Fire Emblem

Even Suicide Cults tend to male it clear something great awaits beyond or with the act. Not "and you will be eaten and be super dead" as some kind of great thing.

Basically they were going for something more Lovecraft in their cult(where the reward is still death and no afterlife to live gloriously in) but driven insane by cosmic madness of an uncaring universe works better for it as it enforces what ending your existence by becoming crazy nihilistic entails.

Not a guys chicken experiment grew too big and people decided haivig it eat them was a cool idea!

Uh excuse me but the snake is clearly supernatural based on its size alone! We have no idea what goes on with it, especially when one ending does have the soul of one person residing in another.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Jun 12th 2019 at 12:49:38 PM

Yeah, like, again. There is real-world religion that has weirder shit in it than the ultimate goal being eaten by a giant apocalypse dragon.

And even "It doesn't make sense!" is not a good reason to call a villain lame. Villains are SUPPOSED to be wrong! They're the bad guys! They're not supposed to make sense! That's why you need to stab them!

RE: Anomalocaris 20

The thing is Gangrel doesn't have a grudge against Ylisse, it was just past resentment he was trying to drum up as to use for propaganda to back up his real selfish cause.

Edited by Monsund on Jun 12th 2019 at 12:49:53 PM

The annoying thing is I didn't even make it that far into the game.

I stopped right at the start of the first switch to Celica.

Still its a Fire Emblem game, it took me several days to reach that switch and I have a fucking aversion to redoing shit like redoing all the leveling up, class switchs, and whatever support ups I did because supports in that game are rarer instance than Awakening & Fates due to it being made from a time before you were you given the option of fucking and breeding with whoever you want.

Goddamn I'm a fucking idiot.

It is rather amusing to me that some asshole built a custom dragon in his basement and now 3000-something years later people are worshipping it as a god.

And Grima's just like "Yeah, okay, sure. Prove your faith by giving me your rancor. 😏"

His FEH dialogue even makes me think he's doing it because daddy turned on him for being exactly what he made him to be.

The Grimleal aren't even all that weird when it comes to being eaten by their patron. You want weird, look no further than the Cultist Simulator scenario where you play as a Grail Apostle. You endure all sorts of hardship trying to drive off an enemy immortal, complete all sorts of unintuitive tasks to turn yourself into a savory feast, and let yourself be eaten by all sorts of horrors...just so your patron can achieve apotheosis. While you just get eaten.

Zealotry is one hell of a drug, and some people are just weird.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Jun 12th 2019 at 12:52:23 PM

E3 press kit. Things of interest:

• The war is a full-on Mêlée à Trois.
• It only talks about three routes you can pick, but who truly knows if that's true [hint hint]
• Edelgård is now an emperor and Claude is the leader of Leicester Alliance, but Dimitri is still introduced as a prince
• The class mates of the house you pick do appear after time skip.

The Grimleal have so little focus there's no way for them to be weird or interesting to begin with.

The only things they have going for them is trying and failing to be a Lovecraft cult to a non-Lovecraft man made chicken.

Yah this whole argument does kind of prove they needed a bit more fleshing out. Just one scene of Validar preaching and the masses chanting would do it, probably.

Awakening's big weakness was always the fact that it jumped between antagonists too quickly.

I thought the one-eyed man would be king.

Edited by ShirowShirow on Jun 12th 2019 at 3:58:41 PM

Huh, I honestly never felt that the game jumped between antagonists that quickly.

Only in the world of the blind.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Jun 12th 2019 at 1:06:24 AM

Sylvain. Big brother figure, tries to be ladies man, and oh yeah, his big brother was disowned for not having a crest.

Fine, I'll double post. Video coverage.

It doesn't matter that mass suicide cults exist in real life if it isn't mentioned at all IN THE GAME why they want to do it.

Like, its the difference of what you can guess and what is actually told and shown in the story :P

Like character development doesn't just mean characters changing, it also means characterization them in the first place. Validar comes across as generic evil crazy cultist archetype rather than a character

I agree that even one scene of Validar preaching to his choir would have been great for the character and to get more idea of what he is like

Edited by SpookyMask on Jun 12th 2019 at 12:08:24 PM

I figured it was one of those things where the cult "knows" their deity will return eventually and by bring it about themselves, they get the privilege/mercy of being among the first to go, while the unbelievers will suffer at great length.

Probably because existence is suffering or something like that, so the conclusion is that the best thing to do is end existence.

It's worth noting that the Grimleal cult brainwashes people from a very young age. They have existed for many, many generations, with the leaders of the cult constantly attempting to breed the perfect host for Grima. Validar was a failed host, but he was still born and raised to lead the cult and breed the next host for Grima. He worships Grima because that's all he's ever done and known and has been conditioned to believe nothing else. He is, after all, completely obsessed with destiny being already written.

