Book VII Discussion Thread

[DefyingFates]

11 hours ago, Mercakete said:

(except for why Briedablik followed Kvasir into the past or why she took it with her. Either one.)

If Brave Gullveig is any indication, Gullveig seems to be a nihilist who's just going through the motions. While it doesn't explain her attitude in the reveal trailer (unless the curse is forcing her to act that way), I wouldn't be surprised if she brought Breidablik with her because she wants to be defeated/ put out of her misery. I was surprised by that reveal for Brave Gullveig so I'm hoping they'll do something with it for "canon" Gullveig too.

Edited September 19, 2023 by DefyingFates

[Lemmy]

Being defeated is probably her win condition, she seems to be spreading among the three killing each other, and each time parts of her receive more Ar strengthening her.

 

Although I’m still stumped how Kvasir becomes Seidr.

[Mercakete]

Well, the next chapter is out. There's not a lot to say about it, really, at least from my perspective. Kvasir died. Okay. We're really hurtling toward facing off against Gullveig now. And I guess at least Nerpuz confirmed that our Seidr isn't the same as this Kvasir or Gullveig anymore. It was neat that there was a moral dilemma here, too, among the protagonists. Good on Alfonse for being level-headed about it. It's nice that it came across that he was struggling with it, too, though.

[Lemmy]

They really had us kill the person that nursed us back to health, and didn’t even tell us her motivation.

 

I’m surprised, bored rather than intrigued, but at least it is ending soon.

[Etrurian emperor]

I was kinda surprised they'd actually killed her. Given Sharena's opinion about it I was sure she'd befriend Kvasir and ensure she doesn't turn into Gulvig through the power of friendship. That would actually be pretty nice since it would have given Sharena some relevance. 

[DefyingFates]

I'm honestly shocked by the sheer amount of nothing in this chapter. Wasn't this the penultimate one? You'd expect a little more to do, but I think we only got two cutscenes and Kvasir died in the second. I wish we'd at least gotten some scenes from her perspective or something while she was running away. I'd almost suspect Nerthuz of being another secret enemy but... yeah.

[Aedan7479]

So why did Kvasir have to die while Seidr gets to live? Why couldn't they just expel the golden serpents from her just like they did with Seidr? I get that Gullveig is probably too far gone for that to work, but still, that's some double standards.

[Mercakete]

2 hours ago, Aedan7479 said:

So why did Kvasir have to die while Seidr gets to live? Why couldn't they just expel the golden serpents from her just like they did with Seidr? I get that Gullveig is probably too far gone for that to work, but still, that's some double standards.

The in-story reason is that, despite having different personal timelines and are different beings, Seidr, Kvasir, and Gullveig cannot continue to exist at the same time (as they're doing now.)

The reason from a production/writing standpoint is "it would overcrowd the cast and lead to an awkward ending where Seidr isn't the special one and everyone's just friends again despite all the buildup. Also, we wanted a tragic (female) child so that the player would feel things because everyone obviously is always sad when this happens despite anything before or after it." (I kid you not, buildup is perhaps the most important aspect in writing and there just really wasn't enough for Kvasir to make her death all that impactful.)

And all of that is moot since we'll probably get to summon her someday anyway.

[Medeus]

37 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

The in-story reason is that, despite having different personal timelines and are different beings, Seidr, Kvasir, and Gullveig cannot continue to exist at the same time (as they're doing now.)

The reason from a production/writing standpoint is "it would overcrowd the cast and lead to an awkward ending where Seidr isn't the special one and everyone's just friends again despite all the buildup. Also, we wanted a tragic (female) child so that the player would feel things because everyone obviously is always sad when this happens despite anything before or after it." (I kid you not, buildup is perhaps the most important aspect in writing and there just really wasn't enough for Kvasir to make her death all that impactful.)

And all of that is moot since we'll probably get to summon her someday anyway.

That's one of the biggest problems with FEH's writing. They want us to care about the characters by killing them off for sympathy points, but often forget that the emotion that comes from such scenes is us knowing the character in the first place. Kvasir barely did anything, and as much as they try to play the 'poor little child' card it doesn't change the fact that we barely know her or even her situation as she's the least developed of the three 'Gullvegs'. 

We'll probably get more from her unit quotes when she's summoned next month then we will from the story itself.

