FE8 Eirika's Story?

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So I’ve been thinking alot between the differences between Eirika and Ephraim’s stories in FE8 and was curious as to why most people prefer Ephraim’s route. (Feel free to leave your own reasons here or correct and errors in my knowledge of vanilla FE8’s story). I apologize in advance if this is far from new to most people, it just struck me all of a sudden while working on my hack :sweat_smile:

While pondering things, I realized something that never occured to me before. Gameplay and map design aside, Eirika’s story feels like it lacks structure compared to Ephraim and I wanted to take a moment to openly breakdown my thoughts by comparing some things.

Ephraim's Structure

So starting with Ephraim for context. When the story splits, Ephraim directly states that his job will be to go to the capital and stop Grado at it’s core. From that moment onward, the story stays clearly on that path every chapter.

We invade Grado at Fort Rigwald, intercept Grado turning on Duessel, get attacked by Riev’s monsters at sea on our way to the capital, and get ambushed at the docks as we arrive in Taizel.

We only go off the path for a moment to chase Myrrh who went to get her Dragonstone but we’re still in Grado and end up fighting one of Grado’s top generals here anyways which is better to happen here than at the capital as expected. Then we arrive at the capital and slay Vigarde, ending Grado’s war (mostly) just as promised before reuniting with Eirika.

This story stays on path and has Ephraim clear every goal laid out before him and then transitions into a new mission to prevent the Demon King from getting away with what he has done and still plans to do.

Now, compare that to…

Eirika's Story

At the start of the story split, Eirika declares she is going to Rausten to warn them about the war. To do so, she goes to Port Kiris to find a boat…

She and Seth come up with and alias for her but she’s immediately identified by Bink’s mercenaries and has to fight them. She also fails to get a ship and is detoured to the land route. She finds out Innes is pinned down in Carcino and goes straight there. She saves him and there’s some interesting stuff about a coup but we don’t see much about it after that. Ewan guides us past a building where we’re ambushed by random (not Riev’s) monsters and fight them, then fight more random monsters in the mountains near Caer Pelyn. Then on the way to Jehanna (still just passing through btw) we get intercepted by Grado at Hamill Canyon before finding out Jehanna was attacked. Now we rush there to stop a simp (for lack of more tasteful term) from getting Jehanna’s queen killed and fail to protect her or her Sacred Stone, then fall into a trap and have to go outside to be rescued by Ephraim for the 2nd time since Renvall.

What I notice here is that unlike Ephraim, Eirika gets derailed, fails at every objective she has except for rescuing Innes, and doesn’t even make it to her primary destination (Rausten) before the stories merge. She has to be rescued by Ephraim after he has already completed all of his tasks, and when she does reach Rausten 5 chapters later to give the warning, Ephraim is with her so technically he also completes that task too. Ephraim accomplished the goals of both routes :sweat_smile:

It’s almost like Eirika’s route doesn’t even need to be there and I’m just now seeing it.

How do you feel about Eirika’s story? Does it have merit that I’m not seeing? Can it be saved? Lol

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combined with Lyn being relegated to the tutorial story in 7, I legitimately think there is or were some conservative opinions at IS.

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Not to mention Kent is the one really driving the story in said tutorial.

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My guess is that Ephraim’s story was to be the straightshot Fire Emblem experience based with the fighting-oriented Lord who learns that while a whole lot of stuff can be solved through combat, a lot of non-war life is going to require the gentler hand.

Meanwhile Eirika’s story was their initial attempt at trying more storytelling on the emotional spectrum that they broached in FE7. From the rage of being derailed to the sorrow of watching another member of royalty lose their parent in front of them - and teaching her that while war is just as emotional as it is physical; not everything can be solved purely by talking.

