Vindicated by History

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Medeus said:

I can't say I agree with that. Takumi's descent into being the final antagonist is something Conquest does highlight and not understanding how or why Takumi gets possessed in Conquest is a pretty major plot point to not explore as it means if you don't play the other two routes you're almost completely left in the dark to why he became the way he is. Same with Garon who has the entire plot warped around revealing his true nature and we get little explaining how he got to that state in the first place. Additionally, the game nudges you into wanting to know about those details that aren't explored, with Valla in particular might as well have a 'curious, buy Revelations' sign plastered all over it for how much it leaves the player wanting. 

In the end, I don't see how Conquest went about withholding plot details is any better than TH doing the same. Azura, Takumi, Garon and the like are just as central to Conquest, if not more so, then Rhea and the Agarthans are in Azure Moon, yet they're given worse treatment in how the plot handles the progression of those storylines.

I'm not talking about what makes a compelling or good story, I'm talking about what makes a structured story. Takumi or Garon being possessed isn't actually all that important to Conquest. You could say a wizard did it and leave it at that. Three Houses on the other hand would need significant rewrite to reach a point of narrative cohesion on any one of its routes.

2 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

We didn't start Fire Emblem

Kaga did it first

Ever since is worse

Glad someone caught that reference.

2 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

lmao

Not anymore

Huh? Why, was he banned?

1 hour ago, vanguard333 said:

I'll be the first to say that the story of Three Houses bit off more than it could chew and has a lot of problems, but Fates' narratives are far worse than that of Three Houses. Conquest and Birthright do not work at all as narratives; they rely way too heavily on contrivances and people making horrible out-of-character decisions, and are just nonsensical in so many places. They do not stand on their own.

But, honestly, the main area in which Three Houses shines (in terms of story at least) compared to Fates is the characters. The characters in Three Houses actually have depth to them and are interesting and fascinating characters that do stuff that makes sense for them to do given what we know about them. 99% of the characters in Fates have no depth to them at all; Corrin is a Mary Sue, the royals are inconsistently-written, and pretty much everyone is defined by a single gimmick with no depth to them beyond that. Azura possibly has the most flesh out of the whole cast if only thanks to being the mysterious-deuteragonist character, and she is generally relegated to being just a plot device. At least the plot in Three Houses is actually character-driven.

 

And I'm one of them.

Yeah, the maps in Fates generally stink. But the gameplay problems run deeper than that. Every gameplay element is just thrown in haphazardly, as if they just threw in everything they could think of. Three Houses, for all its problems, at least has focus. Detractors complain about exploring the monastery taking too long and being boring on repeat playthroughs (and I can somewhat agree with that), but you can't deny that it's a core part of the game that serves a clear purpose and ties into everything else.

The Fates character really weren't making much of an attempt to be deep or meaningful though. They were trying to be popcorn, colourful and easy to digest. Do I like the Three Houses characters better? Well yes, I, personally, do, but that might just be down to the aforementioned more mature target base they were going for. I'm not sure I can, in full confidence, say they're actually better. The Fates characteds arent completely awful inisolation, im jist not their target base.

Edited February 20, 2022 by Jotari

[AnonymousSpeed]

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Glad someone caught that reference.

Huh? Why, was he banned?

I am an Oxford man, after all. Very cultured, and a poet.

Yep. Straight to the shadow realm.

[AvatarofDiscord]

1 minute ago, vanguard333 said:

Alm is definitely a Mary Sue as well. But Corrin is definitely also an example. It's not just about things benefiting them; the true indicator of a Mary Sue is that the plot is unnaturally distorted around them, and that's definitely the case for both Alm and Corrin.

Also, when did Corrin's canon mistakes ever come back to bite him? Normally, the plot finds a way to go, "No, that wasn't actually a mistake, and if it was, it wasn't Corrin's fault."

 

In any case, another problem with Corrin, which admittedly is a problem with all the avatar characters, is that they're just not interesting or well-defined characters. However, unlike Robin or Byleth (in 3 out of four routes of Three Houses at least), Corrin is placed front-&-center; it's Corrin's story. In Awakening, it's Alm and Lucina's story as they're the lord characters. In every route except Silver Snow, it's the respective House Leader's story (though admittedly Verdant Wind suffers from largely retreading Silver Snow and thus reducing how much it is Claude's story). Corrin was front-&-center, so they needed to be compelling, but IS couldn't write Corrin as a compelling protagonist, because they needed to write Corrin as an avatar. As a result, they somehow failed to find the compelling protagonist in a human-dragon hybrid from two royal families that go to war against each other; how does one do that?.

Well i'll go by what is the most accepted definition of Mary Sue I can find and judge it from that.

"A Mary Sue is a character who is so perfect that he or she warps the world around them to display their perfection."

As far as the sword thing with Corrin goes, I cannot think of a time this was the case, and one could argue the same thing could have happened with the other Royal weapons.

