Jump to content

What would YOUR Fire Emblem plot be?


Recommended Posts

I plan on being a game dev in the future and making my own Fire Emblem-esque SRPG one day, but so far it's a mess of scattered and disconnected ideas that don't really fit together. Thinking about this got me curious what other people would hypothetically come up with if you got to write the plot of a future Fire Emblem game yourselves. It goes without saying that certain games (we all know which ones) have divisive plots so I should clarify that I don't mean an improvement of a story that already exists (so no "x but good/better" type answers), but an original plot that can take inspiration from the mainline series without directly copying their homework.

So, what would YOUR Fire Emblem be about?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 64
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

My Fire Emblem plot would be a two part epic.

 

The first would feature the creation of the world by a lonely, naive god. He forms a strong bond of friendship with one of his creations, but as the chaos inherent to humanity presents himself, he decides to wipe the slate clean and start all over again. His friend, strongly attached to this world and intent upon improving it, undergoes a story as the game's main lord and ultimately betrays his creator, splintering him into the creator (chaos), the judge (order), and the reshaper (harmony).

 

The second would feature a divine conflict of epic proportions, with the judge returning from imprisonment to wipe the slate, and place of all humanity in one giant hivemind under him. The creator is broken, and the reshaper is left to discover himself, forge strong bonds with a band of mortals, and defeat the judge.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well... I'm already making my own Fire Emblem clone in SRPG Studio, but I guess I'll share its basic plot here anyway.

The kingdom of Rema on the continent of Sanctaea is suffering a mysterious famine.  Cato, its king, is launching a campaign of continental conquest in an attempt to procure more food for his people as their existing supplies begin to run out.  He enlists his half-brother, Claudius, to help him, but Claudius defects upon witnessing Reman atrocities against another kingdom's inhabitants.  Meanwhile, Carol, the last living member of Rema's original royal bloodline and thus its rightful ruler, has her village in the kingdom of Ferenca attacked by a greedy duke who has usurped the Ferencan throne.  In trying to stop him with the help of a resistance force, she ends up swept into conflict with Rema.

The game more or less follows Claudius and Carol as they and their friends band together to stop Cato from conquering the whole continent and figure out how to stop the famine.

If you want to see my progress on the game so far, check out the Sanctaea Chronicles thread in my signature.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Napoleonic wars with a German type unification and an Italian one too for 2 different countries. Also the big bad is a 6'6'' giant general seeking to return his country to it's glory as it was before a war 47 years before. This war happens around the industrial revolution so the game's conflict is a dawn of it.

Change names, geography, time and myths and voila new game.

What I will not include:

Avatar, avatars dont fit in my history
A black and white story
Mary SUESSSSSSSS
Being able to pair the sweetest girl in existance with a psychopath. Incompatible man sorry weeaboos.

Edited by This boi uses Nino
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As I once mentioned in another thread, I'd make a plot inspired by the Latin American independence wars. Putting it here again:

Quote

So basically, game would take place in a Far-offDuchy/FrontierProvince/Protectorate/Colony/etc, whose parent country gets taken over by another, its ruler deposed, and a puppet one is placed instead. The region is split on what to do, either accept the new overlords, continue supporting the motherland (bonus points if the ruler and/or heir(s) managed to escape into the area), or use the chance to break off and declare independence. Game could be like Fates with a "Choose your Path" approach, or just stick to a single path (in which case it'd be the Independence route, but with the added twist that you are not, in fact, playing as the Independists until at least the last-third of the game; the player party would be in the Loyalist camp before defecting. My inspiration is Agustin de Iturbide here.).

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I gotta get a cheeky GIF to post whenever Von has a chance to plug Sanctaea Chronicles.

1 hour ago, TheDreamReturns said:

so no "x but good/better" type answers), but an original plot that can take inspiration from the mainline series without directly copying their homework.

>Checks notes
>One idea is literally "Fates but Well Written"
Well then.

