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Fire emblem and "modern" anime trends


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21 minutes ago, Thane said:

A lot of forum discussions, at least theoretical ones such as these, start wide and then the focus gets more and more narrow. If you disagree with something in particular, then you should speak your mind so that the people who're generalizing can explain themselves further.

I specifically didn't do that because either they don't need to explain because I totally get where they're coming from, or just because I don't want to hear it.

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24 minutes ago, Thane said:

Easily fixed gameplay changes, while appreciated, aren't as difficult to address as writing conventions. While it's impossible to know if it were just because of different developers or what, but if I were being optimistic, I'd say Echoes is more proof of them trying to move away from Fates' more questionable choices. While I thought Echoes was pretty poorly written, I didn't feel dirty playing it.

According to Reggie, at least Nintendo of America reads "all the boards", so I wonder if they know about the overall reception to Fates' writing. Hell even Jwittz, a guy they've worked with multiple times, personally, called it "a narrative disaster".

Of course. It all depends on the person. A lot of people with heavy investment in Fire Emblem don't care about story at all. It's all up to individual preferences.

A lot of forum discussions, at least theoretical ones such as these, start wide and then the focus gets more and more narrow. If you disagree with something in particular, then you should speak your mind so that the people who're generalizing can explain themselves further.

The major concern here is that while Fates is almost universally recognized as a narrative disaster, it is also a huge financial success.

If it wasn't for Nintendo's predicted low financial projections about Echoes I would agree with you that the series is trending back towards the style and presentation of Echoes, however, the company specifically kept estimates low compared to a new series entry. There could be a number of reasons for this, but I think the most obvious one is that they knew and did enough market research to recognize that many of the new fans they got off the previous 3ds titles wouldn't buy into something that wasn't a dating sim. That makes me question whether new content will ever be able to escape the dating sim elements of the initial 3ds entries and all the current troupes that seem to go with it that users like Modamy highlighted.

Hopefully, the next entry we get isn't a mirror held up to what is wrong with the anime industry, but instead 'pulls from the right places,' like Slumber said. 

 

Edited by NPR
meh, typo. probably still more but w/e
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48 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Do people with low investment in the series as a whole (read: people who've still only played the 3DS games and haven't even considered the older ones) even pay attention to the story?

Well, probably not. In general, i feel that most fans play this series for it's gameplay rather than it's story, though it's story is closely behind, evidenced by all of Fates' writing criticisms and the discussions on the FE16 section calling for a better story.

Of course, it could just be because Fates' story is that bad.

23 minutes ago, Thane said:

Easily fixed gameplay changes, while appreciated, aren't as difficult to address as writing conventions. While it's impossible to know if it were just because of different developers or what, but if I were being optimistic, I'd say Echoes is more proof of them trying to move away from Fates' more questionable choices. While I thought Echoes was pretty poorly written, I didn't feel dirty playing it.

I remember reading somewhere that, back when Fates was in development, they wanted to address the writing criticisms of Awakening which is why they hired that manga writer......then IS basically rewrote the entire script and scientists still can't figure out why.

But when i look at Echoes and even Heroes honestly, i feel like IS has gone back (or is trying) to reasonably competent writing.

4 minutes ago, NPR said:

.If it wasn't for Nintendo's predicted low financial projections about Echoes I would agree with you that the series is trending back towards the style and presentation of Echoes, however, the company specifically kept estimates low compared to a new series entry. There could be a number of reasons for this, but I think the most obvious is one is that they knew and did enough market research to recognize that many of the new fans they got off the previous 3ds titles wouldn't buy into something that wasn't a dating sim. That makes me question whether new content will ever be able to escape the dating sim elements of the initial 3ds entries and all the current troupes that seem to go with it that users like Modamy highlighted.

Well, keep in mind that Echoes was also a remake of the series' black sheep with a smaller budget and also didn't have as much marketing as Fates.

 

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9 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Well, keep in mind that Echoes was also a remake of the series' black sheep with a smaller budget and also didn't have as much marketing as Fates.

 

you also have to keep in mind that the switch came out two months prior and pretty much all of nintendo's attention was squarely focused on their new console.

