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Kysafen

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    Data-mined Information (SPOILERS; please read first post)

    in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

    Posted · Edited by Kysafen

    3 hours ago, BlizzardWolf95 said:

    Just had a listen through a lot of the ripped voice lines...

    There's heartbreaking lines that characters say when their friends/family die in battle near them.
    That's not cool, Nintendo.

    Aww, did mean 'ol Intelligent Systems trigger your delicate little snowflake heart?

    My god, it's almost as if people actually die in war, or something. :c

    fire emblem binding blade COMPLETE

    in Concepts

    Posted · Edited by Kysafen

    Simple: just get some of the JUMP scans showing the maps, then get BWDYeti's FE Map Creator, and recreate them as close as possible.

    merchtop10gazou-fev.gif

    And the editor is really, really easy to use. As far as the enemy placement goes, that's a subject unto itself.

    V Map: Start on the bottom-center. A huge swarm of enemies on one far side, and a few elite enemies coming to you on the other far side, with some mid-level enemies in the mid-center corridors. Assuming that "front door" is openable, place some generals there with archers/snipers/mages behind them, as a sort of "hardest yet most direct" route. If you want to make it evil, place a mage/sage with Bolting in the middle, if not the boss.

    As for the J Map, use the same map design sensibilities of Thracia 776's chapter 21: obvious emphasis on defenses. Ballistae on the island/around the castle, archers/armorslayers around the castle (and in the hands of the advancing army up the J), Generals on the bridges. Station Horsemen/Paladins with "attack when in range" A.I. around/behind the castle, and a platoon on the tip of the J. Horsemen are, with the size of the map, going to be more effective in traversing more terrain, so equip some soldiers/halberdiers with Horseslayers. One strategy that would easily end the map is using a wyvern/pegasus ferrying a high-DEF General and cheesing the enemies around the castle, but a ballista in addition to the paladins surrounding being equipped with Armorslayers would prevent that. An aggressive strategy should be favorable, if by the time you reach the south bridges you'd be at a tactical advantage. You'd want to incentivize that risk of running into a horseslayer with a reward, after all.

    Generic stuff, all in all.

    (SLIGHT UPDATE, 8/10/15) Rewrite Awakening's plot (now with cinnamon-flavored poll goodness!)

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted

    So if I understand correctly, in gen 1, Robin acts as the tactician of the Shepherds and hides all his misery and hatred under a mask and socialize with the Shepherds normally, essentially making him look like a normal main character. Then he kills Chrom and the true face of Robin is revealed in gen 2, where his angsty personality is shown. Up until then, there is no hint at all?

    1. Robin confessing the "dreams" he/she's had of killing Chrom

    2. When you fight Tiki in Gen 1, she tries to convince Chrom of turning Robin over to her, saying "you don't know how treacherous this man is!" or something along those lines.

    (SLIGHT UPDATE, 8/10/15) Rewrite Awakening's plot (now with cinnamon-flavored poll goodness!)

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted

    As I see it, you are putting large emphasis on Robin being a fellborn, matching other characters that are vessels in their games, and straight up hates the world because of their inheritance. So basically, you are discarding him/her as main character altogether, to make them a catalyst for the coming apocalypse and delegate the main character role to Lucina (with Chrom being the tragic hero fated to die because of stupidity).

    I'd still have Robin be the same tactician character whose appearance would be customized, and would still make some decisions in the game (perhaps even decisions that affect what can happen in Gen 2, level-design or in terms of character recruitment). Robin would play out as a sort of vessel for the player, and most definitely a main character... up until the point where Robin kills Chrom, something that would come out of left field and serve to sever the ties between player and character, setting it in stone when Robin in Gen 2 admits that everything he/she did in Gen 1 was all an act on his/her behalf.

    (SLIGHT UPDATE, 8/10/15) Rewrite Awakening's plot (now with cinnamon-flavored poll goodness!)

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted · Edited by Kysafen

    Thing is Anri is said to be the guy who took down Medeus not Grima so they're different people. Unless Grima and Medeus are the same person but that's a whole lot of fuckery to wrap your head around.

