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(spoiler discussion) What do you think of the story?


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I beat Duma, so it's time for a little retrospective look at the story.

The only things I noticed that bothered me on my first time playing through;

-Celica not learning her lesson, and insists on martyring herself despite being told not to at least 3 times

-Celica believing anything that super-obviously-evil guy told her

-Alm going from military leader to everyone seeing him as an aspiring king (especially Luthier) felt unexplained, and sudden. Especially when there was only two people in the room with Alm as he held the Royal Sword, and Alm downplayed the significance of it from start to finish

-At least twice people saw Alm's mark in a way that implies that have xray vision, or Alm just takes off his gauntlets without mention when the plot demands it (I'm not counting Silque since that scene implied she was told of it ahead of time, and asked to see his hand for confirmation)

Anyone have any major gripes with the writing?

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While I do like it's story, these are some pretty big flaws/plot holes. I'm only on Act 4, but I still don't understand how people notice Alm's mark. Alm literally covers his hand and has a freaking gauntlet on and Berkut somehow manages to see it.

So Alm was the "grandson" of Mycen, who was known as a pretty famous general (I think that's what it was), and because of that, he was instantly promoted to leader of the Deliverance. It was to raise troop morals and some other thing about being worthy. I just think it's weird that Clive thought it was smart to give a teenager, who's never actually experience the world, the army that will free their country. I would understand if he'd given it to Mycen, but to a teenager who you didn't even know about?

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My only major gripe is the framing device behind Alm's rise to become king of Valentia.

The theme of the Deliverance and Alm's army is "Anybody can rise up and become great", and that's the whole reason Clive pushed him up as the leader of the Deliverance was because he thought Alm was a common-born villager. His presence was supposed to give the impression that any and all were welcome to become great soldiers within the Deliverance, and it's the whole reason Fernand goes ballistic.

But then he turns out to be the natural born successor to the Rigelian throne, and the whole concept behind his leadership of the Deliverance feels hollow. He's a royal. Sure he was raised as a common villager, and surrounds himself with normal people, but he's still of royal blood.

But on the whole the story's been a step-up from what we've been getting lately.

Edited by Slumber
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2 hours ago, KongDude said:

While I do like it's story, these are some pretty big flaws/plot holes. I'm only on Act 4, but I still don't understand how people notice Alm's mark. Alm literally covers his hand and has a freaking gauntlet on and Berkut somehow manages to see it.

So Alm was the "grandson" of Mycen, who was known as a pretty famous general (I think that's what it was), and because of that, he was instantly promoted to leader of the Deliverance. It was to raise troop morals and some other thing about being worthy. I just think it's weird that Clive thought it was smart to give a teenager, who's never actually experience the world, the army that will free their country. I would understand if he'd given it to Mycen, but to a teenager who you didn't even know about?

I think its supposed to largely be a PR stunt. Clive even says that of course he will still be handling the day to day affairs. 

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28 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I think its supposed to largely be a PR stunt. Clive even says that of course he will still be handling the day to day affairs. 

Exactly. PR was pretty much the intention from the start. Not much different from how in Radiant Dawn, Izuka wanted to rush putting Micaiah in charge just because the troops liked her.

The fact that Alm turned out to be an alright leader in the end was more or less good fortune honestly.

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I enjoyed the game immensely and I liked the story quite a bit. Yes it is the same old Famicom-era of simple plots but I think it holds up pretty well; it helps a lot to have a very likable cast and top-notch voice acting. However, I do agree that most of the issues mentioned above exist and some of them are really unfortunate. The biggest issue I had, as I have mentioned in other story/character discussion threads, is the lack of consistency in some of themes the game seemingly set off to illustrate. The "commoner vs noble" thingy for one fell really flat towards the end of game. "People should be evaluated by their own merit, not station of birth"? Nope, quite on the contrary, endgame is full of "destined for greatness" BS.

But the biggest inconsistency yet is still how one-sided the endgame felt compared to the start. In the heartwarming opening cutscene, Celica raised the question of "why do Duma and Mila have to fight, can't they just say they are sorry". You would have thought the game is about understanding and respecting each other and finding common ground in different beliefs. The game certainly starts as such, but ends quite differently.

Again, the game has done so much right that a few disappointments like these didn't bother me as much; but I would be lying if I sayI didn't wish it had been better, closer to perfection.

Edited by Ninferno
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I can buy Celica not learning her lesson and being eager to martyr herself in dramatic fashion since she's a teen. She's also not had much training as future queen.

