I'm OK with Master Classes mostly being sidegrades that are only "upgrades" once you get S and S+ in whatever your relevant skills are. I'm even OK with them being weirdly cavalry-centric, as much mounting/dismounting as that can require on endgame maps to really make them work best.
But Petra should be able to be a Hero, Hilda should be able to be a War Master, Linhardt should be able to be a Gremory, Lysithea should be able to be a Dark Bishop, and Hubert should be able to ride a flying horse
I have no particular hopes for the DLC classes but if I had my druthers, some of them would look like this:
New tier of classes for each of the lords (Edelgard would get Conqueror, which is a lot like Emperor except it can use magic, Claude would be like a flying cannoneer, I have no idea about Dimitri)
Infantry lance class for every tier: Piker/Lance Knight/Sentinel (Lancefaire, Lance Crit +10, I dunno)
Trueblade
Berserker (Axefaire, Bowfaire, Crit +20)
Dark Flyer (Dark Tomefaire, Black Tomefaire, Canto)
Druid (Canas's class from FE7—Dark Tomefaire, Lifesteal, Fiendish Blow)
I don't know what their mastery skills would look like but they'd be pretty cool I bet. Also I guess you'd need to give us some really hard missions to play on because these classes would be strong
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
I'm OK with Master Classes mostly being sidegrades that are only "upgrades" once you get S and S+ in whatever your relevant skills are. I'm even OK with them being weirdly cavalry-centric, as much mounting/dismounting as that can require on endgame maps to really make them work best.
But Petra should be able to be a Hero, Hilda should be able to be a War Master, Linhardt should be able to be a Gremory, Lysithea should be able to be a Dark Bishop, and Hubert should be able to ride a flying horse
Oh wow I didn't even catch that hero was gender locked, that is nonsense
realises how harsh on himself he truly is in B, and goes out to dinner with him
haven't seen the A yet but I imagine it'll be really sweet
I kind of also like, B rank spoilers for those two:
That Sylvain also kind of low key gets her to realize that they are actually very similar? Dorothea, through her supports, is implied to be leaving a lot of heart broken young men strung out behind her. In their B support, he calls her out for part of her interest in interacting with him is about money, and she calls him out for wanting to be around her cause she is pretty. It's actually fun to see it twist like that after their C support. And one of the few times that got me to think that while the game does not draw as much attention to it, she is tossing men aside the same way Sylvain tosses women aside. It's just that a lot of her supports don't focus on it.
I dunno, I'm always a little dubious of the, "you and me, we're the same" argument in these scenarios because Sylvain, as a crest-bearing nobleman, has immense political power and protection from consequences, so he can burn every bridge in as dramatic a way as possible, whereas Dorothea, as a crest-less commoner woman, has to make sure to finagle every possible suitor into leaving her be when she's done in a way that won't make them harm her socially, professionally, politically, or physically.
I do really like their supports though! I just think that Dorothea has a massive incentive to go along with Sylvain's perception of events because it'd appease him for it to be true, rather than because their actual social circumstances are truly similar.
Byleth's B support with Sylvain earns him his place as first against the wall
"You were a spoiled brat who had no pressure placed on them for having a Crest" Sylvain I grew up killing people to put bread on the table
"Nobody looks at me as anything but a stud horse because I'm rich and have a crest, everyone just wants to take advantage of me," especially after his C support with Mercedes (and Dorothea's support with Hanneman) going into how the Crest system is actually much worse for women than it is for men, whether those women have a crest or not
That boy has no real self-awareness regarding his own privilege
It is incredibly wrong to say Sylvain and Dorothea are even remotely the same.
Sylvain is actively toying with women. Stringing them along. Lying to them. Cheating on them. He’s just fucking around, consequences or feelings be damned. He tricks women into thinking he’s into them, has his fun, then hurts them.
Dorothea is just a person who is in the dating pool, looking for someone to court. She is upfront about what she wants. She simply goes out on dates, and when it doesn’t click for her, she tries someone else. She’s not doing anything wrong or deceptive. Going out on a date with someone is just that, a single date. She is not a bad person for not being able to find someone she likes enough to continue past that.
Anyway, I got to the timeskip with Blue Lions last night, and honestly Dimitri is really frustrating me as a character.
I’m into the idea of a tragic revenge story where the protagonist is misled into taking revenge on the wrong person. As a concept, that’s fine, as much as the idea of Edelgard getting murdered for something she didn’t do is upsetting.
