Slumber

Why do I suddenly feel like I have a 10lb weight in the pit of my stomach?

All at once.

Naesala is straight up an antagonist for 99% of PoR with really no context given to it. He allies with Daein to act as an agent of chaos to a certain degree, he orders his people to attack the party, and he generally acts very antagonistic to everyone. The one situation with Reyson is an exception where he's not acting completely as a villain, but even in this case, he's taking advantage of Reyson and putting him in a situation that we know Reyson has a looooot of hang-ups about. Together with the ravens in the game being less than friendly, it gives you the impression that Naesala is not a good guy. Without context, and just knowing that Kilvas is a poor, impoverished nation that relies on piracy effectively as an industry gives the impression that Naesala is acting this way as a "By any means necessary" approach of supporting his people, which makes him look like a shade of gray. With the reveal that all of this was because of the Blood Pact, it completely changes Naesala's character. You get the impression that he's still not a nice guy, but he was only ever this antagonistic and supporting the villains because he was forced to. It removes a lot of those darker shades to his character. Even if he ended up as a more heroic version of Trabant, where he allied against the heroes in FE9 of his own volition, and eventually fully came around in FE10, there are still more of those darker shades. The Blood Pact threatening his people is really the one thing that could have justified literally all of his bad actions in the first game with minimal impact on his actual character. I actually think gory survival horror games would be a good example of shocking scenes being used to heighten the impact of the games. When survival horror games use a physical threat as the source of horror, showing off how extreme the violence is does a lot to sell how dire the situation is. There's a reason the first time you ever see a zombie in all of Resident Evil, it's gnawing the head off one of your comrades. It's not just for the sake of gore. I don't think Fire Emblem should ever go that far, but I think the intention of what Resident Evil 1 does with its first zombie reveal is a good example of showing off a serious story beat and setting a tone. Resident Evil is campy, but it's still sincerely trying to scare you a lot of times. If we ever do get an FE4 remake, I think showing off that scene like a scene out of a horror game would actually have a big impact. Mortal Kombat, though, it just does the violence for fun. Really shouldn't be used as any sort of inspiration unless you're DOOM or something, where reveling in ultraviolence is part of the fun.

2 years. The Switch came out in March 2017, Three Houses is still slated for early 2019. That said, I agree. A remake in either 2020 or 2021 seems likely, and a Tellius collection would be great for an off-year or something along those lines. If Nintendo wanted a filler game to pad out their title line-up for a given year, PoR/RD would be perfect, given how much attention the series has gotten, how popular Ike is, and how few people actually played the Tellius games.

Naesala is basically Trabant, if only the Lopto Sect was threatening the destruction and genicide of Thracia outright. Though Thracia 776 does imply some of his actions were because of this, it's still fully explained that he willfully allied himself with the bad guys for a better chance at fully unifying Thracia and keeping the country safe. If you want to see what Naesala would be without the Blood Pact, and what he'd look like if he was a much grayer character, look at Trabant. As it stands, Naesala comes across more like a sneaky good guy by the end of RD than an untrustworthy snake, like he was at the end of PoR.

Between this and Manafort, it makes it seem like Mueller was waiting for Trump to submit anything before really going after him. Get ready for some angry tweets from the president.

I think many maps in FE4 are the same size. There seemed to be a maximum size they could be, and I think there are other maps just as big as Doors of Destiny. Any one of these maps will be the biggest.

To be fair, the Laguz aren't pure good. They are arguably crueler to Branded than Beorc are. Beorc treat them poorly as second hand citizens, but begrudgingly accept them in society at certain levels. Laguz don't even do that, as Stefan's support convos attest to. Though Stefan kind of betrays this notion when he reaches out to Laguz and flees at the sight of Beorc. Anyway, as much as I'll say the Tellius games have all around the best writing in the series after the Jugdral games, I agree that their portrayal of racism leaves a bit to be desired. They tackle it competently enough that I'm not ever screaming at the game over how poorly they mishandled an important topic, and it doesn't ever detract from the rest of the game.

Man, I was going through my old music(AKA everything I listened to before I switched over to Spotify almost exclusively) just last month, and Agalloch is one of the bands in there that I was like "Oh my god, why in the world did I not keep listening to them on Spotify?" They're fantastic to listen to during these cold falls and winters.

Ever hear one of those songs and you're immediately like "What the hell am I listening to and why do I love it?"

Welcome. This is a great place if you want to discuss, or argue, or ramble, or whatever.

