘stopping’? You nearly killed him. Poor thing…”

Fergus: “Well, I hate to remind you, but you’re the one who stepped up to them first.”

Karin: “Yeah, and then they threw me in here as well because they thought I was with you. It’s all your fault! What am I going to do now…”

Fergus: “Come on, there’s no point in crying over spilled milk. Yawn… I’m kinda tired, so I think I’ll take a nap. Wake me up at dinnertime.”

Karin: “I don’t believe… …Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Karin. Pleased to meet you.”

Leaf: “Karin? …That’s an unusual name for a Thracian.”

Karin: “Oh, I’m from Ciledia. I had just arrived in Manster…and then I end up here because of him.”

Leaf: “Ciledia… That’s far up north, right? What did you come all the way here for.”

Karin: “Well, our prince suddenly left the country. The queen has already passed away, and the princess is still too young, so… We didn’t know what to do, so we set out to look for the prince.”

Leaf: “I heard that Siledia was destroyed by the Empire. The royal family is still safe?”

Karin: “Yes. The people opposing the Empire all moved to a city called Tovae in the far north, where they’re defending the royal family. I’m going to become a full-fledged Pegasus Knight and help them out, too.”

Leaf: “Wow… That means you can fly, right?”

Karin: “Well, I’m still not a knight yet, so flying is the best I can do. But my pegasus and I understand each other. His name is Hermes, and he’s so cute and smart! He must be flying around here, looking for me.”

Leaf: “So why did the prince leave the country?”

Karin: “He said he was going to go look for the king… But you see, the king’s kinda weird. He left years ago, abandoning his country and family. Naturally, everyone’s mad. So we need Prince Sety to return and take the throne. I was sent here to pick him up, but then because of this guy…”

Fergus: “Because of who? You know, can’t you keep it down? This is a prison. Some of us are trying to get some sleep.”

Karin: “You’re the only one who can snore away in a place like this. You’re so insensitive!”

Guard: “Hey! Keep it quiet over there!”

Fergus: “Told you. Hahaha…”

Karin: “Erg…”

Leaf: “……”

Fergus: “…Something on your mind? You can talk to me about it. I might be able to help.”

Leaf: “…Yes… Maybe you can help me.”

Plus, it cuts instead of letting you read Leif telling Fergus about the whole plot of the game you’ve experienced so far, which is a sin a lot of games commit.

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Tank and spank, meanwhile. The Freeji daves kind of suck.

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The civilians, including Halvan’s sister again, have a few bits of dialogue as turns go by. There’s a bit of reference to the Magi group being “decimated” which is funny because you never even see ten members appear on screen, counting all named and generic. You’ve met every member of the Magi group you’ll ever see bar one, who you’ll meet next chapter.

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Pop.

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Lifis rules. Right now he’s undeniably my favorite character in Fire Emblem so far from this LP.

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Brighton does good work in the north while we rotate the rest of the boyz to the left.

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Since Leif told Fergus his life’s story off camera (thanks again Thracia!!) he’s all rarin’ to help him out and save Leinster or whatever.

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Leaf: “I can’t do that! When I escape, so does everyone else!”

Fergus: “Ha… All right, kid. I’ll tag along with you for a while. I can’t really just ditch you after hearing that story.”

Conveniently, this stops them having to tell us a convincing enough story to switch Fergus from derisive to ready to break Leif out even if he gets tossed back in.

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Karin, meanwhile, doesn’t believe in “coincidence” or “multiple people in the world having the same name” so she’s all aboard to help Leif out and maybe run into the Magi group. She’s also got personal motivations in that there’s still a bunch of civilians stuck down here and she’s a helpful girl.

I hope you enjoyed Karin, Brighton, and Fergus as much as I do, because two of three are gone from the narrative now. Karin has a bit more to say, though.

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Crimedaves help us clear out while we get the civilians and the loot.

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This chapter’s crime is chiefly taking too long. You can have up to sixteen chests to pop open, and the most you can ever do in a turn is FOUR COUGH COUGH I DIDN'T FORGET KEYS – not counting walking.

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The reinforcements aren’t even particularly problematic. It’s just tedious and sometimes you’ll eventually mess up and misposition something and bleh. The worst part is that the hard part of the map is the very last fight, twenty-odd turns in.

