Also worth noting that Leif starts the game with 0 authority stars, gains one when August joins him, gets another when Dorias joins up, then finally loses one when Dorias dies. Effectively, Leif's authority stars represent having a tactician/advisor around. Thracia is so good.
This topic is the main reason why I love the genre so much. I think this is the biggest strength in all FE games. Even though the writing can be hit or miss, the feel of the gameplay conveys a story that is hard to replicate in other genres. I feel like Judgral and Radiant Dawn does this the best, while games like Engage have good moments of this as well. When you look up people's favorite chapter, it's usually a map that integrates both very well. Some other examples I can think of are the defend chapters. To make a good defend chapter, you need to do both. Conquest Chapter 10 makes you feel like you are struggling and barely made it out alive near the end. Radiant Dawn 3-13 is also similar where there are so much happening both gameplay and story that it feels chaotic and epic. I feel like defend chapters are some of the hardest to get right, because you need both ingredients to cook at the same time to make it engaging.
I like reclass options that tell a story. Like vaike having thief because he used to be one before being a Shepard or ricken having all of chroms to show how he idolizes him or libra having dark mage because of the darkness his parents sensed in him and why they abandoned him or Cordelia having literally all the best options in the game covering every option because she’s a prodigy. It makes replay value a lot better while also doing subtle story telling. It’s part of why I don’t quite like the change to omni class changing because you lose those little insights.
That is an interesting comment, though I'd add that it's not totally lost. Character's strengths and weaknesses can play a subtle role in Three Houses, for example. Claude has a hidden talent in axes, which combined with his natural talents in flying and bows hints at his Almyran heritage. On the flip-side, Ashe once turned to thievery to support his family, but strives to be an upstanding knight now. His lack of a strength in swords and his personal Lockpick ability means he doesn't have to train as a Thief, even if the monastery allows it, with the only caveat being that he won't steal directly from other people.
I like the Awakening trio in conquest all having their reclass options being Hoshidan classes that reference their original appearance in Awakening. It for one, plays into the idea that they aren’t exactly from Nohr by giving them access to Hoshidan classes, and also acts as cute references to Awakening. Odin having Samurai in reference to his original base class, Selena having Sky Knight in reference to her mother’s class, and Laslow having Ninja, a fast nimble class, like his Mother’s dancer class. It’s also nice from a gameplay perspective, since these classes are in fairly short supply in conquest.
14:10 I have always said that weather or not Robin comes back to life at the end of Awakening should be based on a ranking system like old games had. the story tells you that Robin would only survive if enough people kept them in their minds. which being a legendary "five star" tactician would warrant being remembered and even studied. aspiring stratagists would be studying Robin's battles, historians would be documenting Robin's accomplishments etc.
That’s what I love about FE. Anyone can be the hero, because the gameplay and story are perfectly intertwined. You CHOOSE who your party of main characters in this wacky JRPG adventure are.
One of the things I liked about the Tellius series was how often the various different objectives collaborated with the story. Liberating POW's was an escape map, there's a map divided into 4 sub-chapters in Path of Radiance that makes the player feel the massive onslaught the their army is currently going though.
my favorite gameplay story integration is the power of holy blood and holy weapons in the jugdral games. the unbalanced cast just makes sense when holy blood is so hyped up
@@bificommander7472 The differences are more subtle because there isn't a generations mechanic to make it explicit but crests do clearly impart more raw stats to the people who have them. Compare the ludicrous power of Lysithea and Constance to their competitors with lesser or no crests; the highest strength stat in the game belongs to Dimitri, and Edelgard isn't much far behind. The other characters are given tools to make up for the raw stat difference because modern games just don't make bad on purpose units to the same extent that older ones did, but those stat differences do exist.
Kaga had a real knack for gameplay-story integration. His map design is insanely intricate and often because of story elements, he often includes secret events for various characters in his games based on this too.
One of my favorite moments of gameplay and story integration is in chapter 10 of Fe3/Fe12 where you only get the silver card if you spare all the clerics. The game gives you no hints for this as the clerics are willing siding with Arlen and will heal his troops when they can. The only reason you would do this is because its the right thing to do and because it fits Marth's character to avoid unneccesary bloodshed. It's moments like these that can really sell you on a character and I wish the series did this more rather than telling us about a character through a cutscene.
@@YouCanCallMeIz No one knows what broke Prince Marth. Maybe it was watching Caeda getting one-shot by an ambush spawn archer, maybe it was seeing Gordin getting doubled by an armor knight, or perhaps it was watching Draug getting one rounded by a mercenary. It was probably that last one, I'd lose my shit too if I saw that. The sights that Marth saw changed him after he realized he would have to take Matthis off the bench and train him. His tactics became more suicidal with each strategy being less ethical than the last one. By the time he reached Hardin, he looked no different than the diseased Coyote plus his army was nothing but replacement units who he gave personalities for some reason, perhaps deep down he wanted to feel something when he saw life fade in front of him but he still felt nothing. The only recorded account of the battle came from Midia who defied god's desire for her to die and dodge every attack. What she saw disturbed her. Marth fought like a devil high on Thracian wrath and vantage somehow working together and his plan was for everyone to die, friend and foe. When he finally made it to Hardin, he one-rounded the turbin simp and sat on the mad emperor's throne (he didn't even move the corpse off the throne). He sat there for a while with future scholars believing that he was using the bathroom there before leaving because he somehow unlocked the good ending. No one knows what these battles were like, only that Marth won these battles without showing mercy to his foe. What became of the broken prince is unknown, but it is said that if you walk around the ruins of Altea castle you may hear a demonic voice uttering the unholy phrase, "Where is that moron Kris?!?!??!"
One bit of ludonarrative I love is the difference between Fire Emblem and Darkest Dungeon. Both games are strategic RPGs about making the best of your situation with permadeath (or near permadeath, FE sometimes has a 'bring back to life' staff and DD has a rare "back from the dead" event). In Fire Emblem, losing a unit is emotional to you, but makes a great statement about war like you say in the video. But all the same, that resource is gone to you now, and you have to struggle that much harder. In Darkest Dungeon, you're far more likely to lose a unit and, while they have identities and stories, nearly identical ones arrive on the stage coach each week. While Fire Emblem teaches you to be attatched to these lowly soldiers by giving you just a little story, a little personality, Darkest Dungeon teaches you that the one thing you can always get more of is bodies. In this way, Fire Emblem is a story about hope and community and coming together to best evil, while Darkest Dungeon is a story about the horrors of ceasing to see people as people and slowly treating them as resources.
One other thing I always appreciated in Engage on this front is just the rings being so powerful. Big Powerful Holy Weapons are a standard of the series, often even fought over... but if you're a player prone to elixir syndrome, they'll just sit in a convoy or get used maybe once or twice a map because they're big stat sticks, especially on easier settings. And that makes them lose their luster fast; you went through all this work for... what? A tome with a few extra might that you didn't need because enemies have no res anywat? But Engage's rings are Big and Impactful right away, and give little incentive *not* to use them and experience their power. They are the centerpiece of the story, and they are the centerpieces of your combat strategy. They live up to their importance, especially when you see enemies equip them and realise how much more seriously you're going to have to take them. From the moment Lumera pops on Sigurd and rushes you down, it's clear just how meaningful the power of these rings are, and why they're so desireable.
Meanwhile, Crests in 3H never felt like they made a big impact on a unit's viability, except Felix's, Lysithea's and very occasionally Dimitri's. I would say this serves the narrative's debates on whether they're necessary or not, but it's hard to tell how much that's intentional and how much is just poor balance. (A Japanese magazine poll on "favourite Crest" had Fraldarius with around 50% of the vote I think, and this isn't established as a renowned Crest in-story, meanwhile Flames is and it's fairly meh)
@@BigKlingy Yeah Crests have always felt meh which hurts the story because the game treats them like the power of god when the gameplay just makes them feel like worse proc skills so the player doesn't feel the importance of crests in the story. Though this may have been intentional as the only units whose crests feel strong also are the ones with major crests so the developers may have wanted to highlight the power gap between the major and minor crests. The only problem with this little theory is that the difference between major and minor crests are rarely if ever brought up which sucks because the story could have done so much with it. In conclusion, Crests are the perfect example of gameplay and story separation and how it can hurt the story.
@@BigKlingy At the same time? This does actually help to enhance the story. Since Crests aren't as powerful in-game as they are in-story, this means that you might sympathize more with people like Edelgard and those who see the system as flawed. Because if you think about it? It IS flawed - If Crests were super powerful and made the units objectively better like the Royalty in Fates, would you even bother with using units who have no Crest like Petra, Leonie, Dedue, Ignatz, Raphael, or Cyril? My guess is you might not - this is actually something that I would try to improve with a Fire Emblem Jugdral remake. But it also fits a theme with Fire Emblem Three Houses: "How 'worth it' is someone if they are only given a chance?" Even on the "Status Quo" route (Azure Moon), you see characters who question the validity of the Crest System. Ingrid's worth as a person is reduced primarily to her Crest, rather than who she is as a person. Sylvain saw Miklan cast out of the house and resented him for being born because Sylvain had a Crest that Miklan didn't. Annette may be a hard working person, but the system still largely gave her a chance because of her Crest. Many of the non-Crest bearing students have backgrounds where they either worked HARD to get into this elite academy, had connections, or were lucky. And Edelgard wants to reward people who do work hard. This also explains why some people would want to join the Empire if recruited to the Black Eagles & Edelgard route - the Commoners would probably agree with a system wherein hard work is valued more than the family they were born to. (Like Leonie) Even the nobles would have had their lives harmed by the Crest System and agree that yes, it should be abolished. Hanneman may love the existence of Crests and devotes his life to studying them and teaching... but he also himself also does not fully support the system. He's seen the damage it can do. He's very empathetic to people like Edelgard and Lysithea for whom Crests cause physical problems, as well as people who may not support the system - since as a teacher he himself sees what can happen when you give "Normal people" a chance. This even is surprisingly applicable to real life, too - where a lot of people are simply not given a chance because of the family they were born to. Despite whatever "Budding talents" or potential they actually have. For all we know? That person who delivered your pizza was the world's Ultimate Defence Attorney - but are delivering pizzas because they were born to a family where Law School was not on the table. That person who is working at the bank probably could have been the Ultimate Mechanic - but was born to a family where they would be epxected to follow in their parents' footsteps and join the Bank business, so their talents at fixing up cars are squandered on personal projects while banking takes up most of their time.
