Defending the Story of Fates.

[Azure Sen]

was it even confirmed that the continent that Ylisse and Plegia exist on is even called Ylisse?

It's mentioned somewhere, I forget where, that the continent is indeed named Ylisse, but even if it wasn't it still has the name Akaneia from the previous games. Really, both continents in Awakening have two names, which is still more than we get in Fates.

They only care about whatever they can see in front of them. Compare Elincia willing to sacrifice the woman who was basically her sister for the good of her country, to Chrom not wanting to let go of Robin even if it meant saving the world,

I'm pretty sure Chrom being a short-sighted dolt was intentional, given that Emmeryn pretty explicitly jumped off the cliff to keep him from handing over the Shield of Seals in exchange for her safety and dooming them all. Plus, the ending where you kill Grima (and Robin) against his wishes is the much more hopeful ending overall.

I'd have to disagree with them not caring about people, in conquest Kamui didn't want to kill people especially their siblings, I don't think they really mentioned their happiness or it was factored in at all(unless I missed it).

If you give me a little while, I'll compile a list of quotes about Kamui being a selfish jerk who only thinks about their own feelings in Conquest.

Xander is like the Camus archetype, despite what his heart says he is duty bound being crown prince and all that.

Camus and his ilk are short-sighted idiots on top of being hypocrites, because staying loyal to a tyrannical or evil lord who treats them like crap doesn't make them honorable, especially if said character actively participates in his/her lord's atrocities. Xander at least has a (terrible and flimsy) reason for staying loyal to Garon, but said reason is frequently stretched beyond...well, reason. This isn't helped by his incredibly dumb motivation for supporting and following his father's orders, and his unwillingness to even consider that his father has changed until either the endgame of Conqquest or said father explicitly says that he wants to destroy Nohr (and even then, he initially dismisses it as his father being tired or something like that, I don't remember the exact wording) in Revelation.

And also I'd argue his duty is more to his people to overthrow the tyrant who massacres them for the slightest hint of disobedience rather than continue to follow said tyrant's orders while subverting them only when it's convenient for Xander or his siblings.

Conquest does have a few hints on morality if you dig deep enough.

I'm actually really curious to hear your thoughts on this, if you wouldn't mind sharing.

So, I hear a lot of people complaining about the story of all three campaigns for Fates. The same also applies to Awakening. So I thought to myself for a while, and realised that the plot can be barebones, because it's not where the bulk of the story lies. Note that plot and story are separate things here.

Plot and story (narrative) are not separate things, because you can't really have a narrative without a plot. Plot is the series of events that drives the narrative forward, while the narrative is the way said sequence of events is communicated to the audience.

Edited June 24, 2016 by AzureSen

[warchiefwilliams]

How do you justify the Nohr invasion, then? That's black and white; Nohr are the aggressors attacking an innocent, peaceful nation. If there are any other circumstances regarding it, we're not told about it

Yet another problem that proper world building could solve. And another problem that the game simply glosses over in Birthright (Ryoma, you have ninja spy networks everywhere. How did you not know that your neighboring country and regional rival was in the midst of a famine?) and ignores in both Conquest and Revelations. Instead it all gets blamed on a blob of grey goo.

You're too kind. I take any and all credit for the fuck Xander movement, and his popularity confuses me as much as Camilla's.

Fan-service. She may have an interesting history being used as a tool (assassin, maybe?) but the game only explores it in a single support. So bollocks to making her an engaging character, put her in skimpy armor that shows off what people want to see!

And also I'd argue his duty is more to his people to overthrow the tyrant who massacres them for the slightest hint of disobedience rather than continue to follow said tyrant's orders while subverting them only when it's convenient for Xander or his siblings.

Isn't the former what Conquest was supposed to be? Or at least what we were expecting?

Edited June 24, 2016 by warchiefwilliams

[Sunwoo]

I'm pretty sure Chrom being a short-sighted dolt was intentional, given that Emmeryn pretty explicitly jumped off the cliff to keep him from handing over the Shield of Seals in exchange for her safety and dooming them all. Plus, the ending where you kill Grima (and Robin) against his wishes is the much more hopeful ending overall.

