Thirty(?) Days of Fire Emblem, Day "Five"

[mark_asphodel]

 OK.  Let's just get this one over with.

#5: Favorite Lord

Hector, of course.

...

Oh, sorry, that wasn't even funny.   I mean, nothing against Hector, but he's totally not the one and anyone reading this already knows it.  So let's just get the explanation over and done with.

Marth, FE11 version.  

See, I didn't have terribly high expectations for Shadow Dragon.  I knew it was based on FE1 and not all of FE3 and was thus only half the story, the set-up, and the more straightforward and less interesting part at that.  And, being familiar with FE3, I was pretty sure I knew what to expect from Marth.  I knew that he was pure-hearted and sweet and naive and occasionally teary-eyed.  I thought I knew what I was getting into.

Instead, thirteen chapters into FE11, I was already kind of weirded out by things that didn't fit my expectations, and no I don't mean the portraits or the murky color scheme.  I mean Our Hero and his interactions with... everyone.  I kept waiting for Marth to act like I expected him to, and he kept going almost up to the line, getting to where I knew he was going to go all soppy and idealistic, and instead I see statements like "No... the hate remains," and "Nyna, I can't make you any promises."  


Small things.  Very small things, very weird things.  But, if we're analyzing video games for the purposes of fandom theorizing and 'fic-writing, hanging our hats upon very small things is what we do.  And comparing these new scenes to the FE3 dialogue induced great bouts of cognitive dissonance, even allowing for translation mistakes and/or translation "agendas"!  What was going on here?  Why did this game seem almost... cynical?  

I still don't know what the hell was up with FE11, or FE12 for that matter.  But lyndis  and myaru  have both over the months hit it right on the head when it comes to Marth-- FE11 took the shining perfect saint of FE3, the holy innocent, and made a human being out of him.  A flawed, corruptible, and potentially quite alarming human.  And I guess it's one thing to be a hero when it's what you're born to and you've never had an impure thought or destructive impulse in your short little life, but it's another thing entirely when you've got the means, motive, and opportunity to commit some truly terrible acts... and you don't.  And I can't read the implications in Chapter 13 of FE11 any other way. 

Comments

[kyusil]

I don't remember if I'm paraphrasing correctly, nor have I played the games to back it up, but I seem to remember you saying something like the Archanea remakes read like deconstructions of the original games, which I think is really fascinating and unlike anything I've seen from a game developer.

...I should really get around to playing my copy of FE11. Unless you'd suggest the originals first?

[mark_asphodel]

but I seem to remember you saying something like the Archanea remakes read like deconstructions of the original games

Yeah. That is one possible explanation for the weirdness of FE11 and the whole MyUnit "true story" angle of FE12. It's the most palatable explanation I can come up with, anyway.

Unless you'd suggest the originals first?

Go for FE11 and see what you think. I mean, for a lot of people used to FE7 and up, the lack of things they're used to (rescue, support conversations, chapter goals that don't involve just killing everything and seizing the castle) are enough of a reason to hate it. I hadn't played any of the Stateside releases and wasn't working off those preconceptions, but even so things like, um, essentially being rewarded for killing off your own units does make the whole thing feel weird.

And in terms of what it was doing to the source material...

At the very end of FE3, Marth is instructed by his tactician that some characters cannot be rescued and the best thing to do is a mercy killing. Marth flips out at this, and of course there does turn out to be a way to save said characters. Loop back time and flash-forward to FE11, and in the bloody Prologue, we have the whole canon decoy incident and this BS about "losing old comrades to meet new ones," justifying exactly the kind of strategies that were abhorrent in the originals. And then there are some changes to FE12 that, from what I can tell, turn the morality of the FE3 game universe on its head. It's bizarre, and given how beloved and popular FE3 was in Japan, these aren't changes that are just going to... I don't know, slip in unnoticed.

Yeah. I still can't get my head around the remakes.