Missed potential in the Tellius games

[Fala]

Ike needed to have his metaphorical face in the dirt more. Or suffer in more clearer terms. And after FE9, be the Fire Emblem equivalent of Red from Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal or a previous player character that becomes an opponent. In and only in the End Game of Part 4 does he become a playable character.

Elincia should have been made playable earlier (mid game) and after FE9, she becomes Eliwood in Lyn's story to the Dawn Brigade's Lyn. At the start of Part 4, she becomes playable again.

Micaiah and the Dawn Brigade should have been the main characters with Micaiah and Pellius being the Lords.

 

Edited July 7, 2017 by Fala

[mangasdeouf]

Quote

Ike needed to have his metaphorical face in the dirt more. Or suffer in more clearer terms. And after FE9, be the Fire Emblem equivalent of Red from Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal or a previous player character that becomes an opponent. In and only in the End Game of Part 4 does he become a playable character.

Elincia should have been made playable earlier (mid game) and after FE9, she becomes Eliwood in Lyn's story to the Dawn Brigade's Lyn. At the start of Part 4, she becomes playable again.

Micaiah and the Dawn Brigade should have been the main characters with Micaiah and Pellius being the Lords.

Yes it would be a good point, especially 2 lords with light mage and dark mage, that would change from sword/lance/axe users lords. + Pelleas is too incapable. After his speech in the 1st part before the ending chapter, he should have become more self-confident.

Edited July 7, 2017 by mangasdeouf

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Adding Pelleas to the DB in part 3 would give the party authority stars.

Edit: Crap he has only one. Why?!
 

[Jotari]

10 minutes ago, はたの 秦 こころ said:

Adding Pelleas to the DB in part 3 would give the party authority stars.

Edit: Crap he has only one. Why?!
 

Because he did sort of suck as a king.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

But Lucia sucks too in protecting herself and has two of them.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, はたの 秦 こころ said:

Adding Pelleas to the DB in part 3 would give the party authority stars.

Edit: Crap he has only one. Why?!

Fun fact- Goran, the generic Daein commander of 3-11, has two Authority Stars. Micaiah's no name underling has more authority than her. And somehow, Sigrun has zero stars despite being commander of the prestigious Holy Guard. Also, Nailah has three, the same as Ike and Elincia, despite not actually having her kingdom at all present in RD with the exception of Volug and herself. And in the world of rulers, Naesala has an understandable three (the same as Geoffrey), but Tibarn, who you'd expect would have the same number as Caineghis, only has four to Cain's five. Sanaki only has four as well- but to be fair she is young and has lost her own empire in RD. Oddly, Renning in spite of his absence for so long, still has four stars as well.

All this said, I liked the idea of Authority Stars and to see the concept returned from Thracia 776, even if for the majority of characters they're just flavor text. You know, I think we have the kernel of a better idea here.

[Darros]

I'm here for returning authority stars.

 

I'm kin of conflicted on this, but Part 2 felt too short. It's because it was so well written that I wish there was more of it, but I feel like if they tried to expand it and make it the size of the other chapters they would've ended up butchering the writing, so it's not easy to call it "lost potential".

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I want to see them back too... but they have to make sense.

In FE10 they don't make sense at all.
The DB is disadvantaged since Micky never has any which also downgrades her lord position massively compared to Ike who has three.
Also it's stupid that some trivial bosses like the trans-Laguz or Goran and Zeffren have as much or even more than leading characters like Sigrun, Pelleas or Ludveck.

 

[Chad Radwell]

Radiant Dawn introduces an actual Hot Topic employee and his adorable girlfriend. Said Hot Topic employee is the closest you get to a second Nephenee, and he has, like...two lines? How did he get here? Does he prefer BOTDF to BVB? Do haters make him famous? We need to know these things.

[mangasdeouf]

Quote

Radiant Dawn introduces an actual Hot Topic employee and his adorable girlfriend. Said Hot Topic employee is the closest you get to a second Nephenee, and he has, like...two lines? How did he get here? Does he prefer BOTDF to BVB? Do haters make him famous? We need to know these things.

What do you mean? And yes, RD really cuts through everything to get to the end faster and have more interactions inside a uselessly big army. If there were real support conversations, it would probably be the same dating sim as Awakening or Fates.

[Reality]

Daien's four riders-

 Leaving the Black knight aside

 Petrine and Bryce and Betram are respectively  awful, barely in the story , and raise unnecessary questions.

