What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

[Jotari]

22 minutes ago, Harvey said:

I was referring to the world building aspect. The plot itself does that just fine. There's no need for large support conversations to do just that.

 

So then why bother wanting conversations to bring about world building instead of just conversations? If FE6 already explained enough world building with just the main story, there's no reason for the support conversations to do that. Criticising supports because of not having world building or not mentioning specific things about world building is just unfair when the conversation was not meant to have that in the first place.

But I digress...

 

Yes...I know. I was pointing out how you can apply the exact same logic to the main story and say there's no need for character arcs because you can have them in supports. Was I really not clear about that.

13 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I just remembered this is true of one my childhood JRPG protags, despite me having had a village from the game listed as my location since late November. Kalas is Japanese for "raven", and is certainly on the abrasive side. 

 

Why want a car in red, with an electric engine, and side airbags, when a car wasn't made to be colorful, safe, or concerned about the environment? A car was made to get me from place to place, I shouldn't care about its color, safety or what fuel source it uses, cars were never invented with any of that in mind.

 

 

Now I want to count the support chain totals per game. But, this is going to take some time, I'll PM you the results later if you're interested. So far, I've counted 141 for Binding Blade.

Oh man 141 in Binding Blade. Awakening probably has a thousand then. Well, maybe not. Binding Blade's cast is pretty big. But yeah, tell me the results of that. Would be interesting to see.

[Harvey]

5 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Yes...I know. I was pointing out how you can apply the exact same logic to the main story and say there's no need for character arcs because you can have them in supports. Was I really not clear about that.

What do you mean by character arcs? The only time you ever see characterization in most FE games is via support conversations.

20 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Why want a car in red, with an electric engine, and side airbags, when a car wasn't made to be colorful, safe, or concerned about the environment? A car was made to get me from place to place, I shouldn't care about its color, safety or what fuel source it uses, cars were never invented with any of that in mind.

If you're bringing in preference over this argument, that doesn't make sense. Cars are built with going from distance to distance so of course you're gonna want to care about what fuel to use.

However that logic can't apply here because support conversations can be anything. They don't always have to have world building conversation at all. Doing that ruins the social life that the cast would want to have. 

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Quote

This is something that FE has always struggled with. I actually really liked the inclusion of height in Radiant Dawn a lot because you could make a Defense style map(Like 3-13) where it truly felt like you were at truly a huge disadvantage with army strength, but due to having leverage and height advantage, things were much more equal.

Don't know exactly how the opposite would be handled. I guess chapter 14 of FE5 kind of works that way. Just a massive city siege where you can make all kinds of bottle necks in the streets, while the two enemy armies just throw themselves at you to try to break through.

Thinking about it, is suppose one could scratch the “may not affect the player adversely” since that would probably take a lot of effort. I will however point to Conquest chapter 8 (Ice Tribe with the lake-DV) and perhaps Chapter 9 (Azura Cave) though the set enemies to 1 HP is a cheap way of doing something, I feel. The whole enemy has mor dudes and better position is mostly referring to them having direct access to things such as ballistae or are covering each other in a formation etc.

 

Quote

The issue I have with harder difficulties is that they don't do much besides either adding stonger enemies or replacing tougher enemies instead and some small tidbits here and there.

If they could do something like adding an exclusive chapter like how FE7 did, there would be a reason to do so but apparently not anymore.

I mean the whole point of the additional difficulties is to accommodate differing players, no? Some may just want to enjoy the story and characters, while others want to test themselves or rather their strategies.

Other than that, it´s exactly for that reason that I would disagree on less difficulties. How would additional chapters be integrated story wise? Would they just be omitted, or more as a recap of sorts, with characters just discussing what had happened? And what about players that don´t want or can´t play on these higher difficulties; would they be just locked out of parts of the story?

Regarding the "they don´t add much to the game". Somebody correct me if I am wrong about this for the different games, but most of the time the higher difficulties just scale enemies up higher, meaning they will be more of a match for your units. Though sometimes they will go way overboard with that. But in some games, they also change or complete enemy formations, or change/add skills which may force a different approach to the game. To give an example I will once again point to Conquest and take the aforementioned Chapter 9. Of the top of my head Lunatic adds one archer in the hallway to the rescue staff chest, one more spear fighter near the boss, another archer in the boss room and an additional set of reinforcements of 4 spear fighters at the stairs near the rescue staff chest. However, it also gives the new archer in the boss room a magic bow and one of the spear fighters has a bolt naginata, so these are additions that may force a change in your strategy to the map.

