An aspect of Fates' story that's often criticized is how Laslow, Selena and Odin are completely irrelevant to anything happening in the main plots, in spite of the fact that their sole reason for world- (maybe time-, but that's a discussion for another post) hopping is to help Corrin kill Anankos, as stated by Hidden Truths.

When thinking about why that could be, a surprisingly simple explanation came to mind; helping Corrin go to Valla and kill Anankos was never the Trio's main motivation, at least not until Hidden Truths changed it into being so.

Here's why i believe that to be the case:

Hidden Truths' given motivation contradicts nearly everything the Awakening trio does in Fates' main story.

The Awakening trio does nothing at any point, in any of the stories, to guide Corrin towards Valla, not even in Conquest, when they're on the same side for the entirety of the main plot; while they're aware of the curse and that they can't just tell Corrin everything about Valla and Anankos while still in Nohr, it would be exceedingly easy for them to at least try and convince Corrin of Valla's existence, even if they fail at it.

Furthermore, they have nothing to say when they do finally reach Valla and kill Anankos; given how much of an impression his good version left on them last they met, it is very odd that they don't react to his crazed self at all.

Both of those issues, however, are small potatoes in comparison to what this motivation does to Birthright and Revelation; Laslow, Selena and Odin all try to kill Corrin in those routes, despite knowing full well that the world is doomed if they die.

Yes, they were ordered to do so by Leo, Camilla and Xander; that is no excuse for them not to do the obvious and defect to Corrin's side once they have confirmation that they're not going back to Nohr.

What really pushed me over the edge is that nothing in the (non-DLC) story or supports so much as implies that those three went to Nohr for the sole purpose of getting Corrin to kill Anankos; the supports confirm that they're the same people from Awakening and that they went to Nohr for the sake of completing some sort of mission, yes, but what said mission is is left so vague that you'd never be able to even guess at what it is.

So, all in all, any criticisms people may have towards the Awakening Trio's inclusion (or lack thereof) should be directed towards Hidden Truths for making a massive retcon without realizing the implications it'd have on the rest of the story, not at Fates' story itself.

Link to video here.

Let's get the preamble out of the way:

Unlike my other responses, i have no reason to believe that Excel would have any reasonable way of knowing about the smaller translation differences in Fates, so whenever he criticizes something about the game's story i'll only defend it in regards to it's localized script; even if one of his criticisms is valid in EN but invalid in JP, i'll still give him the point in full, even if i bring up the differences anyway just to give whoever can be bothered reading this some context.

I will not accept “he's just joking!!” as an excuse for the issues with his points when most of his arguments against the story are just him criticizing it and the characters in a snarky manner, i'm already skipping over points i genuinely believe to be exaggerated satire, and the video would lose most of it's value if every single argument was dismissed as meaningless nonsense.

I will be transcribing his arguments and pointing out what chapter the video's on whenever i get to a criticism i disagree with; he put timestamps for every chapter in the game on the video itself, so if anyone wants to fact-check me and see if i'm not misrepresenting what he says, y'all can just go to the timestamp there and hear it for yourselves.

Now, onto the main course:

Chapter 1

Then we are introduced to all of the Nohrian royals: Xander who has good stats, Camilla whose assets make her a fan favorite, Leo who exists primarily to ensure that Corrin never has to do anything morally dubious, and Elise, who is technically an adult in the english translation to cover Intelligent Systems' ass.

I'll respond to the Leo point in full when Excel presents his evidence for that claim in later chapters, but the Elise point is both bad-faith and ignorant; If we assume that the Nohrian and Hoshidan sibling counterparts are even vaguely similar to each other in age, Elise is bordering on adulthood even in JP since she's 15 at the absolute youngest, very likely older given how Sumeragi would probably have waited until Sakura was at least a few years old before bringing her to the peace talks 15 years prior to the start of Fates (as stated by the second artbook). I fail to see why an adult being naive, innocent and acting childishly causes so many people to assume they actually are a child, or why Excel is trying to frame this line as if it was Treehouse trying to change Elise into an adult instead of them just confirming that she's a few years older than 15.

Edit: i was informed that Elise claims in her support with Azura that she was only born after the latter was kidnapped, which would put her at 15 years old at oldest instead of youngest, according to the artbook statement; genuine mistake on my part, but even then, 1-) i was never very fond of the statement due to it being written 4 years after the game came out and by a completely different writer that could very well have had no involvement with the original story, and have only grown to have more issues with it since, to the point of no longer standing by it as valid info, and 2-) it's still his burden to prove that JP!Elise is underage just because she's short and childish without using the artbook, since he never brings it up in the video.

Chapter 2

Corrin refuses to actually kill them, making daddy very mad, but to stop the situation from escalating further, Leo uses golden experience to pretend to execute the prisoners to preserve Corrin's moral purity;

That's a funny way of saying “to stop Corrin from being executed for disobedience”; Corrin was never going to be willing to actually kill the prisoners at that point in the story and would have gladly died a pointless death trying to save them. Leo didn't do shit to preserve Corrin's morality in this instance, only to preserve their life; their morals would have stayed squicky-clean regardless of Leo intervening, they just wouldn't have been worth much when they would have been killed shortly after rebelling.

the prisoners Rinkah and Kaze are released back into the wild because they have unique portraits.

And because they were canonically the only Hoshidan prisoners in the castle; this point only works if it's supposed to be referring to the fodder Hoshidan soldiers Corrin kills earlier during gameplay and pointing out how weird it is for Rinkah and Kaze to have been spared but not them, something that conveniently ignores the fact that they don't show up at all in the pre- and post-battle cutscenes and are never acknowledged by anyone on either side of the battle, not even during gameplay proper, pretty heavily implying that they were only put into the chapter to spice up the map design, not to imply that there were a half-dozen fodder who no one points out the existence of.

This is apparently only a good thing and will never backfire because merely being seen alive will be solid proof of treason or insubordination.

Firstly, both Leo and Xander state that they think this is overly soft-hearted for Corrin to do, that they should have followed Garon's orders instead of risking getting into trouble just to spare some random no-name soldiers, and that they only did so as a favor to Corrin:

Corrin: Leo, your spell…

Leo: Was only enough to weaken them, yes. I should have followed Father’s orders. But Camilla and Elise always make such a fuss when I do anything to upset you.

Xander: Listen well. It is only my brother’s kind heart that has bought your freedom. Disappear now, lest you be spotted by our king.

Secondly, the burden is on Excel to prove that Garon both told everyone in Nohr about two random soldiers the Nohrian army captured during a skirmish and gave them detailed descriptions of what they looked like despite fully intending on having them killed soon after taking them prisoner; even if he could do that, the fact that Kaze defects to Nohr and Garon evidently doesn't care about him being alive debunks that point anyway, due to it being walking proof that Garon doesn't care enough about Corrin and Leo having spared some random fodder months ago to punish them for it.

Chapter 3

Corrin gets sent into a death trap as punishment for the events of the previous chapter, a chapter premise that will be repeated so many times it defies explanation.

What the fuck is Excel talking about?! Chapter 8 is the only time in all of Conquest where the premise of “send Corrin into an intentional death trap in the hopes that they'll get killed, all because of what they did in the previous chapter” gets reused, and that comes with the obvious explanation that Garon and Iago still don't trust Corrin at that point and are trying to get rid of them; the only other instances that even vaguely resemble that premise are Chapters 12, 21 and 25, all of which fall apart under scrutiny due to Garon and Iago fully expecting and wanting Corrin to surpass the challenges they're sending their way in all those instances and the challenges having nothing to do with what Corrin did or didn't do in the previous chapter. Did he even read Conquest's script before writing this section?!

Shortly after is he yeeted into the bottomless canyon by his own sword but as it turns out Lilith, one of his maids and apparently a bird he saved at the barn because Corrin is homeschooled and is incapable of identifying common animals who also happens to be his biological sister by means of a shared parentage with an evil dragon not appearing in this route,

Firstly, young children are incredibly stupid; i guarantee that a five-year old who'd never seen a bird in their life and only heard of them without being given explicit descriptions would absolutely mistake Lilith's dragon form for a weird species of bird.

Secondly, Anankos appears in every route of Fates, especially Conquest and Revelation; just because he doesn't show up personally doesn't mean he isn't projecting his desires and personality onto Garon everytime he's on-screen, which he is, since he's the one getting all excited at the prospect of breaking Corrin and turning them into his vessel.

Chapter 5

For completely unrelated reasons the divine blade Yato appears and throws itself into Corrin's hands seemingly out of nowhere, marking him as a hero of legend who will bring peace to all of-uh, does the setting-wait wait hold on a second does the setting have a name? Oh apparently it doesn't. Anyway uh-marking him as the hero of legend who will bring peace to all of Fateslandia.

Nohr and Hoshido is the name of the setting; their landmasses combined account for the entirety of the non-Valla section of the world and the smaller tribes all occupy miniscule amounts of territories in comparison. Obviously the two countries that have been stuck in a forever war aren't going to come together and decide on what the name for the combined continent in case the two of them decide to join forces is going to be; that's asinine, and even if anyone needs to name the continent as a single thing out-of-universe, they can just call it Nohrshido.

Chapter 7

The Nohrian royal siblings employ the powerful “surely he can't kill us all” tactic to convince Garon to not kill Corrin; Garon concedes the point but decides to switch gears and resolves to put Corrin into moral quandaries in which he has no agency because he will always be bailed out at last minute by convenient circumstance.

Firstly, Corrin not having any agency is the point; they're being forced into ridiculously evil and cruel ultimatums where their only choice is to either do something bad or die, which by necessity means they don't have any agency or meaningful choice in the matter.

Secondly, neither of those suicides happened by “convenient circumstance”; i know he's surprisingly incompetent at remembering what actually happens in the story despite dedicating large portions of this video to covering it, but both the Sage and especially Ryoma only kill themselves as a direct result of Corrin convincing them of their hopes for the world through their words and actions, not convenience.

Chapter 9

Upon completing the map i find it safe to assume that all of the castle's inhabitants are non-lethally suppressed, but nobody cares anyway since none of them had unique portraits.

Nobody cares because that rogue section of Hoshido's army was too powerful for Corrin's group to risk dealing with non-lethally and had to all be wiped out, much like the vast majority of the chapters in Conquest.

Chapter 10

Upon successfully defending the port Corrin allows Takumi and his soldiers to walk away because he has once again somehow managed to avoid killing even a single person

Where in the actual fuck is he getting the idea that Corrin's army didn't kill anyone in Chapter 10 of Conquest from?! The closest anyone ever implies to that being the case is Takumi saying that too many of his soldiers are too injured to keep fighting, but that doesn't in any way imply that no one died during the battle or that the soldiers that are injured aren't just the remaining ones after a bunch of the main army died; Corrin never tells Beruka, Selena and Camilla to try and spare the people they're currently fighting, much like they don't tell Nyx or Azura in Chapter 9, a chapter where we know for a near-fact that Corrin's group murdered all the Hoshidan soldiers in the fort, making it very likely that they were also killing a bunch of Takumi's soldiers during the port and a few of them got lucky enough to be disabled instead of killed.

Chapter 11 is uneventful outside of Excel repeating his “muh Corrin's moral purity” point after what happens with the Rainbow Sage, but it'd be a waste of post space to respond to the same criticism with the same debunk from 6 paragraphs ago, so onto a part of the video that'll be actually interesting to tear apart:

Chapter 12

In chapter 12 of this Conquest ironman we must escape or defeat Ryoma within 16 turns because we need to get medicine for Elise who has coincidentally fallen ill from a tropical disease that will soon kill her, that can coincidentally only be treated with Hoshidan herbs, that coincidentally can also be found at the Nohrian town of Macarath, where Corrin has coincidentally simultaneously been given orders to travel to as part of a convoluted trap, that coincidentally only works if all of the previous statements are true, otherwise this conflict simply does not materialize as Corrin will not need to fight Ryoma to save his sister.

Oh boy:

In chapter 12 of this Conquest ironman we must escape or defeat Ryoma within 16 turns because we need to get medicine for Elise who has coincidentally fallen ill from a tropical disease that will soon kill her,

Excel has no proof that Elise got sick by pure coincidence; the closest the game gets to implying as such is Azura theorizing that she might have gotten infected in Notre Sagesse and Sakura theorizing that Takumi got the same disease from fighting the wolfskin in chapter 16 of BR, both of which are completely baseless assumptions made by two characters who are desperate to come up with some sort of answer as to why their ally fell deathly ill out of nowhere, with neither of them having any proof for their claims. The fact that Iago confirms that he's the one who told Ryoma where Corrin was going to be just proves that he's the one who made Elise and Takumi sick in the first place; Excel failing to understand the basic-bitch red herring of “have a bunch of seemingly coincidental stuff happen for the premise of a chapter, only to reveal that it actually happened because one of the main villains set all of it up” isn't chapter 12 being convoluted, it's him proving my point that his reading comprehension is phenomenally terrible.

that can coincidentally only be treated with Hoshidan herbs, that coincidentally can also be found at the Nohrian town of Macarath,

I can concede to the disease only being reasonably fixable on Macarath being convoluted, but only if Excel bites an ungodly large bullet and also argues that every single instance in fiction where someone has a problem they can only solve by going to one location that just so happens to be specialized to deal with said problem is also notably convoluted, otherwise these criticisms are horseshit; it's perfectly logical and consistent for Nohr to have at least one hospital with Hoshidan medicinal ingredients in it just in case one of their soldiers have injuries that can only be treated with said ingredients.

where Corrin has coincidentally simultaneously been given orders to travel to as part of a convoluted trap,

Again, Corrin going to Macarath and being forced to fight Ryoma because there's nowhere else they can go to to save Elise was all part of Iago's plan; the orders were given just to make sure Corrin knew where to go in case the rest of their army didn't know about Macarath or the disease, not by coincidence. Furthermore, what part of Iago's trap is convoluted? He gave Elise an illness that can only be solved by one hospital in Nohrian land, warned Ryoma that Corrin and their group would be spending a whole lot of time there and would be vulnerable to being ambushed, and had Garon order Corrin to also go there just in case they didn't know about Macarath, forcing them to fight and potentially kill Ryoma; every part of that plan is perfectly logical and within Iago's knowledge and capabilities, and i'd even argue it's a pretty simple plan overall.

that coincidentally only works if all of the previous statements are true, otherwise this conflict simply does not materialize as Corrin will not need to fight Ryoma to save his sister.

Iago's plan would have very likely worked regardless of any of the steps he mentioned; forcing Corrin to fight by poisoning Elise in such a way that there's only one place they can go to to save her is a smart guarantee, but the basic plan of “have Corrin fight Ryoma by warning Ryoma of where their next location is going to be and having Corrin sent there under orders from Garon” would have worked almost anywhere else in Nohr, if not having been more unreliable due to the lack of a guarantee that Corrin would fight Ryoma instead of retreating, which itself would still be very unlikely when a fighting retreat would be significantly more dangerous than standing their ground.

Oh right, i almost forgot to mention, no one died.

Well, at least he has more of a basis for this than in Chapters 9 and 10, if only because Corrin does order Peri and Laslow to try and avoid killing the Hoshidan soldiers if at all possible, but it's his claim that no one died that i take issue with; that's never stated or implied by anyone in the story, and Peri and Laslow trying to spare people if possible does not mean they succeed at it 100% of the time, let alone the rest of the army.