@@finleycream1937 The story treats crests as the powers of gods - but the player would question why since most crests aren't very good other than "Well you get to use this endgame weapon". Which at the same time? Does serve for one story purpose. Multiple characters question the validity of the whole "Crest System" - early on, you're shown why people would have reason to question it. Miklan is the oldest sibling - ordinarily, HE would be the one who is going to the academy while SYLVAIN is the one who is a spare. Instead, because Sylvain was born with a Crest, he gets everything while Miklan is kicked out. You see that Miklan put a lot of work to get where he was today, even if it was a bad path. Milkan in all honesty wouldn't be a bad person, but because he was kicked out and sent to the fringes of society, had nothing else to go but to become a bandit. A lot of Ingrid's conflict is over the fact that she's valued more for her Crest, rather than her as a person. Hanneman even says that whiel he is fascinated by it, he also has his own opinions on the Crest System and thinks he would like to make it so others could have a Crest if they want to. Lysithea has two crests - a massive anomaly and one that would make her desirable, but it's shown that like Edelgard, this is NOT a good thing. This can help justify why some people WOULD want to align with the Empire - even those who seemingly have little to no reason to like Marianne or Annette. Marianne's crest is seen as cursed and an evil crest - She didn't choose it. She was just born with it. Annette is indeed a diligent worker, but a big reason she's given a chance by society is because she bears a Crest of Dominic. Ingrid's worth as a bride is primarily due to her Crest, rather than her as a person. Leonie's village had to save for years in order for her to pay tuition - and she essentially gets a relic weapon not because of her birth, but because she proves that she is capable.
On the list of things I was gonna see today, Lyn vs Lucina in a Steel Cage match. That said, I think it's an excellent point you were making, and as someone who was training to do that I really appreciate that you did treat the art form with respect. I think the story telling of wrestling can really be used to enhance fights in other media. Roddy Piper vs Bret Hart at WrestleMania 8 tells an entire fallen hero redemption arc in 20 minutes. Fights can do so much storytelling, and honestly I wish more people looked at wrestling for inspiration rather than cheap mockery.
On the one hand, it could be a callback to the first Choose Your Legends poll for Heroes, where they finished 1-2 in the female poll, with this serving as the title match.
Its also worth noting that thracia's first gaiden (2x) had a good bit of gameplay integration without compromising the player experience. Enemy pirates in a fog of war map were actually really engaging, since unlike most fog of war maps in the series (hell, its the first fog map in the series!) the enemies dont enjoy complete dominance while you stumble through the level. Most of the early areas in the first island can be walled off by two units, which gives you enough time to understand the majority of enemies you'd be handling - brigands who can twoshot most of your army, but cant double anyone even early on due to their 0-1 net AS. It also has pirates who can waterwalk, so a lot of the time I end up seeing incoming enemies while handling the current set. It gives you a bit of dread due to your lack of healers, but enough time to prepare for the threat. No random 8 mov wyverns bypassing your frontline to snipe an archer in the back, or 3 range mages melting an armor out of LoS. And when you do get a torch, using it on a certain island gives you enough visibility to see their spawn point (2 forts) but it dwindles every turn, and usually before you can get a feel for their spawn timer. I remember having to brace with a solid frontline for about ten turns until I was sure it was safe to proceed. It's also worth noting the inventory even played a part here for unit relevance. This level let archers shine, since both ronan and tanya could do damage over everyone else in the frontline, while ferrying vulnaries around (since they dont need multiple weapons eating up inventory, unlike people such as dagdar and finn). It made me appreciate every unit, since even a bad unit who can keep up can mule items where they're needed. I just love thracia for making everything I have feel like a resource. That 0 str thief (laura) makes for excellent capture bait to give my other people a fighting chance, while lifis can mug mages for library books at base con, and brighton can wipe out 5 armors during prison break with his wrath skill and a steel axe.
Engage is probably my favorite instance so far. The Emblem Rings specifically. The entire story is based around them, and they actually carry both the gameplay impact the story events set up as well as the narrative weight reinforced through your previous experience you already had. The game hands you a lot of rings early: Marth, Sigurd, Celica, Micaiah, Roy and Leif. By chapter 11, when those rings are stolen you have a great deal of experience with how to use those specific rings to your advantage. Most of the earlygame centers around when and how to use your engage skills to overwhelm the generic enemies. Story-wise, you literally collect the remaining six rings in an effort to be roughly equal to your foes in terms of power all while you as the player already know what a pain the Hounds are to deal with while they're bunched up together. Leading to the confrontation in Chapter 17, probably my favorite chapter in the entire game. Here, the Hounds make use of the exact strategies you did in the earlygame: Veyle/Marth : She's a Dragon, so Veyle has access to the 9 Hit Engage Attack, she'll absolutely delete your units if given the chance Zephia/Sigurd: 12 tiles of range, Momentum Override, Zephia punishes you for balling up your units and taking it too slow Griss/Celica: Warp Ragnarok. That's it. If you're not careful, he'll swoop in and nuke you, literally. He takes care of any stray units left behind Mauvier/Micaiah: Nothing special here, literally just a Recover Bot for Marni, but that's enough for this chapter Marni/Roy: Probably a casual player's nightmare. She's guaranteed to survive multiple rounds of combat and stall time while Griss approaches Hyacinth/Leif: Makes pretty solid use of Leif's skills overall. Just a bitch to deal with consistently, he walks up while you're still scrambling to deal with Zephia The way enemies are places, it's almost impossible to avoid drawing multiple groups, unless you go all the way to the top right corner to bait Zephia early. While you deal with the first wave of generics, Griss and one of the Beats are already approaching. Engaging Marni starts pulling Mauvier and his squad closer, and as soon as you try and deal with the second beast, it's just one more Turn until Zephia is right at your doorstep, with Hyacinth and Veyle not far behind, yet spaced out enough to give you some breathing room at least. This Chapter, by design, is an all out Emblem war and I love it. You need to rely on your Broken Emblems to deal with the opposing, equally as broken Emblems. The placement of the blue Engage refill spaces also reinforces this to the player. The map design screams at you to go all out, regroup and do it again.
I also love how Chapter 11 works, having the story's darkest hour coinciding with you not only losing access to the game's strongest mechanic, but having it now used exclusively by the enemy. This integration is why I enjoy Engage's story a lot more than I logically should in spite of its genericness and occasional major flaws.
@@BigKlingy While three houses has the better story, I feel like Engage has a higher high point with Chapter 10 and 11 due to it being a point in the story where our heroes get their asses kicked, something 3 houses was sorely lacking. Chapter 10 has the FE classic of the advisor telling the Lord not to storm the enemy's base which they do anyways but it instead ends just like how the advisor said it would end with the heroes now just trying to make it out with their lives. The gameplay matches this feeling perfectly as you no longer have emblems while the enemies are now being given them instead. Ivy's reinforcement and her giving you two rings feels like a dim light in an all-consuming darkness as they make it easier for you to escape but they aren't enough for you to stand your ground and fight back against the 4 hounds. Speaking of the 4 hounds, I'll say they're better than the death knight because here they actually feel like a threat even though later on they get hit with a deadly case of death knight syndrome. Overall, chapter 10 and 11 are the peak of Engage's story and if the rest of the story stayed at this quality, Engage could have been the peak of Fe writing.
@@finleycream1937 Chapter 10 was absolutely NOT the Peak of Engage, it was definitely the LOWEST, that entire chapter relied on every character being as dumb as they possibly could, and Veyle pulling a Deus ex Machina, for anything in Chapter 11 to happen.
Good integration: Small little Florina being afraid of archers because they're effective against her. Not so good integration: Small little Florina (with an Seraph Robe) consistently being one of my most powerful units.
Fire Emblem does have its occasional oddities with unit design like this. For the opposite example, Rinkah in Fates being portrayed as strong and her portrait showing abs, but having a lower Strength growth than Sakura and more focused on stonewalling than offense. Meanwhile Boucheron is a better example of how to tailor personality to this type of unit. It's established that he doesn't care much about strength training, he's just naturally big. So he has good Build and HP, but low Strength for an axe user.
FE4 is probably the best at Gameplay-Story integration in any of the fe games I've played. almost everything happens through gameplay, and your choices have a major impact on what happens. it even goes so far as to completely change what units you get in the 2nd half if you lost certain ones in the first half. you can feel how Holy blood impacts your units, and the mechanics of inheritance match what's told in the story. the large maps match the large scale of what happens in the story. that's what makes it so jarring when it breaks with this and has Seliph take a castle offscreen at the start of chapter 10, because up to that point you've always been in control of where you go and what you do. whereas in the other games the characters move around and do things off screen all the time
this is why i love fire emblem's stories even if they don't look amazing on paper, half the narrative is made by your experience and decisions when playing.
Side quests locked behind how well you do in a story chapter is bery cool. If you have slow play or fail a requirement first time. It makes fe feel like a old fashion new game plus where you come back better and can play with more skills then get a bonus story Or be like marth and end your army to get secret chapters like with nagi
What made me enjoy engage so much was the gameplay and story integration. It may not be the most interesting or unique story, but you do get to experience a lot of the story elements through the gameplay.
14:10 there actually is something like that in the DS remake of Heroes of Light and Shadow. Kris, the Avatar character of that game, often has chats with Jagen between missions where Jagen looks at their stats to determine how good they are. So of you're focusing a Mage Kris, you will get scolded for having poor Strength, but praised for your high Magic. Ofc this is actually based on your stats, so you could be scolded for having low Strength as a Hero, but it's still a fun lil thing.
my favourite games have excellent ✨ludonarrative integration✨. e.g. pathologic and cultist simulator. its my favourite thing about fire emblem when it pulls it off well, in particular i really enjoy when how characters are presented in the story matches the player's gameplay experience
You mentioned slight changes in dialogue depending on how characters have grown, technically FE12 did this with Jagen commenting something on Kris depending on having a stat reach a certain point, I think. One I found memorable was the res one where I think it's mentioned in Khadein because of the magic users. I find it memorable since I usually go with mage Kris and I get the positive line from Jagen, which I feel most people that picked other classes will probably see the one of not having enough res since it's not a high stat in that game usually.
11:41 all of this you explained with the mechanics representing what's happening in the narrative makes me think of FE Fates... I'm currently playing Conquest for the first time and I have many problems with the story, and one of them is how Corrin is supposedly a pacifist that refuses to kill enemies and instead just K.O's them (and in the story, good things happen to Corrin because they showed this mercy and compassion to others; iirc Kaze joins Corrin because he saw that they didn't kill the Hoshidan soldiers), and I've always been very skeptical about this because when playing, it doesn't feel like you're sparing the enemy, just killing them as in any other FE game, so whenever the story mentions that no Hoshidans were killed in the map I feel a sort of dissonance that bothers me a little, up to the point that I wish Corrin didn't have this character trait of ultra idealism where everyone survives and is spared. But now that you mentioned that example with Thracia, I'm wondering if Conquest could have implemented a mechanic of "Sparing" that could show how Corrin's army's goal isn't to kill the Hoshidans and/or any other enemies? I wonder if this could replace the Capture mechanic, where instead of taking prisoners of war, the spared Hoshidans could choose to give you rewards or even join your army if you Spared them? I'm thinking that if Conquest implemented this, we could feel more connected to Corrin's war and goals, since we as players are experiencing it first hand
It shows the writter only knew FE from anectdotes from his daugther. Up to Engage, Fates is the only game where generic units don't die in story when killed in gameplay.