[Jotari]

6 hours ago, Harvey said:

What do you mean by character arcs? The only time you ever see characterization in most FE games is via support conversations.

If you're bringing in preference over this argument, that doesn't make sense. Cars are built with going from distance to distance so of course you're gonna want to care about what fuel to use.

However that logic can't apply here because support conversations can be anything. They don't always have to have world building conversation at all. Doing that ruins the social life that the cast would want to have. 

Well that's just not true, but if you think it is then there's no arguing with you.

[Flere210]

49 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well that's just not true, but if you think it is then there's no arguing with you.

Tbf, very few secondary characters get actual arcs in story, and most of them get those before they became playable. Because you can't really have them after, considering the character can die halfway trough the arc. 

Permadeath is just not good for storytelling, because a Shrodinger character can only have little plot relevance. Having an highly reactive story is technically possible, but would take too much time and effort for it to be feasible. 

[Ottservia]

8 hours ago, Harvey said:

However that logic can't apply here because support conversations can be anything. They don't always have to have world building conversation at all. Doing that ruins the social life that the cast would want to have. 

this I agree with and to that notion a story can be anything. A story/support isn't bad because it doesn't pander to you're particular set of tastes. I hate it when people criticize writing this way because it comes off as extremely entitled to me. Like just because the story isn't what you wanted it to be that doesn't make it bad

[Hawkwing]

On 2/15/2020 at 9:55 AM, Interdimensional Observer said:

I wish there was an easy way to determine how long the average support is. Do I count the words- which is very tedious, or do I count the number of times the dialogue goes from one character to another? In both cases, I'm ignoring content thought, which is not easily converted to statistics despite being the thing that matters the most. I sorta want to figure out what the ideal support length is. Neither so short it feels unfulfilling, but nor so long you want it to end. Must a support finally end totally fulfilling, or does tantalizing you with a slight lack of finish so your craving more also suffice?

Not helping is how voices (not just voice acting) and presentation can affect the perception of how long supports are. I thought that the supports in Fates were surprisingly short (and uncommon opinion, but I thought they were middle of the road in quality. Nothing blew me away, but nothing struck me as poor, either), but since I only played Conquest once, I don't know if they really are shorter than Awakenings, or if the lack of voice clips simply meant that I sped through them faster. While the supports in Three Houses do take a while, one could argue this is more due to them being voice acted with odd pauses inbetween (seriously, why is there an erratic pausing between when one voice clip starts and the next? Especially when Echoes didn't have this problem) and having simplistic animations that honestly aren't all that interesting to look at than the script itself being long.

Anyway, counting words would easily lead into the "use 'it is' instead of 'it's' to reach the minimum word requirement" problem, where two supports with a similar amount of content would differ in length due to minor word choice differences. Going from one character ignores how two supports could be of similar length, but one could have more back and forth between the characters while the other has one character going into more detail about their background while the other listens. I don't know if there is a solid statistical way to determine support length, since as you said content is the thing that matters most.

23 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Some ideas are bad. Shadow Dragon was also intended to have a cast full of mutes and it was a dumb idea regardless of whether it was accidental or intentional.

I really wonder what the development reason behind Shadow Dragon's lack of supports was. Did the writers think that there were too many characters to efficiently write for without them coming off as generic and/or sacrificing the quality of the main story, and thus decided to make most of them mute outside of death quotes and endings  (of which most of them were taken from FE1 and 3)? Was it the support system of Shadow Dragon, where one character affected another but not always vice versa, and they didn't want to give the player the wrong idea by having conversations? Were the optional event conversations between characters things they wrote before or after the decision to not have supports? All or none of the above? Something else entirely?

I actually really like Shadow Dragon's writing, but I am curious what the official reason for the lack of the traditional support system was.

23 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Likewise deliberately ignoring world building is something you can do but its a flaw that's knowingly put into the game. I'm also not sure if Awakening's bare world even was intended. Given that its a vastly changed Archenea its probably the world that needed the most world building rather than the least to explain how the continent changed so much.

Awakening's worldbuilding simply told the player what they needed to know, and occasionally a little more, but that tended to be it. There's context for every level and I'm not left wondering why we're going from mission A to mission B, but there's not a whole lot of "unnecessary details" about the games world that may not be required for the plot but help makes the setting more interesting. Virion being from Rosanne is mentioned and his territory being conquered by Walhart is relevant to continue the story. It also shows that Valm is no longer the united Valentia that Gaiden/Echoes ended on, and Walhart aims to have history repeat despite the finer details of the conflicts being different. Yet we only get minor details about what kind of place Rosanne is, and lack of information of the other territories beyond "some oppose Walhart, others benefit, and some are on the fence" makes the whole rebellion part of the Valm arc come off as telling instead of showing. On the flip side, the Taguel actually do get a decent amount of lore that had some thought put behind it, but you have to scour through every little thing Panne and to a lesser degree Yarne says in order to find it, and even then said information is easy to miss. I like the background we're given about them, but I also admit it's more trouble than it's worth to discover. Awakening doesn't entirely lack worldbuilding, but it really only pops up when it needs to, and other times it's hidden in supports less obviously than worldbuilding was handled in the past.