"It seems as though nothing in this universe except Mary Sue is even real, and is instead a plot device to make Mary Sue seem flawless and loved."

Counting the Birthright path, outside of the Family characters (Cause you know, they are family...) it doesn't seem like Corrin has the most welcome reception coming back to Hoshido

"Honestly, with Hana who's mad at you for no reason, Takumi who doesn't trust you, Saizo who doesn't trust you, and Rinkah who's always angry at everyone including you"

"A Mary Sue can destroy a piece of writing or media, since the characters existence will often forcibly make the world and people around them defy logic to simply display how amazingly radiant they are."

Birthright has Ryoma more the face of the army when he joins, Conquest has his actions speak, Revelations has him make a few mistakes and even get called out (Start of the path and trusting Anthony).

 

[AvatarofDiscord]

1 minute ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I am an Oxford man, after all. Very cultured, and a poet.

Yep. Straight to the shadow realm.

Gotta here this story, can someone tell Avvy a story time 🙂

[vanguard333]

23 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

It's funny, because I actually feel the complete opposite way.

Three Houses characters have more complex family trees than Fates characters, but I think that just draws more attention to how shallow they actually are. Fateswakening characters aren't very deep, but they're at least campy and quirky.

Meanwhile, Fates actually has very tight and interesting gameplay, while Three Houses feels like a bunch of mechanics and ideas that sounded good on paper thrown together with an understanding of how to make them work or interact.

Okay. I never said anything about family trees; I think they have depth because, well, they have depth: they have goals, they have beliefs and convictions, they have personalities beyond just one shallow gimmick.

I'll agree about Fates having interesting gameplay, but I definitely will not agree about it being tight. It is perhaps the most scattered gameplay I have ever seen in an FE game. With Three Houses, there at least is a clear focus and the different gameplay elements, aside from stuff like the fishing minigame (which I suspect is only there because fishing minigames are everywhere these days), actually do interact and work together.

 

22 minutes ago, Jotari said:

The Fates character really weren't making much of an attempt to be deep or meaningful though. They were trying to be popcorn, colourful and easy to digest. Do I like the Three Houses characters better? Well yes, I, personally, do, but that might just be down to the aforementioned more mature target base they were going for. I'm not sure I can, in full confidence, say they're actually better. The Fates characteds arent completely awful inisolation, im jist not their target base.

I mean... okay; you can make a cast of quirky and shallow characters for an FE game and make it work, but you have to admit that such a cast is ill-fitting in a game story like Fates that has pretentions of being nuanced and morally complex (I say "pretentions", because every time the game is about to present something that could be nuanced or complex, it immediately backs out of it).

I don't think depth has anything to do with maturity of the target base; deep characters and shallow characters alike can be enjoyed by older and younger audiences. Just look at something like Avatar: the Last Airbender for deep and compelling characters in a story targeted at a young audience.

 

@AvatarofDiscord I can hardly read a word you typed without hurting my eyes as the tiny font is straining my eyes. Please reply with the standard font & size.

 

@AnonymousSpeed I'm interested in hearing what happened as well.

Edited February 20, 2022 by vanguard333

[AvatarofDiscord]

4 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Okay. I never said anything about family trees; I think they have depth because, well, they have depth: they have goals, they have beliefs and convictions, they have personalities beyond just one shallow gimmick.

I'll agree about Fates having interesting gameplay, but I definitely will not agree about it being tight. It is perhaps the most scattered gameplay I have ever seen in an FE game. With Three Houses, there at least is a clear focus and the different gameplay elements, aside from stuff like the fishing minigame (which I suspect is only there because fishing minigames are everywhere these days), actually do interact and work together.

 

I mean... okay; you can make a cast of quirky and shallow characters for an FE game and make it work, but you have to admit that such a cast is ill-fitting in a game story like Fates that has pretentions of being nuanced and morally complex (I say "pretentions", because every time the game is about to present something that could be nuanced or complex, it immediately backs out of it).

I don't think depth has anything to do with maturity of the target base; deep characters and shallow characters alike can be enjoyed by older and younger audiences. Just look at something like Avatar: the Last Airbender for deep and compelling characters in a story targeted at a young audience.

 

@AvatarofDiscord I can hardly read a word you typed without hurting my eyes as the tiny font is straining my eyes. Please reply with the standard font & size.

Sorry, stupid copy and paste messed up the text

Well i'll go by what is the most accepted definition of Mary Sue I can find and judge it from that.

"A Mary Sue is a character who is so perfect that he or she warps the world around them to display their perfection."

As far as the sword thing with Corrin goes, I cannot think of a time this was the case, and one could argue the same thing could have happened with the other Royal weapons.

"It seems as though nothing in this universe except Mary Sue is even real, and is instead a plot device to make Mary Sue seem flawless and loved."