The cult itself seems to have some kind of mind control power over Plegia, too, as shown by C23. They're practically zombies in that they wander around muttering to themselves and don't even notice the Ylisseans in their midst.

Serenes Forest posted some information about Three Houses gleamed from a video of Gamespot playing a demo build. There's quite a bit of information there, including:

• We have some localized names, both for units and items. Byleth wields the Sword of the Creator, and their crest is apparently called the Crest of Flames. I suppose that's our Fire Emblem of this game.
• Students can suggest switching study goals when studying skills. You can choose to accept the change or decline it.
• Exploration of the monastery grounds can be done on the weekends.
• You can assign two students to Group Tasks, which helps them build skills. For example, stable duty increases riding skills, sky watch increases flying skills, etc.
• The Mess Hall gives you the option of serving that day's Special, or selecting something from the full menu. You'll see what sort of ingredients you need to make the meal, as well as which students and teachers enjoy the meal the most.
• Jeralt is apparently someone who can offer Faculty Training.
• You apparently don't reset levels when class-changing, and you can apparently wield any weapon for most classes. That being said, fist weapons are restricted to non-rider classes and magic is restricted.
• The calendar can show "global activity," meaning the percentage of players worldwide that decided to take a certain action.
• The Battle Preparations screen has a Marketplace option, which I think allows you to buy supplies before the battle begins.
• You can invite students to tea, possibly to build support points, as well as give them gifts. There's also a "Lost Items" option, probably to return missing items to students.
• The Skill stat is apparently now the Dexterity stat. There's also a Charisma stat.
• There's an Amiibo Gazebo in the monastery. No idea what it does yet, though.
• Apparently you can recruit students from the other houses after the time skip. Whether they join or not seems to depend on how high some of your stats are. For example, Lorenz favors Charisma and Reason.
• Archbishop Rhea is an instructor for Faculty Training. Apparently she can boost Byleth's Sword, Fighting, Reason, and Faith skills. Oh, and you can give her gifts as well.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Jun 12th 2019 at 9:32:23 AM

Dammit, this whole debate going on while I had to go to bed early to get up for work

I’ll agree with Validar and the Grimleal being boring, but that’s because at this point in the series Generic Doomsday Villain is one of the most played-out tropes we have, and the Grimleal did nothing new and interesting with it. I feel like the Grimleal apes the Loptous cult, who had the advantage of being in a game with much broader worldbuilding and being given a much more understandable motivation (revenge for oppression).

The problem I had with Validar himself is that he never felt like an actual person, unlike Arvis, Zelgius, or even Zephiel. He’s an obstacle that exists because the game needs him to exist to serve the plot. He has no charisma, his design is generic, and he’s easily forgotten about after the game is over. I dislike a lot of things in Fates and the writing is poor, but most of the villains were far more interesting (if not very nuanced) than Awakening’s, bar Gangrel. I remember Iago being the slimy Smug Snake and much more interesting schemer to Garon’s generic evil, because the man had some sort of presence and his design was good. They hammed him the hell up in Warriors, which was fun. Even Hans, generic Hate Sink as he is, had personality and standout moments.

I’d say that Validar isn’t even as good as Gharnef as far as “generic evil sorcerer” villains go. Gharnef’s motivation is at least humanistic (falling prey to greed and envy), and his design does a much better job of communicating the utter corruption that he went through. Validar’s design is bland and he mostly exists to be Grima’s hype man, and Grima, up until later material gave him some characterization and backstory, was a bland Giant Space Flea from Nowhere.

I firmly disagree with the notion that villains don’t have to make sense though. They do. All characters have to make sense, in the sense that their motivations have to be logical (for a sort of definition, I mean logical in a “that makes sense he’d think that/do that based on x, y and z” way, rather than something being strictly rational). Based on what we know of the Grimleal cult Validar makes sense, but it’s not a compelling or interesting motivation at all. It turns him into a personality-less automaton who exists For the Evulz, which a good villain does not make.

Gangrel, an unstable guy who used his country’s justified anti-national sentiment toward Ylisse to make the characters’ lives hell is far more interesting and feels more like a person than Validar ever did, and he’s not even amazingly well-written.

Edited by ILikeRobots on Jun 12th 2019 at 8:06:07 AM

Btw, they officially confirmed dual audio and romancing students on the Treehouse stream.

Edited by LordVatek on Jun 12th 2019 at 12:18:41 PM

The Advice Box feature seems pretty interesting.

They specifically pointed out that romance is locked to after the timeskip, though, to preempt any complaints.

I wonder how long it'll take before we get a complete list of the English cast.

I guess as a quick note I noticed, Petra doesn't speak with an accent, just with incorrect syntax. For example "I would be liking that greatly!" when having lunch.

Three Houses E3 gameplay video is here, for those who missed it: