Permafrost's Writing Advice

[Zeldacrafter64]

@theghostcreator

I do agree that the way three houses handles characters that die in story poorly but you used a horrible example to prove your point.

Well, I think it does get the point across that at least this guy had a character arc that tied into his death, while Rodrigue could have slipped on a wet rock and broke his neck to get pretty much the same result. I guess a more obvious example would be the very obscure game Final Fantasy VII and its rather unknown development which, to avoid spoilers, I will simply call “Aerith gets murdered”. Another example that predates FF7 and could work better would’ve been

SPOILERS

Phantasy Star IV

But, in my opinion, even then “Aerith gets murdered” is an unfair comparison to “Rodrigue slips and falls and dies” if only for the fact that one of them concerns a playable character, whom the player will necessarily have grown at least accustomed to, if not fond of, while the other concerns an NPC.

If you ask me if there’s a game I’m heavily biased toward, I would answer Tales of Berseria. If you ask me if there’s a game that uses an NPC’s death well enough to be impactful to the player, let character development and plot progress, while not feeling like “oh so that’s when it happens”, my answer would also be Tales of Berseria. So, before we move on, spoilers for Tales of Berseria’s first hour or two incoming. Skip if you want to experience it yourself (which you should btw). The basic premise of the game is that you play as a revenge-obsessed highschool quiet kid’s OC who’s like really angry 95% of the time. The game’s prologue however takes place 3 years prior, and we see said character as a happy and cute village girl, taking care of her little brother Laphicet who’s suffering from some sickness preventing him from leaving his bed for too long; and exchanging vaguely meaningful conversations with her mentor figure Arthur. What sets her character off her peaceful life and forces her to be the completely different person she is for the rest of the game is Laphicet’s death at the hand of Arthur on the 7th anniversary of her older sister’s death. I find this interesting because, on paper, it’s the death of an NPC we’ve known for like just an hour or two caused by another NPC we’ve known for an hour or two, and yet, this death is impactful not only to the protagonist, but also us the player. I cannot speak for everyone, but this was a major shocker for me.

But this doesn’t apply only to video game characters too. I find it interesting that the two most well-known moments of Fullmetal Alchemist are the deaths of characters that honestly fill the purpose of NPCs. (Again, spoiler warning, don’t read the following paragraph if you want to experience Fullmetal Alchemist, in particular Brotherhood, by yourself) Well, this spoiler warning is mostly useless, since I’m pretty sure anyone who hasn’t lived in a cave these last 10 years will known what I’m talking about : The deaths early on (Both during season one of Brotherhood) of Nina Tucker and Maes Hughes. Both actually fill roles that are commonly so associated with death flags they might as well start out dead, and yet both deaths have been equally impactful not only to the fanbase but to pop-culture as a whole, moreso than any future death involving characters we’ve seen for a much longer time, even though Nina is essentially just an NPC girl made to make you care, and Hughes filling the same role as Rodrigue, being some sort of vaguely-mentor-ish figure.

So, what makes these work and not our boy Rodrigue? Well, to be honest, I don’t think there is any simple answer to that. But, in my personal opinion, I think the most important thing is the long-term consequences. All of the deaths I’ve cited earlier have consequences that are immediately felt, as well as other consequences long after that. In a way, one has to think of the butterfly effect. If one wing flap of a butterfly can cause a tornado at the other end of the world, what may a person’s death cause? To be fair, it’s been a while since I’ve played Blue Lions so I may be misremembering, but I think Rodrigue’s death has no consequences besides Dimitri feeling very sad at first, and then realizing vengeance isn’t cool. Past that point, bar some mentions (which could be resumed as “in the end it’s kinda great rodrigue died”), I’ve felt like Rodrigue’s death could just not have happened and Dimitri’s character development could’ve stayed the same, by getting himself nearly killed for example.
To go back to the Fullmetal Alchemist example, I think this also why the two early deaths have stuck so much more with fans than any other later, equally heart-breaking deaths. Those, while well-executed, lacked the consequences Nina’s and Hughes’ had.
I’m not saying a character should angst around 100% of the time following another character’s death, there’s a balance of course, but I feel the main problem in 3H’s execution is that it lacks consequences, probably due to its formula? I feel like Dimitri reaching the conclusion that becoming feral because “haha revenge time” is not such a good idea could’ve been achieved without Rodrigue’s death, in fact, I’d argue it feels even less natural this way. A character obsessed with avenging the dead will not stop to think about their ways if someone close to them dies, quite the contrary.

Anyways that’s the end of today’s rant lol. As a side note, I feel I should mention 3H at least does something right : Rodrigue’s death has a purpose, at least. Too many medias, especially long-running series, try to kill off characters for no other reason than “subverting expectations”, “keeping viewership high” or for real-life reason like the actor simply not wanting to play the character anymore. And that’s far, far worse than Rodrigue’s case.

EDIT : Another factor that makes Aerith’s, Laphicet’s, Nina’s and Hughes’ deaths work and not Rodrigue’s are also how attached we grow to the characters. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember a single character trait of Rodrigue, while all of these had at least something going for them. But I kinda feel like that’s really a major fuck-up on 3H’s end and thus not really worth debating as much as funny consequences

[jackofblades1991]

Gotta pull out some mild ff4 detailing for ya here. most of the cast past tellah’s death were originally intended to stay dead or act as dead. You only find out the twins are fine if you go back to earth with the lunar whale, Edward was already know to have survived but was in rough shape and you can actually 100% miss learning yang is alive since he’s hidden in an optional dungeon in the underworld and takes two trips to acquire.