Given how Fates bit off a crap ton more than it could chew, I wouldn't be surprised that inbetween writing three different stories, how individual scenes would play out throughout all the routes, planning out the story reasons for why you get each character or item at certain times and making sure the you don't get a unit or weapon too early or too late, having the gimmicks make sense for the level in question, and continuing Awakenings support system of "everyone supports everyone" (which had its own issues), the writers simply didn't have the time or resources to effectively focus on the worldbuilding. It's not nonexistent (Nohr has some solid "show don't tell" regarding some of your units being non-nobles that earned high positions through their abilities, with some positive examples of how this bettered some of the characters lives and made them even more loyal, as well as the drawbacks being acknowledged since people like Peri and Hans can go far despite their horrid actions because they're good at their job), but given how Fates isn't set in a pre-established world, the lack of background on several aspects sticks out more. Doesn't help that the great level design gives an idea that there is an untold story about several maps, and Fates in general has some great concepts with lacking execution, but harping on Fates missed opportunities is beating a dead horse by this point.

22 hours ago, Boomhauer007 said:

Playing casually you're barely going to get any. There's a few reasonable ones but some of them require over 200 turns of people ending the turn next to each other, entire playthroughs don't take that long. 

Crap. Well, I could always view the conversations on SF if I'm curious. I wonder why they thought that 200 turns would be a reasonable requirement, especially when the game one of the games rankings is based on speed.

[AnonymousSpeed]

2 hours ago, Hawkwing said:

Crap. Well, I could always view the conversations on SF if I'm curious. I wonder why they thought that 200 turns would be a reasonable requirement, especially when the game one of the games rankings is based on speed.

There is no reason.

I should also note that Karel FE6 Edition joins you with 3 maps remaining in the game. Most of his supports are 1+1, which means they start at one point and increase by one every turn two units are adjacent. You can only get one support per chapter, and each additional support rank requires 80 support points.

This means that, if you want to read Karel's A supports with Rutger, Zeiss, or Noah, you have to take at least 239 turns to complete the last three maps of FE6. Even his fastest support is 30+3, which would require you to have Fir and Karel stand next to each other for 70 turns over the course of three maps, one of which is just Idunn.

Or your could just look them up. Karel is actually kind of interesting in this game, it might be worth it.

[Harvey]

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

Well that's just not true, but if you think it is then there's no arguing with you.

What isn't true? The cars thing or the character arc thing? Because if its the latter, I have no idea that characters could develop within the story unless its the main lords.

7 hours ago, Ottservia said:

this I agree with and to that notion a story can be anything. A story/support isn't bad because it doesn't pander to you're particular set of tastes. I hate it when people criticize writing this way because it comes off as extremely entitled to me. Like just because the story isn't what you wanted it to be that doesn't make it bad

My guess to this is people state the Fire Emblem is a waifu game type meme and all the strategy is removed or gone which is blatantley false because Fire Emblem has always had tactical elements and the RNG alone proves that. If you look at FE Conquests, it has the best map design of the whole bunch and the other objectives that are present from previous games are also there.

But really though, FE always had romance in the end whether it was minor or not. The waifu meme doesn't even make the series look bad.

 

Edited February 17, 2020 by Harvey

[Jotari]

9 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Tbf, very few secondary characters get actual arcs in story, and most of them get those before they became playable. Because you can't really have them after, considering the character can die halfway trough the arc. 

Permadeath is just not good for storytelling, because a Shrodinger character can only have little plot relevance. Having an highly reactive story is technically possible, but would take too much time and effort for it to be feasible. 

 

1 hour ago, Harvey said:

What isn't true? The cars thing or the character arc thing? Because if its the latter, I have no idea that characters could develop within the story unless its the main lords.

The main characters are in the game too. And they also have supports. Should they not have supports because they have characterisation in the story? Or should they not have a story arc because they have supports? That's the same logic you're working under when you say there is no reason for world building to be an element of supports. Neither supports nor the main story have exclusive access to the narrative. Both should work towards making the best story possible.