Hallo. Welcome back.

I've been hospitalized a few times. I almost died to chicken pox when I was 2, and was hospitalized for some time. Don't remember it at all. When I was 8, I(Once again) almost died from the flu. For 3 days building up the sickness, I couldn't keep foods or liquids down, I was severely dehydrated, hadn't eaten in days, and had a temperature of over 104. I had to spend 3 days in a children's hospital. The first two were me screaming in pain, and apparently my parents were told that I was scaring the other children and that I had to stop screaming, though obviously that didn't really work. I felt fine on the third day, but the doctors wouldn't let me out until I proved I could keep food down, so I ate half a bagel, which was awful. Hospital food is awful. I also didn't get any sleep while I was in the hospital, and most of my nights watching Three's Company on the TV I had in my room. I crashed hard when I got home, then ate a family sized bag of Cheetos and walked over to the Burger King 4 blocks away from my house after not eating for about a week. There were a bunch of other times I was hospitalized between the ages of 7-10 from my migraines when I'd get cluster headaches so bad that I got so nauseous that I'd vomit stomach acid to the point where I'd start dry heaving and had troubles breathing. These stays were much shorter, and I was usually just made it to the ER for quick treatment. Usually I was just put on a morphine drip until the pain subsided(Usually a few hours) and I could go home. One time they wanted to make sure my constant efflux of stomach acid wasn't destroying my gut and my esophagus, so I had to drink two liters of apple juice that had some tracer in it that'd show up in an x-ray. That s u c k e d, and it tasted awful. My migraines have gotten better and I've been fit as a fiddle since I was 10ish, so I haven't had to go to the hospital in about 16-17 years.

You should read HunterXHunter.

Kinda that. But if you take Ike's journey as the main throughline of the Tellius games, it follows the typical arc and power escalation of a shounen series. Ike starts off as a naive young, inexperienced kid. Suddenly, a great responsibility is thrust upon him when his father dies, he establishes a clear rivalry with an evil counterpart to himself, and he gradually works his way up through the world by being so good at fighting. Eventually he gets a magical sword that'll let him fight evenly with the stronger people in the story, he acquires strength to beat his rival, and finally he takes down the big bad of the first major arc. Shortly after, the viewers are let known that there are more things going on behind the scenes than Ike knows of. THEN TIMESKIP Ike spends his timeskip as a huge training arc, regularly training alongside people who were once the strongest people in the story(Like Caineghis), and he builds up a reputation that makes himself a known quantity in his world. He learns that his rival is still alive, and he learns of the plot behind everything. He gets more magic upgrades that lets him fight on the level he needs to, he defeats the masterminds, finally definitively beats his rival, and beats a GOD. And then he wanders off, presumably to become even stronger. He's got the personality and interests(IE he likes to fight, his friends, eat a ton, and is entirely asexual) of a typical shounen protagonist as well.

I actually kind of get this. I'd say Fire Emblem should avoid using broad anime genres like isekais and shounen, but people say the Tellius series is super shounen-y, and they actually managed to pull that one off.

I came into this thread to specifically take back everything I've said about Fire Emblem never really "wow"ing me with its music. This remix took a famous FE song I couldn't remember two measures of and amped it up like crazy.

It's one thing to attempt dark comedy. It's another to attempt dark comedy, and then have the reactions basically be the exact same as every other comedic situation involving character gimmicks. Take South Park for example, which is a pretty cartoonish and colorful dark comedy series. When Cartman gets people killed or does other monstrous things, the joke isn't "Hehe, Cartman got people killed", which is more or less how Fire Emblem has presented "dark" comedy for Awakening and Fates. In South Park, the jokes surrounding Cartman's darker moments involve how he's a complete idiot who becomes incredibly competent when it comes to harming people or accomplishing his own twisted goals, the deadpan/straight(Yet not realistic) reactions of the people around him and his over the top awful actions, wondering why anybody bothers even associating with Cartman, or the pettiness of the catalysts that set off Cartman's episodes. There's basically nobody else like Cartman, and people don't treat/react to other characters the same way they do to Cartman, and the dark comedy of other situations is handled differently from how Cartman's episodes are(Stanley's Cup is nothing like Scott Tenorman Must Die or Kenny Dies, for example). In Fates and Awakening, you pretty much take the bad shit that people like Tharja, Peri and Camilla say and do at face value, and accept the jokes that the developers put on top of it. Most of this amounts to people going "Oh boy, what am I going to do with you?". Tharja mentioning that she's hexing members of the army and threatening her own husband? Almost the exact same reactions people give to Peri when she mentions killing innocent people. Alright, both heinous acts, people are clearly exasperated dealing with them. But then you get to Nina and her gay fantasies involving men in the army, and she's given the exact same treatment people give Tharja and Peri, another character where the punchline to her quirk is generally "Oh boy, what am I going to do with you?" Maybe if I felt that Fire Emblem did dark comedy well at all, I'd have a different opinion. But I feel like Tharja would have to be an entirely different character for it to work. I also feel like, maybe, just maybe... This whole conversation has been what I've been saying from the start, and that having the vast majority of supports be comical and silly is a bad idea. Maybe turning Fire Emblem into a borderline comedic franchise only hurts the tone and characters when you try to tackle any issue that's more serious than a boy who likes to dress up like a girl. Maybe there needs to be some second thoughts that go into writing characters like Tharja and Peri, and maybe they shouldn't be treated the same way as everyone else. They used to do this. Karel's not treated the same way Barte is in FE7.