But the problem is I don’t think the writing did a good enough job actually setting this up? Like, it actually doesn’t make much sense at all?
We had that whole scene after the death of Jeralt where we are spying on the Flame Emperor, her uncle, and Monica, and it basically goes:
Flame Emperor: Yo you guys are responsible for the Duscur tragedy, I fucking hate you and you will pay for it.
Dimitri: OMG the Flame Emperor is responsible for the Duscur tragedy.
Like, he’s not even tricked or misled into assuming Edelgard’s guilt! He eavesdrops on the bad guys and the conversation explicitly points out it wasn’t her!
So now every scene where Dimitri is singling out Edelgard as the big bad genocider I’m just glaring at the screen thinking “you’re a dumb motherfucker”
Like even if he was just like “she may not be guilty, but she’s working with the ones who are so I demand answers and I demand justice!” then that would be fine! But the way it’s written, it’s just real sloppy and is taking me out of the story.
1. He’s already strongly associated Flame Emperor = flames of tragedy at that point because of Remire Village, so how much is he even listening? Byleth has to prevent him from just charging in at that scene.
2. Why should he necessarily believe one line from an enemy openly conversing on the monastery grounds? From his perspective, if the Flame Emperor is so innocent, why are they standing there talking to these evil-doers? (Especially given what we know of Dimitri’s character - he would fight, even when it would be foolish to do so). I think it’d be easy to understand why Dimitri would be suspicious of the conversation.
1. He’s already strongly associated Flame Emperor = flames of tragedy at that point because of Remire Village, so how much is he even listening? Byleth has to prevent him from just charging in at that scene.
2. Why should he necessarily believe one line from an enemy openly conversing on the monastery grounds? From his perspective, if the Flame Emperor is so innocent, why are they standing there talking to these evil-doers? (Especially given what we know of Dimitri’s character - he would fight, even when it would be foolish to do so). I think it’d be easy to understand why Dimitri would be suspicious of the conversation.
I guess it doesn’t come across like suspicion to me. He just seems to completely and blatantly misread the conversation entirely.
But yeah for sure his trauma is fucking with him and making him irrational. I get that. I just...feel this could have been done a lot better, in a way that doesn’t make him look as dumb.
1. He’s already strongly associated Flame Emperor = flames of tragedy at that point because of Remire Village, so how much is he even listening? Byleth has to prevent him from just charging in at that scene.
2. Why should he necessarily believe one line from an enemy openly conversing on the monastery grounds? From his perspective, if the Flame Emperor is so innocent, why are they standing there talking to these evil-doers? (Especially given what we know of Dimitri’s character - he would fight, even when it would be foolish to do so). I think it’d be easy to understand why Dimitri would be suspicious of the conversation.
I guess it doesn’t come across like suspicion to me. He just seems to completely and blatantly misread the conversation entirely.
But yeah for sure his trauma is fucking with him and making him irrational. I get that. I just...feel this could have been done a lot better, in a way that doesn’t make him look as dumb.
I’m going back over the two scenes again and to add to that:
The Flame Emperor also tries to tell Byleth they weren’t involved, and Jeralt doesn’t believe them, and if Byleth tries to tell Dimitri that they’re innocent, Dimitri says “and you believe him? He became an accomplice when he refused to turn himself in and return to us to the monastery.”
So yes, the Flame Emperor is an accomplice and that’s terrible enough in Dimitri’s eyes (who himself has too strong a sense of justice to ever do what the Flame Emperor does) and a single line from the Flame Emperor isn’t about to sway him - especially when it’s not followed by immediate action.
Also, immediately after the Flame Emperor says “There will be no salvation for you and your kind” (which isn’t a direct threat, to be honest), Thales says the Duscur incident was “All so that you may acquire the strength you need”, so even if Dimitri is paying attention, that’s only serving to show him that the Flame Emperor knows who’s responsible for the Duscur incident and hasn’t even tied to punish them or turn them in yet, and is also still accepting the perks the Duscur incident brought them.
It’s also moved beyond the Duscur tragedy, too, at that point - Byleth and Dimitri have witnessed the Flame Emperor be present at the scenes of all kinds of fuckery while at the monastery. I have a lot fewer issues with Dimitri not believing the Flame Emperor than I do Byleth agreeing to join the Flame Emperor or wanting to defend them.
1. He’s already strongly associated Flame Emperor = flames of tragedy at that point because of Remire Village, so how much is he even listening? Byleth has to prevent him from just charging in at that scene.