Now, believing the obviously-evil guy... she's at fault there. ;)

It's also possible there were more people who witnessed Alm picking up the sword for the first time, or we might assume people gossiped about it.

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It has some flaws, Celica being sorta dumb, Rudolf's plan not being foolproof, but I really love the story nonetheless.

But maybe it's just Fates' story that made my standard rot away, who knows ? :p

 

4 hours ago, maninbluejumpsuit said:

-At least twice people saw Alm's mark in a way that implies that have xray vision, or Alm just takes off his gauntlets without mention when the plot demands it (I'm not counting Silque since that scene implied she was told of it ahead of time, and asked to see his hand for confirmation)

Aaaaaaaand now I feel dumb for not noticing sooner. :p
 

4 hours ago, Slumber said:

My only major gripe is the framing device behind Alm's rise to become king of Valentia.

The theme of the Deliverance and Alm's army is "Anybody can rise up and become great", and that's the whole reason Clive pushed him up as the leader of the Deliverance was because he thought Alm was a common-born villager. His presence was supposed to give the impression that any and all were welcome to become great soldiers within the Deliverance, and it's the whole reason Fernand goes ballistic.

But then he turns out to be the natural born successor to the Rigelian throne, and the whole concept behind his leadership of the Deliverance feels hollow. He's a royal. Sure he was raised as a common villager, and surrounds himself with normal people, but he's still of royal blood.

But on the whole the story's been a step-up from what we've been getting lately.

I feel dumb for not noticing that that too. :p
But y'know, if Mycen is a general by merit instead of blood, doesn't that make Alm, his 'grandson', a noble then ?
Huh, the morality is broken no matter how I not at it. Still 100% better than Naruto.

Still love the plot all the way.

Edited by B.Leu
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I just made a thread about Rudolf where I discuss his plan, which at the end of the day is rather silly and too reliant on things working out exactly the way he had expected to the point where the man might as well have prophetic powers.

I've also complained about Alm and Celica not fitting in with the theme of the game. The main theme of the game seems to be to find a balance between Mila and Duma's ideals, but while Duma is portrayed exclusively through cartoony villains and is a crazed monstrosity, Mila saves Celica's life, has hot anime studs worshipping her and is overall never seen doing anything wrong. Not only does this cause me to question why a balance needs to be found in the first place, but I don't really buy how this balance is supposed to have been achieved in the form of Alm and Celica. 

What I mean by that is that Celica does a lot of questionable things. She goes against her promise of not sacrificing herself, she brings her team to Duma Tower without telling them why, delivers herself to Jedah even though he tried killing all of her friends not long before that, and she has to apologize to Alm for messing up. Now, Alm influencing her is a good thing, even though I don't think it's particularly well done. However, Alm is never in need of being influenced by Celica. Alm has no need to reevaluate his choices or personality because everything tends to work out for him; he starts as an honest, kindhearted man, and that's how he finishes the game. So, where is the Duma representation? What does Celica need to influence in order to find a balance here? The only really questionable thing Alm does is killing Rudolf, but that was planned, and all responsibility of it is removed from his shoulders immediately. 

If he had been Awakening!Alm, this theme of balance would've made a lot more sense, and would've given Celica a reason to actually have an impact on Alm. I feel like they miss the theme of the game, and a lot of it is caused by Alm and Mila being portrayed in too good a light. 

Then, like others, I've got a bit of a problem with Clive just handing over control of the Deliverance to Alm. Sure, he takes care of the day-to-day activities, but right after Alm joins, they can storm Zofia castle, and the victory is attributed mostly to him? What the hell?

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I think the plot, at it's core, is decent, but the way it's presented makes it so much more memorable.

The thing i found off though was the part in Act 4 where the pendant Alm got from Celica dispells the curse that Berkut unleashed. Like....how? I thought all this time that the pendant waa just a regular pendant but i guess not.

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It's mediocre. Not terrible like Fates, but mediocre all the same. Too many little holes and not-so-little issues that either weren't addressed from the original or added in to the remake.

Quite honestly, I ended up more disappointed than with Fates' plot. With the later, everything had been beaten to death by the time it came over and I knew exactly what to expect. With SoV, I just heard rumblings of "it's not that great" and went in with neutral expectations.
IS had a solid base that just needed a few fixes. Instead, they didn't fix most of what was there and added a bunch of unnecessary shit that goes nowhere. 

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Putting onto Thane's post, I'll say that Jedah was wasted potential. 