Chapter 14

The performance begins and the singer, whose disguise is so flimsy that a child could see through it, sings a magical song that causes king Garon to groan in increasing discomfort. Unfortunately, traumatic brain injury induced prosopagnosia runs in the Nohrian royal family, meaning that nobody knows that the singer is actually Azura.

How would they? Look at how far away they are from the stage, especially when they don't have telescopes or any way of getting a close-up on Azura; she'd just look like a dark and blue blob to anyone watching the performance, especially when she's deliberately dancing and singing in a completely different way than normal, is covering the stage with water, there's plenty of people in Nohrshido with long blue hair, and there's nothing in the game to imply that the royals have super-vision because of their dragon blood. I still don't get how this criticism became so widespread when thinking about it from the POV of the characters debunks it so easily.

He then repeats this criticism but with Garon not recognizing Azura instead, so moving onto a more interesting point (again):

he asks for all the singers in the city to be killed and for Corrin to do it. Fortunately, just like every other time Garon orders some cruel duty to perform, he loses interest in the enforcement of his orders almost immediately, just like a baby who lacks object permanence.

What? Garon doesn't lose interest in having Corrin enforce his orders, he just has a short argument with them where he explains why he's giving them said orders before Leo saves them from blowing their cover by convincing Garon that they're too exhausted to do that immediately and need a bit of rest; giving someone who just fought in a battle a couple of minutes to recover their strength is hardly “losing interest in the enforcement of his orders”, especially when Corrin and Leo's plan hinges on them intentionally searching for dancers in unlikely places and lying to Garon about having killed some of them, meaning Corrin started pretending to follow Garon's orders as soon as the convo ended. I genuinely suspect Excel didn't read the script properly before putting this in, both due to him just being factually wrong about Corrin not following Garon's orders and especially because he immediately afterwards adds “Corrin is whisked away by Leo” as if it was an entirely separate incident that came after Garon had already let them off the hook instead of being the reason it happens and, as such, something that should have been put in this paragraph instead of the next.

Also, at what point in Conquest does Garon not care about making sure that Corrin performs some cruel duty he ordered them to do? Chapter 24's the only time in the game where he doesn't make sure that Corrin's doing what he told them to, and that instance is perfectly justified due to him being busy leading his section of the army in a separate battle; i guess 8, 11, 14 and 25 could also count depending on how generous you want to be to Excel, but those instances also don't hold up to scrutiny. Sure, he forgives them for disobeying his order to deal with the Ice Tribe alone, but only because he changed his mind on what to do with them after finding out how powerful they were and wanting them to become Anankos' vessel, i already explained why his argument for Chapter 14 being an example was bs, and in both 11 and 25 his only goal with giving them cruel orders was to fuck with their mental state by having them kill someone they care about, something that's accomplished just as well by said people killing themselves instead and having Corrin blame themselves for it.

Leo whisks Corrin away and reveals that he plans to save the singers; that's all the Nohrian royals secretly plot to keep Garon in check, and says that he's not some kind of hero for doing this, prompting his magical tome, the one marking him as a legendary hero of Nohr who was prophesized by the Rainbow Sage to join forces with the wielder of the legendary blade Yato, to bring peace to all fateslandia. Yeah, this is a little on the nose, don't you think?

Firstly, and this isn't an actual response to the point being made and moreso something i wanted to point out for anyone reading this, since i already clarified i wouldn't be using the og script as a defense, Leo doesn't say that in JP (source is fateswartable):

Leo: …I work in my own way. That’s all.

Secondly, i'd love to get a source for the royal siblings' legendary weapons marking them as heroes; the weapons are literally just sentient beings that choose whoever they deem to be worthy as their wielder and were created by the Rainbow Sage in order to give humans the firepower to defeat the ancient dragons and put an end to their war, also happening to power up the Yato if the wielders of the two resonate with each other strongly enough. The Yato is the only legendary weapon in Fates whose goal is to bring peace to the world and, as such, marks whoever wields it as a hero; anyone of any moral caliber could have picked up the other legendary weapons if they were strong enough to do so and the weapons took a liking to them, with them just so happening to pick people that were both worthy and had a close relationship with the wielder of the Yato that time around by coincidence, not because they were heroes.

Thirdly and lastly, even if i were to concede in full, for the sake of the argument, that Leo having the Byrnhildr made him a hero and that was the point of the scene, what's wrong with it? It's a good joke; Leo claiming he's not a hero only to be immediately proven wrong by his personal weapon helping the weapon destined to bring peace to the world power up is a good bait-and-switch, not something that's “on the nose”.

Chapter 15

This mysterious land is populated by invisible ghosts and also, somehow, Gunter, who has not died of starvation off-screen like he probably does in the Birthright route

Gunter doesn't die in Conquest because Azura finds him and gives him advice on how to survive in Valla, unlike in BR and Rev where he either dies or gets possessed before the two can even meet, something Azura explicitly says in this very chapter.

Plus, and this is again somewhat of a nitpick, can Excel prove that Gunter dies, let alone due to starvation specifically, in BR? Wouldn't it be much more reasonable for him to have either gotten himself killed fighting Vallite troops or to have been captured and brainwashed like in Rev?

Corrin jumps off of a cliff to leave Valla whose existence must be kept a secret because of a curse that kills you for talking about it, unless you pay 20 dollars to buy the DLC for the Revelation route

Excel keeps trying to pretend throughout the video that Rev has extremely important information hidden behind a paywall, but it really doesn't; the most important thing revealed there is that Anankos is the one instigating the war, which boils down to giving the demon Azura keeps referring to in CQ a name. Every other plot thread throughout CQ is explained and resolved by the end just as well, if not better, than in Rev, so i really don't get why he decided to fixate on CQ foreshadowing Rev as one of his major criticisms throughout the video.

Then, in one of the stupidest plot points of the entire franchise, Azura comes up with a genius plan of exposing Garon's true form by conquering all of Hoshido to get the false king to sit on a special chair.

And here i thought i was going to have to go in-depth when i got to this part; seriously, i'm still surprised Excel practically skipped over this scene. It's much more important to the story and characters than Lilith's death, yet he puts significantly more effort into deconstructing the irrelevant death scene of an equally-irrelevant side character than to deconstructing the entire reason the story plays out the way it does from the halfway-point onwards, being content to just explain what happens in the scene, call it stupid, refuse to elaborate further, and leave; what the hell are these priorities?

Chapter 17

Corrin's forces non-lethally defeat several squads of Hoshido ninjas before it is discovered that Kotaro has dared to take a captive; the horrifying audacity of such a dishonorable action is enough to convince Corrin to murder Kotaro and slaughter his entire clan down to the last man.

The second half of that sentence is just Excel being a rat; Corrin asks Kotaro to release his hostages, Xander escalates the situation by threatening him with violence once he refuses, and then Kotaro starts a fight with the group and gets himself killed. Trying to portray the battle as starting just because Corrin didn't like Kotaro taking a hostage is ridiculously disingenuous.

The story unfortunately has the audacity to once again rub Corrin's moral high ground in our faces by telling us how they didn't kill any Hoshidan soldiers; i assume that the credit for the deaths of Kotaro and his forces was intentionally left vague.

Excel's argument that Corrin and their forces not killing any Hoshidan soldiers was done to give Corrin the moral high ground is asinine; it's much more likely to have been included so Saizo being buddy-buddy with Corrin and Kaze during the end of the chapter made more sense and to maintain consistency with previous chapters, where they did the same thing but to more and better-armed platoons instead of a bunch of half-dead soldiers, especially when Corrin canonically kills Hoshidan soldiers in every chapter of Conquest from this point onwards and in most chapters prior.

Also, what the fuck is he talking about with “i assume that the credit for the deaths of Kotaro and his forces was intentionally left vague”? i find it incredibly difficult for this line to mean anything other than giving Corrin significant credit for the death of Kotaro:

Saizo: You also helped me to finally avenge my father's death.

Even if we were to argue that it still leaves room for interpretation on who personally killed Kotaro, the only reasonable interpretations of that line are that Corrin or someone in their group killed Kotaro, at which point that's the game giving them direct credit for his death, or that Saizo did it instead, at which point that's the game giving them credit for killing dozens of enemy soldiers in order to give Saizo the opportunity to deal with Kotaro; unless Excel's unironically trying to argue that Saizo soloed Kotaro and his army while Corrin did nothing to help (while conveniently ignoring the line that explicitly states otherwise), this argument is idiotic.

Lastly, why would Corrin killing Kotaro and his forces be morally bad for them to do, to the point of sullying their supposed “moral high ground”? Kotaro attacked them first and (practically) unprovoked and had every intention of killing them; how is blatant self-defense supposed to be a mark against their morality? The only way this could possibly work as a gotcha is if Excel's trying to argue that Conquest only ever portrays murder as an exclusively bad thing, something easily debunked by pointing out that chapters 18 and 26 exist.

Chapter 18

Xander and Ryoma have a cat fight over who is actually Corrin's non-blood-related big brother, but this is interrupted by Izana, who has actually been replaced and impersonated by the illusion wizard Zola, who uses this opportunity to capture the unarmed Hoshidans and try to execute them to win the war instantly and gain favor with king Garon; Xander and Corrin disagree with this treachery and decide to stop Zola which, if nothing else, is at least consistent with the previous chapters.

Excel has no basis for his claim that Zola killing the Royal siblings would have ended the war instantly; the Hoshidan army in BR is fully aware that the siblings all went on what could have very well been a suicide mission to assassinate Garon, leaving it to fend for itself, and still fights to the bitter end to protect it's home, even as it's pushed back to the throne room and on the brink of losing the war. Zola going through with his plan would, at best, have left Hoshido without a royal family while the rest of the game went on completely unchanged and, at worst, enraged the Hoshidan soldiers to the point of them refusing to surrender, leading to significantly more casualties than in canon.

Upon the map's completion Zola is cornered and begs for his life, but Leo executes him so Corrin doesn't have to.

Corrin wouldn't have executed Zola at all; they were about to let him leave prior to Leo killing him. Leo saying verbatim that “i did it so you wouldn't have to” is just a weird and stupid line given how he knows that Corrin was about to let Zola go and wouldn't have agreed to execute him even if Leo had explained to them why he should be killed, meaning that Corrin killing Zola was never a possibility in the first place; while this doesn't fix the EN version of the line being dumb, since i agreed to only use that version of the script when responding to the video, it's worth noting that that convo goes pretty differently in JP:

Kamui: L- Leon…? You didn’t- have to kill…
Leon: Why not? Big sis Kamui. If we kept that guy alive, what would happen if Father found out we helped Hoshido nobility?

Leo doesn't in any way phrase what happened as him taking the moral responsibility of executing a defenseless enemy away from Corrin and into himself in JP, only explaining why Zola needed to die after a shocked Corrin questions why he did that; it's actually weirdly-consistent, given what happens with Iago later on in CQ, for Treehouse to take scenes that originally only served to showcase Leo's ruthlessness and willingness to kill even defenseless people with little to no remorse on his part and change them into Leo being just as disturbed as Corrin at the prospect of executing defenseless enemies but doing it anyway in order to spare Corrin's conscience. Again, not a point against the video, just something i felt like pointing out.

Corrin takes this opportunity to ponder about another world where everyone gets along; they're trying to get you to buy the 20 dollar Revelation route dlc.

Corrin explicitly states that their dream is to have everyone on both sides of the royal family survive the war and make peace with each other after it ends, a dream that bears no correlation to convincing the royal families to unite against Anankos in order to put an end to the war before it even properly starts and ensuring cooperation in the process. Unless Excel is going to bite the bullet and argue that the basic concept of “Corrin wants both royal families to survive and be on good terms after a conflict is over” is a Rev reference in and of itself, something i know he won't do because Corrin has expressed that desire multiple times in the prior chapters but he never commented on those instances, this point is idiotic.

After a yet-again uneventful Chapter 19 synopsis (outside of Excel claiming *again* that Corrin doesn't kill people through most of Conquest, but i'm not wasting significant post space on something i've debunked thrice already), we get to:

Chapter 20

Fuga dusts off his non-lethal wounds and non-lethally tells Corrin to do whatever he wants, because the story and every other character will bend over backwards to justify his actions.

I wasn't aware that Fuga confirming that the Yato didn't make a mistake by choosing Corrin as it's wielder, meaning the path they're currently on is indeed destined to save the world and they should keep following it, was actually him telling them to do whatever they want; i need to check out Excel's personalized copy of Conquest, that seems like it does a crazy amount of changes to the story.

More seriously, Fuga, Azura, and maybe the Hoshidan royals are the only characters to try and justify Corrin's actions in all of CQ, and i still don't really get how “the story” is supposed to be reaching to try and justify their actions; Corrin's actions are inherently just due to the context of the story and what it means for the Yato to choose someone as it's wielder, and the scene at the end of chapter 20 is just reaffirming that.

Chapter 21

Iago laments that Corrin has apparently suffered zero casualties which will, uh- come on, look, 16 dead characters, and the game doesn't even acknowledge it.

I'll give him this point because we're both using the english version of the script, but just for clarity's sake, this is an issue with the localization of the game, not the game itself:

Iago: …Hmph…Lady Kamui seems to have passed through the Wind Clan village. I thought she would’ve lost a hand or foot or two by this point, but there’s nothing interesting in this. The stairway is a dangerous place said to lead straight to hell…How many of your comrades will disappear? I’m looking forward to it.

Iago never states anywhere in JP that Corrin and everyone in their group made it through the Wind Tribe village alive, only that Corrin and *only* Corrin made it past unharmed; they could have lost as many people due to the player's ineptitude as it was possible to and the statement would still be perfectly valid.

and for some bizarre reason the Hoshidan defenders have already all been killed and replaced by Iago's faceless.

I wonder why the Faceless, a bunch of mindless brutes under orders from Iago, wouldn't get along well with Hoshidan soldiers and had to kill them all in in order to set up an ambush, or why Iago would ever think that sending a near-endless amount of Faceless Corrin's way would be more likely to result in one of their comrades dying than a small platoon of fodder Hoshidan soldiers; truly a mystery for the ages.

No cap, this might just be the stupidest point in the video so far; how in the fuck did Excel not realize how much of an idiot he'd have to be to say “it's bizarre that the Faceless killed the Hoshidan soldiers occupying the stairway in order to set up their ambush” despite knowing full well that the two factions aren't on friendly terms?! How did this both make it into the final draft and get recorded without him realizing how stupid that claim was to anyone with two brain-cells to rub together?!

And despite this tragic incident being caused by a need to hurry up and escape, Xander and Corrin somehow find the time to sit in place and have a roughly 500 word conversation mourning Corrin's astral plane dragon-sister-made-landlord, and this is extremely understandable, because i for one am extremely emotionally invested in this character who in this route has had a total of two appearances.

I'll give Excel Lilith's lack of screentime, but the “look at how long they spend talking and standing still despite being in a rush to run away from the Faceless” criticism is just another example of him being a dimwit; here's the part of that scene he oh-so-conveniently decided to skip over:

Azura: Yes, thanks to Xander's incomparable skill, we somehow made it out alive. We're sorry to have kept you waiting.