Counting the Birthright path, outside of the Family characters (Cause you know, they are family...) it doesn't seem like Corrin has the most welcome reception coming back to Hoshido

"Honestly, with Hana who's mad at you for no reason, Takumi who doesn't trust you, Saizo who doesn't trust you, and Rinkah who's always angry at everyone including you"

"A Mary Sue can destroy a piece of writing or media, since the characters existence will often forcibly make the world and people around them defy logic to simply display how amazingly radiant they are."

Birthright has Ryoma more the face of the army when he joins, Conquest has his actions speak, Revelations has him make a few mistakes and even get called out (Start of the path and trusting Anthony).

[AnonymousSpeed]

31 minutes ago, AvatarofDiscord said:

Gotta here this story, can someone tell Avvy a story time 🙂

Alright lads, gather round. Uncle Anon's gonna tell you a story, and it's a good one! So shut up if you don't like it.
 

Spoiler

Once there was this dude, Ottservia. He was known as a big fan of Severa/Selena. Some might call her his "waifu", others might call him a "simp". Now, Ottservia was an interesting guy. There was this one user who was sharing how she'd been, by her own diagnosis, bullied into being asexual. Ottservia, as a wise sage, advised her to watch Naruto. So she could learn about the power of friendship I guess? In retrospect, that was pretty hilarious. Not everyone can say something like that with a straight face, yet alone unironically.

He was also well known for being a big Fates plot apologist. The dude wrote, like, a thirty page essay about how the plot was actually very deep, with very deep themes that people couldn't see because they just didn't give it a chance. He made a bunch of threads about anime tropes, too. That should give you a fairly decent picture of his approach to art criticism- a lot of reading too much into anime plots.

He was also a regular poster in the unpopular opinions thread, which is a very civilized place. There came a time to discuss Fates in that thread, and this is where our friend Jotari comes in. See, Ottservia and Jotari were in an argument. To simplify, Ottservia said people should read his essay about how Fates was deep and had deep themes. Jotari said he did and the essay was wrong. Ottservia said he just wasn't giving the game a chance, so Jotari went through his individual arguments and expressed why he thought they were wrong. So Otts said he just wasn't giving the game a chance.

I should note that he attempted to ascribe a Yin-Yang relationship to Hoshido and Nohr, betraying that he completely did not understand what Yin and Yang represent, and probably assumed it applied simply because the two countries have dualistic aspects. This went on for entirely too many pages, and so eventually, a moderator showed up.

This moderator was very clearly being impatient with him, so Otts decided it would be a great time to start arguing about Camilla. Was he right or not? Of course he wasn't, but neither was the moderator, only I am ever right. Always! Me! No one else! Besides, who was right doesn't matter. If you poke a dragon to tell 'em the facts, the results are not much different from telling 'em the unfacts. I don't even really remember what the specific argument was about, just that it came up whether she was degrading to women or not. Being a wise sage, Otts decided to continue arguing with the angry moderator about this hot-button topic despite basically being told, to his face, by the moderator and others, that he really should shut up.

So, uh...he got banned.

And we all learned some kind of lesson.

 

19 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Okay. I never said anything about family trees; I think they have depth because, well, they have depth: they have goals, they have beliefs and convictions, they have personalities beyond just one shallow gimmick.

I'll agree about Fates having interesting gameplay, but I definitely will not agree about it being tight. It is perhaps the most scattered gameplay I have ever seen in an FE game. With Three Houses, there at least is a clear focus and the different gameplay elements, aside from stuff like the fishing minigame (which I suspect is only there because fishing minigames are everywhere these days), actually do interact and work together.

See, I think all of those praises you just gave are actually unsubstantiated falsehoods. The closest thing I see to a 'focus' in the gameplay of Three Houses is making everyone a wyvern lord.

EDIT: I realized my tone might have come off as a bit hostile, which was not my intention, but I really just don't see it.

19 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

I don't think depth has anything to do with maturity of the target base; deep characters and shallow characters alike can be enjoyed by older and younger audiences. Just look at something like Avatar: the Last Airbender for deep and compelling characters in a story targeted at a young audience.

Dude, it's a cartoon, not Hitchcock.

Edited February 20, 2022 by AnonymousSpeed

[vanguard333]

@AvatarofDiscord Forgive me for taking a while to reply; I'm in the middle of watching a helpful video on plotting out a novel (I'm an aspiring writer).

 

33 minutes ago, AvatarofDiscord said:

Sorry, stupid copy and paste messed up the text

Well i'll go by what is the most accepted definition of Mary Sue I can find and judge it from that.

"A Mary Sue is a character who is so perfect that he or she warps the world around them to display their perfection."

As far as the sword thing with Corrin goes, I cannot think of a time this was the case, and one could argue the same thing could have happened with the other Royal weapons.

"It seems as though nothing in this universe except Mary Sue is even real, and is instead a plot device to make Mary Sue seem flawless and loved."