Thracia was definitely the best blending of story and narrative in the series. So much of the underdog, running from a larger military as a group of ragtag revolutionaries is communicated to the player primarily through the gameplay, it's great. Path of Radiance still probably edges it out as my favourite FE story, but it's FAR less diagetic.
Also, you felt broke has shit for most of the game. The fact that most enemies are lance locked footies also make them look and play extremely different to your normal units, and puts you at a (very minor) disadvantage vs most of your sword boys (on paper). The game wasnt afraid of having reinforcements be more warnings than actual threats to combat (green draco hit squad that cant reach the city in the 2 turns left), which I cant say the other FE games did at all. Also a small touch, but lief's promotion only offers an opportunity to gain more levels, which segues into the immediate map to follow so well - an escape chapter with semi random unit placement and reinforcement spam, encouraging you to send lief to the frontlines to cover your army's retreat. Also rly miss when enemies operated like armies with weakspots, like in fe5 chapter 5, where you had to fight through a 3 columns worth of roads and houses to escape. If you destroyed the enemies in one lane, you could loop around and encircle the backline of archers (who cant retaliate). If you punch through the sword armors, you can accomplish the same and cut through the squishy mages. Modern FE loves giving enemies rly good range coverage, so theres no tactical nuance beyond destroying a flier or the highest dps unit.
@@chaseong9560 Yeah for lack of better terminology, newer FE games have been tending to lean much more into the RPG elements rather than the ractical ones, I’d say starting with Radiant Dawn where reaching tier 3 in a class makes the unit a god who has a proc % to just delete the enemy unit. Though Conquest was very good in opposite direction; it had a LOT of specialised enemy groups, like an entire squad of mages, then another squad is all Berserkers, etc. and then when enemy squads overlap is when the player is really challenged, or one enemy in a squad will counter your counter to the rest of the squad, so taking out that one enemy tends to neuter the rest of the squad.
@@LoudWaffle generals also had wary fighter, which was an awesome way to flip the tactical table. Thracia just felt awesome since you felt like you were fighting an organized army with specialized troop formations. Everyone in FE5 had a specific job, despite the 20 stat hardcap. Also map design in fe5 made you pay attention a ton. I remember the road to road fighting on the map above and got shocked when an enemy page popped into a house below wrath brighton and took a potshot, made me become way more attentive to terrain. And that map is basically a 3 lane area with forts on 9 different tiles. Rly made the most of the little they had.
Your argument at 2:56 sums up why I don't like how Awakening and Fates have around half the cast be immortal plot-wise because they're child-bearers. While the child system is mechanically and narratively interesting, without using a timeskip like FE4 the consequences of war feel jarringly light when an entire gender can never die. I'm glad 3H and Engage went back to allowing most people to die... although that also has issues with the main story (rip Fogado and Celine's plot-relevance because they arbitrarily decided Alfred and Timerra would represent their nations in the plot) On other games, Valkyria Chronicles also has permadeath, but the 4th game did something interesting with it that hammered in the realities of war the best I've seen in a game. And in regards to narrative emerging through gameplay, look no further than my recent Engage run where Clanne got stupidly good level ups early on when I never planned on using him, and who I expected to be a mockery I'd bench became the most iconic member of my army. (I picked random growths over fixed exactly for the potential for this to happen and was not disappointed) This led to an amazing "story" moment where I promoted him on Chapter 11's prep screen with the Master Seal from Hyacinth, giving him a horse just in time for an escape map. 4:52 Hence why I've always loved replaying FE games using different units, why I don't make a fuss over "good vs ban units" unless someone's flat-out unusable (Lyre, a lot of Revelation people) and why games where you can realistically use everyone, like Awakening, Birthright and 3H, lose some of that magic for me. Even in games that develop characters via supports, you'll naturally see different ones based on your combination of picks for your team. Amber shot up from boring to one of my favourites after using him actively in one playthrough. I'm looking forward to replaying Engage and using Rosado and Zelkov, some of the few I've never actively used before, just to see more of them. And yet more trainee love from ActualLizard, love to see it. Though like you, I wish their growths were a little better so there was more payoff to using them. On a tangent, how you described trainees reminds me of Junpei in Persona 3, and how I've always felt his gameplay curve reflected his plot development. The guy who goes from immature class clown to one of the most level-headed and wise party members has a skillset most early enemies resist but that becomes more valuable as the game progresses. 6:35 You know... you kinda summed up why I hated Jeralt's death but loved Lumera's. Jeralt was around for a while, but his biggest gameplay role was as an NPC in two chapters and honestly he was a liability in both, either stealing exp or risking himself against Solon. Lumara may not have been playable, but her one chapter as a boss was such a brilliant tutorial on the Emblem mechanic that I could see how much of a nurturing effect she had on Alear, so I cared when their time was cut short so soon. Come to think of it, Greil (my FAVOURITE story death in all FE) was similar in PoR. 8:22 ...Dang I need to replay Thracia. Something I love about PoR is the sheer dialogue variance depending on who's alive/dead. The scene where Elincia gets her pegasus has variations for almost every alive/dead combination of Geoffrey, Lucina and Bastian, iirc. And Mist will chew out Ike if he tries fighting the Black Knight in Chapter 11. But even SUPPORTS have variance, e.g Makalov's supports changing if Maria dies. 3H does this too, with Claude and Ingrid's supports brining up Sylvain ONLY if he's recruited into the Deer, Annette mentioning making up with her father if you do other supports after getting their A, and many more. Wow this went on longer than I expected, but I guess I had a lot to get off my chest after witnessing so many people bash Engage purely for its story while not realizing how the gameplay serves it.
I'd go as far to say that FE's gameplay is its story at times due to permadeath and RNG. >Good unit dies, bad unit lives >Good unit gets RNG screwed, bad unit gets RNG blessed >Expected outcome doesn't happen, unexpected outcome actually happens
One other aspect that I enjoyed in Engage is actually the reverse of that, where they intergrate the gameplay into the story in a clever way, it’s when Mauvier uses the teleportation stick, when you first get him you notice that the stick is part of his inventory and when he uses it in the story I felt it was a pretty cool moment as it utilize an element from gameplay when you would think you would need to use your suspension of disbelief (like when a character in Final Fantasy dies and you get someone asking « why they don’t use a Phenix feather ? »).
Story based promotions are great the first time experiencing a game, and are a an example of integrating story and gameplay together (Radiant Path as a good example), but I wish there was an option to promote a such characters regularly when you want to. (must be frustrating for harder mode runs or speedruns to lock a story character to its base class)
Awesome but no mention of FE4? That game imo does the best of integrating gameplay and story especially considering as it minimizes cutscenes in between chapters (And lets its story play out on the map so many times, e.g. Quan and Ethlyn getting ganked by the Thracian empire, or Eldiganleaving the battlefield after his talk with Lachesis)
You get some different dialogue at the end of FE1 if Caeda/Shiida is dead. Chapter 4 of Thracia's gameplay gave me a feeling of hopelessness. You'd definitely feel hopeless if you were actually in prison so I thought it was some nice integration.
I really like in genealogy how bc of the giant maps, the game is able to play out story events happening super far away from where you are like in chapter 5 or in the chapter where you have control of leif and co separate from the rest of your party. The story told by the maps in genealogy is great
Here's another specific instance of Gameplay and Story Integration in Fire Emblem In Shadow Dragon, the Prologue forces a horrible choice on you: You must either kill an unarmed person who is actually one of your countrymen bound and gagged, or sacrifice Frey(the canon sacrifice) to continue. A plot point is that the bad guys want to use the Aum staff. In Shadow Dragon? This choice adds an extra reason for why Marth wants to obtain it - because this death was not preventable. When you obtain Aum, you can't use it on Frey... but you can with other people in the prologue. But Frey is in New Mystery of the Emblem - so what's going on? Well... Frey reveals he was actually just beaten and left for dead. Thus? You couldn't revive Frey - because he never actually died.
Sigurd second gen is nice for a soft reset of his game so anyone who was relying hard on a small cast could basically start over with all the game knowledge Awakening deepens the first cast when having kids and how they mature as people. Shows many more sides to them and how chrom isn't the only one in his army with a big heart. And that's without bringing up laurent being there much longer and the entire morgan backstory that is layered Fates not so much. Someone would have told garon and he'd have gotten those realms destroyed or conquered for the time holes. It's a plot hole in many ways.
Awakening also made the kids central to the story: the game is a time travel story--a pretty good one. The kids came from the future, specifically to change the events of the game. And that is shown at multiple points. I particularly like the presence of alternate dialogue at an important scene if Robin is Lucina's mother. Fates, on the other hand... the kids are just there. They were pretty clearly just tacked on because the mechanic was popular in Awakening.
@@someguy1ification yeah and the writers of awakening even went into extra story for where Morgan comes from and the hints are all around to piece together. I had a lot more fun with the awakening story as a whole as well. The kids are all important and give more to the main units and then show they mature. Yeah even the magazine made the joke of showing corrin and Felicia having kana. They basically picked the first girl you see. Fates parents don't change as the kids don't matter. Azura and corrin have kids but they affect nothing meanwhile chrom has a child and the slay chapter where lucina wants to end the tactician changes a lot depending on if you marry chrom or lucina adding to the weigh of it all.
I really liked your examples from Engage. The gameplay story intertwining is one of the elements about Engage I think will age well. Chapter 10, after your bond rings are taken and you have to escape without them reminded me a lot of the Manster escape sequence. And I even had to let a character die because that’s just where we were, and it hit different knowing it was avoidable on my end. One of my favorite moments in Fire emblem is in FE4. When Sigurd and the crew are first making their way through the forest and you need to assault the castle at the end of the map. Everyone moves just 1 or 2 tiles through this massive area, and you know you’re gonna need to do something about the long range magic the boss can use before you get to him. When out of nowhere Deidre pulls Sigurd deeper into the forest. Not only does he fall in love with her here. But she’s also the savior of the group because she can safely use the Silence staff to let everyone safely get to the castle. I’ll always remember this moment with Deidre, and most of the time characters don’t get this kind of fantastic intro
I think FE4 generally does a great job at introducing new characters by putting them in situations that exemplify their strengths. Being accustomed to FE6, where many units are absolute garbage when they join, this was massively appreciated.
Some of my favorite story and gameplay integration come from the Blazing Sword. Eliwood and Hector start out with a very high initial supports with each other. Just standing next to each other is enough to get a C support. This demonstrates that these two lords had a strong friendship before the story events. Likewise, Pent and Louise start out with an A support. This helps the player know that these two are already in a perfectly happy marriage.
One case of the opposite, of how gameplay and story actively weaken each other is being able to marry your siblings in Fates. For whatever reason, they wanted to let the avatar marry _any_ character. And because of that it broke the fundamental question of the game. It reveals that the Hoshidan siblings aren't blood relatives, breaking the motivation to join with them. And with the Nohrian siblings, it perverts the familial love you were supposed to have with them, ruining the motivation to join with them.
