Best written villain?

[BrightBow]

Pheros has a backstory of being a former priest of Naga like Libra, which puts her in a sympathetic light. Also, she's in love with her ruler, uses a fire tome as her main weapon, and has blonde hair. Seems plenty like a clone of Selena, especially since they could have just thrown in another generic boss like they did for Chapters 14 and 15 to further emphasize how much Valm hates Excellus.

Loyality by itself doesn't mean much. If they weren't loyal, an army wouldn't even work. And when on looks closer, their loyalty for their respective leaders is entirely different.

Selena was loyal to Vigarde but she didn't actually approve of the war and the treatment of civilians. If he didn't earn her loyalty through his kindness, she would have stood against him. In Pheros case, this kind of brutality is the reason she is loyal to Wallhart in the first place. Because he is such a "god upon men" who has the strength to unite everyone. Selena could never serve somebody like Wallhart.

So the only thing she has effectively in common with Selena is... that she is not depicted as a sadistic bully. Man, I miss Jugdral where bastards like Kempf were the ones that managed to stand out.

Edited June 2, 2014 by BrightBow

[Jotari]

@Selena: I never said Pheros was a Camus archetype. I just said Pheros was so similar to Selena that she was probably just a ripoff for the sake of FE8 fanservice. I love the Camus archetype if it's done particularly well, and FE8's Quirky Miniboss Squad are probably the best non-final boss major antagonists of the GBA games.

@Walhart: Personally, the Valm arc was the best part of the game for me. After seeing the character descriptions for Pheros and the Chapter 15 boss, I kinda felt like every single enemy soldier was a fanatic psychopath like they were going for with the Grimleal lategame, except not brainwashed. Reminded me of FE10 and how the Daein army was convinced that Micaiah was Jesus Christ reborn, only this time Walhart ISN'T actually Jesus.

No one was saying Pheros is a Camus archtype. I was saying Selena has more in common with Camus than she has in common with Pheros. The fact that she was a priestess of Naga isn't meant to be a positive thing. Being a former member of the religion means she wasn't happy with the way things were done and left to follow a different path, in this case Walhart's path. I don't think anything about Pheros was meant to stand out as sympathetic, while Selena is just dripping with intended sympathy. Neither are evil characters to any great extent but how they are handled is completely different. They might have some physical similarities and share a class but everything about them as characters (which is what we're talking about here, who is the best written character) is completely different. They decided to go with a Valkyrie boss because it's a cool class that doesn't really get a whole lot of screen time as enemies. Maybe they did want to remind people of Selena's existence a little bit but regardless if Pheros was a general, sage or pegasus knight with black, red or purple hair then she would be the same character with the same history, motivations and dialogue none of which she shares with Selena.

[Constable Reggie]

Who the hell is Pheros

[Elieson]

http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Pheros

[Constable Reggie]

Oh right the one line boss who's gimmick was "i'm a woman"

[NobodiePichu]

you notice how its pretty much only female bosses that are portrayed in any sympathy, and all the other bosses are men and or evil and nonredeemable. somethings wrong there.

[BrightBow]

you notice how its pretty much only female bosses that are portrayed in any sympathy, and all the other bosses are men and or evil and nonredeemable. somethings wrong there.

Yes, there is. There aren't enough female bosses and grunts. Female bosses are often treated sympathetically because for the most part Fire Emblem follows the "male is normal" philosophy and therefore only developed characters have even a chance to be female unless they are in a female-only class

I do have to give Awakening some credit for Raimi, since she is probably the only female boss in the series who is neither of these things, nor is she the leader of an amazon brigade like that Swordmaster in FE4. She is just a generic boss whose role could have just as well been filled by a male without any additional changes.

Edited June 2, 2014 by BrightBow

[Jotari]

you notice how its pretty much only female bosses that are portrayed in any sympathy, and all the other bosses are men and or evil and nonredeemable. somethings wrong there.

Once again I don't think Pheros is meant to be sympathetic. Certainly no more sympathetic than Walhart, they pretty much have an identical ideology. On the male hand you also have bosses like Yen'fey and Mustafa who definitely are meant to be seen as sympathetic. Unless you're talking about the series overall in which case there's still some particularly nasty females like Hilda and Ashera (I was going to say Petrine but they kind of throw her a bone in her death quote) and some really sympathetic dudes like Gale and Hetzul. The problem isn't that women are more sympathetic, the problem is that there's a lot less female bosses than male. Which given the nature of the series being medieval war based isn't too big a problem but it would be nice to see more of them (point of trivia, aside from the final boss who isn't human, the only female boss in Radiant Dawn is Catalena, that Pegasus Knight in the camp chapter of part 4 whom the player might never even see due to the fog of war).

