Which FE do you you think was the most well-written?

[Axie]

Well, this thread is about the writing, and I feel FE8's writing definitely compares to the other FEs. A lot of it comes down to taste as different people put different weights in different flaws/qualities (as we can see with FE4 and how polarising its writing is).

[CT075]

as much as i feel like fe8's overall plot is kind of bland the actual writing (the chapter-by-chapter plots, 90% of the characterisation) is like spot on

[ZemZem]

Sorry if I'm just bringing up the nagative aspects of FE8. I just feel like it's given more credit than it actually deserves nowadays. (Especially by guys like Genral Shock.) It's a good game, I'll admit. But when compared to other games, I don't feel like it compares.

Hey man, that's alright. Though TBH, I think it gets the credit it deserves, IMO. To each their own. :)

[Just call me AL]

Well, this thread is about the writing, and I feel FE8's writing definitely compares to the other FEs. A lot of it comes down to taste as different people put different weights in different flaws/qualities (as we can see with FE4 and how polarising its writing is).

That's true. I never really cared much for FE8's story save for the Jehanna subarc or characters aside from Joshua, Duessel, L'arachel, the trainees, Dozla, Rennac, Forde, Colm, Knoll, Tana, Lyon, Selena, Carlyle, and Glen. Heck, I even stopped playing it as soon as I first got FE7. I probably still have an unfinished save on my FE8 GBA cartridge. I honestly just feel like the story and characters in other FEs like 4, 7, 9, 12, and some of 6 are just better, though I do admit they have their flaws.

Hey man, that's alright. Though TBH, I think it gets the credit it deserves, IMO. To each their own. :)

Eeyup. Edited November 15, 2013 by Just call me Al

[General Banzai]

That's true. I never really cared much for FE8's story save for the Jehanna subarc or characters aside from Joshua, Duessel, L'arachel, the trainees, Dozla, Rennac, Forde, Colm, Knoll, Tana, Lyon, Selena, Carlyle, and Glen. Heck, I even stopped playing it as soon as I first got FE7. I probably still have an unfinished save on my FE8 GBA cartridge. I honestly just feel like the story and characters in other FEs like 4, 7, 9, 12, and some of 6 are just better, though I do admit they have their flaws.

"I didn't care for the characters aside from [giant list of characters]"

4's characters don't exist, claiming they're superior to anything is a slap in the face

hell you care about more characters in FESS than FE4 even has

Edited November 15, 2013 by General Banzai

[BBM]

Yeahhh the only FE4 characters who get any story are Sigurd, Cuan/Ethlin, Fin, Levin, Alvis, Trabant, Julius, Celice, Leaf, and Julia. The rest you might "like" such as Sety or Aless but they have no story relevance beyond their recruitment. And even of the story-relevant characters, only a few really get development.

[General Banzai]

Yeahhh the only FE4 characters who get any story are Sigurd, Cuan/Ethlin, Fin, Levin, Alvis, Trabant, Julius, Celice, Leaf, and Julia. The rest you might "like" such as Sety or Aless but they have no story relevance beyond their recruitment. And even of the story-relevant characters, only a few really get development.

does "getting fucked over royally" really count as character development?

because if not, then you can cross off like half of that list

[Aizenberg]

have you fe8 fan boys even played fe4?

[General Horace]

Yeahhh the only FE4 characters who get any story are Sigurd, Cuan/Ethlin, Fin, Levin, Alvis, Trabant, Julius, Celice, Leaf, and Julia. The rest you might "like" such as Sety or Aless but they have no story relevance beyond their recruitment. And even of the story-relevant characters, only a few really get development.

just off the top of my head its pretty easy to add ayra, tiltyu, deirdre, oifaye, hannibal and definately altenna to that list

and thats not including npcs and enemies like areone, hilda etc

but a lot of the stuff on the archanea and jugdral games admittably isn't always ingame, and hidden away in directors notes, which is unfourtunate and not really related to how well written it is.

regardless I still think fe8 wins pretty handily although the translation probably helps it out.

[ZemZem]

have you fe8 fan boys even played fe4?

Yeah. And I still think FE8 is better written than FE4.

[Jotari]

Also, you do know that the Frelian army goes with whichever twin you don't choose right? It's not like Ephraim charges Grado by himself if you go Eir route or Eirika travels to Jehanna by herself if you go Eph route. You just don't see them onscreen when the two parties meet up in C15.

