Best/Worst Fire Emblem Story (In concept)

[Jotari]

So we all know execution is generally a lot more important than concept. But for fun, let's ignore that fact for a moment and focus on the stories we've seen in the Fire Emblem series and think about which one should be the best (and worst) in theory. Taking just the general ideas, themes, characters and plot events without taking into account the writing, pacing or general execution. Go!

Edited February 22, 2017 by Jotari

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Best is probably FE 6 or 7, worst is Conquest BY FAR! My gooooosh that story is bad.

[Azure Sen]

Best in theory is Radiant Dawn. It's an epic fantasy tale with actual moral ambiguity, characters with complex motivations and good development, a tightly-woven and intricate plot building off of PoR's great set-up, and an explicitly apocalyptic scale unmatched by earlier games.

Worst in concept is probably Heroes, if only because it's the most blatant of excuse plots.

 

[maybe]

in theory I like blazing sword's the most honestly

the thing that I really liked is that the main characters are driven by their family, but get dragged into much bigger things as a result

lyn just wants to meet her only living relative after losing the rest of her family, eliwood wants to meet his dad again

it's simple and not too original and once nergal gets involved shit just gets sort of weird and not very interesting but I think it makes for a much more fun beginning to a story than "holy shit evil dudes are doing bad shit!!" or whatever 

i also really liked shadow dragon's mainly because of the prologue but that'd take a lot longer to explain

also i have to say it's reaaaally not fair to have heroes on there because no one is going to pick that for best and it's very easily the story that had the least effort put into it because the story is clearly not there to tell a story it's there to have an excuse for the game to happen 

anyway worst i'd say revelation

i haven't actually played it, but I've seen a fair amount of it and since we're judging the concept here I guess it's fair to say that I do think the idea of dragon prince guy convincing his siblings to jump off a bridge into a world that they can't mention without dying is kinda dumb

(also it's pretty much one of those "the two sides team up to fight big evil" plots which are typically boring as shit)

[Florete]

Radiant Dawn or Conquest for best in concept. They're pretty much the only ones that aren't a straight up good vs. evil story. Blazing Blade and Genealogy would probably be up next for using more unique ideas.

Revelation for worst. The whole invisible kingdom crap was dumb and the concept alone took away the moral ambiguity that was Fates' strong selling point (Can't pick one? Pick both!). It was doomed from the start.

Putting Heroes as a choice seems strange since it basically doesn't have a story at all, and clearly doesn't try, unlike all the others.

[Jotari]

Haven't played Heroes since my phone sucks but I figured it I didn't stick it on the poll then people would comment saying it's not there. In general though you can vote on how viable you find the idea of summoning past characters to help with a conflict is.

[NekoKnight]

Radiant Dawn and maybe Conquest/Birthright together, because having a choice and reaping the consequences is a big part of the appeal. The former handles a grand scale war from multiple perspectives and continues off of the solid worldbuilding from Path of Radiance. The latter (in theory) creates a ton of personal drama and a morally nuanced tale of a wealthy peaceful nation vs a deprived and warring nation.

For worst story, Revelation. Creating a generic "Chaotic evil dragon god" to completely undermine the human drama of the story, not to mention invalidate the significance of the choice by letting you side with both families.

 

Also, I'm going to second that including Heroes is a poor choice. You can't expect a gaccha game to take its story seriously.

Edited February 22, 2017 by NekoKnight

[Thane]

Heroes shouldn't be on the list, as others have said, because it's an excuse plot and nothing more. 

As for the best story in concept, I'm going to have to go with Conquest. The premise of Fates is so damn appealing, and going back to a kingdom in need of reform and covertly changing it from within sounds so damn awesome and could allow for so much drama - the good kind, not the sort we actually ended up with in Conquest.

For the worst, I'm going to have to go with Revelation and echo NekoKnight's sentiment; Fates was supposed to be a game about choice and family, but Revelation strips it of both.

[Magical Glace]

I'd say either Radiant Dawn or Conquest are best in theory.  Blazing Blade on their heels.

Worst is Revelations, because in both theory and actuality it completely defeats the point of Fates as a whole.

Edited February 22, 2017 by Glaceon Mage

[bethany81707]

I'm standing by Genealogy as the best concept- a group of heroes fighting on hearsay and rumour purely because they want to prove that they're family is in the right, while a scheming evil cult does machinations behind the scenes greater than even the villains of the piece know.

Spoiler

And then they kill the heroes, leaving their descendants to learn about the wider plot and clean up after them.

 

I voted Shadow Dragon as the worst largely because I don't quite understand Fates's three plots to judge on concept (this is something I really want to work on), and of the 'hero assembles to fight the evil dragon' plots, I feel Shadow Dragon tries the least with the idea.

[Azz]

For the best, it's definitely between Conquest and Genealogy. While the Conquest we got was not so good, the premise was amazing and interesting. As for Genealogy, while Gen 2 is a bit of cliche, Gen 1 is amazing and does something that you don't normally see happen, though I am going to be voting Conquest.

As for worst, Rev. Echoing what NekoKnight and Thane said, Rev takes away from both Conquest and Birthright and I personally don't feel Fates should have had a golden path, nor should Valla have even existed.

[Jotari]

Per popular opinion, I've removed Heroes from the polls. Those who voted on it should be free to distribute their vote.

[Tuvy]

Best is Fe7. I loved how they had multiple lords, because I'm sick of their being a chosen 1. It seems so inefficient to have a single 16 year old with the world on his shoulders, especially with the whole teenage angst thing. It is much easier for their to be multiple heroes, to split the burden than one angsty teen. Granted, the lords in this game are some of the least angsty and some of my favorite, but I love the plot none the less. I loved the plot around Nergal and I F****N LOOOOVE THE BLACK FANG! 

