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Stop bullying Fates. It doesn’t deserve it


Ottservia
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Honestly viewing any story through the lens of “hard work” is honestly the most boring way to look at it imo. Cause it’s just such a one dimensional theme

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1 hour ago, Murozaki said:

Apologies if i am misunderstanding the point of your post, but i personally don't understand why you would look for or expect messages of hard work and effort in a superhero story instead of say, a sport story or something of the like. Superhero stories, most often, don't have the characters work for their powers because the powers aren't there to be a gift or a positive thing, but rather as something neutral, which is where the superhero and supervillain dynamic prevalent in so many stories comes from, that when you are in a special circumstances that gives you power no one else has, the question becomes of whether you use it for good or for evil. Which is again, why it doesn't make a lot of sense to write a traditional superhero story with themes of hard work and effort, as most of them are trying to tell the stories about people in special circumstances and how these special circumstances affect and influence them, said special circumstances being something that can't really be replicated most of the time.

What im trying to say with this rambling is, well, that from the very concept most superhero stories were never meant to be tales of hard work and effort and are often far more so about agency and morality, about doing right with what you have regardless of what that even is, be it god-like superpowers or fighting skills you acquired on your own. So i don't really ever expect them to focus on hard work or effort as themes.

Don't get me wrong, "with great power comes great responsibility" is great, and I did say that I enjoy good superhero stories. What I was lamenting was not so much the presence of superheroes that do work for their abilities so much as an almost lack of superheroes that do work for their abilities. I was just saying that I personally prefer (as in this is completely subjective) when characters have to train and improve their abilities. I'm even fine with characters being born with/receiving power so long as that's not the be-all-and-end-all of it. For a good example, Star Wars (at least the first six movies) had it that only some people are born strong with the Force, but it still put a lot of importance on training regardless; when Luke confronts Vader in episode 5, he loses because he wasn't ready. I just think there's a lot more potential avenues for storytelling when there's an element of hard work involved. Does that make sense?

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19 hours ago, Icelerate said:

I think reducing a female character's quality to the amount of times they get captured/saved is dumb. Going by this logic, Micaiah is one of the worst female characters in the series lol. 

I feel like you misinterpreted my point, since I don't think that and you know that, since I am in fact a Micaiah fan. (Micaiah has a ton of agency in the story despite this, incidentally, which is a big deal.)

Good stories can obviously be written which involve characters being captured/rescued. But when a game is written where it happens to something like seven or eight of the female characters I don't think it should be terribly controversial to say that's a problem and reflects poorly on the game as a piece of writing.

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6 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I feel like you misinterpreted my point, since I don't think that and you know that, since I am in fact a Micaiah fan. (Micaiah has a ton of agency in the story despite this, incidentally, which is a big deal.)

Good stories can obviously be written which involve characters being captured/rescued. But when a game is written where it happens to something like seven or eight of the female characters I don't think it should be terribly controversial to say that's a problem and reflects poorly on the game as a piece of writing.

I know you don't think she's badly written which is why I used that point to show that a damsel in distress isn't inherently bad writing. Take Lucia for example, she actually used her capture as a means to gain intel and warned others in advance that if she gets captured, it means Ludveck knows her plans which allows her to counteract his plan. As a result, her getting captured actually allowed her to play Ludveck right into her hands ironically because he no longer had the element of surprise and also had to worry about reinforcements. If she didn't account for the possibility of capture, Geoffrey would have returned to Melior and Elincia would be caught by surprise and also have less men to defend Alpea as Haar wouldn't have come. 

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A longtime lurker here, who finally decided to make an account so I could reply to this with my own arguments.

I think that a lot of the complaints about the story of Fates stem from all the potential it had. I know that when I look at it, I see something that could have been great with some more time and critical thought in developing the story; I think just about every point in all three paths (except the Deeprealms, short of extending the game to at least a multi-year war rather than something that ended in a few months) could have been plausibly justified with better worldbuilding and non-idiot moments from characters. I'm not going to try and attack all those points here (I'd go replay the games again before I tried something fully comprehensive), but I'll list a couple of big ones here.

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Garon makes an excellent example: build his character properly, and you would avoid a wide swathe of the criticisms around Conquest. It wouldn't take much for him to be something less than hideously obvious with his evil; ruthless is fine, but he doesn't even pretend to dress up the war as anything other than conquest for its own sake. Birthright offers the reason for Nohr to go to war: lack of food. That should have been expanded and exploited at multiple points in Conquest to drive the point home: people might not like the idea of using bloodshed to secure access to food, but that is a logical course of action for a military nation with a peaceful breadbasket for a neighbor. It's cold-hearted, certainly, but it would be enough to reasonably justify the war as far as Corrin and the Nohrian siblings go; however much they might dislike a war, seeing their people starving in the streets is a powerful incentive to act. Bonus points if you mix in a tale of Hoshidan treachery in a previous attempt to negotiate a trade deal, to counter that natural proposal; it doesn't have to be truth, but Hoshido (presumably) is training its hordes of ninjas for covert operations that often need to stay out of public perception, not merely because people think ninjas look cool.

