FE13: the morning after
Feb. 20th, 2013 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodelThat final chapter was strange.
And I don't mean just fighting on the back of a giant flying dragon. One of my favorite endgame chapters will likely always be FE11's, with its lovely four-part approach demanding some pretty intricate planning. Then on the less impressive side we have the conquest of Barhara in FE4, which can simply consist of Julia tearing around with the Book of Naga. (The penultimate confrontation with Ishtar is many times worse.)
But this was... well, you pair up, huddle everyone together, spam every Rally in your party's possession, and sprint in formation up Grima's back so that Chrom/Robin can get close enough to finish him off. It's only tricky in the sense that Chrom can't make the kill on his own and you need Robin, Lucina, or both as backup. My winning combination on the third attempt was Lucina and her arm candy striking a blow from the right (Inigo had no offensive capacity against Grima at all and was purely there for support) followed by Chrom striking at dead center. If you kill Grima on the second turn, everyone in your party is likely to sail through. Stretch it out to three turns by being overcautious on the approach, and there could be casualties. I lost Kjelle the first time and Cordelia the second.
Yeah. Exhilarating and strange the first time I tried it and distinctly underwhelming by the third.
-x-
Oh, and I did have Chrom strike the final blow, because to hell with that cheap-ass alternate possibility. The ground rule of Fire Emblem is that humans will always fuck it up and the cosmic threat du jour will come careening back onto the scene. Always. Also, from what Ammie said, Robin doesn't actually die, so that makes the "sacrifice" ending even worse.
I could bang on for hours about the ways in which I find this game morally vacuous, but I'll try to keep it short. I think the most immediate thing it did, besides pissing me off, was make me loathe Chrom.
I quite liked Chrom. Still do, up to a point. He's a likable guy. I was able to justify his actions and stances through the first arc of the game. I can't do that for anything in the second and third arcs. If he's meant to be the moral center of the game, he's the center of much of what's wrong with it-- and unlike Sigurd, who paid in blood several times over for his stupid, reckless actions in Gen 1, Chrom suffers no consequences. He gets it all. His wife, his best friend, his family, his intact kingdom, his entire posse, some new allies, and his daughter. Both versions of his daughter.
I'd figured, given the complexities of time travel, that there HAD to be another shoe dropping with regard to Lucina. She certainly seemed to think so, and was at peace with it (Lucina is the moral voice of the game that's constantly shouted down, overturned, and told not to worry about it). Nope.
FE3 is a tragedy.
FE4's happy ending comes at a devastating cost.
FE5's central issues aren't even really resolved.
FE7 features our heroes inadverently setting up the stage for a full-scale war.
FE8 is another tragedy.
FE10, in its "most canon" form, features an actual sacrifice as a plot point, among other things that Cannot Be Undone (until your second playthrough).
FE13 seems to be going there in its initial plot arc, then blows the whole thing up in a fantasy of sparkles and rainbows. It's as shallow as its uniformly youthful and attractive cast, whose "old crones" are smooth-skinned, beautiful, and fertile. Its resident "old man" is musclebound, virile, and in possession of hefty plot armor. It's a heap of sugar candy in glittering foil wrappers.
Oops. Getting off-track there.
No, there is something about this game that repels me at a deep level, and yet I mourn its potential. It seemed be going somewhere with the Chrom/Robin dyad, setting up Chrom to be the (imperfect) beacon of deliberate good will while allowing Robin to tap into the darker side of war and statecraft. So much seems to be going there, from the DLC recruitment conversations with Marth and Micaiah to the bogus "choices" the player gets to make. For a while, I was wondering if a Robin who makes the hard-nosed, underhanded choices might give into Grima of his own free will. Instead, the game waved all that away. Meanwhile, Lucina was relegated to a backseat Cassandra.
In this game, your heroes cannot make mistakes. Or, more accurately, any mistakes they might have made in their own time were airbrushed out of the picture. There is nothing to compare to Leif's no-win situation in the middle of FE5 that sends Dorias to his death. They set that up with what happens with Basilio, but then surprise! Everything's fine. There's nothing to compare to Eirika's act of handing over the Stone of Renais to Lyon. They set that up, too, but Our Heroes are so much better than that. And then there's the business of setting fire to the Valmese fleet, something that I'm sure is meant to evoke Micaiah's war crimes in FE10, and then it turns out, strangely, not to matter much. Again, it's all good. Nothing to see here, moving along...