2. Why should he necessarily believe one line from an enemy openly conversing on the monastery grounds? From his perspective, if the Flame Emperor is so innocent, why are they standing there talking to these evil-doers? (Especially given what we know of Dimitri’s character - he would fight, even when it would be foolish to do so). I think it’d be easy to understand why Dimitri would be suspicious of the conversation.
I guess it doesn’t come across like suspicion to me. He just seems to completely and blatantly misread the conversation entirely.
But yeah for sure his trauma is fucking with him and making him irrational. I get that. I just...feel this could have been done a lot better, in a way that doesn’t make him look as dumb.
I’m going back over the two scenes again and to add to that:
The Flame Emperor also tries to tell Byleth they weren’t involved, and Jeralt doesn’t believe them, and if Byleth tries to tell Dimitri that they’re innocent, Dimitri says “and you believe him? He became an accomplice when he refused to turn himself in and return to us to the monastery.”
So yes, the Flame Emperor is an accomplice and that’s terrible enough in Dimitri’s eyes (who himself has too strong a sense of justice to ever do what the Flame Emperor does) and a single line from the Flame Emperor isn’t about to sway him - especially when it’s not followed by immediate action.
Also, immediately after the Flame Emperor says “There will be no salvation for you and your kind” (which isn’t a direct threat, to be honest), Thales says the Duscur incident was “All so that you may acquire the strength you need”, so even if Dimitri is paying attention, that’s only serving to show him that the Flame Emperor knows who’s responsible for the Duscur incident and hasn’t even tied to punish them or turn them in yet, and is also still accepting the perks the Duscur incident brought them.
It’s also moved beyond the Duscur tragedy, too, at that point - Byleth and Dimitri have witnessed the Flame Emperor be present at the scenes of all kinds of fuckery while at the monastery. I have a lot fewer issues with Dimitri not believing the Flame Emperor than I do Byleth agreeing to join the Flame Emperor or wanting to defend them.
Basically my problem is that
Dimitri specifically assigns the blame for Duscur to the Flame Emperor. He doesn’t talk about her like she is an accomplice, he talks about her like she is the specific person who did it. Which doesn’t make sense.
Honestly just some minor tweaks to the dialogue in that eavesdropping scene would have fixed this problem completely. As it is it’s just weird to me.
I agree that in the Edelgard path they don’t give Byleth enough reason to side with her, though. In context, at the moment of the decision, she still seems like a bad guy. At that point there’s little reason to believe she didn’t actively get your dad killed. It’s only after you side with her that the writing starts to make that choice feel justified.
So yeah overall as much as I like this game and the characters, I do feel the plotting has a tendency to be sloppy. There’s just a lot of little things about character motivations that feel like they could have used an extra pass in the scripting to make sure things follow through better.
It is incredibly wrong to say Sylvain and Dorothea are even remotely the same.
Sylvain is actively toying with women. Stringing them along. Lying to them. Cheating on them. He’s just fucking around, consequences or feelings be damned. He tricks women into thinking he’s into them, has his fun, then hurts them.
Dorothea is just a person who is in the dating pool, looking for someone to court. She is upfront about what she wants. She simply goes out on dates, and when it doesn’t click for her, she tries someone else. She’s not doing anything wrong or deceptive. Going out on a date with someone is just that, a single date. She is not a bad person for not being able to find someone she likes enough to continue past that.
The only time I saw Dorothea doing the same kinds of stuff Sylvain was doing was in her supports with Caspar, which really felt off character for her (actually felt like they wrote it for Hilda and just used it for Dorothea instead)
It is incredibly wrong to say Sylvain and Dorothea are even remotely the same.
Sylvain is actively toying with women. Stringing them along. Lying to them. Cheating on them. He’s just fucking around, consequences or feelings be damned. He tricks women into thinking he’s into them, has his fun, then hurts them.
Dorothea is just a person who is in the dating pool, looking for someone to court. She is upfront about what she wants. She simply goes out on dates, and when it doesn’t click for her, she tries someone else. She’s not doing anything wrong or deceptive. Going out on a date with someone is just that, a single date. She is not a bad person for not being able to find someone she likes enough to continue past that.
I don’t remember him actively toying with women, or lying to them? Like I know he Plays the field a lot. At the same time I do remember the Ingrid support where she talks to him about spending lots of time mollifying a lot of hurt people, but I thought that was more about just he’s dated a lot of women. Re-reading his Byleth support though it is either he’s cheating on them, or just expects them to know he is openly dating multiple women at one time. Which is not great either, as that’s something one should be upfront about. And you can get him to admit post timeskip that he was being a sexist asshole when he was younger, do maybe the former is more of what they were getting at.