Garon should also have been less obvious about trying to get Corrin killed: the trick with the Ganglari (setting him up to be captured) is bad enough, but the mission to the Ice Tribe basically screamed it, and later behavior didn't really change that impression. Garon being distant or cold is fine, even harsh with disciplinary moves: threatening to kill any of his children out of hand for daring to voice a question is ridiculously excessive. It's sorely out of place when Corrin is presented as being both compassionate and yet loyal to his/her (their) "father"; the fact that Corrin swallows that treatment repeatedly, even after they knew they had been sent to their death more than once, makes it hard to see them as anything other than idiotic, which is not good when they are the main protagonist and an avatar character.

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Corrin's dragon transformation is another huge sticking point to my mind (its appearance is a matter of personal taste, although I find the useless wings and limitation to head-butting attacks to be issues). Out-of-universe, I'm pretty sure this is the result of it being added too late in development to go back and rewrite the story, but it's definitely a worthwhile example regardless. Nohr and Hoshido both revere dragons in the distant sense, as legendary figures: from everything Fates indicates, they had vanished from the world until Corrin abruptly transformed into one. This should have been a huge, world-shaking event to a great many people, that a dragon had manifested once more. It would most assuredly draw attention to Corrin's parentage; Ryoma at least knew that Sumeragi was not Corrin's father (as indicated by his S-support with Corrin), which would raise a lot of questions about who was. The fact that Azura somehow knows exactly how to deal with this, can identify it for what it is instantly, and even possesses or can create a dragonstone (I'm not sure which, but my reading of that scene and the one with Kana's recruitment is that she can draw on her pendant's power to create the stone), is worth another few dozen questions that never get even hinted at by characters who really should not have been instantly accepting it at face value without any trace of doubts.

More to the point, though, this should have been given tremendous amounts of narrative attention; a real live dragon, on the battlefield, would make a massive inspirational figure. Any number of scenes should have brought this up as a critical point: any transformation in Chapter 6 would have stopped the Nohrian siblings in their tracks, likely rattling them enough that Corrin could get them to listen (especially notable in the Revelations choice). In Conquest, the siblings should have questioned him at some length about it; one might say that this was covered out-of-view on the trip back to Krakenburg, but there should at least have been some kind of report to Garon by Corrin and/or the siblings about something that extraordinary. There should have been tales told by encountered enemies, warnings by allies of those enemies about such an opponent, and so on. Any encounter with the Rainbow Sage should have put that transformation front and center, giving him the chance to provide some kind of explanation.

But instead, any indication of Corrin being a dragon vanishes after the chapter it appears in (Chapter 5). Outside of that and Kana's paralogue, the only mention whatsoever I've found in main story dialogue is a blink-and-miss-it throwaway line in Conquest Chapter 7 where Corrin says something about not having time to transform to fight the Faceless he's just run into (I can't remember the precise words offhand). I can't recall that any of Corrin's supports ever touched upon it either; I haven't read them all, so perhaps there are one or two mentions hiding in there, and Kana's supports probably raise the matter a few times, but that's a pretty pitiful contribution. This was a tremendous story and worldbuilding opportunity here, and the writers threw it away in a rather silly fashion.

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There's also the way that Conquest gets effectively derailed by Chapter 15 (in terms of story: as a strategic challenge, I think that was a wonderful premise). Before that, you have Corrin setting the seeds of a resistance to Garon's cruelty, trying to provoke reform. The Ice Tribe gets set up as a faction of supporters for Corrin. Notre Sagesse is another example of how he's trying to drive a change in Nohrian methods and perception of Nohr by Hoshidans; the complete lack of serious injuries is rather excessive, but the principle was sound. Cheve shows how it can end badly, with Hans executing the prisoners; he really should have gotten killed off sooner than the final chapters, with the way he was flouting the orders of Corrin (who was effectively his commander at the time), but it spurs Corrin on. Cyrkensia shows Garon's paranoia and ruthlessness, which is savage, but you also get shown how the siblings do their best behind the scenes to avoid casualties. This is a wonderful recipe for a rebellion of some sort to occur within the Nohrian army as soldiers take sides, Corrin and presumably Xander on one side versus King Garon on the other.

But after Chapter 15, that plan gets completely dumped by the wayside. We don't even see Corrin go about the abrupt change of plans very smartly; the scene at the end of Chapter 15, where Corrin slaps down and threatens Iago very effectively and in precisely the sort of character Garon and Iago wanted to see, was brilliant, but the interactions with them and Hans during the invasion completely failed to build on that promising start. The self-pity Corrin feels about being "forced" to invade Hoshido is also excessive, given their position as a commander of the invading force, and it certainly doesn't create a good impression of Corrin. Chapter 26 does show Iago and Hans getting dealt with, finally, but it doesn't have any actual follow-up from the earlier threads of rebellion or reform set up by the first half of Conquest.

This would be a rather difficult point to properly fix, admittedly, entailing a fair chunk of dialogue changes and probably an entirely new take on Chapter 26 at the least. Still, if properly planned out early on, before the level design really got rolling and it became too expensive to make significant changes, it could have been done.

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One last point I'd like to raise. Something else I've noticed here is the frequent criticism of Xander for inconsistency between supports and the story. This one, notably, I don't see as a big plot hole (in apparent contradiction to a lot of other opinions). I haven't seen all his supports, but I've seen enough to understand that he's generally shown as being much more reasonable and compassionate there. I would argue that that is Xander when he feels free to act as himself, to speak his mind and say what he would like to do given the opportunity. What you see in the story, time and again, is the crown prince, bound by duty and family ties both to carry out his king's commands. Whatever he might feel about those commands, in that position, is irrelevant, since he places his country and king above all else; compare him to Camus or perhaps Bryce, who would never break their fealty to their sworn lord regardless of their own feelings. By Xander's beliefs, as the crown prince, he is not free to act in any way contrary to Nohr's interests, as defined by the king (who is also his father, compounding the point of obedience), for his life and choices are not truly his own to make and can be overruled by the king's decree at any time. To us, perhaps, that is an excessive degree of obedience and loyalty, but Garon is king and father both, which certainly makes rebellion seem unthinkable; such obedience does match his established character.

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44 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

Honestly viewing any story through the lens of “hard work” is honestly the most boring way to look at it imo. Cause it’s just such a one dimensional theme

I don't view a story through the lens of hard work; I was just saying that emphasis on training/hard work is a neat writing tool that I personally (as in this is very subjective) prefer to see over a character just being given power. In the Iron Man example that I brought up, the building-the-suit and experimentation did quite a bit of comedy as well as character exploration; reinforcing how he's changed and become driven to rid the war-torn parts of the world of the weapons that he built, that even though he's back home, part of him is still in the cave and all that. Obviously a lot can be done without a character needing to train; I'm just saying that I personally prefer it. 

 

Funny enough, it's only now that I remember a way I can bring this back to Fire Emblem. One of the many reasons Ike is my favourite FE protagonist is how much emphasis and attention-to-detail is placed on his growth, both as a leader and as a swordsman as well as other things. Out of all the FE protagonists, he is the one where the power scaling is most-clearly defined, and part of that is because we see him work for it. With Corrin, obviously they weren't going for a "needing to work for it" in terms of his abilities, and that's completely fine since Fates is going for a very different narrative. As far as how the story uses Corrin's abilities are concerned, however, I do have some issues:

I like how they handle the Yato, at least to some extent. I don't like that it appeared out of nowhere in chapter 5; I definitely feel that it would have been better if it had been given some proper buildup since it's a legendary sword with history behind it (compare to Ragnell, which did get some buildup before we even knew of its significance with the Black Knight tossing it to Greil and saying, "Here, use this blade."). However, I do like the implication in Revelations that the Yato doesn't choose Corrin out of any sense of them being worthy, but instead because Corrin ultimately desires peace just like the Rainbow Sage who made the sword now does. It's an interesting variation on the "chosen-wielder" trope, and I just wish it had been explored a bit more. 

However, Corrin's dragon powers I have a big problem with. They get good buildup; Corrin going into a rage at Gunther's apparent death and awakening the lance-arm ability was interesting. Chapter 5 having him turn completely into a dragon and lose control of himself due to their grief and rage at Mikoto's death is interesting. Corrin being calmed down by Azura is interesting, and Corrin being the only First Dragon-descendant in this generation to have that kind of power is inherently interesting and creates a possible mystery about them... and the story ditches all this entirely the moment Azura gives Corrin a dragonstone. For one thing, where did she get the dragonstone? But that's beside the point; this power has a ton of potential for interesting emotional character drama as it's basically a superpowered evil side akin to something like The Hulk or the Nine-Tailed Fox from Naruto (see the video in the spoiler tag below for more info about superpowered evil sides). 

So, yeah; considering this is a story of a protagonist torn between two warring families, and the hidden main villain is a First Dragon who succumbed to madness and degeneration, there's tons of potential in Corrin having to deal with the dragon power and the risk of madness. And yet, the power is never brought up again in any of the three routes except as a quick aside in Conquest when Corrin's ambushed by some mindless ones and they say they can't use their dragonstone (even though they can in said chapter). Tons of wasted potential.

The nature of a character's abilities are a good avenue for exploring said character and their struggles. Ike's are used extremely well within Path of Radiance's narrative; Corrin's aren't.

What do you think, Ottservia?

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This thread is going to be going on for a while, isn't it? May as well get my opinion in.

Ok, so the biggest problems I have with Fates is twofold:

1) We where led to believe it was going to revolve around that choice. What choice? What choice do you think? The choice that was the biggest marketing point of the game! Blood-family or Adoptive-family choice in Chapter 6. Birthright sounded like is was going to be the bog-standard FE story (Homeland invaded, you beat it off, then invade back). Conquest, meanwhile, was supposed to be all about manipulating/changing/improving Nohr so that there wouldn't be such massive loss of life. And Revelation? It was going to be the 'find out what's behind it all' Lore route. False advertising can make a grand mess of anything, and oh lord, did it fuck up with Fates.