Compare the way that RD handled Elincia and Awakening handled Chrom, though. RD!Elincia is a pacifist who just wants to take care of her country, but at first she didn't have the backbone to stand up to corrupt Crimean senators because she was too afraid of harming the people -- the same people who were becoming convinced to turn against her (RD 2-1). Elincia has to eventually take up arms against her people and the rebel army to keep her country from caving upon itself, and she tells Ludveck outright that he will not get the throne even if it means Lucia has to die. She thanks him for making her realize her weakness, but calls him out as greedy for power nonetheless, and he doesn't have what it takes to be king because he doesn't care about the people (RD 2-E).

The same game also gives us an example of a weak king, Pelleas, who was basically a puppet to Izuka and Begnion. He signed a pact in his own blood without reading it, and Micaiah was far more popular than he was with the people. But he did all that he could to get out of it for the people, even if it meant sacrificing his own life. And in the first playthrough you ARE forced to sacrifice him. Even his sacrifice proves useless, since it didn't break the pact by itself. The game does not try to hide Pelleas's mistakes, it portrays him as a weak king who still cared about the people, but ultimately couldn't do anything on his own.

Chrom just isn't called out by the game for his weak ruler actions the same way Elincia and Pelleas were. He doesn't really grow at all, like Elincia. Even Emmeryn, who's an even weaker ruler than Elincia, is hailed as a saint and Walhart's stance on how she spouted nonsense and jumped off a rock is clearly meant to be "wrong". Chrom not wanting to sacrifice Robin isn't seen as being selfish. If you don't choose the sacrifice ending the general message is that Robin is far more important than the rest of the world. Which is a really dramatic swing from RD 2-E's message that a ruler has to make what choice is the best for the country, not for themselves or just the people immediately in front of them.

[Captain Karnage]

I think the flaws in Conquest's strory are more apparent because unlike in Birthright or Revelations you can't just shut your brain off and let Ryoma solo the map.

anyways I thought it was just ok,

Edited June 25, 2016 by Captain Karnage

[Hero of the Fire Emblems]

To everyone saying Nohr has no just motive- Azura's B support in revelation does indeed gloss over a motive that in my opinion might actually put Hoshido to a degree in the wrong and is a big reason I can't fucking stand pretty much any of the Hoshido siblings (especially Takumi)

Apparently, Hoshido has been refusing to offer aid, food, or fucking anything even long before Garon went crazy, in spite of famine- with Hoshidans literally being described as "maybe outsiders might consider them self centered, as long as they have peace, they don't care about affairs outside their borders"- but with the note someone made about Ryoma not knowing a neighboring country had a famine it really paints the hoshidans as selfish assholes who probably get everything they deserve in Conquest (especially when you consider that they basically attempted to kidnap and murder Azura for "possibly" defecting to Nohr in direct defiance of Ryoma, makes me think Hoshido might have the capability to descend into absolute barbarism if shit hit the fan)

It also makes me seriously question how moral of a person Sumeragi was, especially based on what we learn in Revelation about him. No wonder the Nohrians are just a bit pissed.

I think Conquest!Corrin might be a case of the character knowing more than the audience

Edited June 25, 2016 by Hero of the Fire Emblems

[Thane]

To everyone saying Nohr has no just motive- Azura's B support in revelation does indeed gloss over a motive that in my opinion might actually put Hoshido to a degree in the wrong and is a big reason I can't fucking stand any of the Hoshido siblings (especially Takumi)

Apparently, Hoshido has been refusing to offer aid, food, or fucking anything even long before Garon went crazy, in spite of famine- with Hoshidans literally being described as "maybe outsiders might consider them self centered, as long as they have peace, they don't care about affairs outside their borders"- but with the note someone made about Ryoma not knowing a neighboring country had a famine it really paints the hoshidans as selfish assholes who probably get everything they deserve in Conquest (especially when you consider that they basically attempted to kidnap and murder Azura for "possibly" defecting to Nohr in direct defiance of Ryoma, makes me think Hoshido might have the capability to descend into absolute barbarism if shit hit the fan)

It also makes me seriously question how moral of a person Sumeragi was, especially based on what we learn in Revelation about him. No wonder the Nohrians are just a bit pissed.