[Lemmy]

Since Gullveig became Kvasir in other timelines, it's possible they will "revive" her by having our Gullveig do the same, maybe ...

next chapter is 1, perhaps a new beginning

Despite being told this cycle happens, I still don't think they showed it well.

[DefyingFates]

7 hours ago, Medeus said:

That's one of the biggest problems with FEH's writing. They want us to care about the characters by killing them off for sympathy points, but often forget that the emotion that comes from such scenes is us knowing the character in the first place. Kvasir barely did anything, and as much as they try to play the 'poor little child' card it doesn't change the fact that we barely know her or even her situation as she's the least developed of the three 'Gullveigs'.

Yeah. Which is a shame, because her spending a chapter nursing Kiran back to health only to reveal she's Gullveig's past self was a nice way to introduce her, but then she just... did nothing until she showed up here to be killed. Maybe if we'd spent a few chapters with her post-reveal we could have seen her struggle with knowing what will happen despite not wanting to hurt anyone, after which her death would have come off as a much messier and tragic "mercy kill/ this is for the greater good-type deal" than the source of jokes about Alfonse being a callous child killer it wound up being. Turns out Arvis had a fourth kid.

Edited October 17, 2023 by DefyingFates

[Mercakete]

On 10/17/2023 at 12:47 AM, Medeus said:

That's one of the biggest problems with FEH's writing. They want us to care about the characters by killing them off for sympathy points, but often forget that the emotion that comes from such scenes is us knowing the character in the first place. Kvasir barely did anything, and as much as they try to play the 'poor little child' card it doesn't change the fact that we barely know her or even her situation as she's the least developed of the three 'Gullvegs'. 

We'll probably get more from her unit quotes when she's summoned next month then we will from the story itself.

That's a bit harsh, I'd say. FEH's writing isn't always like that. (For example, while it could have been handled better, the tragedy of Fafnir's death was at least relatively well executed. Helbindi's wasn't bad either, and Laegjarn's followed the plot very well. Gustav's was a good execution of...well, character death as well. Even Freyr's sacrifice was done well to the point of moving the plot along and showing aspects of his character while forcing growth (or a tantrum, as the case was) in Freyja. Whatever the case, it moved characters and the scenario to have to change.) However, it's becoming more of a pattern for sure (and it started, really, with Freyja, but that was less "who cares?" and more IS shoving "here's why you should be sad -- just forget about how terrible she was and excuse it because she was picked on when she was a kid" down our throats), and it's not a good one. Most of the FEH writing's shortcomings can be explained with "the format is bad for the stories they want to tell" but this is just way forced and as DefyingFates said, they could have had her have introspection during this chapter as she runs away, which would have made it a lot better. (If we can spend a bunch of text density on Heidr shipping the player with Seidr, we can spend some text density on Kvasir wondering if this is all her life amounts to.)

19 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Yeah. Which is a shame, because her spending a chapter nursing Kiran back to health only to reveal she's Gullveig's past self was a nice way to introduce her, but then she just... did nothing until she showed up here to be killed. Maybe if we'd spent a few chapters with her post-reveal we could have seen her struggle with knowing what will happen despite not wanting to hurt anyone, after which her death would have come off as a much messier and tragic "mercy kill/ this is for the greater good-type deal" than the source of jokes about Alfonse being a callous child killer it wound up being. Turns out Arvis had a fourth kid.

Except that Alfonse really did struggle with it. It felt a lot more "had to be done, but I had to force myself (and if I didn't say it, no one would have)" than "oh well." (Also, didn't Arvis only have 2? He raised his little brother, but Julia and Julius are his only two children, right? I guess Seliph would be a stepson, though?)

Anyway, I kind of get Kvasir basically just being a "past world" anchor, but I do wish we'd seen more of her, especially what the heck happened between her going to Njordr's palace and becoming Seidr. (Also Heidr popping up all confused and stuff and Njordr responding to all that.) Maybe we'll get it in a FB as a backdrop story or something like what happened in the FB with Eitri and Otr, or the FB with Ash and Elm. (Both were Fallen FB's, so that may be when something like that happens again if it does.)

The trouble I'm seeing is that, lately, FEH's writing has had really, really good starts/premises, but then it just kind of falls over towards the middle/end. Even if it's not always an abysmal failure, it's not as good as it could have been.

Here's my ranking:

Book 1: Important, but not very engaging.

Book 2: Pretty good all the way through, except that the middle bit was kind of same-y. Felt like the premise actually needed a shorter telling.