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Civilians run along. They can get captured and stolen by the soldiers. Don’t let them, you’ll miss out on a chapter that has a lot of stuff going on.

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Remember how cool it was that our initial dudes had such an unusual and cool and varied weapon layout? Yeah.

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Okay let’s fastforward a lot. Jeez.

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Pop. Hello, the last fight.

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One of those armored axedaves is Dalsin.

Dalshin: “What!? My brother was captured in the child hunting!? I see… That’s it, I’ve had it with Reidric and the Empire. I’ll join you!”

This is Dalsin’s Line. I don’t know if he has another.

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Send him Halvan’s axes, for he is Big.

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That’s pretty much the chapter, though, once you chop through these daves and don’t die to the speardaves who are still spawning behind you. Escape with everyone before Leif – Fergus wasn’t wrong, anyone you don’t manually escape with will be captured and disappear from your roster.

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A lot of people are really apologetic in their escaping lines for some reason. Like, if you let Leif go first, you’d die. Come on.

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Lifis ain’t.

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When the chapter is devoid of anything, you get to see a hidden room in the center of the map, which contains…..

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noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

It’s okay, actually. Manfroy doesn’t play a huge part in this game, he just makes a few cameos to make sure you remember that he’s running the entire universe at the moment.

Manfroy: “Good. Now we only have Tahra left. If they insist on protesting, don’t hesitate to burn them down, city and all. It shall set an example for the other cities. Have no mercy.”

Berdo: “Of course. However, the Freeji generals seem to be hesitant. They have surrounded the city, but they seem reluctant to step in.”

They’ve rounded up all the children in what used to be Good Thracia except for Tahra, the place Safy was out to get help for.

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Ishtar’s back! She’s going to do a total 180 from Genealogy. Remember how she was, like, leading the child hunts in Miletos and all that junk, and how she was unrepentantly pretty chill about murdering us?

Ishtar: “My brother is also strongly against this act. Bishop Manfroy, please stop the child hunting. It is unbearable to separate young children from their parents. And sacrificing them to Lopto is not something that a humane person would do!”

Strongly worded protests instead, here! She’s all about protesting the child hunts right in front of Manfroy now. It’s a bit heavyhanded, but it’s nice that Thracia at least tries to portray the empire as something besides totally monolithic like it was in Genealogy, where everybody was on board for every war crime except Arvis, because he got tired of them. Oh yeah, by the way,

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He’s here too. And, a game later, we’re going to get a full explanation as to what the child hunts are actually accomplishing.

Yurius: “Ishtar, I think there’s a misunderstanding. I am not telling them to kill the children. I just want to educate them to be fitting citizens for my empire. Those who withstand the training will earn high posts and rule over the other inferior citizens. In other words, they will become new nobles, Ishtar. I’m giving them a chance to grasp their happiness.”

Ishtar: “They only become nobles after surviving through harsh hatred between each other… That is not happiness.”

If you take this on its own, and as honest, it’s at least believable. If this follows up on Genealogy’s “I’m going to throw them into sickass cage matches” explanation, it gets almost bizarre. Gladiators don’t tend to make great noblemen to rule over the rest of your subjects in an enlightened manner, as far as I’m aware. On the other hand, there is the potential that Julius is just straight-up lying to Ishtar and that “the training” is in fact hypermagical brainwashing and other great stuff that could come out of a Goodkind book. Or, hell, that he’s just delusional. I mean, hell, I’d raise kids to gladiator fight each other to become my new nobles after I’d purged all the ones who didn’t like me off the continent, wouldn’t you?

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Plus, there is a pretty clear implication and nearly explicit statements across the two games that Julius is just straight-up disconnected crazy. He’s a better villain in the background than the fore, at least. What we’re doing here, unlike Genealogy, is actually shit he shouldn’t really bother caring about.

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Asvel! Asvel’s the guy Ced mentioned last chapter – if you don’t get this paralogue, you’ll never even see the poor kid, which is kind of bizarre because he and Leif have history.

Sety: “After you rescue the children, I want you to go search for Prince Leaf with Brighton.”

