Stories are the voices of the people who write them. Suppose that Fire Emblem follows certain story topics or downtime that can bring the soul out of characters and the world as a whole. When considering the topics or exposition in a story, what click for you the most? What doesn’t click for you?
For me, I think a big turnoff are the large story expositions that FE had followed since its inception. While I personally enjoy country/continental drama, having to read countries in different forms of “Evil Empire conquers unprepared country” or “The King of the Kingdom was assasinated by the Evil Bishops” definitely takes a toll on your person and one can question how to improve, or even remove the exposition and scatter it through the story.
“Downtime” or “Interlude” talk I think are better ways to introduce your world and explain plot points or characters. Food talk is always welcome, but I feel like everything in life, you need moderation in everything. Reading about interactions with characters in the world is something I believe I sorely missed out on my project, along with map exposition which I think needs improvements.
But enough of my monologue, what do you guys think?
I’m not going to delve deep in to the argument of how much there is talk vs how much is actually being said, but in my opinion:
You generally want to avoid exposition dumps, especially at the very beginning of your game. You can introduce the various countries/nations little by little as the story progresses and those countries/nations and the situation/dilemma in them becomes more relevant. In my project, I have some variations of this sort of dialogue depending on which units are alive and which ones are not.
I personally prefer the guide as a place to have additional information. Some people say that most players don’t bother checking the guide, but the issue I have with interlude chapters that exist to give you dialogue to read is that you’ll either have to read everything at once or you’ll miss out on it for the rest of the game - and there can be quite a lot of text. It’s almost like taking a book, but if you don’t finish reading it in one sitting, you don’t get to read that book again. Maybe this is non–issue for some, but for me this is a huge deal.
While the guide is less interactive, you can always come back to it and refresh your memory. You can also read its contents at your own pace. If you use the world map in your hack, you also have “downtime” between chapters for reading.
There’s also the option to repurpose the guide as a codex of sorts: a talk conversation or a support conversation unlocks a codex entry on the unit or the topic they’re talking about, and you can go more in detail about it in the codex. Let’s say that your two units are talking about a monster from a fairy tale → this talk unlocks the codex entry for this monster → you now don’t have to give longwinded exposition about it in conversations, you can have all the info about this monster in the codex. And it doesn’t have to be monsters, either. It can be anything you want.
While this approach makes it so that you can end up missing out on some backstory/lore, it allows players to read more on something at their own volition and at their own pace, and that’s personally something I value a lot when it comes to any information or dialogue not directly related to the main story.
-By its nature, it demands brevity from the writer, so there is less room for boring exposition. Of course, you CAN shove exposition in there, but with how awkward it is to fit any lengthy sentences to a battle convo, even the exposition has to be shorter and more concise than usual.
-It immediately puts the characters into a situation where it is easier to reveal what they are truly like than in a standard interlude convo or map talk convo. And it is often a hell of a lot more interesting, most of the time.
-Unlike interludes or map convos or pre-story exposition dumps, they are seamlessly integrated into the gameplay and in fact elevate it. You move your blorbos around and attack the boss, then suddenly your blorbo starts speaking and they express remorse or show their hate or their shock or their last confession of love or whatever. What used to be a standard gameplay segment has just become a lot more hype.
-This applies to both romhacks and vanilla. FE8 Lyon wouldn’t hit nowhere near as hard if it weren’t for his battle convo with Ephraim.
In conclusion, best type of talk, make more battle convos, make sure that as many of your characters have at least one battle convo with someone.
I love how in Tellius, in POR, when Ike first moves across the Gallian border the forest is so thick and hot that it slows everyone down, and during that time Shinon gives Ike a scare-story about typical racist depictions of laguz. We get to imagine powerful monstrous creatures that can move through this undergrowth with shocking speed and agility… and then we can actually confirm, with our eyeballs, what these creatures are when Ranulf and his platoon show up.
The exposition is fun and natural because for a moment a new player may take it at face value - why would we distrust Shinon? He’s been an abrasive but useful veteran member of the group so far - and this will impact the shock they get later, and a returning player can note the standalone beorc idea of laguz as a point of rare contrast.
A lot of exposition is treated as a flat “this is what happened, objectively”, but I find fun to see exposition as a story in itself - counterable, undetermined, and something that can be built on for massive effect. I don’t think Fire Emblem’s exposition is bad so much as its writing is often cliche, and its exposition reflects that.
“Talking is a free action” in these games but some mid-battle scenes push it. The best time for support scenes and talk scenes in general? Between chapters, or in scenes immensely important to the main story.
No exposition dumps until it answers questions the audience is already asking, and the audience isn’t likely to ask these questions until their answers matter to characters the audience cares about.