Nonsense. The Frelian army were just there to carry Ephraim's stuff. He single handly took on the whole empire. Well maybe Dussel helped a bit but for the most part it was Grado soldiers running away in fear of the one man army.

[General Banzai]

have you fe8 fan boys even played fe4?

yeah, it's a lousy game, one of the worst in the series both on a gameplay and story level

[Baldrick]

Nonsense. The Frelian army were just there to carry Ephraim's stuff. He single handly took on the whole empire. Well maybe Dussel helped a bit but for the most part it was Grado soldiers running away in fear of the one man army.

Also, don't the Frelian army get slaughtered en masse by the Grado soldiers, even after Ephraim defeats Vigarde?

[Aizenberg]

yeah, it's a lousy game, one of the worst in the series both on a gameplay and story level

gameplay is debatable, but you've got to be kidding me on the story. fire emblem 4 easily has one of the most engaging story lines. what exactly did 8 have in terms of story? leon and valter were the only memorable characters in that game

Edited November 15, 2013 by Aizenberg

[ZemZem]

An amazing Camus archtype (Selena), memorable characters (looking at you, L'Arachel and Innes), route split (how could you not remember this), and other elements.

I think FE4 is pretty damn great, but the only part of the story that's really big is everything that happens in Chapter 5. That's it.

[General Banzai]

gameplay is debatable, but you've got to be kidding me on the story. fire emblem 4 easily has one of the most engaging story lines. what exactly did 8 have in terms of story? leon and valter were the only memorable characters in that game

gen 1 is just sigurd doing random unconnected things while whatever the real story is happens offscreen, and then eventually he dies, which isn't that great a twist because sigurd himself is one of the worst-developed main characters in the series

gen 2 is better, but still nothing special

the game really suffers on a story level due to the gameplay considerations, where the main way story gets progressed is through villager gossip. there's just not enough time in between chapters to give the characters any justice, and the chapter setup makes gradual change impossible so instead huge swaths of story happen offscreen between the few chapters we do get (example: sigurd meets dierdre and marries her in literally one chapter). killing everyone at the end of gen 1 has no impact because nobody has had more than a couple of paragraphs of dialogue, not even sigurd himself. meanwhile, since we're stuck with a fan translation, the writing itself is ehhhhh and often relies on comically exaggerated phonetically-rendered accents, as if we're reading the first scene of pygmalion. (i hear there's a new translation? is it less shit?)

Furthermore, although the maps are enormous, the actual number of enemy units you're dealing with isn't scaled up appropriately, which gives an amazingly underwhelmingly unepic feel to the battles. Like oh. This ENTIRE COUNTRY is being defended by like thirty-forty guys. cool. By contrast, Thracia manages to build a feeling of tension about what on paper is a much smaller-scale war, and although Berdo himself is a derpfaced atrocity of a villain, the Ch 24-24x-Final build up to fighting him at least sets a mood of "oh fucking shit we're in the depths now". Granted this is undermined by how lame Berdo himself is both storywise and gameplaywise, but with FE4 in comparison although we're fighting dark gods and transcontinental puppetmasters by endgame, in fact fighting ridiculous swaths of bigbad powerbosses, the tension and mood going into that is so superbly abrupt as to undermine any power the boss gauntlet ever inherently had.

here's where i point to FERD part 4 and how great it is, even though people are uniformly mentally handicapped and don't like it for whatever fucking reason. in the final chapter, you the player are aware that all of these bigbads are floating around in the aether somewhere, and you know as per the rules of good storytelling you'll have to encounter them all in one way or another before roll credits, but the structure of the guidance tower as this escherian mysterymaze emphasizes a kind of uncertainty, a kind of confusion. The deeper you delve into this tower, the more vulnerable you feel, even though you're actually gaining momentum and knocking out more powerful enemies with every ensuing step you take. It's the unknown factor of the tower that deliberately adds this element and thus FERD manages successfully to evade the pitfalls that PoR and FE4 fall into at their conclusions: where with every bit you get closer to victory, your ultimate triumph is more and more ensured, to the point where the final chapter of PoR is almost comically lacking stakes. FE4 is less problematic in that regard but the fact that you can see the entire map, even if the enemies at later parts are missing, really removes tension. Once you've taken care of Edda and like two or three of the other random castles you have to take out (guarded by generic previously unseen bosses we're have no reason to care about like RODAN and SCORPIO, and thus lacking the bossgauntlet tension we would derive if we were fighting people who had harangued us over a protracted period), the final parts where we're taking on the real faces of evil (like Manfloy and Ganondorf etc) it seems as though a significant portion of "the worst" is behind us.

