The Splendid Incoherence of FE4
Sep. 29th, 2012 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodelI have to seriously side-eye anyone who praises the writing in this game. So many of the second-gen characters are just ridiculously incoherent.
Let's say I have a plot-bunny about Arthur, and since it's not pairingfic and doesn't revolve around the oh-so-important issue of his paternity[*], I decide it's worth writing. So let's delve into Arthur. He doesn't have all that much dialogue, so let's just skim over his handful of scenes to get a feel for the guy.
Well, he shows up riding with Fee, who gave him a lift out of Silesia. Since this is FE4 and there's a chance Fee might not be Levin's daughter and therefore Silesia's princess, she's deliberately vague about this "father" person that went missing on her. But we "know" in light of later canon that she's Levin's daughter and therefore Lady Fee, Princess of Silesia... which means Arthur-- raised a Silesian-- doesn't know that he's hitching a ride with the princess. His princess. And that he's also unable to connect the dots regarding aaaaaall the shit that went down with King Levin going missing and Prince Sety disappearing thereafter and poor Queen Fury dying alone. And that makes Arthur look not especially bright. Fee agrees with us there, but that doesn't mean it's good writing.
Oh, but it gets better. Come the final chapter, Arthur and Fee have another little talk if you pair them (I don't)**. In this, Arthur vows to go back to Silesia with Fee... except that, technically speaking, he can't. He inherits Freege by default, and if he doesn't go to Freege he goes to some other duchy in Grandbell or whatever (Velthomer, Dozel, Edda...). The only way Arthur ever goes back to Silesia is if he is Levin's son and heir... but he's not. Levin is like Tiltyu's #4 choice in "canonicity" in FE4, and FE5 shot that ship down hard.
[And if Arthur is the Prince of Silesia, his entire introduction makes No Fucking Sense.]
I'm starting to think that the only way to enjoy writing FE4 'fic is to just kind of skim canon and write what "feels" good, 'cause trying to hew 100% to canon as given results in a mess. There is a fair amount of mess that can be resolved with just a bit o' handwaving, but some of it just can't work no matter how you try to tweak it.
* Arthur does not appear to give a flying flip about this particular issue, FWIW. Unlike Lester&Lana or Faval&Patty (or Levin!Sety&Fee), he cares first, foremost, and only about his mother's side of the family.
** There's a Chapter Eight talk too, but it sucks.
Let's say I have a plot-bunny about Arthur, and since it's not pairingfic and doesn't revolve around the oh-so-important issue of his paternity[*], I decide it's worth writing. So let's delve into Arthur. He doesn't have all that much dialogue, so let's just skim over his handful of scenes to get a feel for the guy.
Well, he shows up riding with Fee, who gave him a lift out of Silesia. Since this is FE4 and there's a chance Fee might not be Levin's daughter and therefore Silesia's princess, she's deliberately vague about this "father" person that went missing on her. But we "know" in light of later canon that she's Levin's daughter and therefore Lady Fee, Princess of Silesia... which means Arthur-- raised a Silesian-- doesn't know that he's hitching a ride with the princess. His princess. And that he's also unable to connect the dots regarding aaaaaall the shit that went down with King Levin going missing and Prince Sety disappearing thereafter and poor Queen Fury dying alone. And that makes Arthur look not especially bright. Fee agrees with us there, but that doesn't mean it's good writing.
Oh, but it gets better. Come the final chapter, Arthur and Fee have another little talk if you pair them (I don't)**. In this, Arthur vows to go back to Silesia with Fee... except that, technically speaking, he can't. He inherits Freege by default, and if he doesn't go to Freege he goes to some other duchy in Grandbell or whatever (Velthomer, Dozel, Edda...). The only way Arthur ever goes back to Silesia is if he is Levin's son and heir... but he's not. Levin is like Tiltyu's #4 choice in "canonicity" in FE4, and FE5 shot that ship down hard.
[And if Arthur is the Prince of Silesia, his entire introduction makes No Fucking Sense.]
I'm starting to think that the only way to enjoy writing FE4 'fic is to just kind of skim canon and write what "feels" good, 'cause trying to hew 100% to canon as given results in a mess. There is a fair amount of mess that can be resolved with just a bit o' handwaving, but some of it just can't work no matter how you try to tweak it.
* Arthur does not appear to give a flying flip about this particular issue, FWIW. Unlike Lester&Lana or Faval&Patty (or Levin!Sety&Fee), he cares first, foremost, and only about his mother's side of the family.