You're right, well-integrated gameplay can elevate the story, and well-integrated story can elevate gameplay. The converse is also true: Act 3 of Radiant Dawn wants us to feel the tragedy and injustice of friends killing friends on opposite but understandable sides of a war. Sadly, this feeling is undercut because the story's conflict that drives the war is contrived and the gameplay's deaths are not real. Radiant Dawn could have been great, but the some of its story and gameplay choices weaken what could have been powerful moments.
The plot contrivance is bad but I disagree slightly on the character death stuff simply because there’s no other way for the idea to work. The ability to recruit various characters to each side is a very well done gameplay-story integration. And maybe this wasn’t intentional but the MASSIVE power gap between the Dawn Brigade and Greil Mercenaries reinforces the story 100%.
The story is the foundation the gameplay is built upon. Thus I have come to believe the people who say Gameplay over Story come from the more modern era of "multiplayer" games where there is no story, just repetitive gameplay mechanics with the end goal of charting on a score board.
Naturally they only seek the gameplay element if the above is true, because they just don't care. It's like a kid who gets rewarded by his peers for doing something stupid. He'll just keep doing stupid things for the dopamine hit. Thus growing up to be a maladjusted person in the world. The second half is how I see things, they want the rest of the industry to be dumbed down to their level.
I recently got into fire emblem with Sacred stones and one moment in particular i had matched well with the topic of the video so i wanted to tell this story I was on eirika route, about to go to jehanna to make allies with them to beat grado, but unfortunately grado's troop got there first so we gotta fight them During the chapter, my weapons started reaching low durability and breaking, but the chapter was too easy, so i thought to myself "okay, i can still make it throught this, ill buy some things in between chapters" But then, when the chapter ends, we discover that this was just a decoy and the real army of grado was reaching us soon, but i still thought "okay but the chapter ended so i can still buy my stuff on the overworld map".... but i actually couldnt, the chapter proceeded immeadiatly The next chapter started showing that my troops were getting exausted and low on resources and the grado's army needed to finish us off quickly before ephraim's crew got here to help us The chapter itself started very hard, with me low on resources and most of my troops being highly slowed down by the sand (desert level lol) but then, ephraim's crew got here, not only was more people joining my army very convinient, but one of the fellas that got it was duessel, a very tanky great paladin capablr of barely taking any damage from most attacks Even then it was hard and characters died in that chapter but that panic i felt when i didnt have time to gather more weapons made this be one of my favorite moments on the gameplay
I've always loved Genealogy's inventory system because it causes every item to have a story. This is the ring that Lester inherited from his father, the Lightbrand was a gift from Deirdre to her new sister-in-law Ethlyn, which is then passed down to her son Leif, a physical reminder of the bond of blood shared by Leif and Seliph, as well as another way Deirdre's love goes on to help and protect the next generation. The Silver Sword Sigurd receives from Arvis in the prologue can end up being the very same sword Sigurd's son uses to slay Arvis for his betrayal. Many of the crusader's weapons like Helswath and Mjolnir, once created to fight against the oppressive Loptous Empire are now instruments of that same empire over a century later because the bloodline of those holy weapons failed to live up to their legacy. So on and so forth. It's so cool, and a good reason not to change the inventory management in a remake just because it would be more convenient to trade between units freely.
One of my favorite gameplay story integrations in the whole series is if you deploy Jill on the map where your army fights her father. She has special dialogue for it, but my favorite, she has the absolute lowest biorhythm for the entire map.
I love fire emblem and the last 2 are my favorite entries, but I wish more of them were good at both at the same time rather than excelling at one or the other
Chapter 11 of Engage is probably one of my favorite in the entire series. Its just- so scary getting all your crutches taken from you like that. The emblem rings would have sucked, but including the time crystal was a master class; that thing is pretty much the player's emblem ring for how busted it is, and suddenly being without your failsafe is just as frightening as losing Marth was for Alear. Chapter 21 part two or whatever that map is called kind of tried, but I don't think it committed hard enough. I think that map could have been super interesting if you were given the full power of the dark emblems, so that you can see why everyone else is on edge; Veyle just turned you into a corrupted and now you're just as bad as Sombron. It could even be an interesting character moment if some of the people in your army will refuse to equip a ring. If they really wanted to add complexity to the map, I think they should have replaced standard difficulty with a unique curveball; my first thought is the emblem supports actually gain negative EXP, with losing bond levels having a cutscene of your unit crying because their friend screaming in pain. That would add a soft time limit to the map, and really drive home how wrong the dark emblems are.
For your curveball: I like the game as is. My thoughts are like a balancing act for the world. For example it is like the Shadow Dragon arc in Gt and the Fae of Kingdoms of Amalur together. When they are in Divine Dragon Emblems they are Seelie/The Summer Fae. Divine Emblems are about the Growth and renewal of the world of Elyos. When they are Fell Dragon Emblems they are like the Unseelie/The Winter Fae. The Fell Emblems are about the natural decay of all things. Think about the Fell Xenologue at how after the Divine Dragon is gone the 7 bracelets are destroying the world. In which it would be like Chaos and Omega of the Dirge of Cerberus in which they would find another world to go to that I think would have no Emblem Rings/Bracelets to help with the stability of that world. What are your thoughts of my idea on the Emblems
Losing Bond levels would actually be a MASSIVE middle finger for players, that's not a time limit, it's more punishing players for making any pairing they ever have before Putting that aside, I think a balancing act plot would be more interesting than the black and white (Or sometimes white and grey) plots FE gets more often, imagine if some Emblems even innately leaned to one side or the other instead of it all being a summoner thing, I can think of one or two cases where this could be interesting and actually kinda work
One of the things that REALLY bothers me about IS writing (especially when it involves the avatar) is how the first four to six chapters, they will set up story elements (like for Alear, for example) and then never touch on it until the last four or five chapters in the game. As someone who majors in writing, this INFURIATES ME. Fates also did this as well. This is not how you write your protagonist when you need them to go through active character development and growth. When you write a character, especially a MAIN CHARACTER, you need to have them develop through the whole entire game. Give them something to do, let them learn something about themselves, have the suspense build to that big reveal overtime...but NOPE! What's worse is you have four other protagonist which get heavily sidelined after there chapters are done and other then Diamant, NONE of them go through arcs! You have technically five leads in your game, your avatar's story is slept on and your only other protagonist that actually feels like a fire emblem character and has a beginning, middle, and end to his arc is sidelined after chapter 10!...WHAT!? Point is, IS could have cut out Firene and Solm completely since Alfred and Timmera don't go through any arcs whatsoever AND they also offer nothing to the overall plot. You could have had Engage center around Brodia and Elusias war and that would have been enough. There are so many things they could have cut from this game so that the other protagonists that do go through character development (or almost character development in Ivy's case) could of had more time to be fleshed out, but that's just my take on it anyway.
"Pong is a game of tennis" Yea thats why it is derived from Ping Pong. A word describing the sound of the sport of table tennis... wait a moment where was I going with this again?
Sometimes I find discussion of gameplay~story integration in fire emblem to be really one dimensional but thankfully this vid mostly avoids that. A story intermingling with gameplay CAN go beyond "character who is strong has high stats". One example I really like is how FE1 lets you roleplay what kind of ruler Marth is. Marth is the only person who can visit villages and recruit many characters.... but you never HAVE to do any of that. You can just have Marth charge forward, killing everything with his effective rapier and then the lightning sword and then the Mercurius and then the Falchion. In FE1 (and lower levels of FE11), he is really competent in a fight, so you're actively sabotaging one of your best fighters by constantly sending him on these side missions, at the cost of actually building a system of trust across the continent. In order to get the kind loving Marth that you see in the story, you have to roleplay that fantasy of a good lord when there's a lot of stuff in the game tempting you not to.
There are exceptions, Byleth lore wise ahould be able to solo like 95% of the game easily for instance. But for the most part i can think of very few, if any, games that are better than FE at mixing story with the tiny details of gameplay.
Precisely because of how linked story and gameplay are in FE is why Engage’s gameplay fell totally flat on its face for me. Any time I was reminded that the gameplay I was playing was connected to the…rest of it…was another time I enjoyed the gameplay less
There is one instance in where, in my opinion, the gameplay and story fails to mix. In fire emblem echoes, there’s a mission where you have to face off against two bosses, one of them is a mind controlled Delthea. You are told before the battle even begins, do not fight her. What does the game allow you to do? Fight her, and kill her.
I am of the opinion that the story should be told by the gameplay as much as possible. This following statement is not an opinion: *Cutscenes are antithetical to games.*
Not many FE games can strike the balance between writing and gameplay the most. But FE6 does it the best when it comes to that, despite its own problems. From all the ones that have been released so far, FE has either leaned too far into the writing at the expense of the gameplay or the other way around. Its uber hard to strike that balance between the 2. Marth's remakes strike that 2nd balance, which the other best example. FE8 doesn't come close to those 3 games. FE8 would have been way better than FE2, if it had split progression with Ephraim having his own army to take on the Southern part of the map. But instead we get a BS message from the devs through Seth, upon choosing to take on the Southern area of the map, about why they didnt have time to program in 8-10 extra characters for Ephraim to fill out his own army to advance through the South as it is. So instead of getting many units unique to Ephraim, we are end up recruiting all of the units that were supposed to be exclusive to Erika's route in all of the spots where those units unique to Ephraim's route would have been.
How could I forget to talk about supports! Literally getting stronger through the power of love and friendship
Or in some cases, the power of hatred and contempt
Fake gamer thinks pong is tennis when the name clearly indicates it's ping pong. I expect an apology video immediately.
I thought ping pong was just table tennis
Despite the gameplay being more akin to Air Hockey?
Really?
Better buy or get your ukulele actual lizard
@@winstonpham4809 Ping Pong and Table Tennis are the same thing
So... Is it like, electronic pong pong? There's no ping (and I'm not sure why)
Another cool thing about ch 19 in thracia is you lose a leadership star (+3% hit/avo) once dorias dies
Also worth noting that Leif starts the game with 0 authority stars, gains one when August joins him, gets another when Dorias joins up, then finally loses one when Dorias dies. Effectively, Leif's authority stars represent having a tactician/advisor around. Thracia is so good.
This topic is the main reason why I love the genre so much. I think this is the biggest strength in all FE games. Even though the writing can be hit or miss, the feel of the gameplay conveys a story that is hard to replicate in other genres. I feel like Judgral and Radiant Dawn does this the best, while games like Engage have good moments of this as well. When you look up people's favorite chapter, it's usually a map that integrates both very well.
Some other examples I can think of are the defend chapters. To make a good defend chapter, you need to do both. Conquest Chapter 10 makes you feel like you are struggling and barely made it out alive near the end. Radiant Dawn 3-13 is also similar where there are so much happening both gameplay and story that it feels chaotic and epic. I feel like defend chapters are some of the hardest to get right, because you need both ingredients to cook at the same time to make it engaging.