Edited June 2, 2014 by Jotari

[NobodiePichu]

no my point was that in fire emblem awakening only the female boss lineup has anyone slightly normal and human i guess. mean while pretty much every male boss is a murdering asshole, a "slimy bandit type", or just has little to no lines to really give a damn about them. there are exceptions true but for the most part the game seems to treat all female bosses with some form of respect or at least care to make them not just a stock villain and make them seem as if they actually do have a life outside of the day job. mean while all most all the other villains beside plot relevant characters are murdering assholes and just plain out evil, and even then some plot relevant villains are still just treated as murdering assholes with no life in them.

then again what to expect from a game that treats all the female characters like eye candy.

[Jotari]

no my point was that in fire emblem awakening only the female boss lineup has anyone slightly normal and human i guess. mean while pretty much every male boss is a murdering asshole, a "slimy bandit type", or just has little to no lines to really give a damn about them. there are exceptions true but for the most part the game seems to treat all female bosses with some form of respect or at least care to make them not just a stock villain and make them seem as if they actually do have a life outside of the day job. mean while all most all the other villains beside plot relevant characters are murdering assholes and just plain out evil, and even then some plot relevant villains are still just treated as murdering assholes with no life in them.

then again what to expect from a game that treats all the female characters like eye candy.

I really don't see where you're getting that from. Out of all the games I'd rank Awakening as one of the higher ones when it came to stereotypical sympathetic female bosses. The only female that comes across as any way sympathetic is Aversa in here paralogue which retcons her evilness into brain washing. Outside of her there's Raimi as someone mentioned who is just a standard character who is a little to zealous and proud but in no way evil or sympathetic. Pheros who as I said before isn't treated as sympathetic. And Grima who is identical regardless of which gender you choose. I honestly can't recall any female bosses outside of that leading back to the problem being there aren't enough female enemies. As for males on the large scale you have the likes of Gangrel who is treated somewhat sympathetic in his paralogue, Yen'fey and Mustafa as I mentioned before are probably intended to be the most sympathetic characters in the game. You have characters like Cervantes who aren't nice or murdering bastards and also characters who are really just there with less importance than Raimi like the first few Valm bosses. Awakening does have a fair few generic thug enemies but it hardly depicts males or females in unfavorable light compared to each other unless there's a super sympathetic female boss that I'm forgetting about.

Edited June 2, 2014 by Jotari

[NobodiePichu]

no my point is the fact that every signal generic thug, and or otherwise completely evil character is a male. there inst any female thugs, hell there isn't even a bisexual or pangenderd villain unless you count excellus and he was just an asshole so that's not healthy. my point being that the sexuality representation in awakening is one of the most skewed thing's i have seen in any of the fire emblem games. bah i dont even really care at this point but really i just have a problem with the fact that the majority of characters that are enemies are generic faceless male thugs, even when the game had plenty of ways and opportunity's to use generic female thugs. and even when they have a female villain they write them on the standpoint of making them both visually and or character wise appealing in a basic sex appeal manner. pheros though maybe not sympathetic is still written and drawn to at least appeal to people's horomones, aversa is a fetish character no questions asked, and even ramini probably is made to appeal to something. then again this is a failing of thee game in general, but it still makes me worried because even though there are ideas for characters all of the female characters are objectified in some way, and i find it uncomfortable and a little upsetting that no one has made a fuss over things like this happening in the media in general.

[Jotari]

no my point is the fact that every signal generic thug, and or otherwise completely evil character is a male. there inst any female thugs, hell there isn't even a bisexual or pangenderd villain unless you count excellus and he was just an asshole so that's not healthy. my point being that the sexuality representation in awakening is one of the most skewed thing's i have seen in any of the fire emblem games. bah i dont even really care at this point but really i just have a problem with the fact that the majority of characters that are enemies are generic faceless male thugs, even when the game had plenty of ways and opportunity's to use generic female thugs. and even when they have a female villain they write them on the standpoint of making them both visually and or character wise appealing in a basic sex appeal manner. pheros though maybe not sympathetic is still written and drawn to at least appeal to people's horomones, aversa is a fetish character no questions asked, and even ramini probably is made to appeal to something. then again this is a failing of thee game in general, but it still makes me worried because even though there are ideas for characters all of the female characters are objectified in some way, and i find it uncomfortable and a little upsetting that no one has made a fuss over things like this happening in the media in general.

But as I said this is less an issue with sexual sterostypes (since there is diversity among the males characters) and more a problem with male to female ratio among the enemies in the game. And this is also not a problem with just Awakening, like I said Radiant Dawn had only a single female enemy in 40+ chapters excluding the goddess who serves as the final boss. I'm currently playing Thracia right now and the only female enemy in that which comes to mind is Olwen who is super sympathetic to the extent that she's obviously a playable character after five seconds of dialogue. There are nasty and nice characters of both genders throughout the entire series. There just happens to be a hugely significant amount more male characters due to it's nature as a war series. I agree that lack of gender representation in Fire Emblem is an issue (among enemies, it's pretty good among playable characters) but I think it's unfair to lay all the hate on Awakening when many games have done no better.

[Logience]

Everyone remember FE3, where all the Peg Knights were made male?

[RJWalker]

Everyone remember FE3, where all the Peg Knights were made male?

And the game ended with every female ruler systematically handing over their power to Marth.

[NobodiePichu]

But as I said this is less an issue with sexual sterostypes (since there is diversity among the males characters) and more a problem with male to female ratio among the enemies in the game. And this is also not a problem with just Awakening, like I said Radiant Dawn had only a single female enemy in 40+ chapters excluding the goddess who serves as the final boss. I'm currently playing Thracia right now and the only female enemy in that which comes to mind is Olwen who is super sympathetic to the extent that she's obviously a playable character after five seconds of dialogue. There are nasty and nice characters of both genders throughout the entire series. There just happens to be a hugely significant amount more male characters due to it's nature as a war series. I agree that lack of gender representation in Fire Emblem is an issue (among enemies, it's pretty good among playable characters) but I think it's unfair to lay all the hate on Awakening when many games have done no better.

no no that's not the problem the problem is that though yes the gems do have low female to male ratios awakening objectify's all the enemy females into something that is not a sexual stereotype, but instead made to be thought of as an object or a role type, like aversa as the sexy seductress, pheros as the diligent duty before love type, ramni as the gruff military female, and all the female playable characters no better, with tharja as stalker, sully as no nonsense tomboy (not feminist tomboy), miriel as glasses, nowi as loli, cordelia as the humble talent, olivia as the clumsy shy but nice quite girl, sumia as every female love interest in any anime ever, female robin as a psychotic si fanfic bitch, chereche as the maid, sayri as traditionalist and tragic action girl, flavia as pure action girl, lucina as small chested leader, Severa as 'not' princess, nah as acts older then she is, kjele as the traveling fighter, cynthia as wanna help hero, emmeryn as both naive overly sensitive type and amnesia bait (two in one wow), and female morgan as oc slash child. the men have a lot of this running about as well but the females seem to have it in spades, not only implying that this game was made to appeal to the 'male' democratic but to also sell it with sex along side all the nostalgia bones the gem throws at you. the other game's had some problems but in my opinion fire emblem has been usually one of the better series out there to portray gender equality in a balanced way with female characters being female characters, even if it did throw the odd bone in there for fan service with certain character roles. awakening however is designed more like an anime and a bad one at that. the plots all over the place, the characters make no sense in there actions, the world is designed for the convenience of the plot and has no thought put into it at all, and the characters are designed to sell to the public's perverted fantasies. i would have less of a problem if it was only the male characters in awakening that were subject to this as there are plenty of good male characters out there to balance the book but the game adding a few more blow up female toys to add to the pile of the already small female character pool (at least when compared to the male pool) and further making it difficult to find any good female characters out there, further leading to standardization of female characters when people accept these things with no complaints, further leading to more bad female characters, furthering the problem.

[Jotari]

no no that's not the problem the problem is that though yes the gems do have low female to male ratios awakening objectify's all the enemy females into something that is not a sexual stereotype, but instead made to be thought of as an object or a role type, like aversa as the sexy seductress, pheros as the diligent duty before love type, ramni as the gruff military female, and all the female playable characters no better, with tharja as stalker, sully as no nonsense tomboy (not feminist tomboy), miriel as glasses, nowi as loli, cordelia as the humble talent, olivia as the clumsy shy but nice quite girl, sumia as every female love interest in any anime ever, female robin as a psychotic si fanfic bitch, chereche as the maid, sayri as traditionalist and tragic action girl, flavia as pure action girl, lucina as small chested leader, Severa as 'not' princess, nah as acts older then she is, kjele as the traveling fighter, cynthia as wanna help hero, emmeryn as both naive overly sensitive type and amnesia bait (two in one wow), and female morgan as oc slash child. the men have a lot of this running about as well but the females seem to have it in spades, not only implying that this game was made to appeal to the 'male' democratic but to also sell it with sex along side all the nostalgia bones the gem throws at you. the other game's had some problems but in my opinion fire emblem has been usually one of the better series out there to portray gender equality in a balanced way with female characters being female characters, even if it did throw the odd bone in there for fan service with certain character roles. awakening however is designed more like an anime and a bad one at that. the plots all over the place, the characters make no sense in there actions, the world is designed for the convenience of the plot and has no thought put into it at all, and the characters are designed to sell to the public's perverted fantasies. i would have less of a problem if it was only the male characters in awakening that were subject to this as there are plenty of good male characters out there to balance the book but the game adding a few more blow up female toys to add to the pile of the already small female character pool (at least when compared to the male pool) and further making it difficult to find any good female characters out there, further leading to standardization of female characters when people accept these things with no complaints, further leading to more bad female characters, furthering the problem.