2) All the missed opportunities. All the chances to take the concept and make it great. And what did they do with it? Slapped together random anime troupes, poor world building, and fanservice. Good job, IS. Good job. (Sarcasm)

 

I should get this strait. I think Fates has a great concept. It could've been the best FE to date. If they had actually put effort into developing the world. And not making Garon/Anankos/Hans cartoon villains. Iago's ok to an extent. As for the playable characters, I don't expect every one of them to be a gem in their own right. No FE has done so, and I doubt it ever will. Putting a modicum of depth into the story would've helped immensely.

As for what we are left with, in terms of Gameplay it's Conquest > Revelation > Birthright. For story, it's the other way around. But it's all in the past now. Continuing to tear Fates apart doesn't serve any purpose, unless you're doing it to vent. As long as everyone knows that it was bad, we needn't kick Fates while it's down.

 

And before anyone calls me out for that rant I did a couple days ago, that was me having a go @Ottservia's attempt to avoid the elephants in the room by stating on of Fates strong(-ish) points: it's overwhelming focus on Corrin and their naïve trust in everyone, and how that pulls the families together. As before, I apologize for that, I shouldn't have been so hostile.

 

As a side note,

On 11/23/2020 at 9:20 AM, Interdimensional Observer said:

On the exclusive enemy side, the Str/Mag split allows for the existence of Barons and Emperors. Emperor is exclusive to Gen 2 Arvis, and given Valflame is 70 Res-hitting attack, I can't imagine what would get him to swap to using that decorative Silver Blade in his inventory.

I don't remember who did this, but someone hacked the Valflame off Arvis. And he still didn't use the Silver Blade, even though it was his only means of attack. He didn't attack, even though he was able. Who knows why he even has the thing.

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5 hours ago, L3xandr3 said:

2) All the missed opportunities. All the chances to take the concept and make it great. And what did they do with it? Slapped together random anime troupes, poor world building, and fanservice. Good job, IS. Good job. (Sarcasm)

I should get this strait. I think Fates has a great concept. It could've been the best FE to date. If they had actually put effort into developing the world. And not making Garon/Anankos/Hans cartoon villains. Iago's ok to an extent. As for the playable characters, I don't expect every one of them to be a gem in their own right. No FE has done so, and I doubt it ever will. Putting a modicum of depth into the story would've helped immensely.

As for what we are left with, in terms of Gameplay it's Conquest > Revelation > Birthright. For story, it's the other way around. But it's all in the past now. Continuing to tear Fates apart doesn't serve any purpose, unless you're doing it to vent. As long as everyone knows that it was bad, we needn't kick Fates while it's down.

While it's understandable to be frustrated by how much you think a story is flawed and/or how much you wish it was different, i don't understand how Fates is necessarily different in this regard.

All Fire Emblem games' stories and really all stories in general could, theoretically, be better, because at the end of the day, there is no cap or limit to how good stories can possibly be. So at the end of the day every story any man has ever written could be made better and Fates isn't really an unique case of this. All FE games could have had "The best story in the series" if they were all written better.

Again, im not trying to say you should just feel differently about Fates' writing, more so im trying to say that i think it would be better for you (And anyone really) to not really focus on and get hung up on what-could-have-beens and "potential" that stories could have had and judge Fates, and all stories, as they are. Of course you don't have to stop disliking Fates even after that but i do feel it makes it easier to talk about things with a clear mind and good faith.

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3 hours ago, Murozaki said:

While it's understandable to be frustrated by how much you think a story is flawed and/or how much you wish it was different, i don't understand how Fates is necessarily different in this regard.

All Fire Emblem games' stories and really all stories in general could, theoretically, be better, because at the end of the day, there is no cap or limit to how good stories can possibly be. So at the end of the day every story any man has ever written could be made better and Fates isn't really an unique case of this. All FE games could have had "The best story in the series" if they were all written better.

Again, im not trying to say you should just feel differently about Fates' writing, more so im trying to say that i think it would be better for you (And anyone really) to not really focus on and get hung up on what-could-have-beens and "potential" that stories could have had and judge Fates, and all stories, as they are. Of course you don't have to stop disliking Fates even after that but i do feel it makes it easier to talk about things with a clear mind and good faith.

I believe the specific problem of Fates in that regard is how hyped it was for everyone, the Game had such big and interesting concept to talk about. Compared with the Archanea Games that have a smaller scope or Awakening that it was a bit too obvious the Game's narrative was gonna suffer at some extent for it's own nature of being a celebration Game.

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5 hours ago, Troykv said:

I believe the specific problem of Fates in that regard is how hyped it was for everyone, the Game had such big and interesting concept to talk about. Compared with the Archanea Games that have a smaller scope or Awakening that it was a bit too obvious the Game's narrative was gonna suffer at some extent for it's own nature of being a celebration Game.

Yeah; hype was definitely a factor. One thing that helped was that the marketing for the game was almost perfect; something that had never really happened before in FE as marketing had been almost nonexistent prior to Awakening, and even Awakening's marketing was more helped by (probably accidental) good timing.

