This game is depressing!

[KrazyPotato]

Spoilers for Birthright below!

My god this game is depressing! I just played through Birthright... And I don't know what to think. Main character (kept as default male) loses his mother whom he only started to know, two good friends (Kaze, didn't know you could save him at first, and Lilith), a younger sister, an older brother, and finally, his wife (married Azura), which makes him a widower at just the young age of 18-19 (just an estimation). This game is cruel! I don't remember the other Fire Emblem games killing off that many likable characters just like that! I've played 900 hours in Awakening as of now (purely through main story, I don't bother with that online crap), and I'm still wanting to play the game from time to time, but I can't seem to want to play this game and the other paths I recently bought anytime soon due to fear of seeing characters (especially Azura in that final cutscene, seriously gut wrenching!) die like that. From what I hear, Conquest is even more depressing... Obviously, some characters are going to die, it is a game about war after all... but some characters, especially Azura (and Lilith), should not have died for such bullshit reasons! In Awakening, Robin should have died (as it would make sense), but he didn't due to some power of friendship bullshit (of course I'm still glad he's alive), but in Fates Azura dies to bullshit reasons? There's the end to my short little rant. I still dearly love the series; I bought a new 3DS just so I could play this game (just like how I bought a 3DS 3 years ago only to play Fire Emblem Awakening). I just wanted to share my thoughts about the games mistake in killing a main character off like that at the end, or maybe I'm just a little bitch who can't take loss well. Anyone else have some thoughts about this? No spoilers for Conquest and Revelation please! Obviously I'm still going to play through those paths, just not anytime soon (I need to recover from that last Azura cutscene *cries*).

[eclipse]

Okay, in spoilers:

Birthright:

No, it's not just you, Azura's disappearance was a bit sad from my point of view.

Conquest:

Less emotional impact IMO. That has to do with how Conquest is laid out. You'll see a lot of debate about it. Which reminds me, I'll remind everyone to use spoilers.

Revelation:

The clunkiest of the three in terms of overall writing IMO. Too much is going on.

EVERYONE ELSE: PUT SPOILERS IN SPOILER TAGS! Or your post goes poof when I see it (which may or may not be accompanied by a warning). I expect all further posts to respect TC's wishes.

EDIT: And for the love of everything, don't quote someone's spoiler post and point out that they didn't put it in spoilers. That WILL be worth a warning.

Edited January 22, 2017 by eclipse
Borked spoiler tags!

[Nobody]

If you think this game is depressing, never touch fire emblem 4

I didn't find it that bad, but i'm not really the kind of person to be impressed by this sort of stuff, but i can see some of the stuff that happens in the story being heavy if you're the sort of person that gets involved in stories. I'd be mad at Kaze dying if i didn't know how to save him, though, but for other reasons, like losing a good character that i'm using.

Still, if you ever plan on playing FE4, prepare yourself haha

Edited January 3, 2017 by Nobody

[Radiant head]

birthright was basically "ok cool you're siding with the good guys but this isn't the true route/story either so we're going to lay it thick with the deaths." which felt way too obvious/heavy handed for me to get all that invested.

[NekoKnight]

I think the plot of Conquest is more frustrating than heartbreaking for spoiler reasons. I wasn't very phased by the deaths in Fates because I felt there wasn't enough build up, as though they were just thrown in for the sake of having a higher death count. If you found Birthright sad, there are likely things in Conquest that will resonate with you. It's worth playing for the gameplay at least.

[___]

To be honest, like many have said, some of the deaths that happen aren't entirely worthy of note because of how poorly written their reasons or character was, so I felt little impact from them. Some of them did make me a little a sad. Most of them didn't. But all in all, this is supposed to be a game based on a war setting, it's more surprising you don't lose something like a third to a half of your troops through out the story (but we all know that'll never happen), but thinking like that what deaths we do get feel even less impacting, at least to me. All that being said, I can sort of see where you're coming from if we look at these deaths and how they can affect Corrin; except the writing doesn't really do much or enough to make you feel his/her loss either imo.

[shadowofchaos]

I'd say that I'm less critical of things like the OP about the flaws of Fates building up the character for you to be attached enough to them for their death to matter.

I pretty much take FE stories at face value and will get emotionally invested on the first playthrough "magic".

For the record, I did cry for Mikoto.

母の愛は海より深い。

That being said, about Birthright in a snowy village:

I hated Flora's shock value fire suicide. It had no purpose.

Edited January 3, 2017 by shadowofchaos

[Ertrick36]

CQ isn't much better as far as those kinds of deaths are concerned.

To be honest, I didn't get sad too often while playing any of these paths.

Birthright:

I A-supported Kaze mostly because I actually genuinely liked the guy, so he never died on me. I wasn't too emotionally invested in Mikoto, but I felt for the death none-the-less because she did nothing wrong and it made the main character and the Hoshidan royals upset. Lilith and Azura felt cheap because it was so obvious that they died mostly for shock value, and neither are given much character development. Flora's was the cheapest of all, and because I hadn't played CQ yet, I felt nothing for her death.

Most of the deaths come from Nohr's side, so if you haven't played CQ or REV before, then you aren't particularly given a reason to care. I'd only have cared about Laslow if I killed him since he's literally Inigo, but I just had Corrin kill Xander immediately, so no one died but Elise and Xander. And on that topic, I was actually more saddened by Elise's death than by Xander's, because I honestly thought he was just an asshole for continuing with the fight after striking Elise down.