Asvel: “What? …Prince Leaf!?”

Sety: “Right. He’s been captured by Reidric and locked in this castle. …What’s the matter, Asvel? You look surprised.”

Asvel: “Lord Leaf is a very important person to me. I’ve been looking for him ever since we separated in Tahra. It’s been three years now…”

To call back to the opening narration, that means Leif arrived in Fiana and grew up among the other youths there when he was, uh, twelve. That’s older than some of the dudes in our army in Genealogy. He probably, mathematically speaking, spent more time in Tahra than anywhere else, but all of the Tahra-related context early on before you actually get there (spoilers: we go there unregardless of what paralogues we get) is snuck into paralogues for you to miss and neither Safy nor Asvel, as I recall, have any lines when you finally get there.

Thracia, as a narrative experience, could really have been helped by giving you way fewer characters and concentrating on them individually a lot more. As it stands, each character gets, tops, a chapter where they’re relevant (besides the few plot characters) and then they disappear forever, or near to. Part of that, I’m sure, is up to the game being rushed out, but the rushing hurt this element of the story a hell of a lot.

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That said, since Ced has more lines in this chapter than in Genealogy, there’s finally something to talk about. With regards to him. He’s a bit boring, but he’s portrayed fairly convincingly as a competent leader for the Magi group – he speaks confidently, and people respond to his orders properly. It’s a good dynamic that the portrayed Magi group has going on, which makes it more of a shame that they’re totally unexplored by the game.

Don’t rush your work, kids.

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Anyway, job’s to save the kids and it’s fog of war. You can see around Ced and you can see around the kids, but much like 2x your daves just forget what the hallways looked like behind them as they turn corners.

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The level itself is a delicious absolute clusterfuck. You’re looking at almost the entire map in this screenshot – the hallway Ced and Asvel are in, in the north, is two squares tall, and there’s a trio of rooms north of them with daves, the boss, and loot. That’s the whole thing. Have fun.

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The kids, by the way, are named. One of them is named Boy. They’re not all Boy and Girl, they’re Cliff and Emily and Bela and …Boy. Poor bloke. Saving them here gets us shit in a few chapters, and come on, are you going to send the kids to die in sweet gladiator arena fights?

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Here’s the best look you’re ever going to get at Forseti in my LP.

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It’s not bad stuff, just smash and grab and smash some more. The major limiting thing between this and the next chapter is that we still don’t have access to our convoy, so what we can own is limited to what our cast can carry. The inventory management side of these chapters is harder than the actual levels.

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Bustin’ out, we’ve got !!optional conversations!! a thing we haven’t seen since 2x had a whole One.

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Asvel and Leif are wildly, mutually gay.

Leaf: “As soon as I left!? …Then you’ve been searching for me for three years…?”

Asvel: “Yes. Don’t you remember our promise? We vowed to reclaim Thracia together. But you left me and went off on your own, Lord Leaf.”

Leaf: “I’m sorry… I had no choice. Tahra was surrounded by Imperial troops, and I was sure I was going to die. I never thought I would make it out of there alive… I didn’t want to put you in danger.”

Asvel: “We swore to each other that we would live and die together, Lord Leaf… Was that an empty vow? I still remember it. And I’ve chosen to aid you as much as I can.”

Leaf: “Asvel…”

Love it. It’s overall a pretty good conversation, a bit longer than I’ve pasted, but like the Fergus/Karin bit it does a good job setting up the relationship these two characters already have without spending too much time going back over stuff the game’s already told us.

The conversations in this chapter, and the previous, actually work because they’re conversations that make sense for the characters to be having at this point (Genealogy.), they don’t go on repeating themselves or repeating information that you’ve been told, they don’t involve huge revelations, and they’re not contextually way out of place – the traditional Fire Emblem “battle’s ragin’ but hey honey, wanna hook up sometime?” support conversation silliness from the GBA games is avoided. This is one of those few chapters that wholly, unironically is actually good from a narrative standpoint.

Asvel's thing, by the way, is that he has a special Asvel-only bit of wind magic that does hella damage. He's good shit.

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One more conversation is left, though. Since this map has no entry or exit text whatsoever, I’m going to hold onto this one for the end of the update, because I think it makes a good ending point. Plus, there’s not too much to cover on the gameplay front.