Then, finally, there is a startling lack of interest in the common welfare-- like, the actual good of the people. FE4 may take an inconsistent approach to vengeance and retribution, but it nonetheless carried the sense that the welfare of the people was paramount. Tyrants with good intentions have to die. Even a god-marked holy warrior who loses his concern for the people stops being a legitimate ruler because of it. Maybe I missed it, but I just didn't come away with any sense that Robin or Chrom really gave a damn about anything beyond their own little insular circle. Are we just leaving Valm to its own devices after destroying the place? Are we going to do anything about poor leaderless, dark-dragon-worshiping Plegia? Please tell me I just missed the part about rebuilding and helping Plegia, because it's a frightening omission. But hey, it doesn't seem like we actually gave a shit about the Feroxi, either. We took both their Khans on a ridiculous overseas jaunt and nobody made a peep.
It almost feels like Chapter 1-11 and everything thereafter were written by two different teams who didn't compare notes.
Yeah. So when's that King vs King DLC coming out?
And I don't mean just fighting on the back of a giant flying dragon. One of my favorite endgame chapters will likely always be FE11's, with its lovely four-part approach demanding some pretty intricate planning. Then on the less impressive side we have the conquest of Barhara in FE4, which can simply consist of Julia tearing around with the Book of Naga. (The penultimate confrontation with Ishtar is many times worse.)
But this was... well, you pair up, huddle everyone together, spam every Rally in your party's possession, and sprint in formation up Grima's back so that Chrom/Robin can get close enough to finish him off. It's only tricky in the sense that Chrom can't make the kill on his own and you need Robin, Lucina, or both as backup. My winning combination on the third attempt was Lucina and her arm candy striking a blow from the right (Inigo had no offensive capacity against Grima at all and was purely there for support) followed by Chrom striking at dead center. If you kill Grima on the second turn, everyone in your party is likely to sail through. Stretch it out to three turns by being overcautious on the approach, and there could be casualties. I lost Kjelle the first time and Cordelia the second.
Yeah. Exhilarating and strange the first time I tried it and distinctly underwhelming by the third.
-x-
Oh, and I did have Chrom strike the final blow, because to hell with that cheap-ass alternate possibility. The ground rule of Fire Emblem is that humans will always fuck it up and the cosmic threat du jour will come careening back onto the scene. Always. Also, from what Ammie said, Robin doesn't actually die, so that makes the "sacrifice" ending even worse.
I could bang on for hours about the ways in which I find this game morally vacuous, but I'll try to keep it short. I think the most immediate thing it did, besides pissing me off, was make me loathe Chrom.
I quite liked Chrom. Still do, up to a point. He's a likable guy. I was able to justify his actions and stances through the first arc of the game. I can't do that for anything in the second and third arcs. If he's meant to be the moral center of the game, he's the center of much of what's wrong with it-- and unlike Sigurd, who paid in blood several times over for his stupid, reckless actions in Gen 1, Chrom suffers no consequences. He gets it all. His wife, his best friend, his family, his intact kingdom, his entire posse, some new allies, and his daughter. Both versions of his daughter.
I'd figured, given the complexities of time travel, that there HAD to be another shoe dropping with regard to Lucina. She certainly seemed to think so, and was at peace with it (Lucina is the moral voice of the game that's constantly shouted down, overturned, and told not to worry about it). Nope.
FE3 is a tragedy.
FE4's happy ending comes at a devastating cost.
FE5's central issues aren't even really resolved.
FE7 features our heroes inadverently setting up the stage for a full-scale war.
FE8 is another tragedy.
FE10, in its "most canon" form, features an actual sacrifice as a plot point, among other things that Cannot Be Undone (until your second playthrough).
FE13 seems to be going there in its initial plot arc, then blows the whole thing up in a fantasy of sparkles and rainbows. It's as shallow as its uniformly youthful and attractive cast, whose "old crones" are smooth-skinned, beautiful, and fertile. Its resident "old man" is musclebound, virile, and in possession of hefty plot armor. It's a heap of sugar candy in glittering foil wrappers.
Oops. Getting off-track there.
No, there is something about this game that repels me at a deep level, and yet I mourn its potential. It seemed be going somewhere with the Chrom/Robin dyad, setting up Chrom to be the (imperfect) beacon of deliberate good will while allowing Robin to tap into the darker side of war and statecraft. So much seems to be going there, from the DLC recruitment conversations with Marth and Micaiah to the bogus "choices" the player gets to make. For a while, I was wondering if a Robin who makes the hard-nosed, underhanded choices might give into Grima of his own free will. Instead, the game waved all that away. Meanwhile, Lucina was relegated to a backseat Cassandra.