    I'm running this under the logic that only those (and descendants of those) who have made a pact with Naga may wield the Falchion. It makes sense because Anri is Marth's ancestor, and since Chrom/Lucina wield the Falchion, then they're distant descendants of Marth, and by extension, Anri. Unless there was something I was missing? If there was the possibility that Awakening's world, and the different Falchion/Shield of Seals, AND the different function of the Fire Emblem in the original Awakening was a result of Marth's lore being different than the lore established in FE3 Books 1/2, I'm not going by that here, as cool of a "what if" scenario that'd be.

    And as far as Grima's relation to Medeus... see first post; it's a creative liberty.

    It was established that most of the Earth Dragons degenerated into feral beasts besides Medeus (who became a Manakete) and Loptyr (who made a blood pact with a human and implanted his will into a Tome that would let him hijack certain members of said human's bloodline). Grima is neither a Manakete or dependant on a Tome, yet he can speak coherently and scheme. Neither of which are the actions of a feral beast.

    The Earth Dragons, along with all the other dragons, turned feral because they refused to assume a human form. Bear in mind that Grima would be in human form 99% of the game. Grima's harvesting of quintessence in the rewrite would reflect an understanding of how to handle it. But yes, Bishop Galle (the human from the Yggdrasil Outrealm that Loptyr made a pact with) would have to be written into the script in some form, as that was a consistency error on my part.

    Nice to see a topic like this. I liked Awakening's general plotline but the execution was terrible. I actually liked the Valm arc most, as it was just pure war (which I happen to like in fiction) instead of chasing evil dragons, but there were so many holes and so little explanation. I liked Robin's character a lot, but to really understand his character, one needs to look quite deep.

    Is this just an idea you are toying with or are you planning to do a fanfiction of sorts? I am a recent FE fan, so I am not too acquainted with the mystics and lore of the FEverse. If I did a rewrite, I would probably lessen the fantasy and magic aspect and portray an epic sense of war instead.

    The core of Robin's character here is, he/she knows who and what he/she is (a literal bastard born to a race/culture that's long dead), he/she's convinced he/she has no future, and wants to drag the rest of the world down with him/her in misery, no matter who he has to lie, cheat, or kill to do it. And if I keep rolling with this, don't go expecting me to write Lucina to be all "I pity you," or "there's always another way, another second chance" for Robin by the end of it; he/she will have killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions by the time they directly confront.

    I'll keep writing/revising/developing this, if this is something people would actually be interested in reading. The acts of war laid out within will be given context as the chapters are contextualized, my aim for it to be organic development. That's something I'm hoping to get out of this, at least, far more than Awakening's.

    (SLIGHT UPDATE, 8/10/15) Rewrite Awakening's plot (now with cinnamon-flavored poll goodness!)

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted

    Except the 2nd Gen not being mostly optional doesn't require forcing the player to comb for S-Ranks. It could be set up that past a point of no return the mothers all marry nameless men.

    Anyway, Awakening's narrative issues can be summed up by these:

    1. A lack of direction throughout the game. From the Valm arc, to the 2nd Gen, to underexplored incidents such as the Hiearch who sold-out Emmeryn, and conflicting details with past games that makes one suspect that the developers weren't sure if Awakening was going to be a follow-up to Marth's games or a reboot.

    2. The Grimleal have no properly explored cause or ideology

    I could rewrite this for a variety of reasons: pious who worship the dragon race as the superior race for their longevity, wisdom, and strength, believing the Naga to be traitorous to the manaketes. Some sectors believe in a day of reckoning where the dragons will return from the dead, others believe that devoting their lives to Grima will have them reincarnate as them. Nowi's introduction could alternatively introduced as being chased by the Grimleal who used her body for research, in the hope of finding the cause of the dragons becoming wild beasts, their ultimate goal to change the laws of nature to let them walk the earth again.

    Another religious reason that's easy is fear. One day Grima will come, and the devoted shall be saved and beloved by the fell dragon that nearly demolished civilization.

    with Validar himself being a worse written Manfroy. Grima is a Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain who sat around for over 2 years waiting to find a man and gems he didn't need to break the seal.

    My rewrite seeks to humanize him; a man whose nobility, where he could have closed the wounds from the war prior and opened his heart for another, fell to his personal revenge against Ylisse, despite the prospect of a future between his country and Ylisse, which by Gen 2 consumes his sanity.

    Gangrel and Walhart are used to make Chrom and Emmeryn look good. All of them noticeably fail to serve as effective opposition.