To this day, I still consider the "Fire Emblem If: Choose Your Path trailer" one of the best video game trailers ever made (not necessarily the best, but definitely up there), as it efficiently conveys everything unique and interesting about the game in a very exciting and intriguing way. 

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8 hours ago, Murozaki said:

While it's understandable to be frustrated by how much you think a story is flawed and/or how much you wish it was different, i don't understand how Fates is necessarily different in this regard.

All Fire Emblem games' stories and really all stories in general could, theoretically, be better, because at the end of the day, there is no cap or limit to how good stories can possibly be. So at the end of the day every story any man has ever written could be made better and Fates isn't really an unique case of this. All FE games could have had "The best story in the series" if they were all written better.

Again, im not trying to say you should just feel differently about Fates' writing, more so im trying to say that i think it would be better for you (And anyone really) to not really focus on and get hung up on what-could-have-beens and "potential" that stories could have had and judge Fates, and all stories, as they are. Of course you don't have to stop disliking Fates even after that but i do feel it makes it easier to talk about things with a clear mind and good faith.

Ah, but that's the problem. When I play Fates, everything in the story makes me think either "oh, this would've been so good if they had done it correctly" or "they should've wen back to the drawing board on that one". I can't think about it any other way. That's all I get out of the story.

I know some people like the story or will defend it to the death, but disappointment and regret is all I get out of it's story. It could've been the best story FE had. But they wasted the opportunity to amaze.

It's between the Concept and

5 hours ago, Troykv said:

I believe the specific problem of Fates in that regard is how hyped it was for everyone, the Game had such big and interesting concept to talk about. Compared with the Archanea Games that have a smaller scope or Awakening that it was a bit too obvious the Game's narrative was gonna suffer at some extent for it's own nature of being a celebration Game.

this. The marketing made it sound like it was going to have a great story. But that's only a small part of what irks me about Fates. The concept meanwhile is the best concept in any FE. Fight me, but it is! And they squandered it on a very lazy, low quality story that had minimal thought put into it. IDK how much of the story's competence was lost in translation, so IDK whether to blame this on IS or Treehouse for this. Is it IS for squandering the story, or Treehouse for butchering the translation?

 

And so, I'll repeat this again for anyone who missed it: Story isn't a big deal in FE. It's a strategy game. I play it for the challenge. Not the story. But it's nice when it's a good story. SoV is a good example of taking a bare-bones plot and making something great out of it. Could you do the same with Fates? Yes, I should think so.

You can play the entirety of any FE game without reading a single line of story. Most of FE's stories are quite bland. But Fates just saddens me whenever I read it's story. This is just me. I know some people love it. And that's Ok. You can like what you like as long as you aren't harming others with it.

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13 minutes ago, L3xandr3 said:

this. The marketing made it sound like it was going to have a great story. But that's only a small part of what irks me about Fates. The concept meanwhile is the best concept in any FE. Fight me, but it is! And they squandered it on a very lazy, low quality story that had minimal thought put into it. IDK how much of the story's competence was lost in translation, so IDK whether to blame this on IS or Treehouse for this. Is it IS for squandering the story, or Treehouse for butchering the translation?

I don't think the story is lazy; there are enough little flashes of competent writing or at least competent writing that the story strikes me not as lazy, but as something put together hastily and haphazardly, as if it were rushed or overstretched, and I think that's exactly what happened: writing effectively three stories in a timespan that would normally be devoted to writing one overstretched the writing team; they bit off more than they could chew. Further evidence to support this is that Three Houses, in its four different routes, shows varying (but far less than Fates) degrees of the same problem despite being delayed twice and despite the game's programming being handled by Koei Tecmo so the IS team could focus on the story. 

"Overreaching ambition invites disaster" - Sephiran. 

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17 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

I don't think the story is lazy; there are enough little flashes of competent writing or at least competent writing that the story strikes me not as lazy, but as something put together hastily and haphazardly, as if it were rushed or overstretched, and I think that's exactly what happened: writing effectively three stories in a timespan that would normally be devoted to writing one overstretched the writing team; they bit off more than they could chew. Further evidence to support this is that Three Houses, in its four different routes, shows varying (but far less than Fates) degrees of the same problem despite being delayed twice and despite the game's programming being handled by Koei Tecmo so the IS team could focus on the story. 

"Overreaching ambition invites disaster" - Sephiran. 

Pardon me if im getting my info wrong, but wasn't Three Houses written by Koei staff (With IS staff supervising and giving feedback obviously)? The story i heard in specific was that IS wanted to make a multi-route game, so when working with Koei they wrote a rough and simple outline for a "Basic" route and basically asked Koei writers to come up with interesting alternative scenarios for said simple outline to make up the routes. And that the outline of the "Basic" route would go on to be the basis for the Silver Snow route.

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15 hours ago, L3xandr3 said:

As for what we are left with, in terms of Gameplay it's Conquest > Revelation > Birthright. For story, it's the other way around. But it's all in the past now. Continuing to tear Fates apart doesn't serve any purpose, unless you're doing it to vent. As long as everyone knows that it was bad, we needn't kick Fates while it's down.