Counting the Birthright path, outside of the Family characters (Cause you know, they are family...) it doesn't seem like Corrin has the most welcome reception coming back to Hoshido

"Honestly, with Hana who's mad at you for no reason, Takumi who doesn't trust you, Saizo who doesn't trust you, and Rinkah who's always angry at everyone including you"

"A Mary Sue can destroy a piece of writing or media, since the characters existence will often forcibly make the world and people around them defy logic to simply display how amazingly radiant they are."

Birthright has Ryoma more the face of the army when he joins, Conquest has his actions speak, Revelations has him make a few mistakes and even get called out (Start of the path and trusting Anthony).

These read like scattered points. I'll do my best to respond to them.

Honestly, I'm fine with the sword choosing Corrin and don't really count it as an example of them being a Mary Sue, especially since Revelations' reveal about the origin of the sword and of the Rainbow Sage's past heavily implies that the reason it chooses Corrin is that Corrin is that Corrin desires peace, which would fulfill the Rainbow Sage's atonement. I prefer to cite other examples, such as everyone plot-relevant fawning over them except for those who have something "wrong" about them related to why they don't fawn over Corrin, the story bending over backwards to glorify Corrin, etc.

And all those characters you listed have no bearing and immediately trust Corrin anyway.

How do your last statement there argue against that quote?

 

21 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Alright lads, gather round. Uncle Anon's gonna tell you a story, and it's a good one! So shut up if you don't like it.

Aw, that's too bad. He and I were in the middle of a long conversation about different anime and I was hoping to talk to him about one that I recently watched called Golden Kamuy. Now who am I going to talk to about anime?

 

21 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

See, I think all of those praises you just gave are actually unsubstantiated falsehoods. The closest thing I see to a 'focus' in the gameplay of Three Houses is making everyone a wyvern lord.

EDIT: I realized my tone might have come off as a bit hostile, which was not my intention, but I really just don't see it.

Dude, it's a cartoon, not Hitchcock.

I can back it up though by pointing out the ways in which Three Houses' gameplay interconnects. There's a clear focus on the "teacher" aspect, with customization of the students being key: the class change system working by reaching certain skill levels interconnects with directly upgrading the students through the teaching mechanics, which interconnects with the other monastery activities; most of which are about either raising support or raising skill levels, the "weapons can break, but can also be repaired" interconnects with how combat arts work, etc.

Proving that the characters in Three Houses have goals, multiple traits, beliefs & convictions, etc., would lead to us being here all day as the only way to prove that definitively would be to list those things for every single character. But, at the very least, you can't deny that the characters in Three Houses have clear beliefs & convictions.

As for the wyvern lord remark, class balance has never been a strong point of FE, so that's rather unfair. Fates isn't well-balanced with its classes either. 

 

I understand; it's hard to convey tone online as it's all just text. I struggle with it as well, and my autism making it that I struggle with tone even in a normal conversation doesn't help.

 

Weird remark, as I literally cited a cartoon as an example of my point that you responded to there.

Edited February 20, 2022 by vanguard333

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

It's funny, because I actually feel the complete opposite way.

Three Houses characters have more complex family trees than Fates characters, but I think that just draws more attention to how shallow they actually are. Fateswakening characters aren't very deep, but they're at least campy and quirky.

Meanwhile, Fates actually has very tight and interesting gameplay, while Three Houses feels like a bunch of mechanics and ideas that sounded good on paper thrown together with an understanding of how to make them work or interact.

Because pedantry is fun.

I don't know how family trees managed to be a part of this, but I'd be remiss to not bring up this thread I recently made now that they have somehow managed to become relevant.

Now to be fair that's an attempt to make a Fates family tree be as complex as possible, but just to talk about it in general, does Three Houses have a more complex family trees? It certainly leans into the whole dynasty aspect like Genealogy, but unlike Genealogy it doesn't seem to have many inter family marriages. Are Ferdinand and Bernadetta related etc? If they are it doesn't seem like it's a part of the plot, unlike in Jugdral. Once again Three House's plain not showing us the previous generation kind of just sucks.

 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Jotari

[AvatarofDiscord]

3 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

@AvatarofDiscord Forgive me for taking a while to reply; I'm in the middle of watching a helpful video on plotting out a novel (I'm an aspiring writer)

Honestly, I'm fine with the sword choosing Corrin and don't really count it as an example of them being a Mary Sue, especially since Revelations' reveal about the origin of the sword and of the Rainbow Sage's past heavily implies that the reason it chooses Corrin is that Corrin is that Corrin desires peace, which would fulfill the Rainbow Sage's atonement. I prefer to cite other examples, such as everyone plot-relevant fawning over them except for those who have something "wrong" about them related to why they don't fawn over Corrin, the story bending over backwards to glorify Corrin, etc.

And all those characters you listed have no bearing and immediately trust Corrin anyway.