    Walhart's counteroffensives against the Archanean Union I would write to shed more context within the chapters of Gen 1. Not every battle would be an overwhelming victory.

    3. Chrom is a raging hypocrite who doesn't really develop or have his issues properly explored.

    Chrom would be rewritten to be raised at odds with Emmeryn's philosophies of peace. Prologue chapter Chrom would witness an old friend he had killed by bandits in the village raid, but deflects the initial attack with Robin and quickly becomes friends, chapter 1 he would ride to the bandits' base of operations and kill all the bandits there, to find that some of them could barely fight back. He'd be heavily criticized by Emmeryn, who would tell Chrom that the bandits themselves were starving, characterizing Chrom as rash, young, and with a naive sense of justice. Chapter 2 his troupe is led into a trap from a village, only to realize that it was captured in the Ylisse-Plegian war and the Plegian citizens were worked ragged by the corrupt Ylissean aristocrat, who also banned Grimleism and publicly executed anyone who practiced it. The chapter boss is automatically killed in a later turn by Validar, introducing his character and introducing himself to Chrom...

    ...basically, his character arc goes from a reckless boy with a naive sense of justice, to becoming weary of war after the protracted conflict with Valm, only to revert back to reckless rage after Validar kills Emmeryn in front of him... and then Robin kills him.

    Lucina is a walking marketing gimmick who transforms into an expositionbot besides her amazing plan to commit matricide.

    My rewrite would involve Lucina hiding her identity as Marth, as nobody from Valm would ever want to associate with the kin of Chrom, who fought against them.

    Robin is a mess of a character if only due to the blatant worship.

    Robin would become significantly different.

    Lopsided portrayals of nations at war. The named enemy Plegians at large are cackling mustache twirlers besides Token Good Guy Mustafa with the playable ones who aren't former bosses being a stalker girl and a jokester boy who treats war like a game. The one commander in Walhart's army who isn't a fanatic, a baby eater, or a joke is Yen'fay, who was coerced into it anyway.

    Validar and Chrom, when needing to retreat while in Valm, leave Robin to make the decision to raze a large area of Valm's farmland with their Mages, knowing that the land Valm reclaims would be valueless, and the villages along this countryside would starve... but it would also lower the enemy's stats, but prevent you from recruiting a Valmese character later.

    Ylisse is a shiny ray of shinyness whose shady aspects are underexplored at best,

    See above

    what with how Chrom's father oppressing Plegia in practice serves to glorify Emmeryn and demonize Gangrel for how far he goes due to his grudge.

    That'd be explored in Validar's base conversations with Emmeryn.

    5. Putting in nods to and returns from past FEs while also mishandling them. Grima being an Earth Dragon descendant does not fit with what was established about the Earth Dragons.

    So then what was established about the Earth Dragons that my write contradicts? I want my rewrite to be as retcon-free as possible.

    Tiki is sitting around in Valm and is so minor for someone of her power that she might as well not be in the game at all.

    In the base game, or my rewrite? She originally fought with Robin, but the clash left them both significantly weakened, enough for Robin to escape and meet Chrom later, when he was on the brink of death. Tiki would then attempt to kill Robin again, but with her strength not yet recovered, she is deflected, retreating with a deep wound. In the years of her recovering her power, she would raise Lucina and Morgan, acting as the game's Gen 2 Oifey, and eventually regain the power to use her Dragonstone again.

    The Fire Emblem has a brand new function. These problems could have been avoided if the worldbuilding wasn't so low.

    The Shield of Seals was built to seal the Earth Dragons originally, right? I'm trying to write it so that it retains its function, and becomes a critical component in sealing Robin's power in the Endgame.

    6. Low worldbuilding. We see so little of Ylisse's government that you wonder who's running the nation while Chrom is running around the world after the timeskip.

    Oh, Ylisse would be running in Gen 2... terribly.

    How did Grima ever start being worshiped in Plegia considering how openly genocidal she is?

    That's an opportunity to expand upon Grimleism; maybe Grima spared those who worshipped him/her, maybe out of the delight of crushing their spirits, maybe this, maybe that. The point is, it's an opportunity to write a creative solution.

    Who was the First Exalt if he wasn't Marth?

    Wasn't that Anri? Nobody else can wield the Falchion, so it was naturally Anri, wasn't it?

    So, any rewrites should address those problems.

    And I'm willing to keep on writing and addressing them.