While the Main villain has some interesting motivations (changing social structure to darwinism/meritocracy) Petrine is basically a GBA-era cackling villian who kills her own subordiantes. The game also semi-forgets her, which is silly considering that She is built up a little bit (Duels Greil, requires rescue from the laguz ,  causes Shiraham incident)

Bryce is the most forgetable, as he is just a sub-boss in the final chapter. He does show up in the story of the chapter before where he freaks out when he realizes that Ashnard is intentionally splitting up the army to prolong Ike's chance/the war. He has some pre-battle conversations, but being POR you are pretty likely to just push him over with just anyone.

Finally Bertram is basically a random chapter boss in Path of Radiance, although possibly hinted at as undead. He is never mentioned after you beat him. Radiant Dawn claims that he is Renning the king's brother (and hence would have been in line to the throne before Elincia even if she was known publicly but doubly so  because she was raised in hiding) His mind control/ undead status in POR is explained as the result of Daien experments, and Bastian takes some time trying to get him cured in Radiant Dawn before he becomes a playable charather. However, perhapss as a testament to Radiant Dawn being a game with too many ideas, he is almost never discussed.

Edited September 9, 2017 by Reality

[Chad Radwell]

8 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

What do you mean? And yes, RD really cuts through everything to get to the end faster and have more interactions inside a uselessly big army. If there were real support conversations, it would probably be the same dating sim as Awakening or Fates.

LOL, I'm just talking about Aran. I like his design, and he's a good unit, so it's a shame we know nothing about him.

[Jingle Jangle]

Vika, she is in four maps before the endgame, for late in act 1 to then end of act 4. There is little about her other than she is suspicious of Micaiah when is near her. Even the wiki has nothing on her personality. It's sad since I'm a fan of her looks.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Well, lemme try summarize the lowish number of information about the new characters we have:

• Edward: A cherish and impetous swordie who reminds a bit on Mia, not only because of his smiling in his banner. He doesn't know exactly what war actually stands for.
• Leonardo: Unlike his biggest bro he knows the meaning of war. He's by far more serious but also dutyful and generous towards Ed by giving him the tempest blade.
• Nolan: Like the daddy and babysitter of the DB. He has war experience and knows 100% how to behave and prepare the newer members to this situation. He's also very intellectual. 
• Laura: A very kind- and heartful girl who likes to help as much as she can. She's very curious towards new things and tries them out at once without making any thoughts how to use them.
• Aran: A very dutyful and also helpful soldier who was forced to fight for Begnion fight. But he knows his true ideals and that his social relationship (Laura) is more important to him than the targets of an army he doesn't even belong to.
• Meg: Brom's daughter and Zihark's upcoming wife. She knows what she wants like not giving Zihark the chance to deny the marriage.
• Fiona: Loyal leader of Madonoro's army. Also very a kindful person who knows 100% what is right and what is wrong (like not supporting Ashnard in his war). 
• Vika: The Roadrunner as a raven. She's very shy but also very kind towards any people when she could establish a trust to them.
• Heather: Tries to help her sick mother as much as she can despite she brakes laws with her activity. She's attracted to women and very harsh towards men.

[Jingle Jangle]

Also I forgot to mention that there is a lack of suspicion in the Begnion senators, on the checked attendance on Zelgius. Due to him working  for Daein/ being the Black Knight. The game could have explained better how he is able to handle these roles without any suspicion to him.

[Chad Radwell]

11 hours ago, Aya Shameimaru said:

Nolan: daddy

Well, yeah.

 

I feel it's not an uncommon sentiment that new characters went to waste not only in the personality department, but also in design? Vika has been brought up a few times, in this thread and elsewhere. Personally, I absolutely love Fiona's colour palette; she's suuuuper pretty and it's a shame she's a garbage unit with nothing interesting to say, because she would totally be The Girlfriend :( 

The Dawn Brigade aren't exactly potatoes either, if the amount of fanart for Leonardo alone is anything to go by. So like, what happened with these new characters? Did they have all these great leftover designs just sitting around for the first game and they just got thrown into RD, or what? Was there a disconnect between the design team and the writers? Was there stuff planned for them that's just never going to see the light of day? I'm sad now.

Edited September 10, 2017 by Chad Radwell

[Etrurian emperor]

19 hours ago, Reality said:

Daien's four riders-

 Leaving the Black knight aside

 Petrine and Bryce and Betram are respectively  awful, barely in the story , and raise unnecessary questions.

While the Main villain has some interesting motivations (changing social structure to darwinism/meritocracy) Petrine is basically a GBA-era cackling villian who kills her own subordiantes. The game also semi-forgets her, which is silly considering that She is built up a little bit (Duels Greil, requires rescue from the laguz ,  causes Shiraham incident)

Bryce is the most forgetable, as he is just a sub-boss in the final chapter. He does show up in the story of the chapter before where he freaks out when he realizes that Ashnard is intentionally splitting up the army to prolong Ike's chance/the war. He has some pre-battle conversations, but being POR you are pretty likely to just push him over with just anyone.

