Anatomy of a Clusterf*ck (FE4 vs FE13)
Mar. 28th, 2013 07:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodelSo, I made some new pals over on GameFaqs after some of us hijacked a troll thread on the FE13 forum and turned in into a debate over whether Sigurd, Eltoshan, or Cuan was the biggest dumbass in Jugdral. (Hint: Sigurd.) And one of these new pals compared the plot of FE4 to FE13 in that both start off very strong and turn into a "clusterfuck" (though s/he also took points off FE13 for blatantly riffing off FE4).
I think "clusterfuck" is a strong term for Gen 2. It's dramatically flawed to the point where it both challenges adaptation and undercuts its own "aria" moments in the script, to be sure. I've pondered before what precisely is so bad about it, and I had a handful of answers.
1) We never get a good sense of Isaach despite the fact that our hero and his core posse live there and their opening campaign is its liberation. It's the sketchiest of the Jugdral satellite kingdoms. But man do we learn a lot about Thracia. You'd almost think that was the part the writers really cared about.
2) About 2/3 of "Seliph's" story is really about the Fall of House Freege and the Dain/Nova descendants and anyone who isn't them can GTFO for, like two and a half chapters. When Oifaye and Shanan reappear in Chapter 10 with actual dialogue it's like, "Oh yeah, you guys were supposed to be important or something. We're y'all just having a coffee break the last chapter?"
3) No bro action for Our Heroes. The script tells us it matters that Seliph hooks up with Ares and Leif, but both pretty much ignore him the entire game and just worry about their own shit. And they never talk to one another. The closest Leif comes to talking with Ares is if Ares bangs Nanna. So what was that all about?
4) No bro action anywhere else, really... for the eugenics babies. At least Tristan and Roddlevan have their sparring match and Dimna has that girlfriend back home.
5) The plot-point deaths really misfire. The impact of the choice between the Dozel boys is blunted in that we don't even know these clowns. Clown One or Clown Two, take your pick. As for Ishtar, whose death is clearly meant to be the "money shot" dramatically... I dunno why it doesn't feel stronger than it does, and I suppose the context is to blame. For all the screen time given to the Freeges their plot arc sits uneasily in the storyline.
6) Whereas Gen 1 feels like a genuine unspooling of events from the Prologue through the end of Chapter 3 (Chapter 4 is more a self-contained adventure), the chapter breaks in Gen 2 feel like arbitrary quirks of geography and not punctuation marks in a storyline. Stuff just happens, and more stuff happens, and different stuff happens, and hey now we're in Miletos.
PS: Chrom's ultimately a bigger dumbass than Sigurd, too.
3) No bro action for Our Heroes. The script tells us it matters that Seliph hooks up with Ares and Leif, but both pretty much ignore him the entire game and just worry about their own shit. And they never talk to one another. The closest Leif comes to talking with Ares is if Ares bangs Nanna. So what was that all about?
4) No bro action anywhere else, really... for the eugenics babies. At least Tristan and Roddlevan have their sparring match and Dimna has that girlfriend back home.
5) The plot-point deaths really misfire. The impact of the choice between the Dozel boys is blunted in that we don't even know these clowns. Clown One or Clown Two, take your pick. As for Ishtar, whose death is clearly meant to be the "money shot" dramatically... I dunno why it doesn't feel stronger than it does, and I suppose the context is to blame. For all the screen time given to the Freeges their plot arc sits uneasily in the storyline.
6) Whereas Gen 1 feels like a genuine unspooling of events from the Prologue through the end of Chapter 3 (Chapter 4 is more a self-contained adventure), the chapter breaks in Gen 2 feel like arbitrary quirks of geography and not punctuation marks in a storyline. Stuff just happens, and more stuff happens, and different stuff happens, and hey now we're in Miletos.
But these are issues that can conceivably be fixed. I don't know if they're make Gen 2 genuinely good, but I think tweaks along these lines would mitigate things. Do I think a remake would do the trick? HAHAHAHAH. No.
Not least because FE13 is a genuine godawful clusterfuck. I said before that for the first eleven or so chapters-- despite glaring missteps like the fuckery with the Hierophant, the cheap introduction of Cordelia and the equally cheap handling of Phila-- I felt that Awakening might really turn out to be the best entry into the series. Then the Valm Arc happened. And then our heroes went back to Ylisse and the story got even worse. The false choices. The utter pointlessness of the time travel. The irrelevancy of the child characters, which stems directly from the breeding free-for-all among the parents. The utterly uninteresting villains (I cannot dignify them with the label "antagonist"). The shoddy, shoddy worldbuilding. The moral derangement of our alleged heroes. The cheap cheap cheap cheap stupid cheap fucking cheap you-insult-me-sir ending.