    (SLIGHT UPDATE, 8/10/15) Rewrite Awakening's plot (now with cinnamon-flavored poll goodness!)

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted · Edited by Kysafen

    We all know Awakening doesn't have the best of plots (that goes to the Yggdrasil saga), and given that the team was kind of rushed with deadlines, we can kind of see why the plot wasn't the most robust in the series. So I've taken it upon myself to rewrite Awakening's plot, and call upon the other members here to try to seriously rewrite Awakening's plot. You'll see a lot of copy/pasting from my topic on GameFaqs, and I haven't played through the Tellius games (which, with Gaiden, are pretty much the only games I haven't beaten), but I wanted to style the rewrite a lot like Turn A Gundam: packed with parallels, callbacks, and plot elements in the ending that, well, you'll read and understand.

    1. Make Gangrel and Validar the same person, keep the prior war between Plegia and Ylisse the same.
    2. Make the war of Valm the first arc; though Valm's military might is strong, a three-way union between Ylisse, Ferox, and Plegia starts the war off on a more equal footing, Plegia being the tipping edge.
    3. Have the character with the highest support level with Chrom marry midway through.
    4. Build up Emmeryn's character throughout the Valm arc. She's a playable Sage-like Jeigan, but like Raquel from TearRing Saga, she won't finish enemy units off. Throughout this arc, she goes from being thankful to Validar, to them both agreeing to a marital union, as a symbol of the restoration from the prior Ylisstol-Plegian war, and of Emmeryn's relationship of understanding Validar's pain of losing his wife to the prior war, to understanding Validar as a person, understanding his philosophies on leadership.
    5. Build up Robin's recurring nightmares of killing Chrom.

    5a. Randomly, in the middle of one chapter of the arc, a girl wearing a turban appears on the battlefield and directly challenges Robin, but Chrom, now having built up enough trust by this point in the story, defends and deflects her strikes.
    6. After the Archanean Union delivers a critical strike to Valm, Plegia abruptly turns traitor (Bam, tribute to Shadow Dragon's Gra betraying Altea) against them, kidnapping Emmeryn and massacring their army. With the threat of Valm nearly extinguished, Validar no longer needs Ylisse in the union to quash Valm, and he himself kills the Khan of Ferox to assume control. With two countries spontaneously against him, Chrom falls back to Archanea to rescue Emmeryn and defend his country from the two countries now in position to lay waste to Ylisse.

    7. Chrom cuts through the Plegian forces and gets to Validar, who, holding Emmeryn, cuts her throat open and pushes her down the stairs of the throne room to lay in a bloody heap in front of Chrom. "Ylisse kills my beloved, and expects my heart to be filled by her head of state? Here is what I think of that plan, Prince Chrom! Have at you!" Filled with a near-uncontrollable rage, Chrom fights beside Robin and overpowers Validar, and then...
    8. And this is key, Robin actually KILLS Chrom, no "WE FAKED IT" bullcrap, because Robin knew he/she was Grima; he/she faked his entire relationship with Chrom the whole time.

    9. Cue the second half of the game, where Valm, having its forces nearly demolished due to Chrom's fights in the first half of the game, struggles to resist being overtaken by the Archanean Empire. (Bam, tribute to Genealogy)

    10. You alternate between the Lucina route, where you directly confront the Archanean Empire (in levels that focus on tactics that involve breaking through heavily organized and armed forces)
    11. and through the Morgan route, which takes you on a path to find the spheres for the Shield of Seals (in levels that focus on tactics involving enduring onslaughts of Risen enemies) (Bam, tribute to Gaiden and Sacred Stones in one go)

