Fire Emblem Fates but with good writing: Chapter 1
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 เม.ย. 2024
- Fire Emblem Fates has a lot of problems with its writing, and a lot of mistakes in its writing, but the biggest mistake has to be that characters never namedrop their route properly.
Hoshidan characters could say "This is our fate's birthright!" every time anyone brings up the topic of defending the "rightful" rule of the Hoshidan royal family, or defending Hoshido from "Aggressors" comes up, no matter what legitimate or illegitimate grievance might be motivating these "Aggressors" to do whatever they can no matter the cost. (dissatisfaction with the rich samurai and ninja clans dishonestly dominating politics and cruelly dominating a disarmed populace without rights forced to pay exorbitant taxes to a kind and overly trusting puppet-queen ignorant to the realities of the world, perhaps?)
Nohrian characters could say "This is our fate's conquest!". Garon might even believe in and preach something like Manifest Destiny and Social Darwinism except he'd call it Fate's Conquest, because "Life is about conquering others to be top dog by any means necessary, our fate is conquest or to be conquered, justice is an illusion only good for giving pawns ideas useful to society like the need to be honourable and honest and just and self-sacrificing and all other thing true 900 IQ rulers like myself can never be!" or something, and if he was more like the transparently and comically evil social darwinist evil emperor from Code Geass's Britannia, and justified everything unjustifiable he ever did as "Necessary for toughening you up, son" or "Necessary for protecting our family from potential harm" and was a true believer in this lie instead of a comically evil cartoon supervillain who goes mwahaha and does evil and self-destructive things for no reason, he would be better written in comparison to another anime's cackling supervillain. (This just in, villains can be villainous and logically wrong and morally wrong and ideologically wrong without being one-note cartoon villains who go mwahaha. Actually, to compare these caricatures to cartoons is an insult to cartoons). Characters might even disagree about whether ancient dragons passing down magical weapons to the chosen special ones (and the threat of force inherent in that system) is better than authority derived from the consent of the governed. Supreme executive power should derive from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical draconic ceremony. Really, you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some oversized lizard threw a sword at you! I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an emperor just because some sheep-snatching beast of burden had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
Characters could even say "This is fate's revelation" once or twice, like Azura or the Rainbow Sage.
Okay, I'm joking, the biggest problem with the story is not that people don't say the name of the game's routes often enough. It's that the story is fundamentally dishonest, and that gets in the way of creating a satisfying story where you truly have to balance between walking a dark path for the greater good and descending into the same darkness that claimed the souls of once-good people. This is not the deep morally grey route the story tries to pretend it is, and it lacks the cruel cathartic black comedy fun or meaningful powerful pointless tragedy of a real Evil Route seen in better games. You don't pick between Paragon Corrin choices and Renegade Corrin choices even if they make your run easier or harder and build support points with the nice half of your army or the edgy half. The game lies to you because this fundamentally incomplete story is harmed by bad decisions forced upon it in the name of profit, not artistic integrity or experimental storytelling. Contrived silly magic BS exists to serve Corrin, because Corrin and Alear and characters like them are how the developers think the target audience that got the anime recap of "F-Rank Adventurer is actually S-Rank Harem God and prince of 3 kingdoms with two royal families warring over him" to over a million views want stories to treat them. Perhaps the next Fire Emblem will graduate from "Everyone loves me" and "The ghosts in my Rings love me" to "I can create my own infinite waifus who love me". Perhaps with CK2 meets Advance Wars and Fire Emblem style disposable waifu generation.
I don't know if I'll do a full rewrite of this story in playable mod form, but I might give it a go. If I do it'll come with map changes to suit the new story. The current gameplay is tied to the story. Might have to retcon some cutscenes incompatible with the new story as "Scenes Corrin imagined". That feels inelegant. But I can't reanimate prerendered CGI cutscenes.
Fire Emblem Fates has a lot of problems with its writing, and a lot of mistakes in its writing, but the biggest mistake has to be that characters never namedrop their route properly.
