Randomly, while I was thinking of ideas/writing stuff for something I’ve been working on, I thought “hey, this is a lot like that one anime I watched”. That spiraled into a bunch of other dumb things, and led me to this; what are some of the things that have influenced the writers of FEU?
Could be anything, really; books, games, anime, even real life stuff.
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fire emblem
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The classics of classical literature are classics for a reason, and if you’ve never read them and thought about what to learn from them to improve your writing, you’re missing out. Also Game of Thrones and Lord Of The Rings are masterpieces, but LOTR is better.
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For Fire Emblem specifically, the Jugdral and Tellius games are a big source of inspiration for me.
Outside of those, I’m a big fan of visual novels like Ace Attorney, Zero Escape, and AI: The Somnium Files, so I try to make my dialogue flow like how those games do so.
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History, mythologies, personal experiences, other literature. Any medium that can tell a story, or make you take a step back and think about things to add to your story.
For example, me and a friend recently “found” some old Japanese movies that we watched in their original language with english subtitles (imo always better for foreign products if possible).
Samurai 1: Miyamoto Musashi and it’s following 2 Sequels were made in 1954-1955, but are comparable if not better quality wise than many movies from the 80s or 90s. We were genuinely suprised how good the movie was, and i definitely took home a handful of things i thought were pretty cool from it.
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Pretty much everything I came in touch with: movies, books, mangas, comics, movies… Even songs! In FE in particular, I have a couple of ideas for stories (that currently aren’t beyond the planning stages), mostly influenced by Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard and even Terry Pratchett, not to mention songs from Helloween, Avantasia, Hawkwind, or Blue Oyster Cult that inspired me in the making of certain characters or plot elements.
Tho, in the two hacks I have published, the inspiration comes from their games settings for the most part, expanding upon what we know about established characters (Echidna’s resistance force against Etruria or Dice’s gambling problems).
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My writings have 2 strong influences and 3 minor ones.
My strong influences
- History: I really like reading history and find myself making stories that are similar to things that happens on history, witch makes my histories come out some times a bit to realistic, even though I add the normal fantasy elements encountered in FE games.
- My dreams: This might sound weird, but because of how I sleep, I tend to have a lot of dreams, and I tend to remember some of them, this dreams normally are short, but they tend to influence main crucial points on my histories.
My minor influences
- Folklore: I like adding tropes from folklore on my histories, this normally makes my worlds feel more fantastical, making my histories feel like something you could see in a normal RPG.
- RPG: All types of RPGs, from your favorite FE game to that obscure RPG your friend told you about.
- Music: The music I hear while writing normally influences me to make a scene that has the feel of the music, if the music is calm I may make a support convo, but if the music is unnerving I may make a dark moment in my history.
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Well for me, the things that are often my writing influences are mainly most of the recent things I watch and learn (like certain shows, anime, film, games, history, mythology, etc.). After seeing and investigating most of those things I tend to have ideas for a certain character, scene, story arc or any other trope I could implement into my own stories.
As such, some of the things I do tend to be similar to other ideas made by someone else, although they aren’t 100% the same thing.
For example, imagine a certain character trope or archetype (like the stock shonen rival) that ends up being played with and made more different (that character’s actually the main hero, he’s not really jerk, just a bit misunderstood) and it can be put on another setting not expected for that character (he just wants to draw and paint).
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Style
In terms of dialogue, I think I may have gone overboard in the Joss Whedon (I think that’s how you spell his name) school of thought, especially the constant snappy retorts common in Firefly. For awhile I really struggled writing dialogue that wasn’t full of cheap quips, though that may be partly due to the fact that the sarcasm gene runs deep in my family. Over time this I like to think my sense of when to quip has gotten better (in writing at least), thanks to several jaunts into Epic Fantasy.
In terms of narration, I try to keep it to a minimum when I write in an FE type format, because frankly I haven’t found any outstanding examples to emulate.
Content
Characters
I tend to subconsciously piecemeal characters, so I could go on forever listing influences there, but my central characters tend to fall clearly into a few archetypes whose influences are clearer:
The Broken Paragon: These characters were once knights or soldiers of the highest order, but have been broken, emotionally and physically, and fallen from grace. Usually plagued by guilt, and usually the protagonist. Influenced by: Cecil Harvey from FFIV, Kaladin Stormblessed from The Stormlight Archives (TSA), Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist (FMA).