Finally Bertram is basically a random chapter boss in Path of Radiance, although possibly hinted at as undead. He is never mentioned after you beat him. Radiant Dawn claims that he is Renning the king's brother (and hence would have been in line to the throne before Elincia even if she was known publicly but doubly so  because she was raised in hiding) His mind control/ undead status in POR is explained as the result of Daien experments, and Bastian takes some time trying to get him cured in Radiant Dawn before he becomes a playable charather. However, perhapss as a testament to Radiant Dawn being a game with too many ideas, he is almost never discussed.

I agree with you in regards to Bryce and totally not Renning but I think Petrine is pretty well utilized. She's got plenty of screentime, being the first mayor villain the Greil mercenaries face. In that that encounter she's established as a big shot while also making it clear there are people far above her. 

She ''disappears'' for a bit but that's a natural result of the story shifting away from Daien and towards the southern countries. When she returns she's arguably the main villain of her arc, being the commander in chief of the Daien defenses and the final opponent before they return to Crimea. While Petrine does carry some influence from Sonia who in turn was a rebooted Hilda I think her soft spot for Ena helps to nuance her a little bit. 

[fangpoint333]

I'm fine with the Four Riders getting the amount of screentime they get. Having all 4 constantly running into the main characters repeatedly and having them survive would cause even more suspension of disbelief. Daein has a large army. They have other things to do. I'm fine with Elincia and Ike having the amount of the story importance that they do have. Elincia is now too constrained by her status as queen to run around and go fightin round the world. Ike stealing the show makes sense. He's a hero who saved the world and his actions have shaped the current state of most nations. It would be even stupider if he wasn't important. That'd be like having Superman not having a big role in BvS Dawn of Justice. The GMs and their army were always gonna be playable in this game (except Largo) unless it took place in the distant future. Of course, most of those characters would be on the same side as Ike as well as he as their leader/friend/ally whatever. And as a mercenary, he's gonna get swept up into conflict as it's his job. Also there's still that closure that he needed with the BK because even though BK lost at the end, we still knew nothing about him which was obviously supposed to be finished in the next game and Sephiran was doing that foreshadowing that Ike would have more fights ahead of him. The unrealistic thing would be for Ike to not be important and to have most of the playable characters from the previous game not side with Ike and not give the player the satisfaction of letting us have Ike get his win against the BK. Ike being center stage in the sequel was always going to happen. To change that, they'd need to completely rewrite the previous game.

There is missed a lot potential in the Chapter one units though. Most of them didn't have the screentime from PoR necessary for us to get attached to them. Even a few more base conversations and being in scenes before and after each chapter would have done wonders for them. LEA should have joined earlier and all that yeah, but my big qualm is about Micaiah. I know they're trying to keep her true identity a secret until the end of the game, but her gameplay presence seems really underwhelming for being the true apostle. She can heal but staves do that better. She can foresight but that has no presence on actual gameplay. She has light magic yeah but it's not exclusive besides Thani. I feel that the decision to have it revealed that she was the true apostle really limited a lot more stuff they could have done with her character. I'm conflicted though. Part one cast needed more screentime, but they really only had one goal in mind which was liberating Daein, and there's only so much they could have done to drag that out without having it get boring and feel pointless. It would have seemed really underwhelming compared to the higher stakes conflicts in each of the later parts of the game.

[Truffa]

After finished RD and saw the extra scenes and base conversations, I have bitter feeling toward this game, I loved PoR, but RD is a little mess, not at the levels of Fates, that's impossible.

My major problem is that when in PoR the medallion was extremly important and everyone was focused on it, in RD, despiste showing us the dark goddess/loli, the thing don't have screen time until, like, part 3? Also the cange of focus at the last part when is logic 'cause medalion plot device, was kinda weird, the game focus on showing conflicts that don't required so much time, what matter finally was the war against the goddess and such. The story telling was just a mess.

I don't gonna say anything about the support system, we all know how shitty is.