From the original story perspective once the player has the lunar whale they are supposed to go straight to the moon and finish the game without learning most of the alleged dead cast survived since most of them don’t get any better equipment that isn’t shared with the core 5 at that point. Unless you play FF4 advanced or Collection then they get new super weapons from the post game dungeon but i digress.

[Permafrost]

@Dancasto123

I think its kind of disingenuous when people write off certain characters for their role in the story from pretty much every game past FE3, where there are more interactions between characters outside of the story.

I don’t really know what you’re getting at with this response. Supports? Rodrigue doesn’t have any because he’s not a playable unit. And as far as not mentioning Felix, that’s because I was talking about how his death was executed, which Felix isn’t a part of. Rodrigue’s death causes a reconciliation between Dmitri and Byleth and has nothing to do with Felix outside of a short exchange after Dmitri makes nice with everyone again. That wasn’t me, that was Three Houses, so I don’t see how I’m being disingenuous.

I will say that Three Houses has some characters that I like in a vacuum, Sylvain, Ingrid, Mercedes, Ashe, and Hilda to name a few. Unfortunately, these characters are not in an enjoyable story. Moreover, I struggle to take most of the characters seriously because of the route structure. They all have these lines about how they’re fighting for what they believe in if they wind up fighting their old friends. But the only change is whether Byleth spent time with them, which leaves the unfortunate conclusion that the entire worldview of most of the characters is shaped by whether their creepy teacher invited them to lunch regularly.

I can’t help but think that the writers were really counting on the idea of fighting characters who the player knew as students to carry the story, but it didn’t work for me. The post-time skip battle of Gronder is asinine because the kingdom and alliance have no reason to fight each other, but they’re made to in order to create a moment for the trailer. On my first playthrough, I tried leaving the named characters alive until after the empire was defeated to see if I could recruit them or at least spare them, but nope. The game forced me to pointlessly slaughter the Blue Lions for no reason at all. The sad music and death throws of former students didn’t stop me from thinking the entire scenario was ridiculous.

And the game really clings to these “sad” moments as its hook. Having played Golden Deer first, most of Edelgard’s dialogue about how important Byleth was to her made no sense. I had talked to her maybe once a month. Apparently this was because most of those scenes were recycled from Silver Snow (I haven’t finished either Black Eagle route because I don’t have the want or motivation to). Furthermore, Edelgard and Claude have similar goals, and the only reason they aren’t allies or even negotiate seems to be to force these contrived “sad” scenes.

Fates Revelations is neither a fun game nor a well written one, but having a route where the characters’ pretenses are broken down and they fight the real puppetmaster behind the other two routes is satisfying in it’s own way, at least at the very end. When the Three Houses trailer dropped where Sothis tells Byleth that he’s “seen both sides of time,” (or something to that effect) I thought that the plot would involve Byleth experiencing multiple timelines in order to learn the true enemy and eventually unite the lords (something like Radiant Historia), but Sothis’s line is apparently just a throwaway to seem epic (it has no meaning in the context of the scene it’s in). And now having played Three Houses, I realize that such a plot would have robbed the story of the clashes between old classmates (because it would be undone) which is really the only arrow in its quiver.

This focus on the fates of the students resulted in Those Who Slither just kind of existing as a scapegoat so that none of the playable characters are ever the “bad guy” (or at least there’s always someone worse). But they barely exist in the plot. FE1, with its very economical use of text sequences, builds up Garnef more than Three Houses builds up Thales (who was supposedly behind everything). And if anyone reading this played the game and doesn’t remember who Thales was by name, I wouldn’t be surprised as I certainly didn’t after my first playthrough. Garnef is at least built up as a powerful mage who is all but invincible due to possessing both Falcion and Imulhu so there’s a real sense of accomplishment in facing him (if the player is able to).

I honestly struggled with what I really thought of Three Houses for quite some time, particularly whether I thought the good outweighed the bad. And no, I wasn’t trying to hate it. I wanted to like it. But after giving it multiple chances, I think the bad outweighs the good. A large part of this is the narrative doing the bare minimum to try to affect emotions rather than connecting its elements into a satisfying story.

@theghostcreator

this is by far the worst example for handling character deaths, there are so many character ‘deaths’ where certain characters are presumed and by all accounts should be dead just for the sake of opening a party slot for the player, and since nearly every character that joins you has a fake death when Tellah dies it isn’t seen as a shock at all

You’re really missing the point with what you say here. The point is that Tellah actually has his own story arch and doesn’t exist solely to serve Cecil’s character arch. And as Jack says, none of the dead party members come back before Tellah dies, unless you count Edward and Yang surviving the shipwreck, which isn’t too weird since Cecil survived. Also unlike the others, Tellah is seen fading away (the way death is depicted in game) rather than the scene cutting away before they do something dangerous and the others assuming that character died. So your comment doesn’t really account for events in the order they appear.

As far as calling the overall story of FFIV average, yeah that’s true. It won’t seem all that special to anyone familiar with RPGs because, like I said, it’s extremely influential, and it’s DNA is everywhere across video games. But to dismiss it ignores that it was one of the first attempts to tell a more involved story within a game, one where the goals and enemies could change. The reason it feels average is because it has so many imitators. It’s kind of like saying the story in Disney’s Snow White is overly simple, ignoring that the movie was the first feature length animated movie and the focus was more on that.