Hoshidan characters could say "This is our fate's birthright!" every time anyone brings up the topic of defending the "rightful" rule of the Hoshidan royal family, or defending Hoshido from "Aggressors" comes up, no matter what legitimate or illegitimate grievance might be motivating these "Aggressors" to do what they do. What if, instead of saying Corrin was sent by Garon to watch Hans trigger a war, then get dragged into the canyon, get warped into free real estate, get warped back to be bonked on the head by Hoshidans and taken to the royal family, and potentially die taking Anankos's exploding Ganglari into Hoshido to be triggered by Vallites, the explosion in Hoshido was caused by rebels in Hoshido dissatisfied with (insert negative thing about current or historical Japanese government and culture here) aided by Nohrians but not directed by Nohrians or controlled by them. In a rewrite that seeks to make things morally grey, Ryoma could be a good man albeit one blinded by historical revisionism, the lies caste societies tell to justify unequal justice systems, and the lies told by Yukimura, the devil on his shoulder whispering in his ear. Look, someone on the Hoshidan side needs to be, if not pure evil, a pragmatist who views what he does as a necessary evil for the glory and continued survival of Hoshido (and the status quo and royal family that employs him), contrasting him with a rewritten Garon who doesn't go mwahaha.
Nohrian characters could say "This is our fate's conquest!". Garon might even believe in and preach something like Manifest Destiny and Social Darwinism except he'd call it Fate's Conquest, because if he was more like the transparently and comically evil social darwinist evil emperor from Code Geass's Britannia, and justified everything he ever did as "Necessary for toughening you up" or "Necessary for protecting our family from potential harm" and was a true believer in this lie instead of a comically evil cartoon supervillain who goes mwahaha, he would be better written in comparison.
Characters could even say "This is fate's revelation" once or twice, like Azura or the Rainbow Sage.
Okay, I'm joking, and this isn't the real Chapter 1, it's just a Proof Of Concept while I decide whether to add EVEN MORE in-progress projects to my plate or not. The biggest problem with the story is not that people don't say the name of the game's routes often enough. It's that the story is fundamentally dishonest, and that gets in the way of creating a satisfying story where you truly have to balance between walking a dark path for the greater good and descending into the same darkness that claimed the souls of once-good people.
It lies to you
Hoshido is the straightforward boring good-guy route while the other two are messes.
You're told Garon used to be a good man before the Whore Wars but he and his goons regularly try to have you killed on impossible tasks.
The gameplay has you KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM then the story says you nonlethally conquered everyone. And then the story says when you weren't looking, and sometimes when you were, Nohrians like Hans killed innocents because mwahaha they are sooo evil and you're on the evil route. You can't kill Hans or Iago until you can, you can't openly defy Garon except when you and your siblings do, anything bad that happens because of Corrin's choices is never Corrin's fault.
The story says "Our choices are important" and then your choices never really matter. You don't get to choose whether you take on a supremely hard Hoshidan Fortress in your way or take the easier way through the Kitsune lands only for Hans or Iago to slaughter them because "Nobody in Hoshido can know where we are, no survivors means no survivors". Your choice to recruit Shura or make him into Boots does not alienate any of your allies.
The story says you're doing this for family, the family that raised you is more important than being blood related to anyone, but you aren't really blood-related to any of them and you weren't really raised by any of them, you were locked away in a giant tower your whole life with scarcely any interaction with or knowledge of the outside world to be a more useful pawn for Garon, the clown who goes mwahaha and tries to kill you multiple times for no good reason. Meanwhile Corrin the hypocrite and his army toss their own children in the Babyrealms for child soldiers on demand. Good thing they never have their lives ruined by bad parents, right? Good thing Corrin's own child wasn't brainwashed by Garon's deep cover agents posing as a foster father and his wetnurse wife "For Nohr's own good", yes? Hooray for the extreme luck that comes with authors not wanting to explore their own worldbuilding's darker tragic aspects. Why are some of these Babyrealms places with other people while others are just forests, anyway? Can you create your own Babyrealms or just exploit existing ones? Where's the option to send my men on training trips or recruit from these worlds? Let me see what the distant offspring of my finest soldiers become and bring to our world after 500 years pass for them in a day. Guns?