8 hours ago, Ottservia said:

this I agree with and to that notion a story can be anything. A story/support isn't bad because it doesn't pander to you're particular set of tastes. I hate it when people criticize writing this way because it comes off as extremely entitled to me. Like just because the story isn't what you wanted it to be that doesn't make it bad

No one here has criticized supports for not world building. I'll quote what slumber said earlier.

On 2/16/2020 at 3:53 PM, Slumber said:

I swear you people are being purposely dense. I never said that it's "better writing", I just said that it's the typical way FE does supports, and Fates and Awakening do something different that draws peoples' attentions to different aspects of the world/characters.

There's still a ton of fluff in Three Houses supports, no FE has world building in EVERY support, but the chances that you learn something about Fodlan in any given support is pretty high.

[DragonFlames]

7 hours ago, Hawkwing said:

I really wonder what the development reason behind Shadow Dragon's lack of supports was. Did the writers think that there were too many characters to efficiently write for without them coming off as generic and/or sacrificing the quality of the main story, and thus decided to make most of them mute outside of death quotes and endings  (of which most of them were taken from FE1 and 3)? Was it the support system of Shadow Dragon, where one character affected another but not always vice versa, and they didn't want to give the player the wrong idea by having conversations? Were the optional event conversations between characters things they wrote before or after the decision to not have supports? All or none of the above? Something else entirely?

I actually really like Shadow Dragon's writing, but I am curious what the official reason for the lack of the traditional support system was.

Something, something "faithful to the source material", I imagine. I'd personally blame laziness for it, but that's just me.
Then they got flack for it and decided to implement supports in the other remakes. Didn't exactly help the atrociously boring cast of Archanea (with exceptions, of course), but hey, it was something.

[Ottservia]

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

No one here has criticized supports for not world building. I'll quote what slumber said earlier.

 

Not really saying anyone did. I just dislike it when people criticize something for not being what they wanted. It’s something I see a lot and it bothers me.

[CH0D]

On 2/14/2020 at 3:00 PM, vanguard333 said:

Two things:

1. Interesting. Now you know how I felt when you said Ike was generic and Elincia was a worse Celica; the difference being that I played and paid attention to Shadows of Valentia. (Please don't interpret this as passive-aggressive; I'm actually perfectly calm and, if anything, having a small chuckle about this). 
2. I'm curious: why? Are there any particular reasons?

Well specifically with Berkut I just really love his voice acting and overall character. I don't really know much to say other than that about him, I've always enjoyed the more egotistical and "insane" characters/villians in the franchise so seeing one that was all of that and understandable is refreshing. In terms of his general character I think he's pretty well written, he was raised as the heir to Rigel so naturally when that's taken from him his entire life is shattered.

I like Fernand for generally the same reason, I think a lot of fiction in general is quick to say "noble bad" whereas he shows how they're people too, and how their negative actions have much more unintential whiplash. It's the same reason I like Ferdinand and Lorenz too, more the former.

[Ottservia]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

The main characters are in the game too. And they also have supports. Should they not have supports because they have characterisation in the story? Or should they not have a story arc because they have supports? That's the same logic you're working under when you say there is no reason for world building to be an element of supports. Neither supports nor the main story have exclusive access to the narrative. Both should work towards making the best story possible.

This is another thing I agree with. Every aspect of the story needs to feed into another and it all should connect neatly in order to make an engaging narrative.

 

14 hours ago, Hawkwing said:

Awakening's worldbuilding simply told the player what they needed to know, and occasionally a little more, but that tended to be it. There's context for every level and I'm not left wondering why we're going from mission A to mission B, but there's not a whole lot of "unnecessary details" about the games world that may not be required for the plot but help makes the setting more interesting. Virion being from Rosanne is mentioned and his territory being conquered by Walhart is relevant to continue the story. It also shows that Valm is no longer the united Valentia that Gaiden/Echoes ended on, and Walhart aims to have history repeat despite the finer details of the conflicts being different. Yet we only get minor details about what kind of place Rosanne is, and lack of information of the other territories beyond "some oppose Walhart, others benefit, and some are on the fence" makes the whole rebellion part of the Valm arc come off as telling instead of showing. On the flip side, the Taguel actually do get a decent amount of lore that had some thought put behind it, but you have to scour through every little thing Panne and to a lesser degree Yarne says in order to find it, and even then said information is easy to miss. I like the background we're given about them, but I also admit it's more trouble than it's worth to discover. Awakening doesn't entirely lack worldbuilding, but it really only pops up when it needs to, and other times it's hidden in supports less obviously than worldbuilding was handled in the past.