which is a pratfall

[amadeuscho]

I don't rate the writing in the game based on how many characters have influence in the story. The FE games have always had only a few characters central to the plot, just like real war. Some people are foot soldiers. Hence they can die and the story moves on. It doesn't make any sense to me to rate up FE8 as a result of plot involvement of the characters. Often times, the better written story's are the ones involving a smaller cast of characters that are focused on. The X-Men films vs the Avengers is a good example of this.

I also don't rate down FE3, FE4, and FE5 for the lack of development of side characters. That wasn't expected in game and the support conversation as they exist now didn't exist. I do rate down Shadow Dragon because it was released in the modern context. FE10 is also weakened for the lack of development of the Dawn Brigade.

[Loki Laufeyson]

Quick quip about Lyon.

I vastly preferred EphraimRoute!Lyon. Why? Cuz he appears to have a measure of control over his superpowered Evil Side. It shows him as cold and calculating in places but also regretful. Eirika!Lyon is well written but comes off as Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds. I like the calculating side more. The cool thing about Lyon is that he can be interpreted in Eirika's Route as being just as cold and calculating as Ephraim!Lyon, but using sympathy to manipulate Eirika. Sadly, the game doesnt tell us if this is the case or not. Its left (possibly deliberately) ambiguous.

[-Cynthia-]

I don't think most of the complaints about FE10's Part 4 are due to the Tower of Guidance set up which I liked personally. My issues with Part 4 were:

1. Everyone goes from fighting each other to fighting the enemy a little too quickly. It would have been nice to see some more tension between Daein and the other armies.

2. Ranulf's Zelgius=BK reveal while logical, is very anticlimactic.

3. The Ike/Zelgius dialogue in the tower is...weird. Suddenly they're all buddy buddy now?

4. The inconsistencies with Yune- in PoR she's a 'dark god' inside the medallion that shouldn't be let out, but after she shows up people like Skrimir treat her with reverence.

It's not as terrible as some make it out to be though IMO.

Edited November 16, 2013 by -Cynthia-

[General Banzai]

I don't rate the writing in the game based on how many characters have influence in the story. The FE games have always had only a few characters central to the plot, just like real war. Some people are foot soldiers. Hence they can die and the story moves on. It doesn't make any sense to me to rate up FE8 as a result of plot involvement of the characters. Often times, the better written story's are the ones involving a smaller cast of characters that are focused on. The X-Men films vs the Avengers is a good example of this.

I also don't rate down FE3, FE4, and FE5 for the lack of development of side characters. That wasn't expected in game and the support conversation as they exist now didn't exist. I do rate down Shadow Dragon because it was released in the modern context. FE10 is also weakened for the lack of development of the Dawn Brigade.

again, by side characters we mean side characters who are actually relevant to the plot. the examples everyone keeps pointing to are innes and larchy. equivalent examples would be, say, soren or ranulf from Radiance Saga, or august and evayle from Thracia

actually august is a bad example because we all know august is the REAL main character of thracia

[Loki Laufeyson]

I don't think most of the complaints about FE10's Part 4 are due to the Tower of Guidance set up which I liked personally. My issues with Part 4 were:

1. Everyone goes from fighting each other to fighting the enemy a little too quickly. It would have been nice to see some more tension between Daein and the other armies.

2. Ranulf's Zelgius=BK reveal while logical, is very anticlimactic.

3. The Ike/Zelgius dialogue in the tower is...weird. Suddenly they're all buddy buddy now?

4. The inconsistencies with Yune- in PoR she's a 'dark god' inside the medallion that shouldn't be let out, but after she shows up people like Skrimir treat her with reverence.

It's not as terrible as some make it out to be though IMO.