Book 3: Excellent, but the ending was a bit vague.

Book 4: Ugh. Concept was kind of neat, but the execution was just... It turned from "let's explore what a world of dreams would be like/Alfonse is trying to balance his work in the Order of Heroes with his role as the next king of Askr, so his mom is being regent for now" to (at least conceptually) "The good girls are cute, with one being sleepy, the other being cheerful, and both being airheads. The bad girls are visually tempting and emotionally damaged, but in a way that makes you want to help them/be the one their grateful to. Either way, the player will FOR SURE want to cuddle them. Oh and there's Freyr to meet quota and vouch for Freyja." The baddies felt overblown without being able to carry the weight of their roles, Alfonse's period of mourning and growth got completely snubbed and forgotten, and we were supposed to feel bad for the dokkalfar (especially Freyja) with sudden, forced sympathy. Like, present tragedy within reason and let the reader/player decide how to feel. I will say that Freyr got development later (like, recently, with Peony's FB and regular Freyr being added to the game) and the dream/nightmare theme is being handled well (specifically in the FB, though) but there's much of the same from Book 4 with the TT+ story... At least they finally addressed Freyja's coma that they just left hanging forever? (I clearly enjoyed this book.)

Book 5: Fantastic concept. The ending clarified some things, but completely botched others. I still feel the absolute tragedy that it was the Askrans themselves who prevented Fafnir from returning home while he could, though. (You know, the people with the power to open gates and stuff.) The biggest ball-drop here was how they handled Otr. He was set up so well to be an actually good tragic villain, but then IS was all "let's just discard everything we set up in order to make him an unrepentant, self-pitying, emotionally-dependent wreck." He just could have been handled so much better. Like, IS was against giving him emotional depth even though they paved the way for that. He still feels like 2 different characters to me. At least IS learned their lesson about Freyja, it seems, though, since they explained Eitr's motivations without jusifying them.

Book 6: This one got a LOT better from the last 2. Lots of character and plot development and explanations, each character felt like his/her own person with motives that made sense... My biggest problem was, however (at least that I'm remembering right now) that there wasn't enough explanation about what happened to Elm. The player was left wondering if (and when) he died from the "poison" of the World of Openness, primarily. Thankfully, that got addressed later (though still not as specifically as I would have liked.) For example, in Askr and Embla's New Years version, they argue about which of Ash or Elm looks better in their New Years attire (answering the question of what Embla thinks of Elm -- like, besides "he's my faithful servant whom I always can depend upon" like he was treated in Book 6. But the fact that she feels this way when she's so closed off to everyone really says something, too) and in the seasonal story, Askr even treats Elm as Embla's son to the point of being all "I'm sure Elm would like to go to the shrine, too!" to get Embla to stop being so resistant to going (probably because he can tell she actually wants to go.) There was also...I think a FB? Yeah, it was for fallen units (the one with Fallen F!Byleth. For some reason, she's the one sticking in my mind. Ah, and Anakos.) Anyway, Elm revived, but that can only be done using Embla's power. So, she used the last of her power to revive him (probably just by leaving a remnant of it) from the last time we fought him in Book 6. I just wish they had a couple more lines for him when he returned to Embla after going to the World of Openness. It felt like he was going to tell her that he was dying, but she started going on and on about how he'll always be there for her, so he just couldn't. If we had some reflections from him on that after his conversation with her, it would have been much better, I think. Ah, and another concept I really wish they'd explored here was how Emblian Alfonse's mindset was in Book 1. "I don't want to make connectsions because it hurts so much then your friends leave" is basically EXACTLY Embla's mindset. If he's still working through that, it would have been neat to see it highlighted more.

Book 7: And here we are. The time travel concept was handled so well at the beginning, and even the first part of the middle. But then it felt like IS was relying on the player 1. being surprised by Njordr and 2. caring about Seidr/Heidr (and ONLY Seidr/Heidr.) Like, they didn't even connect Njordr to Freyr/Freyja or give any deeper meaning/insight to Njordr's actions than "doesn't like humans anyway" and "wants to live forever." Like, "My Ar showed me the future: a future of humans, without gods. My Ar let me see the past: a past where you killed Freyr, and put Freyja into a coma. Now, I will see to taking action here, in the present: a time when I prevent the gods' oblivion and punish you for what you did to my family." As it stands, while not as weirdly taking a hard left as Otr did, Njordr's writing was dropped. Let's hope he gets the Freyr treatment and gets better characterization in time.