I'm trying to parse the last sentence as anything but incredibly condescending. "As long as all the game's many fans accept that it's bad, we can be nice to the game"?

I don't even particularly love the game's story myself (as I've said before, it's pretty darn mediocre, though there's worse), but I find the attitude of the Fates story hate crew pretty obnoxious at points, and this is a good example. And of course, from this sentence it's not clear if you think everyone needs to know that Fates' story is bad, or if you think we all need to know the game as a whole is bad (the latter being a pretty ridiculous statement to expect others to accept, but that doesn't stop some people I guess!).

Also maybe I'm misreading you so feel free to clarify.

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I also believe we naturally criticize games, especially when it comes to gameplay. After all, I have my FF and KH games ranked for a reason. KH is mostly judged by gameplay for me, as I think it's the most important aspect. Its okay to say "the others just arent as fun to me." Imo, at least.

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3 hours ago, Murozaki said:

Pardon me if im getting my info wrong, but wasn't Three Houses written by Koei staff (With IS staff supervising and giving feedback obviously)? The story i heard in specific was that IS wanted to make a multi-route game, so when working with Koei they wrote a rough and simple outline for a "Basic" route and basically asked Koei writers to come up with interesting alternative scenarios for said simple outline to make up the routes. And that the outline of the "Basic" route would go on to be the basis for the Silver Snow route.

I don't know all the details; that could be what happened. I was just trying to say the broad strokes so to speak. 

Anyway, what did you think of my overall point about Fates' writing? It's been a while since I got a reply on this thread.

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I could go into Fates' many flaws, but several of them have already been eloquently described by people such @Etrurian emperor so I won't revive that discussion.


This isn't a community problem, @Ottservia , it's a you problem. Despite saying you wish for discussions to be more nuanced, you certainly like to take away all the tools of the Fates detractors to make our arguments. We can't criticize contrivances because according to you, all stories are contrived. We can't criticize characterization or plot points because they're tied to "themes" and "authorial intent". There is nothing we can really criticize because you would just accuse us of judging the game according to our subjective personal tastes. This all smacks of hypocrisy anyway considering you use your own non-objective interpretations of the story to invalidate people arguing the contrary. You can say there is hidden brilliance in the writing but when others reject that, they're inappropriately assuming they know better than the writer. 

But let's get into that topic: authorial intent. Why is it that one must "respect the writers" for their writing decisions just because it was "thematic", "by design" or "intentional"? Do I have to give them a pat on the back for making Hinoka and Sakura forgive Corrin despite all the evil he allowed to happen, because it's allegedly part of a theme? Do I have to say it's "just not for me" when they railroad you into invading Hoshido with a series of contrivances just because that's the direction the writer wanted to take? How can any story ever be considered bad when criticisms are countered with "That's just your personal tastes"?

I know you don't think Shadows of Valentia is a good story, so let's apply the same standard there. People can and do argue that Alm was always meant to be the flawless savior of Valentia and that any themes of a duality between Alm and Celica were just the story we wanted instead of what the writers wanted. There are things to support that claim, such as Berkut and Celica perfectly representing their respective deities' flaws and Alm being the ultimate combination of strength and kindness, but I don't think it makes the story better that Berkut is an ineffectual whiner who murders his fiance and gets forgiven, or Celica being unbelievably foolish for trusting Jedah, or Alm being a Mary Sue that can only pay lipservice to not being a perfect human.

Thanks but no thanks, I'm only going to praise what a writer tried to do if they have more successes than failures in their narrative. And what a conga line of failures Fates was. Who can read Ryoma describing the "kingly qualities" of Corrin as a toddler and not assume it's self parody?  Who can read Xander's pronouncement that "peace is wonderful" after he just cut a bloody swathe through a peaceful country, and not shake their head? <Groans of increasing discomfort.>

Edited by NekoKnight
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3 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

I don't think the story is lazy; there are enough little flashes of competent writing or at least competent writing that the story strikes me not as lazy, but as something put together hastily and haphazardly, as if it were rushed or overstretched, and I think that's exactly what happened: writing effectively three stories in a timespan that would normally be devoted to writing one overstretched the writing team; they bit off more than they could chew. Further evidence to support this is that Three Houses, in its four different routes, shows varying (but far less than Fates) degrees of the same problem despite being delayed twice and despite the game's programming being handled by Koei Tecmo so the IS team could focus on the story. 

Low effort = Lazy. If someone dropped the contents of a sewage tank on your front doorstep, but you found a small diamond in it, are you going to be happy with the person that dropped it there? And then charged you for dropping it there? And if people told you 'Oh, you got a small bit of good out of it, stop complaining', are you just supposed to shut up, sit down, and say 'thank you, please give me more shit'? No. You will not be.

Another analogy: You buy a big breakfast meal. They hand you an empty tray that has a single piece of sausage on it. And the sausage was delicious. Are you going to be happy with it? No, you paid for more than a single sausage, no matter how good it was.

The point of these analogies is that a single good thing does not make the entire package awesome.

 

Onto giving examples of it's laziness, name all the various contrived conveniences in Fates.