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6 minutes ago, NPR said:

The major concern here is that while Fates is almost universally recognized as a narrative disaster, it is also a huge financial success.

True, but like you say, they're most likely doing market research. If they deliberately continue in a direction that the core fanbase dislikes, then I personally believe it'll affect the series' sales negatively in the long run. Granted, I know it's hard to know what the "core fanbase" wants since there are as many opinions as there are people, but there seems to be a general consensus on a lot of things.

I'd also argue that the "dating simulator" stuff isn't a major problem in and of itself since it's been a part of the series since Genealogy, effectively. I know the current format is very different, but pairing up characters doesn't strike me as something inherently negative; it's all about the execution. Having everyone be able to support everyone is odd. Forced babyrealms and pandering to a niche audience with psuedo incest at the cost of the game's themes and integrity are problems stretching far beyond shipping.

6 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I remember reading somewhere that, back when Fates was in development, they wanted to address the writing criticisms of Awakening which is why they hired that manga writer......then IS basically rewrote the entire script and scientists still can't figure out why.

That's not how I remember it at all. Do you have a source on this?

The way I remember it is that Intelligent Systems asked Kibayashi to write a 10 page draft. He showed up with 500 pages, and then got to working on at least 500 pages more. I'm not familiar with his work, but I know he's not considered to be some kind of Shakespeare, and he was already fairly busy I believe, so he must've pushed himself hard to get all that out. 

From what we've been able to gather, it seems like what happened behind the scenes of Fates was a perfect storm, and a lot of it was because of Intelligent Systems, but it's silly to blame them for what they may or may not have done with the draft when we have zero clue as to its quality.

9 minutes ago, Armagon said:

But when i look at Echoes and even Heroes honestly, i feel like IS has gone back (or is trying) to reasonably competent writing.

They're not doing a very good job, then, and I believe Heroes has gotten worse in its main story. Lines are more forced than ever (Anna having to comment on Fjorm sounding colder when talking about Surtr as a hamfisted way of showing us that she's actually got a personality, Ygir spelling it out that Helbindi isn't a bad bloke deep down, etc.), they're drowning us in OC's even though the established ones barely have a shred of development, and way too many things are just poorly considered, like Veronica's role in the second book, and especially the Heroes. Leif has no qualms about burning down kingdoms even though he mentions in one of his lines in the very game itself that the same thing happened to him.

It's a gacha game and the story isn't a focus, I know, but while some main series characters' characterization has been good, arguing that Heroes is trying to come across as competently written strikes me as odd.

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22 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Well, keep in mind that Echoes was also a remake of the series' black sheep with a smaller budget and also didn't have as much marketing as Fates.

 

I concede that point. From there, the question of why leads to quite a few other questions though. I don't have the link on me, but if I recall correctly, 'Echoes,' is just supposed to be the moniker for Fire Emblem remakes in the future and that Shadows of Valentia was their test run.

Now, this is all just wild speculation on my part, but from a developer interview I read a while back they seemed to interested in The Binding Blade... the one with all the children characters from Blazing Blade. That makes me both optimistic and uncomfortable at the same time. It makes me uncomfortable because they may be experimenting with blending the presentation and tone of Shadows of Valentia with the Awakening-esque marriage system. Ironically, that also makes me feel optimistic, because if they pull that off without making everything cringe worthy they might find the sweet spot for old and new fans to enjoy the series.

So, bouncing off of that, I don't believe all modern anime troupes are the problem, in fact, they can probably be married (pun intended) to the pre-awakening feel of the games. It is just a few very specific anime troupes that warp the presentation and narrative of the whole game by their inclusion that need to go. To get specific here, the whole Isekai-like atmosphere that was mentioned previously should probably go, forced boob and panty shots need to go, and the current way that the Avatar character is presented needs some re-examining.