Ephraim & Eirika feel like one Lord that was split into two because they wanted to try this split route mechanic involving different stories that would later go onto be used with arguably greater effectiveness in Radiant Dawn, and to arguably less effectiveness in Fates; and I feel like it has always damaged the overall storytelling a touch because it still ends up presenting the idea that twins are just one identity split into two by chance; when twins are individual identities themselves that just have the same/similar face/body by chance.

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i feel like there was once upon a time a thread about this

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My unpopular opinion is that the story of FE8 would be outright better if Ephraim’s route did not exist and Eirika’s route was just how the game goes.

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This “direct military approach” story vs “Side-quest happens on our journey” story may be also a part of the story taking inspiration from Gaiden’s routes. Where Alm’s side is more direct and focused in his story progression as a war effort, while Celica’s just keep getting side-tracked on his way to her destinaion.

After all, FE8 is meant to draw Gaiden as it’s main inspiration. But due to the stories merging way before Eirika is even close to her objective, the “side-quest happens’“ feels less effective as a way to progress the overall plot. Since as has been pointed… the main plot point of defeating Grado happens off-screen for Eirika. And the whole Carcino sub-plot ends up pretty thin too.

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I think the decisive point is Lyon’s characterization. In Eirika’s story, Lyon is controlled too obviously by the Demon King, portraying him as a very standard innocent victim, whereas in Ephraim’s story the manipulation is more subtle, since the Demon King uses his feelings of envy and inferiority complex to twist his noble intentions (he wants the power to stop the disaster that will devastate Grado in the near future to save his people, but at the same time he wants to defeat them to prove he’s become stronger). That gives him extra layers of complexity as an antagonist.

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Ephraim route feels like the “true” route while Eirika gets the wool pulled over her eyes. I definitely get the impression that Lyon was lyin’ about being the demon king in both routes but playing the “half-possessed victim” worked out so well to fool Eirika that he never dropped the act. Rather than ending up with a Schrodinger’s Cat situation where events in the past change depending upon the player’s choice.

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I see this, yeah. Honestly, I feel like it’s supposed to show how… bad at war Erika is? Still, it definitely contributes to why people tend to prefer Ephraim route, I think. As a writer (god that sounds cringe, idk) I think the goal was to make your first playthrough (where you probably will go Erika route, you’ve spent the whole game with her up until now) more of a showing of the rest of Magvel. You’ve seen Renais, Frelia, and to an extent Grado as well from chapters 1-8, now go see the rest of the world.

I feel like it does (somewhat poorly, perhaps) achieve that goal. You get to see what’s happening elsewhere in Magvel, and experience the biggest side plot in the game, with Joshua and Ismaire. I feel like the biggest issue, narratively, is the two monster maps. Johanna gets wrapped up quite nicely, but Carncino ends up… well, feeling underbaked. One of the elders tried to start a whole rebellion, and Erika kinda just shows up, kills all his mercs, refuses to elaborate, and leaves. Like, maybe have the next chapter or two be about dealing with the rebellion instead of some random monsters. Show Erika being so genuinely kind that she’s willing to put off her own quest to Rausten/Jehanna to make sure the independent merchant state of Carcino has a stable government before she leaves.

But yes, I do agree that Erika’s route feels a bit underbaked. Probably because her goal is a little roundabout, and not exactly straightforward like “let’s go kill the emperor”, it’s “let’s go warn the other nations” which she technically does.

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I agree. I think Ch11 in particular feels the most pointless. They encounter monsters in the building, fight them, and don’t even stay the night there if I recall correctly. They go straight to Saleh’s house at the end of the chapter and sleep there instead :sweat_smile:

I think this whole chapter is just an excuse to get L’arachel on the exact same chapter as Ephraim’s story instead of 1 chapter later in the mountains.

Out of excitement, I’ve already written up a rough story to replace that chapter and move some details of surrounding chapters around a bit to create tension without compromising their stories, but now I’ve come to a terrible realization… I suck at making good maps from scratch :joy:.

But anyhow, I do believe the entire route story can be improved by fixing that Chapter specifically.

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