Unless Xander's secretly really skilled at running away from fights, the only reasonable interpretation of that statement is that he killed all the Faceless already and, as such, they have all the time in the world to grieve over Lilith; going back to college and getting some classes in basic reading comprehension before writing the script would have done this video wonders, methinks.

Shigure's Paralogue

We find ourselves suddenly on a boat, in a scene jarringly disconnected from any part of the main story

No shit, Sherlock; they quite literally travelled to a different dimension while on R&R from the war in order to pay Shigure a visit. How is something like that supposed to connect to the main story when the entire point of the scene is that they're taking a break from the main story?

At the end of the map it is revealed that all of Shigure's friends are dead, but that's okay, because they didn't have names and he can now be drafted into her army as a child soldier.

Firstly, prove that Shigure's underage; secondly, i dunno why he's exposing himself as never having read Shigure's supports. He could have just left that part out of the script and not made himself look like a clown by implying that the story doesn't care about Shigure's dead friends and family despite multiple of his supports being centered around his grief at losing them.

Nina and Midori's paralogues

Somehow, in the midst of invading a foreign country, Silas has found a way to resurrect himself from the dead to protect some old man's funko pop collection.

(Later…)

Nina finds herself intrigued by the interactions between Niles and Silas, the latter of which is, in fact, dead.

The paralogue melancholically ends with Midori hallucinating a conversation with her father's ghost.

I'm surprised Excel never realized that Silas and Kaze have plot armor and them losing all their HP causes them to be crippled and incapable of fighting again, not die; i'd have expected someone on his twitch chat to inform him of that fact, or at least for him to find out himself after double-checking Silas and Kaze's defeat quotes, if he evidently thought the two of them showing up despite being “dead” was weird enough to warrant making basically the exact same joke about it thrice.

Chapter 23

Conflict is brewing in the Nohrian army and two factions have formed: one half that is loyal to king Garon, for some reason, and the other half that is loyal to Xander, for some other unspecified reason.

Goddamn, was Excel really in such a rush to pop this video out asap?

Azura: …You should know that Garon's men don't agree with our choice to keep them alive. We should keep close watch on them, or I shudder to think what might happen.

Azura is all but spelling out that the reason the Nohrian army's loyalty is split between Garon and Corrin is that the former half wants to kill every Hoshidan soldier they see without taking prisoners, even if they're surrendering, while the latter half wants only to kill as many people as needed to conquer the country and are willing to spare surrendering soldiers; How did he miss something this obvious?!

Chapter 24

In chapter 24 of this Conquest ironman the Nohrian army enters the Hoshidan capital and starts committing some atrocities; addressing these unwarranted acts of brutality, the wise prince Xander bows his head and solemnly says to Corrin there's actually zero difference between good and bad things, you imbecile you.

This just beat the “the Faceless killing Hoshidan soldiers is bizarre” claim as the biggest showcase of ineptitude in the video; Xander's point is that absolute justice doesn't exist and that bad actions can lead to good outcomes and vice versa, therefore they shouldn't risk dooming the world by trying to stop the slaughter and likely getting themselves pointlessly killed in the process; the bad and stupid part of that speech is Xander saying that they shouldn't let evil men's visions take precedence over their own, even as he's letting an evil man's vision take precedence over his own, but that's not even a point i can give to Excel, since he just takes the lazy way out and strawmans the fuck out of that speech instead of properly criticizing what's wrong with it.

Chapter 26

In the following cutscene Leo kills Iago so Corrin doesn't have to, a reocurring theme already well established by this point.

I'll give him this point in EN, if only because Corrin explicitly thanking Leo for killing Iago for them is pretty irrefutable evidence, but for clarity's sake, that is not what Corrin says in JP:

Corrin: Leon… I’ve caused you trouble.

The only thing that line means is Corrin apologizing to Leo for pushing him into killing a defenseless person again, this time due to a fight they're directly responsible for starting due to sparing Hinoka; nowhere in that scene is it implied Corrin wouldn't have just killed Iago themselves, other than their hesitating to do so after he begs for his life, a hesitation that lasts all of a few seconds before Leo barges in and killsteals them, giving them no time to go through with it themselves.

Chapter 27

In chapter 27 of this Conquest ironman, the Nohrian royals lampshade the flagrant plot contrivances that have brought them to this point.

How is Leo asking Corrin how they found out about Garon being dead, why they didn't tell them earlier, and why only they and Azura know about it lampshading contrivances? I could maybe see the first and third questions fitting that bill if i were to be generous to Excel and point out that the answer is “because of a truth-revealing crystal ball that comes out of nowhere in this route”, but the answer to the second one isn't in any way contrived; the Nohrian royals would never believe Corrin and Azura based off their words alone, therefore they had to get them to the Hoshidan throne room in order to show them irrefutable evidence for their claim.

Chapter 28

Takumi shows up, apparently having already died in chapter 23, and tells Corrin that his corpse is being pocketed by a mysterious entity, but he won't say any more unless Corrin pays 20 bucks for the Revelation dlc.

What? Takumi doesn't know anything more about the situation than what he tells Corrin; plus, the only thing Revelation adds to this scene is giving Anankos a name and nothing more. The how and why of Takumi and Garon being possesed are genuinely significantly better explained in CQ than in Rev, which are the only things of relevance to this scene.

He then expresses his true heartfelt feelings, that Corrin never did anything wrong and that all of the legitimate grievances he had were completely unjustified.

I need to peep his personalized copy; changing Takumi's confession from him saying that he always wanted to befriend Corrin throughout Conquest, even as he felt hurt and betrayed by what they were doing, into him saying that Corrin did nothing wrong and all his complaints were unjustified sounds like a crazy modification to the story, and i'd love to question IS on why Excel's such a special boy that they went through the trouble of rewriting the scene just for him.

Azura also mysteriously disappears for reasons not elaborated on in this route, and you can only save her by paying 20 bucks for the Revelation dlc.

Maybe so in Excel's personalized copy, but for everyone else, there's a pretty obvious elaboration on why she disappears in a line he already brought up:

Azura: I didn’t plan on ever doing this again… But I will now use my forbidden song to weaken the curse and help free you. Once I use this power… Takumi, Ryoma… I wonder if you’ll be upset at me for joining you so soon. Or maybe you’ll be happy to see me too... ... ♪

Blud must have contracted Garon's supposed object impermanence; either that, or he's being an inept rat again, given how he already referenced the in-route explanation for why Azura disappears and still thought this would be a good gotcha.

Buy Revelation today to get the golden route ending where everyone lives, except for the ones that don't; buy Revelation today, buy Rev today, buy Rev today, buy the dlc i swear to god buy it please please, don't you want to see all your favorite characters happy? buy it now buy it buy it

This entire rant is just Excel being a rat and making an argument that he doesn't realize would require him to bite a bullet so large no one would unironically do so in order to be valid; every single time he portrays something in CQ as a Rev reference he's either factually wrong or trying to use the fact that different things happen in a different route as IS shilling for people to buy it. Even if i were to just start bootlicking him and gave him that second part, he'd also have to argue that Path of Radiance setting things up that are only revealed and/or paid off in Radiant Dawn is also IS shilling for people to buy RD every time PoR sets up a plot point to be explained in the former, along with any instances of a piece of fiction with a planned sequel leaving things up in the air for a sequel to explore and explain also being an instance of the creator shilling for people to buy said sequel, otherwise he's a flagrant hypocrite.

Besides, he's blindly assuming that IS had mind-reading skills and foresaw that people playing CQ would randomly know that Rev is the route where most of the characters survive; Rev was only ever marketed as a route where Corrin refuses to side with either kingdom and sets out to find the truth behind the war, so even if i started hyper-sucking him off and gave him both of the first two criticisms, the entire argument would still fall apart due to, at it's very core, being built off working backwards from a conclusion and assuming that IS expected players to have future sight when playing CQ.

In a following cutscene, Xander is crowned king and gives a speech about how war benefits nobody, immediately after conducting a war of aggression that has exclusively benefited Nohr.

Nope, this is the true heir to the throne of “biggest display of flagrant incompetence in the video”; Excel literally pulled the “no one on either side of the kingdom benefited in the slightest from the war” gotcha completely out of his ass. Xander only says that Garon was a cruel leader, that he won't follow in his footsteps, and that Hoshido suffered from the war, never that no one in Nohr benefitted from it; i would adore to take a gander at Excel's personalized copy of Conquest, since that's the only explanation for this point making it into the video that doesn't require him to either be a lazy fuck who'd rather strawman a very simple speech than actually spend the two minutes necessary to read it, or a grossly inept dimwit, and for what it's worth, i'm willing to give him the former denomination rather than the latter.

Hinoka and Sakura forgive Corrin for invading their country and killing their brothers because it wasn't his fault and he can do no wrong.

I wasn't aware Corrin secretly had mind-control powers all along and forced Takumi to jump off a tall wall and Ryoma to slice open his own stomach, especially when they were trying to take the former in as a POW and the latter would have just been killed by Garon anyway if they hadn't done it themselves; Excel needs to release his personalized copy of Conquest for the world to see.

Besides, i thought he claimed Corrin never kills people throughout all of Conquest unless stated otherwise; if that's the case, what would Hinoka and Sakura be angry at them for? They didn't kill anyone during the invasion and gave the former her kingdom back as soon as the war was over, so i fail to see a single good reason for anyone to be angry at them, according to his logic.

Lastly, yes, it unironically wasn't Corrin's fault that their kingdom was invaded and their brothers died; Nohr is so much more powerful than Hoshido that they would have won the war even without Corrin's help, except with the entire royal family dead and a lot more casualties on the Hoshidan side.

To celebrate the tremendous loss of life, Nohr will have a grand banquet for everyone in the capital.

I find it very interesting that Excel doesn't make this exact same criticism against every FE ending; all of them end with the heroes triumphant and relaxing after a lot of bloodshed, and in CQ's case specifically it's even more justified due to Nohr finally getting enough food from Hoshido to feed everyone in the country for the first time in decades, if not centuries.

The rest of the video is just a couple of mid jokes followed by self-congratulations, so i'll end this here; shame that Excel put out a 3/10 video for something as important as a subscriber landmark, but there's always next time.

So. Chapter 28 of Fire Emblem Fates Conquest. More specifically, the scene at the start where Takumi talks to Corrin and says that he forgives them for what they did and still wants to befriend them.

To say that that section of the cutscene is infamous among the community would be a massive understatement, with the reasons why generally falling into the camp of “this is character assassination for Takumi, he never felt anything but extreme anger towards Corrin through the entirety of Conquest's story, why would he be willing to forgive them after they invaded Hoshido? This was clearly done just so the writers could absolve Corrin.”

Those arguments, however, come from a fundamental misunderstanding of what Takumi's going through mentally over the course of Conquest, what actually caused him to forgive Corrin, the most likely purpose for the scene's inclusion, and bad localization, and i intend to prove why with this post.

Let's take a look back at Takumi's appearances throughout Conquest:

If he's attacked by Corrin during Chapter 6, he reaffirms that he never trusted them, along with claiming that he isn't surprised or hurt by their betrayal at all, and that he'll enjoy killing them.

In Chapter 10, he shows up to lead an invasion on Nohrian land, gets defeated by Corrin and, after angering himself by blaming the destruction of Hoshido on them again and remembering Mikoto's death, gets a massive headache and a sudden boost in arrogance before running away.

During Chapter 13, he ambushes Corrin's group when they arrive at Cheve, screams at them to just shut up and die when they tell him they weren't there to get into a fight, orders his soldiers to attack, and admits near the end that his main reason for doing this is because he hopes that killing Nohrian soldiers will make his headache go away; he goes off on a rant about killing them after being beaten and runs away (2: Electric Boogaloo), causing Azura to point out that he's acting extremely out-of-character, much moreso than would be expected just because Corrin defected to Nohr, and wonders whether that's even the real Takumi anymore.

Takumi guards the Great Wall of Susanoo during Chapter 23. His battle dialogue with Corrin has him claim that he has become obsessed with the idea of killing them, to the point of no longer caring about anything in life other than taking revenge on them; this is, however, almost immediately proven false when finding out that Sakura was taken prisoner causes him to break down crying and let it slip that he was devastated by Corrin going back to Nohr and wishes they'd stayed in Hoshido, also proving that he was lying every time he claimed that their betrayal didn't bother him. His sorrow reaches enough of a boiling point for whatever was messing with his mind to be able to take full control, enveloping him in a purple aura and convincing him that he could still escape and save Hoshido if he threw himself off the wall, something that obviously doesn't work and gets him killed.

At the end of Chapter 27, Takumi shows up again, though clearly no longer as himself; he makes his entrance by trying and failing to snipe Corrin, ignores their plea for him to stop since the war is already over, is barely capable of saying anything more than “i'll kill you” over and over again, along with repeating his previous blaming of Corrin for Hoshido's destruction back in Chapter 5, and states that he doesn't need to be able to think for himself to take revenge. Azura explains that he's being possessed in the same way Garon was, starting at least from the moment he threw himself off the wall of Susanoo, that he can't possibly recover from this anymore, and that his anger and resentment have completely overtaken his mind, presumbaly due to the influence of whatever's controlling him; Corrin, blaming themselves for Takumi's current state and wracked with guilt because of it, ignores Azura's warnings and tries to get him to let go of those feelings by allowing themselves to be used as a punching bag and refusing to dodge his next shot, though still with no intention of dying and failing to keep the promise they made to Ryoma. They underestimate how much stronger the possession made him, however, and the attack shatters the Yato and nearly kills them, with their last words before passing out being to deliriously ask Takumi to hit them more if it'll make him feel better, still believing they can take his attacks.

At the start of Chapter 28, Mikoto and Ryoma's spirits show to Corrin (while they're all in what seems to be the Nohrshido version of the afterlife) that killing them did nothing to stop the possessed Takumi, with Ryoma claiming that his anger has overtaken him so much that he won't stop until he has killed every Nohrian soldier; before Corrin goes back to the world of the living to finish him off and save their friends, Ryoma reintroduces them to the real Takumi, who's also in spirit form. Takumi confirms that the version of him they've been fighting is nothing more than a corpse controlled by someone else and fueled by resentment, with his heart and soul having left that body ever since Susanoo; he also confirms that he can't personally interfere in the outside world while stuck in the afterlife, asking Corrin to destroy his body with the Yato when they go back and giving them the Fujin Yumi so they can repair the broken sword, a request Corrin promises to fulfill. Takumi thanks them, wonders how he would have felt if the two of them had been able to fight together in another life, and admits to having only been pretending to dislike them (and, as BR confirms, Azura) during Chapter 5 and actually wanting to befriend Corrin back in that chapter, apologizing for being too insecure to be honest with them. Corrin also apologizes for all the pain they caused him, but Takumi says that it's all right, since seeing them sacrifice themselves in an attempt to accept and heal his corpse's hatred, along with the heart-to-heart they just had, was enough to convince him of their good nature and cause him to forgive them for the pain they caused him; his last words to them consist of him being excited at the prospect of spending time together with them, as a true family, when they meet again in the afterlife.

Now that we're all caught up, i will respond to one of two major points against the scene:

Doesn't Takumi say that he always wanted to get closer to Corrin up until his last moments in life? Wouldn't that mean that it wasn't him witnessing and being moved by their actions after his death that caused him to change his opinion of them, but instead him secretly never taking any issue with them even while they were invading his homeland and he had no way of knowing why?