The story pretends this is a grim and gritty morally grey dark fantasy world and then it turns out everything bad ever was done not by desperate people forced into bad situations with no good options by dehumanizing systems of power more powerful than any one man, even a King, but by a few people who go mwahaha and do evil for no real reason beyond profit and fun including a bad dragon who used to be a good dragon.
The story says you're doing this for your siblings and father, you're doing this to save your openly satanist father from madness or demonic control or show your family (who are already regularly working against him in secret, and openly defying him multiple times making him look like an inconsistent hypocritical lying blowhard merely putting on airs) Garon is bad, so you obliterate Hoshido and much of its royal family all so a puppet made from mud can sit on a throne and have his true self revealed, only for an unsatisfying ending to ensue where you don't kill Anankos because just like in Ashura's Wrath but worse, the real ending costs extra.
This is a childish story that pretends to be a mature story despite trying so hard to be liked at the cost of its own artistic integrity. It thinks this is how you make fans like something. To give the self-insert undeserved importance and power and waifus. To praise the self-insert for showing up and being born more special than anyone else. Even characters who can't love anyone else can love you. Even Babyrealm brats cooked quickly to legal age within the Hyperbolic Time Chambers can be... I mean, does anyone see how messed up that is? It's one thing to get with Lucina, the future version of the daughter your best friend just had, because at least from her perspective her father is dead and the men she met in the past are not men from her past, they are not the men she grew up around. But you met Odin, you met Elise, you paired them for Ophelia, you paired Ophelia and Male Corrin, you paired your own child with the child of other soldiers under your command to make their kid a better stat-boosting backpack for your Dragon daughteru.
Huge parts of the whole game need rewrites so severe it would become something else entirely when done, but to fix the story with minimal changes, if we aren't giving Corrin frequent meaningful moral choices to make things harder or easier and change the ending, recontextualize Fates Conquest from the start as "Garon has clearly gone too far, I had no idea how awful he was until now, I need to get close to him and overthrow him with the help of my siblings who also hate him, Hoshido isn't all it's cracked up to be, and when I am sent by Garon to pacify rebels (alone because I'm technially not a military asset yet so sending me won't break a peace treaty about to break anyway, but my friends and the retainers of my siblings will aid me revealing Garon sent them after ensuring Xander wouldn't kill me if ordered to and I would walk to my certain doom alone if ordered to) I will ask them to wait for the perfect moment to attack, then when I have my father's trust, I will lead Garon and his best men on a suicidal attack on the best-defended fortress in Hoshido, ensuring our only supply route and escape route can be cut off easily once my Hoshidan siblings fake their deaths and let us get deep enough into Hoshido territory to be suddenly encircled and forced to surrender, giving everyone a chance to have Garon dealt with properly and his underlings stripped of their rank and power while Xander takes the throne and rebels revolt in Nohr while the bulk of the army is away- Oh crap, now that Garon and Iago and Hans are vulnerable, Yukimura killed them and has decided my coup is the perfect chance to permanently destroy Nohr's royal family and harm its military capability for generations, then conquer a weakened Nohr, ensuring Hoshido's eternal dominance over Fateslandia and he may or may not be influenced by Anankos based on whether my rewrite includes him or not! Damn, it looks like the real villain all along was not a big bad dragon satan, but deep mature philosophical concepts like power, what people do for it, what people do when they lack it, monarchy, man's obsession with power, man's obsession with becoming invincible, and man's fear of opening himself up to others and being vulnerable! Now my Nohrian army and the Hoshidans who defend me must prove the superiority of trust and goodness and opening yourself up to others, and defeat Yukimura and his dream for Hoshido! Killing Anankos in the process if he exists in this rewrite. The target audience likely wants the finality of slaying satan so I'll probably put him in there".
@@JasonGodwin69"the whore wars" is crazy 💀💀💀
That's what they called the damn thing in the lore! The Concubine Wars!
@@JasonGodwin69 lmfao
Dude, I thought this video was a shitpost, not a hidden rant about Fate's dodgy writing
This must be the version of the game where Takumi getting poccessed in chapter 25 of Birthright actually matters
Everything seems normal and then Takumi just says that. Crazy.
I didn't draw attention to it so most people didn't notice :3
But for real, Takumi is a weird character. "You're the eldest so you're in charge", he says, and then he immediately starts ordering you around. On this route where Takumi is possessed and (mermaid man voice) EEEEVIIIIL whose idea was it to make Ryoma the one who tries to use Elise's life as leverage against you? Should have rewritten that so Ryoma expresses some Survivor's Guilt and gives you the medicine "Even if there's a chance you're lying, because I don't want another child soldier's death on my conscience". Also that whole scene was stupidly contrived. Should have been the result of someone's intentional manipulation, not sheer dumb luck. Perhaps Yukimura could send a nonlethally poisoned letter to Corrin hoping to weaken the army and force the Nohrians to visit that potion place for a cure, and then send Ryoma there saying "My spies tell me the Nohrians are making their way to that neutral territory to steal its most useful cures and then obliterate it out of fear that it might one day help us!". In that moment Ryoma could reject the role Yukimura penned for him in his script. He could prove himself to be redeemable, prove himself to be more than an enemy in Corrin's story, prove himself to be more than Yukimura's attack dog, without needing to outright know this is a trick. He could express some goddamn humanity by putting somebody's life over what he feels he is owed in that moment. But of course, this rewrite would require Hoshido to not be an absurd utopia designed to contrast the evil european country. And this rewrite would require Ryoma to be a good man working with incomplete information, not a bad person written by an author who thinks he's writing a good person. This rewrite would also require a complete overhaul of the ending because slime blob Garon gives an unsatisfying ending to a broken story where everyone looks like a moron for not realizing Garon was too far gone long ago and he's dragging Nohr and the world to hell with him, and it would require writing out that crystal ball Azura used to show Corrin the truth right before it broke, it would require rewriting things so Azura can't just make the whole army follow her into a pond and then see everything including Gunter, it would require rewriting so much it wouldn't really be Fates any more. Do the people who disliked Fates still care about Fates? How would the people who liked Fates react to a man rewriting their favourite story in all of fiction to be less embarrassing and stupid? I'll consider this project but I'd be better off making my own things.
@@JasonGodwin69 You bring up some excellent points. I feel like most people who enjoy Fates as a story (if there are more than a handful to begin with) would probably be positive in the face of such clear passion for the game. And they'd have to admit that some of the flaws in the story are very hard to ignore.
balls
See okay I figured this would just be a joke about Birthright and Conquest namedrops but then I see Takumi talking about the enemy's balls
mwehehe balls :3
goes hard
You know what else goes hard? :)
I just played Hidden Truths 1 the other day and I had to do a double take of the text when I realised Owain did a title drop for the three routes
Title drops=quality writing.
What's the exact quote please? Whatever it is, only "Definitely not Owain" could pull it off and get away with it since it's so in character.
@@arminarlelt7471
*******: Haha, I am sorry about that too. Still, you all came, nonetheless.
Owain: I suppose being heroes is our birthright. Or maybe we crave the thrill of conquest...the seduction of revelation. No, I think it's just that we can't bear to abandon someone in need.
(In-game, the title drops are also at the right end of the dialogue box I think, making it even more obvious. At least birthright is. It's dialogue after the battle if you want to check)
Edit: SHIT, IT'S EVEN BETTER! The voice line he uses while starting the line is "Such are the whims of fate!"
This looks cool, I look forward to more of this!