I attribute that 180 flip to be more of a problem with FE6's way of characterizing, since it was IS' first attempt at hardcore character focus. I agree that 180 flip isn't good for him. And the main issue with that second bit that I have, and the focus of this thread, is how emblematic it is with the writing of Fates and Awakening. Yeah, Tharja being a terrible person, hexing allies and threatening love interests is entirely in-character for her. The problem is that she's supposed to be a good guy and that this is in-character. Even the product(Not necessarily the actual act of it, since that's generally when Noire gets semi-serious) of her child abuse with Noire is often played for laughs. Things like harming your allies and abusing your child/spouse should be treated with more weight and consequence than Awakening gives. When you're under the impression that characters like Tharja are totally fine for goofy comedy and don't at all compromise the tone of the games, this is when you start getting Peris and Camillas.

??? The hell are you talking about with the bolded? Even if that's what people take away, it's clearly not the intention of his character. Uh, no? How does this make Peri and Karel at all similar? Karel's whole deal is he wants to kill strong people. He doesn't even bother with Guy when Guy challenges him and wants to become Karel's apprentice. He's not out killing random bystanders or innocents in the middle of a conflict. If I recall, one thing we never actually hear from Karel is if he kills innocents, and his interactions with Guy are pretty clear of that. Karel doesn't target the weak. While he's definitely a sociopath/cold-blooded killer in FE7, he's a focused killer. Peri is not, and kills whoever. And, once again, Peri's played for laughs. You can say "Ha ha Karel's such a silly character that I laugh every time he talks", but it's clear as day that his characterization is supposed to be played for laughs. He's a creep and it's played straight. Nobody's cracking jokes about him. Everybody's legitimately creeped out by him(Geitz and Dart), praying for his mortal soul(Lucius), or they want something out of him(Karla and Guy). You could argue that Dart's line is supposed to be comedic, but the situation of the matter is supposed to be funny, not Karel himself. Which is, again, clear night and day from what we get out of Tharja and Peri. Karel's a bad man, but he has somewhat of a code to who he goes after. And, while a bit unfair to Peri and Tharja, we know he changes pretty much as soon as he joins in FE7. We know he eventually becomes a peaceful and wise swordsman. On the other hand, some people try to rein in Peri's bad habit, but people also straight up tell Peri "I don't care if you're a murderer, I love you for who you are(Which is strictly a murderer)!", and Thraja's love confession to most people is a threat, and the furthest look we get into the future for her, while skewed in one direction due to the horrific circumstances surrounding it, show that Tharja is capable of becoming a much worse person than she already is.

Here's a big difference between Tharja and Karel: There's no indication that Karel is actively harming anybody on the army while he's part of it, and his violent nature isn't played for laughs or brushed over. I think these two points, the last one especially, are pretty indicative of why Awakening gets focused on instead of other games in this regard.

The King.

Realistic, no. But I want there to be more weight and tact put into the writing. I'm not opposed to silly moments, but I really don't like that the games are like 60-70% silly moments right now.

Marth and Roy in Melee piqued my interest Nintendo was cross advertising FE7 with a bunch of games I was interested on the GBA. It was a pamphlet that was included with Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Sword of Mana, and Advanced Wars. I think after seeing it advertised in the back of the FFTA, I decided to go out and buy(AKA bug my parents until they took me to Best Buy) FE7.

Mercenary, Thief, or Assassin Because I want to get paid for putting my life on the line, dammit.