#i need to get the dw7 ones to compare but i can just take a photo of that cuz ps3 doesnt have screenshots 💔

[basslinegrave]

theyre sho cute. gan ning's little blush in the special 😭 and ling tong looks cute even when angry and sad.. and his special exp is so sassy i love them so much

[renisfan]

Since I just mentioned DW, let's also take a look at how it handled the theme of Oudou vs Hadou! As I recognize it had been a topic of discourse before and people had different opinions on what they wanted to express with this concept. I find it may be valuable to see what KT themselves had said in their other game (since their writers did the most writings).

From DW7's Shu story:

Now this English sub isn't very clear about the concept of Oudou and Hadou, so I'll show you the jp subs too:

It literally says Cao Cao = Hadou while Liu Bei = Oudou.

DW8 explained a bit more into their respective thoughts, in the ending of Shu's hypothesis story:

There's one more line which I think isn't very well translated, in which Liu Bei asks for people to talk, trust and support each other (while in en he says "what we need are allies who we can trust and friends who'll support us!")

And this ending features Liu Bei reaching out his hand to a dying Cao Cao and Cao Cao challenging Liu Bei to realize his ideal if he can. Sounds similar to a certain moon route right?

And it showing a person from the Oudou fraction, a person from the neutral fraction and a person from the minor race fraction adjacent to the Oudou fraction being friends together has absolutely nothing to do with a certain gleam route.

Anyway, the general concept is rather clear:

Hadou = ruling through force, people need to be shown what's "correct"

Oudou = ruling with benevolence, believing in people's hearts

However, I don't think KT is treating Hadou as an inherently bad thing. Maybe because they really love Cao Cao and Nobunaga to death. They're somewhat treating it as an equally valid way to end conflicts. Even if you may have enemies or NPCs talk about how their path is brutal every once in a while, it's not taken that seriously because it's based on "reason" and to end things quickly and "dream of benevolence is too unrealistic" bla bla bla. It's only when getting explicitly compared with Oudou that it'll be shown in a more obviously "bad" light.

And that is probably why - as you may have noticed - both above comparisons are from Shu's story. In Wei's story, while they will still talk about their Hadou, they barely touch about Liu Bei's Oudou. Even if their conflict remains the main focus of the story, they just don't make the comparison. Just like their 3H counterparts.

(But, while AM have a lot in common with Shu's story, CF is way less similar to Wei's story. For one, while Cao Cao doesn't like Liu Bei running around "prolonging the war", he's always treated him and his ideal with respect, which Edel-chan certainly doesn't.

CF is more like... DW8's Jin story where the mitri is Jiang Wei. Feel free to find out what that means if you're interested... just know that I absolutely despised that story 🙃)

Well got a bit carried away but to conclude, in KT's eyes:

Hadou bad compared to Oudou

Except that Hadou good aksually, if you yeet the concept of Oudou away from the story

And Oudou just like chivalry is too good to be true, so Hadou good

Supreme Leader uwu

...or at least that's how I perceived their opinions.

Btw, do you know that DW had the OG gatekeeper-kun?

I'm specifically referring to the one assigned to Shu (featured from 10:28) because his lines are the closest to gatekeeper's and iirc he was in DW7 too while the rest were added in DW8 as his other fraction variations. Sorry I couldn't find a video of the DW7 version nor did I find a English one, so this is the best I can get :( Actually found a video that has the DW7 part, but it's jp voice with Chinese subs, so still no English :(

People liked him in DW, so they made a Fodlan version of him too!

[the-archlich]

I skipped DW8, how was the narrative bad in that game?

Part of the reason DW8 had a bad narrative was that everything DW7 did a great job with, DW8 did badly.

One of the main things that made DW7 great was the way the characters grew and changed over the course of the story. They learned from their experiences ann changed because of them, for better or worse. Major characters were very different people by the end of the story.

DW8 didn’t do this. It moved heaven and earth to avoid it. Comparing the Jin stories provides two good examples. In DW7 Sima Zhao is a lazy failson happy to just live off his trust fund and let his more ambitious relatives do whatever. And then his brother dies and he’s forced into power. He has to step up, be active, take responsibility, and do some dark shit. He didn’t want any of this but his family need shim to take it on anyway, and he steps up to the plate. You can disagree with that interpretation of him if you want, but it makes a strong narrative. DW8 doesn’t do this. Every hard choice Sima Zhao would have to make, Jia Chong does for him. Any time he’d have to develop or grow, Jia Chong steps in and makes sure he doesn’t actually have to.

Zhuge Dan is another great example from the Jin story. In DW7 he’s a complex character. He’s ambitious but insecure. He has a true and genuine admiration for Sima Shi and hates Sima Zhao because these two characters are total opposites, the latter being lazy but supremely confident. And when Sima Shi is gone and Sima Zhao takes over, Zhuge Dan can’t stand him anymore and defects. It’s the logical conclusion to these character dynamics. DW8 eliminates all of this interesting stuff and just says “He did it because VIRTUE and also the emperor secretly told him to.” So we never actually get any character development there.

In terms of major story beats, DW7 wasn’t afraid to be sad. In fact those were some of its strongest points. The deaths of characters like Dian Wei, Sun Jian, Xiahou Yuan, etc. were major points in the story - even more than big battles were. These were the things that motivated characters. These were the emotions that the story revolved around. Tragedy. Betrayal. Loss. Because it’s a huge war and in war, your friends die even when they don’t deserve it. One of the story’s most powerful scenes is Cao Cao’s death scene in Wei’s ending, when he just quietly says that he can finally tell his dead friends he’s sorry.

DW8 also makes great efforts to avoid this. Aside from the fact that you can save most major characters for hypothetical scenarios, you also have characters who logically need to be dead just...not die. Cao Cao retires. Sima Yi retires. They just say “Okay, enough of that” and step off to the side. There’s no loss in this game, or no loss that can’t be prevented. That means there’s no consequences.

I guess what I’m saying is that its a question of stakes. In DW7 the stakes of the war are personal because your friends are dying. You’re not fighting for whatever greater ambition your leader is talking about, you’re fighting because if you don’t the people you care about are going to die. In DW8 there are no stakes. Nothing really matters because nothing bad actually happens.

DW8 was a toothless shell. There were no consequences, no growth, nothing you did in the story actually mattered. Ironically, being able to change the outcome of major events actually made it feel like you had less agency, because it meant that nothing actually had any meaning at all.