Conquest:

This path made me the most upset about death only because two of my favorite characters - Takumi and Oboro - wind up dead (or in the case of Oboro if you spare her, she probably either goes insane or commits suicide). But like I said with BR, if you hadn't played the other paths, you aren't given much of a reason to care about their deaths. I do also get mad about the deaths of innocent civilians when you get to Hoshido because all I can think of is how moronic both Xander and Corrin are for thinking that it's for the best. This topic is a primary source of debate between those who like CQ and those who hate it.

Ryoma's death is probably the most tragic for a CQ player. It's in his final moment that he ultimately realizes that Corrin is trying (very poorly) to try to fight Garon's will. So he sacrifices himself in hopes that Corrin can get Garon on the throne so that Corrin can unite with the Nohrians against him. But even then, I didn't feel much for his death. And in the end, you can avoid killing every unique character but Ryoma and Takumi, and no one on your side dies except for Lilith and Azura again (not even Kaze dies here).

And the biggest reason why death doesn't make me all that sad in Fates...

Revelation:

Death's mostly non-existent in Revelation, with only Izana, Scarlet, and all of the royal parents being killed. They never tell you if Yukimura was killed while defending Hoshido, but his death is unlikely since his primary role in the Hoshidan army is as a tactician, which indicates that he'd only die if most of the Hoshidan army was killed.

Plus, no one in the world but me has even a modicum of care for this guy, and I only care about him because of his English Voice Actor and the fact that his appearance reminds me of Citan Uzuki from Xenogears and Hal Emmerich from Metal Gear Solid.

The deaths in this path are literally there just to insist that there's no true "Golden Ending", even though Revelation is literally the Golden Ending. In this path, the only characters you're really given a reason to care about who die are the parents, and they were already dead... you just had to kill their undead bodies (which apparently retained all personality traits, with the added bonus of Anankos Certified Mind-Control Chips).

In every path, you can lose all non-royal female units in your army, Shura, Yukimura in BR, and, Fuga in Revelation. But this is only if they actually are killed by an enemy unit on Classic difficulty, which is really just a staple of the series. But the reason I mention this is because other than the ones I mentioned (and all the Gen 2's),

no one else in your army actually dies. That's right, even on Classic difficulty, most of the male units are incapable of dying; they only become too crippled to fight anymore. They do it so that they don't have to compensate for them being dead in their children's Paralogues.

This further takes away the impact of death in this game. It's like a nonsensical compromise between 4Kids and the story of the Titanic; all either does is take away the point of the other, so you get something severely watered down. Ultimately, Fates is a war story. The mere fact that you can't even lose half your army is pathetic. Yes, it's a T-rated game, but so is literally every other FE title released in the west, and in some of them, you could wind up with everyone but the main character(s) dead by the end.

 

On 1/3/2017 at 6:10 AM, shadowofchaos said:

I'd say that I'm less critical of things like the OP about the flaws of Fates building up the character for you to be attached enough to them for their death to matter.

I pretty much take FE stories at face value and will get emotionally invested on the first playthrough "magic".

I myself am fairly critical about Fates (not as much as Thane, but still quite a bit), but in practice (as in when I actually play it), I choose to enjoy it for what it is. As many flaws as it has, I still find it to be fun, and I like a lot of the characters in the game. In truth, the likeable characters are some of FE's greatest assets. The ability to have them grow and strategically use them to crush powerful foes is what makes these games so fun.

Edited January 22, 2017 by eclipse
Fixing spoiler tags

[Thane]

I myself am fairly critical about Fates (not as much as Thane, but still quite a bit), but in practice (as in when I actually play it), I choose to enjoy it for what it is.

How absurd!

[Qilin]

That one death in Awakening is pretty much better written than most of the ones in Fates besides possibly the prologue one that sets things in motion. The ones in Fates feel shoehorned.

Edited January 4, 2017 by Qilin

[Thinks Their Own Way]

In Azura's case, they did set it up (you see the singing slowly killing her throughout Birthright. She's basically Satine in Moulin Rouge. Only Lilith death I didn't care for. You take out the stuff with Kaze and nothing will change (the scene with Ryoma and Corrin after the map was more than enough).

[Ertrick36]

On 1/3/2017 at 6:49 PM, Qilin said:

That one death in Awakening is pretty much better written than most of the ones in Fates besides possibly the prologue one that sets things in motion. The ones in Fates feel shoehorned.

Do you mean the pseudo-deaths of Chrom and Basilio? The death of Tiki in Future Past? Yen'Fay? Walhart's henchmen? Or the non-deaths of Gangrel, Aversa, Walhart, and Emmeryn?

Though regardless, I'd say that a lot of those are written better than the deaths in Awakening, even though most of these characters don't actually wind up dead.

Edited January 22, 2017 by eclipse
Fixing spoiler tags

[Darros]

On 1/4/2017 at 8:43 AM, Ertrick36 said:

Do you mean the pseudo-deaths of Chrom and Basilio? The death of Tiki in Future Past? Yen'Fay? Walhart's henchmen? Or the non-deaths of Gangrel, Aversa, Walhart, and Emmeryn?

Though regardless, I'd say that a lot of those are written better than the deaths in Awakening, even though most of these characters don't actually wind up dead.

 

Pretty sure they're talking about Emmeryn before the Paralogue became a thing. For story purposes she's pretty dead and at the very least considered dead until Endgame

Edited January 22, 2017 by eclipse
Fixing spoiler tags

[eclipse]

If you see edits to your post, it means that the forum upgrade broke your spoiler tags.  I fixed them.