Looking at the like, forty half-baked ideas I have scattered around a WriteURL document because I lack the focus to make Sanctaea Chronicles, I guess the one I like most is, uh...well, I don't do too well with picking favorites, but a common theme in a lot of them seems to be really committing to the idea of picking one of two equally valid / equally questionable sides and sticking with that. Might be what Three Houses is kind of doing, we'll see.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My two biggest ideas are "Basically the Vampire Emblem leak that we had before Three Houses was revealed" and a newer idea involving humanoid dragons playing chessmaster over the continent they used to rule but were banished from, one on the side of the humans, the other against them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

humans vs demon/monster people only the actual war happened in the past, the demon kingdom lost, human racism against demons is common place, your a captured prince(ss) from the demons, a dark dragon god spirit tm has offered you great power in exchange for service and your help in resurrecting the dark dragon, and after busting you out with magics its up to you on what to do. will you resurrect the dark dragon to take revenge on the humans, will you raise an army to take back your kingdom, branching narrative yada yada yada.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

my Fire Emblem would be about making the player understand the different points of view and ideals of the main characters, and making him/her question about what really defines the story's protagonist as the "hero" and what defines the character clashing with him the "villain", despite both of them being humans, thus impossible to be described with just a single word

it would also show the player that gods are not much different from regular people, with their flaws, weaknesses, fears and so on

Edited by Yexin
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would make a succession crisis based on the debate of the Imperial Family in Japan in the present day, as well as elements from Elizabethan Britain and Austria during Maria Teresa's days. The royal family has a crisis - while the family itself has a young princess (the protagonist), and an only child, currently the only possible heir to the monarch. However the extended relatives and their supporters are not too happy about that, and points out any of the male descendants from the other branches would rule the kingdom just fine.

Furthermore, the neighboring kingdoms, who fought against the protagonists' homeland previously, were looking for any excuse to sack the latter, having fought in a bitter war that nearly led to a societal breakdown. And just if you think they were the agressors, it's actually the protagonist's grandfather that started the whole mess  - so it's not as simple as a typical FE game either. And the effects are still seen in the present - many people from those countries live impoverished, and their governments have only recently started keeping law and order in control. The protagonist's parents, ashamed at their own parent's past, are doing their best to renew the royal family and break away from the warmongering past, but it's not so easy when the old aristocrats, wealthy merchants, and anyone else who supported the grandfather are bitter about being ushered into a new era.

The whole situation could come to a boiling point where some of the opposing vassals/local lords would plot an assasination against the protagonist's family. The protagonist is safe, but her parents were not as lucky. And with it, a civil war ensues - a struggle between the old values and the new, a struggle for the protagonist's rightful place as ruler, and a struggle for her voice to be heard in a world where kings and emperors ruled in the past.

The final bosses would be a family from one of the branches and their supporters, and different endings will play out depending on how many of the supporters you managed to convince to switch sides/surrender. The more people surrendering, the better the Protagonist's/Princess's/future Queen's political outcome. The least favorable case would be if the protagonist's army killed most of the enemy units throughout the final chapters, in which the protagonist who is now the new Queen gets assassinated several years later in a coup d'etat. The most favourable case is when the protagonist's army convinced at least 60% of the people to lay down their arms and even convinced some of the final antagonists's cousins to reconcile, in which the Queen would realise a new Golden Age during her reign, and would lead to another of her female descendant take the crown. Much of the supernatural would be downplayed, with dragons only being used for warfare like Pokemon, and the final bosses are all normal humans.

Edited by henrymidfields
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have had this thought for this story a while. It begins with the protagonist dying. The secondary protagonist is someone who was very inspired by this person who was a famous hero and wants to know what his life was like so he starts looking for people who have known him. Each person has a very different opinion of him and some even tell different things about the same event.  

The chapters are basically the events that are told to the secondary protagonist but because they're told by different persons the tone isn't consistent. Some chapters are very heroic while others are more grim because that's the way it's told.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, TheDreamReturns said:

I plan on being a game dev in the future and making my own Fire Emblem-esque SRPG one day, but so far it's a mess of scattered and disconnected ideas that don't really fit together. Thinking about this got me curious what other people would hypothetically come up with if you got to write the plot of a future Fire Emblem game yourselves. It goes without saying that certain games (we all know which ones) have divisive plots so I should clarify that I don't mean an improvement of a story that already exists (so no "x but good/better" type answers), but an original plot that can take inspiration from the mainline series without directly copying their homework.

So, what would YOUR Fire Emblem be about?

in terms of story, probably something about war. a plot based either on the medieval-fantasy genre( examples: Final Fantasy Tactics, The Legend of Dragoon ), or other concepts from sci-fi/mechs( Zone of the Enders ).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am baking ideas since a similar thread a few months ago.

Basically it was based on the hypothical scenario of a war between the Roman Empire and the chinese Han dynasty, mostly set in a buffer state similar to Persia or pre-islamic arab civilizzitation, with a nation based on mongols and one of the arthurian england to round up the factions. 