[Etrurian emperor]

8 hours ago, Mercakete said:

Book 2: Pretty good all the way through, except that the middle bit was kind of same-y. Felt like the premise actually needed a shorter telling.

I mostly think book 2 was pretty decent except for the part where Surtr outlived his welcome. The part where Alfonse and co storm his palace and kill him was the perfect spot to end things rather than Surtr going ''Lol I can revive myself!''. I also think the cast of OC's might have been a bit too big with Fjorm's entire family and several Muspel officers. It leads to weird situations like Fjorm's two older siblings being non entities. 

8 hours ago, Mercakete said:

Book 4: Ugh. Concept was kind of neat, but the execution was just... It turned from "let's explore what a world of dreams would be like/Alfonse is trying to balance his work in the Order of Heroes with his role as the next king of Askr, so his mom is being regent for now" to (at least conceptually) "The good girls are cute, with one being sleepy, the other being cheerful, and both being airheads. The bad girls are visually tempting and emotionally damaged, but in a way that makes you want to help them/be the one their grateful to. Either way, the player will FOR SURE want to cuddle them. Oh and there's Freyr to meet quota and vouch for Freyja." The baddies felt overblown without being able to carry the weight of their roles, Alfonse's period of mourning and growth got completely snubbed and forgotten, and we were supposed to feel bad for the dokkalfar (especially Freyja) with sudden, forced sympathy. Like, present tragedy within reason and let the reader/player decide how to feel. I will say that Freyr got development later (like, recently, with Peony's FB and regular Freyr being added to the game) and the dream/nightmare theme is being handled well (specifically in the FB, though) but there's much of the same from Book 4 with the TT+ story... At least they finally addressed Freyja's coma that they just left hanging forever? (I clearly enjoyed this book.)

Of this book I'm the most critical. In concept its pretty good. Alfonse and Sharena getting high and going into dream world was a much needed break from yet another evil conqueror coming to take over Askr. But the big let down about Sharena sits extremely poorly with me. Given their close bond I wasn't exactly rooting for the book to say that Sharena suddenly wasn't Alfonse's sister after all, but the plot introducing the plotline and then eventually just dismissing it with a big ''WHO CARES!?'' just felt wrong.

I think the book should be given some credit though. Book 3 completely ignored the concept that you were supposed to be in the realm of the dead. The return of zombie Surtr was teased but never acted up on, nor did the book introduce much other zombies like Helbindi, Leagjarn or tragically fallen heroes like Eldigan or Ishtar. But for the wacky trip into dreamworld they really do allow for some dream related hi-jinks. Surtr even got the cameo last book refused to give him. 

I think the current book is the worst one. There's very little that's awful about it but its just consistently uninteresting. The problem is that they spend so much time teasing who or what Gulveg is without giving us a reason to care aside from her yet being another conqueror. I guess her being a one woman apocalypse is kinda neat, especially since the enemies seem to be here snakes, maybe even supposed to be real people wrapped up in her snakes and puppeteer or just people cursed like she is.

 

Edited October 18, 2023 by Etrurian emperor

[DefyingFates]

9 hours ago, Mercakete said:

Except that Alfonse really did struggle with it. It felt a lot more "had to be done, but I had to force myself (and if I didn't say it, no one would have)" than "oh well." (Also, didn't Arvis only have 2? He raised his little brother, but Julia and Julius are his only two children, right? I guess Seliph would be a stepson, though?)

I was partly kidding about Alfonse, but I do think we could have gotten a lot more out of Kvasir's situation. As for the second point:

Spoiler

Arvis has a second son who shows up in Thracia.

 

[Etrurian emperor]

I've stated it before but I think my biggest pet peeves about all the books is that they refuse to incorporate the banner characters into them. If you didn't go in knowing FEH was supposed to be a Fire Emblem crossover then the story would give you extremely little reason to come to such a conclusion. All the banner units ever say is one token line that almost never has anything to do with the story at large. I think that after book one its only just Reyson who says something about the main story.

Its something that could easily be fixed by just the smallest of steps. Instead of Lugh saying ''Hi I'm a good boy!'' have him instead either be mortified about being forced to fight for Death or go ''Commander Lif is rough around the edges but he's a good guy underneath!''. Have the Black Fang not just say their stock phrase but signal they were hired to take out Alfonse. In book 4 characters you fight could also be stuck in the dream or being someone's nightmare if they're villains, and in the present book the heroes could either be forced by the snakes to fight against their will, or fight because they're promised another timeline. Febail for instance fighting because Njord duped him into thinking that in a new timeline his little siblings would be safe and happy. Book 6 would have been especially easy since its literally a plotpoint that you fight the head of another order of Heroes. 

All of this can be conveyed in the one line each hero has, and it would both flesh out the story as well as expand on the methods of the many villains. 

[Lemmy]

Kvasvir’s motivations were the the only thing I’m missing

 

Seithr seems babylike, filled with warmth and naïveté, and none of the knowledge of her counterparts possess. Perhaps at the beginning of despair with the death of her sister, Northr, and killing Kvasir.

 

Gullveig there’s despair, but perhaps even that was lost, and we’re stuck on a bored, stale cycle with perhaps no way out even if she wanted it.

 

Kvasir knows what’s going on, but seems detached from most characters, and I’d like to know why she wants to stay the course, she seems to have despair and loneliness, but it does seem like something a few friends could have fixed.

 

And it’s possible Kvasvir did this as a ploy to kill Northr the only way she could, and perhaps giving us the gun was meant to kill Gullveig, end the curse, but this chapter gave us nothing.

Edited October 18, 2023 by Lemmy

[Etrurian emperor]

Its far too late to change this now, but I think intertwining the Heroes story so extremely thoroughly with Norse mythology was a mistake. Taking inspiration from mythology is fun but Heroes often skips mere inspiration and instead aggressively copies Norse Mythology. Sure, they put their own spin on things but the Heroes world is still an almost one to one copy of Norse Mythology. Fire Emblem in general often takes inspiration from Mythology when it comes to naming characters, but Athena from Archenea is not literally the Greek goddess Athena, like how Loki and Thor are literally the Norse gods Loki and Thor. Perhaps it would have been a little better if it wasn't 100% Norse Mythology 100% of the time. Like Muspel being followed up Yomi and Lethe rather than by Hell and Elf world.

It somewhat detracts from the Fire Emblem lore in general. The Heroes world is supposed to be a pantheon above all the others which means all the gods from the mainline Fire Emblem game play second fiddle to a pantheon that's a direct copy of Norse mythology.  

[Mercakete]

I get what you're trying to say, but I'd say Heroes is a far cry from a direct copy of Norse mythology. Otherwise Alfonse's sword would actually be a river, the majority of the characters would be male, and there would be no creativity in the designs. Not to mention Loki would have turned into a mare and had 3 children, one of which was a 6-legged cat, as I recall. (I am so glad that FEH didn't go 1:1 with the Norse myths -- some of those are just plain trippy.)

I'd say it just takes heavy inspiration from Norse mythology, and I don't actually think that's a bad thing. It's just a stylistic difference. And what's wrong with the gods from other mainline FE titles (which Heroes is too, by the way) being canonically not as powerful as the ones from Heroes? Heroes' world is all about the connection of the other worlds, so it makes sense that they would have some sort of networking mainframe in place for it, and in swords and sorcery fantasy, that often is the domain of certain realms and gods, as it is here.

If you want to talk "detracting from FE lore" then let's look to Cypher or FE# or maybe even Engage if you want to get particular about that. (Like, how did they get spirit copies of heroes from other worlds?) What makes even less sense are the einheijar from Awakening/Fates. If anything, Heroes helps patch things up with those ones by showing how they realistically can all be connected. ("They went through Askr and landed in x other FE world.")

[Etrurian emperor]

8 hours ago, Mercakete said:

And what's wrong with the gods from other mainline FE titles (which Heroes is too, by the way) being canonically not as powerful as the ones from Heroes? Heroes' world is all about the connection of the other worlds, so it makes sense that they would have some sort of networking mainframe in place for it, and in swords and sorcery fantasy, that often is the domain of certain realms and gods, as it is here.

That in itself isn't that bad. But to quote Clanne ''Its hard to cheer on someone who hasn't you know...earned it''. Them being just a discount version of norse mythology rather than a more concrete pantheon of their own makes their status feel unearned. 

8 hours ago, Mercakete said:

I get what you're trying to say, but I'd say Heroes is a far cry from a direct copy of Norse mythology. Otherwise Alfonse's sword would actually be a river, the majority of the characters would be male, and there would be no creativity in the designs. Not to mention Loki would have turned into a mare and had 3 children, one of which was a 6-legged cat, as I recall. (I am so glad that FEH didn't go 1:1 with the Norse myths -- some of those are just plain trippy.)