A couple of things here before I have to leave, so pardon me if it's a bit rushed:

First of all, if memory serves, different teams wrote the supports and the main story, which means Conquest was written without that in mind.

Secondly, it's not up to Hoshido to just give Nohr everything - that's not how the world works unless you're North Korea and threaten everyone with nuclear weapons to get basic supplies.

Thirdly, how can you say that invading someone's nation for not giving them food is giving them what they deserve? Not only does that not make sense, but literally no one mentions that as a motive in Conquest; this is not brought up in the main story.

Fourthly, this entire thing about Ryouma not knowing about the average Nohrian having it hard makes no sense. He's got a bunch of ninja under his command, and him not knowing about the living conditions of a nation with infamously poor soil, high crime rate, etc. is straight up impossible. We're essentially led to believe that a Nohrian diplomat could've walked up to Ryouma and said "shit sucks, could you help us out?" and he would've done it.

Fifthly, you question how moral Sumeragi "might" have been - we have no clue, but judging by the fact that Garon murders him in cold blood, I'm pretty sure Nohr is, again, in the wrong. I wish there was more moral complexity to the story, but there is none.

In short, the writing in this game makes no sense and is far removed from reality, is painfully black and white and I have no idea how you could possibly try to twist any of this to try and make Hoshido look like the bad guys.

[Raguna]

I think Conquest!Corrin might be a case of the character knowing more than the audience

Thane did most of my answers but seriously if Kamui knew more than the audience how in the heck does he show it? He's too naive and would blurt it out at some point just like he almost blurted out the name of Valla in his support with Azura because Fates doesn't even have good foreshadowing or good event execution aside from probably the cutscenes. In what way does this Kamui know more than the audience?

Edited June 25, 2016 by Raguna

[Azure Sen]

To everyone saying Nohr has no just motive- Azura's B support in revelation does indeed gloss over a motive that in my opinion might actually put Hoshido to a degree in the wrong and is a big reason I can't fucking stand pretty much any of the Hoshido siblings (especially Takumi)

Apparently, Hoshido has been refusing to offer aid, food, or fucking anything even long before Garon went crazy, in spite of famine- with Hoshidans literally being described as "maybe outsiders might consider them self centered, as long as they have peace, they don't care about affairs outside their borders"- but with the note someone made about Ryoma not knowing a neighboring country had a famine it really paints the hoshidans as selfish assholes who probably get everything they deserve in Conquest (especially when you consider that they basically attempted to kidnap and murder Azura for "possibly" defecting to Nohr in direct defiance of Ryoma, makes me think Hoshido might have the capability to descend into absolute barbarism if shit hit the fan)

First, nothing about their actions means that Hoshido "deserved" to be invaded, have two of their sovereigns, one prince and untold numbers of soldiers and innocents killed, and left in shambles at the end of the war. Hoshido had no obligation, moral or otherwise, to offer Nohr aid. The two countries are implied to have been fighting off and on for centuries, something the support writing team doesn't seem to have been told, but then again Kamui and Azura's entire Revelation support chain reflects absolutely nothing about the Hoshido-Nohr situation we're presented with in any route, and is once again trying to establish a false equivalency between the two nations. Even if Hoshido did have an obligation to send aid to Nohr at some point, Garon murdering Sumeragi at a peace conference, kidnapping his child and making repeated incursions into Hoshido revoked any right Nohr had to that aid.

On top of that, this possible motive doesn't matter because it's not Garon's motive, period. Or anyone else's motive, for that matter. Garon wants to destroy Hoshido, and everyone Nohr follows him because they're comically evil, afraid of him or have no moral qualms about invading an innocent nation, even if by all accounts they should.

Isn't the former what Conquest was supposed to be? Or at least what we were expecting?

It was one of the many things IntSys promised pre-release, yeah.

Chrom just isn't called out by the game for his weak ruler actions the same way Elincia and Pelleas were. He doesn't really grow at all, like Elincia. Even Emmeryn, who's an even weaker ruler than Elincia, is hailed as a saint and Walhart's stance on how she spouted nonsense and jumped off a rock is clearly meant to be "wrong". Chrom not wanting to sacrifice Robin isn't seen as being selfish. If you don't choose the sacrifice ending the general message is that Robin is far more important than the rest of the world. Which is a really dramatic swing from RD 2-E's message that a ruler has to make what choice is the best for the country, not for themselves or just the people immediately in front of them.