I'm not going to argue on the point of playable characters, IS clearly went with what they thought would sell and it seems to have worked out for them. But Pheros and Ramni feel like two of the least fan serviced characters in the game. I think it's good that they stand out in the game as bosses instead of being completely blank slates. What are you looking for exactly? As far as Awakening's bad writing goes they're two of the more tolerable characters in the game. Even if they are in some obscure way objectified (I'm asexual so I admit it's not something I would immediately pick up on) they at least appear and have some kind of character and role. I'd rather what we got over them being female counterparts to someone like Farber, the Dark Knight who serves as the boss in Say'ri's chapter who is so minor I had to look up his name.

[NobodiePichu]

I'm not going to argue on the point of playable characters, IS clearly went with what they thought would sell and it seems to have worked out for them. But Pheros and Ramni feel like two of the least fan serviced characters in the game. I think it's good that they stand out in the game as bosses instead of being completely blank slates. What are you looking for exactly? As far as Awakening's bad writing goes they're two of the more tolerable characters in the game. Even if they are in some obscure way objectified (I'm asexual so I admit it's not something I would immediately pick up on) they at least appear and have some kind of character and role. I'd rather what we got over them being female counterparts to someone like Farber, the Dark Knight who serves as the boss in Say'ri's chapter who is so minor I had to look up his name.

hmm true i guess, but that's kinda sad at the other end isn't it. its the balance that states that all females are as close to good as possible in there given roles, and all males are scum unless there on the good guys side. there should be a balance were its a character that comes to mind first no the specific gender characters when a role is mentioned.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Simia is female, in a gender-neutral class, and definitely not for fanservice (at least not that kind). Please don't discriminate against Risen when choosing examples.

Possibly relevant, but there are also no enemy War Clerics (outside of DLC), while there are plenty of Monks, and those classes are similar enough that they might as well be the same.

Anyway yes the females of Awakening are giant walking tropes, but so are the men. It's hardly a gender-exclusive phenomenon.

Oh right the one line boss who's gimmick was "i'm a woman"

Actually Pheros has 11 lines.

[NobodiePichu]

Simia is female, in a gender-neutral class, and definitely not for fanservice (at least not that kind). Please don't discriminate against Risen when choosing examples.

Possibly relevant, but there are also no enemy War Clerics (outside of DLC), while there are plenty of Monks, and those classes are similar enough that they might as well be the same.

Anyway yes the females of Awakening are giant walking tropes, but so are the men. It's hardly a gender-exclusive phenomenon.

Actually Pheros has 11 lines.

well played sir well played.

back on the original topic of this thread, another villain i rather like was days of future past villain crew. it was a lazy solution yeah but there was potential there and in the days of future past concept and feel in general would have been kinda fun.

[Czar_Yoshi]

If you're specifically referring to FP Grima there... I agree. I may have mentioned earlier that he gets some much nicer writing than is par for Awakening if you get FP3's bad ending (Lucina is alive, but not all of her allies are).

[NobodiePichu]

If you're specifically referring to FP Grima there... I agree. I may have mentioned earlier that he gets some much nicer writing than is par for Awakening if you get FP3's bad ending (Lucina is alive, but not all of her allies are).

yep that's the one I'm talking about.

[Constable Reggie]

Actually Pheros has 11 lines.

Well fuck me that's Selena-quality characterization right there

[Jotari]

Overall I noticed the writing in Future Past was of much better quality than the main game. That scene on the bridge in the second chapter really managed to capture the desperateness and tone of the event really well. It's a pity gameplay wise the first two chapters aren't connected to the last and literally nothing changes aside from one line of dialogue if you let the children die.

Edited June 3, 2014 by Jotari

[Roivann]

Well fuck me that's Selena-quality characterization right there

It's more than most bosses can say (no pun intended). A lot of Valm arc bosses just yell "Rebel scum! I shall smite you in the name of the conqueror!"

And then "Defeated? But howwwww?!"

[Rohesia]

In terms of Awakening (because that's the only game I've finished so far), I thought Gangrel was pretty good, but most of that comes from after I learned his backstory.

[spoiler=Backstory]It's pretty impresses a kid from the slums became the king of his country (guess Plegia doesn't have royal families?).

As for the other villains, they weren't bad. Pretty much all of them (except for Yen'fay and Mustafa) had that overconfidence that I've seen in one too many villains and it kind of made them bland in my opinion.