When he first approaches Celica, he actually has a bit of a point. He say the dragon gods are degenerating (which is a plot point that ties in nicely with the rest of the series' depiction of them), and so we need you to sacrifice yourself to fix that

Now, the overall story pushes for "Death to the gods! We don't need them anymore!", and that's also a point. But Jedah's proposition, on its face, isn't a terrible offer either. Celica even calls it "too good to be true".
 
Unfortunately the scene goes downhill quick. Jedah talks about creating a nightmare world under the restored Duma by sacrificing Celica to Duma, in front of Celica. 
 
First off, I'm not seeing what makes Jedah figure a restored Duma would help with his chaos filled nightmare world plan. Not only do we see that Rigel for all its flaws isn't like that but Duma himself obeyed the pact he made with Mila and overall tried to avoid going to war with his sister. Frankly, the corrupted Duma would be better for spreading chaos.
 
Secondly, what makes Celica figure that Jedah would keep Alm safe and not screw over Zofia even after hearing his plan talk? 
 
You could have just made Jedah try to make Duma Great Again so that he'll keep Rigel strong and also get revenge on Zofia for not helping them during a famine (maybe even put a parallel with Chrom not letting Robin kill himself to stop Grima for good). You could have had him trying to turn the continent into one fit for Duma. You could have even had Jedah not do his dastardly plan talk when Celica was looking. But nooo.
Edited by Salamud
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9 hours ago, maninbluejumpsuit said:

I beat Duma, so it's time for a little retrospective look at the story.

The only things I noticed that bothered me on my first time playing through;

-Celica not learning her lesson, and insists on martyring herself despite being told not to at least 3 times

-Celica believing anything that super-obviously-evil guy told her

-Alm going from military leader to everyone seeing him as an aspiring king (especially Luthier) felt unexplained, and sudden. Especially when there was only two people in the room with Alm as he held the Royal Sword, and Alm downplayed the significance of it from start to finish

-At least twice people saw Alm's mark in a way that implies that have xray vision, or Alm just takes off his gauntlets without mention when the plot demands it (I'm not counting Silque since that scene implied she was told of it ahead of time, and asked to see his hand for confirmation)

Anyone have any major gripes with the writing?

Those are pretty much my problems, but I don't find them as writing problems, but conceptual problems. They make it too obvious that Jedah is evil and Celica has no reason to believe him, yet she does. That was just a poor idea that didn't make sense before it was even written into dialogue. Celica martyring herself makes sense to her personality, they just didn't come up with a convincing scenario to make it feel natural or believable in the story. 

Alm never aspired to be king, but people trying to push that on him does feel forced, and the scene with Alm holding the Royal Sword feels so stupid. Alm, you already got multiple hints that you're royalty, now you're holding the sword, just own it, man!

The x-ray vision is hilarious and so dumb, I wish they'd thought about that. 

I don't have issues with the execution (the writing), but more with some of the conception of the story. X-ray vision, Alm's naivety, and Celica's foolishness, are all forced ideas that could have worked better. Alm could have only worn a glove on one hand, he could have been a bit smarter or had more people around when he held the royal Sword (or, for crying out loud, have Berkut recognize it when Alm LITERALLY DUELS BERKUT WITH THE ROYAL SWORD), and Celica could have been given more of a proper scenario for her sacrifice to make sense. The writing itself is consistently excellent, but there are some story ideas that are silly or forced. 

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It's fine, cheesy and sometimes unintentionally funny but it gets the job done; although their's some stuff in here that really rubs me the wrong way. I don't like it or the characters enough to justify the horrid gameplay (playing through it feels like a form of punishment once you get to Act 3 of Celica's route). I just recruited Tatiana and did one swamp chapter on Act 4 and never want to play the game again. I rather have not so great stories but fantastic gameplay over games like this.

Edited by I'm a Spheal
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I agree with the general responses here. Overall decently written story with some details that felt too forced, and sudden, but doesn't overall hurt the story and immersion the way Fates writing did.

Also, I think Mycen offhandedly mentions that it was the king's plan to get the people to rise against him, but dying to his son's hand was a mercy, which sort of implies he didn't plan on it, but it worked out better than he expected.

Edited by maninbluejumpsuit
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Overall, it's decent. Act 1-3 are fine ignoring Celica's outburst and a couple other things, but 4 it takes a bad turn as Celica goes into Eirika territories of idiocy, Rudolf's plan, while better then in Gaiden, still has a few holes, and a few changes here and there between the original and the remake actually cause more problems in the story then previously (mainly in regards to how Duma is represented). It's still a step up from many of the issues with Fates, but it definitely has its own problems that could've been patched up better then they were.