** There's a Chapter Eight talk too, but it sucks.
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Date: 2012-09-30 03:23 am (UTC)Trying to lure me in, are you?
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Date: 2012-09-30 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-30 05:52 am (UTC)Also, regarding your first asterisk: in my recent FE4 playthrough, I paired Tiltyu with Azel. So it was kind of amusing to me that Arthur and his sister were going WE HATE OUR MOTHER'S EVIL FAMILY OKAY every five seconds while they were also very much related, albeit slightly more distantly, to the game's primary antagonists.
I feel like the interchangeable marriage system creates all kinds of funky plotholes. Not that the rest of the writing in FE4 is exactly stellar either, but still. :D;
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Date: 2012-09-30 11:54 am (UTC)Totally obsessed with Uncle Blume and Aunt Hilda, nothing whatsoever to say about Uncle Alvis and dear cousin Julius? Yeah. And ALL Tiltyu's predestined dudes are heirs to landed estates, so it's not like it's endorsed by canon that their father is Dew or Noish or some other relative nobody with relatives of no consequence.
[You can argue that the whole context is pretty cruel to Arthur, who clearly doesn't want to be tied down to some place in Grandbell or whatever, which is why I roll my eyes whenever a fic!Arthur shows up being all grand and stately about being the heir to Velthomer or whatever. He doesn't care, people.]
I feel like the interchangeable marriage system creates all kinds of funky plotholes.
Lester, Chapter 6: "We need to do our best for our missing father!"
Ya mean, DEAD, because Jamka, Claude, and Azel most definitely are, and Midayle almost certainly is. Very slight chance that he's not.
And if your father's out there somewhere, he doesn't want to see you, Lester, so go do whatever suits you, man.Fee, Chapter 6: /babbles about shitty home life
You know, if your dad ain't Levin, this has very little resonance or consequence. IDGAF what happened to Ardan.
Faval and Patty: "Yay, we're Lady Briggid's kids! Maybe someday we'll learn who our dad was!"
There's a fortune-teller in every town, kiddies. Also, ask Oifaye or Shanan or somebody who was around back then. Either Briggid was the most secretive chick in the army, or the older guys just aren't very helpful.
FE5 left this one completely up in the air.Though the Julia business is the absolute nadir of the writing. :/
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Date: 2012-09-30 07:56 pm (UTC)The cruelty of having all the second-gen kiddies reclaiming their families' estates is something that's occurred to me more than once too. And not just in Artur and Tinny's case, though I do think it's particularly true for them. Given what House Freege, for instance, put their mother through, you'd think it would be the last place either of them would want to spend the rest of their lives, and yet they can very well inherit it anyway. I think similar things can be said for many of the second generation. Even besides being heavily linked to bad memories, most of them were orphans who grew up in different parts of the world, with very different lives. I can buy some of them being into the idea of uprooting their lives to carry on the family name or whatever, but certainly not all of them.
(This puts me in mind of all the Tellius fics out there where Soren learns about his parents and suddenly becomes totally interested in reconnecting with his estranged mother and being royalty, despite all indications in canon to the contrary... except that in FE4, it is canon. :D;)
And seriously, I can't imagine that anyone would want to deal with Velthomer, period. :-/
...I was going to joke about Lester being all gung-ho about finding their father because of his uncanny resemblance to Lex, but Lex is probably dead by that point too. :-P But yeeeaaah, the fact that the fortune teller was always just a castle away while everyone and their sister fretted over who their parents might have been was a bit of a wtf moment for me too.
I'm not sure what bothers me the most about FE4's writing. The whole Julia thing is pretty high on the list, but I think I'm most bothered by a significant portion of the main players being walking one-liners (looking at you, Sigurd, Diadora, Julius, and so on). I feel like that's part of FE4's biggest flaw in general, for me: the game rarely plays to its own strengths. There actually are some very interesting people in FE4. The problem is that instead of pushing the fascinating characters into the spotlight, it shoves Sigurd and Diadora's Flawless Eternal Love and Celice's Indisputable Awesomeness down the player's throat ad nauseam. >_>
eta: Sorry that got so long! Apparently I have a lot of feelings on FE4 today.
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Date: 2012-10-01 09:40 pm (UTC)One or the other gets it, yeah. And while Tinny's conversation with Levin actually pinpoints Alster as the place where Tiltyu was confined, Tinny'll go back there happily if she marries Leaf.
I can buy some of them being into the idea of uprooting their lives to carry on the family name or whatever, but certainly not all of them.