[Luba]

Spoiler for Fullmetal Alchemist

In my opinion Nina’s and Hughes’ deaths are so impactfull because they seem properly planned, they are written to have an intentional effect on the characters that can change their motivations and how they view their interactions with the world. Nina being turned into a chimera, and Edward being unable to save her or help her in any way let’s him realise that he’s not as powerful as he may think he is,
and reminds him of the darker side of alchemy that he has personally experienced and engaged with in the past, at the same time it helps ease the viewer for the things to come regarding these practices.

While Maes Hughes’ death gives the characters, regardless of their previous allegiance, a common foe that they need to eventually confront, i sincerely doubt that without this, many of the soldiers who end up fighting against the Amestrian government would have done so in the first place, additionally the way it’s handled to emotionally manipulate the audience is very effective, easing the watcher/reader into this hate for both the person responsible for this death, and those they associate with.

The main reason i wanted to talked about these two a bit more than was previously done in this thread is that these are good examples for deaths that happen early into a story, have an effect on the narrative, and don’t necessarily feel completely out of nowhere, while remaining sudden and impactful.

Since many writers would rather leave deaths to the end of a story, as a consequence of the narrative, and the choices of the characters rather than letting these deaths have a prolonged effect in the narrative by being early and meaningful.
I don’t necessarily have anything against this, but in most examples it feels almost like an unfinished piece of the narrative, not letting the characters Mourn, overcome the loss or fail to do so and let it dictate a part of their personality and motivations.

[Permafrost]

My third main article is here. This time I’ll be talking about the narrative value of romance, a more niche topic than what I’ve discussed so far.

Romance, Who Needs It?

Romance is definitely not necessary for all plots. And I doubt that many people who set out to make a hack are setting out to make anyone tear up over characters falling in love. It’s also understandable why romance plots have poor to mixed reputations in many’s minds. “Love Stories” (as in stories built around two people falling in love) tend to be kind of tedious and overstay their welcome as it can really strain the audience’s interest to care about about two characters having a relationship when they really only exist for the sake of that relationship and neither is doing anything else outside of having a few basic characteristics. However, a well executed romance plot can be a good way of developing characters.

If a character is developed into a believable person, then his relationships will come across as in or out of character just as much as the things he says. In order for a relationship to be satisfying for the audience, the characters involved should be equally developed characters. Writing a relationship thus gives the opportunity to articulate the qualities that a character values or cherishes. As in, character A observes and admirable quality in character B, so the audience is given insight into how character A thinks through the way he feels for character B.

This idea carries over not only into conveying information to the audience, but it can also assist with the writing process, itself. If two characters are intended to be romantically involved, thinking about what about Character B will appeal to Character A and vice versa can help form the characterization and storylines of both characters. Thinking about what sort of person could come to be important to another character can serve as a way of getting into a character’s head and bringing him to life.

If one of the characters can be described entirely as another character’s love interest, then the romance aspect is very unlikely to have an impact on the audience. The goal should be to make the relationship feel like the natural result of two characters encountering each other rather than like the characters are being forced together.

Giving specifics as to how to do this is kind of difficult because the relationship should be a product of the characters, so how to write the relationship will depend on the characters involved. The last thing a writer should do is bend the characters in order to fit them into a relationship because, if the audience is paying attention, it will be able to spot any oddities that serve to realize the relationship and nothing else. Because of that, I can’t really tell anyone what sort of relationship they should strive to write. It makes more sense to view the relationship as an extension of the characters rather than a plot point or goal of the storytelling. This will help with making the dialogue natural, which is quite important, as there are few things harder to read than forced romance.

So throughout the 3DS era, I often saw older FE fans bemoaning that the series had become a dating sim. This is a bit of a mischaracterization as FE’s support system, in all of its incarnations, is far less interactive than a dating sim. Avatar supports are still achieved by building support points through battle actions in order to access a preset dialogue sequence. Dating sims have the player navigate dialogue options in order to seduce his or her target. I wouldn’t want to see a more dating sim-esque system in FE (and I’ll add a tangent below on why), but being a dating sim isn’t the problem with 3DS supports.

The reason why so many 3DS supports are unsatisfying is that options were prioritized over characterization. Aside from most lategame prepromotes, any male character can be paired with any female character, which resulted in many poorly realized supports where characters are essentially forced into relationships so that the player can get the child units he wants. FE4 also does this, but most of the relationships have no dialogue associated with them, so it doesn’t stand out as much. But the 3DS support design puts characters into relationships without any consideration for their characterization, resulting in most of them feeling very artificial and forgettable. In such a set up, it’s pretty much impossible for the relationships to say anything about the characters as none of the characters are really meant for the relationships.

In conclusion, in order for a relationship to have an impact on the audience, the relationship should fit the characterization of both characters. That might sound like painfully obvious advice, but worthwhile romance plots are kind of rare, so it’s worth saying.