Oh, you need to go to Notre Saggess? Leo hands you a warp book that has exactly enough power to get you - and your army - there and back. Thanks, Leo, that really helps!

Oh, you need to kill Garon but your sword's weak? Well, it just so happened that Raijinto choose that exact moment to act up and buff Yato. Wow, amazing!

Azura just showed you that your adoptive dad is an evil slime monster? The crystal broke so that your siblings can't see it, too. That's to bad.

There are too many conveniences to call it anything but lazy. They took the easy way out on everything.

Another? Ok then, Iago tells you to kill the Rainbow Sage. Corrin don't want to! Well, to bad for you, the Sage commits sudoku (I know it's not called that, thanks), thus sidestepping the entire difficult choice by taking it out of Corrin's hands.

Every time the plot wills it, every time Corrin must make a hard choice, it just falls into your lap. TH is occasionally guilty of this, too, but oh LORD, does Fates live off convenience. How is a story that relies on convenience anything but lazy?

 

2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

 

I'm trying to parse the last sentence as anything but incredibly condescending. "As long as all the game's many fans accept that it's bad, we can be nice to the game"?

I don't even particularly love the game's story myself (as I've said before, it's pretty darn mediocre, though there's worse), but I find the attitude of the Fates story hate crew pretty obnoxious at points, and this is a good example. And of course, from this sentence it's not clear if you think everyone needs to know that Fates' story is bad, or if you think we all need to know the game as a whole is bad (the latter being a pretty ridiculous statement to expect others to accept, but that doesn't stop some people I guess!).

Also maybe I'm misreading you so feel free to clarify.

That's not what I mean. If everyone knows it's bad, then why must we continue to rip it apart and repeat ripping it apart over the same fistful of flaws? We all know it's bad, so we can stop complaining about how bad it is. "Hey, guys, did you know Hitler was evil?" Most people already know this, we don't need more ranting on the same stale topics. But, who am I to tell anyone to stop raging about anything?


As for the minor rant above this, this is because @vanguard333 apparently thinks it's not bad. How is it not bad?

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6 minutes ago, L3xandr3 said:

As for the minor rant above this, this is because @vanguard333 apparently thinks it's not bad. How is it not bad?

Because whether or not the plot of Fates is good or bad is purely subjective. Not everyone will agree with your opinion on Fates just as not everyone will agree with Ottservia's opinion on Fates.

I think that Fates' plot was pathetically executed, is rife with bad tropes, and is plagued by a distinct lack of cohesion, but nobody else has to agree with me on that.

Criticism is a good thing, so long as people can respect each others' perspectives and thoughts on what's being criticized. Invalidating the ideas/opinions of others destroys the possibility of healthy and meaningful discussion.

Edited by twilitfalchion
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10 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

Because whether or not the plot of Fates is good or bad is purely subjective. Not everyone will agree with your opinion on Fates just as not everyone will agree with Ottservia's opinion on Fates.

I think that Fates' plot was pathetically executed, is rife with bad tropes, and is plagued by a distinct lack of cohesion, but nobody else has to agree with me on that.

Criticism is a good thing, so long as people can respect each others' perspectives and thoughts on what's being criticized. Invalidating the ideas/opinions of others destroys the possibility of healthy and meaningful discussion.

Ok, let me correct that statement:

How is it not lazy? What parts of the main story show that they actually put effort into it? Please, prove me wrong! Find something that shows that it isn't lazy.

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2 minutes ago, L3xandr3 said:

Ok, let me correct that statement:

How is it not lazy? What parts of the main story show that they actually put effort into it? Please, prove me wrong! Find something that shows that it isn't lazy.

No one has to prove you anything because this isn't science, it's a videogame, it's art. Its inherent quality can't be measured the same way you can measure say, the quality of a tool created for a very specific physical task.

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6 minutes ago, L3xandr3 said:

How is it not lazy? What parts of the main story show that they actually put effort into it? Please, prove me wrong! Find something that shows that it isn't lazy.

I personally couldn’t do that because there’s very little about Fates that doesn’t feel like a low-substance, low-effort product to me.

Besides, the arts and creative media don’t need to be proven to have qualities like that since their quality is subjective anyway,

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8 minutes ago, NekoKnight said:

We can't criticize contrivances because according to you, all stories are contrived.

All stories are fundamentally contrived and I’ve explained as to why numerous times. Cause really ask yourself “what does contrivance mean?” Cause going by the dictionary definition of what “contrived” means we get “deliberately created rather than arising naturally or spontaneously” which isn’t that why it’s called “fiction” in the first place. It’s not real. It never was. Nothing in a story happens naturally or spontaneously. Like that should be a no brainer. Stories are inherently artificial and constructed meaning they are inherently contrived and unrealistic by definition. Again, it’s called “fiction” for a reason. It’s not real. You can call anything in a story contrived if you try hard enough which is why I don’t see it as a very valid criticism. It comes off as extremely nitpicky to me.

15 minutes ago, NekoKnight said:

People can and do argue that Alm was always meant to be the flawless savior of Valentia and that any themes of a duality between Alm and Celica were just the story we wanted instead of what the writers wanted.