I like reclass options that tell a story. Like vaike having thief because he used to be one before being a Shepard or ricken having all of chroms to show how he idolizes him or libra having dark mage because of the darkness his parents sensed in him and why they abandoned him or Cordelia having literally all the best options in the game covering every option because she’s a prodigy. It makes replay value a lot better while also doing subtle story telling. It’s part of why I don’t quite like the change to omni class changing because you lose those little insights.
Fates was a good balance, because you had your base options for everyone but could get people into other classes with a little effort
And then Kellam having thief is still just super funny
That is an interesting comment, though I'd add that it's not totally lost. Character's strengths and weaknesses can play a subtle role in Three Houses, for example. Claude has a hidden talent in axes, which combined with his natural talents in flying and bows hints at his Almyran heritage. On the flip-side, Ashe once turned to thievery to support his family, but strives to be an upstanding knight now. His lack of a strength in swords and his personal Lockpick ability means he doesn't have to train as a Thief, even if the monastery allows it, with the only caveat being that he won't steal directly from other people.
@@OrigamiAhsokakellam has thief cause no one notices him
I like the Awakening trio in conquest all having their reclass options being Hoshidan classes that reference their original appearance in Awakening. It for one, plays into the idea that they aren’t exactly from Nohr by giving them access to Hoshidan classes, and also acts as cute references to Awakening. Odin having Samurai in reference to his original base class, Selena having Sky Knight in reference to her mother’s class, and Laslow having Ninja, a fast nimble class, like his Mother’s dancer class. It’s also nice from a gameplay perspective, since these classes are in fairly short supply in conquest.
14:10 I have always said that weather or not Robin comes back to life at the end of Awakening should be based on a ranking system like old games had.
the story tells you that Robin would only survive if enough people kept them in their minds. which being a legendary "five star" tactician would warrant being remembered and even studied. aspiring stratagists would be studying Robin's battles, historians would be documenting Robin's accomplishments etc.
When I carefully craft the story of Arthur being hero of all of Fateslandia by making him the MVP of the run 👌Ugh so good 😩
You better have put him in Hero then to fully commit to being Hero hero of heroic heroism
That’s what I love about FE. Anyone can be the hero, because the gameplay and story are perfectly intertwined. You CHOOSE who your party of main characters in this wacky JRPG adventure are.
One of the things I liked about the Tellius series was how often the various different objectives collaborated with the story. Liberating POW's was an escape map, there's a map divided into 4 sub-chapters in Path of Radiance that makes the player feel the massive onslaught the their army is currently going though.
my favorite gameplay story integration is the power of holy blood and holy weapons in the jugdral games. the unbalanced cast just makes sense when holy blood is so hyped up
Three houses' Crests in gameplay didn't live up to their story importance in comparison.
@@bificommander7472 The differences are more subtle because there isn't a generations mechanic to make it explicit but crests do clearly impart more raw stats to the people who have them. Compare the ludicrous power of Lysithea and Constance to their competitors with lesser or no crests; the highest strength stat in the game belongs to Dimitri, and Edelgard isn't much far behind. The other characters are given tools to make up for the raw stat difference because modern games just don't make bad on purpose units to the same extent that older ones did, but those stat differences do exist.
@@arachnofiend2859 fr,hubert is good but lysinthea straigth up just inutilizes him in basicly every way
Kaga had a real knack for gameplay-story integration. His map design is insanely intricate and often because of story elements, he often includes secret events for various characters in his games based on this too.
One thing I want to see Fire Emblem do is to give each generic enemy a (randomly generated) name, like what Matsuno games do (FFT, Tactics Ogre).
One of my favorite moments of gameplay and story integration is in chapter 10 of Fe3/Fe12 where you only get the silver card if you spare all the clerics. The game gives you no hints for this as the clerics are willing siding with Arlen and will heal his troops when they can. The only reason you would do this is because its the right thing to do and because it fits Marth's character to avoid unneccesary bloodshed. It's moments like these that can really sell you on a character and I wish the series did this more rather than telling us about a character through a cutscene.
Wait, Marth ISN'T the most bloodthirsty being in the FE multiverse?
- Exceleblem fans
@@dominicjannazo7144 I know, it's crazy how much reality differs from peak fiction.
@@finleycream1937 Props to you for recognizing the best pieces of fiction ever created, the Scuffed FE10/12 runs.
@@YouCanCallMeIz No one knows what broke Prince Marth. Maybe it was watching Caeda getting one-shot by an ambush spawn archer, maybe it was seeing Gordin getting doubled by an armor knight, or perhaps it was watching Draug getting one rounded by a mercenary. It was probably that last one, I'd lose my shit too if I saw that. The sights that Marth saw changed him after he realized he would have to take Matthis off the bench and train him. His tactics became more suicidal with each strategy being less ethical than the last one. By the time he reached Hardin, he looked no different than the diseased Coyote plus his army was nothing but replacement units who he gave personalities for some reason, perhaps deep down he wanted to feel something when he saw life fade in front of him but he still felt nothing. The only recorded account of the battle came from Midia who defied god's desire for her to die and dodge every attack. What she saw disturbed her. Marth fought like a devil high on Thracian wrath and vantage somehow working together and his plan was for everyone to die, friend and foe. When he finally made it to Hardin, he one-rounded the turbin simp and sat on the mad emperor's throne (he didn't even move the corpse off the throne). He sat there for a while with future scholars believing that he was using the bathroom there before leaving because he somehow unlocked the good ending. No one knows what these battles were like, only that Marth won these battles without showing mercy to his foe. What became of the broken prince is unknown, but it is said that if you walk around the ruins of Altea castle you may hear a demonic voice uttering the unholy phrase, "Where is that moron Kris?!?!??!"
One bit of ludonarrative I love is the difference between Fire Emblem and Darkest Dungeon. Both games are strategic RPGs about making the best of your situation with permadeath (or near permadeath, FE sometimes has a 'bring back to life' staff and DD has a rare "back from the dead" event).
In Fire Emblem, losing a unit is emotional to you, but makes a great statement about war like you say in the video. But all the same, that resource is gone to you now, and you have to struggle that much harder.
In Darkest Dungeon, you're far more likely to lose a unit and, while they have identities and stories, nearly identical ones arrive on the stage coach each week. While Fire Emblem teaches you to be attatched to these lowly soldiers by giving you just a little story, a little personality, Darkest Dungeon teaches you that the one thing you can always get more of is bodies. In this way, Fire Emblem is a story about hope and community and coming together to best evil, while Darkest Dungeon is a story about the horrors of ceasing to see people as people and slowly treating them as resources.
One other thing I always appreciated in Engage on this front is just the rings being so powerful.
Big Powerful Holy Weapons are a standard of the series, often even fought over... but if you're a player prone to elixir syndrome, they'll just sit in a convoy or get used maybe once or twice a map because they're big stat sticks, especially on easier settings. And that makes them lose their luster fast; you went through all this work for... what? A tome with a few extra might that you didn't need because enemies have no res anywat?
But Engage's rings are Big and Impactful right away, and give little incentive *not* to use them and experience their power. They are the centerpiece of the story, and they are the centerpieces of your combat strategy. They live up to their importance, especially when you see enemies equip them and realise how much more seriously you're going to have to take them.
From the moment Lumera pops on Sigurd and rushes you down, it's clear just how meaningful the power of these rings are, and why they're so desireable.
Meanwhile, Crests in 3H never felt like they made a big impact on a unit's viability, except Felix's, Lysithea's and very occasionally Dimitri's. I would say this serves the narrative's debates on whether they're necessary or not, but it's hard to tell how much that's intentional and how much is just poor balance. (A Japanese magazine poll on "favourite Crest" had Fraldarius with around 50% of the vote I think, and this isn't established as a renowned Crest in-story, meanwhile Flames is and it's fairly meh)
@@BigKlingy Yeah Crests have always felt meh which hurts the story because the game treats them like the power of god when the gameplay just makes them feel like worse proc skills so the player doesn't feel the importance of crests in the story. Though this may have been intentional as the only units whose crests feel strong also are the ones with major crests so the developers may have wanted to highlight the power gap between the major and minor crests. The only problem with this little theory is that the difference between major and minor crests are rarely if ever brought up which sucks because the story could have done so much with it. In conclusion, Crests are the perfect example of gameplay and story separation and how it can hurt the story.
@@BigKlingy At the same time? This does actually help to enhance the story.
Since Crests aren't as powerful in-game as they are in-story, this means that you might sympathize more with people like Edelgard and those who see the system as flawed. Because if you think about it? It IS flawed - If Crests were super powerful and made the units objectively better like the Royalty in Fates, would you even bother with using units who have no Crest like Petra, Leonie, Dedue, Ignatz, Raphael, or Cyril? My guess is you might not - this is actually something that I would try to improve with a Fire Emblem Jugdral remake. But it also fits a theme with Fire Emblem Three Houses: "How 'worth it' is someone if they are only given a chance?"
Even on the "Status Quo" route (Azure Moon), you see characters who question the validity of the Crest System. Ingrid's worth as a person is reduced primarily to her Crest, rather than who she is as a person. Sylvain saw Miklan cast out of the house and resented him for being born because Sylvain had a Crest that Miklan didn't. Annette may be a hard working person, but the system still largely gave her a chance because of her Crest. Many of the non-Crest bearing students have backgrounds where they either worked HARD to get into this elite academy, had connections, or were lucky.
And Edelgard wants to reward people who do work hard. This also explains why some people would want to join the Empire if recruited to the Black Eagles & Edelgard route - the Commoners would probably agree with a system wherein hard work is valued more than the family they were born to. (Like Leonie) Even the nobles would have had their lives harmed by the Crest System and agree that yes, it should be abolished. Hanneman may love the existence of Crests and devotes his life to studying them and teaching... but he also himself also does not fully support the system. He's seen the damage it can do. He's very empathetic to people like Edelgard and Lysithea for whom Crests cause physical problems, as well as people who may not support the system - since as a teacher he himself sees what can happen when you give "Normal people" a chance.
This even is surprisingly applicable to real life, too - where a lot of people are simply not given a chance because of the family they were born to. Despite whatever "Budding talents" or potential they actually have. For all we know? That person who delivered your pizza was the world's Ultimate Defence Attorney - but are delivering pizzas because they were born to a family where Law School was not on the table. That person who is working at the bank probably could have been the Ultimate Mechanic - but was born to a family where they would be epxected to follow in their parents' footsteps and join the Bank business, so their talents at fixing up cars are squandered on personal projects while banking takes up most of their time.
@@finleycream1937 The story treats crests as the powers of gods - but the player would question why since most crests aren't very good other than "Well you get to use this endgame weapon".
