#from the concept art. because imagine what fandom could do to the poor Lady. near to this dudebros gigachad. just imagine.

[mjrdm]

There is a soft spot in my heart for the performer Thin Man, but I do respect his wet cat personality. Imagine seeing this guy acting and singing and doing god knows what on the tv, and being absolutely charmed by him, only to then meet him and he's just🪑

[gascon-en-exil]

I Liked Fates Before It Was Cool!: The Opening

Prologue

Here begins my run of Fates, in which I react to things that I believe merit either praise or criticism and that hopefully haven’t been thoroughly picked over yet hundreds of times by everyone else in the fandom. I’ll be doing each route in the sequence I used last time, with gameplay details to follow as they come up. To answer @damoselcastel, I’ll be doing an all-male run, and it does indeed suck that the game screws this over a bit at the very beginning by forcing me to take Felicia over Jakob first. Breeding will come when I feel like it, more to have extra chapters to play through than anything.

Prologue

In what I assume will continue to be a series trend going forward, all of the 3DS FEs open somewhat in the abstract, including a flash forward to a future event. Fates’s particular take is both the most surreal and the least dependent on shock value, as the events it depicts are only several chapters away rather than near endgame. Azura picks up her Lady of the Lake associations right from the start, there’s a very early glimpse at what will be eventually revealed to be Valla, and Ryoma and Xander and Xander’s ludicrously acrobatic horse square off to set up this setting’s central conflict. The chapter proper is (fittingly) dreamlike, with surreal music and a high-energy scenario that begins in medias res and doesn’t entirely follow the normal rhythms of FE combat. I have absolutely no idea how this would come across to a newcomer to the series - I got my hand held through Lyn Normal Mode, cut me some slack - but I imagine it would be disorienting.

Chapter 1

That’s apparently official concept art of Nohr. Reasonable worldbuilding, what’s that?

The in-game presentation starts off rather less absurd. Hell, if it weren’t for the ominous castle rooftop setting of Xander’s training session one could almost find Corrin’s slice-of-life interactions with their servants and their Nohrian family quaint. Xander is just a drama queen like that. This fight calls back to Path of Radiance and New Mystery, which also start off with training sessions against significantly more powerful named characters. For Birthright it also forms a narrative bookend, but I’ll get to that in due time. I have Feelings about the presentation of Xander...and not just because he’s my husbando either.

I like that Corrin’s retainers are domestics first and combatants second unlike those of the other royals, because it stresses that they’ve been isolated in a non-combat role during their upbringing, their exposure to Nohr’s allegedly spartan military culture limited to sparring with Gunter and Xander. I have no idea how that would be enough for them to survive when they evidently live in Mordor, but then Nohr is the source of the most consistently sloppy worldbuilding in Fates so at least we get that established right away.

Oh, and Lilith is here. There’s never a point anywhere in this game where Lilith’s character is competently handled, so I have a tendency to forget she exists unless she’s on-screen. Here she’s just an unassuming stable girl with an unusual design, and Elise makes an incestuous insinuation in her direction that’s only funny if you played the appropriate DLC. 

Chapter 2

Structural contrast with the towering Hoshidan royal palace aside, I don’t entirely get how Krakenberg works. A dragon did it?

Anyway, Corrin gets an under-explained and clearly evil magical sword from his shamelessly homicidal father only to balk at the thought of killing anyone with it. Leo salvaging this faux pas isn’t the silliest example of Corrin not understanding the basic concept of lying - it’s presumably easier to fake someone’s death with magic than with a giant sword - but it’s definitely up there. The Nohrian royals on the other hand have no trouble with such things based on their traumatic but mostly implied experiences at court. Important to note that everyone here up to and including the prisoners of war calls out Corrin for their sheltered worldview; their development from here on out really is dependent on the player’s choice of route. I vastly prefer this approach to Awakening’s for explaining why the Avatar is such a relatively blank slate - almost no amnesia necessary this time.

And while they appear in most chapters, I want to praise Dragon Veins here for being a really cool concept that doesn’t get as much love as it should. Draconic or otherwise superhuman bloodlines in FE are usually expressed in gameplay with the ability to wield certain legendary weapons, and while that also makes an appearance in Fates Dragon Veins represent more dramatically visible utility. They really make a difference in some chapters, and I’d like to see them reuse the concept in future games where it would be a logical addition (which would be most of them since humans with dragon blood pop up all over this series).

Chapter 3

I chose this image because I want everyone to appreciate as I do that Hans dresses like the world’s most tasteless leatherman. A harness and straps that show off all the wrong bits, and it’s in purple. Not even the overall weirdly fetishistic look of this game’s berserkers can excuse that.