Edited by NPR
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you know what I've noticed though in regards to anime tropes in these games. Character wise these games, for the most part,  do a really good jobs at handling these tropes. I mean as far as male tsunderes go takumi is the only male tsundere I've seen to follow a more type B(the character is constantly flip flopping between tsun and dere think characters like severa or asuna from SAO) personality than the more traditional/classical type A(more traditional starts tsun and develops to show a more dere side think rin tohsaka from the fate series) personality you see in most male tsunderes. The thing about takumi though is that the archetype is done really well. it's kind of surprising honestly. Other well done anime character tropes include beruka the kuudere, Cynthia who is more or less a kind of deredere basically the cute try hard moe girl, Owain the chuunibiyo, as mentioned earlier Severa is a pretty good tsundere, etc. These characters borrow a lot from a particular anime archetype but they're written competently with good execution. at least in my opinion.

Edited by Otts486
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2 minutes ago, Otts486 said:

you know what I've noticed though in regards to anime tropes in these games. Character wise these games, for the most part,  do a really good jobs at handling these tropes. I mean as far as male tsunderes go takumi is the only male tsundere I've seen to follow a more type B(the character is constantly flip flopping between tsun and dere think characters like severa or asuna from SAO) personality than the more traditional/classical type A(more traditional starts tsun and develops to show a more dere side think rin tohsaka from the fate series) personality you see in most male tsunderes. The thing about takumi though is that the archetype is done really well. it's kind of surprising honestly. Other well done anime character tropes include beruka the kuudere, Cynthia who is more or less a kind of deredere basically the cute try hard moe girl, Owain the chuunibiyo, as mentioned earlier Severa is a pretty good tsundere, etc. These characters borrow a lot from a particular anime archetype but they're written competently with good execution. at least in my opinion.

I think it is because of the strong potential that all the characters have that there is so much fan-fiction about Fates. The characters seem to exist in this, like, primordial state of half-creation. It is like the Overwatch fandom, where there is just enough info on the characters to make them feel real and project something onto them, but within the text itself there isn't much there. To me, the sad thing about this is that it creates a situation where some of the fan-fiction feels like it is written better than the actual plot and story of the main games.

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I do like to echo what some other people have said. FE has always been an anime inspired game, no doubt about that but Fates is pushing certain things way too far.

2 hours ago, Armagon said:

Oh boy, i remember watching Grimgar and being absolutely bored out of my mind. Not the worse Isekai i've seen (that goes to Isekai Smartphone) but i just could not give a damn about any of the characters and that's the fastest way to make me lose interest in anything.

That said, i'll be going back to it one day on my quest to watch most of the Isekai anime out there, since i've recently been getting ironic enjoyment out of them because of how bad they can get. The exception to that is Konosuba, as it's the only actually good Isekai anime i've seen so far and as of the second season, it's a 10/10 in my book. Who knows, maybe my opinion on Grimgar will change.

Smarthphone was a great ironic watch. I just couldn't help but laugh with how many things Toyota pulled out of his ass. At least your typical LN writer tries to set up some limits (even if they don't mean that much by the end) this guy though, whew.

3 hours ago, Thane said:

Being here in Japan and seeing the insane number of merchandise every famous and not so famous anime series sells, it's not hard to see where all the recent inspiration is coming from. What I don't understand is how Japan can compete for the same demographic to this extent, doing the same thing and appealing to the same crowds. Making anime and games are expensive as hell, so I can understand safe bets - which is where we see a lot of the poor quality anime come in looking to make a quick buck, I'd wager - but considering the aging population and the ever-increasing importance of the Western fanbase, the fact that Intelligent Systems seem to be chasing trends like this has me concerned and confused.

That's something I never understood. LN anime in general is very poorly sold. They almost never break the 8.000 "great sales barrier". Is the LN sales boost/merchandise so good that they make anime just to increase the sales for the LN/merchandise?

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41 minutes ago, Thane said:

That's not how I remember it at all. Do you have a source on this?

The way I remember it is that Intelligent Systems asked Kibayashi to write a 10 page draft. He showed up with 500 pages, and then got to working on at least 500 pages more. I'm not familiar with his work, but I know he's not considered to be some kind of Shakespeare, and he was already fairly busy I believe, so he must've pushed himself hard to get all that out. 