But my other major problem is all the Ashnard son thing; the fact of giving us so much backstory to it, plot relevance and the fake prince with Pelleas was interesting and I really like it, also made Ashnard change from "Cool villain" to "asshole dad" in my book, but made him even more mad than before, that's good, right? But my truly big problem with it, is that the game think that telling us, in a scene with ridiculous requeriments, at the fucking end of the game, that a plot important character, Soren, is truly his son and leave like: "That is all, someone is hungry?" PoR and RD takes canon that you A supported Soren and Ike and knows that Soren is branded, and has a crappy childhood, and in RD we receive a lot of info regards Soren's born circustances and all, but the delivery of the conclussion is just lazy, I feel it lazy, Soren never even knews that! I don't know others, but after a few days of finished the game and thinking back at it... It drive me crazy, wasted potential, Soren is one of my favorite characters, he is plot relevant, but is like a crazy surprise kind of "surprise motherfucker!" is even more anticlimatic than Ranulf saying "Zelgius is the BK btw" is just lazy.

Also Ike stealing Micaiah spotlight, Yune do the same btw, is kind of... Meh, I mean, I really didn't care about DB 'cause the null personification of them, more wasted potential I guess, I get bored with them and I just wanted to go back at Greil's mercenaries. But Micaiah as character and what she does was interesant and I wanted more of it, but alas.

Edited September 26, 2017 by Truffa

[Interdimensional Observer]

28 minutes ago, Truffa said:

Soren never even knews that! I don't know others, but after a few days of finished the game and thinking back at it... It drive me crazy, wasted potential, Soren is one of my favorite characters, he is plot relevant, but is like a crazy surprise kind of "surprise motherfucker!" is even more anticlimatic than Ranulf saying "Zelgius is the BK btw" is just lazy.

I very much like Soren as well, and it'd be nice for him to know he has a refuge in Goldoa if he ever wanted to have a safe place to live his long Branded life. But beyond that, I'm fine with Soren never knowing he learns the truth about his origins. Should he be burdened with the thought that Ashnard is his father? He isn't the kind of person who'd be interested in having a kingdom to rule either. Honestly, some revelations are best left unsaid.

On 9/9/2017 at 6:43 PM, Reality said:

Petrine and Bryce and Betram are respectively  awful, barely in the story , and raise unnecessary questions.

Petrine was done quite well as Etrurian Emperor explained, she is Narcian-like in her bravado yet lack of skill, mixed with Sonia's sex appeal. She appears early and good and reappears later with meaning.

I consider Bertram the worst, since it's hard to imagine a ghastly warrior like him being able to do as much as issue commands. To make Bertram work, perhaps he should have had a "second-in-command", who was the real commander of the battle. Bertram in this scenario is just a savage beast Ashnard has unleashed and which the second controls. Add a bit of background that since Crimea fell, Bertram appeared and began ruthlessly slaughtering the slightest hint of resistance. Thus, Bertram gets a reputation as a mysterious, silent, swift and ruthless reaper of death, like the Riders being alluded to.

Bryce could have used more plot appearances, he is strangely absent in all of Ashnard's "Nevassa"/Melior chats despite being in the area. He and Tauroneo are a decent contrast, but yeah, he was underdone. Besides giving him more conversation, I'm not sure how they could have fixed him.

 

On 9/21/2017 at 1:06 AM, fangpoint333 said:

Part one cast needed more screentime, but they really only had one goal in mind which was liberating Daein, and there's only so much they could have done to drag that out without having it get boring and feel pointless. It would have seemed really underwhelming compared to the higher stakes conflicts in each of the later parts of the game.

Agreed. Despite its length, RD doesn't really drag on at all for me until maybe early Part 4. The plot moves at a brisk pace, and it works well for P1, P2, and P3 until 3-12, when things become rushed and the plot hits its nadir. The Tower overloads the player with revelations, but I think it was tackled well.

 

RD was ambitious, and some plot elements and characters like the DB and Renning were hurt by this, on top of gameplay issues. Yet RD did much right as well, and that too should be acknowledged. Certainly, this game was ambition realized to higher degree than Fates, Awakening, and possibly even Genealogy.

[mangasdeouf]

Nice conclusion from International Observer. I think the topic can now be closed, everyhting seems to have been written already.

[Icelerate]

They should implement some of the gameplay features in RD in a potential remake of PoR. For example, being able to swap skills, authority stars, one effective weapon per type and nerfing indoor cavalry and flier movement off the top of my head. Also, allow BEXP to increase 3 stats per level just like in RD. 

As for RD, there should be some way of revealing items without having to check the internet every single chapter. I think certain characters should auto level if they can't fix their availability issues. Make authority stars actually matter for the majority of the cast who don't ever use them. Also, make it so that you can choose which party you want to support in the second half of part three. Playing twice on the swamp map is boring and I feel that part three drags out too long. By having a route split, it allows you to see your side's PoV more clearly than in RD where the Dawn Brigade got shafted. 

Edited October 1, 2017 by Icelerate