I agree with this as well. Honestly when it comes to writing world building only needs to pop up when it’s relevant to provide context to the reader as to what is happening. We don’t need a 50 paragraph info dump about the logistics, politics, and history of the world at large in order to understand what’s going on. That shit can be read up on in artbooks or whatever for those curious. The audience only needs so much information. I honestly don’t think world building is as important as people make it out to be. It’s important obviously but it’s not the be all end all of a story. 
 

On that note. I prefer Fates’s world building over three houses. Yeah the continent may not have a name but at the very least I got to see a lot of these locations like the ice tribe village, the wind village, Izumo, etc. and the clothes the characters wore were really distinctive and highlighted the primary aspects of the cultures they were from. Three houses just decides to tell you everything and never show you any of these locations at all which makes not give a shit.

[Harvey]

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

The main characters are in the game too. And they also have supports. Should they not have supports because they have characterisation in the story? Or should they not have a story arc because they have supports? That's the same logic you're working under when you say there is no reason for world building to be an element of supports. Neither supports nor the main story have exclusive access to the narrative. Both should work towards making the best story possible.

I said that not every support has to have it and if it had, it would ruin the social life of characters and social life is part of what makes Fire Emblem special. But I digress...

 

[Jotari]

6 hours ago, Harvey said:

I said that not every support has to have it and if it had, it would ruin the social life of characters and social life is part of what makes Fire Emblem special. But I digress...

 

No one has said that every support needs world building.

[Flere210]

I would argue that there is world building, it's just not spelled out loud.

Someone mentioned Tharja/Henry. Whilenit's not about the Grimleal, the whole support is about social expectations linked to Dark Mage and how nonconventional Henry is. This tell us several things about Plegia, because we already now that Dark Mages are a potent lobby there. It tell us that scheming againist and cursing each other is so common that there is annoffixial profession about doing that, o that Dark Mages have at least an implied code of conduct based on inspiring fear, wich make sense if your job is selling curses, and so on.  If the support was something like this:

Tharja: Stop being an happy-go-lucky sociopath, that againist the Code *3 conversations about the code*

We would get a similar amount of world building about Plegia and the role of dark mages there, it would just be more explicit.

 

That said, i feel focusing on world building can be equally detrimental. Jugdral dedicate a large part of it's word count on small things happened 300 years before the story that are barely relevant while half of the playable characters have less than 10 lines.

[Ottservia]

7 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

 

That said, i feel focusing on world building can be equally detrimental. Jugdral dedicate a large part of it's word count on small things happened 300 years before the story that are barely relevant while half of the playable characters have less than 10 lines.

This right here describes all the problems I have with 3H’s world building. Most of it just doesn’t matter and the shit that does matter is never elaborated on!!

[Deathcon]

21 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

This right here describes all the problems I have with 3H’s world building. Most of it just doesn’t matter and the shit that does matter is never elaborated on!!

Can you be specific on both accounts?

[Ottservia]

14 minutes ago, Deathcon said:

Can you be specific on both accounts?

I have one example for both. The tragedy of duscur. Now to be fair this event does hold meaning to Dimitri’s entire character arc as it’s the event that killed his parents but then we learn that the whole thing was a conspiracy instigated by his stepmother. An interesting twist that if elaborated on could lead to Dimitri having to come to terms with the fact that his step mom may not loved him. Too bad we never get that elaboration as it’s just brushed off by Dimitri. That’s fine... It’s not like that event is the major crux of Dimitri’s entire character or anything!! But no don’t elaborate on it. It’s totally not important.

We also hear a lot about Almyra and the trouble they cause but what the fuck does Almyra have to do with anything regarding the core conflict between Edelgard and the church. Absolutely fuck all that’s what.

Also who the fuck are the agarthans and why do they have nukes?! Why do they hate dragons so much?! The game provides no answers for this!!

Edited February 18, 2020 by Ottservia

[Slumber]

1 hour ago, Flere210 said:

I would argue that there is world building, it's just not spelled out loud.

Someone mentioned Tharja/Henry. Whilenit's not about the Grimleal, the whole support is about social expectations linked to Dark Mage and how nonconventional Henry is. This tell us several things about Plegia, because we already now that Dark Mages are a potent lobby there. It tell us that scheming againist and cursing each other is so common that there is annoffixial profession about doing that, o that Dark Mages have at least an implied code of conduct based on inspiring fear, wich make sense if your job is selling curses, and so on. 

???

Those supports don't really do anything like this. They mostly showcase that Henry's just a nutjob(Which is already showcased in all of Henry's other dialogue in the game) and much more proficient in Dark Magic than Tharja is.

