To move away from muddiness and cross-country skullduggery. (SPOILERS FOR FATES)

[Alazen]

From my vantage point, it looks like FE from Awakening onward has took a turn towards overly lopsided portrayals of lands at war. At least, for the lead unit's birth nation against its enemies.

In Awakening, the named enemy Plegians at large are cackling mustache twirlers besides Token Good Guy Mustafa with the playable ones who aren't former bosses being a stalker girl and a jokester boy who treats war like a game (along with how Plegia's god is a dragon out to destroy humanity). Yen'fey is the one commander in Walhart's army who isn't a fanatic, a baby eater, or a joke and he was coerced into it. Ylisse's shady aspects are underexplored at best, considering how Chrom's father oppressing Plegia in practice serves to glorify Emmeryn and demonize Gangrel for how far he goes due to his grudge. The only example of skullduggery within Ylisse is the Hiearch who sells out Emmeryn.

Now we're at Fates. The game goes out of its way to have Hoshido shine over Nohr. Nohr's king has Hoshido's killed right before kidnapping Kamui. Nohr's troops go around commiting war crimes along with getting bossed around by baby eaters Macbeth and Ganz. It turns out Nohr's king was hijacked by a slimeman, with the actual Garon's policies and views being underexplored. We have Kamui and Aqua talk like rejecting Hoshido is this great sin. We're told about Aqua being chased out of Hoshido, but that comes off as an excuse for Aqua to hang around Kamui in the Nohr Path. Oboro is bigoted against Nohrians, but it's out of a personal grudge instead of indoctrination. And mind you, Fates was hyped up for its narrative.

I'm dwelling on this since past FEs were better about portraying the Lord's birth nation against its enemies. It'd be different if it was just Awakening, but to have two examples with the second one being hyped for its narrative before release is alarming.

Edited August 8, 2015 by Alazen

[Ryo]

You may want to hide the Fates section as spoilers. Never mind.

Edited August 8, 2015 by Ryo

[bookofholsety]

a few years ago, one of my friends had an interesting hypothesis on why this happened. i'll just copypaste the entire thing:

Recently, I've read about both Japan's economic history and its issues with its aging population. And then suddenly, Fire Emblem's recent thematic betrayals made awful sense to me.

Recap: Japan lost WWII. Of course you knew that, but let me emphasize: Japan lost a war after massive destruction on its home front. Aside from the losses due to the bombings at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, after the war it plunged into an economic depression that lasted until the late 60's, when the so-called economic miracle happened.

Anyone who had grown up before the 60's was deeply, personally aware of the devastation of war and the lasting effects for the losers. It so happens that Shouzou Kaga was born in 1950, and would have spent his childhood in the days of the Japanese post-war depression, only seeing Japan rise back to glory in his later teenage years.

Viewed in that light, his sympathies for the losing side become natural. And if you stretch the Japan metaphor, so does his sympathy for imperialist nations like Thracia. Japan had formerly been quite expansion-happy (to the woe of its neighbors) perhaps because its people are stuck on a comparatively teensy island.

All right, so there's the economic history. The aging part?

The age for retirement in Japan is traditionally 60 years old. There's some backlash against that lately, as 60-year-olds these days can be perfectly fit and more than willing to work, but only as recently as this year did that change. (Even then, it's going to be a slow hike upwards to, eventually, 65 in 2025. Way to go, Japan?)

So, let me point out another seemingly obvious fact: it's presently 2013. Meaning, the people who are 60 years old now and being forced to retire were born in 1953. Meaning, in a few years we can expect that everyone who had seen post-war Japan's depression will have been forced to retire from their jobs, including those at Nintendo and IS.

I am aware, of course, that that benchmark isn't all that far off from Kaga's birthday itself and IS could still have been stuffed with a few old guys who had seen these things when it was developing FE12 and FE13. Still, I can't help but find the gap in generations significant. Twenty years ago the people in their 40s rising to power were personally affected by the tragedies of war. Less than ten years from now they will all have been forced into retirement, and the people in Nintendo and IS will all have grown up in a prosperous Japan. Perhaps they have already been quietly nudged away from positions of creative influence. Kaga led his projects in his 40's; maybe contemporary 40-year-olds are behind the core concepts now. There's a mugshot of some Nintendo and IS developer team representatives in the Nintendo Dream comics commentary section, and they certainly look to be on the young side.

