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Sidereal Wraith

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    Tharja: How Awakening Made a Good, Bad Character. [Fire Emblem: Support Science #14]

    in General Fire Emblem

    Posted · Edited by Wraith

    On ‎1‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 5:10 PM, NekoKnight said:

    If one is to like Pieri and think she's a good person at heart, you're going to have to accept that she's an unrepentant serial killer, past and present. Mind you, I don't think liking morally perverse characters means you approve of such things in real life, but within the context of the story, Pieri is a villain, who, like many Fates characters, has her villainy ignored.

    Yo Ghast, hook me up with those character analysis', I'll peer review your stuff.

    You think that Peri and many of the other playable characters of Fates are villains? Flawed? Yes. Do morally questionable things? Yes. Villains? No. Characters like Elric of Melnibone are goddamn villains. Elric has slaughtered untold hundreds of innocent people with his hellsword, Stormbringer, to please his patron god, Arioch, Lord of the Higher Hell and to keep himself alive. And the funny thing is that Elric is the protagonist of his own saga and saves the day in the multiple times over the course of his adventures.

    P.S. Stormbringer doesn't just kill people but also devours the souls of its victims.  

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    Enter Elric: The Original Edgelord

    in Far from the Forest...

    Posted · Edited by Wraith

    The Prince of Ruins, Womenslayer, Kinslayer, Dragon Emperor, The Thin White Duke, Godslayer, The White Wolf of Immryr.

    Since 1961, Michael Moorcock's infamous Elric of Melnibone has been a major influence on many famous anti-heroes, anime villains, and edgelords the world over. Join me in traveling back through the mists of time to rediscover a character that has left an indelible mark on the fantasy genre for over half a century. 

     

     

     

     

    Hopes/Fears for Shadows of Valentia

    in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

    Posted · Edited by Wraith

    2 hours ago, Jotari said:

    Mostly playing devil's advocate here (as I really don't care either way) but to address your points against Fates.

    A) That's a design choice they went with. There's absolutely nothing to prevent Fates from being physically in the same world. Valm and Ylisse are hardly the only continents on that planet. We know of at least one (possibly two) others. You might find it to be the wrong choice for your own reasons but it wasn't a limitation of the setting that makes the cameos forced. They could have decided anything they want when conceiving the plot, Fates' (strangely unnamed) continent wasn't a preestablished setting. I suspect they go with different dimensions because it allows to keep the different canons neater and stop them interfering with each other (so questions like why the Dragon Laguz work like Manaketes can be easily side stepped).

    B) The characters appearance in Fates does nothing to interfere with the canon of their own endings in Awakening. All of them were said to go off on a quest of their own and in Fates all of them left Nohr and presumably returned to the Ylisse. That was simply one of their quests mentioned. Hidden Truths also explains their presence their completely. Ananakos needed some people to help defeat his evil half so he found some fan favourite random warriors to help him. Being that Valla is apperantly in a different dimension itself it's perfectly consistent that Anankos should have the powers to do everything he did in the DLC. The real question is why the three of them did feck all and never mentioned their connection to Ananakos at all throughout the main game. That's what happens when you go with half measures and try to make cameos feel relevant but not over shadowing.

    B) Subsection B) Ests ending in the original FE1 mentioned nothing about her disappearing. The ending in Book 1 of Mystery of the Emblem was a retroactive one to explain her presence in Gaiden (an already released game). The original ending simply said she fell in love with a knight meaning there was less of a basis for her to appear as a cameo then any of the child characters from Awakening. And as (relatively) good as Camus' arc eventually ended up being they literally had to revive him from the dead to get away with it.

    C) Gaius, Cordelia and Tharja don't appear as second gen characters. Expies of them do. It's not something unfamiliar within the Fire Emblem series. With such phenomenally large cast they're bound to reuse character concepts. The only difference here is that it was extremely blatant and done for the sake of fanservice. Nevertheless I do consider it something completely separate to established characters physically appearing in different games.

    D) True, for the most part. I think we did get to see a bit more of Owain's insecurities bleed through into his Odin persona.

    E) I wasn't alive in 1991 when Gaiden was released but I can't imagine the cameos back then were viewed of as anything other than pure pandering (for better or for worse).

    All in all if you can confess that the cameos in Gaiden worked then you shouldn't fear the idea of cameos themselves but how they're handled in future installments.