It would work similarly to 3H, with the avatar meeting up the lords of the faction in part one and join one of them in part two. Also i noticed that most of the character i made are based on a combination of hystorical figures and FE archetype(The roman emperor is based on Adrian+Marth while the Mongol one is Lyn+Khutulun for a couple of example).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, LJwalhout said:

I have had this thought for this story a while. It begins with the protagonist dying. The secondary protagonist is someone who was very inspired by this person who was a famous hero and wants to know what his life was like so he starts looking for people who have known him. Each person has a very different opinion of him and some even tell different things about the same event.  

The chapters are basically the events that are told to the secondary protagonist but because they're told by different persons the tone isn't consistent. Some chapters are very heroic while others are more grim because that's the way it's told.

Interesting, so no big bad dragon is killing the world!! Dragon: Bueegghhhhhr i spit fire xd now I'm dead kek

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't have any real specifics in terms of the world or story, but I would want to write a story that deconstructs and reconstructs many a Fire Emblem trope while placing a greater emphasis on the war. 

The hero would be a prince, but he'd be far from a Marth-expy. He was never the intended heir, he has such a weak constitution that he is ridiculed as "hollow-boned", and he is a mage, not a swordsman. Campaigning and leading an army into a war takes both a psychological and a physical toll on him; one cutscene would even have him finish a battle, only to then vomit before passing out from how much he's overexerting himself. 

His elder brother, the intended heir, is a deconstruction of the Marth archetype. There are times where he admits to his brother that he's tempted to trade places, as sometimes he feels more like he's filling a mold that expected of the crown prince, rather than being the crown prince he feels the kingdom truly needs. 

Edited by vanguard333
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A long lost race of unimaginable power is wiped out leaving a sole survivor who journeys out to discover the secrets of their heritage and the mystery behind the slaughter of their home, uncovering hidden truths, betrayal, and inevitable war as they travel across the continent.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/13/2019 at 5:18 AM, Von Ithipathachai said:

The kingdom of Rema on the continent of Sanctaea is suffering a mysterious famine.  Cato, its king, is launching a campaign of continental conquest in an attempt to procure more food for his people as their existing supplies begin to run out.

That is LITERALLY the premise to my novel. XD
Or at least the motivation of one of my antagonists.

With that said, since my novel was inspired by my time playing Fire Emblem and reading various ancient and medieval epics (Romance of the Three Kingdoms in particular), I think - without trying to praise myself - the plot I conjured up would fit very well in a Fire Emblem game.

If you're interested how it goes, it's basically like this:
The princess of the Kingdom of Vales, Eliana, an outcast in the castle, to the point were even the servants ignore her, gets sent to help put down a rebellion, which turns out to be a plot by the king's second wife and the nation's prime minister to get rid of the "abomination" (so-called because she is the result of the king getting drunk in depression over his first wife dying, and forcing himself on one of his maids, who carried out the child just to spite him before ending her life - Eliana doesn't know, however). She gets shot in the back by her former best friend, falls into a river, miraculously survives and ends up in another nation that is on the cusp of getting invaded by her homeland. Her brother was made to believe that nation, the Duchy of Lampart, caused the rebellion that "killed" his little sister. She is saved by Finley, who is the son of a Lampartian General (who vanished), who really hates Vales because they killed his grandpa, so she keeps her identity a secret (badly, I might add). When she hears that her brother's army is invading, she decides to return home to convince him to stop.
Meanwhile, another rebellion breaks out, which gets stopped by Eliana's older brother, Elliot (I'm creative with my names, I know), who gets injured during it. With the king bedridden due to a mysterious illness, the prince out of commission due to literally losing an eye, the princess thought to be dead (and not legitimate in the first place), and her younger brother studying in another country, the prime minister and the new queen have basically free reign over the kingdom and use its plight to further their own ends. The queen wants to take the throne from her husband's family and establish a strict caste system, while the prime minister, who was a former professor at the academy of magic in the Church State of Azolas who got thrown out due to illegal human experiments, wants to prove that humans are greater than the gods through attaining what is thought to be impossible for mortals: the power of Eternity. He also considers mortality humanity's greatest weakness and believes that peace can only last forever under an absolute ruler who is immortal and possesses ultimate power to subdue any conflict.

... and I just realized that this plot is complete nonsense. Holy hell.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My game would be more inspired in FE than a FE proper.