I think many other eccentricities of the latest Fire Emblems could easily be chalked up to modern gaming trends that have been sweeping both Japanese and Western game development alike. But that wasn't a satisfying explanation of why its spiritual core had so dramatically changed.

This, I think, could be it.

[Ryo]

Personally, I think the core problem lies not necessarily in the black-and-white nature of these stories, but more in the fact that there are little to no world-building as well as the shallow historical factors within the narrative. These are the issues that were present in both Awakening and Fates. We don't have a clear definition of the state of relation between the political entities, how they interact with one another before and during the war in non-military aspects, while events of the past are only vaguely mentioned. War exists for the sake of having a conflict.

EDIT:

@bookofholsety: That's an interesting hypothesis, I actually have never thought about it that way. I do wonder if this is a trend that can be observed in other media nowadays that involve depiction of war.

Edited August 8, 2015 by Ryo

[Water Mage]

In FE9, Crimea was portrayed as a perfect place with few exceptions, while Daein was seen was evil, again with exceptions, in fact Daein was born because of bigotry.

The laguz are always good guys, even Naesala had reasons to be "evil" and deep down is a good person.

In FE8, you don't see anyone complaining about Renais, and even thought Grado had good people, there seems to be a lot more jerks there.

In the early games, the enemy nations were also portrayed as evil, have you seen anyone speaking good things about Dolhr and Gra?

Really this black and white line of thinking is nothing new to the series.

There are even more examples I can think of.

Edited August 8, 2015 by Water Mage

[Alazen]

Crimea had an entire Part in RD that explored its shady aspects. Dark Dragon was the start of the series. Gaiden and the Judgral games all made the Lords birth nations have serious dark sides (Rigel's brutality, Zofia's corruption, Grannvale's expansionism and in-fighting, and Lenster throwing its weight around agriculturally).

Edited August 8, 2015 by Alazen

[BrightBow]

In FE9, Crimea was portrayed as a perfect place with few exceptions, while Daein was seen was evil, again with exceptions, in fact Daein was born because of bigotry.

The laguz are always good guys, even Naesala had reasons to be "evil" and deep down is a good person.

In FE8, you don't see anyone complaining about Renais, and even thought Grado had good people, there seems to be a lot more jerks there.

In the early games, the enemy nations were also portrayed as evil, have you seen anyone speaking good things about Dolhr and Gra?

Really this black and white line of thinking is nothing new to the series.

There are even more examples I can think of.

No.

Before we even know the name of the country that our heroes live in, we learn that Crimea is far from perfect. We play through the game as a group of mercenaries who are shown that they don't really get the money and fame the fancy Crimean Royal Knights get, despite risking their lives to protect the people just like they do, which foreshadows the themes about social status and the value of individuals depending on were they were born, that the game will deal with. And that's just the beginning. Again, that's before we even know the name of the country.

Now the conflict between Crimea and Daein was initially painted as extremely black and white, quite deliberately so to the point were their respective armors were even painted white and black in contrast to the usual blue/red colors, with red being given to the Begnion Empire instead. But those superficial shades disappear as we progress through the story and learn that for example the nice people of Crimea will quickly turn into bigoted murderers, who are more then happy to even help their invaders if they do as much as see a Laguz.

On the other side of the border, over the course of the game several recruitments will eventually turn out to be citizens of Daein, with Jill in particular illustrating were the perspective of the Daein people comes from. Not that in terms of bigotry, there is much of a difference between Daein and Crimea in the first place. It comes down to the fact that Ashnard merely used the bigotry of the Daein people to his advantage but the potential was there in both countries. Ashnard is also portrayed as a beacon of hope for those on the bottom of the social ladder, since he is willing to promote people according to their abilities and not because of their social status. Considering the game made us experience this kind of discrimination in Begnion, we can most certainly see why this earned him a lot of brownie points with the population whose crappy everyday life has not a whole lot to do with complicated things like the relationship between Beorc and Laguz.