How do your last statement there argue against that quote?

 

I wouldn't say the story bends over backwords to glorify Corrin, mainly cause from what I remember, in Birthright he's always been called out by his other family for his siding with Hoshido and vise versa with Conquest, and in revelations it has him trying to get the trust of everyone and it requires Azura to help him.

I might read through the script a 4th time but i'm a bit busy playing KoL...

No they dont, you missed the point
Saizo doesn't trust Corrin and only trusts Sakura, that's why he joins in Revelations, and in Birthright he joins you to help find Ryoma and that's with the other Siblings. Rinkah would only trust him because he saved her during chapter 1 and even then he got a talking to by Camilla, Leo, and Xander. 

My last point was trying to show that that either of those situations either didnt defied logic (in fact it was expected) but show that Corrin wasn't portrayed in the right in either situation.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Alright lads, gather round. Uncle Anon's gonna tell you a story, and it's a good one! So shut up if you don't like it.
 

  Hide contents

Once there was this dude, Ottservia. He was known as a big fan of Severa/Selena. Some might call her his "waifu", others might call him a "simp". Now, Ottservia was an interesting guy. There was this one user who was sharing how she'd been, by her own diagnosis, bullied into being asexual. Ottservia, as a wise sage, advised her to watch Naruto. So she could learn about the power of friendship I guess? In retrospect, that was pretty hilarious. Not everyone can say something like that with a straight face, yet alone unironically.

He was also well known for being a big Fates plot apologist. The dude wrote, like, a thirty page essay about how the plot was actually very deep, with very deep themes that people couldn't see because they just didn't give it a chance. He made a bunch of threads about anime tropes, too. That should give you a fairly decent picture of his approach to art criticism- a lot of reading too much into anime plots.

He was also a regular poster in the unpopular opinions thread, which is a very civilized place. There came a time to discuss Fates in that thread, and this is where our friend Jotari comes in. See, Ottservia and Jotari were in an argument. To simplify, Ottservia said people should read his essay about how Fates was deep and had deep themes. Jotari said he did and the essay was wrong. Ottservia said he just wasn't giving the game a chance, so Jotari went through his individual arguments and expressed why he thought they were wrong. So Otts said he just wasn't giving the game a chance.

I should note that he attempted to ascribe a Yin-Yang relationship to Hoshido and Nohr, betraying that he completely did not understand what Yin and Yang represent, and probably assumed it applied simply because the two countries have dualistic aspects. This went on for entirely too many pages, and so eventually, a moderator showed up.

This moderator was very clearly being impatient with him, so Otts decided it would be a great time to start arguing about Camilla. Was he right or not? Of course he wasn't, but neither was the moderator, only I am ever right. Always! Me! No one else! Besides, who was right doesn't matter. If you poke a dragon to tell 'em the facts, the results are not much different from telling 'em the unfacts. I don't even really remember what the specific argument was about, just that it came up whether she was degrading to women or not. Being a wise sage, Otts decided to continue arguing with the angry moderator about this hot-button topic despite basically being told, to his face, by the moderator and others, that he really should shut up.

So, uh...he got banned.

And we all learned some kind of lesson.

 

Well, I wasn't the only one, and I never actually read the essay he posted elsewhere, just responded to the points presented when they came up. That Yin-Yang point was particularly great though. And the lesson of "don't argue with the mods" is a salient one for everyone. Serenes has good moderation in the sense that toxicity is kept low, but question the state site authority and they will come down on you with all the mercy of a blind Thracia 776 run.

43 minutes ago, AvatarofDiscord said:

I wouldn't say the story bends over backwords to glorify Corrin, mainly cause from what I remember, in Birthright he's always been called out by his other family for his siding with Hoshido and vise versa with Conquest, and in revelations it has him trying to get the trust of everyone and it requires Azura to help him.

I might read through the script a 4th time but i'm a bit busy playing KoL...

No they dont, you missed the point
Saizo doesn't trust Corrin and only trusts Sakura, that's why he joins in Revelations, and in Birthright he joins you to help find Ryoma and that's with the other Siblings. Rinkah would only trust him because he saved her during chapter 1 and even then he got a talking to by Camilla, Leo, and Xander. 

My last point was trying to show that that either of those situations either didnt defied logic (in fact it was expected) but show that Corrin wasn't portrayed in the right in either situation.

Only tangentially related to this comment, but since this is a Fates thread in general, I'm going to throw in that one thing that I feel Fates is somewhat weak on is giving us an ordinary point of view for the citizens of each nation. I guess the likes of Saizo and Hanna are meant to represent the ordinary people to some extent, but given they're literal retainers to the royal family, it doesn't feel like it. It feels like they're firmly entrenched in the clique of the elite. Fates doesn't put much, if any, focus on who is a noble or who is a commoner, but it's reasonable to assume all the retainers are nobles of some sort (though Oboro's family is a seamsters, maybe they're like super good at it). The only characters in Fates that really seem like "just common folk" are Benny and Charlotte who are boarder guards. And they aren't actually used that much to explore the view points on the war. Hell few characters actually are. That's probably Revelation's fault. Slightly difficult to write supports showing a Hoshidan's view on the conflict if in the third path they're kind of fighting a completely different conflict and need the same supports.