Well, yes… in the localized version of Conquest's story; here's a side-by-side comparison of the specific section of the Chapter 28 convo where Takumi claims that he wanted to be good siblings with Corrin, with the major difference between the two highlighted (sources for this are the fates chapter scripts on the fire emblem wiki for EN and fateswartable for JP, though i will be using the en script unless otherwise specified since the prose there is significantly better than the fateswartable translation and the examples i use are actually pretty faithful to the original script, with 28 and a bit of 27 being the only major fumbles):

Takumi: I always wished we could have been close, as you are with your Nohrian siblings. Right up until my last moments, I wanted so badly to call you my brother/sister. To look up to you and love you…and never allow anything to come between us. I wish I had told you that before I died. While there was still a chance… i was just so stubborn, so hurt. I couldn’t admit those feelings even to myself. For that, I am truly sorry. I’m so sorry for letting you slip away, dear brother/sister.

Takumi (JP): Kamui. The truth is, i really… i wanted to get along as siblings. I wanted to call you brother/sister. I should have said so properly when i was still me… but because of my stubbornness, i was determined not to show my true feelings… i'm sorry.

Now, is it still possible to argue that, even in JP, Takumi could be counting “still himself” as “from when he met Corrin to just before he was forced to jump off Susanoo”, with him referring to his possessed corpse as the sole instance of him not acting like himself, which would make the wording change a distinction without a difference? Yes, but said scenario is extremely unlikely and inconsistent with what the rest of the story shows and tells us; there's a consistent pattern throughout the game of Anankos needing to:

1. Get his hands on someone's corpse so he can reanimate them as either mindless mute zombies (Scarlet) or a version of themselves that has all their negative emotions in life massively exaggerated (Mikoto's sorrow at spending 15 years apart from Corrin getting turned into her trying to trick and kill them just so they can spend the rest of eternity serving Anankos together and getting all the bonding time in the world, Sumeragi's bloodlust during battle getting turned into battling and killing being his only motivation in life and something he's thoroughly obssessed with, etc…)

2. Capture them in Valla so he can brainwash them personally (Rev!Gunter and BR!Takumi)

3. Have someone who already visited Valla at least once to be feeling heavy amounts of negative emotions, at which point he can start to slowly amplify those feelings and get more control over their actions, until said feelings reach a boiling point and he gains enough control to force his victims to commit suicide and proceed with option 1 (Garon and CQ!Takumi)

And before someone brings it up, yes, it's never explicitly stated anywhere that the host needs to have both visited Valla and be feeling heavily under-the-weather for a long time for Anankos to even be able to begin messing with their head, but those are the only provable commonalities shared between all of his possessed victims in Fates (that weren't already captured or killed), commonalities that also provide a strong explanation for why he hasn't possessed more people, so i find them fair inferrences to make for the story.

Takumi first shows signs of possession at the end of Chapter 10 when he starts getting depressed and angry due to the double-whammy of both remembering Mikoto's death and getting beaten by the sibling who he feels betrayed him, which causes him to get his first headache and to, immediately after said headache, gain an unhealty amount of copium and arrogance:

Takumi: That's right! If you hadn't come back into our lives, Hoshido would still be at peace. Mother... all those innocent townspeople... they would still be alive. They wouldn't have... ARGH! NOOO!

Corrin: Takumi! What's wrong?!

Takumi: M-my head... the pain is... ARGHHH!

Corrin: Takumi!

Takumi: DON'T YOU TOUCH ME! K-keep your filthy Nohrian hands off of me!

Corrin: Takumi... please, let me help!

Takumi: Don't think this means you've won. This is only the beginning! Ryoma has already found the Rainbow Sage and received his power. You're no match for him now, even with the whole vile Nohrian army behind you! And I'm getting stronger, too! Soon I'll be unstoppable. One day you'll beg me for death, and I will happily grant you. Until then, I leave you with your guilt.

He starts acting even more aggresively and unreasonably by the start of Chapter 13, causing Azura to point out that it's extremely out-of-character for him to be so kill-happy, suspecting he'd been possessed or replaced, along with Takumi confirming that the headache from before has become a common occurence that he hopes will go away after killing Nohrian soldiers:

Azura:  ...That is not the Takumi I once knew. He's changed. Takumi never accepted me as his sister like the others, but he was always kind. He's not the type to raise his voice or threaten to hurt anyone. I can't explain it, but it's like he's a different person... He's so crazed and focused on Nohr's destruction... I can't help but wonder if that's really Takumi. 

Takumi: I'll... kill you all... Y-yes... If I kill the Nohrians... surely the pain... the pain in my head will go away...

With all of that, it's safe to claim that he fell into Valla and got out sometime before chapter 10, with the end of said chapter being the first time he felt negative enough for Anankos to start work on possessing him (based off the facts that he's acting perfectly normally prior to getting the headache, the agression he gets from it is consistent, obvious and not something he'd be able to hide, as shown by the rest of his appearances afterwards, and, if we're willing to resort to meta evidence, the theme that plays for fighting Vallite bosses also plays when fighting him in Chapters 13 and 23, but not 10, heavily implying he's either completely or mostly unnafected by Anankos up until the very end of that chapter), work that gets sped up significantly every time Corrin beats Takumi and the latter feels a sense of humiliation and frustration; the last time Takumi would have felt like himself would have been, at the latest, right before he gets his first headache at the end of chapter 10, with all of his appearances afterwards being him acting like an obsessive violent psycho due to being slowly made to hyperfocus on his negative emotions, and not something he'd be proud of or consider his true feelings.

So, no, the infamous line was never originally meant to imply that Takumi never felt any sort of anger or resentment towards Corrin through all of Conquest, only that his already-existing grudge and anger got blown massively out-of-proportion by Anankos from the end of Chapter 10 onwards, that he regrets being a dickhead towards Corrin unprovoked back in Chapter 5, and wishes he had told them that he actually wanted to befriend them during that same chapter; Takumi only forgives Corrin after he stops being possessed, is rid of all the extra anger and resentment Anankos gave him, very likely has his own heart-to-heart with Mikoto and Ryoma offscreen, both of which would encourage him to not be so harsh on Corrin (with Ryoma specifically arguing that they were still a good person and intended on fixing things after the war was over, given how he knows they disobeyed orders to spare Hinoka and saw the Yato evolve in front of him, which is a sign that it's wielder is still destined to save the world), and sees them practically commit suicide in a fruitless attempt to help him after being filled with guilt for what they think they did to him:

Corrin (JP): I'm sorry too… your resentment is my fault. I also wanted you to call me brother/sister. Once this war was over, i thought it was possible to have a good sibling relationship with you. But even so… this happened. I am truly sorry.

Takumi: No, it's already okay. You accepted my hatred and came here. That was enough. Thank you, brother/sister…

Given all the information i have laid out, i do not believe that it is a valid criticism against the scene to argue that Takumi is out-of-character for forgiving Corrin, at least in JP; the argument *is* stronger in EN, if only because it's wildly contradictory for Takumi to state that he always deeply wanted to befriend Corrin, even during his dying moments, while also having his possession start due to his feelings of resentment and anger towards them that he had long before he fell into Valla and were only amplified, not created, by Anankos. If you want to criticize that version of the sentence because it damages Takumi's character by implying that he never took any major issues with what Corrin was doing throughout CQ (including beating the shit out of him thrice over and helping in the invasion of his homeland for what he assumed were evil reasons) and scapegoating Anankos as being solely responsible for all his misgivings, or even just because it removes a lot of the emotional weight the scene had since that changes it into “i never felt any significant ill will towards my older sibling at any point in my life regardless of what they were doing to hurt me, and any time i did it was all because of my being possessed” feel free to do so; you'll get no complaints from me, though i would appreciate it if more people started spreading the info around that Takumi saying he never felt negatively towards Corrin while he was alive was the result of a mistranslation.

Now, for the second main criticism of the scene:

This was only put in the game so the writers could absolve Corrin by ass-pulling it so that even the character who disliked them at the start actually secretly wanted to be friends with them all along and forgave them for conquering his home

My main issue with this criticism is that it's baseless, bad-faith, and borne out of a lack of knowledge of Takumi's character and Corrin's motivations all in one; going from most to least important of those points:

It was inconsistent/an asspull for him to have secretly liked Corrin in Chapter 5

Even ignoring his supports and focusing only on the main stories, Takumi is consistently characterized as taking a liking to people very easily and quickly, but pretending to dislike them/not care about them because he's an insecure young man with an inferiority complex who feels like he's less useful than his siblings, causing him to to larp as a cold, calculating and unfeeling person who has no need for friends so he can make people think he's more self-assured and confident than he actually is; this is demonstrated when he gets flustered from Azura complimenting him in Chapter 10 of Birthright, despite acting like he disliked and distrusted her not 5 chapters prior, and when Izana, a stranger he barely knows, asking him to join Corrin's group as his dying wish in Chapter 10 of Revelation moves him enough to join up with them out of respect.

While i can concede that there's little set-up for this aspect of his character in Conquest itself outside of the scene it's introduced in, that's mostly just because the guy also has next to no screentime in that route where he isn't either fighting in a battle or having his negative emotions amplified, so of course it'd take the one and only instance in the whole story where him and Corrin aren't fighting and are willing to have a healthy talk with each other for that to be revealed; this isn't like the warp book in Chapter 18 of BR, which is an actual asspull because it has no set-up or foreshadowing to speak of anywhere else in the game and is brought up out-of-nowhere in order to solve a massive dillema in the story (that being whether Corrin's willing to backtrack to the Rainbow Sage for more power but exponentially increase the danger and risk they'd go through in the process), but a consistent part of Takumi's characterization that's both pivotal to his character arc in Birthright and made clear in every route where he doesn't spend 90% of his screentime as an enemy who wants nothing more than to kill Corrin and refuses to entertain a friendly convo with them until after he dies and gets to chill in the afterlife for a while. I can see a decent argument being made for it being inconsistent in the EN version of Conquest, if only because it's very hard to buy that Takumi would have continued feeling mostly positive feelings towards Corrin even in the middle of the war, but anyone who tries to say that it's still a character assassination for Takumi to say in JP that he wanted to befriend Corrin back in Chapter 5, when they did nothing to him and he was just acting tough and uncaring to try and intidimate them, genuinely doesn't know the first thing about him as a character.

It's inconsistent for Takumi to forgive Corrin for conquering Hoshido

What i find interesting about this argument is that people who use it have this weird belief that Takumi (and, very often, the rest of the Hoshidan siblings) would always lay a significant amount of blame on Hoshido being conquered on Corrin no matter what the circumstances, if not that Corrin is genuinely mostly to blame for Hoshido getting invaded; most of those complaints come back to people believing that it doesn't make sense for Corrin to choose to help in the invasion of Hoshido in the first place because they supposedly had more peaceful and reasonable options that'd have accomplished the same thing with less bloodshed, meaning that their participation in it was a huge mistake, they were both stupid for accepting it and morally in the wrong for doing so, and the Hoshidan characters should think the same.

The debunks for those arguments are extensive enough to warrant their own post, let alone a quarter of an otherwise-unrelated one, which is exactly what happened; someone on reddit made an excellent analysis recently compiling said debunks, along with in-depth explanations for why it makes perfect sense for Corrin to go along with the invasion character and logic-wise, but even skipping over most of the explanations of both that post and my Conquest Part 3 response where i went into some detail on why the Hoshidan sibs don't blame Corrin for their participation in the invasion (except for Takumi because i managed to miss his last two lines of dialogue where he explicitly forgives Corrin in both versions of the script, and even if i hadn't, i didn't understand his reasoning for forgiving Corrin until recently and would have probably just made a stupid defense for the scene anyway because i was much worse at this schtick back then, but it doesn't matter that much when this entire post has just been a poorly-disguised CQ!Takumi character analysis) on the grounds of it derailing an already-long analysis and going with the basic fact that i hope no one will try and dispute of “Corrin didn't start the invasion, they only helped one side win it more easily”, i have a question for the people who think it's bad writing for Takumi to ever forgive Corrin for helping conquer Hoshido, no matter the context: why would he (and the other Hoshido sibs for that matter) blame Corrin for the invasion instead of directing the vast majority of that resentment towards Garon, especially after he's had time to think about what happened clearly and is fully aware of the context and reasoning behind their participation?

Why would Takumi, after dying and being rid of his excess anger and resentment; very likely being told by Ryoma that Corrin hadn't joined the invasion in order to conquer Hoshido but to free the country after it inevitably lost the war against the overwhelmingly-superior Nohrian army, even going as far as to risk their own life by sparing Hoshidan soldiers (including Hinoka and Sakura) if and when they could, with Ryoma himself only dying because Garon gave them a direct order to kill him; seeing Corrin offer themselves up as a punching bag for possessed!Takumi to beat the shit out of due to how stricken by grief they were over the thought that they caused him to end up in that state, nearly getting themselves killed in the process; AND having a chat with Corrin where the two of them finally confess their true thoughts and apologize for the pain they caused each other; hold any significant resentment against Corrin? Why would he, after thinking things through calmly and objectively (which he would have had plenty of time to do in the afterlife), blame someone for their part in an invasion he knows they only joined because they had no choice on the matter and were actively trying to minimize the damage that would happen during the conquest to the best of their capabilities, especially when he knows that, had Corrin not joined, hundreds more would have died, including his sisters, while Hoshido lost the war anyway because they're hopelessly out-matched regardless of Corrin being a commander for a small portion of Nohr's army or not, especially when the one actually responsible for starting and carrying through that mess is a much easier and more logical target for his frustrations, and especially when the person forced to participate in the takeover is someone he cared dearly for, had a falling out with, then went right back to holding deep affections for once he found out he was wrong in his judgement of them?

Sorry that this derailed into a bit of a defense for CQ!Corrin, but it'd be near-impossible to respond to that criticism properly without bringing that topic up. TL;DR it's completely in-character and logical for Takumi (and the Hoshidan sibs) to forgive Corrin, mostly because he's aware they had no real agency or choice in joining given their circumstances, made a significant and good difference in a war Hoshido couldn't possibly win by saving a bunch of people in the process, Garon is right there and is much more at fault for Nohr winning the war than Corrin ever was, and he still has an emotional connection and bias towards them.

The scene was only put into the game to absolve Corrin

Or it could have been put into the game to keep to the throughline of Birthright and Conquest's stories paralleling each other at multiple points (two of the royal siblings die near the end; the Yato gets halfway-done evolving after Corrin deepens their bonds with two of the allied legendary-weapon-wielding royal siblings; Takumi falls into Valla and gets brainwashed by Anankos; and most importantly for this argument, Corrin takes a hit strong enough to destroy the Yato and nearly kill them in the final chapter, ends up in the afterlife, has a heart-to-heart with the Nohrian/Hoshidan siblings that died during the route and, with help from them, restores and improves the Yato so that they can go back to the world of the living and save their friends); or to give CQ!Takumi a proper resolution to his character conflict by having him finally get over his insecurities and need to appear strong at all times and ask Corrin for help with a problem he can't solve on his own, telling them what his true feelings were and how he wishes he had confessed when the two of them were still alive and on the same side, and have his sadness due to Corrin's betrayal mended after he sees them sacrifice themselves to try and save him, apologize for the pain they caused him, and admit to hoping that the two of them could have mended their relationship after the war was over; or to reaffirm Corrin's will to see their choice through to the end by having the talk cause them to admit that Takumi died because of them and the path they chose, but that they'll redeem themselves for that and their other sins by fulfilling their promise to him and getting rid of whatever's possessing his corpse, along with working to bring peace to the world (in JP; they put the blame for his death entirely on Anankos in EN, which is a really weird choice to me but whatever):

Corrin: The true owner of the Fuujin bow… is dead because of us! That is the price I paid for choosing this path, but I will redeem myself! By defeating you, I’ll fulfill my promise to that precious person! Takumi… I’m late, but this time i'm sure… I can save you and the whole world!