    A) Its an example of incredibly poor writing and design. The inclusion of the Awakening characters comes off as forced rather than organic. I can buy the prospect of characters from SD appearing in Gaiden because both games exist in the same world and around the same time. This is why I'm okay with characters from Binding Blade appearing in Blazing Sword and vice-verse. Anakanos travelling to another dimension to find dragon slayers to help him kill himself and help his son/daughter, only to have this plot point destroyed by the curse of Valla reeks of poorly thought-out story telling. I.E. the explanation is longwinded and nonsensical. 

    B) The whole idea of the character endings in Awakening is to give closure to the characters and even get the characters married depending on the player's choice. By having the option to marry off Inigo, Severa, and Owian in both games runs the risk of getting their marriage endings in Awakening retconned in the process and invalidating the player's agency in Awakening. It also doesn't help that the original Japanese version of Hidden Truths heavily implies that Inigo, Owain, and Severa in Fates are actually the same characters from The Future Past and not from Awakening. Also Inigo is killed in the Birthright path, making it impossible for him to return home.

    B Subsection) I was referring to Est's ending in Mystery of the Emblem, not SD. Even thought IS revived Camus I feel that this addition added something to the already paper thin plot of Gaiden and helped to apply some more character conflict for Nyna in Mystery of the Emblem. The Awakening characters in Fates are superfluous, adding nothing to the plot and instead raise several questions about why they are here in the first place. These questions are not answered main game and were only given in two DLC maps later on as an afterthought.

    C) Even thought archetypes do appear regularly in FE, these expies are still nothing more then blatant fan service. The expies might as well be Gaius, Cordelia, and Tharja, because these second-generation characters are literally nothing more then carbon copies of already existing characters from Awakening. At least in the other games the archetype characters were given different names, appearances, and backstories as opposed to the characters they were similar too.

    D) Agreed

    E) I still think that more leeway can be given to the FE series in 1992 because it was still young and fledging, as opposed to the FE series of 2015. The appearances of SD characters in Gaiden added something to the game, whereas the inclusion of Awakening characters to Fates did nothing except give use two more second-generation characters and raised several questions about the continuity of the series which then only got explained  in two paid DLC maps. 

      

    Hopes/Fears for Shadows of Valentia

    in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

    Posted · Edited by Wraith

    31 minutes ago, Jotari said:

    I find this fear rathe amusing considering Awakening was the first game to pull that trick by shoving Camus and the Pegasus sisters in there for no reason.

    The reasons why I'm fine with Camus and the Whitewings being in Gaiden:

    A) Archanea and Valentia exist in the same world and the events of both SD and Gaiden happen around the same time.

    B) Camus' (a.k.a. Zeke's) appearance in Gaiden contributes to his overall story and character development, even if the amnesia is a forced plot point.

    C) Having the Whitewings participate in Gaiden helps to explain Est's disappearance at the end of Mystery of the Emblem, for it can be inferred that she ran away to Valentia and Abel followed after her.

    D) I can forgive Gaiden for reusing characters from SD because it was the second game in the series and as such FE, as a whole, was still searching for its identity as a series.

     

    Why having Awakening characters in Fates didn't work:

    A) The events of Awakening and Fates take place in different dimensions.

    B) Hidden Truths 1 and 2 did a piss pour job explaining why Inigo, Severa, and Owain are in Fates to begin with, on top of retconning their character endings from Awakening.

    C) As far as I know, Fates provides NO reasons for why Gaius, Cordelia, and Tharja appear as second-generation characters in Fates. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)

    D) Fates didn't use this opportunity to flesh out any of these characters anymore so then Awakening did.  

    E) The fanservice of Fates comes off as pure pandering to fans of Awakening when compared to the reused characters in Gaiden. This is the case because all the Awakening characters who appear in Fates are incredibly popular amongst the FE community.

    Hopes/Fears for Shadows of Valentia

    in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

    Posted · Edited by Wraith

    I'm excited that Gaiden is getting a remake, because of all the other games it was the one that needed it the most. My biggest fear is that this remake is being made in the Post-Awakening era of FE. Don't get me wrong, I like Awakening and Fates despite their flaws, but I fear that IS will shove boatloads of fan service into the game in order to appease newer fans. I don't want Takumi or Xander randomly appearing as playable characters in Echoes for one simple reason: Gaiden is NOT their story! One of the biggest problems with Fates was the inclusion of Awakening characters who didn't contribute anything to the plot and were put in the game solely for fanservice. From what I've seen so far I'm still optimistic about Echoes. All IS has to do with the plot of Echoes is flesh out the original story, add some NEW characters, and have a support system to give depth to the cast. Just keep fanservice on a very short leash and this game will be golden.

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