That's a clusterfuck. It fails in a narrative sense. It fails in an aesthetic sense. I would argue it fails in a moral sense. It makes the convoluted irrelevancies of FE7 look like halfway decent storytelling and it makes Gen 2 look like a mild-to-moderate letdown.
I'm sorry you can't turn off the storyline the way you can turn off animations and just play the damn maps. It doesn't mean I hate the game, though I'm somewhat repelled by it overall and have mostly lost interest in playing it. It doesn't mean I hate the characters, though I'm deeply, deeply conflicted about Chrom and Robin both and resent how Lucina was handled. But the storyline is beyond redemption because the core of it-- Robin-- is more decayed and hollow than the Sigurd/Deirdre nonsense that's supposed to anchor FE4.
Worst of all, FE13 has pretensions-- intermittent pretensions. Like a shitty novelization of Lyn's Tale, it's a comedy that wants to convince the player of its depth, its grandeur, its tragic heft. Well, some of the time. Then it's back to the pratfalls and fluff. FE4 has some murky parts to its philosophy but there's not any doubt that the core people working on it thought they were crafting something genuinely meaningful. FE13 by contrast is obvious pastiche-- it's not Dark Side of the Moon, it's The Australian Pink Floyd come to town to bring you excerpts from Dark Side of the Moon and a passable light show. I'll go out on a limb here and say it feels very much like the work of ascended fanboys, people who grew up on FE3 and FE4 but didn't understand what made either of them work. Or not work. Or why.
And the only way to "fix" any of it would be to throw the entire draft in the shredder and start over.
That's all for now.
That's a clusterfuck. It fails in a narrative sense. It fails in an aesthetic sense. I would argue it fails in a moral sense. It makes the convoluted irrelevancies of FE7 look like halfway decent storytelling and it makes Gen 2 look like a mild-to-moderate letdown.
I'm sorry you can't turn off the storyline the way you can turn off animations and just play the damn maps. It doesn't mean I hate the game, though I'm somewhat repelled by it overall and have mostly lost interest in playing it. It doesn't mean I hate the characters, though I'm deeply, deeply conflicted about Chrom and Robin both and resent how Lucina was handled. But the storyline is beyond redemption because the core of it-- Robin-- is more decayed and hollow than the Sigurd/Deirdre nonsense that's supposed to anchor FE4.
Worst of all, FE13 has pretensions-- intermittent pretensions. Like a shitty novelization of Lyn's Tale, it's a comedy that wants to convince the player of its depth, its grandeur, its tragic heft. Well, some of the time. Then it's back to the pratfalls and fluff. FE4 has some murky parts to its philosophy but there's not any doubt that the core people working on it thought they were crafting something genuinely meaningful. FE13 by contrast is obvious pastiche-- it's not Dark Side of the Moon, it's The Australian Pink Floyd come to town to bring you excerpts from Dark Side of the Moon and a passable light show. I'll go out on a limb here and say it feels very much like the work of ascended fanboys, people who grew up on FE3 and FE4 but didn't understand what made either of them work. Or not work. Or why.
And the only way to "fix" any of it would be to throw the entire draft in the shredder and start over.
That's all for now.
PS: Chrom's ultimately a bigger dumbass than Sigurd, too.
Re: Necro posting, but oh well
Date: 2014-02-05 11:49 pm (UTC)Gangrel arc
The Arc deals with the past and overcoming the scars it left.
Ferox would be a proper antagonist seeing as how they were mislead by Plegia's attempts to frame Ylisse as their enemy, not to mention that Chrom's father was into the war thing.
Gangrel is out to get Ylisse's royal family if not Ylisse itself.
Emmeryn dies in order to protect the capital from destruction.
Valm arc
The arc deals with how unity by force is set to fall to pieces.
Chrom's fleet meets the Valm fleet and wins. The ship burning as done in Awakening is gone.
Elaborate more on the dynasties. Make sure that the point comes across that they AND Chrom's army had Wallhart fall and the alliance's victory shows how Chrom's philosophy is the right one. And the dynasties are capable of taking care of the continent.
Grima arc
The arc deals with a person's ability to do good or bad and how circumstance can lead to either of these things.
Grima!Robin awakened and Playable!Robin didn't. There would be more exploration into what led to Grima!Robin becoming what he is now.
Grima!Robin's obsession with Playable!Robin is tied to how she noticed how Playable!Robin did things differently from what she did and maybe wanting to prove to himself that how he awakened is and was guaranteed to happen, even if she does have regrets.
Others:
Chrom would actually become king.
No Tanguel. They don't cover anything that the Manaketes don't already cover, both mechanics wise and story wise.
There would be a different art director. The Victorian look, can stay though.
There would be an option to select a different skin color for the Avatar.
There's even more that I've thought of.