Now, i'm not trying to argue that it's impossible for the devs to have put that scene in solely for pandering, but given how all the arguments i laid out have significantly stronger and more supporting evidence for them and can be interpreted solely by analyzing the text instead of baselessly assuming author intent, i am arguing that it's an incredibly weak and unlikely point that relies on interpreting the convo with heavy dosages of bad-faith while also ignoring other, significantly more logical, well-supported and consistent explanations for it's purpose in the story; it's never going to be something i'll be able to completely disprove, mostly because that's the most subjective criticism of the scene i've seen so far and the writers haven't dedicated a section of an interview to explaining their intentions when writing that scene, but i hope i was able to at least convince those who do believe that to look at that moment in a different light.

An oft-repeated claim in the Naruto fandom is that the revelation that Naruto and Sasuke are the “reincarnates” of Ashura and Indra, the Sage of Six Paths' children, invalidates their, especially Naruto's, struggles at the start of the series, be it because that means they were fated to save the world or because they had a massive power-boost from birth.

How accurate are these criticisms, however?

In this post, i will be going over all the major points used to criticize Naruto and Sasuke's statuses as reincarnates being of significant benefit to them and making counter-arguments (using only manga canon, since the Indra and Ashura anime filler has some really weird and contradictory shit in it), starting with:

Their statuses as reincarnates means they were fated to save the world/be powerful shinobi

This is honestly the weakest point of the bunch, mostly because there's next to no supporting evidence for it in the series and what little we do get on the specifics all but debunks it; here's the only things Indra and Ashura's reincarnates are ever stated or implied to be destined to do:

As you can see, the only thing the series ever implies the Indra and Ashura reincaranates are destined to do are to kill each other and nothing else;there's nothing on them being fated to save the world or to become powerful shinobi themselves.

As a matter of fact, Hagoromo in the first and third pictures explicitly confirms there were multiple reincarnates prior to Hashirama and Madara, none of which ever became anyone of any relevance or power to the shinobi world, further confirming that being a reincarnate does nothing to guarantee you power in the Narutoverse. The argument that Naruto and Sasuke had any sort of beneficial destiny is a gigantic strawman of that plot point, and one that's easily debunked the second you try looking for evidence to support it.

Naruto and Sasuke were born with massive power boosts and special abilities due to being reincarnates

This is the stronger of the two main criticisms, if only because, unlike with the last point, there's nothing in the series to definitively disprove the notions that Ashura and Indra are reincarnated when their hosts are born or that the hosts receive a power boost from them.

There is, however, evidence against those notions, evidence strong and plentiful enough for me to make cases against those points.

Starting with the idea that Indra and Ashura “reincarnate” into their hosts at birth, Naruto in the third picture describes the experience like a ghost haunting, and both him and Hagoromo claim they can see/sense someone else (Ashura)'s presence and chakra inside of him, something that wouldn't make sense if it was a true reincarnation and Ashura had any significant amount of his chakra inside of Naruto from birth:

In addition to that, and this is the strongest piece of evidence against the idea that I&A reincarnate at birth, the manga goes out of it's way to all but confirm that the “change” Naruto had sensed in Sasuke's chakra during the Five Kage Summit was Indra choosing him as his host during those events:

While there's not enough evidence to prove this claim beyond a shadow of a doubt, i do think it makes for a very strong argument that I&A work more like transmigrants than reincarnates, choosing hosts they feel align with their ideals and have enough power to see it through; the idea that N&S were born as reincarnates of I&A is, while not as objectively wrong as the destiny argument, still a very shaky point to stand on that has plenty of holes in it.

Naruto and Sasuke gained powers when they became the transmigrants

This is both the strongest and weakest argument so far; it's the strongest because there's very little in the series that can be used to disprove that claim, and the weakest because there's not only very little in the series that can be used to prove that claim, but also no way to quantify how much power N&S got from being I&A transmigrants, let alone to prove that it was in any way significant.

It's completely unknown when Ashura chose Naruto as his host, so that's a dead end given how often Naruto gets stronger through the series; we do know Indra chose Sasuke during the events of the Five Kage Summit, being the reason his chakra got colder and Sasuke himself started going off the deep end, but even then Sasuke's best feat prior to the FKS was beating Deidara, after which he has very few good feats pre-FKS and multiple different power-ups, including getting his Mangekyo and multiple hatred amps every Uchiha gets, meaning there's no way to prove whether Indra was the reason he grew so quickly following Itachi's death or not.

The notion that Naruto and Sasuke got significant power ups from Indra and Ashura is honestly just an unfalsifiable claim, especially when there are multiple other ways they could have gotten stronger, and as such a very weak argument.

In conclusion:

N&S being transmigrants of I&A had fuck all to do with any sort of beneficial destiny or fate, as stated, shown and implied by the manga itself

N&S very likely only became transmigrants after 17 years of working hard to become as powerful as they did, to the point of impressing I&A enough that they chose them as the people they wanted fulfilling their ideas of how the world should be, as heavily implied by the description of the reincarnation process and Naruto sensing something different in Sasuke after the earliest point he started showing signs of being possessed by Indra

The burden of proof is entirely on the person making the claim that N&S got a power boost from becoming transmigrants, let alone that it was in any way significant, which can't be done because it's a borderline-unprovable claim

Link to original post here.

> **Sexism**

> I think this topic goes well beyond Camilla's "armor", which is why I feel the need to bring it up despite not exactly being an expert on the topic. Some fan service designs are understandable, in my opinion, both for male and female characters, but this is an issue which seeps into the writing.

> Camilla is in three cutscenes, two of which focus entirely on her design. One of them is the "sibling introduction cinematic", for the lack of a better term, and all eight have one of these. Camilla's is the most jarring, as the camera shots go beyond gratuitous and straight into creepy pandering territory, and what really gets me is how utterly it clashes with what's happening in the story. Camilla is supposed to be distraught over Corrin's betrayal and getting ready to fight them, and *that's* what the game focuses on? It'd be like showing Ryoma get out of the bath before trying to stop you from taking over his country in Conquest.

I'll happily concede that Camilla's outfit is horrifically impractical for armor that she's supposed to be wearing into battle, and that you might be able to argue sexism due to the fact that there's no real reason for her to wear that aside from fanservice, but what does that, or the camera in her Birthright cutscene focusing on her “assets”, have to do with the writing?

The only thing i got from this is that you personally found her BR cutscene creepy and think that it clashes with the tone of the story, and more power to you if you did, but how is this any different from someone using “i like what this story says” as a defense? Both of those points are based on heavily subjective evidence that can't really be argued for or against, which is the exact reason you gave for why you thought that thematic analysis was lesser than plot analysis; isn't this hypocritical?

> The other sisters' cutscenes aren't as *creepy,* but there's a pattern in how the cutscenes are all brighter, and in Sakura and Elise's case, cuter.

Sakura and Elise are some of the most idealistic and optimistic members of their respective families; the cutscenes being “brighter” (being good-faith here and assuming you're talking about the tone instead of the actual lighting of the cutscenes) are just accurate representations of their characters, not sexist writing.

And yes, Sakura and Elise's surface-level gimmicks are being cute girls, just like Kiragi, Percy and Hayato 's surface-level gimmicks are being cute boys; unless you're willing to argue that Fates is both misandric and misogynistic for having a tiny fraction of it's cast be made up of young people that are occasionally portrayed as cute, a trope that's omni-present in not only this franchise but in almost any piece of fiction with children in it, this is inane.

> To Hinoka's credit, she actually flaunts her weapon in a vaguely threatening manner, but the camera angle of the video coupled with her insanely short skirt are unlikely to be coincidences.

Wow, you can see her *legs* in that cutscene, guys! How sexist of the game for putting a female character in an outfit with a skirt, keeping her outfit for a cutscene, and going out of it's way to censor any actual fanservice by putting a black void under her crotch anytime there's a shot where the audience would be able to see under her skirt, amirite?

> Meanwhile, all four of the brothers get a cutscene of them getting ready to fight and posing threateningly with their legendary weapons. Oh, right, the legendary weapons. Which all the four brothers have. The sisters don't have a single one.

I find it very interesting for you to reduce a bunch of women's worth solely to whether or not they can use special weapons; are you aware of how much worse than the game this makes you look?

> Granted, as discussed in Revelation, the brothers' legendary weapons basically get reduced to batteries in the main plot, but at least they're *something.*

Give a meaningful distinction between Takumi and Leo being shoved to the sidelines in Revelation despite wielding two of the four legendary weapons and them being shoved to the sidelines in some alternate universe where they weren't the ones who could use the legendary weapons; their biggest contributions to the plot are in their joining chapters, after which they become little more than tag-alongs with minimal screentime or relevance up until the fight with Anankos, where their legendary weapons sync up with the Yato and power it up to it's final state, which would have happened regardless of whether the people wielding the weapons had a dick or not.

If anything, this should be a criticism of Revelation's bloated cast making it so that any character not named Corrin, Azura, Xander, Ryoma or Gunter get, at best, a chapter for themselves before being mostly forgotten about by the plot; while i'd question if you'd share that criticism with most other FE games, if to a lesser extent due to the sheer size of Rev's playable cast, it'd still be more sensible than trying to argue that Revelation's poor distribution of screentime and/or plot relevance is sexist despite the fact that Takumi and Leo get just as shafted as the royal sisters.

> The game never really justifies the sisters' presence in the conflict in any way,

Just because they can't use the super-duper-special weapons their brothers can doesn't mean they're not some of the strongest people in the world; that, and the fact that they want to win the war they're currently in, is more than enough justification for them to join the conflict.

> and they're the first to get shoved to the sidelines, especially once Ryoma and/or Xander join. There's never anything only they can do or say.

They're the first to get shoved to the sidelines because they're the first ones to join the team, and even then, they're only truly shafted in the latter halves of Revelation and Birthright.

In Birthright, Elise is pivotal to the main plot; Camilla gets two chapters all to herself, both of which explore her character and mental state after Corrin betrayed Nohr; Sakura is the one to point out that they'll need a special herb to cure Takumi's sickness, saving his life when that causes Ryoma to direct them to Macarath; and Hinoka saves Corrin and Sakura's lives from Zola by (accidentally) looking through his disguise and following him in secret to see if he planned on doing anything to them. The Hoshidan sisters don't have much presence in the story later on, admittedly, but at least the Nohrian sisters get plenty of screentime to make up for that.

In Conquest, Elise causes the Ice Tribe fight to break out by unknowingly snitching on Corrin, is the reason the team goes to Macarath and gets ambushed by Ryoma due to getting sick, has a mini-character arc where she starts off jealous of Sakura when they first meet in Izumo prior to warming up to and befriending her when she's taken prisoner, and insults Iago and Hans to their faces prior to fighting them; Camilla tells Corrin to go talk to Leo for guidance after they witness the Cheve massacre and warns them against disobeying Garon lest they be executed, starting their character arc in that route, has a scene at the end of Hinoka's chapter where she convinces Hinoka to follow Corrin's orders to retreat by threatening to decapitate her if she disobeys, and tells Hans and Iago that she doesn't care about what they did and is only going to fight them because they're attacking Corrin, having a pretty consistent thoroughline of being relatively amoral, which is an aspect of her character that's only explored in this route; Sakura has, for the only time in any of the routes, an actual character arc, with her getting a chapter and cutscene all to herself, dedicated to showing her overcoming her shyness in order to stand her ground and help the troops fight off the Nohrian army, even being willing to fight and kill Corrin to do so; and Hinoka is at her most relevant in Conquest, being the entire catalyst for why Chapter 26 even happens, along with being fought twice, with the second time estabilishing just how betrayed she felt when she thought Corrin blew off her attempts at appealing to their sentimentality when they told her to let them through because they need to reach the throne, having her steel her heart to finally kill her own sibling, who was the entire reason she even got to training in the first place, and reconciling with Corrin after they make clear that they hold no ill will towards her or Hoshido and are doing this for the greater good, along with sparing as many soldiers as they can, causing her opinion of Nohr to brighten up enough for her to sign a peace treaty with Xander. Unironically, Conquest is the best route in the entire game in terms of giving the sisters plot and character relevance.

> The only real exception to a sister's importance is Elise in Birthright where she serves as a guide and the only character trying to inject some humanity into the story.

So, thematic analysis as a concept is too vague and subjective to be argued for or against and, as such, is a bad point to make in defense of a game, but saying that a character is relevant and good because they “inject humanity into a story” isn't? What are these standards?

> In that way she's far more important than Ryoma in any route outside of his weapon.

I like Elise too, but you don't need to go so far as to lie just to hype her up; her only purpose in Birthright is to serve as a tour guide for the team and to die so Xander can complete his character arc.

Ryoma, just in Birthright, however: has a fully-fledged character arc, where he starts off ignorant of the suffering of the Nohrian populace, prior to visiting the Nohrian capital and seeing for himself how miserable life is for the vast majority of people living in Nohr, leading him to reconsider his opinion of the country and promising to help it rebuild once he's crowned as king; is pivotal for Corrin's character arc, being the one who convinces them to keep trusting in their allies whenever they start becoming undeservedly suspicious of their own army due to a constant string of betrayals from people they considered friends, leading to them both saving Takumi's life at the end of the game by trusting in Takumi to overpower his possession and causing the conclusion of Ryoma's own character arc when, at the end of the game, he accepts that he isn't strong enough to do everything by himself and needs friends in order to solve the problems ahead of him, causing the Yato to evolve and the main theme of Birthright to be fully explored; and is the main person driving the plot forward prior to the team meeting up with Elise since he's the only one with knowledge of important military locations in Nohr.

Elise is utterly irrelevant compared to Ryoma, both character and plot-wise, in any of the routes, not because of sexism, but because he's one of the main characters of the entire game whereas Elise's a secondary character at best; it's called having priorities when making a story.

> There's one more thing that I've not seen many people discuss: the sisters' (and Azura's) feelings on ascending the throne. Camilla gives up the throne to Leo, Hinoka is forced to become queen because both her brothers died, and Azura gives up her claim to the throne in favor of Corrin. No (canonically; Corrin's sex can be chosen) female main support character wants to become queen and are quick to shy away from the responsibility.

Camilla's reasons for not wanting to be queen are pretty obvious given how mentally unstable she's proven to be multiple times throughout Birthright; Hinoka only claims that she didn't want to be queen in the localization and, in the JP script, only says that she never dreamed of taking the throne because the title of king would have automatically gone to Ryoma or Takumi, meaning she didn't expect to be made queen due to Hoshido's patriarchal succession system, not because of a lack of desire on her part; and Azura's shown to be both a terrible leader and extremely shy and anti-social multiple times throughout Revelation, so her hesitation at her capacity to successfully rule over a recently-devastated country is perfectly understandable given the amount of convincing the people of Valla would need in order to follow a new ruler.