    10/11a. The same Turban girl from the first arc serves Lucina/Morgan as the Oifey of this arc, vowing to defeat Robin. Here she bears a resemblance to Alec.
    12. Lucina actually hides her identity under her Marth persona to keep the people of Valm from finding out she's actually Chrom's daughter, (and this fact is kept even from the player), but she tosses this persona aside and reveals her true identity after discovering
    13. Her father's body is being used as the Risen Dreadlord
    14. as well as Chrom's allies who became the Dreadlord.
    15. When Lucina and Morgan meet up, it turns out that Morgan succumbs to his/her cursed bloodline and hands the spheres over to Robin resulting in you killing Morgan
    16. And going through an entirely different ending path, unless you managed to clear Morgan's gaiden chapters, in which he/she successfully resists the urges and acquires the Starlight tome (Bam, tribute to Binding Blade)
    17. which is the only thing that can defeat Validar, who holds the final sphere, the Darksphere, and wields its power with the Imhullu tome (Bam, tribute to Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem)
    17a. (And you discover that Validar betrayed Chrom originally because he not only wanted revenge for the war on Plegia, but he also wanted to restore Grima, thinking his ability to harness quintessence would be able to repair the Aum staff and resurrect his dead wife (Orson/Nergal tribute), little did he know Grima can only take quintessence)
    18. And after getting all the spheres, the Turban Girl reveals herself to be Tiki, who reveals to Lucina/Morgan that Grima is part-Earth Dragon-part-human, effectively making Grima the descendant of Medeus' bastard child, which means the Shield of Seals is able to seal Grima's draconic form (since the Shield of Seals was, after all, originally made to seal Earth Dragons) (Bam, tribute to Mystery of the Emblem), leaving only the human form, Robin.

    19. Robin seems to be cornered, until one of his bishops reveal to him that he's from another world, and they strike a deal: Grima makes a blood pact with the Bishop Galle, and Grima gets to wreak havoc in another realm that doesn't have the Shield of Seals. After the blood pact is sealed and their bodies meshed, they flee for the Outrealm Gate, Lucina/Morgan's forces in pursuit.
    20. The final chapter has three endings:
    20a. One where Galle, having Robin's power harvested the quintessence of two entire continents' wars' worth, successfully flees into the outrealm and, as Loptyr, causes the ENTIRE EVENTS of Genealogy of the Holy War,
    20b. One where striking Galle with Falchion seals him in his human form, but still manages to get through the gate and causes the events of The Sacred Stones (where his human form, unable to contain his quintessence, twists his body into The Demon King)
    20c. Or the best ending where you manage to make your way past the Dreadlords and kill Robin/Galle before he can get through the gate.

    21. Or the worst ending, where if you didn't get all of the spheres of the Shield of Seals, Grima, after Morgan's death, easily overpowers Lucina's army with the quintessence built up throughout the wars and plunges the entire globe into chaos.

    (Updated 8/10/15, to include Galle and change "Dark Crusaders" to "Dreadlords.")

    This would work for Awakening's plot for a number of reasons:
    1. You'd be forced to actually use the children characters
    2. The replayability of the children characters, consequentially, would have farther-reaching implications gameplay-wise, since you're using them for more than whatever time you chose to give to them in the original game.
    3. Emmeryn's death and Robin's betrayal would be built up for half of the game, not for 1/3rd of it, giving more room for pacing and character-building to give these events the actual punch they should've had in the first place
    4. The scenario for fighting the final boss is actually intertwined with the plot: no longer is it a stereotypical "go up to the big bad beast/king in his cave/castle and kill it", but you're actually in a RACE to kill him. Such a goal would make for a grossly unconventional level design challenge for a final boss. It would be fresh.
    5. It would mean that the Sacred Stones of Magvel are actually the spheres from the Shield of Seals.

    5a. And by extension, it would mean the Stone of Grado would be the Darksphere, which is logical, given Lyon (like Hardin before him) succumbs to his ambitions throughout his character arc
    6. It would explain how Loptyr is actually acquainted with Naga, and it's logical that one with two continents' worth of quintessence could easily subjugate all of Jugdral.

    7. Validar's reasoning behind supporting Grima has real personal stakes for him, and makes a LOT more sense and a lot less cliche than the "LUKE I AM YOUR FATHER" relationship from the original.

    8. Instead of Grima being an inexplicable entity that bears no connection to Marth, he would have actual ties to the prior conflict between Marth and Medeus.

    9. If Loptyr is Loki, it would make mythological sense, as character-wise, Robin believes he has no past or future, and only wants to wreak as much havoc and chaos on the world as possible, or to put it another way, mischief on a continental (or in the bad endings, a transdimensional) scale.

    10. It would bring Morgan's ambivalent bloodlines and destiny to the fore in the main game, instead of a purely "what if?" scenario.

    11. Should Chrom marry Robin, Robin's final confrontation with Lucina will have a lot more bite.

    So if anyone could go over this and critique it, or even rewrite Awakening in ANOTHER way, I'd love to hear either.

    lol

    in General Gaming

    Posted · Edited by Kysafen

    Where's the Super Mario Bros. Deluxe option?