Which at the same time? Does serve for one story purpose. Multiple characters question the validity of the whole "Crest System" - early on, you're shown why people would have reason to question it. Miklan is the oldest sibling - ordinarily, HE would be the one who is going to the academy while SYLVAIN is the one who is a spare. Instead, because Sylvain was born with a Crest, he gets everything while Miklan is kicked out. You see that Miklan put a lot of work to get where he was today, even if it was a bad path. Milkan in all honesty wouldn't be a bad person, but because he was kicked out and sent to the fringes of society, had nothing else to go but to become a bandit. A lot of Ingrid's conflict is over the fact that she's valued more for her Crest, rather than her as a person. Hanneman even says that whiel he is fascinated by it, he also has his own opinions on the Crest System and thinks he would like to make it so others could have a Crest if they want to. Lysithea has two crests - a massive anomaly and one that would make her desirable, but it's shown that like Edelgard, this is NOT a good thing.
This can help justify why some people WOULD want to align with the Empire - even those who seemingly have little to no reason to like Marianne or Annette. Marianne's crest is seen as cursed and an evil crest - She didn't choose it. She was just born with it. Annette is indeed a diligent worker, but a big reason she's given a chance by society is because she bears a Crest of Dominic. Ingrid's worth as a bride is primarily due to her Crest, rather than her as a person. Leonie's village had to save for years in order for her to pay tuition - and she essentially gets a relic weapon not because of her birth, but because she proves that she is capable.
On the list of things I was gonna see today, Lyn vs Lucina in a Steel Cage match. That said, I think it's an excellent point you were making, and as someone who was training to do that I really appreciate that you did treat the art form with respect.
I think the story telling of wrestling can really be used to enhance fights in other media. Roddy Piper vs Bret Hart at WrestleMania 8 tells an entire fallen hero redemption arc in 20 minutes. Fights can do so much storytelling, and honestly I wish more people looked at wrestling for inspiration rather than cheap mockery.
I wasn’t expecting to see a fellow wrestling fan in this comment section.
Yeah wrestling does not get enough credit for being a very unique medium of storytelling. I think more people would enjoy it if they gave it a chance
On the one hand, it could be a callback to the first Choose Your Legends poll for Heroes, where they finished 1-2 in the female poll, with this serving as the title match.
Its also worth noting that thracia's first gaiden (2x) had a good bit of gameplay integration without compromising the player experience.
Enemy pirates in a fog of war map were actually really engaging, since unlike most fog of war maps in the series (hell, its the first fog map in the series!) the enemies dont enjoy complete dominance while you stumble through the level.
Most of the early areas in the first island can be walled off by two units, which gives you enough time to understand the majority of enemies you'd be handling - brigands who can twoshot most of your army, but cant double anyone even early on due to their 0-1 net AS.
It also has pirates who can waterwalk, so a lot of the time I end up seeing incoming enemies while handling the current set. It gives you a bit of dread due to your lack of healers, but enough time to prepare for the threat. No random 8 mov wyverns bypassing your frontline to snipe an archer in the back, or 3 range mages melting an armor out of LoS.
And when you do get a torch, using it on a certain island gives you enough visibility to see their spawn point (2 forts) but it dwindles every turn, and usually before you can get a feel for their spawn timer. I remember having to brace with a solid frontline for about ten turns until I was sure it was safe to proceed.
It's also worth noting the inventory even played a part here for unit relevance. This level let archers shine, since both ronan and tanya could do damage over everyone else in the frontline, while ferrying vulnaries around (since they dont need multiple weapons eating up inventory, unlike people such as dagdar and finn). It made me appreciate every unit, since even a bad unit who can keep up can mule items where they're needed.
I just love thracia for making everything I have feel like a resource. That 0 str thief (laura) makes for excellent capture bait to give my other people a fighting chance, while lifis can mug mages for library books at base con, and brighton can wipe out 5 armors during prison break with his wrath skill and a steel axe.
Engage is probably my favorite instance so far. The Emblem Rings specifically. The entire story is based around them, and they actually carry both the gameplay impact the story events set up as well as the narrative weight reinforced through your previous experience you already had. The game hands you a lot of rings early: Marth, Sigurd, Celica, Micaiah, Roy and Leif. By chapter 11, when those rings are stolen you have a great deal of experience with how to use those specific rings to your advantage. Most of the earlygame centers around when and how to use your engage skills to overwhelm the generic enemies. Story-wise, you literally collect the remaining six rings in an effort to be roughly equal to your foes in terms of power all while you as the player already know what a pain the Hounds are to deal with while they're bunched up together. Leading to the confrontation in Chapter 17, probably my favorite chapter in the entire game.
Here, the Hounds make use of the exact strategies you did in the earlygame:
Veyle/Marth : She's a Dragon, so Veyle has access to the 9 Hit Engage Attack, she'll absolutely delete your units if given the chance
Zephia/Sigurd: 12 tiles of range, Momentum Override, Zephia punishes you for balling up your units and taking it too slow
Griss/Celica: Warp Ragnarok. That's it. If you're not careful, he'll swoop in and nuke you, literally. He takes care of any stray units left behind
Mauvier/Micaiah: Nothing special here, literally just a Recover Bot for Marni, but that's enough for this chapter
Marni/Roy: Probably a casual player's nightmare. She's guaranteed to survive multiple rounds of combat and stall time while Griss approaches
Hyacinth/Leif: Makes pretty solid use of Leif's skills overall. Just a bitch to deal with consistently, he walks up while you're still scrambling to deal with Zephia
The way enemies are places, it's almost impossible to avoid drawing multiple groups, unless you go all the way to the top right corner to bait Zephia early.
While you deal with the first wave of generics, Griss and one of the Beats are already approaching. Engaging Marni starts pulling Mauvier and his squad closer, and as soon as you try and deal with the second beast, it's just one more Turn until Zephia is right at your doorstep, with Hyacinth and Veyle not far behind, yet spaced out enough to give you some breathing room at least.
This Chapter, by design, is an all out Emblem war and I love it. You need to rely on your Broken Emblems to deal with the opposing, equally as broken Emblems. The placement of the blue Engage refill spaces also reinforces this to the player. The map design screams at you to go all out, regroup and do it again.
I also love how Chapter 11 works, having the story's darkest hour coinciding with you not only losing access to the game's strongest mechanic, but having it now used exclusively by the enemy. This integration is why I enjoy Engage's story a lot more than I logically should in spite of its genericness and occasional major flaws.
@@BigKlingy While three houses has the better story, I feel like Engage has a higher high point with Chapter 10 and 11 due to it being a point in the story where our heroes get their asses kicked, something 3 houses was sorely lacking. Chapter 10 has the FE classic of the advisor telling the Lord not to storm the enemy's base which they do anyways but it instead ends just like how the advisor said it would end with the heroes now just trying to make it out with their lives. The gameplay matches this feeling perfectly as you no longer have emblems while the enemies are now being given them instead. Ivy's reinforcement and her giving you two rings feels like a dim light in an all-consuming darkness as they make it easier for you to escape but they aren't enough for you to stand your ground and fight back against the 4 hounds. Speaking of the 4 hounds, I'll say they're better than the death knight because here they actually feel like a threat even though later on they get hit with a deadly case of death knight syndrome. Overall, chapter 10 and 11 are the peak of Engage's story and if the rest of the story stayed at this quality, Engage could have been the peak of Fe writing.
@@finleycream1937 Chapter 10 was absolutely NOT the Peak of Engage, it was definitely the LOWEST, that entire chapter relied on every character being as dumb as they possibly could, and Veyle pulling a Deus ex Machina, for anything in Chapter 11 to happen.
Good integration: Small little Florina being afraid of archers because they're effective against her.
Not so good integration: Small little Florina (with an Seraph Robe) consistently being one of my most powerful units.
Fire Emblem does have its occasional oddities with unit design like this. For the opposite example, Rinkah in Fates being portrayed as strong and her portrait showing abs, but having a lower Strength growth than Sakura and more focused on stonewalling than offense.
Meanwhile Boucheron is a better example of how to tailor personality to this type of unit. It's established that he doesn't care much about strength training, he's just naturally big. So he has good Build and HP, but low Strength for an axe user.
I never knew how much I needed to see Lynn in a WWE game😭
FE4 is probably the best at Gameplay-Story integration in any of the fe games I've played. almost everything happens through gameplay, and your choices have a major impact on what happens. it even goes so far as to completely change what units you get in the 2nd half if you lost certain ones in the first half. you can feel how Holy blood impacts your units, and the mechanics of inheritance match what's told in the story. the large maps match the large scale of what happens in the story.
that's what makes it so jarring when it breaks with this and has Seliph take a castle offscreen at the start of chapter 10, because up to that point you've always been in control of where you go and what you do. whereas in the other games the characters move around and do things off screen all the time
this is why i love fire emblem's stories even if they don't look amazing on paper, half the narrative is made by your experience and decisions when playing.
Side quests locked behind how well you do in a story chapter is bery cool. If you have slow play or fail a requirement first time. It makes fe feel like a old fashion new game plus where you come back better and can play with more skills then get a bonus story
Or be like marth and end your army to get secret chapters like with nagi
What made me enjoy engage so much was the gameplay and story integration. It may not be the most interesting or unique story, but you do get to experience a lot of the story elements through the gameplay.
14:10 there actually is something like that in the DS remake of Heroes of Light and Shadow.
Kris, the Avatar character of that game, often has chats with Jagen between missions where Jagen looks at their stats to determine how good they are. So of you're focusing a Mage Kris, you will get scolded for having poor Strength, but praised for your high Magic. Ofc this is actually based on your stats, so you could be scolded for having low Strength as a Hero, but it's still a fun lil thing.
my favourite games have excellent ✨ludonarrative integration✨. e.g. pathologic and cultist simulator. its my favourite thing about fire emblem when it pulls it off well, in particular i really enjoy when how characters are presented in the story matches the player's gameplay experience
You mentioned slight changes in dialogue depending on how characters have grown, technically FE12 did this with Jagen commenting something on Kris depending on having a stat reach a certain point, I think. One I found memorable was the res one where I think it's mentioned in Khadein because of the magic users. I find it memorable since I usually go with mage Kris and I get the positive line from Jagen, which I feel most people that picked other classes will probably see the one of not having enough res since it's not a high stat in that game usually.
11:41 all of this you explained with the mechanics representing what's happening in the narrative makes me think of FE Fates... I'm currently playing Conquest for the first time and I have many problems with the story, and one of them is how Corrin is supposedly a pacifist that refuses to kill enemies and instead just K.O's them (and in the story, good things happen to Corrin because they showed this mercy and compassion to others; iirc Kaze joins Corrin because he saw that they didn't kill the Hoshidan soldiers), and I've always been very skeptical about this because when playing, it doesn't feel like you're sparing the enemy, just killing them as in any other FE game, so whenever the story mentions that no Hoshidans were killed in the map I feel a sort of dissonance that bothers me a little, up to the point that I wish Corrin didn't have this character trait of ultra idealism where everyone survives and is spared.
But now that you mentioned that example with Thracia, I'm wondering if Conquest could have implemented a mechanic of "Sparing" that could show how Corrin's army's goal isn't to kill the Hoshidans and/or any other enemies? I wonder if this could replace the Capture mechanic, where instead of taking prisoners of war, the spared Hoshidans could choose to give you rewards or even join your army if you Spared them? I'm thinking that if Conquest implemented this, we could feel more connected to Corrin's war and goals, since we as players are experiencing it first hand
It shows the writter only knew FE from anectdotes from his daugther. Up to Engage, Fates is the only game where generic units don't die in story when killed in gameplay.