----

I have an idea where you control a group of mercenaries instead of a lord/lady and their soldiers. Yeah, Path of Radiance already did that. But it didn't focus enough on the mercenary work that the Greil Mercenaries did - three chapters later, and they're shoehorned into the main plot and become Elincia's men, following the classic tried and true FE formula.

I'd rather have a game where you control a group of mercenaries who travel around the continent, doing jobs for locals, maybe being hired by higher nobles to serve in more important missions, before traveling to other parts of the map. There would be a backstory for each country and a starting state of affairs for the continent's politics, but the focus would be on the group and how their actions may influence the environment they're in (from minor ones such as "The group saved a merchant ship from pirates" and "The group rescued villagers from a bandit group" to major ones such as "Country A successfully managed to repel a territorial invasion during a skirmish with Country B" or "The pretender X managed to defeat Y for the throne of Country C").

The player would be able to move around the map as in FE8, although it'd be a much bigger one and some paths may be blocked for specific reasons from time to time ("there is a blockade and ships aren't leaving anytime soon", for example, for those who want to travel through the sea).

Combat would be triggered by interacting with certain events on the map, which may be part of a quest ("the village elder sent us to this mountain to fight bandits") or part of the map ("there's an army encaped by Country A's borders" or "bandits blocked this route and we must break through it"). The maps would be similar to standard Fire Emblem ones, except levels of elevation would become important elements of terrain advantage (what FE10 tried to do in some maps) and more often than not the mercenary group would be in a numeric and financial disadvantage (ie. the enemies tend to be more numerous and/or better equipped. Forget about soloing a map with a single unit).

Characters would be recruitable by visiting parts of the map. They'd have their own backstories and personalities, shown through their support conversations. Depending on the actions of the group, characters could opt for leaving the group (a desire they'd manifest before defecting), or have others manifest their interest on joining. There would be a mode with Permadeath and another mode where units simply take a debuff to their stats on the next mission, if they fell on battle. For Permadeath mode, reserve characters appear in case a certain number of characters have died, as in FE11.

I think I could write a huge document detailing these ideas, but that's not the point. In any case, I wouldn't try this as a beginner dev. I'd rather think on easier and more practical projects first, both for the sake of getting experience as well as for funding more complex projects.

Edited by Rapier
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The main thing is my protagonist would not be a famed warrior, son of a famed warrior, or royalty.  Nor would he even be human.  He would be a slave in a brutal labor camp (manakete or beast or maybe something new).  Haven't thought about it too much but would address many of the issues of power, corruption, prejudice, influence of public perception, genocide.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Lewyn said:

The main thing is my protagonist would not be a famed warrior, son of a famed warrior, or royalty.  Nor would he even be human.  He would be a slave in a brutal labor camp (manakete or beast or maybe something new).  Haven't thought about it too much but would address many of the issues of power, corruption, prejudice, influence of public perception, genocide.  

An FE version of Persona 5's morals?

Edited by henrymidfields
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

An FE version of Persona 5's morals?

I think it would be more similar to "The Wire" except a different setting.  We would get a lot of development of the various antagonists as well, and 'our hero' would be far from a 'pure good' guy either.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My own Fire Emblem plot would honestly be quite simple and formulaic. The evil empire seeks to conquer the world, multiple nations must unite to face the threat and there's probably some evil cult pulling the strings from the shadows. 

I would have some suggestions on how to make that a bit more fresh. 

Rather than the Emperor being manipulated by the evil cult he's the one manipulating them. He makes use of them before being the one to doublecross the cult and subjugating its dark god for his own benefit. 

I would also take the classical religious Gharnef into a different direction. Most Gharnef's are slavishly devoted to their dark god and this one would start out this way. As the plot goes on the Gharnef would slowly lose his faith however. After all, he's the one doing all the work while his precious god is too busy being in a coma after its first defeat. So why shouldn't he just try to take the god's power for himself and become the new god if he's so much better and this whole world conquest thing. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

my fire emblem plot would basically have been conquest, except corrin sees the rot in nohr and decides to seize power while the war between hoshido and nohr was ongoing.

 

it's what i thought conquest was gonna be. i was japed. ;(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Characters that are awful people but like in a comical way. Think It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Protagonist would be a funny dumb guy with no morals who doesn't even care about appearing to be good. Lots of allies who'd backstab you and betray will for a chapter just to join back the next one. Lots of scheming against good natured enemies and your team would often get screwed while doing their thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...