[Medeus]

5 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I'm just saying, when I read the Bible, I don't need the backstory on every demon Jesus casts out.

That said, the plot details being withheld in Conquest is less egregious for a few reasons. The first is that it has an obvious profit motive- there's no illusions about what's going on. Secondly is that Three Houses very much wants its story to be taken seriously, whereas Conquest mostly doesn't give a hoot. Lastly, each route of Fates ends in an essentially satisfactory, thematically resolved way. You could play Conquest and only Conquest while feeling like things wrapped up nicely in the end.

Considering the bible is a religious tome I'd assume people would be reading it for vastly different reasons then a video game.  

As for your second point, IS made a big deal about Fates being a grand story with a major political and familial consequences that would be vastly superior to Awakening and would improve on its faults and mistakes. To say that it didn't give a hoot I'd say is probably taking your own read of the situation, not of what the writers and developers intended. 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Medeus

[Saint Rubenio]

5 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Ruben is also in the Super Mario Bros movie good club?

I only recently watched it in the original dub. I spent the entire runtime making fun of Meryo's heavy, grungy American accent.

That movie is comedy gold in ways I seriously doubt Chris Prattio will be able to match.

Quote

Amazing. Will you join me on pilgrimage to the site where they filmed it?

Ha! Sure. We can call it New Mystery of the Scapellis.

5 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I mean...eh? I feel like this is an effective psychological trick, but doesn't actually prove anything is okay, or even "not as bad". It simply shows that it's not the worst possible, and past a certain point I think putting sins in a hierarchy of severity gets kinda silly.

Sure, but I got to horrify him. That was fun.

2 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

So, uh...he got banned

Shame. I remember back before I played Fates, I trashtalked the artstyle for the fanservice and he came out of nowhere to defend it for being expressive and full of personality. I kinda would've liked to tell him he was right in the end.

...though I must say, I don't see the deep philosophy in the game. Unless you count Garon's hilarious "rebellions are like seeds" spiel that he repeats like 10 times in Conquest. That was very phisolophical indeed.

Edited February 20, 2022 by Saint Rubenio

[AvatarofDiscord]

15 hours ago, Medeus said:

Considering the bible is a religious tome I'd assume people would be reading it for vastly different reasons then a video game.  

As for your second point, IS made a big deal about Fates being a grand story with a major political and familial consequences that would be vastly superior to Awakening and would improve on its faults and mistakes. To say that it didn't give a hoot I'd say is probably taking your own read of the situation, not of what the writers and developers intended. 

To be fair, the Bible has been used for Archeology and has scholars talking about the shocking accurate history it gets right

[Medeus]

24 minutes ago, AvatarofDiscord said:

To be fair, the Bible has been used for Archeology and has scholars talking about the shocking accurate history it gets right

That's true, but either way the Bible still wouldn't be approached in the same way a video game's story would. 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Medeus

[AnonymousSpeed]

12 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

I can back it up though by pointing out the ways in which Three Houses' gameplay interconnects. There's a clear focus on the "teacher" aspect, with customization of the students being key: the class change system working by reaching certain skill levels interconnects with directly upgrading the students through the teaching mechanics, which interconnects with the other monastery activities; most of which are about either raising support or raising skill levels, the "weapons can break, but can also be repaired" interconnects with how combat arts work, etc.

Proving that the characters in Three Houses have goals, multiple traits, beliefs & convictions, etc., would lead to us being here all day as the only way to prove that definitively would be to list those things for every single character. But, at the very least, you can't deny that the characters in Three Houses have clear beliefs & convictions.

As for the wyvern lord remark, class balance has never been a strong point of FE, so that's rather unfair. Fates isn't well-balanced with its classes either.

Yeah, but I don't think most of those interactions are more than superficial. It really makes most of them into a means to an end, like the experience bar, except I don't have to manage experience with beating the map.

I kinda would. None of them really followed their beliefs and convictions during the five year time skip, which was crushingly disappointing to me.

True, but there is some opportunity to making Effie a fighter beyond not making her a Maid.

12 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

Weird remark, as I literally cited a cartoon as an example of my point that you responded to there.

Exactly.

12 hours ago, Jotari said:

Now to be fair that's an attempt to make a Fates family tree be as complex as possible, but just to talk about it in general, does Three Houses have a more complex family trees? It certainly leans into the whole dynasty aspect like Genealogy, but unlike Genealogy it doesn't seem to have many inter family marriages.