Fair enough. I agree that Chrom and Emmeryn should have gotten called out more for their flaws as rulers, but Emmeryn got killed off and stayed dead before she could have any significant development and Chrom's suffered from him getting shoved out of the spotlight once the war with Plegia was over.

[Yunanuy]

I figured that one of the points in the peace treaty the two kingdoms were about to make was for Hoshido to support Nohr during their famine, but then Garon went tripping. So the fact that Hoshido isn't helping Nohr with this problem is attributed to that. But while it's easy to blame Nohr for being the aggressors, I think people have to consider that Garon does not represent Nohr, in the sense that he is in fact a tyrant, a dictator, which is to say that he is the sole reason for what the people of Nohr are forced to do to Hoshido. I'm not saying the majority of the Nohrians aren't shitty people, but it's easy to put everyone under the same comb just because of a few individuals actions.

Personally I enjoyed the story, Hoshido, Nohr, Revelations. I think the story (idea) itself was great. But is it plothole galore? Definitely. There are so many things wrong about it, which people have already pointed out. But what annoys me the most is the Avatar. There is absolutely no character development for him/her. We're lead to believe there is, but towards the end of Revelations I just lost my shit when the "traitor boy whose name I don't remember" in Valla betrays them. Surprise surprise. And then Ryoma and Xander have the gall to tell them that "we need you to be a trusting little shit that gets us in trouble and never learns from their mistakes", to which everyone else goes hooray. Like wth? You're enabling their biggest weakness and telling them it's okay. You're letting them know that they can fuck up as much as they want because you'll clean up their mess. Again. And again. And again. Not to mention that the only character we're lead to believe the Avatar ever does kill is Garon and/or Anankos. Everyone else just steals his kills to ensure his "purity".

And then there's the Hidden Truth DLC...and the "explanation" of how the Awakening Trio ended up in Nohr and their mission. They pretty much forgot all about Anankos and decided to dedicate themselves to their masters, and their supports are filled with "let's go home once the war is over" aka Hoshido sucks it. And although the DLC gave us some answers, it ended up creating more questions, like wtf are they doing? They knew his son was kidnapped and brought to Nohr. Maybe they didn't know that the Avatar was the child in question in the beginning, but after Chapter 6 they sure as hell did. And if you chose Birthright, do they side with you? lol no

What about Conquest? They make no attempts to push the Avatar towards their goal of collecting all the weapons and guiding them to Valla. Honestly, if you're gonna shoehorn fanservice characters in a DLC that actually really matters for the story, how about making the characters themselves actually doing something in the main story itself?

I love Fire Emblem to bits, and Fates' gameplay is absolutely fantastic. I've never enjoyed the gameplay of a Fire Emblem game so much as I have with Fates. But storywise, it suffers from the belief that our generation has a short attention span and that we don't like to think too much. It presents us with a story, but the details are all jumbled up because we don't want to think about those things anyways. "This doesn't make sense? Well that's fine, it's just a game after all!"

And at the end of the day, yeah, it's just a game. But if you're going to include a story, at least try to patch up the plotholes, or they might as well just continue making Advance Wars instead..

[Sentinel07]

To everyone saying Nohr has no just motive- Azura's B support in revelation does indeed gloss over a motive that in my opinion might actually put Hoshido to a degree in the wrong and is a big reason I can't fucking stand pretty much any of the Hoshido siblings (especially Takumi)

Apparently, Hoshido has been refusing to offer aid, food, or fucking anything even long before Garon went crazy, in spite of famine- with Hoshidans literally being described as "maybe outsiders might consider them self centered, as long as they have peace, they don't care about affairs outside their borders"- but with the note someone made about Ryoma not knowing a neighboring country had a famine it really paints the hoshidans as selfish assholes who probably get everything they deserve in Conquest (especially when you consider that they basically attempted to kidnap and murder Azura for "possibly" defecting to Nohr in direct defiance of Ryoma, makes me think Hoshido might have the capability to descend into absolute barbarism if shit hit the fan)

It also makes me seriously question how moral of a person Sumeragi was, especially based on what we learn in Revelation about him. No wonder the Nohrians are just a bit pissed.