My Promised Tangent

I don’t really like games where you start with a character creator and the story is shaped by the player’s dialogue choices (so as you can imagine I don’t really play western RPGs). When presented with dialogue choices in a game, I’m painfully aware that I’m not really choosing what I would say, but I’m trying to deduce which option will produce the best results in gameplay terms, whether that be improving rapport with party members or producing the best results from quests. So to the extent that video games serve as escapism, trying to adjust my personality in order facilitate relationships and interactions doesn’t fit into this. This all probably just my penchant for overthinking things stopping me from enjoying something, but no, I really wouldn’t want to see a more interactive, dating sim-esque element in Fire Emblem.

[Xilirite]

The tangent is interesting. I play a lot of CRPGs, they’re one of my favourite genres, and something I’ve noticed is that a lot of people often struggle to engage with dialogue options in the way I think the developers want players to. Usually, players end up engaging with them as either a.) what they’d say, b.) what gives them the best quest outcomes, c.) “I’m doing an evil playthrough” and d.) “oh this line is really funny.” It’s actually shockingly rare that anybody ever truly roleplays their character, and getting into the habit of doing that made the entire genre really stand out to me as something really entertaining. It’s very weird though, to have to develop a specific “skill” at engaging with a certain kind of storytelling in order to get the most out of it, and a lot of games in the genre understand that most people don’t care to put that much thought into their dialogue choices and build their dialogue sequences around power fantasy and making it easy to just slot yourself into the main character’s shoes, or else take away a degree of control from the player and make the player character a more static figure in the universe, a la Mass Effect or The Witcher.

As for worthwhile romance subplots, are there any you can think of as a strong example of such a plotline having a dramatic influence on your enjoyment of a story? I’ve been really interested in hearing some of your thoughts on what games succeed in the avenues you’ve been writing about, rather than just which ones fail.

[Luba]

In my opinion the main reasons dialogue options tend to fall flat are that:

1. Most players will proceed trying to avoid game overs, bad endings, and perhaps more importantly, seek to proffit from the results of their choices, this causes them to slowly, wether intentionally or not, optimize their own enjoyment out of the choices themselves.
2. Developers dont have infinite resources or time crunching sounds echo in the distance, so most of the time they need to focus on create a single line from begining to end of their story, while adding branching options later on, which results in these options having less impact on the narrative than they should, as well as end up being perceived as plot holes which detracts from enjoyment if the players cares about that sort of thing.

It is Very difficult and time consuming to create a game where most if not all the dialogue choices are benefitial to gameplay, and even more so to make them meaningful in a storytelling sense, so most developers tend to go for one or the other, which can fail to fulfill the player’s expectations, which leads to dissapointment, which leads to a loss of enjoyment. So it’s completely understandable for someone to not enjoy that sort of game.

In addition to this its very likely to create a set of choices that the player does not identify with in the least, even when a dev team tries to go for as broad a spectrum as possible, or specially so in the last case since it tends to result in the choices having less of an impact in your story, as a result of having to stretch your narrative thin in order to acommodate a wide variety of playstyles. (Both in terms of “gameplay” and in terms of player/character personality)

Tl;Dr

It’s hard to handle player choice in an effective way if you need to compress a possibly infinite ammount of personalities into just a few options.

Not every game Can or should be DnD

PD:Play DnD

[ElPinguinot]

The tangent is interesting. I play a lot of CRPGs, they’re one of my favourite genres, and something I’ve noticed is that a lot of people often struggle to engage with dialogue options in the way I think the developers want players to. Usually, players end up engaging with them as either a.) what they’d say, b.) what gives them the best quest outcomes, c.) “I’m doing an evil playthrough” and d.) “oh this line is really funny.” It’s actually shockingly rare that anybody ever truly roleplays their character, and getting into the habit of doing that made the entire genre really stand out to me as something really entertaining.

I’m also a big fan of CRPGs, and in regards to dialogue options (which I agree completely can be a bit harder to get into it when asked about roleplaying) I thinks Disco Elysium really did something quite innovative to help people get into it.

Firstly, they used “social networks-like” interface for dialogue. Which makes it much easier to people to invest themselves in reading an discussions (which is the main aspect of the game). Also, the fact that all your though, organs, sensation, etc. are “talking” to you made it so you can’t just play like if you were yourself: You are playing an old alcoholic cop, and no matter how he evolve during the game who he was and his “particular” mindset will always have an influence on your playthrough.

To give an example, you can try to never drink alcohol in the game, and to make your character get rid of this problem. But your character will still be a man whose face is ravaged by years of raving alcoholism, and your mind and body screaming to you for a drop of beer.

When presented with dialogue choices in a game, I’m painfully aware that I’m not really choosing what I would say, but I’m trying to deduce which option will produce the best results in gameplay terms, whether that be improving rapport with party members or producing the best results from quests.

on the question of “what option would give me the best result?” , the game help to tone down those kinds of thinking: the unique vision of your character, the fact that “failing” many times will opens new branch of dialogues and options and not just stop you (in the same way that “succeeding” a dice roll will sometimes produce unexpected results), and the fact that there is no combat system in the game

So @Permafrost , maybe Disco Elysium could gives you a new outlook on western RPGs, and their way of handling storytelling

[Permafrost]

@Xilirite

As for worthwhile romance subplots, are there any you can think of as a strong example of such a plotline having a dramatic influence on your enjoyment of a story?