The Bard: Snarky, inconspicuously plot relevant (unless you’re genre savvy in which case it’s extremely conspicuous), and exists (in a Doylean sense) to brighten everyone’s day (at least, if they ‘everyone’ happens to be someone they like) and to spread knowledge. Uses music or other arts to do this. Influenced by: Belgarath from The Belgariad, Wit from TSA, Razumikin (probably misspelled) from Crime and Punishment, Aladdin, the prince guy from the Chronicles of Pyrdain whose name I can’t spell.
The Healer: Compassionate and graceful, this character is also the toughest in many areas, including: Being one of ~3 people who can call out the protagonist on his crap, probably the most magically adept of the starting cast, and having levels of determination that would make Frisk start sweating. Usually keeps everyone else grounded. Sometimes there’s more than one of these in a single party, because there’s that much emotional support needed. Often the love interest, usually a priest if not. Influenced by: Rosa from FFIV, Winry Rockbell from FMA, Simon Tam from Firefly, Katara from ATLA.
The Brother-in-Arms: This character is the closest to the protagonist sans perhaps the healer. They’re the classic Lancer, always there with a bit of snark and a willingness to get their hands dirty. There’s a 50% chance they’ll turn out evil, 80% chance they’ll seem like they’re going to turn out evil, but they’ll always be sympathetic even if they’re standoffish. Probably the Jagen in terms of gameplay. Influenced by: Kain from FFIV, Murtagh from the Inheritance Cycle, Moash and Sadeas from TSA, Roy Mustang from FMA.
My Villains are similarly archetypical, but this post is getting pretty long.
Plot:
I’m a fan of moral dilemmas and stuff, but I do enjoy a good old “save the world” plot. I could pull inspiration for that from everywhere.
Sorry for the massive reply
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The only correct answer.
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Conan the Barbarian, Lord of the Rings, Hyperion, Catch 22.
Those works really got me into creative writing and influenced how I write.
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Most of the media I come into contact with are video games, and I’m sure a lot of my writing is mostly influenced by them. The Final Fantasy series probably being the biggest influence. VI, IX, XIV(+expansions), XVI, and Tactics (PS1/WotL) being my favorites and most influential for me writing wise.
The Wheel of Time and Stormlight Archive series have probably been the most influential from books (more recently, at least). I need to read more, or at least listen to audiobooks more.
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Kaitou was influenced by the following works
Like Lupin III, he steals things anyway. A sick man who steals because he wants to steal.
Elements taken from Sherlock Holmes. Digging underground tunnels, the Bruce Partington, blue garnets, etc.
Like Milky Holmes, the thief and the detective fight.
Positive anyway, like the cartoon characters of the early 90s.
A net meme of the movie Commando.
Of course, I also refer to historical events and incidents.
On the hidden side, I made them experience capitalism and communism, dictatorship and democracy, these opposing ideologies using time leaps.
Each ideology has its good points and its bad points, and I made sure to go through them all.
I based the time leap on something like Steinsgate.
It is also influenced by the Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
The song is as challenging to listen to as a sound MAD video.
A growth system that allows the player to choose the growth of the unit, not just random numbers.
Massive reinforcements like fe7if, enhanced WeaponTriangle and Support bonus.
The two-part structure, front and back(hidden), was influenced by the original Legend of Zelda.
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I would say my writing is primarily influenced by trash isekai, late 1800s crime thrillers/mystery novels, and people talking in real life.
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I usually find a song or album that I vibe with and write according to what it makes me “feel”, rather than what the song is actually about. Using the song as “fuel” for my imagination to work
Of course, Emulation Theory comes from the Muse album and Tales of The Conquerors is inspired by the single player campaigns in Age of Empires 2 (which I love to a fault). But I’ve also used Stargazer by Rainbow and Magica by Dio as ‘inspiration’ for some short stories that I wrote
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History
Watching my friends do stupid shit
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Neil Breen taught me everything about writing through his programmable, virtual, reality cyber program. The corrupt one.
I mean, how can anyone not be left in awe of his amazing talent!
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Glad to see you like AoE2.
I also created an infiltration stage based on the final stage of the Barbarossa campaign in AoE2.
In this stage, only NPCs are on the map, but after a few turns, they become enemies and attack you.
This is a reference to the Barbarossa Campaign’s final stage, where only for 30 minutes you are allied with the enemy and can act freely.
aok_fe_jpn
I would like to make this translated version someday.
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That’s amazing! I don’t have HD, I’ve only played the original and DE, but Barbarossa is a cool campaign and its last chapter is so good. My favourite one is Bari, and I thought about making something similar to it
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What are some of these classics that you are mentioning? Just curious.
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