With Dorothea, I will admit I hadn’t thought about the class implications of what they are doing, and how that makes it different. That is fair.
Maybe my comparison was not as apt as I thought it was.
The more I think about it(general first half spoilers for the game)
I think the Flame Emperor subplot in general was a mistake. It feels like it’s just there to be a twist for the sake of having a twist. And it’s a cool twist, sure. But at the same time, I feel like it muddles things a hell of a lot. A lot of my biggest problems with how character motivations and actions are handled can be traced back to having to write around the twist. I feel like it hurts Edelgard most of all, especially in her own path. It ends up making the choice to side with her a metagame one rather than a hard moral dilemma.
I think it probably would have been better if the villains of the first act were just Team Twisted, with Edelgard’s turn on the church happening as a shock that seems unrelated. That makes the choice to side with or against her in her route more about if you trust in her and her ideals or not, instead of “I’m gonna pick the bad guy because I know if I do they’ll justify it later and I want to see her story”. Then in the timeskip, we get the reveal that she is in league with the Twisted. In her own path we can explore the abusive relationship that led to her being under their thumb, and set up her and Hubert betraying them. In other paths, especially Dimitri’s, this lets the narrative that she is the bad guy take shape, and lead Dimitri down his path of vengeance.
You sacrifice a neat plot twist, but you get a cleaner plot overall without the Flame Emperor being a thing.
1. He’s already strongly associated Flame Emperor = flames of tragedy at that point because of Remire Village, so how much is he even listening? Byleth has to prevent him from just charging in at that scene.
2. Why should he necessarily believe one line from an enemy openly conversing on the monastery grounds? From his perspective, if the Flame Emperor is so innocent, why are they standing there talking to these evil-doers? (Especially given what we know of Dimitri’s character - he would fight, even when it would be foolish to do so). I think it’d be easy to understand why Dimitri would be suspicious of the conversation.
I guess it doesn’t come across like suspicion to me. He just seems to completely and blatantly misread the conversation entirely.
But yeah for sure his trauma is fucking with him and making him irrational. I get that. I just...feel this could have been done a lot better, in a way that doesn’t make him look as dumb.
I’m going back over the two scenes again and to add to that:
The Flame Emperor also tries to tell Byleth they weren’t involved, and Jeralt doesn’t believe them, and if Byleth tries to tell Dimitri that they’re innocent, Dimitri says “and you believe him? He became an accomplice when he refused to turn himself in and return to us to the monastery.”
So yes, the Flame Emperor is an accomplice and that’s terrible enough in Dimitri’s eyes (who himself has too strong a sense of justice to ever do what the Flame Emperor does) and a single line from the Flame Emperor isn’t about to sway him - especially when it’s not followed by immediate action.
Also, immediately after the Flame Emperor says “There will be no salvation for you and your kind” (which isn’t a direct threat, to be honest), Thales says the Duscur incident was “All so that you may acquire the strength you need”, so even if Dimitri is paying attention, that’s only serving to show him that the Flame Emperor knows who’s responsible for the Duscur incident and hasn’t even tied to punish them or turn them in yet, and is also still accepting the perks the Duscur incident brought them.
It’s also moved beyond the Duscur tragedy, too, at that point - Byleth and Dimitri have witnessed the Flame Emperor be present at the scenes of all kinds of fuckery while at the monastery. I have a lot fewer issues with Dimitri not believing the Flame Emperor than I do Byleth agreeing to join the Flame Emperor or wanting to defend them.
Basically my problem is that
Dimitri specifically assigns the blame for Duscur to the Flame Emperor. He doesn’t talk about her like she is an accomplice, he talks about her like she is the specific person who did it. Which doesn’t make sense.
Honestly just some minor tweaks to the dialogue in that eavesdropping scene would have fixed this problem completely. As it is it’s just weird to me.
I agree that in the Edelgard path they don’t give Byleth enough reason to side with her, though. In context, at the moment of the decision, she still seems like a bad guy. At that point there’s little reason to believe she didn’t actively get your dad killed. It’s only after you side with her that the writing starts to make that choice feel justified.
So yeah overall as much as I like this game and the characters, I do feel the plotting has a tendency to be sloppy. There’s just a lot of little things about character motivations that feel like they could have used an extra pass in the scripting to make sure things follow through better.