As far as a Fire Emblem example, I would say Hector and Lyn. Firstly, I don’t think that it’s often appreciated just how groundbreaking FE7 was in terms of storytelling in Fire Emblem. This is probably because, to many in the west, it was either their entry point to the series or just some old game. But FE7 was the first game to try to tell a personal story without a large scale war or the story being driven by putting the rightful/more benevolent ruler on the throne. And rather than having a lord character who is supposed to be the leader but is mostly told what to do by an unplayable tactician character, FE7 has a core cast of three characters who stand as equals to one another. In fact, I think one of the reasons I don’t like FE9 much from a story perspective is it feels regressive to a more FE1/FE3 style of story that is more about the setting than the characters.

So back to Hector and Lyn, they have this dynamic where they have trouble being vulnerable in front of others to the point that Hector looks away from Lyn crying on the boat, thinking that she doesn’t want to be seen that way. But this actually makes her angry because she was trying to open up to him. This scene winds up coming full circle in a somewhat buried scene in the final chapter. But if you meet all of the prerequisites, you can view a scene where Lyn is holding Hector from behind saying that she’s crying for his sake because she knows he wouldn’t let himself cry over his brother’s death. And this time, rather than assuming that she’s showing weakness, Hector quietly lets Lyn lean on him.

So both characters have a similar struggle with handling their feelings over a traumatic past event, and they both come to understand how the other handles pain. It’s not overly complicated, but it does deliver some solid character moments.

[Xilirite]

Disco Elysium is almost unfair to talk about in the context of western RPGs – it’s just too good but it does slot into that “making the player character more static” thing very heavily – since Harry will always be who he is, and you’re only inhabiting a particularly pivotal week in his life, the dialogue feels much more like you’re trying to steer him in a particular direction rather than truly controlling him. Really really fascinating game.

[TheResourcefulRaven]

Disco is basically the pinnacle that all games should desire to emulate.

not just because it’s written well but because it writes hard topics well.

I think one we can all agree on that ill use as an example is the Likable Bastard trope which the detective does in spades if nothing else you cannot escape the events that happen before the game and they do catch up with you (i mean you are waking up from being blackout drunk) hell the first “goal” you have in the game is tracking down your clothes

And depending on what you say you did some extremely stupid things while drunk.

Onto another topic. Fire Emblem is the king of trope writing for good and ill in three houses case it’s all but certain daddy will die. He is the mentor character after all.

It even goes so far to the character archtypes we even have names for them specific to fire emblem We call them Est’s for example but i think more people would be familiar with the concept of a late bloomer.

Ill straight up say fire emblems writing in general is the most basic things ive ever read the thing is basic does not equate to bad I still love radiant dawn for that reason (then again it’s the least outwardly trope-y of the fire emblem games that i know of)

I also enjoyed Marth and Roy’s games but I think there has been a real downgrade in the writing quality starting with awakening heavily relying on character tropes to introduce it’s overly extensive cast Micaiah goes from self loathing martyr to “I heal good” even stripping her of her signature ability

Tree Houses is just the logical extreme of what awakening did The Three House leaders are actually written decently but without a cast to back them up they all fall flat.

I see why people accuse the game of being rushed out instead of telling one interesting story they went all in on a terrible many routes gimmick which is most apparent because the routes are exactly the same untill the timeskip

And i could fix it with a simple change too. Rhea doesin’t make you a teacher but an assistant to the teachers bam.

no more house segregation recruiting who you want makes more sense since your outside the houses and making you choose who to fight with at the end of the year (and in the event battles like the mock battle) is a lot more painful and in the battle where everyone reunites the students who like you enough show up making a faction with students from all houses.

it’s literally just a few changes in dialogue to reflect the change Rhea still assigns you missions because shes readying you to become a teacher if you stay.

You could even add to her few redeeming qualities this way “you make friends remarkably easy transcending the rivalry of the houses” or something like that have them acknowledge how much more effective a mixed unit of students is then one from a single house instead of attributing it to God King Byleth and her Ashen Demon backround

[Huichelaar]

It’s really hard to read what you’re tying to say when your post is missing a lot of punctuation.

[TheResourcefulRaven]

which is why i’m not a writer.

[Permafrost]

Hey there. Sorry it’s been awhile since I wrote one of these. Today I’ll be giving my thoughts on writing characters as a team. This one’s more about my own writing process than outside examples.

The Power of Friendship

I’m sure the “power of friendship” as a plot device will induce groans in most people reading this. However, there’s a distinction between when characters rely upon each other and when personal bonds become a sort of godly power that can seemingly do anything. I’ll be talking about my own hack, Deity Device, so spoilers for that ahead.

After reaching a certain point, the perspective shifts to following Carson as the main character. Carson is a magic user but has extremely lopsided stats, with his magic base and growth being very low. However, he’s also a magic researcher who knows the inner workings of magic theory better than pretty much anyone else. This manifests in gameplay as very high crit rates. Essentially, Carson can execute a spell extremely well, but he has next to no innate ability to use magic.

Early on in his section of the game, Carson meets Nathan, who has extremely high natural ability to use magic but doesn’t know anything about how to use magic. This manifests in gameplay as Nathan being the best magic tank in the game due to possessing so much raw magical energy.

As the story progresses, Carson teaches Nathan how to use magic, and Nathan shares his excess magic power with Carson to allow him to overcome his poor natural ability. What is important here is that these two characters need each other in order to overcome the trials ahead of them. While their bond doesn’t manifest as a glowy, final boss killing power, the player is able to see through the story and gameplay how neither character would be able to succeed without the other.

