omegaxis1

No, the problem is that Celica contradicts her own words. She insists that finding Mila is their one and only goal, but she ends up doing side jobs for Zofia rather than focusing on finding Mila. In the end, Celica already proved herself to not focus on the very goal that she insists on going through. She's been on and on about how the world needs the gods to fix things, but ends up relying on herself and companions as humans to fix several problems, rather than rely on gods. For all her words, she doesn't back them up. She doesn't rely on gods to fix things, despite insisting that that is what they should do. Her so called wisdom is not actual wisdom that she is preached as. She ends up only proving Alm more and more right, while she's been in the wrong the entire time. In the end, Alm saying that he needed her wisdom is simply not true. He doesn't need her, because in the end, nothing she did are things that he couldn't do himself. She would have had a point if her point actually held any truth or merit, but they simply don't. She's wrong, Alm's right, her wisdom means nothing in the end.

Problem is, nothing about Celica shows her so called wisdom. If anything, all she does is the exact same thing as Alm. Fighting enemies and beating them, rather than actually solving the very thing she insists they should do. She keeps insisting that they have to save Mila, and then all the problems will be solved, only for her to pull and Alm and just go with killing any bad guy that she hears about, ultimately contradicting what she herself insists they oughta focus on. You say that she doesn't have to be right to prove that she's valid in her own ways, except her validity is only amounts to actually not following up on what she originally said, and basically conceding to Alm's way more or less.

The only game that actually succeeded, to a degree, is 3H because of Edelgard.

Yeah. Honestly, it isn't even impossible to do that, even. You could legit just have the character be temporarily captured by the enemies, treated like a guest more or less, and basically have a chance to sit down and talk, learning about why they are fighting and what they desire. It's a case of seeing the enemies you fight have a better and more human side to them. Of course, I do think that there oughta be couple guys that are just straight up evil, because there ARE people like that in the world, who have no conscience, but they exist in both sides. Hell, with how FE typically has you slay some godlike being, it would be neat if to do that, you have to actually work with the morally corrupt villains to win over the greater threat.

Which is why I find it silly how people are silly. They've BEEN demanding "more moral grey" over and over, especially after Fates, but now that 3H threw in Edelgard, people are now exposing that they don't actually WANT moral grey. They just want more sympathetic villains who are still objectively wrong. The people of Loptous were persecuted and burned at the stake? Well, they are morally corrupt and worship a dark god that likes to make child sacrifices. Sephiran suffered from the genocide of his race? Well, he's trying to commit total extinction, so he's wrong. Zephiel has daddy issues? Too bad, he started a war and is basically trying to commit genocide on the human race by replacing it with dragons. It's basically that one thing, "Cute story, still murder." And they apply it to Edelgard now. Trying to push that she's morally black and objectively wrong, when the thing is, her war attacks a seriously deep problem that simply CAN'T be solved through peaceful means. Fire Emblem really should consider making longer scenes and dialogue, basically getting points across better.

Honestly, I feel people in the Fire Emblem community are a little touchy with the whole, "war is bad" and act like if you start a war, you are the bad guy. Of course, it's OKAY to start a war if the other guy is just 100% Disney evil villain, like in Radiant Dawn. No one cares the fact that the Laguz Alliance declared war, which would actually pose a serious danger to the world in the form of Lehran's Medallion, because we're fighting a righteous war against a bunch of evil, powerhungry, racist pricks. But then we have 3H where Edelgard declares war against the Church, and gets the other nations involved, and because the other side aren't 100% evil, they are all going about how she's wrong, evil, and just go out of their way to dehumanize her and remove any shred of moral grey from her to insist that she's morally black. Like, geez. It's incredibly petty and shallow. So yeah, future FE needs to have a single protag that is like Edelgard, but are fighting a not totally evil side, but is fighting for an overall good cause.

Yeah, the fact that they don't even look realistic only dehumanizes them in the player's eyes. Frankly, I want Fire Emblem to have more Edelgard's, especially having her as a protagonist more often, not needing to share a spotlight.