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Loot.

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Murder. Capture.

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Let Cedric absorb some reinforcements because he’s way out of their league.

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And finally escape.

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Despite fog of war being bad, this is a good, bite-sized, unfrustrating map to play and I like it, especially considering that it actually does things for some characters in your army, both in giving some good definition to a guy you’re just getting and in giving some extra to one you had. Even if you haven’t played the game, you’ve probably figured out who the participants are in the optional conversation I skipped over to present now.

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This isn’t a short one, so I’m going to put it in spoilers. Please read it, though.

[spoiler=ced and karin] Karin: “Yes! To look for you!”

Sety: “To look for me? …Did Fee send you? Or was it my mother…”

Karin: “…Lord Sety… I have something very important to tell you.”

Sety: “What is it?”

Karin: “Well… …Oh…”

Sety: “Karin, what is it? Crying isn’t helping!”

Karin: “Yes… The queen, she…”

Sety: “Mother!? Did she…?”

Karin: “Yes… It’s been two months already…”

Sety: “I…see… So…mother died…”

Karin: “Lord Sety…”

Sety: “I was too late… I… I wanted her to see father just once more…”

Karin: “Lord Sety, please return with me to Ciledia. Lady Fee is waiting for you.”

Sety: “Fee… How is she doing? Is she all right…?”

Karin: “She tries hard to hold back her tears in front of the others, but she cries and cries when she’s alone with me… You’re so cruel, Lord Sety. You push everything on little Lady Fee and go running off to a place like this… It’s natural to be called a hero when you take after Holsety. But you’re letting that get to your head and abandoning your mother and sister. And you call yourself the prince of Ciledia!”

Sety: “Karin… You’re right. But my father was the only one who cure my mother’s illness. Even if I stayed by her side, there was nothing I could do except watch her fade away… That’s why I wanted to find my father no matter what.”

Karin: “Then what are you doing in Manster?”

Sety: “I heard my father was here until a half a year ago, but when I arrived, he had already left. But after seeing the terrible state of the people here, I couldn’t just leave them…”

Karin: “I see… Forgive me, Lord Sety. I was harsh…”

Sety: “Karin, can you give me a little more time? I’ll return to Ciledia once I drive Reidric out of this city. It shouldn’t take long. I just need another half a year…”

Karin: “Then I shall stay here with you.”

Sety: “I appreciate your concern, but… I can’t fight with you around. I want you to go back to Ciledia.”

Karin: “…Yes… I would just be in the way, wouldn’t I… All right, I shall go back home. Please promise me that you’ll come back as well, Lord Sety.”

Sety: “Yes, I swear to you that I’ll return. Here, I’ll give you this as a symbol of our promise.”

Karin: “What is this? A rag?”

Sety: “That’s a national treasure of Ciledia. It’s an old scroll left by the holy warrior Sety, and it has magical powers. I’m really supposed to give it to my bride, but I’ll give it to you for now.”

Karin: “I-I can’t accept such a valuable item!”

Sety: “Karin… I’m sorry about my mother. I’m also grateful that you took care of Fee for me. This is a symbol of my gratitude. Please take it.”

Karin: “…Very well. But I’m only taking it for the time being. I’ll be sure to give it back once you return to Ciledia!”

Sety: “Karin, we’ll meet again in Ciledia. Take care of yourself until then.”

Karin: “Yes! You too, Lord Sety!”

This is Karin’s big moment as far as the entire game goes, and it’s actually good. It establishes both Karin and Ced (the latter better than Genealogy ever did in four chapters) in a single conversation, and it establishes the whole package: personality, motives for getting where they are, reason for going where they will, and preexisting relationship. It’s long, and that’s its biggest flaw, and it isn’t perfect by any stretch, but it’s a really solidly done conversation, placed where you’d figure, about what you’d figure, and not over-wrought like it could have been. There’s no ignoring the shitty situation they’re in – this is the only chance Karin is probably going to get to tell Ced all this, and she knows it. Ced keeps up his strong leader persona for the most part, except when he reacts believably to the death of his mother, a thing I don’t think we really saw anyone do in Genealogy despite killing tons of siblings and children and parents.