This is where I’d be really curious as to what the original Japanese for that scene is!
Okay, one last thought:
The Flame Emperor doesn’t actually state their innocence of the whole plan - just the ‘gruesome deeds’ that TWSITD committed. So it’s perfectly reasonable for Dimitri to believe they might have had a hand in preparations or at least had foreknowledge of the event.
But yes - the whole Flame Emperor business is poorly handled, especially given it’s never mentioned again after the reveal.
The more I think about it(general first half spoilers for the game)
I think the Flame Emperor subplot in general was a mistake. It feels like it’s just there to be a twist for the sake of having a twist. And it’s a cool twist, sure. But at the same time, I feel like it muddles things a hell of a lot. A lot of my biggest problems with how character motivations and actions are handled can be traced back to having to write around the twist. I feel like it hurts Edelgard most of all, especially in her own path. It ends up making the choice to side with her a metagame one rather than a hard moral dilemma.
I think it probably would have been better if the villains of the first act were just Team Twisted, with Edelgard’s turn on the church happening as a shock that seems unrelated. That makes the choice to side with or against her in her route more about if you trust in her and her ideals or not, instead of “I’m gonna pick the bad guy because I know if I do they’ll justify it later and I want to see her story”. Then in the timeskip, we get the reveal that she is in league with the Twisted. In her own path we can explore the abusive relationship that led to her being under their thumb, and set up her and Hubert betraying them. In other paths, especially Dimitri’s, this lets the narrative that she is the bad guy take shape, and lead Dimitri down his path of vengeance.
You sacrifice a neat plot twist, but you get a cleaner plot overall without the Flame Emperor being a thing.
I'll register my disagreement with this.
General pre-timeskip spoilers
I think that Edelgard being the Flame Emperor is great, especially in Crimson Flower, though a lot of that is dependent on seeing her supports (which is, of course, a prerequisite for getting Crimson Flower at all)
Hubert and Edelgard, in story sequences and in their shared supports, make no secrets that they are planning terrible things, and that they will shake the world to achieve Edelgard's ideals. Edelgard sets this up, too, every time she talks to Byleth: she spends the entire first half of the game feeling out whether they would be willing to bring down the Crest system, whether they would be willing to fight the church, and how far they would be willing to go for their ideals. Edelgard shares everything with you in her C+ support, everything that matters—
And then there's that final bit, the last betrayal, where she expects you to reject her.
And I think that works beautifully for her character. She expects you to hate her, to side with Rhea, and she just wants for the exchange to be over.
Now, I need to qualify this: the choice that sends you down Silver Snow or Crimson Flower isn't "side with the Flame Emperor" or "side with the Church." It's "I must kill Edelgard" or "I must protect Edelgard," rooted very much in your personal relationship with the character. Seeing what she's done, do you believe she's more than a monster? Do you believe that she is all the things she's done, and that her ideals are housed in a tower built of corpses?
That it's so intensely personal, that it's so much rooted in how you react to her and how much she's been able to win over you, the player, that it's based on how much you care about her more than your larger political reasoning, is probably the strongest moment of writing in the game, to me
Very early Black Eagles run, Hubert/Byleth first support convo:
Oh aren't you just precious! I'd just love to see you try something, kid.
Also Hubert/Edelgard C rank:
Hubert I'm gonna need you to dial it down. Painting the path forward red in blood? You're at like a 13 on the 'drama' scale, please bring it to around a 6.
The more I think about it(general first half spoilers for the game)
I think the Flame Emperor subplot in general was a mistake. It feels like it’s just there to be a twist for the sake of having a twist. And it’s a cool twist, sure. But at the same time, I feel like it muddles things a hell of a lot. A lot of my biggest problems with how character motivations and actions are handled can be traced back to having to write around the twist. I feel like it hurts Edelgard most of all, especially in her own path. It ends up making the choice to side with her a metagame one rather than a hard moral dilemma.
I think it probably would have been better if the villains of the first act were just Team Twisted, with Edelgard’s turn on the church happening as a shock that seems unrelated. That makes the choice to side with or against her in her route more about if you trust in her and her ideals or not, instead of “I’m gonna pick the bad guy because I know if I do they’ll justify it later and I want to see her story”. Then in the timeskip, we get the reveal that she is in league with the Twisted. In her own path we can explore the abusive relationship that led to her being under their thumb, and set up her and Hubert betraying them. In other paths, especially Dimitri’s, this lets the narrative that she is the bad guy take shape, and lead Dimitri down his path of vengeance.
