Does Every game need a center villian.

[Mikethemaster2018]

Is there a need for center villians in every FE Game or games in general. In Three houses there no over all ccenter villian. Though all the character do questionable methods can we call those characters evil or are they emotional damage characters. There is a group of evil team but they are kind of thrown out the window.

[Strullemia]

There is a center villain of sorts in 3H. TWSITD would fit that role, they just don’t seem like it because some routes focus more on them than others.

[Fabulously Olivier]

13 minutes ago, Hekselka said:

There is a center villain of sorts in 3H. TWSITD would fit that role, they just don’t seem like it because some routes focus more on them than others.

Spoiler

Honestly, I think TWSITD were a mistake. Edelgard's motivation and the conflict as a whole would make more sense and be more tightly written if Rhea were the one who experimented on Edelgard, just as she had done with Byleth. And if this were the plot they had gone with, this horrible action could have even had some sympathetic, if twisted, motivation.

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

Does everything need one? No. It's possible to make a good game without a singular big bad. 

For instance, whilst Xenogears has what you could loosely call the equivalent of a big angry dark dragon in FE, the villainy is focused on a trinity of big bads who don't agree with each other. And, that villain trinity is splendid. Mainline SMT commonly disregards a singular villain for multiple villains who could be friends to reflect its alignment system.

 

It does help to have a concrete face to villainy though. A face for a narrative arc can be helpful, if not enough when the face itself is atrocious (see Tales of Vesperia, its second part). Thracia 776 has a plot that I don't mind, with good points, but I have identified one fault with it. That fault being Thracia 776 is just lacking in the villain department.

Raydrik is serviceable to good for the game's beginning, but once you get past Chapter 7, he suddenly drops out of the narrative. From Chapter 8 and onward, Leif's journey becomes devoid of a face to the enemies he faces. Travant pops in and out, but that stops after Chapter 14. Freege and the Loptians becomes Leif's enemy in Chapter 9-23 barring the C12 Dandelions and C15 random bandits, but Freege is usually faceless. You fight generics, with Kempf the incompetent trying for a moment to become a face, but leaves after two chapters and you might never see him again afterwards. Reinhardt is often spoken of as powerful, and so is Saias, but each makes only one mandatory appearance on the battlefield where they command, and they barely get scenes of giving orders to troops in earlier fights. Blume has next to no screentime, and Leonster is guarded by a mere generic.

Then with 24, Leif gets back to Raydrik, so much stronger a year later. This is good narrative, but Raydrik himself deserves no credit for villainy, since he has done nothing since C7, and does nothing of note now. With Raydrik dead, the game is left with the utterly generic Veld, who has to be artificially injected with last minute amping up to give him any villainous impact beyond the one thing he did earlier with Raydrik. 

Admittedly, Thracia 776 is handicapped by being a midquel, thanks to which, it is impossible for Leif to kill off Julius, Manfroy, Ishtar, Travant, or Arion. Though the game could have easily given him Blume's head, which would have been a good villainous catch and a focus point starting at C9. I like the approach taken by trying to create a personal villain in Raydrik, but as Blume didn't send him and his dubious, incompetent nature to pursue Leif after he emerged from the Thracian border again, Raydrik failed.

-Just getting this out of my system. I still like Thracia 776 like any other FE, this is just me being analytical.

[Strullemia]

3 minutes ago, Etheus said:

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Honestly, I think TWSITD were a mistake. Edelgard's motivation and the conflict as a whole would make more sense and be more tightly written if Rhea were the one who experimented on Edelgard, just as she had done with Byleth. And if this were the plot they had gone with, this horrible action could have even had some sympathetic, if twisted, motivation.

 

Spoiler

Yeah I'm not the biggest fan of TWSITD either. Their very existence also weakens some of the grey morality that works better just with the lords.

I would have preferred if they just changed the story so that the original people just fought Sothis and then in retaliation Seiros and co destroyed all of them. At least then I would have more sympathy for TWSITD. Now they just want to kill everyone and they don't even have the 'excuse' that they in any way are the victim. Wow, how interesting.

Your suggestion is also fine because it would've made an interesting personal conflict of sorts and would have given who to side with more depth.

 

[Mikethemaster2018]

4 hours ago, Etheus said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Honestly, I think TWSITD were a mistake. Edelgard's motivation and the conflict as a whole would make more sense and be more tightly written if Rhea were the one who experimented on Edelgard, just as she had done with Byleth. And if this were the plot they had gone with, this horrible action could have even had some sympathetic, if twisted, motivation.

 

Yeah I think so too but cant make a character who an puuesdo-lord to bad though. 

[Flere210]

4 hours ago, Etheus said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Honestly, I think TWSITD were a mistake. Edelgard's motivation and the conflict as a whole would make more sense and be more tightly written if Rhea were the one who experimented on Edelgard, just as she had done with Byleth. And if this were the plot they had gone with, this horrible action could have even had some sympathetic, if twisted, motivation.

 

Why she would do that? She already can make clones to experiment to, and if she want to manifest the seiros crest into people she just had to do whatever she did to save Jeralt life  It would not advance her goals in any way. You don't necessarily need TWSITD, but Rhea in particular has 0 reason to do that unless you change several plot points. 

That said. Usually is much better to have a clear antagonist because usually is the villain that begin the overall conflict of a story. For example in the SMT saga you usually have a god that started the whole mess and is the final boss in most routes. Those kind of villains does not necessarily makes the story less morally ambigous, because the other factions can be flawed in their own way. But they make the story more coherent, as all routes end up in dealing whit them.  To me it's really difficult to sell the person that started the mess as anything but the villain.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I think it is very interesting to see a Fire Emblem game where people are actively debating, at least for now, which of the evils are the most evil. But I wonder if a consensus will ever be reached on that question, since in order to experience everything you need to play three times, and this is the point where people would hold the most intense bias toward their favorite characters, factions, etc. These discussion are also awkward, since that game is never critical of your chosen faction. You're always the hero in the end. 

I think well realized worlds will have bad people on all kinds of factions since that emulates real life. However, there are cons in creating such a fantasy. If everybody is an asshole, the player doesn't know who to root for, or which cause to champion. They start to crave more choices than what is given to them. Fire Emblem has never been a franchise known for presenting meaningful narrative choices to the player, and it still isn't. Not to go on a tangent, but One hour is not enough time for the player to decide which faction they would like to fight and die for thirty hours later into the experience. A better role playing game would allow you to stop supporting a faction if you find you don't agree with them later. But if the story always ends with fighting the same big bad, the player can at least appreciate having left the world a better place. The epilogue that calls them a hero will at least feel somewhat earned, rather than just believable because: the winning side will write the history books anyway.