The opening conversation for this chapter accomplishes pretty much the same goals, but for Ced and Asvel instead. The Leif/Karin/Fergus conversation, plus the breakout one, did the same for Karin and Fergus. Even past that, from those two and Leif’s conversation with Asvel now, we’re finally starting to get a decent look at what Leif’s like as a character. The writing for the first three (eh, four, but 2x hardly counts) chapters was pretty bare-bones, largely just setting …uh, setup and people reacting to things the Antagonist of the Map was doing, plus introducing us to August. These two chapters actually give good evocative looks at characters without overdoing it, and I really like them for that.

Why are conversations had, I asked in the first real LP post? This is one great reason why. Peace out, buckaroos.

Edited by Integrity
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Also, you didn't even mention that Lifis wanted to go full Judas on Leaf in Chapter 3.

?

did i miss this or forget it? i don't have any screenshots of lifis having any lines in c3, and the sf script doesn't have any either

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The Project Naga translation plans on calling him Dahlson, which is pretty decent IMO.

You can technically open up to 4 chests per turn in chapter 4 if Lithis and Lara both activate their movement stars.

I take it you plan on recruiting Saias over Ced then?

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You can technically open up to 4 chests per turn in chapter 4 if Lithis and Lara both activate their movement stars.

yeah i didn't totally edit in the fact that you have chest keys too about an hour later, not at all :')

EDIT:

I take it you plan on recruiting Saias over Ced then?

not telling, but it won't matter for the purposes of screenshots - even if i recruit ced, i'm not taking any pictures of forseti. even when i get to awakening, i'm not taking any pictures of forseti. forseti is dumb.

Edited by Integrity
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I always figured the child hunts were supposed to be Julius and the Empire collecting children to try and route out the last of the Heim blood line and it's not till they kidnap Julia does it work though. And Julius was just lying to Ishtar.

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So I was looking at the official character ages for this game as I was curious, particularly about Lara's age(which is apparently 15 by the way), and there's some interesting information to glean from them. For instance, Sapphie is working for Linoan, yet Sapphie's age is listed as 17, whereas Linoan is "around 15". This means Sapphie's boss is around two years younger than her, which I find amusing, even though Leif is also 15. Eyvel's meanwhile, is listed as "around 35". Since FE4 is in the year 757 when the game starts, and FE5 obviously takes place in 776, this means Bridget(and by extension Aideen) was around 16 at the start of gen 1. Miranda's apparently 14, which is kind of an eyebrow raiser given her ending implies she eventually married Conomore, who is probably at least in his 30s, but hopefully they didn't actually enter a relationship until Miranda was a bit older. The youngest character, though, is Manfroy's granddaughter Sara, at fucking 12 years old. Like, holy shit, she ain't even a teenager yet.

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So I was looking at the official character ages for this game as I was curious, particularly about Lara's age(which is apparently 15 by the way), and there's some interesting information to glean from them. For instance, Sapphie is working for Linoan, yet Sapphie's age is listed as 17, whereas Linoan is "around 15". This means Sapphie's boss is around two years younger than her, which I find amusing, even though Leif is also 15. Eyvel's meanwhile, is listed as "around 35". Since FE4 is in the year 757 when the game starts, and FE5 obviously takes place in 776, this means Bridget(and by extension Aideen) was around 16 at the start of gen 1. Miranda's apparently 14, which is kind of an eyebrow raiser given her ending implies she eventually married Conomore, who is probably at least in his 30s, but hopefully they didn't actually enter a relationship until Miranda was a bit older. The youngest character, though, is Manfroy's granddaughter Sara, at fucking 12 years old. Like, holy shit, she ain't even a teenager yet.

it's not news that fire emblem has no reasonable grasp of age though

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it's not news that fire emblem has no reasonable grasp of age though

I was surprised at how many fe5 characters actually had official ages, tbh. Most games, other than the Elibe ones, only gave official ages for like a dozen characters or so, at most. For Thracian, like at least three quarters of the playable cast have official ages.

EDIT: and even the Elibe games only provide specific ages for like a dozen or so characters. The rest merely have age ranges.

Edited by Matthewtheman
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