You sacrifice a neat plot twist, but you get a cleaner plot overall without the Flame Emperor being a thing.
I'll register my disagreement with this.
General pre-timeskip spoilers
I think that Edelgard being the Flame Emperor is great, especially in Crimson Flower, though a lot of that is dependent on seeing her supports (which is, of course, a prerequisite for getting Crimson Flower at all)
Hubert and Edelgard, in story sequences and in their shared supports, make no secrets that they are planning terrible things, and that they will shake the world to achieve Edelgard's ideals. Edelgard sets this up, too, every time she talks to Byleth: she spends the entire first half of the game feeling out whether they would be willing to bring down the Crest system, whether they would be willing to fight the church, and how far they would be willing to go for their ideals. Edelgard shares everything with you in her C+ support, everything that matters—
And then there's that final bit, the last betrayal, where she expects you to reject her.
And I think that works beautifully for her character. She expects you to hate her, to side with Rhea, and she just wants for the exchange to be over.
Now, I need to qualify this: the choice that sends you down Silver Snow or Crimson Flower isn't "side with the Flame Emperor" or "side with the Church." It's "I must kill Edelgard" or "I must protect Edelgard," rooted very much in your personal relationship with the character. Seeing what she's done, do you believe she's more than a monster? Do you believe that she is all the things she's done, and that her ideals are housed in a tower built of corpses?
That it's so intensely personal, that it's so much rooted in how you react to her and how much she's been able to win over you, the player, that it's based on how much you care about her more than your larger political reasoning, is probably the strongest moment of writing in the game, to me
Personally I think all of this is intact without the Flame Emperor, and is stronger without it because you don’t have a situation where Byleth just kind of forgets about her dad being murdered and the other horrible shit that the Flame Emperor is seemingly responsible for. The Twisted just come across as so cartoonishly evil, and that just makes the choice to side with or against Edelgard feel less like a valid moral dilemma to me.
The more I think about it(general first half spoilers for the game)
I think the Flame Emperor subplot in general was a mistake. It feels like it’s just there to be a twist for the sake of having a twist. And it’s a cool twist, sure. But at the same time, I feel like it muddles things a hell of a lot. A lot of my biggest problems with how character motivations and actions are handled can be traced back to having to write around the twist. I feel like it hurts Edelgard most of all, especially in her own path. It ends up making the choice to side with her a metagame one rather than a hard moral dilemma.
I think it probably would have been better if the villains of the first act were just Team Twisted, with Edelgard’s turn on the church happening as a shock that seems unrelated. That makes the choice to side with or against her in her route more about if you trust in her and her ideals or not, instead of “I’m gonna pick the bad guy because I know if I do they’ll justify it later and I want to see her story”. Then in the timeskip, we get the reveal that she is in league with the Twisted. In her own path we can explore the abusive relationship that led to her being under their thumb, and set up her and Hubert betraying them. In other paths, especially Dimitri’s, this lets the narrative that she is the bad guy take shape, and lead Dimitri down his path of vengeance.
You sacrifice a neat plot twist, but you get a cleaner plot overall without the Flame Emperor being a thing.
I'll register my disagreement with this.
General pre-timeskip spoilers
I think that Edelgard being the Flame Emperor is great, especially in Crimson Flower, though a lot of that is dependent on seeing her supports (which is, of course, a prerequisite for getting Crimson Flower at all)
Hubert and Edelgard, in story sequences and in their shared supports, make no secrets that they are planning terrible things, and that they will shake the world to achieve Edelgard's ideals. Edelgard sets this up, too, every time she talks to Byleth: she spends the entire first half of the game feeling out whether they would be willing to bring down the Crest system, whether they would be willing to fight the church, and how far they would be willing to go for their ideals. Edelgard shares everything with you in her C+ support, everything that matters—
And then there's that final bit, the last betrayal, where she expects you to reject her.
And I think that works beautifully for her character. She expects you to hate her, to side with Rhea, and she just wants for the exchange to be over.
Now, I need to qualify this: the choice that sends you down Silver Snow or Crimson Flower isn't "side with the Flame Emperor" or "side with the Church." It's "I must kill Edelgard" or "I must protect Edelgard," rooted very much in your personal relationship with the character. Seeing what she's done, do you believe she's more than a monster? Do you believe that she is all the things she's done, and that her ideals are housed in a tower built of corpses?