I think Conquest!Corrin might be a case of the character knowing more than the audience

As far as I know, it's never specifically said how things were between Nohr and Hoshido. Sure, Azura suggests that Hoshidans may be complacent, but it's never outright said if they ever refused aid to Nohr.

We really have no idea how things were before Garon murdered Sumeragi.

[Sunwoo]

Hoshido has no obligation to give Nohr anything, especially if they get nothing in return. That's not how the world works. Besides, in Birthright Ryouma promises to send supplies to the poor starving people of Nohr -- at the very least it shows Ryouma is willing to help once he sees how shitty it is over there. But man, if Nohr can't offer anything in return then Hoshido doesn't have obligation to take care of Nohr before taking care of themselves. And it most certainly DOES NOT MEAN that they deserved to be invaded and have half of their royal family killed.

I have no problem with people who like Conquest's story or Conquest's characters better, but I'm honestly getting really annoyed with Nohr apologists who act like Conquest is the morally superior choice or that Hoshido had it coming or that they even deserved to be invaded. Hoshido does not have to be "evil" while Nohr are just the poor victims of evil Hoshido. That's not going to make the story gray, it makes it just as black-and-white as making Hoshido the poor victims of the evil Nohr. Conquest had good concepts and ideas, but it was a train wreck in execution. If you like it, that's fine, but please do not make it out like Hoshido owes Nohr any of its resources if it's not getting anything in return, or that they deserved to be invaded when most of the story doesn't support that they did anything worthy of destruction.

[twice]

I like the idea of Fates altogether, but nothing is ever perfect.

[warchiefwilliams]

Hoshido has no obligation to give Nohr anything, especially if they get nothing in return. That's not how the world works. Besides, in Birthright Ryouma promises to send supplies to the poor starving people of Nohr -- at the very least it shows Ryouma is willing to help once he sees how shitty it is over there. But man, if Nohr can't offer anything in return then Hoshido doesn't have obligation to take care of Nohr before taking care of themselves. And it most certainly DOES NOT MEAN that they deserved to be invaded and have half of their royal family killed.

I have no problem with people who like Conquest's story or Conquest's characters better, but I'm honestly getting really annoyed with Nohr apologists who act like Conquest is the morally superior choice or that Hoshido had it coming or that they even deserved to be invaded. Hoshido does not have to be "evil" while Nohr are just the poor victims of evil Hoshido. That's not going to make the story gray, it makes it just as black-and-white as making Hoshido the poor victims of the evil Nohr. Conquest had good concepts and ideas, but it was a train wreck in execution. If you like it, that's fine, but please do not make it out like Hoshido owes Nohr any of its resources if it's not getting anything in return, or that they deserved to be invaded when most of the story doesn't support that they did anything worthy of destruction.

My problem with the whole "Ryoma promises to send aid" line is that in the Conquest!Corrin/Azura support lines, assassination attempts by Hoshidoan Ninjas occurs more than once. This sort of implies that Hoshido does have at least some form of a spy network, which further implies that Ryoma should be aware of the lack of food in Nohr. Yeah, they shouldn't give away goods for free, but to feign ignorance at the problem and promise aid just makes me dislike the lobster lord even more.

I concur regarding the train wreck in execution part. It is a damn shame that the game gave us such a kick-ass pretense and squandered it. All well, that is what head-canons are for right?

[Sentacotus]

You know I found Fates story entertaining. I don't dislike it to the point that I curse it up and down and kept me interested enough to keep playing. In short like what you want and enjoy the damn game lol.

[Sunwoo]

My problem with the whole "Ryoma promises to send aid" line is that in the Conquest!Corrin/Azura support lines, assassination attempts by Hoshidoan Ninjas occurs more than once. This sort of implies that Hoshido does have at least some form of a spy network, which further implies that Ryoma should be aware of the lack of food in Nohr. Yeah, they shouldn't give away goods for free, but to feign ignorance at the problem and promise aid just makes me dislike the lobster lord even more.

Honestly, when the story and the supports contradict one another I take the story to be more "correct" than the supports -- if only because the supports are optional while the events of the story are not. If Thane is right and the supports were written by different people than whoever wrote the story, that suggests a lack of cross-checking or making sure things were consistent. While I think that Hoshido kicking out Azura and then trying to assassinate her is a dick move, I can't blame them for wanting to assassinate Kamui. On the contrary, I think it would've made sense for Nohr to send assassins directly after Kamui in Birthright.

As for Ryouma not being aware about the lack of food in Nohr, yeah that really is stupid but there's nothing that suggest that he's faking ignorance. Either his ninjas are incompetent and didn't think telling Ryouma that Nohr as fucking poor and starving was incompetent, or the writers didn't think hard enough about this.

I have so many problems with Fates in general. But regardless of how people feel about the Hoshido siblings, the story does not suggest that they did anything worthy of being invaded and conquered the way they were in Conquest. And like I've been saying so many times, I have no problem with people liking Conquest. But I have seen people who literally and seriously try to argue that what results in Conquest was either deserved, better than the outcome of Birthright, morally correct, or some other form of mental gymnastics. I have no problem with admitting the shortcomings of Birthright and the Hoshido siblings, the route being flawed does not affect me personally, so I expect people to be able to do the same for the side they like.

[eclipse]

Everyone jumps on the hate train really quickly on this forum. Especially those that have played older games. So it probably looks as though the vast majority hate this or that mechanic but there are plenty of people who do like the plot and just simply enjoy the series as a whole. There are hardcore players and there are casual players, it's fairly obvious who makes the most noise on this forum between the two.

But seriously different strokes for different blokes, tit for tat.

You can thank some VERY VOCAL MEMBERS WHO DO NOT SHUT UP ABOUT HOW FATES' STORY RUINED THEIR DAY for that. My take is that it could've been better, but it's nowhere near the worst I've seen.

However, lumping people together isn't cool, especially when it comes to likes/dislikes. For reference, I started when FE7 first hit America.

[Varidan]

If you compare Conquest!Corrin to Ike in PoR, the decisions Corrin made is like Ike deciding to defect to Daein once he learned about Lehran's Medallion and fanning the flames of war, helping Ashnard kill things all day every day, and when he goes crazy from the Medallion, THEN decides to call it a day and kill him while he's in his "true" form.....

Yea no... Ike would never do something that ridiculous. In fact Conquest could have turned out similar to PoR, minus the whole save the princess ordeal. Corrin goes back to Nohr, confronts his father. Garon gets pissed decides to actually imprison or kill him. Nohr then turns into an escape in X turns map. Afterwards, you travel around Nohr to the various small kingdoms or tribes or whatever communities I don't even remember, (which goes to show how apparent they were in the game) and starts slowly building an army to confront Mad King Garon. I literally thought thats what I was doing when i started out in Ch7 for the first time, but nope... Taking a game in an unexpected direction isnt always the best idea...

And honestly... fuck the Avatar. He's only there for gameplay purposes. Can I get a show of hands from people who would prefer Birthright from Ryoma's point of view, and Conquest from Xanders? And Revelations can just not exist... (havent even bought or played it yet, the desire is gone).

[blinkingbrave]

I enjoyed it just fine, honestly, and I feel like 80% of the arguments I've heard for 'good vs bad' essentially come down to personal preference more than anything else.

Edit: And unsupported speculation. If I had a dollar for every person who knows the true message/goal of Fates's story that IS somehow didn't execute properly, I'd have a lot of money. Same for the 'the story would've been better if XYZ happened.' Maybe. Or maybe the writing still wouldn't have been what this person wanted.

For whatever reason, there seem to be a lot of these arguments floating around, and they're certainly fun enough to puzzle out for kicks and 'what if'/'what I'd do' type things... but until IS declares what their actual intention with the story was or writes up a sample script for someone's fantasy scenario, they're not really much use in a discussion about the quality of what's actually written imo.

Edited June 25, 2016 by blinkingbrave

[Time the Crestfallen]

Eh, I'm not too fond of it but I find a lot of the hate to be very over-the-top.

[Raguna]

Eh, I'm not too fond of it but I find a lot of the hate to be very over-the-top.

Same in a way. Plus it gets repetitive after a while and tiresome. In all honesty I'm just looking forward to the next teaser trailer for FE which would probably be the mobile app their doing for Fire Emblem it since no one here is truly discussing Tokyo Mirage Sessions. We've pretty much entered the waiting game by this point.

Edited June 25, 2016 by Raguna

[saisymbolic]

I mean, I like Conquest as well. I do think Fates overall downfall comes from how much it was hyped up and how it did not live up to that hype, a lack of proper communication between the teams who wrote the supports and plot, and general complacency over the success of Awakening, however. At the end of the day, what a person likes is, as said, subjective and people can't change that, no matter what they do; everyone on the earth could claim something is trash and, yet, there will always be that select few that think it is gold (not to imply Fates is trash or gold, in any way).

One thing I do wish now that I've sat on Fates for several months and replayed some of my old PS2 games in the meantime is that I wouldn't mind a FE game with a similar plot as Suikoden V. It would be pretty interesting to play, in my opinion, but I won't go on in fear of derailing the topic.

[Varidan]

I mean, I like Conquest as well. I do think Fates overall downfall comes from how much it was hyped up and how it did not live up to that hype, a lack of proper communication between the teams who wrote the supports and plot, and general complacency over the success of Awakening, however. At the end of the day, what a person likes is, as said, subjective and people can't change that, no matter what they do; everyone on the earth could claim something is trash and, yet, there will always be that select few that think it is gold (not to imply Fates is trash or gold, in any way).

One thing I do wish now that I've sat on Fates for several months and replayed some of my old PS2 games in the meantime is that I wouldn't mind a FE game with a similar plot as Suikoden V. It would be pretty interesting to play, in my opinion, but I won't go on in fear of derailing the topic.

I'm not saying the game is trash or gold either, I still enjoy the crap out of the gameplay, and will mostly likely continue playing it. I try to look at both sides of a discussion, and I read through everything on this thread and what irks me the most is the OP seems to have disappeared without giving any good backup to his claims that the story is good. Maybe I just want someone to find a redeeming quality, and that he didnt bring any forth secretly bugs me. Either way, i left my 2 cents in an earlier post and I'll leave it at that.

[Sentinel07]

Well, it's not a surprise given how much the story was hyped up from Intelligent Systems.

This was the first time they actually advertised who they got to write the story (Shin Kibayashi) and even spent most of an Iwata Asks column commenting that they thought Awakening's story was too cliche and wanted to do better.

So yeah, they put their new story on a pedestal, and any time you do that, the backlash is going to be especially bad if it doesn't work.

[Ebony]

Fates's story sucks and I like to make fun of it but I kind of blame the hype on it.

Also I guess the third route. I would have preferred just Birthright or Conquest instead of generic golden route.

[RedRob]

On top of that, this possible motive doesn't matter because it's not Garon's motive, period. Or anyone else's motive, for that matter. Garon wants to destroy Hoshido, and everyone Nohr follows him because they're comically evil, afraid of him or have no moral qualms about invading an innocent nation, even if by all accounts they should.

I think it's a bit too presumptious to think everyone in Nohr is like. After all, say you are a Nohrian soldier. Your king is a tyrant making peace talks impossible(though I don't remembered if he acted like such in public), your family is starving, and you're told to invade a country with bountiful resources, resources that could feed your family. What would you do? Not invade the country that has done nothing wrong, resulting in your family possibly starving to death, or invade an innocent country to save your family. Alternatively you could try to overthrow the king and try to establish trade with other countries, but what does Nohr have to trade with? Granted with Ryouma as king of Hoshido, trade is likely to happen, though there could be tension as Hoshidians might not be happy with just giving supplies away to a country that was about to invade them.

In the end, the Nohrians are in a pretty tough position.

That said, the Nohrian siblings are idiots for going along with Garon, since they definitely seen up close how terrible a person he can be.

On a side note, I think this should be the next FE game. The MC isn't a lord, rather it's some poor schmuck stuck in an army doing questionable things for the sake of protecting his country.

Edited June 25, 2016 by RedRob