Except the entire problem is that Celica was completely wrong in saying that they cannot fight Rigel. They can't get to the gods without fighting Rigel, meaning that Alm was right in fighting the war against Rigel, and Celica was wrong thinking that the war could be avoided. In fact, she was wrong in trying to deny her birthright which was ultimately going to lead to countless people dying from a growing floor that was happening because of the gates. Alm was never presented to be in the wrong. Look at the very events with Mathilda and Delthea. Whether he saves Mathilda or not, he immediately insists that he wants to help Fernand, a guy that's been nothing but a dick to him the entire time. And with Delthea? He gives a grand lecture to Clive, telling him that there's no difference in saving a princess from a village maiden. And then when they fought Delthea, he is the one that ordered the others not to hurt Delthea. Once again, with information that he is aware of, he already has the right judgment and wisdom, whereas Celica? Even when she gets information, she makes the silliest and most foolhardy decisions ever. So once again, no. Alm was always shown to be wise, while Celica was the one that was foolish.

Yeah, you can easily write that lucky charm plot device off as anything else. You can replace that with anything, and it would still work. A plot device is a plot device. It's not "proof" that Alm "needs" Celica at all. Also, Celica insists that they not fight Rigel because there's another way, only there isn;t, and they have to get to Rigel to ultimately even get to Mila in the first place. In other words, there is no way of avoiding the war for even Celica, so her "wisdom" only comes off as foolish. Add in how she ended up getting tricked by Jedah so easily, all the less reason for her wisdom to amount to much. Alm fighting someone in front of him didn't change. Rudolf dying just means that he now has another enemy in front of him, being Duma and Jedah. So he kills them as well. So no. Once again, nothing about Celica was needed in regards to her wisdom. Her advice literally amounted to nothing, and she ended up swayed by Alm more in the end, because he was more right about freeing the world from gods than she was in relying on the gods. In the end, Celica was never the wise one. Alm was.

"I am the hairball of despair... I am the hiss of ruin... I am the fell cat, Grimnya~"

Yeah. Dimitri thinks that Cornelia brought tyranny from the Empire, but the tyrant was none other than Cornelia herself, since Edelgard isn't able to actually control Cornelia or the Agarthans. Not once was Dimitri ever challenged in his views on the Empire or Edelgard, never seeing the positives, but thinking that there was absolutely nothing good coming from this war but the screams of victims. Because he is supposedly this "righteous king" that lost his way, he can't question about the deeper meaning behind the war, and only see war as nothing but something horrible. Added worse with how his talk with Edelgard is less about finding the reason, and more just preaching how war is bad and she's wrong.

I thought it was really good. It addresses some of the serious issues I had with Dimitri's route. Especially how you even had it that there were people that legitimately like the Empire because of how they are able to benefit from Edelgard's meritocratic efforts, but Dimitri in the story ends up acting like the Empire is evil and people are being oppressed under a tyranny. Sure, under Cornelia, that makes sense. But Edelgard? Nah. The only thing morally grey about Dimitri's story is only when Dimitri was insane. Once he was redeemed, it was basically black and white morality.

Yeah, but in hindsight, this means that Edelgard went all the way from Garreg Mach to the Red Canyon I think, just to tell Kostas that he's gonna die. It's a bit silly, really. Oh, add in the fact that apparently Faerghus won Gronder, but then we're told during the ending that the Empire is coming at them, and they need to get back to the Great Bridge, which actually makes it seem like we LOST Gronder.

How about the fact that the Flame Emperor actually goes all the way to meet Kostas, already aware that Kostas was basically a dead man. It feels nothing more than to tell us that the Flame Emperor was behind it, which sparks the controversial argument now on whether the intention of the attack was really to kill Dimitri and Claude.

The charm had nothing to do with Celica's "wisdom" at all. That was a plot device which is pretty much a lucky break. It wasn't anything about Alm being reckless or foolish. It was more of a flaw of Berkut going on the deep end. Not to mention that Alm killing Rudolf wasn't even something that was due to Alm being reckless either. The thing is, not ONCE was Celica's "wisdom" ever needed.