Of course there are some changes. Like gachafying everyone by giving them big boobs. But in the end Loki is still a shape shifting trickster, Thor is still the Warrior god and Odin can't be anything but a one eyed lady with a raven motif. Its might be a gacha take on Norse Mythology, but its still Norse Mythology. 

[Acacia Sgt]

19 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

It somewhat detracts from the Fire Emblem lore in general. The Heroes world is supposed to be a pantheon above all the others which means all the gods from the mainline Fire Emblem game play second fiddle to a pantheon that's a direct copy of Norse mythology.  

To be fair on this point, most "gods" in FE tend to be just sufficiently powerful beings (usually dragons) that humans worship as such, but actually aren't. The only ones that could be considered actual deities would be Ashunera and Sothis (probably).

---

Personally, while I may not agree with every change on the individual level, there's probably not much of an actual problem that FEH is simply adapting Norse mythology for the most part. It's not like what we know about Norse mythology is fully accurate anyway, since our sources were, for the most part, written centuries after the fact.

Sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel, just give it a fresh new coat of paint. Which, on the overall level, I feel FEH does good enough.

11 hours ago, Mercakete said:

If you want to talk "detracting from FE lore" then let's look to Cypher or FE# or maybe even Engage if you want to get particular about that. (Like, how did they get spirit copies of heroes from other worlds?) What makes even less sense are the einheijar from Awakening/Fates. If anything, Heroes helps patch things up with those ones by showing how they realistically can all be connected. ("They went through Askr and landed in x other FE world.")

I feel for those there can, and sometimes is, an explanation behind them.

The Einherjar are magical constructs stored in cards that were sculpted in the image of the characters, and we're told that their personalities and "memories" were implanted by whoever created them. Kinda like a programmable AI. So they're not the characters themselves.

The Emblems could be something similar, though perhaps with a more refined "AI", so to speak. For all intents and purposes, they sound like an upgrade from the Einherjar Cards, perhaps. It's true their origins remain a bit obscured, since it's stated they were summoned by the Divine Dragons praying for help against Sombron. They're not native to Elyos, as it were.

Cross-world summoning is certainly a thing in FE, since FEH does the same, just with the actual flesh and blood characters.

[Medeus]

On 10/18/2023 at 6:19 AM, Mercakete said:

That's a bit harsh, I'd say. FEH's writing isn't always like that. (For example, while it could have been handled better, the tragedy of Fafnir's death was at least relatively well executed. Helbindi's wasn't bad either, and Laegjarn's followed the plot very well. Gustav's was a good execution of...well, character death as well. Even Freyr's sacrifice was done well to the point of moving the plot along and showing aspects of his character while forcing growth (or a tantrum, as the case was) in Freyja. Whatever the case, it moved characters and the scenario to have to change.) However, it's becoming more of a pattern for sure (and it started, really, with Freyja, but that was less "who cares?" and more IS shoving "here's why you should be sad -- just forget about how terrible she was and excuse it because she was picked on when she was a kid" down our throats), and it's not a good one. Most of the FEH writing's shortcomings can be explained with "the format is bad for the stories they want to tell" but this is just way forced and as DefyingFates said, they could have had her have introspection during this chapter as she runs away, which would have made it a lot better. (If we can spend a bunch of text density on Heidr shipping the player with Seidr, we can spend some text density on Kvasir wondering if this is all her life amounts to.)

Sorry for the late reply, but to respond to this: 

I'll give you Helbindi and Fafnir (though following Nott's own death scene put a damper on that), but I wasn't very impressed with Laegjarn's or Freyr's (especially the latter). It makes sense for the story they want to tell, but the former happens at almost the very end of said story and the following events are very rapid fire in trying to wrap things up so for me it didn't really sink in (and the TT+ story undid it anyway) while the latter Freyr barely did anything before so it felt more like writing him off. Gustav I probably would like more if the whole parent dying thing wasn't a common trope in FE, but as you said it does fit the story and did have a proper follow-up with his undead version later so this is more on personal preference. 

Regardless though, that's still only 4-5 deaths that were handed with any care, which is still a very poor track record for a game that has been going on for seven years and should've learned from its previous shortcomings six times over.