Here’s the thing about that though. There is evidence in the text that directly contradicts this. When I criticize Alm, I’m more so criticizing that he’s inconsistent rather than trying to force the story to be what I want it to be. With Alm I’m more so confused on what exactly they were trying to do with his character at all. Cause for the most part he’s framed as a flawless static protagonist that incites change in other characters namely Clive. And I like that conflict but the issue is that they don’t stick with it and try to pretend that he’s somehow wrong in the end when he never was and that’s a problem. Corrin does not have this problem. Corrin’s character is thematically more consistent than Alm’s character. Because they are a static protagonist more or less throughout the entire story and even when they do deviate from that there’s a reason or explanation for it. It is possible to do dynamic arc and static arc in the same character and I believe Corrin is a decent example of that.

 

25 minutes ago, NekoKnight said:

But let's get into that topic: authorial intent. Why is it that one must "respect the writers" for their writing decisions just because it was "thematic", "by design" or "intentional"? Do I have to give them a pat on the back for making Hinoka and Sakura forgive Corrin despite all the evil he allowed to happen, because it's allegedly part of a theme? Do I have to say it's "just not for me" when they railroad you into invading Hoshido with a series of contrivances just because that's the direction the writer wanted to take? How can any story ever be considered bad when criticisms are countered with "That's just your personal tastes"?

 

Have you ever wrote something before? Have you ever tried to create something before? Cause like I feel like you’re looking at it from a reader’s perspective rather than the writer’s perspective. I’m not saying you have to be a writer to be able to criticize writing but you should at least understand how a writer thinks or understand the fundamentals of what goes into the creative process. Think about it from more a writer’s perspective than a reader’s perspective.

 

14 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

think that Fates' plot was pathetically executed, is rife with bad tropes, and is plagued by a distinct lack of cohesion, but nobody else has to agree with me on that.

This statement bothers me because what the hell does “bad trope” even mean? There is no such thing as an inherently “bad trope” just bad execution. No trope is inherently bad. I don’t understand this statement. Please explain.

 

17 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

Criticism is a good thing, so long as people can respect each others' perspectives and thoughts on what's being criticized. Invalidating the ideas/opinions of others destroys the possibility of healthy and meaningful discussion.

I mean that depends on the criticism though. If I’m being honest if someone even remotely implies that Naruto “contradicted its theme of hard work” I’m going to want to shoot myself because that’s just a wrong and idiotic statement. Anyone who unironically says that probably wasn’t that much attention to the narrative at all. There are such things as bad takes, Y’know. They exist and I have seen them. 

 

10 minutes ago, L3xandr3 said:

Ok, let me correct that statement:

How is it not lazy? What parts of the main story show that they actually put effort into it? Please, prove me wrong! Find something that shows that it isn't lazy.

Then let’s turn it the other way. Prove to me that it is lazy. Prove to me that there was barely any thought put into this story.

also @vanguard333 I’ll reply to your post at a later date because this one is long enough as is

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41 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

“deliberately created rather than arising naturally or spontaneously” which isn’t that why it’s called “fiction” in the first place.

if we just take the meaning literally, many scheme and event in the history of human are from deliberate planning not spontaneously.(unless you're mentally insane so you kill a king because you just happen to be there) so can we start call our history fiction too? sure if you apply it to cases-by cases basis, but avoid generalizing it which you did. and thats not dictionary definition of fiction too

oh no need to clarify or reply, just saying

Edited by joevar
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1 hour ago, Ottservia said:

Then let’s turn it the other way. Prove to me that it is lazy. Prove to me that there was barely any thought put into this story.

So, because you can't answer me, you turn my question back at me? Alright, then:

2 hours ago, L3xandr3 said:

Onto giving examples of it's laziness, name all the various contrived conveniences in Fates.

Oh, you need to go to Notre Saggess? Leo hands you a warp book that has exactly enough power to get you - and your army - there and back. Thanks, Leo, that really helps!

Oh, you need to kill Garon but your sword's weak? Well, it just so happened that Raijinto choose that exact moment to act up and buff Yato. Wow, amazing!

Azura just showed you that your adoptive dad is an evil slime monster? The crystal broke so that your siblings can't see it, too. That's to bad.

There are too many conveniences to call it anything but lazy. They took the easy way out on everything.

Another? Ok then, Iago tells you to kill the Rainbow Sage. Corrin don't want to! Well, to bad for you, the Sage commits sudoku (I know it's not called that, thanks), thus sidestepping the entire difficult choice by taking it out of Corrin's hands.

Every time the plot wills it, every time Corrin must make a hard choice, it just falls into your lap. TH is occasionally guilty of this, too, but oh LORD, does Fates live off convenience. How is a story that relies on convenience anything but lazy?

Was any thought placed into any of the points I've listed above? No, just conveniences. They didn't put any thought into this, as they didn't want to. Anytime there is a problem, they simply convenience their way out of it. Conveniences are a lazy way out of anything. No thought or effort required.

Edited by L3xandr3
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