Er, right. "Family tree" as a shorthand for worldbuilding that is ultimately very superficial. I think the only time I was interested by the world of Fodlan was when Cyril talked about Almyran war culture.

11 hours ago, Jotari said:

the state

*sounds of increasing disdain*

11 hours ago, Medeus said:

Considering the bible is a religious tome I'd assume people would be reading it for vastly different reasons then a video game.  

As for your second point, IS made a big deal about Fates being a grand story with a major political and familial consequences that would be vastly superior to Awakening and would improve on its faults and mistakes. To say that it didn't give a hoot I'd say is probably taking your own read of the situation, not of what the writers and developers intended. 

Of course, but I don't really play video games for the plot, so we've kinda jumped ship already.

It seems more like the marketing department went wild with the original idea well after it had been abandoned. Although I admit I prefer my read of the situation to yours.

10 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Ha! Sure. We can call it New Mystery of the Scapellis.

It's also a few hours from where I live, so when I say "pilgrimage" I really mean "I'll wake up early one morning and meet you there".

10 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Sure, but I got to horrify him. That was fun.

Ah, a noble man's goal. Well done.

10 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Shame. I remember back before I played Fates, I trashtalked the artstyle for the fanservice and he came out of nowhere to defend it for being expressive and full of personality. I kinda would've liked to tell him he was right in the end.

...though I must say, I don't see the deep philosophy in the game. Unless you count Garon's hilarious "rebellions are like seeds" spiel that he repeats like 10 times in Conquest. That was very phisolophical indeed.

Yeah, to be honest, that is a correct take. Even the character designs I dislike are more about what they express than a failure to express it.

It's probably good enough to get a political science degree.

20 minutes ago, AvatarofDiscord said:

To be fair, the Bible has been used for Archeology and has scholars talking about the shocking accurate history it gets right

There existed no evidence for the Hittites outside of the Bible until the 1800s.

Later archeological evidence revealed that the Trojans were also real, and more-or-less Hittites.

[Medeus]

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Of course, but I don't really play video games for the plot, so we've kinda jumped ship already.

Then that's a difference of opinion, so we'll leave it at that.

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

It seems more like the marketing department went wild with the original idea well after it had been abandoned. Although I admit I prefer my read of the situation to yours.

It was also mentioned in interviews by the director and developers that the wanted a stronger story and IS even went as far as to get a professional writer in Shin Kibayashi to help draft Fates' story. So it wasn't just marketing, IS definitely gave a hoot and were trying to make a better story by taking steps to improve on their mistakes with Awakening and put out a stronger narrative. You can prefer your read, but you have to understand that it's not supported by IS' own words or actions on the matter. 

Edited February 21, 2022 by Medeus

[AvatarofDiscord]

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

There existed no evidence for the Hittites outside of the Bible until the 1800s.

Later archeological evidence revealed that the Trojans were also real, and more-or-less Hittites.

Asked a friend of mine to double check that and he agreed with the first point but the second one he disagreed, saying

"Trojans were not more-or-less Hittites. They shared a common language at some times, though, Luwian."

[AnonymousSpeed]

15 minutes ago, Medeus said:

Then that's a difference of opinion, so we'll leave it at that.

It was also mentioned in interviews by the director and developers that the wanted a stronger story and IS even went as far as to get a professional writer in Shin Kibayashi to help draft Fates' story. So it wasn't just marketing, IS definitely gave a hoot and were trying to make a better story by taking steps to improve on their mistakes with Awakening and put out a stronger narrative. You can prefer your read, but you have to understand that it's not supported by IS' own words or actions on the matter. 

Fair.

While it is true they hired this guy to help draft the story, they also rapidly deviated from what he wrote until the final product was nearly unrecognizable. Now, I'll admit I'm no industry insider, but I would assume the story wasn't their primary concern if they went so off target from their storytelling specialist.

8 minutes ago, AvatarofDiscord said:

Asked a friend of mine to double check that and he agreed with the first point but the second one he disagreed, saying

"Trojans were not more-or-less Hittites. They shared a common language at some times, though, Luwian."

Whoops, my bad.

[eclipse]

20 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Alright lads, gather round. Uncle Anon's gonna tell you a story, and it's a good one! So shut up if you don't like it.
 

  Reveal hidden contents

Once there was this dude, Ottservia. He was known as a big fan of Severa/Selena. Some might call her his "waifu", others might call him a "simp". Now, Ottservia was an interesting guy. There was this one user who was sharing how she'd been, by her own diagnosis, bullied into being asexual. Ottservia, as a wise sage, advised her to watch Naruto. So she could learn about the power of friendship I guess? In retrospect, that was pretty hilarious. Not everyone can say something like that with a straight face, yet alone unironically.

He was also well known for being a big Fates plot apologist. The dude wrote, like, a thirty page essay about how the plot was actually very deep, with very deep themes that people couldn't see because they just didn't give it a chance. He made a bunch of threads about anime tropes, too. That should give you a fairly decent picture of his approach to art criticism- a lot of reading too much into anime plots.