In this game, your heroes cannot make mistakes. Or, more accurately, any mistakes they might have made in their own time were airbrushed out of the picture. There is nothing to compare to Leif's no-win situation in the middle of FE5 that sends Dorias to his death. They set that up with what happens with Basilio, but then surprise! Everything's fine. There's nothing to compare to Eirika's act of handing over the Stone of Renais to Lyon. They set that up, too, but Our Heroes are so much better than that. And then there's the business of setting fire to the Valmese fleet, something that I'm sure is meant to evoke Micaiah's war crimes in FE10, and then it turns out, strangely, not to matter much. Again, it's all good. Nothing to see here, moving along...
Then, finally, there is a startling lack of interest in the common welfare-- like, the actual good of the people. FE4 may take an inconsistent approach to vengeance and retribution, but it nonetheless carried the sense that the welfare of the people was paramount. Tyrants with good intentions have to die. Even a god-marked holy warrior who loses his concern for the people stops being a legitimate ruler because of it. Maybe I missed it, but I just didn't come away with any sense that Robin or Chrom really gave a damn about anything beyond their own little insular circle. Are we just leaving Valm to its own devices after destroying the place? Are we going to do anything about poor leaderless, dark-dragon-worshiping Plegia? Please tell me I just missed the part about rebuilding and helping Plegia, because it's a frightening omission. But hey, it doesn't seem like we actually gave a shit about the Feroxi, either. We took both their Khans on a ridiculous overseas jaunt and nobody made a peep.
It almost feels like Chapter 1-11 and everything thereafter were written by two different teams who didn't compare notes.
Yeah. So when's that King vs King DLC coming out?
no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 12:43 am (UTC)Chrom's "Holy War" is not about the people. When Chapter 14 rolls down, not a single prayer, not a single reconsideration of the insane casualties, is given. An empire is crumbled with no afterthought on how to rebuild it, sending a ferocious and ominous sign to the Valmese peasantry that NAGA has cursed them, taken away their Voice, like a sign from the gods themselves that Walhart's actions have brought doom upon all under his rule. The death count and the complete disregard for any consequences of war rival if not outnumber the bigotry of Chrom's father. I simply can't get behind it. (I also chose Chrom to take down Grima seeing as the implication of humanity screwing itself over with its flaws seems more fitting and interesting than the other option.)
Have you seen Male Robin's supports with Gangrel? It's pretty jarring to see Plegia's "Mad King" realizing the implications of his actions while Robin says that the army "wants to save everyone," even while denoting Plegian citizens as "wretches" under Validar's rule.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 02:52 am (UTC)Excellent point.
Have you seen Male Robin's supports with Gangrel?
No, I haven't played it yet.
even while denoting Plegian citizens as "wretches" under Validar's rule.
"Wretches" can have some different nuances, though. I'll have to check that Paralogue out, though. Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 12:55 am (UTC)See: The WTF-ery that is FE12 Marth.
It almost feels like Chapter 1-11 and everything thereafter were written by two different teams who didn't compare notes.
A distinct possibility, IMO. This has happened to several other titles with strong starts and piss-poor finishes (see: FF12).
I foresee tons of fix-it 'fic.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 02:48 am (UTC)Yeah, but up to a point I was liking Chrom better than FE12!Marth. He seemed like a normal kind of guy who was deliberately reining in his aggressive impulses for the sake of his beliefs. But those beliefs apparently turned into total mush.
I foresee tons of fix-it 'fic.
Yeah, but you said that about FE12. ;)
I personally have no desire whatsoever to write FE12 'fic at this point. Playing FE12 killed the 'fic bug for that game like nothing else, man.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 03:43 am (UTC)They were totally doing it.
Not an excuse for the crappy scripting, though.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 01:03 pm (UTC)Valid point! I'm due for another Criswell moment.
Hmm. If there were a fix-it for FE13, though, perhaps it would be an AU starting at that dubious Chapter 11
staff changepoint of departure?no subject
Date: 2013-02-22 09:40 pm (UTC)At this point I think I'm more interested in exploring the timeline where everyone failed and died.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 03:20 am (UTC)(Strangely enough, this icon DOEs represent how that would make me feel.)
no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 02:22 am (UTC)Anyway, FE13 was much more interesting for that period when it wasn't about Robin. Something something Gary Stu.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 02:50 am (UTC)It fell apart as soon as they got on the damned boat, but yes. I was rather liking Robin, too. As Canon Stus go, he was much better than Kris.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-21 03:23 am (UTC)