Actually, they did. Alm specifically did. Except this entire game, Alm never once needed Celica's "wisdom" at any point. He was pretty wise himself, wanting to save anyone he could, despite what others told him.

I disagree. Robin is by far the best Avatar of the bunch. The fact is, Robin has an established personality and interesting character dynamic with the others in his supports. He definitely is able to set himself as a character in the story, rather than some random guy like Mark, who exists and is praised for no reason whatsoever. Or Kris, who feels like he's consuming character interaction just to seem important. Out of all the Avatars done, Robin remains the best of them all. Honestly, they need to take a more RPG element for their My Castle thing. Instead of making on home feature, do multiple when going through major cities and areas, and for the minor ones, do an Encampment that you see in Chapter 12 of the CF route.

I feel that is not really a fair assessment, since Awakening didn't even start that trend.

The one thing I feel that IS HAS learned is that pushing fanservice like they did with Fates is NOT a good thing. Given that very few characters are actually sexualized. However, I do feel that in terms of gameplay, Fates actually did better than 3H had.

An unfortunate consequence. But popularity and trends are what the people basically demand, and will pay money.

I don't necessarily agree with that. Cause the fact is, KT didn't have that much to work with while being in the hardware of the Switch, and we clearly see that there are a lot of graphical and animation issues with the game, with many things being rather half-assed even. Add in how many maps end up being entirely identical, they likely couldn't get so much done. I mean, I doubt they'll stop using Avatars because Avatars are popular in many games nowadays. But you can't have an Avatar not be important. They have to be important to be involved. If they aren't, it feels out of place to even be there. Just make the Avatars be like Robin with personality and lines of their own, and it's good.

This is why it's important to KEEP experimenting on these kinds of things. You're going about it in a negative manner, thinking that because they tried but didn't get far enough, they don't amount to much in the end. What you SHOULD think is that they tried this way, now they should try to go a bit further on this and try to push things now that technology is becoming more and more powerful. The Tellius series pushed quite a lot in their hardware. But 3H didn't truly push the Switch to its maximum potential. Maybe hiring more staff would be a mistake. OR it could actually HELP make the programming much easier. We don't know yet for sure, but the important thing is, it will not hurt for them to try to do that. Fire Emblem is really unlikely to tank in sales at this point, because they have established themselves in the gaming industry and are very popular to people on an international scale. That isn't actually true. There are conversations that can happen while a character is able to be killed, such as how Boyd, Oscar, and Rolf can end up having a conversation with Rolf's mother. The important thing really is that the main cast actually interacts with the environment they are placed in. It makes them more alive and relatable to the players.

Hence why IS should hire more staff for programming this. They oughta be able to afford it now. Fire Emblem is now a pretty big name at this point. Added further with how much money FEH is undoubtedly making. So I don't see why IS doesn't given a higher budget and hire more programmers to help get things going.

This is why I say that the writers to be allowed to hire more staff to handle the workings around the permadeath. It isn't impossible, ad Fire Emblem games in the past HAS actually been able to decently integrate characters to be more involved with the story or have scenes to give them story presence. A prime example is the Tellius series where Path of Radiance actually really worked around the permadeath feature, and even also built base conversations that involved other characters. The Tellius series is what I feel was the game that really pushed the effort in working around the permadeath. So we know for a fact that it is not impossible to work around permadeath. But Fire Emblem needs to actually put in far more effort to do just that.

Yeah, problem is that there are people that try rather hard to perform "grey erasure" by basically removing any sense of moral ambiguity by insisting that one side is morally black, evil, wrong, etc. Honestly, I think that players have gotten so used to villains in Fire Emblem being morally grey in regards to simply them having a tragic backstory, but are objectively wrong, that they can't accept that there can be people doing legitimately good things by doing something that would be considered "morally wrong". So hint at one side not being necessarily evil. Well, in terms of Kaga games, that's definitely a step up.