On 10/18/2023 at 6:19 AM, Mercakete said:

Book 6: This one got a LOT better from the last 2. Lots of character and plot development and explanations, each character felt like his/her own person with motives that made sense... My biggest problem was, however (at least that I'm remembering right now) that there wasn't enough explanation about what happened to Elm. The player was left wondering if (and when) he died from the "poison" of the World of Openness, primarily. Thankfully, that got addressed later (though still not as specifically as I would have liked.) For example, in Askr and Embla's New Years version, they argue about which of Ash or Elm looks better in their New Years attire (answering the question of what Embla thinks of Elm -- like, besides "he's my faithful servant whom I always can depend upon" like he was treated in Book 6. But the fact that she feels this way when she's so closed off to everyone really says something, too) and in the seasonal story, Askr even treats Elm as Embla's son to the point of being all "I'm sure Elm would like to go to the shrine, too!" to get Embla to stop being so resistant to going (probably because he can tell she actually wants to go.) There was also...I think a FB? Yeah, it was for fallen units (the one with Fallen F!Byleth. For some reason, she's the one sticking in my mind. Ah, and Anakos.) Anyway, Elm revived, but that can only be done using Embla's power. So, she used the last of her power to revive him (probably just by leaving a remnant of it) from the last time we fought him in Book 6. I just wish they had a couple more lines for him when he returned to Embla after going to the World of Openness. It felt like he was going to tell her that he was dying, but she started going on and on about how he'll always be there for her, so he just couldn't. If we had some reflections from him on that after his conversation with her, it would have been much better, I think. Ah, and another concept I really wish they'd explored here was how Emblian Alfonse's mindset was in Book 1. "I don't want to make connectsions because it hurts so much then your friends leave" is basically EXACTLY Embla's mindset. If he's still working through that, it would have been neat to see it highlighted more.

Honestly, with Elm I'm pretty sure they meant for him to kick the bucket at that point. His final scene has him badly hurt and Ash's last words to him kind of read as a send-off, but it cuts off so suddenly and move on to the next thing so quickly that it doesn't have any weight to and ended up completely undercooked. It says a lot when a common question from fans following that scene was 'did Elm really die?' (thinking back, Ash had a similar issue, though that was clarified earlier). 

The TT+ felt like them walking it back as he just pops back in with no explanation for how he survived, but in the end I'm glad they did. It would've been a very poor exit for the character if left as is and it fleshed out both him and Ash who both needed it.

Edited October 30, 2023 by Medeus

[Mercakete]

15 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

That in itself isn't that bad. But to quote Clanne ''Its hard to cheer on someone who hasn't you know...earned it''. Them being just a discount version of norse mythology rather than a more concrete pantheon of their own makes their status feel unearned. 

Of course there are some changes. Like gachafying everyone by giving them big boobs. But in the end Loki is still a shape shifting trickster, Thor is still the Warrior god and Odin can't be anything but a one eyed lady with a raven motif. Its might be a gacha take on Norse Mythology, but its still Norse Mythology. 

I'd say my main argument is against the terminology you used. FEH isn't a copy of Norse mythology, but it does almost borrow some of the characters from it. The myths themselves are stories about the characters, and FEH did not (thankfully) copy those (though the theme of ragnarok is looming.) That said, I still hold to there not really being anything wrong with it. Marvel copied the myths' details more heavily than FEH did.

Also, FEH Alfador has been referred to as male already, I think.

Also, I don't really see fantasy deties as ever having earned their worship, so it seems like kind of a moot point. But at least Freyr (according to Peony's latest FB) and Askr actively worked to try to help humanity. As far as FEH goes, it seems like the gods are treated more like resources to tap than respected individuals. (Actually, gods tend to be treated that way in a bunch of real-world faiths and fantasy lore, so it's not really an uncommon thing.) The same goes for Naga and Mila, to cite other FE deities.

11 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I feel for those there can, and sometimes is, an explanation behind them.

The Einherjar are magical constructs stored in cards that were sculpted in the image of the characters, and we're told that their personalities and "memories" were implanted by whoever created them. Kinda like a programmable AI. So they're not the characters themselves.

The Emblems could be something similar, though perhaps with a more refined "AI", so to speak. For all intents and purposes, they sound like an upgrade from the Einherjar Cards, perhaps. It's true their origins remain a bit obscured, since it's stated they were summoned by the Divine Dragons praying for help against Sombron. They're not native to Elyos, as it were.