    Intelligent Systems' writing staff sucks.

    Tales of Legendia's sountrack alone justifies a remake.

    Tales of's fighting system needs to be more like BlazBlue.

    Twilight Princess is linear bullshit. A Link Between Worlds was way too fucking easy, and they should've had Master Quest dungeons, not a fucking "take more damage" mode. Nintendo should've made a third game in the "Oracle" series. I liked Skyward Sword for not pretending to have its identity rooted in realism like Twilight Princess leaned towards. Skyward Sword's color vividness ultimately makes Twilight Princess the inferior game, visually. Twilight Princess is hard to look at.

    Shadow Dragon's difficulty is insultingly easy to make, from a games development perspective, and the avoid hitrate calculations should've been in line with FE7. Also 11 and 12's art/map tile/sprite designs suck. FE12's player perspective shouldn't have zoomed in. Those maps are huge.

    Despite my passive-aggressive relationship with the DS games, they should have been ported to mobile platforms, as their touch controls are really intuitive.

    Nintendo, stop fucking with us and make an Android/iOS Fire Emblem, already. Your DS engine's good enough.

    FE4/5's battle animations are the best. FE4 is fucking slow and fucking unpolished, and those are legitimate complains against it.

    Stat caps of 20 was the best stat cap level, as downplaying the risks of stat randomization allows developers to craft a more controlled, and thus, refined gameplay experience throughout.

    Fire Emblem shouldn't be a game about stats, whether you're steamrolling enemies, or the enemies can steamroll you; it should be about meticulous map and level design that will grind you into dust if you don't maximize your resources in ingenious ways. Fire Emblem should be more a strategy game and less of an RPG than what the series is at now.

    Another Metroid 2 Remake >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Anything Nintendo's done with Metroid within the past 11 years (with the sole exception of Metroid Prime trilogy on Wii), and Nintendo has every right to be ashamed.

    Hideo Kojima isn't all that. He needs a serious elementary course in cutting parts of the script that aren't necessary, and focus the experience.

    Tales of the Abyss' higher difficulty design sucks. You don't raise enemy HP to quintuple what they had on normal, you raise the enemy's stats/change enemy AI and emphasize intelligent and strategic blocking/dodging.

    We haven't gotten one near-perfect Tales game, at least one that's in a playable format in English.

    Games writing sucks. It is the rare, RARE exception that puts games writing on par with actual works of literature, even if a single example has even gotten to that level.

    And no, that exception is NOT Dear Esther, or anything written by thechineseroom. If you were thinking that they were, start by finding out what Purple Prose is, and realize that it sucks. Mark Twain said it sucks in The Last of the Mohicans back then, and I say it sucks now.

    Illusory Revelations#FE will probably be decent gameplay-wise, and we'll like it once it's out, even some of those that were hoping for a return to Majin Tensei... like me.

    The game industry sets up unrealistic expectations, the Smash Bros newcomer speculation being my definitive case-in-point.

    Have we gotten our Citizen Kane of gaming? Probably not.

    SMT if... is probably going to reveal it's aged terribly once the translation patch comes out and we play it.

    I don't like Resident Evil 4 as much as 1-3. The series should've been rebooted as a Sweet Home remake.

    Fuck weeaboo-pandering. Miyazaki's in the objective right in his dismissal of otaku/shut-in culture, and the anime/game industry is suffering as a result of building games around their wants.

    If you have to grind to win, you didn't refine your game enough.

    Never really liked Final Fantasy games. I've PLAYED them (1-4), but I never REALLY liked them.

    Never tell me to my face that status quo is a legitimate argument for mediocrity. It's the lamest, weakest excuse I've ever heard.

    Hey Nintendo: fuck you for not putting Four Swords out on the eShop for sale. Perhaps people that obsessively follow games news might have a shot at getting it, but maybe you guys could get your heads out of your asses and realize that people who have enough of a fulfilling life to not check games media might actually want to play the game as well. You cunts.

    Nintendo Dream leaks (Spoilers!!!!)

    in Fire Emblem Fates

    Posted · Edited by Kysafen

    Granted, it wouldn't be as easy to compromise between children and no children, but I'm sure something could be done.