Even following your lead and ignoring all the context as to why the three of them were hesitant to become queen, why is their denying the responsibilities of being ruler of an entire country sexist, exactly? Being king or queen is never portrayed as an inherently good thing in Fates, and in fact it's pointed out multiple times in both the story and supports that there are immense amounts of responsibilities and restrictions that come with being a monarch; wouldn't them taking up jobs they don't want, aren't suited for, and which would force them to spend the rest of their lives with little choice in how they get to live, just because they're women, be significantly more sexist than them acknowledging they don't want that kind of life and preffering to live the way they want to?

> Sure, the game does a poor job of explaining why Valla needs a monarch at the end of Revelation

Valla needs a monarch because the kingdom and it's people are still there, something needs to be done about it, and Corrin's the best person to rule over it given that they're one of only two people in the world that are Vallite royalty and are an excellent leader besides; these are extremely easy and basic inferrences to make.

> or even where Ryoma and Xander's..."gifts of land" are,

Hoshido and Nohr's territories, put together, account for most of the world; they're going to have plenty of spare, unused land to give. I don't see why you're trying to frame this as an issue.

> but then why even include this in the first place? Why make a completely unnecessary and strictly confusing scene where Azura rejects her throne?

Because this is an acknowledgment that Azura would make for a terrible leader in comparison to Corrin, something that's proven by the rest of the route; the fact that she has slightly more of a claim to the throne than Corrin is irrelevant when compared to the fact that she doesn’t want, or would even be capable of handling, the responsibility of rebuilding and leading a country. Not only is it pretty necessary to acknowledge such a fundamental flaw of her character, I fail to see what about the scene is in any way confusing; anyone paying any attention to Azura's character throughout Rev would be able to immediately tell why she refused the throne.

> The "typical" pandering with the cutscenes and the lack of legendary weapons reduce the sisters' agency and make them feel more like trope-y collectibles than characters in their own right, which is a problem for major support characters.

Firstly, what do you mean when you say that the cutscenes are “typically” pandering?

Secondly, explain why the sisters not having legendary weapons, and them having “pandery” cutscenes, change anything about their characters or their roles in the story, let alone enough to reduce their agency or turn them into “trope-y collectibles” (whatever the fuck any of that's supposed to mean) instead of actual characters.

Thirdly and lastly, they're not major support characters. The main characters of Fates overall are pretty clearly Corrin, Azura, Ryoma and Xander; the rest of the royal siblings are secondary characters, and the rest of the playable cast are tertiary characters. The fact that they don't have as much focus as the main characters of the story is perfectly fine, especially given how much relevance and development they do get in BR and CQ.

> Their feelings on (not) becoming queens, however, just feels...I don't know, strangely mean-spirited?

To someone who doesn't undestand how much of a pain in the ass being ruler of a country is and/or has such a vendetta against a game that they're willing to grasp at straws and misrepresent said game in order to accuse it of serious moral failings it's (mostly) innocent of, such as sexism, yes. To anyone else, no.

> **Supports**

> Interestingly enough, the Birthright and Conquest supports were written by Yukinori Kitajima and others from the company Synthese. They were also the ones who wrote Revelation,

Sources? I don't doubt that this is true, but it's the first time i've heard of that, and would like to know where and how you got this info from.

> and it leaves you wondering just how much this explains any potential discrepencies between the characters in the supports and the routes. A small crack formed either by this, the route split or both is when Corrin mentions in their support with Takumi that they've "shown their loyalty to Hoshido", a line that makes sense in Birthright but less so in Revelation.

Corrin is being loyal to Hoshido by killing Anankos and saving the world, which includes Hoshido; while it's a more unorthodox way of claiming someone to be loyal to a country than if they just served it directly, as Corrin does in Birthright, it's still extremely easy to interpret the line in such a way that it still makes sense.

> That is just one example and I doubt it's the only one.

Prove it. You can't just give one example of a support contradicting the story (if you interpret one specific line in the most bad-faith way possible), then baselessly claim that there's multiple supports that do so, especially when you don't even bother giving any actual reason as to why you think that.

> There are two more general points I'd like to make about Fates' supports: My Castle and the second generation.

> **My Castle**

> My Castle is...odd. It's introduced in the main story, but is never really referenced again. Azura knows who Lilith is, as evidenced by her reaction to the latter's death, yet we never see them interacting (not that Lilith interacts with anyone).

> So why is this a problem? Well, a lot of supports make it sound as though our heroes are out in the wilderness, making camp, hunting for food and the like. However, after every map, you're taken back to My Castle...and it is in My Castle you read the supports.

There are multiple supports in multiple Fire Emblem games that mention the army setting up camp or otherwise being at relative peace, even though said supports can only be accessed during battle, implying that the supports aren't meant to be taken as literally happening mid-battle; i don't see why you wouldn't apply that same courtesy to Fates just because the supports ignore the My Castle instead of the battlefield.

> Maybe you think I'm just being nitpicky here again, but this is a setting established in the main story, from where you read the supports, and the characters don't acknowledge it. Rather than utilizing his unique setting, the supports are written as though it doesn't exist at all. It's not just confusing, but also a missed opportunity.

The My castle visits, aside from it's introduction in Chapter 3, are extremely likely to be non-canon. Lilith says that the Astral dragons granted her and Corrin permission to live there, not random people Corrin feels like bringing along; it's never mentioned again after chapter 6; Lilith states that she has to put Corrin into a specific location in the Bottomless Canyon when they ask to be teleported back to the real world, which would cause innumerable logistical issues if they were actually visiting it between chapters, due to the fact that them going to and fro the My Castle should end with them being teleported away from their goal; the supports by-and-large ignore it's existence; there are multiple instances in the main story where the characters could have retreated to the astral plane to save themselves but don't, implying that they can't, for whatever reason; and lastly and most importantly, Lilith's the only one that's ever shown or stated to be capable of sending people to the Astral plane. Lilith dies in two of the three routes. Logically speaking, Corrin and their army should be completely incapable of accessing the Astral plane after Lilith's death, but they still can in gameplay, implying gameplay and story segregation at best and non-canonicity at worst.

tl;dr my castle isn't canon but the supports are, and that's why they ignored it when writing said supports; it's in no way a missed opportunity.

> **The second generation characters**

> Just like in Genealogy of the Holy War and Awakening, Fates features a second generation character system. Unlike those two games, however, this has zero bearing on the main story,

Lucina's the only second-gen character in all of Awakening who's of any relevance to that game's plot, not that that's an issue with either Awakening or Fates; the point of the second generation characters in either game isn't to provide characters with massive amounts of relevance and screentime to the story, but to encourage players to engage with the support system by giving them new, optional characters you can learn about and use as a reward for pairing up the first generation. I fail to see why optional tertiary characters not being relevant to the main plot is an issue.

I also fail to see why Genealogy’s here, aside from the fact that it pioneered the second gen system; it's the only game in the series to have the second generation be integral to the story in the base game itself, mostly because of the way the plot's structured, to the point that most of them are mandatory recruits IIRC. The child systems in that game and Awakening/Fates might share some similarities, but their purposes are entirely different.

> and it feels like a misguided attempt at cashing in on the popularity of the system in Awakening, since it works pretty much exactly the same way in Fates.

The basic method of getting and recruiting the character's the same, sure, but the way the second gen's stats and skills are calculated and distributed is *wildly* different from how it worked in Awakening.

I also find it very odd to claim that a mechanic in one game returning for the next is an “attempt at a cash-in”; wouldn't this make every FE that's ever reused a gameplay mechanic from a previous game a cash-in too?

> What this means is that every single first generation support between two characters of the opposite sex, so long as they're not related (unless you're Corrin who porks both cousins and family members they grew up with) eventually has an S support rank, where the two hook up and pop out a baby or two.

> This was a controversial system in Awakening as well, as it "forces" characters into a relationship no regardless of the chemistry established in the C-A rank support conversations. However, again, Awakening at least had a main story established reason for this system existing. Fates, on the other hand, doesn't, and it solves the little pesky issue of starting a family while being active participants in a war by shoving their children into other worlds where they'll age faster so that they can join your army as adult-ish members.

> So, the entire first generation of characters not only comes across as very...irresponsible, for the lack of a better word,

The only irresponsible thing about any of this is the parents not waiting until the war was over to have their children, and even that can be (somewhat) excused as either the children being conceived by accident or the parents not knowing whether they'll live through the war or not and wanting to know what it'd be like to have a family.

That part aside, putting them in an alternate dimension with people they've personally ensured will care and provide for them, along with visiting often to make sure they're okay and to connect with them, is the best thing they could've possibly done for their children, given that the My Castle is prone to being invaded by Vallite soldiers and that the normal world is obviously not suited for toddlers to be in due to the team being in the middle of a war.

> but there is also so much wrong with this logistically that it makes your head spin if you stop for a second to think about it. While in the middle of a war, a female character gets pregnant, gives birth to a child, and she together with her partner goes to another world and leaves it there. The parents then periodically, *while the war is still raging,* visit the child who ages super quickly. All off screen and all done the very second after they reach the S support. Moral and logistical questions aside, does Intelligent Systems know how pregnancy works?

Yes; pregnancy works by a woman being impregnated then waiting 9 months for a baby to pop out, which the mothers can do because they go to the Deeprealms and work through their pregnancies there. How did you forget about such an obvious explanation for how the mothers gave birth to the children during the war?

Also, quantify how long the wars take to begin and end. Unless you can prove that all the campaigns take place during a ridiculously short period of time, there's no logistical issues with the characters visiting the children in their spare time, especially with how little time would pass in the normal world during the visits and that, even in the middle of war, there's going to be downtime for the soldiers to sleep and rest, which the parents could easily use to visit their children.

Lastly, i fail to see many moral issues with the Deeprealms; the parents put their children there for the express purpose of stopping them from getting involved in the war, with Heirs of Fate estabilishing that none of the second gen characters ever canonically left their Deeprealms or were recruited into the army, and as i pointed out a few paragraphs ago, that *was* the best place to put their children in if they wanted to ensure their safety. Most of the parents even visited them often whenever they had spare time, so i don't see what's so morally bad about the Deeprealms.

> Deeprealms are widely ridiculed, and it's with good reason.

I still haven't seen good reasons to ridicule them, not from you or from anyone else; most people misunderstand the Deeprealms on a fundamental level due to not bothering to read the children's paralogues and supports properly, thinking that all the parents just abandoned their children there and came back for the first time during the Paralogues themselves for the sake of recruiting them to the army, which is objectively wrong.

Even you, who at least didn't use those specific points, didn't really offer much in the way of criticism, aside from forgetting about the Deeprealms when questioning how the mothers carried out their pregnancies and claiming that it didn't make sense for the parents to have time to visit their children because they were in a war, ignoring the fact that there's inevitably going to be downtime during said war that they could use to visit; it's better than most criticisms of the Deeprealms, but it's still pretty heavily flawed, and certainly not something that proves them to be worthy of ridicule.

> They could not be bigger contrivances if they tried, and I would almost respect the decision to include them just because of how brazenly shameless it is if it hadn't been for the fact that Intelligent Systems just tried to copy what worked in Awakening.

The main story had already estabilished that time ran more slowly in the Astral Plane than in the normal world; the deeprealms expand on that idea by showing off different parts of the Astral Plane than just the My Castle, therefore they're not contrived.

Also, again, explain why copying (and modifying) what worked in a previous game for a new one is bad.

> I've already covered the lackluster worldbuilding and how that leaves the characters with less to talk about, which stands in stark contrast to the Tellius duology and Three Houses, where the world itself plays a big part in the direction the support/base conversations go. Combined with My Castle and the second gen, this leaves Fates' supports with three "handicaps", so to speak.

How are the My Castle and second gen “handicaps” to the supports, and how are they even related to each other in the first place? By your own admission, the vast majority of the supports in the game ignore My Castle's existence, and the second gen not only provide new supports but also (ocasionally) expand on the children's feelings regarding the lives they lived in their respective Deeprealms; isn't this a boon for Fates' supports, if anything?

> Now, you might argue that there are good supports in spite of these setbacks, to which my reply is very simple: of course there are. Fates has an *absurd* amount of support conversations; it would be much, much stranger if there was *nothing* of value here. However, the obscene number of supports opens the way for yet another major problem: you've got to find the good supports. There is very much a quantity over quality approach at play here, and using the combination of characters you like is no guarantee that you'll find their best supports. This has been the case in Fire Emblem since supports were introduced in Binding Blade, but I must emphasize the sheer quantity of supports in Fates and how that exacerbates the problem.

It shouldn't matter how many or how few supports there are in Fates if, by your own admission, uneventful or bad supports have existed since Binding Blade and you've always had to look for good conversations; what's the meaningful difference between the two aside from amount, which changes nothing aside from how long you need to spend looking for supports you like?

> There are supports which pay lip service to worldbuilding and things like the chemistry between Mikoto and her adoptive children, but for the most part it's kept very simple.

It's not paying lip service if it's estabilishing worldbuilding and chemistry by talking about it; i don't know where you got this weird idea that a story detail needs significant amounts of time dedicated to it before it magically becomes a valid piece of information, but I’d recommend that you stop using it.

Also, prove that the majority of supports are “simple” (whatever that means).

> I mentioned above how Kagero's B support sort of skims over Mikoto and Ryoma's relationship despite hinting at something interesting, and that is a common trend in the supports: they're very rarely in-depth discussions or about something meaningful.

It states that Mikoto and Ryoma didn't get along at first, but that the two eventually warmed up to each other; i don't see why it'd need any more time dedicated to it than that.

Also, again, prove that most supports in Fates have little to no depth to them in regards to characterization or worldbuilding; you can't just keep generalizing vast swathes of a game without any proof, at least not without someone like me eventually calling you out on it.

> Far too much attention is instead given to quirks or silly situations characters find themselves in, which is odd seeing as Fates' routes try pretty hard to be dark and dramatic.

Prove that most supports are entirely based around weird situations or character quirks.

> You could argue they're trying to pull a Persona, where one half of the game is very out there and the other half is deliberately kept down to earth, but seeing as Fates' characters get so little time devoted to fleshing them out and establishing arcs, subplots, motivations and more, it doesn't work.

All of the major characters in Fates get plenty of fleshing out in the main story, as proven in both this post and my worldbuilding one.

Even steelmanning you and pretending that the important characters all get permanently shafted in the main routes, what correlation would that have to the supports being more light-hearted than the main story? Why would that change whether the distinction works or not?

> Camilla might be the biggest victim of this. She mentions the fan-dubbed "Concubine Wars" *once* in her A support with Niles,

Firstly, something being fan-dubbed doesn't make the event lesser; it was just a fan-given title to make the events easier to discuss.

Secondly, Leo and Elise also discuss the events of the Concubine Wars in their B and A supports, which would logically include Camilla, so your argument that the Concubine Wars are unimportant to Camilla's character because they're only mentioned once is wrong.

Thirdly, stop using this stupid argument that character traits aren't valid if it they aren't constantly brought up.

> and while she has some supports which are fine and show off her role in Nohr's royal family dynamic, she has so many superfluous and creepy supports which paint her in a pretty negative light

Give examples.

