Why is the story of Awakening not so good according to you?

[NewDisplayName]

Why is the story of Awakening not so good according to you?

[MCProductions]

For most people, its lack of world building and Robin being too mary sueish. For me tho, its that darn deus ex machina at the dragon's table. Everything else about the plot I honestly like.

[IceBrand]

Plotholes, retcons, lack of decent world building.

[Sentacotus]

I enjoy it enough and I'm a sucker for time travel so yes I'll admit I liked the whole future children coming back to the past to save it thing. The gripes I have with the plot is that more world building could have been done in between the arcs to fill in some of the plot holes and even explain why things were the way they were. Like imagine if there was a sidestory or even some cutscene or convo of Chrom retelling (through a flashback) to the Avatar/Robin about the first war between Plegia and Ylisse and how that erupted after he had defeated Gangrel. Or something with Tiki explaining why the split of Archanea happened after Marth united the continent and the distribution of the stones because the other nations were fearful of one nation having Falchion and the completed Fire Emblem.

Edited July 5, 2015 by LordTaco42

[NewDisplayName]

I myself found the story rather nice. But I think it is predictable. So know every Fire Emblem fan who plays FE: Awakening for the first time that Marth is not the real Marth. 2 Falchions, same hair color as Chrom, female voice ...

That vision of Robin in the beginning of the game I do not find the perfect way to get into the game ...

[Draco]

Seems like something out of a fanfiction.

A dude/gal from nowhere is suddenly close with the prince of that nation and all of his crew, that quickly? I dunno.

Time travel? With your kids from the future? From a bad future, and they're all your age for more antics? Oh.

The characters are all tropey and one sided af and love said dude/gal unconditionally even when they haven't supported (this is mostly present in the ending I think)? ...Oh.

Major enemy characters are brought back from the dead? ...Ohhh.

Chrom is willing to sacrifice his whole kingdom and the maybe even the world for the life of that dude/gal? I... ohhhhh...

Yeah, I can't say I'm a fan of it. Poor world building too.

You can like it (why would you, though?), but I really don't. I'd rather have the story be boring than actively bad. Or would I? I dunno.

Edited July 5, 2015 by Draco

[MCProductions]

^I seriously wish people would stop complaining about the spotpass revivals. Considering they are trial maps, likely non-canon, and FE has been pulling revival BS like this since Gaiden. Is it a problem in the plot, yes, but its not a new one.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

mostly just the awful world building.

characters being brought back from the dead is literally slapping fire emblem in the face tho.

the characters themselves I'm neutral on, some i like some i hate, most i don't care about.

also the arguement of "well its optional so its not canon" just doesn't work here unless we assume every non story mission is not canon, so every child other then lucina isn't canon, as well as Donnel and Anna.

Edited July 5, 2015 by HF Makalov Fanboy Kai

[Sentacotus]

I always just considered the spot pass stuff as bonus content and Priam is debately the only one that might be legit. Even then it doesn't really make sense since you only access him right before the Grima battle. I don't really consider it a problem or really even a part of the plot.

[MCProductions]

Yeah, spotpass being part of the plot is debatable, and even then FE2, FE3, FE4, FE7, FERD, and FE12 did revivals like this as part of the MAIN quest. At least its completely avoidable in Awakening.

[Tessie Spoon]

For what it's worth, ProJared thought the story was great (and he tends to be a harsh critic on what he dislikes). : p

That aside, I enjoyed it enough, despite how much potential it wasted. Aforementioned worldbuilding, plus the generic parent-child supports.

[Draco]

Yeah, spotpass being part of the plot is debatable, and even then FE2, FE3, FE4, FE7, FERD, and FE12 did revivals like this as part of the MAIN quest. At least its completely avoidable in Awakening.

No? It's not part of the main quest. FE9 and 6 have trial maps but you have to complete the game a bunch of times before you can get those characters. I dunno about FE1-5 or 12 but the other ones aren't part of the main quest. Like, with FE13, they have dialogue and imply that they just lived through their death or something. It's obnoxious.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

and i thought the story was great too the first time i played it.

its during replaying the game where i noticed the issues with it.

[MCProductions]

Draco, Ninian's "revival" is a MAJOR plot point in FE7's endgame, Oliver and Count Renning both "died" in POR, but come back in RD in the same fashion as the likely Non-canon spotpass characters in the MAIN story. Also I didn't even mention FE6 or FE9 in my post, cause your right about them just being bonus content.

Also, HF, I thought the plot was great my first playthrough too, subsequent ones when you actually think about whats happening turn it into a just decent plotline at best tho.

[Draco]

For Ninian, only thing I can think of is that she was revived with magic and she wasn't killed in battle, nor was she a villain, plus multiple villains were revived in Awakening.

I liked to think that Oliver and Bertram were just defeated or something. I dunno.

I agree with HF too. I wasn't real big on Fire Emblem at the time (I finished Shadow Dragon and played Path of Radiance a few years later) but I noticed a few problems near the end of my first playthrough and a few more on subsequent playthroughs.