They don't show us that Dark Mages in Plegia using curses/hexes on each other is common. The practice of actually casting hexes on others is brought up twice in the support. Once, when Tharja thinks Henry's a threat to Robin(Because of course) and casts a truth curse on him, and again when Tharja mentions she has a death curse from an unknown assailant. Which with all likelihood, and the suddenness with which she brings it up, is because she got it after joining Chrom and started fighting other Dark Mages, and not because one of her colleagues thought it'd be funny to put a death hex on her. There's also no real implication that there's a profession dedicated to just scheming and cursing. It really just seems like it's something Dark Mages do as part of being Dark Mages. If you're basing this off of Tharja suspecting Henry to be a spy, that's really a stretch. However, what is shown is that Dark Mages frequently use hexes to solve their every day problems, which I guess could mean they are casting hexes and curses on each other some times? And that could be world-building, but it really seems like that's a Tharja thing, since she casts hexes/curses on EVERYONE, and Henry doesn't.

On the implication of a "code of conduct" based on fear, Tharja just says that the profession of Dark Mages is based on an ancient history of spreading death and disease... which of course it is, it's a magic that in-gameplay, is designed to inflict illness and drain life, so Henry shouldn't be ALWAYS smiling and giggling while doing it. If you really want to stretch it, you could extrapolate this to mean that there's a certain attitude a Dark Mage is expected to have. But I'd argue this really isn't much different than a code of chivalry or honor that upstanding knight characters in the series follow, which is almost never used to show that this is how ALL knights act, just how the one espousing chivalry acts.

What you're saying is shown in this support chain isn't really shown in this support chain. And if it is, it's very loose implications, and still very much different than how things are in other games.

Here's the support chain:

Spoiler

C Support

Tharja: I know you.
Henry: You do?
Tharja: When I still fought for Plegia, we heard all sorts of stories about you. A silver-haired youth with a knowledge of curses and an extraordinary gift for magic. A man guarded by fierce crows so that very few had seen the true extent of his powers.
Henry: Oh wow! Now that's a reputation! Yeah, crows have always had a thing for me, I guess. Dunno why.
Tharja: Perhaps you'd be willing to teach a trick or two to a fellow dark mage?
Henry: Sure! You want me to cast a death curse on someone?
Tharja: Someone in camp? Mmm... No. That could be problematic.
Henry: Hee hee! Yeah, I guess. Too bad, though. See, 'cause I've got one that makes blood come out your—
Tharja: Thank you, I get the picture. What's with the smiling, anyway? No one's going to trust you if you're grinning like the village idiot.
Henry: Hee hee! Smiling? This is how I always look.
Tharja: Hardly reassuring. Tell me what you're plotting and I may yet spare you.
Henry: Sorry! Nothing sinister over here. I'm just a hale and hearty mage.
Tharja: Ugh... Hale? Hearty? Have you no respect for our ancient profession? We're supposed to be harbingers of pestilence and famine and doom!
Henry: Mm... I love doom.

B Support

Henry: Hello, Tharja!
Tharja: *Mumble, mumble* *hiss*
Henry: Heey! Did you just put a curse on me?
Tharja: Yes. Now, if you do not speak the truth, you will DIE! Answer me clearly and without hesitation. Are you a foreign spy?
Henry: Nope! Not me! Although I do own a cloak and a couple daggers.
Tharja: Who do you serve? Ylisse or Plegia?
Henry: Aw, I don't get into politics. I just want to toss fireballs at bad guys.
Tharja: Interesting. That's the same reason I joined up.
Henry: Really? Hey, would you maybe tell me all about it?
Tharja: I'm doing the interrogating here. Now then, one final question... Do you vow to never cause harm to Robin, no matter what?
Henry: No problem!
Tharja: ...How strange. My magic ensures that you are telling the truth. But I find your heart difficult to read. It seems devoid of human emotion. What's inside that head of yours? What are you thinking?
Henry: Right now, I'm thinking about you. And about how you must really really REALLY like Robin!
Tharja: Mind your own business, little man.
Henry: Is that why you're always following him/her around?
Tharja: I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand affairs of the heart. In any case, you may go. I have no further use for you.
Henry: Hey! Tharja! You forgot to remove the curse! Oh, well. I suppose it'll fizzle out eventually. La la la...