You're right about the 10 page draft and Kibayashi writing 500 instead but i did find the source that stated that Awakening's story criticisms were why he was brought in

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Fire-Emblem-Fates/Fire-Emblem-Fates/2-A-God-Has-Descended-Upon-Me-/2-A-God-Has-Descended-Upon-Me--1032068.html

Quote

Iwata: So, while the previous game, Awakening, got good reviews from many places, some people weren't satisfied with the storyline

Higuchi: That's right, The gameplay and the graphics were highly received, but some people said they wished we had gone a step further with the storyline.

Madea: With Awakening, by changing the tone of the storyline, we were able to get positive reviews from the new players of the series. But on the other hand, the story felt lacking to those fans who were with us from previous games and wanted a deeper and more complex story.

Higuchi: We took all those opinons to heart, and started to prepare to make the next storyline one that everyone could be satisfied with. But then we ended up deciding to make three at once.

Iwata: You didn't stope with simply raising the quality of the storylines. You ended up having to write three storylines. That's a lot of work.

Higuchi: That's right. It's hard enough to make three games, but it would be impossible to do three storylines in-office. So we started thinking about whether there was someone we could outsource the story to. We looked in the game industry but we couldn't find someone we wanted. So we started to wonder if we could find someone outside of the game industry, who had done good work writing storylines in other industries, like publishing or movies. And all of a sudden, Maeda-san said, "What about Shin Kibayashi-san?"

 

50 minutes ago, Thane said:

They're not doing a very good job, then, and I believe Heroes has gotten worse in its main story. Lines are more forced than ever (Anna having to comment on Fjorm sounding colder when talking about Surtr as a hamfisted way of showing us that she's actually got a personality, Ygir spelling it out that Helbindi isn't a bad bloke deep down, etc.), they're drowning us in OC's even though the established ones barely have a shred of development, and way too many things are just poorly considered, like Veronica's role in the second book, and especially the Heroes. Leif has no qualms about burning down kingdoms even though he mentions in one of his lines in the very game itself that the same thing happened to him.

Well yeah, Echoes has it's flaws and Heroes is barebones in it's writing but i do personally see it better than what they wrote in Fates. That's why i feel that Intelligent System's writing is improving, even if just a little.

 

9 minutes ago, Hekselka said:

Smarthphone was a great ironic watch. I just couldn't help but laugh with how many things Toyota pulled out of his ass.

Oh, it absolutely was. It's one of the worst anime i've ever seen but i had a ton of enjoyment tearing every episode. Smartphone's also the reason why i'm going around and watching more bad Isekai anime because tearing them apart is now one of my favorite things to do.

See, i like the concept of the Isekai genre, the issue is that most of the stories in the genre just copy-paste each other, and it doesn't help that most Isekai protags look exactly like Kirito.

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30 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Well yeah, Echoes has it's flaws and Heroes is barebones in it's writing but i do personally see it better than what they wrote in Fates. That's why i feel that Intelligent System's writing is improving, even if just a little.

I feel like this is part of the problem though, the very existence of Fire Emblem Fates has created an anchoring principle where people see a new story that is just 'ok' and eat it up because, 'at least it isn't Fates.' That also seems to give an out to Nintendo for pushing something mediocre because the reviews for the next game will almost surely be able to say that the writing is better than Fates and use that as a selling point.

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2 hours ago, Otts486 said:

I mean yeah charlotte but at least she's given and understandable reason for dressing the way she does

If it was only Charlotte it wouldn't be that bad. Camilla is just as bad or worse even. The random Ass/thong shots every General/Cavalier/Fighter has makes me want to throw my 2ds out. Dark Mages for some reason are half naked... 

Why a dancer is more decently clothed then a Princess i will never understand.

I mean, i love CQ, it's my 2nd fav. game in the series due to awesome (&imo best in the Series) Gameplay, but i can't help but be annoyed everytime a thong shot from fighter and or Effie flashing me happens. It also feels like even the Creator of those Characters didn't respect their own Creations.

Tbh, i don't mind the Maids/butlers, Elise is imo the single best Fates Character and one of the few well written ones, and Mozu is just a villager. Something like those 3 is always in FE anyway, i don't mind em. It's when random fanservice happens i get annoyed.

 

Marriage & Kids: I love it from Gameplay standpoint (customization & replayability ahoy!) but please, no more Microwave chambers or Marriages that make 0 Sense.