That it's so intensely personal, that it's so much rooted in how you react to her and how much she's been able to win over you, the player, that it's based on how much you care about her more than your larger political reasoning, is probably the strongest moment of writing in the game, to me
Personally I think all of this is intact without the Flame Emperor, and is stronger without it because you don’t have a situation where Byleth just kind of forgets about her dad being murdered and the other horrible shit that the Flame Emperor is seemingly responsible for. The Twisted just come across as so cartoonishly evil, and that just makes the choice to side with or against Edelgard feel less like a valid moral dilemma to me.
That's a fair point, though I will point out that Byleth doesn't forget about Jeralt's killers, as alluded to in their later conversation where Hubert pre-emptively talks them down from going on a murder rampage against the Twisted. Rather, in that moment you're picking whether or not Byleth trusts Edelgard when she said that she had nothing to do with what happened in Remire, and assumedly nothing to do with what happened to Jeralt. The Flame Emperor asks Byleth to join forces with her against Solon—which gives Byleth all the mental real estate they need, I guess
I would agree with you if Edelgard/The Flame Emperor wasn't so open in their contempt and their willingness to work against the Twisted at every opportunity—the dialogue she gets when slamming up against the Death Knight, attacking Kronika, or going after Solon illustrates that really well
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Hubert should have gotten Dark Flyer
New tier of classes for each of the lords (Edelgard would get Conqueror, which is a lot like Emperor except it can use magic, Claude would be like a flying cannoneer, I have no idea about Dimitri)
Infantry lance class for every tier: Piker/Lance Knight/Sentinel (Lancefaire, Lance Crit +10, I dunno)
Trueblade
Berserker (Axefaire, Bowfaire, Crit +20)
Dark Flyer (Dark Tomefaire, Black Tomefaire, Canto)
Druid (Canas's class from FE7—Dark Tomefaire, Lifesteal, Fiendish Blow)
I don't know what their mastery skills would look like but they'd be pretty cool I bet. Also I guess you'd need to give us some really hard missions to play on because these classes would be strong
Oh wow I didn't even catch that hero was gender locked, that is nonsense
Steam ID - VeldrinD | SS Post | Wishlist
I do really like their supports though! I just think that Dorothea has a massive incentive to go along with Sylvain's perception of events because it'd appease him for it to be true, rather than because their actual social circumstances are truly similar.
"Nobody looks at me as anything but a stud horse because I'm rich and have a crest, everyone just wants to take advantage of me," especially after his C support with Mercedes (and Dorothea's support with Hanneman) going into how the Crest system is actually much worse for women than it is for men, whether those women have a crest or not
That boy has no real self-awareness regarding his own privilege
wow, the full length version of this kicks even more ass
Dorothea is just a person who is in the dating pool, looking for someone to court. She is upfront about what she wants. She simply goes out on dates, and when it doesn’t click for her, she tries someone else. She’s not doing anything wrong or deceptive. Going out on a date with someone is just that, a single date. She is not a bad person for not being able to find someone she likes enough to continue past that.
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But the problem is I don’t think the writing did a good enough job actually setting this up? Like, it actually doesn’t make much sense at all?
We had that whole scene after the death of Jeralt where we are spying on the Flame Emperor, her uncle, and Monica, and it basically goes:
Flame Emperor: Yo you guys are responsible for the Duscur tragedy, I fucking hate you and you will pay for it.
Dimitri: OMG the Flame Emperor is responsible for the Duscur tragedy.
Like, he’s not even tricked or misled into assuming Edelgard’s guilt! He eavesdrops on the bad guys and the conversation explicitly points out it wasn’t her!
So now every scene where Dimitri is singling out Edelgard as the big bad genocider I’m just glaring at the screen thinking “you’re a dumb motherfucker”
Like even if he was just like “she may not be guilty, but she’s working with the ones who are so I demand answers and I demand justice!” then that would be fine! But the way it’s written, it’s just real sloppy and is taking me out of the story.
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2. Why should he necessarily believe one line from an enemy openly conversing on the monastery grounds? From his perspective, if the Flame Emperor is so innocent, why are they standing there talking to these evil-doers? (Especially given what we know of Dimitri’s character - he would fight, even when it would be foolish to do so). I think it’d be easy to understand why Dimitri would be suspicious of the conversation.
But yeah for sure his trauma is fucking with him and making him irrational. I get that. I just...feel this could have been done a lot better, in a way that doesn’t make him look as dumb.