A Support

Tharja: Here you are.
Henry: Yep! Here I am!
Tharja: I have a rather urgent problem, and I need your help.
Henry: Do you need a death curse? Please say you need a death curse.
Tharja: No death curses! ...... It appears that I, myself, am victim of a curse from an unknown assailant. I have tried to remove it, but the magic is too powerful. I'm hoping that if we combine our might, we may be able to—
Henry: Hecka-necka, jimma-jamma, woozle-wazzle! Aaand presto! Curse dispelled! Actually not dispelled. I tossed it back at the original sender. Hee hee!
Tharja: That's impossible. ...... By the gods! It IS gone...
Henry: Yeah, dispelling curses is kind of my speciality. Right now, whoever cast that curse must be in one confused pickle! Too bad we can't be there to see it. That would be swell!
Tharja: With that kind of power, you could have easily deflected my earlier curse...
Henry: Oh yeah. I guess so, huh? Although you didn't really need to put a truth curse on me, you know? I don't have anything to hide, and I've never told a lie in my life.
Tharja: Aha! At last you reveal the source of your power. You disarm your foes with terrifying honesty and sincerity!
Henry: Well, usually I disarm foes by removing their arms. But your way sounds impressive, too!
Tharja: It's not a compliment.
Henry: Hee hee! I know!
Tharja: Stop being so blasted cheerful, or I'll... I'll twist your tongue in knots!
Henry: Oh, you can try to cast a hex on me...if you dare!
Tharja: Don't think you're the only one who can deflect curses!
Henry: Wizard fight! Wizard fight! Yaaaaaay!

S Support

Henry: Hey, Tharja! Look at these flowers I found! Aren't they pretty?
Tharja: Er, yes. Sure. I suppose they are.
Henry: Aw, Tharja. You're just saying that. You don't think they're pretty at all! Poor little flowers—after they went to all that trouble to bloom and everything.
Tharja: Are you actually talking to them? That's more than a little creepy. If you don't cease at once, I'll cast a hex and turn them into dry sticks.
Henry: Tharja, would you like that better? Would you prefer these poor flowers to be twigs?
Tharja: You make it sound as if I'm being rude to your ridiculous bouquet.
Henry: I don't mean to! It's just that if you wanted a bundle of twigs, I'd be happy to oblige.
Tharja: Wait, what are you—
Henry: PRESTO! ...There you go.
Tharja: You were so pleased with those flowers, yet you destroyed them just like that...
Henry: Nya ha! Oh, I don't care—as long as you're happy, that's all that matters.
Tharja: Wh-where is this going?
Henry: Tharja, I'm head over heels for you! In fact, I'd rip my heels clean off if it would put a devious grin on your face! Heck, I'll destroy this whole army if that's what you want. ...Do you want that?
Tharja: Ugh, of course I don't. Do you think I'm completely insane?
Henry: No, I was just using it as an example. So anyway, you want to get married?
Tharja: Egads, you do know how to sweep a girl off her feet, don't you? And yet... If you promise to protect Robin, I just might consider it. If we both fall into some mortal peril, I want you to save Robin first. Is that clear? You must be ready to sacrifice me for his/her sake. If you can bring yourself to promise me that, then yes, I will marry you and—
Henry: Is that all? Easy peasy! No problem what-so-EVER!
Tharja: Good. ...I think.
Henry: This is great. I thought you'd make the conditions really, really onerous. Like, so hard that I'd think twice about the idea. But you didn't! So, anyway. I'd better go down to the smith and get a ring made.
Tharja: You know, he may actually, truly be crazy... I mean, what kind of proposal was that? Still, it's not like I'm the most normal person around either. Who knows? Perhaps it's the perfect match...

 

Edited February 18, 2020 by Slumber

[starburst]

8 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Honestly when it comes to writing world building only needs to pop up when it’s relevant to provide context to the reader as to what is happening. We don’t need a 50 paragraph info dump about the logistics, politics, and history of the world at large in order to understand what’s going on. That shit can be read up on in artbooks or whatever for those curious. The audience only needs so much information. I honestly don’t think world building is as important as people make it out to be. It’s important obviously but it’s not the be all end all of a story.

Have you considered world building as a literary/ rhetoric device for character development?
In real life, one line stating that the action takes place in, say, Victorian London or Nazi Berlin is enough to transport us to that setting and set our views and expectations of characters and their interactions. But in a game like Fire Emblem, one needs a lot of information to produce even 1 % of a similar mental exercise.

You seem very comfortable with the anime-tropes, yet some of us do not. Why should I know or care about anime-tropes? According to you, somehow this shortcut to define a character can be turned into a super deep, super interesting, mega layered cumulus of traits. Yet if I criticise the use of a trope (not misuse, but the use per se), walls of text will come trying to prove me wrong.

Nothing personal. I disagree with many of your ideas, but still find it interesting reading most of your posts. But scorning world building seemed very odd to me.