 

 

Edited by Shrimperor
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33 minutes ago, NPR said:

I feel like this is part of the problem though, the very existence of Fire Emblem Fates has created an anchoring principle where people see a new story that is just 'ok' and eat it up because, 'at least it isn't Fates.' That also seems to give an out to Nintendo for pushing something mediocre because the reviews for the next game will almost surely be able to say that the writing is better than Fates and use that as a selling point.

Honestly, i feel that this is a pessimistic way of looking at it. I'd rather be an optimist and see it as Intelligent Systems improving it's writing, even if it's just a little bit, as opposed to the pessimistic viewpoint that we only think it's good because it isn't Fates.

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2 hours ago, Thane said:

I'd also argue that the "dating simulator" stuff isn't a major problem in and of itself since it's been a part of the series since Genealogy, effectively. I know the current format is very different, but pairing up characters doesn't strike me as something inherently negative; it's all about the execution. Having everyone be able to support everyone is odd. Forced babyrealms and pandering to a niche audience with psuedo incest at the cost of the game's themes and integrity are problems stretching far beyond shipping.

To be fair, the children mechanism had a justification in Genealogy and Awakening, and the former didn't have the self-insert aspect, either. Heck, Sigurd is the closest that FE4 has as a player stand-in and he's not even part of the whole matchmaker business. But I agree with you, support conversations as ingame shipping has been a staple of the series since FE6 and aren't necessarily a bad thing.

If I were asked about what I dislike about the newest FE games before reading this thread, my answer would have been "checkbox mentality". My impression of Fates is that the designers didn't have a holistic approach and tried to work through a list titled

"THINGS THAT PEOPLE LIKE" -
☑ marriage and children mechanic just like in Awakening
☑ loli that is totally an adult (note that I actually enjoy Elise's character, especially her BR incarnation, but she should not have been breedable)
☑ incest (and in particular mommy) fetish
☑ cool, pragmatic mage knight guy
☑ jiggle jiggle
☑ classic jeigan
☑ people liked Henry right? And I know that people like boobs. Now how to combine those...
☑ ninjas
☑ PIRATE NINJAS
☑ mystical waifu
☑ betrayal
☐ competent main character

I might remember things incorrectly, but many things in Fates feel tacked on with the goal of pandering to some specific taste. We have a wind and an ice tribe? That's great, but they're basically all just locations-of-the-week. Corrin arrives in their vicinity, they have to fight them for some reason, then all misunderstandings are resolved and they tell Corrin that they're the hope of the Omniverse, then the plot is done with them and they're never relevant again. On to the next location-of-the-week! I'm not much of an Anime dude though, so I don't know to what extend this is a new development in the genre.

Edited by ping
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39 minutes ago, ping said:

☑ loli that is totally an adult

I wonder, is that infamous ''technically an adult'' line also part of the original version? Because I wouldn't find it unlikely that Japanese fans found Elise's young age acceptable and that her being mentioned as ''technically an adult'' was a hasty and clumsy correction of the translators to avoid creeping players out. 

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1 hour ago, ping said:

"THINGS THAT PEOPLE LIKE" -
☑ cool, pragmatic mage knight guy
☑ classic jeigan
☑ people liked Henry right? And I know that people like boobs. Now how to combine those...

I don't recall there being a "cool, pragmatic mage knight guy" thing that people liked prior to Fates.  And I don't ever recall people particularly liking pure Jagens, certainly not in comparison to Oifeys like Titania and Frederick.

The last one confuses me a bit because Peri isn't particularly busty (is she?).  Unless you're simply referring to genderbending.

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FE always had anime elements. It's just that it was less anime before Fates. I wonder how it would be handed in FE16.

I don't like it when it ruins the immersion or even when it goes against the game's main themes (like how marriage with the Fates' siblings undermines the whole family theme).

1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I wonder, is that infamous ''technically an adult'' line also part of the original version? Because I wouldn't find it unlikely that Japanese fans found Elise's young age acceptable and that her being mentioned as ''technically an adult'' was a hasty and clumsy correction of the translators to avoid creeping players out. 