> (and there are a lot of informed attributes, like her being ruthless to enemies).

There's no fucking way you just said that Camilla isn't shown being ruthless to people; did you develop amnesia and forget about her cutscene in Birthright, which has her threaten to kill Corrin and cradle their dead body in her arms? Or about her telling Hans' troops to kill every single person hanging out with Corrin just prior to said cutscene? Or, if you want moments where she's still her normal self, her putting an axe to Hinoka's neck in Chapter 24 of Conquest and threatening to decapitate her if she didn't obey Corrin and retreat, straight-up telling her she hadn't taken her head during the battle proper only because Corrin had told her not to? Or her casually telling her siblings to kill everyone quickly so they could be back home in time for Corrin's nap in Chapter 6 of Birthright? Or her being about to torture a defeated Takumi just because he bad-mouthed Corrin in Chapter 10 of Conquest, only being stopped due to Corrin pleading with her not to?

The list goes on; how did you miss one of the most obvious and consistent aspects of Camilla's character?

> Given her lack of importance in the main story

Refer to earlier rant of all the ways Camilla's important to the main plot both character and story-wise.

> and how her appearance in two out of three cutscenes focus only on her design, there's very little to salvage this supposed major character.

Damn, Camilla having two fanservice-y cutscenes are a major reason for you to automatically discard anything and everything about her character and deem her unsalvageable trash? I knew you were prudish due to the “sexism” section of this post, but not to this ridiculous of an extent; more power to you, i guess, but i fail to see how such an “unique” metric for what makes a character salvageable or not is in any way fair to Fates.

> I suppose that is part of the reason why there are so many fan theories surrounding Camilla: there's a rare hint of an interesting story in an ocean of mediocrity, and that gets people's imagination going.

Firstly, most of the more popular fan theories are so heavily supported by the game they're barely fanon anymore, so i'd hardly call that a case of overactive imagination from the fandom.

Secondly, stop being a pretentious prick and claiming that a major reason as to why people “theorize” (using that term loosely given how the only difference between “theories” and “estabilished plot points and character and world details”, as far as Odo's concerned, are whether said details debunk him, at which point they're baseless fan theories no one should take seriously, or support him, at which point they're crucial story and character details no one should ignore; needless to say, the definition of the word “theory” has been consistently and grossly misued and devalued throughout this series) about Camilla is because of her being secretly uninteresting; you can't possibly know that, and it's pretty insulting to generalize a bunch of people's opinions on a character under such a wide umbrella.

> However, it is very clear the developers valued her design and devotion to Corrin far, far more than diving deeper into a potentially interesting backstory.

Explain why IS wrote an interesting backstory for Camilla that informs and adds to her characterization throughout the main plot if they didn't want to write an interesting backstory for her or to develop her and were only focused on her design and devotion to Corrin; i don't think i need to point out the obviois contradiction here.

> I could go on, but I will finish this support section by shortly mentioning another problem: the "Corrinsexuals". That's what the fandom tends to call the characters who can *only* support Corrin and no one else.

Not all characters are created equal; some of them are gonna have to be given less attention and content than others, and since Corrin's main gimmick support-wise is being able to marry anyone of the opposite gender (aside from Kana), they pretty much had to only write one or two supports for the Corrinsexuals and give them to Corrin if they were limited by time or budget, which they very likely were given how the Corrinsexuals are either secret characters (Yukimura, Izana, Flora and Fuga), optional in most of their appearances (Shura), or only fully playable in one route and even then only as an irrelevant tertiary character (Scarlet); while i agree that it's an issue, i think you're downplaying the reason as to why they're written like that.

> This includes Shura, who kidnapped Azura on the orders of Yukimura, yet is unable to talk to either.

I wonder why Azura wouldn't want to talk to the man who kidnapped her, why Yukimura wouldn't have anything to talk about with some random bandit he hired 15 years ago for a revenge kidnapping and probably hasn't thought about ever since, or why Shura wouldn't want to talk to the girl he kidnapped or to some random employer that hired him for a job a long time ago.

If you're going to criticize a Corrinsexual's lack of supports, do so for Scarlet, who has an obvious crush on Ryoma that's not allowed to go anywhere due to her not having a support with him, or for Flora, who has lengthy special dialogue if you fight her with Jakob where she confesses her love for him and how she'd lvoe nothing more than to be able to live with him and the other servants peacefully, only to not be able to do anything about it or have it develop any further due to her not being able to talk to him; there are much better examples of character relationships getting shafted due to their lack of supports than Shura.

> **Final thoughts**

> So, now I think I've covered practically every aspect of Fates that I can think of, even if there is more to be said about individual support chains. Pacing issues, lack of chemistry, contrivances, plot holes, copious amounts of filler, tonal whiplashes, nonsensical dialogue and much more.

> These aren't minor nitpicks or intellectually dishonest claims, but major problems which plague Fates' writing.

Refer to previous posts, including this very one, for proof that nearly every single point you made against Fates is either based on heavy intellectual dishonesty or is a meaningless nitpick.

> If you've forgotten much of Fates' dialogue, especially the main story stuff, I really cannot emphasize enough just how batshit insane a lot of it is in the worst possible way. Practically every chapter has some dialogue which, when scrutinized, makes no sense or actively pushes the plot, worldbuilding or characters in a worse direction.

I'm *very* interested in seeing you prove that, especially since this in an entirely new argument. Damn near every dialogue exchange you criticized in the main posts was done because you personally didn't like it and not because of anything it contradicted, because the dialogue was made up and/or worsened by Treehouse's incompetence, and/or because you interpreted the dialogue in intentionally nonsensical and bad-faith ways in order to make Fates look worse, as i've proven dozens of times over throughout these responses.

> I can't force anyone to dislike Fates' story and its characters, but I hope that the analysis has demonstrated that Fates' issues are in a league of their own.

No it hasn't; i'm still waiting on proof for that claim, given how lackluster your pieces of evidence for it were.

> You can't just say "yeah Fates wasn't written well but what about these other Fire Emblem games?!". I've criticized many aspects of the writing of Fire Emblem in the past, both series-wide issues as well as specific entries, and Fates being poorly written doesn't excuse lackluster writing in other installments of the series.

I can agree with this, if said hypothetical Fates defender went after games you never mentioned in these posts, but if said person went after stuff like the Tellius games or Three Houses, i'd argue it's a perfectly valid response, especially since you brought those games up first and unprovoked; if someone were to tear apart those games' worldbuilding, to the point of managing to prove that they have worse worldbulding than Fates, that just sounds like a good debunk to me.

> However, no Fire Emblem game and indeed no other game I've played in general can be compared to Fates, as its narrative is fundamentally broken on every single level.

Prove Fates' narrative is broken on every single level.

Also, lol no. For a small list of mainline games in this series that are *significantly* worse-written than Fates in terms of plot, worldbuilding, themes and characters, we have: Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, Radiant Dawn, Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, and Three Houses. This is me being fair and excluding FEs 1 through 3 on the grounds that they barely have any story to speak of, or else they'd also be on that list.

Binding Blade, Genealogy, Thracia and Fates are pretty neck-and-neck in terms of their writing quality, i haven't played the DS remakes of FE1 or 3 and don't know their stories, so those are being excluded, and the only games in the series with significantly better writing than Fates overall are Awakening and Path of Radiance; Fates is, at worst, in the upper-mid tier of Fire Emblem stories, and at best is in the top 3.

> The title of this series is "Fates: was the story as bad as people say?" and the answer is no; it's much worse.

Much worse relative to Awakening and Path of Radiance, maybe, but relative to every other game in the series that doesn't take place in Jugdral and isn't named Binding Blade, and even on it's own merits as a stand-alone story, no; it's much *better*.

All in all, this post was the worst one yet, and in fact the worst reddit post i've ever had the displeasure of witnessing; take everything wrong with the main posts, smush them all together, add in a consistent refusal for Odo to ever bother explaining his own arguments or to give any sort of evidence to back up any of his claims, mix in a sprinkle of his misunderstanding of the concept of thematic discussion leading him to try and claim objectivity in his posts, creating *staggering* amounts of hypocrisy throughout his earlier threads if said claim is taken seriously, and you get this. There was a reason this had to be split into three parts.

Link to original post here.

> **Worldbuilding and history**

> This is something most people agree on, and /u/MaaagicMushies somehwhat recently wrote an excellent summary on why Fates' worldbuilding feels so lackluster.

I don't know what happened to that guy, but his account's been hard-deleted; i couldn't find any of his posts even through Camas. If anyone can summarize what the main points of that post were, i'd appreciate it.

> A lot of the issues with the worldbuilding are widely known. Even if people argue the continent is called Nohr and Hoshido, this is never explicitly stated and the map makes it impossible to tell where the borders for all the countries and territories are.

Irrelevant; Hoshido and Nohr are their own continents with no reason to speculate on what they should name a theoretical united territory when they've been at war with each other for thousands of years, something that would be made painfully obvious by anyone who put any amount of thought into the political climate at the start of Fates and why the full continent doesn't have a given name in or out-of-universe.

Also, explain why there being no well-defined borders are an issue; i could see it as one if it was bad enough that they didn't even bother differentiating Hoshidan territories from Nohrian ones, but they do. What would defined borders for countries whose only important piece of information is whether they've sided with the two superpowers of the world, and if so, which, aid in the worldbuilding?

> Furthermore, logistics and geography are completely ignored so as to not get in the way of the narrative. Example: Saizo and Orochi go from the Plains of Hoshido to Izumo which is far to the south, get ambushed and separated from Takumi and Ryoma *and then* run back to Hoshido all in the time it takes for Corrin to travel from the Plains of Hoshido to Fort Jinya, which is close to the Hoshidan capital.

Prove that Saizo, Orochi and Corrin started their journeys to their respective destinations at the exact same time and location. This entire criticism is based on a bad-faith assumption that Takumi, Ryoma and their retainers didn't have any sort of a head-start on Corrin, which is supported nowhere by the game.

> Takumi also falls down into the Bottomless Canyon while fighting in Izumo...which is far to the east of the Bottomless Canyon.

> Takumi: Yeah. It was insane. We ran into Nohrian troops just outside Izumo and began fighting. Ryoma and I were separated in the early stages of combat, before we had to retreat. We were outnumbered...and pushed to the brink of the Bottomless Canyon.

He literally states that the Vallite soldiers chased him all the way to the Bottomless Canyon; how in the actual fuck did no one correct you on your mistake after months of that post being up for anyone to see?

> I think it's clear the worldbuilding was either never a priority or one of the first victims on the chopping block in order to cut corners on development time. You pass through areas which are never mentioned again and never really play a role in the story at all. The end goal in all routes is effectively to get Corrin from point A to point B, and other countries and locales are mere background scenery on the way there.

Izumo's a kingdom with deep ties to religion and gods, with the best medicine and medics in the entire world, along with doing it's damnedest to stay neutral in the conflict between Hoshido and Nohr. It's ruled over by an archduke. In Birthright, the team heads there in order to follow a lead that might result in them finding out about Takumi and Ryoma's whereabouts, only to run into an ambush by Zola, who was impersonating Izama and used the country's reputation as peace-loving to lull Corrin's army into a false sense of security, and defeat him, along with freeing the real archduke from his captivity. Leo shows up to (pretend to) try and kill Zola for his failure and cowardice but is stopped by Corrin, whom Leo expresses resentment towards for betraying him and the rest of the Nohrian royal family. This sets up Zola's involvement in the story, which culminates in his betraying the team's trust and costing them a chance to end the war early, estabilishes that the Nohrian siblings are upset at Corrin for siding with Hoshido, and the entire chapter only happens because of estabilished details about Izumo and it's culture.

This is just one chapter of one out of three routes, btw; i could go on and on about the importance of the smaller countries in Fates to the story, but that would make an already overly long post even longer. Does that sound like something that's irrelevant to the plot if i can do it without any reaches?

> But why does this matter, you may ask? Well, one of the reasons is simply because it makes it feel as though characters live in a void. If there's no world for the characters to feel rooted in, it affects how we understand them and even what they can talk about with each other.

We understand more than enough about the characters and what they can talk about with each other as is relevant for the story. Your wanting more elaboration is entirely subjective, which i thought was supposed to be a bad thing.

> Let's bring up arguably the two most fleshed out worlds in the series for contrast: Tellius and Fódlan.

Skip. I'm not interested in even more nonsensical comparisons between two games that have fuck-all to do with each other and which are entirely comprised of you sucking off the games you like while misrepresenting and lying about the ones you don't; i had enough of that in the main series.

> The important part I want to highlight is how many different characters interact for many different reasons all because of the unique worldbuilding of Tellius and how it shapes and affects the conflicts that spawn from it. In Fates, there's practically no worldbuilding nor subplots, and because of that, characters have little reason to interact with each other. Most characters are tied together solely through Corrin, with little agency of their own,

I'll spare all of you and myself the tedium of listing all the subplots in Fates, and will instead call bullshit on this idiotic “most characters in Fates are tied to Corrin” point:

Of all the playable characters in Fates that have major ties to Corrin, we have: all the Royal siblings, Silas, Felicia, Jakob, Kaze, Azura, Kana, and (debatably) Flora and Gunter.

Okay, that's 16 characters who have major parts of their characterization defined by their relationship with Corrin, sounds like a pretty big number, right?

And it is, up until you realize there's 69 (heh) playable characters in Fates. 53, roughly 80%, of the playable cast of this game don't give a single fuck about Corrin, at least not more so than they do any other stranger they meet for the first time in one of their supports. I'd place good money that, pound-for-pound, Fates is one of the games in the series with the least amount of characters that give the protag any sort of special treatment.

And then you start thinking more about it, and start wondering as to why the characters with ties to Corrin have such ties, and then you start to realize that it has nothing to do with worldbuilding and everything to do with characterization; Kaze, Ryoma and Hinoka all blame themselves for not trying harder to stop Corrin from being kidnapped and want to atone for that; Silas was best friends with Corrin when they were young and wants to rekindle that friendship; the Nohrian siblings all see Corrin as their own family and hang out with them because of it; Takumi is both jealous of their skills and wants to befriend them, but is too insecure to try, lashing out at them instead in the hopes that they'll grow to dislike him and he doesn't have to risk rejection; Azura is literally their cousin and knows that they're destined to save the world one day, so the answer there is obvious; Sakura mostly just finds them comforting to be around; Felicia, Flora and Gunter practically raised them; and Kana's their child.

Objectively speaking, there's nothing wrong with any of those characters caring about Corrin as much as they do, and even if you subjectively dislike it, that's an issue you're free to blame on characterization, not worldbuilding.

Some irrelevant Three Houses shilling later and we get to this argument:

> The world of Fates, on the other hand, feels like it has barely any sense of history, and what little we know of the past is only spoken of in vague terms and the implications of that history isn't elaborated upon.

> For example, there are the more obvious, smaller things like Corrin and their kidnapping. We have no idea how old all the siblings were at the time or how much time has actually passed, which I think is curious given how it's the very foundation of the plot

The second artbook, Pellucid Crystal, confirms that the kidnapping took place 15 years prior to the start of the game and Hinoka states in her Revelation support with Camilla that she started training to get Corrin back from Nohr when she was 7, which, it's safe to assume, she would have gotten the motivation for as soon as she found out about their being taken by Nohr. Sakura also states in her A support with Corrin that she overheard maids spreading a false rumor that Nohr originally intended to kidnap her but had to settle for Corrin either by mistake or because they couldn't reach her, which, even granting the rumor being a load of bullshit, would still have needed to have some basis on reality for it to have spread, which it wouldn't have if Sakura hadn't even been born when the incident happened.