[Ottservia]

4 minutes ago, starburst said:

Have you considered world building as a literary/ rhetoric device for character development?
In real life, one line stating that the action takes place in, say, Victorian London or Nazi Berlin is enough to transport us to that setting and set our views and expectations of characters and their interactions. But in a game like Fire Emblem, one needs a lot of information to produce even 1 % of a similar mental exercise.

It's all a matter about what's important to the story being told. If it's not important, then why include it? Is the ENTIRE history of the ice tribe from its founding and political history necessary to the story fates wants to tell? I don't think so. All we really need to know about the place is that it exists and they're oppressed by nohr. We don't need anymore than that in order to understand felicia and flora's situation as well as Kilma's motivation to rebel. Anything more than that is just added fluff which is nice but ultimately unnecessary. Now do we need a more detailed history about nohr's relationship with hoshido? yeah we kinda do cause what we do know is pretty vague at best and more information about at least a previous war or two(or even why the current war is happening at all) would help contextualize the conflict a lot better. Any more exposition than that is unnecessary or can be told visually(like Samurai's being a part of Hoshido while mercenaries are a more nohrian class. Nohr uses black magic. Hoshido uses scrolls. Small things like that. One off comments by characters can work as well). Do you understand my point? World building is important for the author as they need to make sure the world remains consistent and believable but the audience does not need THAT much information to understand the story being told.  The audience only really needs the bare essentials. The complete history of how each country came to be and a full explanation of the world's politics will only serve to bog the story down with unnecessary information. It's fine to have that information as an author but the audience does not need to know every single minute detail to understand what's happening.

23 minutes ago, starburst said:

You seem very comfortable with the anime-tropes, yet some of us do not. Why should I know or care about anime-tropes? According to you, somehow this shortcut to define a character can be turned into a super deep, super interesting, mega layered cumulus of traits. Yet if I criticise the use of a trope (not misuse, but the use per se), walls of text will come trying to prove me wrong.

Here's the thing about that. Tropes are inevitable in ANY story. There is no such thing as an original idea in fiction anymore so I don't see any reason to criticize a trope for its mere existence because tropes are going to happen in a story whether you like it or not. Execution is what matters most. It's fine to be annoyed by or dislike the use of any particular trope cause that's a matter of personal taste and opinion. There are a lot of tropes that I generally dislike(Like the "Oh so I bet you're wondering how I get here" trope springs to mind) but I'm never gonna use that as objective criticism against something, that's stupid. I may not like it but it's there and it's not going away nor is it done poorly so I see no reason to call it objectively bad. If you don't like tsunderes that's totally fine. I ain't gonna lambast anyone for having an opinion. It's when you say shit like "tsundere is a bad trope" than I get angry cause there's really no such thing as a "bad trope" just bad execution. It's why I despise the "too anime" argument cause what exactly are you trying to argue there? Like it's anime what of it? that doesn't make it inherently bad. If you're trying to argue poor execution then why not just say that? Like what about it being "too anime" makes it bad? is anime just bad? well no that's just a very stupid statement. Like that argument doesn't mean anything. All it really serves to do is say "anime trope bad therefore story/character is bad" which is not at all how that works. The use of Tropes in it of themselves are not bad writing. The poor execution of a trope is.

[Jotari]

8 hours ago, Flere210 said:

That said, i feel focusing on world building can be equally detrimental. Jugdral dedicate a large part of it's word count on small things happened 300 years before the story that are barely relevant while half of the playable characters have less than 10 lines.

Jugdral could certainly have a lot more in the way of developing side characters, though I think it does a rather good job in Genealogy for the time it was made (not quite so much in Thracia)...but what are you referring to in regards to small things that happened 300 years ago? All we get from that time period is literally the opening timeline.  Maybe you're just misremembering the original war against Loptyr that happened just over a hundred years ago, and is obviously very relevant to the plot. It also contains very scant number of small things as we get it in broadstrokes. Do you have any examples of what you're talking about here?

[Jandex]

On 2/15/2020 at 7:58 PM, Harvey said:

Well its better than just replacing stronger enemies or buffing enemies instead of doing something else. The way FE7 is done is what I like best. Hector mode doesn't just add tougher enemies, but rather, some of the maps have units change their positions and what not to make it look different. 

Sure, adding new chapters may not be everyone's cup of tea but its better than doing the same thing all over with just a harder difficulty. Radiant dawn does this well as the harder the difficulty, the different the things are especially the dialogue.

But I don't get it though...many FE games tend to focus on just that or am i missing something?

 

i actually do agree, FE7's way of changing maps entirely is really good, even though the game is easy