But aside from that, Hans sucks. Iago also sucks. Less characters than plot devices that pop up whenever there’s a need for someone to act completely despicable to move the conflict along, there’s no way to spin them in a way that sounds like they contribute anything positive to the narrative. Case in point: in this chapter Hans single-handedly reignites hostilities between Nohr and Hoshido by Leeroy Jenkins-ing his way through the chapter and later (possibly) killing Gunter, with the only interesting caveat that he claims to have done so at Garon’s behest. And sure, Garon is also flat over-the-top villainy incarnate, but he at least has gravitas and a master playing a long game that arguably succeeds in two of the routes. Hans and Iago are just two more in the line of FE villains with flat motivations and personalities who lack even the good grace to be attractive, but unlike Desaix and Darin and Chagall and others like them they stick around in the story long after they’ve worn out their welcome. Did Nohr really need not one but three flat antagonists in its ranks around for most of the game?

I haven’t even gotten into the first appearance of Camilla’s...issues surrounding Corrin or whatever the dimension-hopping hell Lilith pulls with her invocations to presumably deceased dragon “gods” now that she reveals her true form. This is really the first chapter to offer a hint of how disjointed and frequently contrived Fates’s stories are going to end up, saved only by the very end when Rinkah puts this game’s new blunt weapon category to its logical use. Not like the game wants us to feel bad for Corrin....

Chapter 4

...because Hoshido is paradise. And also Takumi.

Everyone knows the story, both as it’s explicitly told and as can be read through the lines. The writers weren’t afraid to let their biases show, the localizers and the Western fandom did a fair amount to mitigate that with some bias of our own, and the final product is one big mess that fails to make logical sense in-universe and teeters on the edge of real-world two-way racism. Here we’re introduced to Castle Shirasagi, glimmering and verdant and awash in cherry blossoms, as well as Azura, Corrin’s foil in Stockholm Syndrome. But it’s all good, because Mikoto is tranquil and peace-loving and enforces her tranquility through a plot contrivance magical barrier that is just one of many examples in Fates of magic not working the way it does in the rest of the series (or at least I can’t think of anything else like this, correct me if I’m wrong). We don’t learn just why Nohr is so hellbent on invading Hoshido that they’d resort to summoning soulless monsters to do so until much later (and only in Birthright of all routes!). For now they just sound like unprovoked aggressors, and the Hoshidan royals Corrin’s true and loving family.

However, what I really wanted to bring up for this chapter is how oddly it’s structured, such that it never fails to throw me off a bit. It opens in an unnamed Fire Tribe village in a snowy area of Hoshido, which might I mention is the only point in the game we see anything of the Fire Tribe other than Rinkah herself. Considering all the time we spend in multiple routes with the Wind and Ice Tribes, that lack of detail strikes me as peculiar. Kaze then brings Corrin to the Hoshidan palace where Ryoma and Mikoto reveal the truth, then it’s immediately back to the snowy north to rescue Hinoka and Sakura from Faceless before returning to the palace to meet Azura. Was there any reason the Faceless fight couldn’t have happened before Corrin left the village, and the reveal and trip to Shirasagi left for after the chapter map and partially in response to Hinoka’s OOC crying fit?

I also hate maps where high-powered NPCs go around stealing kills. Kaze barely got to see any action this chapter, poor guy.

Chapter 5

Props to this manakete design, which is unlike anything else in the series and manages to work in elements of Anankos and Corrin’s weird outfit. No props to the scripting of the thing, as after this chapter Corrin may as well not even be a mankete except for gameplay purposes (which are minimal anyway unless you need them to tank something). You’d think learning that you can turn into a dragon would leave more of an impact on...anyone really, but nope. I guess it technically becomes relevant again in Kana’s paralogue, but that’s as tangential and ultimately irrelevant as everything else involving the kids.

There’s a lot else going on in this chapter, but I’m sorry to say that neither Mikoto’s death nor the obliteration of a large chunk of Hoshido’s capital lands as powerfully as they were meant to considering Corrin and the audience have spent all of 1.5 chapters with these people. This isn’t anything like Elbert or Greil’s death scene or even remake!Rudolf’s for that matter - at least that one came with a shocking twist that was responded to appropriately. It’s hard to even appreciate these events from the perspectives of the Hoshidan royals because they’re still pretty new characters in the player’s mind, though with the hindsight of Conquest I can maybe sympathize with Takumi here at the beginning of his downward spiral.

Corrin also picks up their legendary sword in a way that feels extremely random. I guess the Yato was inside the statue that got blown up? Weird place to keep a divine peace-bringing relic, that’s all I’m saying.

Branch of Fate

Despite some early warning signs and a few slight missteps, I’m happy to say that this story moment works. It’s a good thing that it does too, as this is the defining moment of FE14 in everything from its marketing to its game design to its core themes. The setup is rushed and tense and allows only Corrin, i.e. the intended player self-insert, full knowledge of the weight of the choice put before them, as none of the other royals are aware that they are all in a way family to the person they’re now abruptly forcing to pick a side. Familial connections (biological or otherwise) may not be a narrative hook that grabs me personally, but nonetheless this scene sticks with you. There is no easy choice, and the consequences of any of them immediately define the direction of the story.

This is not to say that all three of the iterations of Chapter 6 that follow succeed equally well, but that’s for other posts...including the next one, which will kick off Birthright.

Next time: Birthright Chapter 6 - 11