I agree. Tower of Guidance is where most of my beef lies, but your first point was one that always stuck in my craw in an unpleasant manner. All the sudden, Skrimir is totally cool with Micaiah's forces? Really? The line "No one doubts your gift, Micaiah." he says just made me go "oh wat." Sothe actually attempts to point this kind of thing out before the teams are formed and Ike just brushes it aside. The only conflict we see is Naesala and Skrimir. This is fine, but what about the Daein/Begnion/Crimea conflict that was just happening before Ashera's judgment? Ya know?

I already kicked the Ranulf/BK/Ike can so ill leave it.

The Ike/Zelgius dialogue wasnt too bad. It does seem rather uncharacteristic of Ike to be so...understanding of Zelgius' motives. The Memory Scene can help put this into better context, but...Zelgius and Ike speak before that, and i think that scene is Second Playthrough And Onwards exclusive. (plus having to chat with the BK in part 3)

The Yune thing is a bit wonky. But this isnt that bad considering that everyone just witnessed Ashera god-bomb everyone. Yune being all "Oh man that fucking sucks..ILL SHOW HER!" kinda helped everyone go "ok so she isnt a total chaotic evil thing that will eat us." Nailah's dialogue about "I feel it deep down that Yune is the god of my ancestors." is sloppy though.

[Rehab]

That's fine, Banzai, but you use big gaping terms like awful and worst-in-series, and have either implied or explicitly stated multiple times that there's nothing of merit even happening in fe4's story. Its writing is structured poorly and the characterization is chunked, sure, but that doesn't mean the "things that actually happen in the story," i.e. "the plot," i.e. a good chunk of the elements that make up "the story" are of no consequence or value.

Sigurd's actions aren't directly related to one another because every basically every time he sallies forth, he's being manipulated into action, and he's either too dumb to notice (not entirely the case, I think, given the "this is getting kind of uncomfortable" sentiments he expresses in the beginnings of chapters 2 and 3), or because he just can't resist helping the distressed party of the month because he doesn't have the heart to let bad things happen to innocents/friends if he can prevent them.

See:

-Adean gets kidnapped by Verdane => "Oops, I accidentally conquered Verdane."

"Sigurd, I gotta tell you, folks in Agustria are getting kinda nervous with the thought of being surrounded by Grandbell all of a sudden, and what's more, having its conqueror chillin' at the border." "Oh dude I know me too, I put in a word, I'm lookin' to be outta here and get things back to normal soon as possible." "Thaaaat's my bro" *knux*

-Elliot besieges Lachesis => "Oops, I accidentally conquered half of Agustria and kicked the heir apparent out of his house."

"So, uh.. how about that word, buddy?" "..workin' on it <: [fuckin hell why won't the brass let me give it back?]"

-Shagaal goes full shitlord => "Oops, there goes the rest of Agustria."

It might not be wOdeepest thing ever, but "nice guy follows conscience => sets stage for revival of evil empire => ousted, executed and martyred" was a plenty strong showing for the time I had of it.

If you found the structure so abominable that the twist didn't have any impact on you, that's fine, because there are problems with it, but that conclusion is also, like, your opinion, man. On the other hand, the timeskip put me in oh-shit mode, because I loved the way the game had me help make a mess on a big scale enough that I was naturally eager to clean it up.

Edited November 16, 2013 by Rehab

[General Banzai]

I'm glad you outlined the plot for me so I didn't have to

because of the jank gameplay structure, gen 1 has 5 chapters and a prologue to cobble together a story, and yet there is no story, it's just a string of random occurrences some of which have some relation to one another

also saying it's "just my opinion" goes with the territory, everything we're saying is just opinion, pointing that out is a waste of everyone's life

[NinjaMonkey]

This is fine, but what about the Daein/Begnion/Crimea conflict that was just happening before Ashera's judgment? Ya know?

I don't see what's wrong with that. They face a common threat, so they decide to drop their respective quarrels, and concentrate on the task at hand (ie saving the people of the world from a goddess gone mad).

[Rehab]

it could've been a much less substantial waste if you'd have included it in the first place, instead of going into every topic blaring the "fe4['s story, gameplay, insert other] is shit" horn

further, you keep effectively saying there's "nothing to it," when I'd think anybody who'd bother to call fe8 "Gothic" could pick up some shit going on in fe4 about I dunno, imperialism? Chivalry? Something more than "it's random garbage"

Edited November 16, 2013 by Rehab