Cross-world summoning is certainly a thing in FE, since FEH does the same, just with the actual flesh and blood characters.

It's not the mode I think is a stretch. It's the specific characters therein. Like, if they're from other worlds, how did the memories of these specific people get into Elyos or Fates world? How did Eirika's consciousness (when she's from Magvel) get into a card as an Einheijar and sent to the dragon gates, when there isn't a dragon gate in Magvel? Why wouldn't the Einheijar be the consciousness of heroes native to the reality in which they exist? Askr being a sort of information/spirit/person terminal makes how they got there more plausible. If flesh-and-blood characters can go through Askr's gates, there's no reason other things can't. For example, a historian may have passed through Askr to Magvel and learned about Eirika, and knew a craft for implanting memories into magical cards. Then the historian planted Eirika's memories into a card as an Einheijar and moved on to the next world until founding an Einheijar shop. Suddenly, the "how" is explained.

1 hour ago, Medeus said:

Sorry for the late reply, but to respond to this: 

My only point was that the wording was a bit exaggerated, really. "Always" wasn't really deserved, is all I was saying. I have different conclusions regarding some of the listed characters, but we may be getting less into fact and more into opinion at that point. (I don't know; it's noisy where I am so I'm not able to assess it very deeply at the moment; it just seems that way to me.)

[Acacia Sgt]

6 hours ago, Mercakete said:

It's not the mode I think is a stretch. It's the specific characters therein. Like, if they're from other worlds, how did the memories of these specific people get into Elyos or Fates world? How did Eirika's consciousness (when she's from Magvel) get into a card as an Einheijar and sent to the dragon gates, when there isn't a dragon gate in Magvel? Why wouldn't the Einheijar be the consciousness of heroes native to the reality in which they exist? Askr being a sort of information/spirit/person terminal makes how they got there more plausible. If flesh-and-blood characters can go through Askr's gates, there's no reason other things can't. For example, a historian may have passed through Askr to Magvel and learned about Eirika, and knew a craft for implanting memories into magical cards. Then the historian planted Eirika's memories into a card as an Einheijar and moved on to the next world until founding an Einheijar shop. Suddenly, the "how" is explained.

When you consider the case of Ylisse, where the Outrealm Gate was located in a place we never visited in Marth's games (probably, since the Alterspire is in another world and how else to reach it?) and was remote enough to be plausible for the general populace to not go there either. So nothing says similar gates couldn't be in the other continents, also in places we never saw (outside when it was relevant, like Elibe or Fates Dragons Gates; yes, Fates also had a Gate. We used it in-game for stuff like DLC purchases, and in-universe it's the physical entrace to the Astral Plane). So the assumption here is that when those gates were finally discovered, it was long after the characters were alive, as it were. So you only had the records left.

It is explained what the Einherjar actually are, per Old Hubba in Champions of Yore 1:

Quote

Each card contains a record of one of history's most valiant and glorious heroes. They do not conjure up the actual person, of course. That would just be silly! It's more akin to...a mirror image, of sorts. A reflection of the man or woman they were.

Which is what makes me think the Emblem Rings are a similar thing. As explained, the Rings were summoned from another world, so they don't need a Gate of their own anyway. Then again, the curious nature of the Emblem Paralogues may imply Elyos still has some ways to cross the world boundaires... maybe.

As it is, Askr simply does things different. Likely because they have the power to open their own gates to other worlds anyway. So no need to hunt down things like the Einherjar Cards when they have the power to get the heroes themselves. Which is something the Divine Dragons of Elyos, or whoever made the Cards, lacked.

 

 

Edited October 30, 2023 by Acacia Sgt

[Lemmy]

 

I wanted to like this book ...

I think there was potential, our new friend being revealed to eventually wipe us out with sadistic glee, other versions of her echoing words we didn't say yet

Another Dues ex Machina later, and now we end with her different murder victims giving gentle smiles ...

 

Seither is my most disliked OC character yet, too pure, and then also force us to make a kid with her, while other OCs are trying to hook us up

 

[Aedan7479]

So, what was the point of the weird chapter numbering? The Story certainly isn't coherent if you play it in numerical order. Also remember how it Njordr said it was super important for Seidr to have a child with Kiran? And how he didn't recognise Kvasir? Or how Kvasir had a Breidablik? Yes, Gullveig used Kiran to create Heidr (I think) but how did Njordr know the importance of that? This book didn't feel well planned.