I particularly resent how Corple ditches his "beloved father" Hannibal to go inherit Edda/Silesia/Whatever. I mean, it really gets under my skin. And honestly... while Levin!Sety and Celice himself might actually be prepared for rulership on some level, IIRC Leaf is the only one of the kids who actually wants it as his destiny. Most of the kids have zero preparation for ruling anything. I have a hard time believing the likes of Faval and Patty are cut out for it.
This puts me in mind of all the Tellius fics out there where Soren learns about his parents and suddenly becomes totally interested in reconnecting with his estranged mother and being royalty, despite all indications in canon to the contrary
Good point.
.I was going to joke about Lester being all gung-ho about finding their father because of his uncanny resemblance to Lex, but Lex is probably dead by that point too
Hah ha ha.
One of these day's I'm going to seriously have some fun writing at Lester's expense. He's just a damnably bland character for writing...
I feel like that's part of FE4's biggest flaw in general, for me: the game rarely plays to its own strengths.
Also a very interesting point. Which characters did you find to be the fascinating ones?
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Date: 2012-10-05 01:19 am (UTC)And oof, I also forgot about Corple bailing on Hannibal. Yeah, that's an especially wtf one. :-/
I would totally read Lester fic, even if I do agree that he's incredibly bland. :-P
Most of the characters in Judgral I find fascinating are probably rather predicable. Despite the whole Julia weirdness, Levin is probably my favorite at the moment. I like most of the first-gen Silesians in general (though Sylvia is a notable exception >_>). I know I mentioned liking Lachesis quite a bit to you before too, but I suppose it's worth mentioning her again. And I think I'm starting to warm up to Alvis, now that I've had some time to reflect on the game. I liked Azel even during the game, but appreciating his half-brother as a character now opens up more possibilities for him, I think.
Also, some of the characters who reappear in FE5 (though not all of them by any means) sound like they have the potential to be interesting, once I get around to reading and/or playing it. Characters like Leaf and Fin, and maybe even Brigid, to a lesser extent, fall into the "probably helped a lot by FE5" category for me.
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Date: 2012-10-05 01:40 am (UTC)Levin!Corple: Oh, my dad Levin is so awesome! I want to be just like him! (/leaves for Silesia)
Me: No. You did not just do that, kid. >:[
I would totally read Lester fic, even if I do agree that he's incredibly bland. :-P
I start off thinking that his relative non-tropey-ness actually makes him a good Everyman kind of POV character (as Everyman as Gen 2 gets, anyway) because he's not depicted as stupid or dippy, but the for some reason writing him just never goes anywhere. 'Cause he's bland.
I like most of the first-gen Silesians in general (though Sylvia is a notable exception >_>)
Yeah. Silesia (I don't count Sylvia), the Velthomers, Lachesis are all favorites of mine. I dig the Thracia angle, too, but FE5 is a big part of that.
Characters like Leaf and Fin, and maybe even Brigid, to a lesser extent, fall into the "probably helped a lot by FE5" category for me.
Leaf kind of gets a personality transplant in FE5, and while I really like the new!Leaf, the old!Leaf (so political, so angry, so much of a live wire compared with Celice) intrigued me enough that I'm sorry I can't really reconcile the two versions. As for Briggid, her FE5 version appeals so much to me that it made me like the comparatively "meh" FE4 Briggid in retrospect.
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Date: 2012-10-01 05:04 am (UTC)そうか･･･ラナ、母上のためにも
そして、まだ見ぬ父上のためにも
俺たちはがんばろう▼
It actually says "the father we have not yet seen," which I think has a slightly less certain air.
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Date: 2012-10-01 09:21 pm (UTC)Ah, fuck it.
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Date: 2012-09-30 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 09:20 pm (UTC)If we do ever get an FE4 remake, the kidlets might get different-colored eyes depending on their paternal line of descent, but somehow I doubt they'll make much more sense.
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Date: 2012-10-01 01:45 am (UTC)And other thing was than they ran out of space for the game script(some of the hacker found that even when the script is partly hard-coded is different that the rest of the game) and were forced to cut down thing for the final version, thus leaving a lot of thing to 'Word of God' or simple to some side materials
In few words... this game suffer similar to PSIII, was to ambicious but suffer for techical bottleneck(FE4 Code is a mess, his RNG is pretty broken and easy to manipulated and memory issues by not using special chipsets)
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Date: 2012-10-01 09:20 pm (UTC)How do you mean? I thought the writing there was terrible, but hardly for the same reasons I have issues with FE4.