Having characters who cover each other’s weaknesses to become greater than the sum of their parts creates a satisfying experience for the audience because it prevents characters from feeling superfluous or just along for the ride. A big reason why I can’t stomach most shonen anime is the protagonist often has a gaggle of friends who are completely useless unless one of them happens to get a focus episode, in which case, the focus character gets to take down the monster of the week. It’s just not satisfying to follow a group of characters who all have some sort of combat ability, but only the protagonist really matters (and don’t get me started about female leads who are most often relegated to standing on the sidelines and shrieking when the protag takes a hit).

Setting up some sort of the need between the characters is very effective way to build a party dynamic. The initial idea that became Deity Device was a story about about a magical researcher who managed to gain the power of a special bloodline’s magic by developing an understanding of how the magic actually worked rather than accepting the explanation that it was sacred power. But I wanted this character to be really bad at the thing that interested him the most, which led to the creation of a foil character who couldn’t use magic despite his incredible potential.

So long as what each character gains through their bond is an explainable phenomenon within the setting, it is possible to craft a solid story around the protagonists winning due to their bonds.

[The-Wild-Fighter]

When you mentioned Mary Sue, the thing is, making a Mary Sue is just cliche, what if the hero is on the path of trying to work on controlling their powers, and is most of the characters’ Number 1 Enemy, what if one of the villains is able to almost kill the hero? Isn’t it the complete opposite of a Mary Sue?

[jackofblades1991]

It’s actually a fallacy to use that logic. It usually gets turned around to “the only reason xxxx survived that is because they’re a mary sue”.

Every protagonist is a mary sue in some capacity, its just the ratio of it varies wildly.

Using some of what went on in Gundam Seed as an example.

Two 4 story tall death robots locked in a death grapple, one has their cockpit exposed and the other is self destructing to to kill the other guy. It then hard cuts post explosion to the guy who should 100% be extremely dead to not only be alive, but now in space and literally given one of two super weapons that’s existence completely invalidates one of the pre established rules in the story.

Which is using a nuclear reactor which do to pre-exisiting lore isn’t possible. Which allows it to use weapons hilariously stronger weapons then any of the sides in the war.

Think of it as if like say ike not only started off with ragnell and capped stats (his Tier 3 caps but in his Tier 1 class) but the Black Knight was completely incapable of actually being a threat to just ike specifically.

And the ragnell was 1-30 range with no weight and 200 crit. Like just completely stupid broken.

[Permafrost]

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? This next entry was inspired by seeing a few posts by @Shrimperor where they say that most Fire Emblem plots are ruined by cults and demons/evil dragons. There is some truth in this take. The late-game of a lot of FE games can feel distant from the early/mid-game because the political dynamics between countries tend to fall away and in its place, the player is just trying to stop a big monster that was revived by a cult/evil religion. However, I don’t think the problem is really that cults are a bad story element that can’t work. I think the problem more comes when the story’s metaphysics don’t adhere to any rules. So click below to read my take on rules for metaphysics and why they’re important. Spoilers below for several FE games and my own hack, Deity Device.

Limitations are good for storytelling.

One thing you will realize when you first start writing a story is that, as the writer, you can make anything happen in the story. If you, as the author, write it, that’s what happens. But just because you can make anything happen, your reader/audience isn’t going to have a good time if you thoughtlessly tack on events. But the infinite possibilities of storytelling are especially problematic in fantasy where nearly anything can be explained by “it’s magic” or “it’s the will of the gods.”

In worlds where magic and supernatural forces exist, it’s very easy for the plot to collapse due to not following the rules that were previously established or the introduction of over-powered abilities that have no real cost. And when problems are conveniently solved due to newly introduced magic, it will read as a bunch of noise.

If you are going to take the time to make up rules for your world, it will frustrate your reader/audience if you do not stick to these rules. This can cause your story to be taken less seriously, or in the worst cases, trivialize your plot. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 plays very fast and loose with the rules of Blades (supernatural sentient weapon spirits) and Drivers (mortals). Early on, it is emphasized that Blades cannot fight on their own (it’s said doing so will exhaust them), beyond contributing a special move after charging power, and Drivers have to handle standard attacks. However, only a short time later, the party is confronted by Brigid, a Blade fighting on her own, who kicks the party’s ass with no issues. This is never explained and makes one question why so much time was spent drilling in the rules of Blades only to break them a short time later. And one will soon realize that the story was only trying to justify obtuse game mechanics that it couldn’t be bothered to apply to cutscenes.

The Xenablade 2 example is more of an annoyance, an instance where not following the rules breaks the entire plot in half would be the consequences of death in Final Fantasy X. Early on, the game explains that when people die, their souls need to be sent to the afterlife by a ritual or else they will linger and turn into monsters due to their envy of the living. However, it’s later discovered that dead people who aren’t sent to the afterlife can just choose to go on living. They have physical bodies and no downsides are ever introduced. It’s presented as a big reveal that’s supposed to expose the world’s church as evil (not sure why that, in itself, makes them bad), but what it actually does is trivialize the entire plot. There are no longer any stakes. One of the party members is a “dead” guy who has actually aged since he “died.” Nothing is done to distinguish that state from living. The plot wants to make death its main theme, but it’s set in a world where people can just choose to be immortal with no consequences.