    Maybe make the children system not suck like it did in Awakening and give us either an alternate campaign that forces us to use the characters, or put them at an average level that doesn't effectively make all of them play catch-up with their experience, all the while having good writing/storytelling in that there's an actual, real reason why the child characters exist within the narrative of the story and why the conflict can't resolve WITHOUT their presence?

    Nintendo Dream leaks (Spoilers!!!!)

    in Fire Emblem Fates

    Posted

    Ritisa, I'm not saying story isn't important, just that Nintendo never has and never will place story in high regards in game making. Heck, FE 7 and 9 are the only games in the series I feel have good plot lines, and those are my two favorite games in the series. IS is going with Nintendo's philosophy here, so they can make a game that is fun to play. I do play games for the storylines, but when Nintendo is in on it, I only look forward to the gameplay.

    I've said it before and I'll say it again:

    Status quo is not an argument.

    It's just an excuse to not try. A lame one.

    Don't go telling me the story and the gameplay aren't intertwined, that they're not focusing on the story when the story causes an entire GAME and DESIGN split, especially if they're expecting us to dish out at least double the money's worth if not more to experience the entirety of the game. If they can't write well and the story sucks, that's Nintendo's fault and their fault entirely, not because "we wanted to focus on the gameplay," not "we wanted to create two experiences," and especially not "we're working on a time crunch," because if their actual interest was in a fully realized vision, they'd take as much time as they need, writing, voice-acting, and design-wise.

    They had the money and the goodwill of the crowd to make any kind of thought-provoking, high-concept design for their next Fire Emblem game; they knew their next game was going to sell with the figures that came with Awakening. The series is far from dead at this point, and with Awakening's reception Intelligent Systems have earned the time they need to make a game with a well-written, focused cast, a fully-realized setting and culture, a story that organically unfolds, level designs that demand unconventional and ingenious strategy to prevail, rather than relying on cheaply and shamelessly pandering to otaku-shut-in demographics that convey only an intention to move more units.

    And oh hey, look! The system that cheaply and shamelessly panders to otaku-shut-in demographics has returned! WaIFu Emblem RETURNS!

    Meanwhile, me, along with every other idealist who wishes for a well-written story and ingenious level design are seeing this warning flag for what it is: a warning flag.

    Maybe I'm just being a hypocrite, maybe we CAN have a generation system AND a well-written story AND as have gameplay, have the best of three worlds. But my hopes are starting very, VERY low.

    Writing over money. Story over spectacle. Humane characters that connect to all aspects of our humanity over poorly-executed otaku tropes. Organic, cohesive narrative flow over plot contrivances. If Intelligent Systems fails to realize those rules, then that's their fault, and fuck them for it.

    Nintendo Dream leaks (Spoilers!!!!)

    in Fire Emblem Fates

    Posted

    I am trying my best to reserve my judgment, and think that they may do children in a manner that's actually refined, hold on to the possibility, but I also can't help thinking IS is going to correlate Awakening's sales to their legitimate-piece-of-shit execution of the Child system and do the same shit all over again.

    HOEP WILL NEAVAR DEI?

    Some cool Screenshots I took from the new FE: IF trailer

    in Fire Emblem Fates

    Posted · Edited by Kysafen

    Cool, but if someone wants GIFs of the trailer, I take requests.

    Oh my god. Purple hair chick/Camilla almost looks like she's from Soul Caliber. As in, those boobs are unrealisticly big -_- Shame on you, IS. Even Tharja and Noire were more decent.

    The only way IS is going to sink even lower than the Tharja figurine is a Camilla figurine.

    I've already gone at length at why I fucking hate otakus and otaku bait on GameFaqs before, I don't care enough to reiterate my worldviews here.

    Marx being voiced by Mark Hamill confirmed.

    giphy.gif

    The Reason for the Problems With Awakening

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted

    Expecting a high-quality story from a Fire Emblem game is like expecting Arby's to carry filet mignon. It has never happened before, and probably never will in the future, so this remains one of the more hilarious (to me, anyway) complaints abut Awakening. This game's plot is nothing more than a binding agent for the gameplay, like mayo in a tuna fish sandwich.

    There are places in this world for rich stories and characterization, and some of those places are video games, but Fire Emblem ain't one of 'em.

    Status quo isn't an argument.

    It's just an excuse not to try.

    A lame one.