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I’m going back over the two scenes again and to add to that:
So yes, the Flame Emperor is an accomplice and that’s terrible enough in Dimitri’s eyes (who himself has too strong a sense of justice to ever do what the Flame Emperor does) and a single line from the Flame Emperor isn’t about to sway him - especially when it’s not followed by immediate action.
Also, immediately after the Flame Emperor says “There will be no salvation for you and your kind” (which isn’t a direct threat, to be honest), Thales says the Duscur incident was “All so that you may acquire the strength you need”, so even if Dimitri is paying attention, that’s only serving to show him that the Flame Emperor knows who’s responsible for the Duscur incident and hasn’t even tied to punish them or turn them in yet, and is also still accepting the perks the Duscur incident brought them.
It’s also moved beyond the Duscur tragedy, too, at that point - Byleth and Dimitri have witnessed the Flame Emperor be present at the scenes of all kinds of fuckery while at the monastery. I have a lot fewer issues with Dimitri not believing the Flame Emperor than I do Byleth agreeing to join the Flame Emperor or wanting to defend them.
Basically my problem is that
Honestly just some minor tweaks to the dialogue in that eavesdropping scene would have fixed this problem completely. As it is it’s just weird to me.
I agree that in the Edelgard path they don’t give Byleth enough reason to side with her, though. In context, at the moment of the decision, she still seems like a bad guy. At that point there’s little reason to believe she didn’t actively get your dad killed. It’s only after you side with her that the writing starts to make that choice feel justified.
So yeah overall as much as I like this game and the characters, I do feel the plotting has a tendency to be sloppy. There’s just a lot of little things about character motivations that feel like they could have used an extra pass in the scripting to make sure things follow through better.
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The only time I saw Dorothea doing the same kinds of stuff Sylvain was doing was in her supports with Caspar, which really felt off character for her (actually felt like they wrote it for Hilda and just used it for Dorothea instead)
With Dorothea, I will admit I hadn’t thought about the class implications of what they are doing, and how that makes it different. That is fair.
Maybe my comparison was not as apt as I thought it was.
I think it probably would have been better if the villains of the first act were just Team Twisted, with Edelgard’s turn on the church happening as a shock that seems unrelated. That makes the choice to side with or against her in her route more about if you trust in her and her ideals or not, instead of “I’m gonna pick the bad guy because I know if I do they’ll justify it later and I want to see her story”. Then in the timeskip, we get the reveal that she is in league with the Twisted. In her own path we can explore the abusive relationship that led to her being under their thumb, and set up her and Hubert betraying them. In other paths, especially Dimitri’s, this lets the narrative that she is the bad guy take shape, and lead Dimitri down his path of vengeance.
You sacrifice a neat plot twist, but you get a cleaner plot overall without the Flame Emperor being a thing.
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This is where I’d be really curious as to what the original Japanese for that scene is!
Okay, one last thought:
But yes - the whole Flame Emperor business is poorly handled, especially given it’s never mentioned again after the reveal.
I'll register my disagreement with this.
General pre-timeskip spoilers
Hubert and Edelgard, in story sequences and in their shared supports, make no secrets that they are planning terrible things, and that they will shake the world to achieve Edelgard's ideals. Edelgard sets this up, too, every time she talks to Byleth: she spends the entire first half of the game feeling out whether they would be willing to bring down the Crest system, whether they would be willing to fight the church, and how far they would be willing to go for their ideals. Edelgard shares everything with you in her C+ support, everything that matters—
And then there's that final bit, the last betrayal, where she expects you to reject her.
And I think that works beautifully for her character. She expects you to hate her, to side with Rhea, and she just wants for the exchange to be over.
Now, I need to qualify this: the choice that sends you down Silver Snow or Crimson Flower isn't "side with the Flame Emperor" or "side with the Church." It's "I must kill Edelgard" or "I must protect Edelgard," rooted very much in your personal relationship with the character. Seeing what she's done, do you believe she's more than a monster? Do you believe that she is all the things she's done, and that her ideals are housed in a tower built of corpses?
That it's so intensely personal, that it's so much rooted in how you react to her and how much she's been able to win over you, the player, that it's based on how much you care about her more than your larger political reasoning, is probably the strongest moment of writing in the game, to me
Also Hubert/Edelgard C rank:
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I would agree with you if Edelgard/The Flame Emperor wasn't so open in their contempt and their willingness to work against the Twisted at every opportunity—the dialogue she gets when slamming up against the Death Knight, attacking Kronika, or going after Solon illustrates that really well