He was also a regular poster in the unpopular opinions thread, which is a very civilized place. There came a time to discuss Fates in that thread, and this is where our friend Jotari comes in. See, Ottservia and Jotari were in an argument. To simplify, Ottservia said people should read his essay about how Fates was deep and had deep themes. Jotari said he did and the essay was wrong. Ottservia said he just wasn't giving the game a chance, so Jotari went through his individual arguments and expressed why he thought they were wrong. So Otts said he just wasn't giving the game a chance.

I should note that he attempted to ascribe a Yin-Yang relationship to Hoshido and Nohr, betraying that he completely did not understand what Yin and Yang represent, and probably assumed it applied simply because the two countries have dualistic aspects. This went on for entirely too many pages, and so eventually, a moderator showed up.

This moderator was very clearly being impatient with him, so Otts decided it would be a great time to start arguing about Camilla. Was he right or not? Of course he wasn't, but neither was the moderator, only I am ever right. Always! Me! No one else! Besides, who was right doesn't matter. If you poke a dragon to tell 'em the facts, the results are not much different from telling 'em the unfacts. I don't even really remember what the specific argument was about, just that it came up whether she was degrading to women or not. Being a wise sage, Otts decided to continue arguing with the angry moderator about this hot-button topic despite basically being told, to his face, by the moderator and others, that he really should shut up.

So, uh...he got banned.

And we all learned some kind of lesson.

 

And you are wrong.  It would be accurate to say that Ottservia hasn't been back since then.  If you aren't sure about what happened to someone, say you're not sure, because bullshit like this doesn't help.  Or better yet, ping me, and I might explain it (depending on the context of the situation and all).

---

As for the topic, Fates was ambitious, and it failed hard in certain areas.  I think the story and characters are a mess.  But I also think that those who have been around since Fates' release has already said what they wanted to say, so digging this up seven years later doesn't look like an argument in good faith.

[Armchair General]

Just now, eclipse said:

But I also think that those who have been around since Fates' release has already said what they wanted to say, so digging this up seven years later doesn't look like an argument in good faith.

The only reason why it's brought up is that most of us hate a few aspects of the plot or the gameplay of 3H; and since that there's an new FE game  on the horizon, Fates has fallen out of the hate train because we expect the devs to actually learn from their mistakes.

But I really didn't care that much for Birthright. Sure, Conquest was kind of entertaining on just how far Corrin was twisting the meaning of his orders; but the story was got kind of bland after the ninja cave level.

[eclipse]

Just now, Armchair General said:

The only reason why it's brought up is that most of us hate a few aspects of the plot or the gameplay of 3H; and since that there's an new FE game  on the horizon, Fates has fallen out of the hate train because we expect the devs to actually learn from their mistakes.

But I really didn't care that much for Birthright. Sure, Conquest was kind of entertaining on just how far Corrin was twisting the meaning of his orders; but the story was got kind of bland after the ninja cave level.

I talk way less about 3H than Fates, but it's because I have lot less to say about the former.

Strangely enough, I liked Birthright best in terms of story, because straightforward seems to work best with this cast.  Conquest tried to introduce some sort of intrigue, but it fell flat IMO.  Revelation's story plummeted during the last third.

[Armchair General]

To be fair, Conquest only makes sense if you knew the rest of the lore; whereas Birthright is it's own self-contained adventure, barring two specific incidents in the middle of the game.

[vanguard333]

4 minutes ago, eclipse said:

As for the topic, Fates was ambitious, and it failed hard in certain areas.  I think the story and characters are a mess.  But I also think that those who have been around since Fates' release has already said what they wanted to say, so digging this up seven years later doesn't look like an argument in good faith.

Indeed. I know I have already said what I wanted to say about Fates many times.

Speaking of Fates having been ambitious; ambition has often been the enemy of the FE series; hasn't it? I'm not saying the series shouldn't strive to do new things; obviously they should, but it's interesting just how often the series tends to bite off more than it can chew when it decides to be ambitious. I hope that, for the next FE game, they find a way to do something creative without overreaching in their ambition; Path of Radiance comes to mind in that regard.

[AvatarofDiscord]

11 minutes ago, eclipse said:

And you are wrong.  It would be accurate to say that Ottservia hasn't been back since then.  If you aren't sure about what happened to someone, say you're not sure, because bullshit like this doesn't help.  Or better yet, ping me, and I might explain it (depending on the context of the situation and all).

---

As for the topic, Fates was ambitious, and it failed hard in certain areas.  I think the story and characters are a mess.  But I also think that those who have been around since Fates' release has already said what they wanted to say, so digging this up seven years later doesn't look like an argument in good faith.

Can you tell the story for Avvy then, I wanna hear this 🙂