Hi Lizard!
Great analysis! I'll have to ponder how to make use of this in my own romhack.
Thracia was definitely the best blending of story and narrative in the series. So much of the underdog, running from a larger military as a group of ragtag revolutionaries is communicated to the player primarily through the gameplay, it's great.
Path of Radiance still probably edges it out as my favourite FE story, but it's FAR less diagetic.
Also, you felt broke has shit for most of the game.
The fact that most enemies are lance locked footies also make them look and play extremely different to your normal units, and puts you at a (very minor) disadvantage vs most of your sword boys (on paper).
The game wasnt afraid of having reinforcements be more warnings than actual threats to combat (green draco hit squad that cant reach the city in the 2 turns left), which I cant say the other FE games did at all.
Also a small touch, but lief's promotion only offers an opportunity to gain more levels, which segues into the immediate map to follow so well - an escape chapter with semi random unit placement and reinforcement spam, encouraging you to send lief to the frontlines to cover your army's retreat.
Also rly miss when enemies operated like armies with weakspots, like in fe5 chapter 5, where you had to fight through a 3 columns worth of roads and houses to escape. If you destroyed the enemies in one lane, you could loop around and encircle the backline of archers (who cant retaliate). If you punch through the sword armors, you can accomplish the same and cut through the squishy mages. Modern FE loves giving enemies rly good range coverage, so theres no tactical nuance beyond destroying a flier or the highest dps unit.
@@chaseong9560 Yeah for lack of better terminology, newer FE games have been tending to lean much more into the RPG elements rather than the ractical ones, I’d say starting with Radiant Dawn where reaching tier 3 in a class makes the unit a god who has a proc % to just delete the enemy unit.
Though Conquest was very good in opposite direction; it had a LOT of specialised enemy groups, like an entire squad of mages, then another squad is all Berserkers, etc. and then when enemy squads overlap is when the player is really challenged, or one enemy in a squad will counter your counter to the rest of the squad, so taking out that one enemy tends to neuter the rest of the squad.
@@LoudWaffle generals also had wary fighter, which was an awesome way to flip the tactical table.
Thracia just felt awesome since you felt like you were fighting an organized army with specialized troop formations.
Everyone in FE5 had a specific job, despite the 20 stat hardcap.
Also map design in fe5 made you pay attention a ton. I remember the road to road fighting on the map above and got shocked when an enemy page popped into a house below wrath brighton and took a potshot, made me become way more attentive to terrain.
And that map is basically a 3 lane area with forts on 9 different tiles. Rly made the most of the little they had.
Your argument at 2:56 sums up why I don't like how Awakening and Fates have around half the cast be immortal plot-wise because they're child-bearers. While the child system is mechanically and narratively interesting, without using a timeskip like FE4 the consequences of war feel jarringly light when an entire gender can never die. I'm glad 3H and Engage went back to allowing most people to die... although that also has issues with the main story (rip Fogado and Celine's plot-relevance because they arbitrarily decided Alfred and Timerra would represent their nations in the plot)
On other games, Valkyria Chronicles also has permadeath, but the 4th game did something interesting with it that hammered in the realities of war the best I've seen in a game.
And in regards to narrative emerging through gameplay, look no further than my recent Engage run where Clanne got stupidly good level ups early on when I never planned on using him, and who I expected to be a mockery I'd bench became the most iconic member of my army. (I picked random growths over fixed exactly for the potential for this to happen and was not disappointed) This led to an amazing "story" moment where I promoted him on Chapter 11's prep screen with the Master Seal from Hyacinth, giving him a horse just in time for an escape map.
4:52 Hence why I've always loved replaying FE games using different units, why I don't make a fuss over "good vs ban units" unless someone's flat-out unusable (Lyre, a lot of Revelation people) and why games where you can realistically use everyone, like Awakening, Birthright and 3H, lose some of that magic for me. Even in games that develop characters via supports, you'll naturally see different ones based on your combination of picks for your team. Amber shot up from boring to one of my favourites after using him actively in one playthrough. I'm looking forward to replaying Engage and using Rosado and Zelkov, some of the few I've never actively used before, just to see more of them.
And yet more trainee love from ActualLizard, love to see it. Though like you, I wish their growths were a little better so there was more payoff to using them.
On a tangent, how you described trainees reminds me of Junpei in Persona 3, and how I've always felt his gameplay curve reflected his plot development. The guy who goes from immature class clown to one of the most level-headed and wise party members has a skillset most early enemies resist but that becomes more valuable as the game progresses.
6:35 You know... you kinda summed up why I hated Jeralt's death but loved Lumera's. Jeralt was around for a while, but his biggest gameplay role was as an NPC in two chapters and honestly he was a liability in both, either stealing exp or risking himself against Solon. Lumara may not have been playable, but her one chapter as a boss was such a brilliant tutorial on the Emblem mechanic that I could see how much of a nurturing effect she had on Alear, so I cared when their time was cut short so soon. Come to think of it, Greil (my FAVOURITE story death in all FE) was similar in PoR.
8:22 ...Dang I need to replay Thracia.
Something I love about PoR is the sheer dialogue variance depending on who's alive/dead. The scene where Elincia gets her pegasus has variations for almost every alive/dead combination of Geoffrey, Lucina and Bastian, iirc. And Mist will chew out Ike if he tries fighting the Black Knight in Chapter 11. But even SUPPORTS have variance, e.g Makalov's supports changing if Maria dies. 3H does this too, with Claude and Ingrid's supports brining up Sylvain ONLY if he's recruited into the Deer, Annette mentioning making up with her father if you do other supports after getting their A, and many more.
Wow this went on longer than I expected, but I guess I had a lot to get off my chest after witnessing so many people bash Engage purely for its story while not realizing how the gameplay serves it.
I'd go as far to say that FE's gameplay is its story at times due to permadeath and RNG.
>Good unit dies, bad unit lives
>Good unit gets RNG screwed, bad unit gets RNG blessed
>Expected outcome doesn't happen, unexpected outcome actually happens
One thing I recently learned that Virion has a high Res stat, and his support with Tharja has him be immune to her hexes.
One other aspect that I enjoyed in Engage is actually the reverse of that, where they intergrate the gameplay into the story in a clever way, it’s when Mauvier uses the teleportation stick, when you first get him you notice that the stick is part of his inventory and when he uses it in the story I felt it was a pretty cool moment as it utilize an element from gameplay when you would think you would need to use your suspension of disbelief (like when a character in Final Fantasy dies and you get someone asking « why they don’t use a Phenix feather ? »).
Story based promotions are great the first time experiencing a game, and are a an example of integrating story and gameplay together (Radiant Path as a good example), but I wish there was an option to promote a such characters regularly when you want to. (must be frustrating for harder mode runs or speedruns to lock a story character to its base class)
Awesome but no mention of FE4? That game imo does the best of integrating gameplay and story especially considering as it minimizes cutscenes in between chapters (And lets its story play out on the map so many times, e.g. Quan and Ethlyn getting ganked by the Thracian empire, or Eldiganleaving the battlefield after his talk with Lachesis)
Dude I love your content. Almost every video I've watched has been something I can agree with or gleam new information about FE.
Dont forget path of radiance jill
You nailed what I love about the franchise and the genre as a whole.
You get some different dialogue at the end of FE1 if Caeda/Shiida is dead.
Chapter 4 of Thracia's gameplay gave me a feeling of hopelessness. You'd definitely feel hopeless if you were actually in prison so I thought it was some nice integration.
Love your use of Trickster Online soundtrack.
I really like in genealogy how bc of the giant maps, the game is able to play out story events happening super far away from where you are like in chapter 5 or in the chapter where you have control of leif and co separate from the rest of your party. The story told by the maps in genealogy is great
Here's another specific instance of Gameplay and Story Integration in Fire Emblem
In Shadow Dragon, the Prologue forces a horrible choice on you: You must either kill an unarmed person who is actually one of your countrymen bound and gagged, or sacrifice Frey(the canon sacrifice) to continue.
A plot point is that the bad guys want to use the Aum staff. In Shadow Dragon? This choice adds an extra reason for why Marth wants to obtain it - because this death was not preventable. When you obtain Aum, you can't use it on Frey... but you can with other people in the prologue. But Frey is in New Mystery of the Emblem - so what's going on? Well... Frey reveals he was actually just beaten and left for dead. Thus? You couldn't revive Frey - because he never actually died.
Lyn v Lucina Hell in a Cell would go exactly like the clip you showed.
Sigurd second gen is nice for a soft reset of his game so anyone who was relying hard on a small cast could basically start over with all the game knowledge
Awakening deepens the first cast when having kids and how they mature as people. Shows many more sides to them and how chrom isn't the only one in his army with a big heart. And that's without bringing up laurent being there much longer and the entire morgan backstory that is layered
Fates not so much. Someone would have told garon and he'd have gotten those realms destroyed or conquered for the time holes. It's a plot hole in many ways.
Awakening also made the kids central to the story: the game is a time travel story--a pretty good one. The kids came from the future, specifically to change the events of the game. And that is shown at multiple points.
I particularly like the presence of alternate dialogue at an important scene if Robin is Lucina's mother.
Fates, on the other hand... the kids are just there. They were pretty clearly just tacked on because the mechanic was popular in Awakening.
@@someguy1ification yeah and the writers of awakening even went into extra story for where Morgan comes from and the hints are all around to piece together. I had a lot more fun with the awakening story as a whole as well. The kids are all important and give more to the main units and then show they mature.
Yeah even the magazine made the joke of showing corrin and Felicia having kana. They basically picked the first girl you see. Fates parents don't change as the kids don't matter. Azura and corrin have kids but they affect nothing meanwhile chrom has a child and the slay chapter where lucina wants to end the tactician changes a lot depending on if you marry chrom or lucina adding to the weigh of it all.
fe8 could have done this where monsters spawn after x turns so as long as you set the xp gain to one it would feel like it fit the story
Minor editing miss on not lining up the footage to selecting Erk when you said the false dichotomy irked you.
I really liked your examples from Engage. The gameplay story intertwining is one of the elements about Engage I think will age well. Chapter 10, after your bond rings are taken and you have to escape without them reminded me a lot of the Manster escape sequence. And I even had to let a character die because that’s just where we were, and it hit different knowing it was avoidable on my end.
One of my favorite moments in Fire emblem is in FE4. When Sigurd and the crew are first making their way through the forest and you need to assault the castle at the end of the map. Everyone moves just 1 or 2 tiles through this massive area, and you know you’re gonna need to do something about the long range magic the boss can use before you get to him.
When out of nowhere Deidre pulls Sigurd deeper into the forest. Not only does he fall in love with her here. But she’s also the savior of the group because she can safely use the Silence staff to let everyone safely get to the castle. I’ll always remember this moment with Deidre, and most of the time characters don’t get this kind of fantastic intro
I think FE4 generally does a great job at introducing new characters by putting them in situations that exemplify their strengths.
