Star Trek and Fire Emblem

[mark_asphodel]

This article from Wired makes excellent points about Star Trek into Darkness.  It's ALL spoilers, so beware, but read it even if you don't plan to see the film because the core weakness of the Trek reboot is-- surprise, surprise, surprise-- awfully close to the core weakness of recent Fire Emblem games.

[I repeat.  I enjoyed the film.  I wouldn't necessarily see it again, but I'll likely see the next one when it inevitably comes to theatres.]

I was making comparisons between Trek 2009 and FE12/13 even before seeing the current Trek flick, but IMO the analogy is even stronger now.

ETA: Here is a very different critique which points out that reboot Trek is missing the whole literary angle that infused previous iterations of Trek.  If you don't wanna read it, I'll quote the final lines: 

I also recognized Kirk and Spock, and Picard and all the other good Trek folks had read way more books than me. And guess what? I wanted to be just like them.

That is an excellent point.

Comments

[mark_asphodel]

The story writer are the staff who made the second part of Awakening!

Yes, pretty much.

P.S. if you don't mind the question, is the problem with FE12 largely comes from Michalis and the awful support convo? Well, in a nutshell, everything I had misgivings about in FE12 was taken and amplified in FE13.

Plot hijacked by the player-insert character for no apparent reason beyond stroking the ego of the player? Yes, and Kris isn't even as well-written a protagonist as Robin.

Characters "developed" by means of flat, gimmicky, pointless support conversations, most of them with the dull-as-dirt self-insert? Yes, and FE12 has too damn many characters to start with.

These characters are "developed" by slapping on tropes and "archetypical" traits so they feel less like 3D versions of the original 20-year-old characters and more like Frankenstein monsters pieced together using bits from mid-period FE games? In many cases, yes. FE13 may actually be better about this particular flaw, though Cordelia stands out to me as particularly, deliberately, bad.

Nuances of world-building and mythology omitted for no good reason? Yes, unless all extant fan-translations did the script a disservice. And what's downright awful in FE13? World-building and mythology! I'm guessing the current writers just aren't interested.

A villain whose character arc resolved perfectly in death instead gets a reprieve because he's sexy or something-- in a way that undercuts (again) the original morality of the plot? Yes. I hated it then and I still hate it now.

Those are the main points. :/

[jsnd]

"Nuances of world-building and mythology omitted for no good reason? Yes, unless all extant fan-translations did the script a disservice. And what's downright awful in FE13? World-building and mythology! I'm guessing the current writers just aren't interested."

I kinda did not understand this one, maybe for FE12. The game did a lot of myth explanation and stuff, and FE3, from what I recalled is identical in this regards(albeit somewhat more justified for being an SNES game, I guess).

For FE13, IMO they did quite a good job on Gangrel and thats it(not sure if the future past DLC has anything regarding this though)

[mark_asphodel]

I kinda did not understand this one, maybe for FE12. The game did a lot of myth explanation and stuff, and FE3, from what I recalled is identical in this regards(albeit somewhat more justified for being an SNES game, I guess).

There were things in FE3 that were not in fan-translations I have read of FE12, like the "small" detail about King Adrah of Archanea being a thug who trashed the Shield of Seals-- a detail that makes it clear that Nyna is really NOT the legitimate ruler of Archanea in a "divine right" sense and that yes, everything should go to Marth (the descendant of a legitimate hero). If that really isn't in the FE12 script, that's just weird.

But then again everything in FE12 doesn't go to Marth because Michalis can live. :/

[rjwalker]

I definitely recall that detail being there. Problem is, I'm pretty sure it was in chapter openings during the world map sections and those parts of the script haven't been added to Serenes Forest's script.

[rjwalker]

A villain whose character arc resolved perfectly in death instead gets a reprieve because he's sexy or something-- in a way that undercuts (again) the original morality of the plot?

Eh, Michalis surviving the events of FE1/FE3Book1/FE11 seemed like a case of this anyway so I'm too angry about his second survival.

[mark_asphodel]

But he still ultimately died. Redeemed, yes, but most definitely dead.

In Kaga-era FE, you didn't get away with being a cold-blooded murderer, however well-intentioned. Not Arvis, not Travant, not Ishtar, and certainly not Michalis. His original character arc-- repentance, death, and leaving Macedon to Marth-- worked for me. His new arc of not-repenting very much, not-dying, and conquering some other land just pisses me off.

[amielleon]

The sudden loss of mythology was a pretty weird development come FE12, because yes okay I'm biased but I'll swear up and down that Tellius had an exceptionally strong sense of mythology (and its relation to history!) which was central to its plot.

[gilasen]

Honestly, I say Awakening's lack of worldbuilding was at least partly from wanting to keep things in the setting like Grima's backstory open enough so that there would be something to cover in a followup to Awakening.

[mark_asphodel]

That may be, but Awakening was disappointing enough that it leaves me with no desire whatsoever to play a sequel/prequel sidestory. Clearly many players do not agree, but if the next game has anything to do with the Awakening plot I will, at most, buy it used.