Edited by Medeus
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It's a step in the right direction from off of Fates. But it isn't the "Oh praise Mila! We finally have a great written FE story again after the last two games!" in which case while every FE game has a highlights to make it's story memorable or engaging hence why I still think as flawed a story Fates and that includes all the paths so Birthright's flaws too which over weighed for me so I still view Conquest has the best story of the 3 pls don't hit me at least Revelations was the worse offender to me  there is going to be flaws/plotholes that don't make a lick of sense.

I still have to view Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance as the best written stories in series. That is at least until I can see the other FE stories which hopefully get remakes of their own too.

Edited by AbsoluteZer0Nova
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Enough have been said about Celica, but there is one thing about Alm that I don't like: he himself puts too much weight on the bloodline thing.

"I am here to take down Rigel's corrupt king! Wait, that guy…"

"You are my father!? I killed my own father!? NOOOOOO!!!!"

So it's suddenly not a right thing to do just because that guy is your father. (Also that Rudolf isn't really evil, but Alm's change has more to do with the "father" thing.)

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42 minutes ago, nocturnal YL said:

So it's suddenly not a right thing to do just because that guy is your father. (Also that Rudolf isn't really evil, but Alm's change has more to do with the "father" thing.)

Well Alm found out that he's not really Mycen's nephew and that he doesn't really have any family besides Rudolf, soooooo I can kind of understand lol. I feel like it's a fairly human reaction.

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20 hours ago, Thane said:

I just made a thread about Rudolf where I discuss his plan, which at the end of the day is rather silly and too reliant on things working out exactly the way he had expected to the point where the man might as well have prophetic powers.

I've also complained about Alm and Celica not fitting in with the theme of the game. The main theme of the game seems to be to find a balance between Mila and Duma's ideals, but while Duma is portrayed exclusively through cartoony villains and is a crazed monstrosity, Mila saves Celica's life, has hot anime studs worshipping her and is overall never seen doing anything wrong. Not only does this cause me to question why a balance needs to be found in the first place, but I don't really buy how this balance is supposed to have been achieved in the form of Alm and Celica. 

What I mean by that is that Celica does a lot of questionable things. She goes against her promise of not sacrificing herself, she brings her team to Duma Tower without telling them why, delivers herself to Jedah even though he tried killing all of her friends not long before that, and she has to apologize to Alm for messing up. Now, Alm influencing her is a good thing, even though I don't think it's particularly well done. However, Alm is never in need of being influenced by Celica. Alm has no need to reevaluate his choices or personality because everything tends to work out for him; he starts as an honest, kindhearted man, and that's how he finishes the game. So, where is the Duma representation? What does Celica need to influence in order to find a balance here? The only really questionable thing Alm does is killing Rudolf, but that was planned, and all responsibility of it is removed from his shoulders immediately. 

If he had been Awakening!Alm, this theme of balance would've made a lot more sense, and would've given Celica a reason to actually have an impact on Alm. I feel like they miss the theme of the game, and a lot of it is caused by Alm and Mila being portrayed in too good a light. 

Then, like others, I've got a bit of a problem with Clive just handing over control of the Deliverance to Alm. Sure, he takes care of the day-to-day activities, but right after Alm joins, they can storm Zofia castle, and the victory is attributed mostly to him? What the hell?

Well he is the main lead and it anime game the main lead always get praise and everything else that comes with the main lead. I always though IS try to make Alm and Celica a fake avatar  characters with the whole everyone speaking to them but seem more like they were talking to the player in away with the one way camara. 

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3 hours ago, mikethepokemaster said:

Well he is the main lead and it anime game the main lead always get praise and everything else that comes with the main lead. I always though IS try to make Alm and Celica a fake avatar  characters with the whole everyone speaking to them but seem more like they were talking to the player in away with the one way camara. 

Welcome to the style of visual novels.

(Oh, and this is something that many JRPGs have done. It's not exclusive to this game, other FE games, or other JRPG series in general.)

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My only big complaint that wasn't touched on already was that it felt like they really tried hard to make Fernand and Berkut sympathetic characters, but I'm just not feeling it. Maybe a tiny bit of pity at times, but ultimately I was glad at their deaths.

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In my opinion it has the same problem that the Star Wars series has with Luke.  That is, there is absolutely no reason to hide Alm's origin from him.  None.  

Rudolf's purpose of protecting Alm was met when he was an adult.  At that point it would have been much better to spill the beans and get Alm and Celica together to take on Duma.

Just like they should have trained Luke and Leia Skywalker from birth so they would be prepared to take on dad.  

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