Fire Emblem is, of course, no stranger to the pitfalls of inconsistent metaphysics. Even the plots I like have these problems. In Blazing Sword, Ninian gets to come back to life with no real explanation. There’s nothing set up about a way to restore a dragon’s life force. Bramimond shows up with her at the end of the game and says her soul has been restored, and she’s alive again. Echoes has the scene where Celica’s soul is restored. She had given her soul to Duma and become a witch, but Alm is able to return her to normal by stabbing her with Falchion. The entire thing feels meaningless in the context of what has been established in the game. Being turned into a witch is said many times to be irreversible, and even if Falchion has all sorts of untold divine dragon power in it, it doesn’t follow that stabbing Celica would retrieve her soul from Duma. Berkut’s death scene, being guided to the afterlife by Rinea, is similarly nonsensical. If Berkut gave Rinea’s soul to Duma in exchange for power, it would follow that she would have been denied an afterlife due to Duma holding on to her soul.

There are two issues with these sorts of forced good outcomes. Firstly, it will come across as noise to the reader/audience. When conflicts are resolved with little to no input from the characters and the story just says it was god-magic, there’s little chance of what happened carrying weight with the reader/audience. The more likely reaction is “Okay, that happened, I guess.” And that is because there is no connection to what the reader/audience knows and understands and what is happening. It’s like listening to a young child tell a story through a series of "And then this happened"s: And then the guy stabs the girl with the sword, but she doesn’t die. And then the sword and the girl start glowing. And then the girl floats into the air. And then she’s back to normal.

The second issue is that it removes stakes and consequences. Celica faces no consequence for being persuaded by Jedah, and Berkut is absolved of murdering his wife. I’m not someone who thinks that good/happy endings are too tidy and longs for tragedy. But I do firmly believe that characters should face consequences for their actions. If the characters do dire things, they should face dire consequences. Celica is brought back from being a witch in the same scene that she first appears as one. Alm doesn’t have to do anything special to save her; he happens to have just gotten the item he needs to save her. The whole thing is fairly meaningless to both the story and characters and makes me wonder why the writers bothered with it.

Genealogy has the problem of giving the villain an overpowered ability without consequence. Literal mind control is a very difficult ability for any story to contain. When one character can freely control the actions of other characters it becomes difficult to explain away why the character with mind control powers can’t solve any problems. This is often handwaved away by saying the important characters are too strong-minded for mind control to work (not great, but it’s something). However, Manfroy is able to pop in like a peek-a-boo demon and kidnap and brainwash both Deirdre and Julia. In universe, the two of them are among the most powerful magic users in the world and have the highest resistance to magic aside from the Major Braggi blood holder.

The kind of power that Manfroy has in those two scenes is too much for the plot. He does not need schemes to instigate wars, and he doesn’t need to breed Julius. He could do anything he wants by mind controlling the right people, and there is no reason Seliph’s army should have won other than him just deciding not brainwash them. I’m not a fan of mind control as a plot point in general because it’s too powerful, but it’s just not great writing to create conflict by robbing characters of agency. Julia confronting the party as an enemy lacks narrative weight because she didn’t do anything to be in that situation.

Strangely, FE1 probably does the best job of adhering to the rules that it establishes. The game spends a decent amount of time establishing Garneff as a threat because his Imulhu Tome makes him immune to everything but Starlight. And the game actually follows through on this. If the player misses Starlight, Garneff cannot be defeated, and Falchion cannot be obtained. Marth doesn’t get to overcome Imulhu’s darkness because of the strong bond he has with his friends. The plot said that Garneff is invincible without Starlight and sticks to it. This helps Garneff to feel like a real threat in spite of the minimal story events in FE1.

I’ve seen a few comments that Deity Device’s plot doesn’t become overwhelmed by its metaphysics despite the plot revolving around magic. But this is because the plot follows its rules. There are three rather lengthy scenes of Carson explaining magic stuff to Nathan. The first of these doesn’t come until after the player has spent a fair amount of time seeing how magic has affected the society the characters live in, so the player can connect what he’s saying to the character’s circumstances rather than it feeling like boring exposition. And in the end, the heroes don’t win because they dug up an ancient sword or other relic. It comes down to magical particle physics that had been explained and reinforced throughout the game.

But Permafrost, Deity Device players may be thinking, what about the scene where Midge is mind-controlled? Gregory and Midge’s storyline throughout Part 2 alludes to Midge having had the magic that allowed her to be controlled gradually engraved into her. And although she was being misled about the effects, she had to voice her assent to the magic being used on her. Horus wouldn’t be able to snap his fingers and control whoever he wanted. When Carson examines Midge after she’s rescued, he explains that magic similar to what is used to create undead was used on her living body. And her body no longer functions like a living human’s and instead functions by taking in magical energy. So there were lasting consequences to the storyline.

In conclusion, limitations and consequences are good for storytelling. Without them, you just have a series of events with no real stakes because anything can happen for any reason.

[adalvar]

So here are a few questions. Relating to the unit archetypes established in FE1…the Jagens, the Navarres, the Cains and Abels, the Ests, etc, etc. Given how much FE tries to connect story and gameplay, do you think those original archetypes should be maintained or phased out? And what would be a nice way to sprouce those archetypes while maintaining what makes them memorable?

For example i’ve played Code of the Black Knights, which for its flaws, had some nice characters to it. For instance the relationship between it’s Jagen and Est characters in Artemisa and Lowell made me more invested in them. Same way it made it’s Gotoh character Jaeger a actual enemy you need to avoid early and a persistent threat. What are your thoughts on that?