Worst is Fire emblem revelations.

It's literal garbage, and just an excuse so that you can ship stuff like Azama x Peri and whatever. Also Izana dies, so that's like -10 for plot points.

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Tuvy said:

Best is Fe7. I loved how they had multiple lords, because I'm sick of their being a chosen 1. It seems so inefficient to have a single 16 year old with the world on his shoulders, especially with the whole teenage angst thing. It is much easier for their to be multiple heroes, to split the burden than one angsty teen. Granted, the lords in this game are some of the least angsty and some of my favorite, but I love the plot none the less. I loved the plot around Nergal and I F****N LOOOOVE THE BLACK FANG! 

Worst is Fire emblem revelations.

It's literal garbage, and just an excuse so that you can ship stuff like Azama x Peri and whatever. Also Izana dies, so that's like -10 for plot points.

What Fire Emblem protagonists harbours undue or a needlessly high level of angst?

[Locke087]

FE 10 for sure could've hands-down been the best story if executed correctly sadly 'twas not to be. FE 7 Runner-up and then Conquest. 

I'm just gonna have to go with the crowd and say Revelations because it really is just as bad in practice as it was in theory... truly a bad to be an idea to begin with

[Slumber]

In-theory, I'd say best is FE10. There were a lot of missed opportunities in the second half of the game, and it really could have benefited from a few rewrites. BUT it built off of the world-building that FE9 did really well, and the backbone of the story that's there is solid.

Worst is Sacred Stones or Gaiden. For Sacred Stones, it would be for building what it probably the most shallow, two dimensional world we've gotten in the franchise. The personal story between Eirika/Ephraim and Lyon is all well and good, but everything surrounding that plot is pretty inconsequential. There are about 4 chapters of substance in that whole game, and there's not a whole lot to suggest that there's anything beyond that.

Gaiden, meanwhile, gets the benefit of taking place in the same world as Marth's story at around the same time, and again, the backbone that's there is fine(Lost prince fights to protect his adoptive home against his inherited kingdom, while dragon/god siblings wage war against each other), but since Gaiden has enough dialogue and story script to fit on a napkin, it's hard to tell if this actually could have been well-executed or not.

I won't say any of the Fates stories, because conceptually I think they're all solid. They were just all executed very poorly.

Edited February 22, 2017 by Slumber

[mikethepokemaster]

5 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

Radiant Dawn and maybe Conquest/Birthright together, because having a choice and reaping the consequences is a big part of the appeal. The former handles a grand scale war from multiple perspectives and continues off of the solid worldbuilding from Path of Radiance. The latter (in theory) creates a ton of personal drama and a morally nuanced tale of a wealthy peaceful nation vs a deprived and warring nation.

For worst story, Revelation. Creating a generic "Chaotic evil dragon god" to completely undermine the human drama of the story, not to mention invalidate the significance of the choice by letting you side with both families.

 

Also, I'm going to second that including Heroes is a poor choice. You can't expect a gaccha game to take its story seriously.

Have you played grand blue Fantasy or fate grand order. Those are gacha games with great stories.

Edited February 22, 2017 by mikethepokemaster

[Tuvy]

30 minutes ago, Jotari said:

What Fire Emblem protagonists harbours undue or a needlessly high level of angst?

Takumi.
I wasn't really comparing to to other fire emblem games, I was comparing it more to other media, like movies and books.

Edited February 22, 2017 by Tuvy

[Tuvy2]

Yah, in concept Fe7 was probably the best. Though in reality some story oppurtunities were missed, especially Nergal an Renault. (I want a remake just for more Nergal backstory and more Renault.)

Edited February 22, 2017 by Tuvy2

[NekoKnight]

15 minutes ago, mikethepokemaster said:

Have you played grand blue Fantasy or fate grand order. Those are gacha games with great stories.

Good for gaccha (FE Heroes doesn't even try) games but still mediocre writing at best. It's just not very fair to place Heroes in the running with games that do invest in story-telling.

[Jotari]

40 minutes ago, Tuvy said:

Takumi.
I wasn't really comparing to to other fire emblem games, I was comparing it more to other media, like movies and books.

Takumi's not the protagonist.

[mikethepokemaster]

34 minutes ago, NekoKnight said:

Good for gaccha (FE Heroes doesn't even try) games but still mediocre writing at best. It's just not very fair to place Heroes in the running with games that do invest in story-telling.

Who knows maybe they will invest in the story I wouldn't mind them doing so since mobile games can go on forever or at least until people stop playing them world building and story is not impossible for Heroes. Forgot Tale of Links story is decent.

Edited February 22, 2017 by mikethepokemaster

[Etria]

Gonna go with Conquest for best. The others already wrote why so I won't repeat it here.

Worst is hard because I don't think any of the concepts are bad. I picked Awakening for worst, purely because I don't like time travel. So it's down ot personal taste.

[Azure Sen]

2 minutes ago, Mirania said:

Worst is hard because I don't think any of the concepts are bad.

This is pretty much the reason why I voted for Heroes and why I haven't reset my vote. I can't with good conscience say that any of the games have bad concepts, because I don't find any of them to be bad in concept, even Revelation.

[Etrurian emperor]

I'm going to agree with those saying that the concept of Fire emblem Conquest was the best one. The execution is another beast entirely but in theory Conquest had all the parts it needed to be one of the better Fire emblem stories.

The worst story in its concept is Shadow dragon because the entire concept itself is faulty. The chance was missed to expand upon a story and continent that was lagging behind due to its age. Shadow dragon didn't fail in expanding on the story but it deliberately didn't try and that's a bad concept to me.