Being accustomed to FE6, where many units are absolute garbage when they join, this was massively appreciated.
Some of my favorite story and gameplay integration come from the Blazing Sword. Eliwood and Hector start out with a very high initial supports with each other. Just standing next to each other is enough to get a C support. This demonstrates that these two lords had a strong friendship before the story events. Likewise, Pent and Louise start out with an A support. This helps the player know that these two are already in a perfectly happy marriage.
One case of the opposite, of how gameplay and story actively weaken each other is being able to marry your siblings in Fates.
For whatever reason, they wanted to let the avatar marry _any_ character. And because of that it broke the fundamental question of the game. It reveals that the Hoshidan siblings aren't blood relatives, breaking the motivation to join with them. And with the Nohrian siblings, it perverts the familial love you were supposed to have with them, ruining the motivation to join with them.
You're right, well-integrated gameplay can elevate the story, and well-integrated story can elevate gameplay. The converse is also true: Act 3 of Radiant Dawn wants us to feel the tragedy and injustice of friends killing friends on opposite but understandable sides of a war. Sadly, this feeling is undercut because the story's conflict that drives the war is contrived and the gameplay's deaths are not real. Radiant Dawn could have been great, but the some of its story and gameplay choices weaken what could have been powerful moments.
The plot contrivance is bad but I disagree slightly on the character death stuff simply because there’s no other way for the idea to work. The ability to recruit various characters to each side is a very well done gameplay-story integration. And maybe this wasn’t intentional but the MASSIVE power gap between the Dawn Brigade and Greil Mercenaries reinforces the story 100%.
The story is the foundation the gameplay is built upon.
Thus I have come to believe the people who say Gameplay over Story come from the more modern era of "multiplayer" games where there is no story, just repetitive gameplay mechanics with the end goal of charting on a score board.
Naturally they only seek the gameplay element if the above is true, because they just don't care.
It's like a kid who gets rewarded by his peers for doing something stupid. He'll just keep doing stupid things for the dopamine hit. Thus growing up to be a maladjusted person in the world.
The second half is how I see things, they want the rest of the industry to be dumbed down to their level.
I recently got into fire emblem with Sacred stones and one moment in particular i had matched well with the topic of the video so i wanted to tell this story
I was on eirika route, about to go to jehanna to make allies with them to beat grado, but unfortunately grado's troop got there first so we gotta fight them
During the chapter, my weapons started reaching low durability and breaking, but the chapter was too easy, so i thought to myself "okay, i can still make it throught this, ill buy some things in between chapters"
But then, when the chapter ends, we discover that this was just a decoy and the real army of grado was reaching us soon, but i still thought "okay but the chapter ended so i can still buy my stuff on the overworld map".... but i actually couldnt, the chapter proceeded immeadiatly
The next chapter started showing that my troops were getting exausted and low on resources and the grado's army needed to finish us off quickly before ephraim's crew got here to help us
The chapter itself started very hard, with me low on resources and most of my troops being highly slowed down by the sand (desert level lol) but then, ephraim's crew got here, not only was more people joining my army very convinient, but one of the fellas that got it was duessel, a very tanky great paladin capablr of barely taking any damage from most attacks
Even then it was hard and characters died in that chapter but that panic i felt when i didnt have time to gather more weapons made this be one of my favorite moments on the gameplay
I've always loved Genealogy's inventory system because it causes every item to have a story.
This is the ring that Lester inherited from his father, the Lightbrand was a gift from Deirdre to her new sister-in-law Ethlyn, which is then passed down to her son Leif, a physical reminder of the bond of blood shared by Leif and Seliph, as well as another way Deirdre's love goes on to help and protect the next generation. The Silver Sword Sigurd receives from Arvis in the prologue can end up being the very same sword Sigurd's son uses to slay Arvis for his betrayal. Many of the crusader's weapons like Helswath and Mjolnir, once created to fight against the oppressive Loptous Empire are now instruments of that same empire over a century later because the bloodline of those holy weapons failed to live up to their legacy. So on and so forth. It's so cool, and a good reason not to change the inventory management in a remake just because it would be more convenient to trade between units freely.
One of my favorite gameplay story integrations in the whole series is if you deploy Jill on the map where your army fights her father. She has special dialogue for it, but my favorite, she has the absolute lowest biorhythm for the entire map.
I love fire emblem and the last 2 are my favorite entries, but I wish more of them were good at both at the same time rather than excelling at one or the other
Chapter 11 of Engage is probably one of my favorite in the entire series. Its just- so scary getting all your crutches taken from you like that. The emblem rings would have sucked, but including the time crystal was a master class; that thing is pretty much the player's emblem ring for how busted it is, and suddenly being without your failsafe is just as frightening as losing Marth was for Alear.
Chapter 21 part two or whatever that map is called kind of tried, but I don't think it committed hard enough. I think that map could have been super interesting if you were given the full power of the dark emblems, so that you can see why everyone else is on edge; Veyle just turned you into a corrupted and now you're just as bad as Sombron. It could even be an interesting character moment if some of the people in your army will refuse to equip a ring.
If they really wanted to add complexity to the map, I think they should have replaced standard difficulty with a unique curveball; my first thought is the emblem supports actually gain negative EXP, with losing bond levels having a cutscene of your unit crying because their friend screaming in pain. That would add a soft time limit to the map, and really drive home how wrong the dark emblems are.
For your curveball: I like the game as is.
My thoughts are like a balancing act for the world. For example it is like the Shadow Dragon arc in Gt and the Fae of Kingdoms of Amalur together.
When they are in Divine Dragon Emblems they are Seelie/The Summer Fae. Divine Emblems are about the Growth and renewal of the world of Elyos.
When they are Fell Dragon Emblems they are like the Unseelie/The Winter Fae. The Fell Emblems are about the natural decay of all things. Think about the Fell Xenologue at how after the Divine Dragon is gone the 7 bracelets are destroying the world. In which it would be like Chaos and Omega of the Dirge of Cerberus in which they would find another world to go to that I think would have no Emblem Rings/Bracelets to help with the stability of that world.
What are your thoughts of my idea on the Emblems
Losing Bond levels would actually be a MASSIVE middle finger for players, that's not a time limit, it's more punishing players for making any pairing they ever have before
Putting that aside, I think a balancing act plot would be more interesting than the black and white (Or sometimes white and grey) plots FE gets more often, imagine if some Emblems even innately leaned to one side or the other instead of it all being a summoner thing, I can think of one or two cases where this could be interesting and actually kinda work
Probably next to no one genuinely thinks either gameplay OR story is important and the other one isn’t
But I get your point
One of the things that REALLY bothers me about IS writing (especially when it involves the avatar) is how the first four to six chapters, they will set up story elements (like for Alear, for example) and then never touch on it until the last four or five chapters in the game. As someone who majors in writing, this INFURIATES ME. Fates also did this as well. This is not how you write your protagonist when you need them to go through active character development and growth. When you write a character, especially a MAIN CHARACTER, you need to have them develop through the whole entire game. Give them something to do, let them learn something about themselves, have the suspense build to that big reveal overtime...but NOPE!
What's worse is you have four other protagonist which get heavily sidelined after there chapters are done and other then Diamant, NONE of them go through arcs! You have technically five leads in your game, your avatar's story is slept on and your only other protagonist that actually feels like a fire emblem character and has a beginning, middle, and end to his arc is sidelined after chapter 10!...WHAT!? Point is, IS could have cut out Firene and Solm completely since Alfred and Timmera don't go through any arcs whatsoever AND they also offer nothing to the overall plot. You could have had Engage center around Brodia and Elusias war and that would have been enough. There are so many things they could have cut from this game so that the other protagonists that do go through character development (or almost character development in Ivy's case) could of had more time to be fleshed out, but that's just my take on it anyway.
Gamer thinks ping pong is table tennis 🏓
"Pong is a game of tennis"
Yea thats why it is derived from Ping Pong. A word describing the sound of the sport of table tennis... wait a moment where was I going with this again?
Fantastic video 😃
Sometimes I find discussion of gameplay~story integration in fire emblem to be really one dimensional but thankfully this vid mostly avoids that. A story intermingling with gameplay CAN go beyond "character who is strong has high stats". One example I really like is how FE1 lets you roleplay what kind of ruler Marth is. Marth is the only person who can visit villages and recruit many characters.... but you never HAVE to do any of that. You can just have Marth charge forward, killing everything with his effective rapier and then the lightning sword and then the Mercurius and then the Falchion. In FE1 (and lower levels of FE11), he is really competent in a fight, so you're actively sabotaging one of your best fighters by constantly sending him on these side missions, at the cost of actually building a system of trust across the continent. In order to get the kind loving Marth that you see in the story, you have to roleplay that fantasy of a good lord when there's a lot of stuff in the game tempting you not to.
[Pong] is air hockey.
There are exceptions, Byleth lore wise ahould be able to solo like 95% of the game easily for instance.
But for the most part i can think of very few, if any, games that are better than FE at mixing story with the tiny details of gameplay.
Precisely because of how linked story and gameplay are in FE is why Engage’s gameplay fell totally flat on its face for me. Any time I was reminded that the gameplay I was playing was connected to the…rest of it…was another time I enjoyed the gameplay less
I liked this video, it was good
Wtf is that Lyn Soren wwe video?
Some wrestling games allow you to create a wrestler. So someone created wrestlers that looked like them.
I hear trickster ost
I was wondering if someone would recognize it
Pong is tennis what?
There is one instance in where, in my opinion, the gameplay and story fails to mix. In fire emblem echoes, there’s a mission where you have to face off against two bosses, one of them is a mind controlled Delthea. You are told before the battle even begins, do not fight her. What does the game allow you to do? Fight her, and kill her.
That’s not really a failure to mix, that’s moreso the game telling you to avoid fighting her to recruit her afterwards.
I am of the opinion that the story should be told by the gameplay as much as possible.
This following statement is not an opinion: *Cutscenes are antithetical to games.*
Not many FE games can strike the balance between writing and gameplay the most. But FE6 does it the best when it comes to that, despite its own problems. From all the ones that have been released so far, FE has either leaned too far into the writing at the expense of the gameplay or the other way around. Its uber hard to strike that balance between the 2. Marth's remakes strike that 2nd balance, which the other best example. FE8 doesn't come close to those 3 games. FE8 would have been way better than FE2, if it had split progression with Ephraim having his own army to take on the Southern part of the map. But instead we get a BS message from the devs through Seth, upon choosing to take on the Southern area of the map, about why they didnt have time to program in 8-10 extra characters for Ephraim to fill out his own army to advance through the South as it is. So instead of getting many units unique to Ephraim, we are end up recruiting all of the units that were supposed to be exclusive to Erika's route in all of the spots where those units unique to Ephraim's route would have been.
Lol... the thing FE has never done well since the GBA days.