    The Reason for the Problems With Awakening

    in Fire Emblem: Awakening

    Posted · Edited by Kysafen

    [spoiler=How I'd rewrite Awakening:]I'd rewrite Awakening as such:

    1. Make Gangrel and Gharnef Validar the same person, keep the prior war between Plegia and Ylisse the same
    2. Make the war of Valm the first arc
    3. Have the character with the highest support level with Chrom marry midway through
    4. Build up Emmeryn's character throughout the Valm arc
    5. Build up Robin's recurring nightmares of killing Chrom
    6. Have Plegia originally assist Ylisse, and then turn traitor (Bam, tribute to Shadow Dragon's Gra betraying Altea) against them, kidnapping Emmeryn and massacring their army. Have Chrom be forced to fall back to Archanea to rescue Emmeryn, and then have her be killed by Validar in front of Chrom/Robin's eyes. Cue Robin/Chrom vs Validar fight, and then
    7. And this is key, actually have Chrom killed by Robin, no "WE FAKED IT" bullshit.
    8. Cue the second half of the game, where Valm, having its forces nearly demolished due to Chrom's fights in the first half of the game, struggles to resist being overtaken by the Archanean Empire. (Bam, tribute to Genealogy)
    9. You alternate between the Lucina route, where you directly confront the Archanean Empire (in levels that focus on tactics that involve breaking through heavily organized and armed forces)
    10. and through the Morgan route, which takes you on a path to find the spheres for the Shield of Seals (in levels that focus on tactics involving enduring onslaughts of Risen enemies) (Bam, tribute to Gaiden and Sacred Stones in one go)
    11. Lucina actually hides her identity under her Marth persona to keep the people of Valm from finding out she's actually Chrom's daughter, but that's tossed away after she discovers
    12. Her father's body is being used as the Risen Dark Crusader, Mus
    13. as well as Chrom's allies who became the Dark Crusaders.
    14. When Lucina and Morgan meet up, it turns out that Morgan succumbs to his/her cursed bloodline and hands the spheres over to Robin resulting in you killing Morgan

    15. And going through an entirely different ending path, unless you managed to clear Morgan's gaiden chapters, in which he/she successfully resists the urges and acquires the Starlight tome (Bam, tribute to Binding Blade)
    16. which is the only thing that can defeat Validar, who holds the final sphere, the Darksphere, and wields its power with the Imhullu tome (Bam, tribute to Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem)

    16a. (And you discover that Validar betrayed Chrom originally because he not only wanted revenge for the war on Plegia, but he also wanted to restore Grima, thinking his ability to harness quintessence would be able to repair the Aum staff and resurrect his dead wife (Orson tribute), little did he know Grima can only take quintessence)

    17. And after getting all the shards, Tiki reveals to Lucina/Morgan that Grima is part-Earth Dragon-part-human, effectively making Grima the descendant of Medeus' bastard child, which means the Shield of Seals is able to seal Grima's draconic form (since the Shield of Seals was, after all, originally made to seal Earth Dragons) (Bam, tribute to Mystery of the Emblem), leaving only the human form, Robin.

    18. Robin then flees for the outrealm gate, looking to wreak havoc in another realm that doesn't have the Shield of Seals.

    19. The final chapter has three endings:

    19a. One where Robin, having harvested the quintessence of two entire continents' wars' worth, flees into the outrealm and then causes the ENTIRE EVENTS of Genealogy of the Holy War,

    19b. One where striking Robin with Falchion seals him in his human form, but still manages to get through the gate and causes the events of The Sacred Stones (where his human form, unable to contain his quintessence, twists his body into The Demon King)

    19c. Or the best ending where you manage to make your way past the Dark Warlords and kill Robin before he can get through the gate.

    This would work for Awakening's plot for a number of reasons:

    1. You'd be forced to use the children characters
    2. The replayability of the children characters, consequentially, would have farther-reaching implications gameplay-wise, since you're using them for more than whatever time you chose to give to them in the original game.
    3. Emmeryn's death and Robin's betrayal would be built up for half of the game, not for 1/3rd of it, giving more room to build up their characters
    4. The scenario for fighting the final boss is actually intertwined with the plot: no longer is it a stereotypical "go up to the big bad beast/king in his cave/castle and kill it", but you're actually in a RACE to kill him. Such a goal would make for a grossly unconventional level design challenge for a final boss. It would be fresh.
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