[Permafrost]

My opinion is that the old character archetypes should be used to the extent that they serve the game design and story, but they shouldn’t be thrown in just for the sake of including them. They serve the purpose of providing players returning to the series something familiar to ease them in to a new game.
I think the official games have already been playing with the archetypes quite a bit. There really hasn’t been a traditional Cain and Abel cavalier pair since Awakening. In Fates they were ninjas and “Cain” wasn’t playable in Conquest. Echos may not count because it’s a remake of a much older game, but in that game, Alm’s Cain and Abel were soldiers and Celica’s were mages. This made worked with Alm’s story being about leading and army and Celica’s being a pilgrimage. In Three Houses, only the Blue Lions house had the traditional archetypes, which makes sense it gives the most traditional FE story, even being represented by the traditional player army color. And Three Houses doesn’t really have a Jagen at all. In Engage, Cain and Abel are a priest and a mage.

[Shrimperor]

I didn’t expect my little rant from before lead to this, but well said! (That, and i am planning a big post on Failures of FE writing for the subreddit, might post it here as well once i finish it, but will take a while because i am lazy XD)

Some other points i want to add (upon):

• Themes and Ideals

These, imo, are more important than the rules. The rules are pretty important, ofc, but what get’s me in most FE story is how, like you pointed out in the first paragraph, the political dynamics/themes fall away for magical bs/cults/dragons. It’s a problem i have with many stories tbh, not just FE, but in FE i hate it so much more because i tend to enjoy the dynamics early on before everything falls apart, and because it usually falls apart really bad.

The problem isn’t the existence of magical bs, but how FE stories tend to use them is the big problem. It’s used to replace to straight out replace the ideological/political conflict, and make some villains appear if they weren’t really bad guys to begin with/don’t deal with the consequences. This is where i praise Deity Device, as the Magical/fantasy stuff there is used to push along the ideological conflict, not replace it. The fantasy is used to enhance the characters and the story, instead of ruining or hijacking it, despite it being a centeral point of the plot, and it doesn’t take away from the agency of the characters. This is what FE should try to do with it’s magical stuff. It came close in certain games (Fodlan with it’s advanced Dragon society, for example), but it was afraid to really commit, hurting the story much more.

If you ask me, it’s ok to sometimes break the rules if it fits the themes of the games, but it shouldn’t be overdone ofc.

• Betrayal of Themes and Ideals

This is something that happens in most FEs. It likes to present themes and Ideals, but either it’s afraid to really commit, presents stuff that doesn’t work with them, doesn’t conclude them or straight out betrays them.

FE4 presents the whole Loptyr thing as the result of them being driven underground/discriminated against…but every single Loptyran we see is a straight up evil nutcase and they are a satanic child murdering cult. Rather than making me symphatize with them or agreeing with Arvis’ cause, the game made me think that the Loptyrans deserved everything that happened to them, and a few lines won’t make me change my mind about them. Paradox of tolerance and all that. (Admittedly FE5 does it a bit better with Characters like Salem and Sara, but nowhere near enough.).

RD has Ike and Miccy each representing different Ideals, but instead of the game deciding on what ideals to stick with or how to resolve the conflict or to reach a compromise through character actions, the stupid blood pact happens taking away character agency and forcing a “compromise”.

Similar thing happens with Fodlan where the lords each represent different ideals, but instead of finding the faults of such ideals and showing the sins the characters go through to reach them, everything is shoved to the Mole Dubstep’ers

Fates had the whole “Adoped vs. Blood” Family thing…until you find out the Blood family ain’t related by blood at all. You could also say there’s the whole “Family (Nohr) vs. Ideals (Hoshido)” thing, but i don’t need to say how bad Fates does that (and everything writing wise). And Rev…

SoV has Alm, the “normal” one…as in Royal, chosen holder of the sword, leader of the deliverance for no good reason, etc. the only difference between Alm and Corrin if you ask me is that you can’t choose Alm’s name and appearance, otherwise he get’s as much character worship for no reason, and the game falls over it’s head with it’s story in trying to convince me Alm was “normal”. Not to mention the Balance between Alm and Celica is heavily tilted towards Alm’s side, with him being proven right every single time.

Etc.

Some might say that these ideals & themes weren’t centeral to the stories (Especially when it comes to SoV), but then why spend so much time on them? Why bring em up to begin with if the game is just gonna throw em away?

• Consequences and Agency.

This is something you already talked about, and i agree with. Characters need to have Agency, and need to face the consequences of their actions. Not that mind control can’t be done well, it can, but there needs to be an actual person with motivations and ideals behind it and not some evil dragon or a comical evil satan worshipper.
Also, and this is something that happens in way too many stories, especially japanese ones, stories should stop trying to convince me that mind controlled characters (or under some kind evil influence) are responsible for their actions. It’s ok if the characters themselves feel guilty and try to atone for their sins (ie, like Spoiler-chan in Engage), or for other characters to blame them, but it’s not ok for the Story to present it as something that was their complete fault.

Then we have another big can of worms…the Support system…but i will leave that for another time as it’s to late atm XD

Also about XBC2, iirc it was never said that Blades can’t fight alone, just that they are stronger when fighting together, and the Torna expansion does show how the whole fighting together thing came to be, with Lora being too poor xD