As for the Laguz themselves, they are similarly portrait as racist. We learn early that a Laguz calling a Beorc "human" means pretty much the same thing as a Beorc using the term sub-human and that King Caineghis doesn't really have any support in it's attempt to bring the races closer together. Meanwhile, the hawks think that terrorist attacks are the best way to resolve their issues with Begnion, which was called out by King Deghinsea as not being very helpful.

Most importantly however, is that for all their talk about being suppressed, the Laguz treat the Branded as "sub-humans" themselves. It's no coincidence that Soren lost his shit when Lethe tried to pain the Laguz as the victims. Despite how cynical and calculated he usually is, this hypocrisy was just to much for him. The Laguz were specifically stated to treat the Branded worse then the Beorc do, completely refusing to even acknowledge their existence even if they were dying right in front of them. This shows that the Laguz are not fundamentally better then the Beorc, so it's really just a cycle of violence and suppression were the Beorc just so happen to currently be on the top.

As for Sacred Stones, no one said anything bad about Renais but no one said anything bad about Grado either. The royals are all friends and the people got along just fine with each other. In particular, the border town of Serafew is presented as a monument of the close relationship between the two countries. The invasion came completely out of nowhere and the cruel reality of the situation is something that all the main characters, including those from Grado, struggle to come to terms with.

Also, the early games? First of all, the Grandbell Empire was full of douchebags, staging a war for the sake of getting an excuse to invade a neighbouring country. And while FE1, an NES with probably no more then 4 people working on it, probably didn't have a whole lot of grey in it (seriously, it's a miracle if an NES game even has a story outside the manual), the very first thing we do two games later is to protect the people of Grust from the abuse of Marth's former allies. Later we learn the backstory between humans and Manakete, and even our buddy Xane expresses sympathy with Medeus, stating that him aiding humans is only because of Marth himself. And Gra was doing just fine, before being forced by Hardin into doing his bidding and despite being officially in war with Marth, Gra's soldiers won't actually attack the Aritian army except to defend themselves, so they only real enemy on that map are the Akaneian soldiers that were left behind to stop Gra from rebelling against Hardin. They will happily ally themselves with Aritia as long as the player doesn't go around slaughtering everyone just because they can.

Edited August 8, 2015 by BrightBow

[Alazen]

Let's not forget Gaiden and how a large portion of the game deals with a civil war in Zofia.

[Emperor Hardin]

In the early games, the enemy nations were also portrayed as evil, have you seen anyone speaking good things about Dolhr and Gra?

Its explained in the first game, as in the original NES version, during the Wooden Cavalry chapter that Jiol's betrayal of Cornelius was as shocking to Gra's citizens as it was to Altea's, but they had to go with it.

This is further expanded in the DS Version where Marth talks about this to himself, and how he count hold all Gra responsible.

Malladeus also explains, once again even in the original NES version, that Dragonkin used to rule the continent, and they're jealous of humanities success.

Considering this is an NES game, Awakening's conflict compares very poorly.

[Alazen]

Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light is the first game in the series. It's not surprising if it's more "black and white" than later games.

[Emperor Hardin]

Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light is the first game in the series. It's not surprising if it's more "black and white" than later games.

What I'm saying is going off the NES Version of Shadow Dragon alone, there's still a more balanced portrayal of the enemy nations then there was in Awakening.

Fun Fact, the Gra villager was a adult man in the NES original, and a teenage girl in the DS remake.

[Alazen]

Also, one can get the impression Fates' portrayal of Hoshido against Nohr's is a case of Japanese nationalism infecting Fire Emblem. What with the peace-loving Japan analogue with an underexplored (at most) dark side losing its king to the Europe analogue's, the same Europe analogue with war crime committing troops. Fates never proposes that Hoshido might have did anything questionable to warrant or lead to Sumeragi's death.

By this point, you can say that Hoshido could been made muddier... by making it like pre-surrender Japan. Complete with war crimes.

Edited August 9, 2015 by Alazen