Edited July 6, 2015 by Draco

[Sentacotus]

I mean granted it was just their dead bodies but weren't the Black Fang bosses all technically "revived" in the endgame in FE7?

[Draco]

Uhh... not quite. You were still fighting against them and they were only there for one chapter. Nergal just brought back their bodies like a Necromancer, and they didn't just say, "Oh, I lived through that battle! Yeah!". I dunno.

[Knight]

I think we can all agree that the worldbuilding sucked. For me, however, it was how all the nations seemed superficial. Ferox and Ylisse were "the good guys" Valm and Plegia were "the bad guys" and no conversation where Gangrel says Chrom's dad was a dick or that conquering the world is a good thing from Walhart's perspective is going to change that. I also hate Emmeryn's character, people look up to her as a great leader when all she does is; ask for reinforcements from Ferox, gets kidnapped, dies, and her death scene is ridiculous. It's just generic good vs. evil with no inbetweens. That said, there's stuff I do like about Awakening, I like the Grima reveal, I like Basilio and Flavia. That's about it really.

[Blaze The Great]

There is so much that is talked about but never explained. The Valm arc, as interesting as it could have been, doesn't really fit. The time travel, while it does fit, just doesn't seem realistic at all. Robin is a total Gary sue.

But my number one gripe is that is just doesn't feel like Fire Emblem. It's basically "oh, a baddy. Let's fight and just beat the baddy. We beat him!" There's not much depth, and in a series that has such traditionally good stories as FE, that's kind of embarrassing.

[Czar_Yoshi]

In order of importance...

-Robin acts like a self-insert, but isn't. This would be more OK if it were apparent that they're their own character, but having a character who seems like they're supposed to be you plotting behind your own back (Cht.23) or committing war crimes with no input (Cht.14) is a really major problem with the world's continuity.

-Support conversations have absolutely nothing to do with what's going on in the game. In a game with a shortage of world-building, that's a huge missed opportunity, especially since they put in the work to write all that anyway. Relevance also could have acted as a major incentive to collect them. Similarly, they have no effect on the plot, despite effectively being a quantifier of friendship that would have been easy to use.

-The pacing is very off. The Paralogues are all 100% irrelevant. At best, you get a new character who then has zero story importance, but typically they all simply involve fighting bandits, thugs and never-do-wells to keep a village safe or something. Yes, Chrom and co. are good guys. That should not take 23 extra chapters of nothing else to explain, especially when everything important gets so little.

-Similar to the above, the game devotes a lot of early chapters to doing very little (Cht.2), or setting up something that could have been better done elsewhere (Cht.8), and then gives no time to actually important things (Valm in general). Additionally, that random Paralogue unlocked after Cht.9... Making the story/game in general longer could have been a first step to a good solution, but the work to fill it out would still have needed to be done (and they definitely could have done much more exposition with the space they had...).

[eclipse]

The first arc had the most potential. . .and then it ended. I think fleshing out what was there would've made for a solid entry. Have the kids and whatnot show up in the second half without the parents, with replacement characters for those kids who don't exist (a la FE4), and skip the Walhart thing entirely.

[Shadow Knight]

The story is enjoyable but in the end more fitting for a saturday morning cartoon rather than a Fire Emblem game. It's a very lighthearted tale with clear good guys and bad guys. Normally even that's ok except that their motivations for what they do are not always well-fleshed out.

In the end the story is there to fit around the game mechanics introduced and while it gets the job done it lacks polish.

[Kirie]

Seems like a lot of people feel the same, but for me is was mostly lack of detail and world-building. The story itself has a lot of potential, but is barely fleshed out and many things are left unexplained. Paralogues and/or Supports could have been used better to elaborate on things, instead they end up being mostly filler. I've built up a lot of elaborate head canon.

[HeoandReo]

I think the base part of the story does its job, (it, uh, carries the direction of the game) but it's much better in the first half than the second.

The Valm arc could have been handled much better. I did not care at all about any of the characters I allied with or had to fight in the second half, compared to what they did in the first half. There was no development or nothing memorable about characters who appeared for a short time. (Compare Mustapha to Pheros, for instance) All the time spent on Valm as a result made the final parts of the game feel extremely rushed.

Supports were generally not good with notable exceptions based on characters. It almost felt that they were written completely separate from everything else in the game, and there are loads of stinkers in there.(Nah/Inigo, Chrom/Sumia, the entirety of Kjelle's character, Cordelia's supports not even touching her role in the story. Pretty sure all of those were there even in the original Japanese) Anything good that I have to say about the supports come entirely from the localization and how they changed things. (and if what I've heard of Fates' supports is true, then my greatest fears for the game have been realized and they kept the support writers from last time)

Edited July 8, 2015 by HeoandReo

[Czar_Yoshi]

I've built up a lot of elaborate head canon.

That's probably the point...