No it's not in the original version. From what I have seen in the translations, Leo just calls her a brat and she is implied to be around 10 years old.

Azura says in the CQ chapter 9 in the japanese version that she left Nohr around 10 years ago and Elise was born after Azura left Nohr. In the localization she is more vague about it.

53 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

I don't recall there being a "cool, pragmatic mage knight guy" thing that people liked prior to Fates.  And I don't ever recall people particularly liking pure Jagens, certainly not in comparison to Oifeys like Titania and Frederick.

The last one confuses me a bit because Peri isn't particularly busty (is she?).  Unless you're simply referring to genderbending.

I also don't recall a pragmatic mage knight either outside of Leo.
For the Jeigans it depends. I have already seen people who don't like how good and broken the Oifayes can be like how Seth is FE8's best unit though I am not sure how popular that opinion is.
Peri says that she has big chest in her JP support with Arthur. It's also part of her skinship dialogues and she also shares Camilla/Charlotte/Orochi and Kagero's model.

Edited by Thunderstar
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1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I wonder, is that infamous ''technically an adult'' line also part of the original version? Because I wouldn't find it unlikely that Japanese fans found Elise's young age acceptable and that her being mentioned as ''technically an adult'' was a hasty and clumsy correction of the translators to avoid creeping players out. 

It isn't part of the original script.

Edited by Emperor Hardin
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6 hours ago, Thane said:


The way I remember it is that Intelligent Systems asked Kibayashi to write a 10 page draft. He showed up with 500 pages, and then got to working on at least 500 pages more. I'm not familiar with his work, but I know he's not considered to be some kind of Shakespeare, and he was already fairly busy I believe, so he must've pushed himself hard to get all that out. 
 

He tends to write stuff for the mystery genre, generally of the detective kind. There's some other stuff, but nothing that indicates he has any experience writing for stuff like FE.

Here's his wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Kibayashi

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On 5/10/2018 at 10:50 AM, Cute Chao said:

I don't mind a lot of it, though I wish the Camilla cutscene wasn't there and that thong armour and random female armour gaps didn't exist. Otherwise, the fanservice has always been in FE, and you get lots of people arguing X character is a Mary Sue because X reasons, anyway.

I only really consider Alm a Mary Sue tbh, his only real fuck up is Celica's....... you know what and possibly not saving Berkut.

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7 minutes ago, FootwaySublong said:

I only really consider Alm a Mary Sue tbh, his only real fuck up is Celica's....... you know what and possibly not saving Berkut.

What about Ephraim? He doesn't really mess up, either, when he really should. 

I don't really consider either of them Mary Sues, but then I tend to be pretty lenient when it comes to that. Celica annoyed me far worse as a character than Alm in that game, and neither are anywhere near close to being my favourite FE characters. 

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1 hour ago, Cute Chao said:

What about Ephraim? He doesn't really mess up, either, when he really should. 

I don't really consider either of them Mary Sues, but then I tend to be pretty lenient when it comes to that. Celica annoyed me far worse as a character than Alm in that game, and neither are anywhere near close to being my favourite FE characters. 

I'd definitely consider Ephraim a Mary Sue. 

At least Alm has somebody in his army question his leadership and leave. And as bad as it makes Celica out to be, she makes it very clear that she doesn't like the things Alm is doing. And Ike, the other lord who gets called a Mary Sue, has an entire COUNTRY that hates his guts. There are at least people that exist in these cases that question the main character, and there are consequences to their actions. 

Ephraim shows up and immediately exists to do cool things and for people to tell him how great he is. The only things that ever go wrong for him have nothing to do with his character and are completely divorced from his own actions. 

As much shit as Corrin gets for being a Mary Sue, I'd argue until I was blue in the face that Ephraim's an even bigger Mary Sue. 

Edited by Slumber
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14 minutes ago, Slumber said:

I'd definitely consider Ephraim a Mary Sue. 

At least Alm has somebody in his army question his leadership and leave. And as bad as it makes Celica out to be, she makes it very clear that she doesn't like the things Alm is doing. And Ike, the other lord who gets called a Mary Sue, has an entire COUNTRY that hates his guts. There are at least people that exist in these cases that question the main character, and their are consequences to their actions. 

Ephraim shows up and immediately exists to do cool things and for people to tell him how great he is. The only things that ever go wrong for him have nothing to do with his character and are completely divorced from his own actions. 

As much shit as Corrin gets for being a Mary Sue, I'd argue until I was blue in the face that Ephraim's an even bigger Mary Sue. 

And this is what I mean when I say most of the elements are already there. People will argue characters are Mary Sues from the previous games - Ike, Ephraim and Alm being the main ones - while ridiculously short miniskirts were always a thing (Eirika, Amelia, Nephenee... probably countless others). 

I don't think ridiculous armour gaps were, after discounting the miniskirts, though. And there were definitely no cutscenes that thrust a woman's boobs and butt into my face, which I did not appreciate at all. I don't mind the confession scenes, etc, personally, but I wouldn't miss them if they were gone. The hot springs can easily be skipped, so it doesn't matter to me if they're there or not (and I did like some scenes), while I ended up liking the treehouse scenes just because... eh, pretty men won me over xD 

So yup, for me, get rid of the random armour gaps and I'd be happy enough. At the moment, they're the most distracting and annoying thing for me, especially when Heroes let it bleed to the older games by giving Gwendy freaking hot pants. 

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54 minutes ago, Slumber said:

I'd definitely consider Ephraim a Mary Sue. 

At least Alm has somebody in his army question his leadership and leave. And as bad as it makes Celica out to be, she makes it very clear that she doesn't like the things Alm is doing. And Ike, the other lord who gets called a Mary Sue, has an entire COUNTRY that hates his guts. There are at least people that exist in these cases that question the main character, and there are consequences to their actions. 

Ephraim shows up and immediately exists to do cool things and for people to tell him how great he is. The only things that ever go wrong for him have nothing to do with his character and are completely divorced from his own actions. 

As much shit as Corrin gets for being a Mary Sue, I'd argue until I was blue in the face that Ephraim's an even bigger Mary Sue. 

I myself don't really like Ephraim all that much, in fact, i'd say he's one of the least interesting Lords in the franchise, but i'd disagree that he's a Mary Sue. He does have a flaw and a character arc, that of someone who is obssessed with being a strong fighter but realizes he needs to be a stronger person instead. The bigger problem is simply the fact that said arc is very badly-handled (In my opinion at least) and the fact that Fire Emblem is a franchise where almost all conflict is handled with physical combat in the story, so the character flaw of being a good fighter and commander, but not a good leader or friend is something that the writers very clearly didn't knew how to translate into the game proper. Ephraim being the source of Lyon's jealousy and subsequently failing to realize that sooner, and him leaving Renais to fight at the border while the country is in chaos are the attempts at showcase these flaws, but the former feels more like a showcase of Lyon's flaws more than anything else, while the latter is something that feels so ordinary from a meta perspective that it's hard to care.

Holy crap, i just realized that i just described Corrin (Character that has flaws and a character arc in an isolated vacuum, but whose actual role in the story does little to actually aknowledge these flaws or handle the arc in a meaningful way), yeah, nevermind, Ephraim is a Mary Sue alright.

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23 minutes ago, OakTree said:

Holy crap, i just realized that i just described Corrin (Character that has flaws and a character arc in an isolated vacuum, but whose actual role in the story does little to actually aknowledge these flaws or handle the arc in a meaningful way), yeah, nevermind, Ephraim is a Mary Sue alright.

I don't know, at least Ephraim and Lyon seem to own up to their mistakes because of the consequences and their interactions and try to make the best out of the situation. Lyon takes on the role of demon king to give Ephraim and Eirika the motivation to kill him and save the continent and Ephraim puts down his spear and acts as a king and gives relief to Grado after they suffer the earthquake that Lyon foresaw. I wouldn't go as far as saying their very good or well fleshed out characters, but it feels like some happened and lesson were learned. Corrin is treated like such a special little lamb that when something goes wrong one of his siblings or retainers bends over backwards to assure him none of it is his fault and he doesn't have to change or grow at all and he just accepts that and never even makes the attempt to be better. In Revelations he treats his flaws as some kind of strength even when nothing good comes from it.

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