Takumi gets jealous of male Corrin in the drama CD because he's older than him and, as such, will inherit the throne if Ryoma retires or dies, due to Hoshido's patriarchal line of succession; Sakura is called little sister by Takumi; Hinoka is called big sister multiple times by Corrin, and ditto for Hinoka calling Ryoma big brother.

If we assume that the nicknames are accurate, which is pretty safe to do, along with gathering all the information in the former paragraph, then: Hinoka was 7 years old during the kidnapping, Corrin was between 6 and 3, Takumi was between 5 and 2, and Sakura was between 4 and a few months old. If you also assume that the Nohrian siblings are the same age as the Hoshidan ones (which is kinda baseless aside from the symbolic parallels and Elise being directly stated to be the youngest of them, just like Sakura, but whatever, this is just to estabilish the basic ages of the characters and the Hoshidan ones are the important ones here, which there's plenty of solid evidence to estabilish their ages for), Sakura and Elise are 15 at the youngest and 19 at the oldest, Takumi and Leo are 17 at the youngest and 20 at the oldest, Corrin is 18 at the youngest and 21 at the oldest, Hinoka and Camilla are 22, and Ryoma and Xander's ages are unknown aside from being the eldest siblings and, as such, unquantifiably older than 22.

So much for not knowing the ages of the royal siblings or when Garon killed Sumeragi, eh?

Also, i'd argue that Anankos possessing Garon was the foundation of the plot, if anything; damn-near the entirety of the story is set in motion as a direct result of Anankos gaining Garon as a host, including the kidnapping.

> This could tell us a lot about how much Hinoka and Ryoma remember of Corrin, for one.

What would knowing the exact ages of the characters change about what the audience does or doesn't know about Hinoka and Ryoma's memories of Corrin, exactly?

Besides, they give a decent enough idea of what they remember in the game itself; they say that they would often play together, that Corrin was trusting, didn't like lying, and that they showed good skills at fighting and leadership. I don't know what else about their relationship you wanted to know or why it'd be relevant to the story or characters, but there you go.

> Then there are the less obvious problems this lack of history brings. Valla was destroyed less than a generation ago, and presumably the curse came along with its destruction, yet no one alive knows about it despite the fact that at the very least Valla's royal family visited Hoshido and gave gifts? Doesn't this mean a lot of people would've died to the curse while saying, I don't know, "I sure would like to go to Valla one day" or "remember when Valla's king came to visit?".

The only thing in the game that implies Valla was still in contact with Nohrshido less than a generation ago is a line that only exists in the localization, as i pointed out on part 2 of my Revelation response. In the JP version of Rev's script, Azura only says that “a long time ago” the royal families of Nohrshido and Valla had good relations with each other, with the good-faith assumption being that, by “long time”, Azura meant “a few thousand years”, which would be more than enough time for people in the continents to forget about Valla's existence.

> There's no way only royals knew about Valla because if the royal family of Valla came to visit that'd likely be a big event involving quite a few regular people, like guards and people organizing the visit (operating under the notion that the Vallite royal family visit was secret for whatever reason; must've been hard carrying that throne without anyone spotting them).

When is it stated that the Vallite royals ever visited Nohrshido? I might be forgetting a line of dialogue somewhere, but i checked for Azura's Valla explanations in both CQ and Rev, and the only thing she says on that topic is that Nohrian and Hoshidan royalty used to visit Valla a long time ago, not the other way around.

Also, the Vallite king could have just dropped off the throne in a secure location, due to getting to choose where in the normal world they end up when traveling to and fro Valla, and sent the Hoshidan king a message telling him where to pick it up; the throne isn't in any way proof of Vallites publically going to the normal world.

> If a world doesn't have a past, it becomes that much more difficult for characters to feel rooted in that world. To borrow a good example from Three Houses, Felix would never work in another Fire Emblem world because his entire character is based around a specific event and how a specific culture replied to it. The same can be said for Soren and his identity as a Branded. This is what it means for a character to be "rooted" in their world. Do all characters need to be like this? No. But the problem is that Fates has practically no character like Felix or Soren.

I'd be very interested to see you argue for it being possible for Azura to work in another Fire Emblem world, given how much her entire character is based around a specific event and how a specific culture replied to it, namely Valla's destruction and Arete's circumstances that came as a result of it.

> The lack of worldbuilding leads to some bizarre moments in the main story proper as well. Leo talks about Nohr's "grand legacy", but all we know of Nohr is that it's a depressing place that spreads misery wherever its armies go.

Already pointed out that Leo never said that, so instead i'll question what would cause Leo to ever think of his own country as depressing or spreading misery; Nohr did what it did because it would have literally starved to death without outside help, meaning that Leo, if anything, would see it's history of conquering other nations as something to be proud of, be it because of the military strategies they employed while doing so or because of the lives they saved by gaining the resources to feed it's citizenry. At worst, Nohr's peasants are starving by the start of the game due to a lack of proper distribution of it's resources, which is something Leo and Xander are stated to solve in their endings, meaning Leo genuinely has nothing to be ashamed of in regards to Nohr, or at least nothing that he doesn't intend to fix.

> Izumo is a neutral country with a "neutrality pact" which other countries can't break, but Xander has never heard of it

Because Zola made that up on the spot; Izumo doesn't even have any sort of army to make good on the thinly-veiled death threat he gave Ryoma and Xander, meaning that the whole “violence in my country is punishable by death” schtick was created solely to try and appeal to the eldest siblings' sense of honor and lull them into a false sense of security. That's not an issue with the worldbuilding.

> and we're never told what insignificant, tiny neutral countries could do to Hoshido and Nohr.

Nothing. Which is why they aren't conquered yet; they can't do ANYTHING. They have little to no army or soldiers to offer to the main kingdoms, are situated in places with no strategic importance, and the only thing any of these tiny countries could have that could possibly make them worth the time, effort and resources to conquer would be Izumo's medicine, which it could very easily use as a deterrent by threatening to destroy it if it's ever attacked by one of the kingdoms; it's literally as simple as there not being any benefit whatsoever for Nohr or Hoshido to conquer the neutral countries.

> Another way the poor worldbuilding affects the narrative is how the maps work more like a series of one-shots rather than a complete, overarching story. There's a staggering lack of planning on the side of the protagonists and the overwhelming majority of maps have the group get caught off guard by a sudden attack.

Firstly, that's a criticism you should be levying towards Fates' plot structure, not it's worldbuilding; these are two completely different aspects of the story that have nothing to do with each other.

Secondly, the protagonists plan ahead as much as they reasonably can; in BR they plan on meeting back up with Ryoma in order to discuss a way to beat Nohr throughout the first half of the story, and when they accomplish that goal, they devise a plan to assasinate Garon, putting an end to the war, doing as well as they can while in a land they have little knowledge of and while being hounded and harrased by Iago, who knows they're there the entire time and is constantly ambushing them due to having the element of surprise; in CQ Corrin plans out almost all of their encounters ahead of time, be it directly due to their knowing the lay of the land ahead of time unlike in BR or indirectly due to their following orders from Garon, who also knows what's coming; in Rev the entire story happens because Corrin plans on convincing people to join his side to stop Anankos, and there isn't much planning they can possibly do when they get to Valla, a land they have no knowledge of, so criticizing them for that would be pretty stupid.

Thirdly, how would their planning things out more have stopped them from being ambushed? Every time they get surprise attacked, it's because of factors they couldn't possibly have known about; unless you're trying to argue that the protagonists should be omniscient, this entire point is nonsensical.

> The problem with this is simple: it removes the protagonist's agency and the world can never be an important "player" in the story.

I already debunked the “the areas you go to are irrelevant to the story” point earlier, so i'll instead ask that you explain what agency is, why it's bad for the protags to not have it, how their reacting to and foiling attempted ambushes aren't massive displays of agency in and of themselves every time they do it, what it means for the world to be a player in a story, and why it's bad for the world not to be that. You can't just go around making these grand, all-encompassing arguments that would require a *lot* of evidence to prove only to simply say it's the case, provide no evidence to support your argument, and expect people to blindly believe you.

> When you constantly move from place to place only to get ambushed, it leaves little to no time for the world to be fleshed out or for the areas they are in/move through to have a deeper purpose than provide the setting for the next battle.

Wouldn't that be an “issue” with the plot itself instead of with the team being ambushed? If you, for whatever ungodly reason, wanted the pacing of the game to get fucked over just so irrelevant lore could be exposited to the player, shouldn't you be criticizing the story for not spending more time in those locations instead of for the team being ambushed? Why do most of the criticisms here have nothing to do with Fates' worldbuilding despite being in the worldbuilding section of the post?

We also learn more than enough about most of the smaller countries, at least as far as it's relevant to the story; explain what more you wanted to know about them and why it'd be in any way important for the audience to know.

> So, now that we've established the worldbuilding is lacking and that it leads to less interesting topics the cast can talk to each other about, and that the timeline is unnecessarily vague,

If by “estabilished” you mean “made points that: are so heavily subjective it's difficult for it to even be a topic of conversation, despite shit-talking and dismissing the very conceot of thematic analysis for the exact same reason; are so vague and ill-defined as to also defy any attempts at discourse without elaboration that's nowhere to be found on this post; and are factually wrong, be it because of lying about what happened in the game or due to your own ignorance on important details of Fates' lore and story”, then yes, you did a bang-up job.

For anyone with more than two functioning brain-cells that isn't also just reading everything here like a mindless drone that's just satisfied to see a game they already hated being criticized, that entire section was nothing more than an incoherent mess of misinformation, vagueness and subjectivity, all shoehorned into the umbrella of “worldbuilding”, despite next to none of them having any correlation to that aspect of Fates whatsoever.

> are we done here? Almost. There's one more thing: what worldbuilding is in Fates is childishly simple or not given any importance.

> The easy example of this is Nohr. We're left to wonder how a barely hospitable land, filled with rebellions, bandits, monsters, and a tyrannical king who doesn't shy away from murdering entire villages of his own people, could possibly conquer anything. Shouldn't this be the very first thing to establish, like in Echoes?

Prove that the land in the Nohrian capital was always infertile; the entire reason Nohr started conquering other territories was because they were running out of food and other important resources, meaning it was capable of sustaining itself long enough to estabilish and develop the country and train an army, which would logically mean that the country was capable of growing food on it's own at the start, prior to something happening that fucked over their earth and forced them to start conquering smaller territories to survive.

If you're not talking about how Nohr was first estabilished and are instead asking how start-of-game Nohr can conquer anything, which is implied by the rest of the paragraph, this is even dumber; take a wild guess at what they're having the conquered territories do for them and where all the food that's being hoarded by the royalty and army, as estabilished by the ending of Conquest, came from, and you'll have your answer.

As for the other points: the bandits aren't stupid enough to try taking on the army and only prey on the peasants and/or rich travelers, which are irrelevant for Nohr's military might or it's ability to conquer territories; the only monsters in Fates are the Faceless and Stoneborn, which are nowhere to be found in Nohr due to being exclusively deployed in Hoshidan territory to harass the opposing country, so this is just false; whether the random peasants at risk of being murdered on a whim like Garon or not is irrelevant to Nohr's ability to conquer territores.

> However, since I like to bring up things that aren't discussed as often, I'll also mention this: Mikoto's legitimacy as queen. A mysterious woman from a hidden country you can't even talk about (that only the royal family knows about? I could have sworn Azura says something about that, but again, that's just silly) gets taken in, with a baby, by King Sumeragi.

A mysterious woman from a hidden country that no one knew of anymore, as implied by JP Azura's dialogue; since that correction has been beaten into the ground already, prove that Mikoto didn't make any sort of a cover story to explain her existence to the people of Hoshido and just left everyone in the country wondering where she came from for the entirety of her stay there, including Sumeragi and the royal siblings.

> Ikona dies soon afterwards, and Sumeragi marries Mikoto, only to die shortly afterwards.

The worst-case scenario for Mikoto is that she arrived at Hoshido with a 6 year old Corrin, Ikona died shortly after Mikoto's arrival, Mikoto was queen consort for a few weeks to a few months, and then Sumeragi died and she took over as queen; the best-case scenario is that she arrived with a days-to-weeks old Corrin, Ikona divorced Sumeragi shortly after giving birth to Sakura, Mikoto was queen consort for a little over four years, and then Sumeragi died.

While i will happily concede that the former sequence of events should cast immense suspicion as to Mikoto's innocence in her rise to the throne, it's also much less likely to be true than the latter interpretation, due to contradicting pieces of information elsewhere in the game and creating glaring issues with any rumors that might arise regarding Mikoto's ascension: Corrin is stated to have been a baby when they were brought to Hoshido and is older than Takumi and Sakura, meaning they must have been less than a year old and, as such, Mikoto would have had to live with Ikona for at least 6 months (if she was already pregnant with Sakura) and at most a year-and-a-half to a little over two years (if Ikona wasn't pregnant with Takumi yet/if she waited a few months between prior to becoming pregnant with Sakura) prior to her death. Why would Mikoto have waited so long to kill Ikona if she wanted a better chance at getting the throne?

In addition, there's nothing confirming that Ikona died before Sumeragi, only that she did so prior to the start of the game; given that she could have either been passed over for the title of queen consort due to favoritism from Sumeragi (if they were his concubines) or have just given the title over to Mikoto due to not wanting to deal with the responsibilities and restrictions of royalty anymore, it's completely baseless to assume that Ikona's death would have cast suspicion on Mikoto when we don’t even know if she died before Mikoto became Queen or if her demise would have benefited Mikoto in any way if she did.

As for Sumeragi, Mikoto lived with him for a minimum of five years, four of those as his main consort; i don't think i need to explain the issue with her taking so long to kill him if she wanted power, especially when he fell blindly in love with her at first sight and would have very quickly appointed her as his successor in case he died prior to Ryoma coming of age to rule.

With all those things put together, i find it extremely unlikely for any rumors of Mikoto setting up Ikona and Sumeragi to die to ever end up as anything more than fringe conspiracy theories, and extremely flimsy and ridiculed ones at that.

> This leaves Mikoto the ruler of Hoshido despite people not knowing where she comes from,

Again, prove that she never gave the people of Hoshido a cover story for her existence.

> despite having brought with her what the population would consider a bastard child,

I'll take this in good faith and assume that you're arguing that Sumeragi just told people that Corrin was born from a fling he had with Mikoto before they married each other, and as such they'd be seen as a bastard child, not that you completely forgot that it's estabilished as early as chapter 4 that nearly everyone in Hoshido believes Corrin to be Sumeragi and Mikoto's child.

Prove that the concept of bastard children exists in Hoshido or that it would include something as semantic as “the king and queen's legitimate child, but since they were born before they married, they shouldn’t have access to the throne or be considered royalty”; the fact that Takumi explicitly states in the drama CD that a male Corrin is second in line for the Hoshidan throne after Ryoma pretty directly proves that the concept of bastards either doesn't exist in Hoshido/exists, but doesn't apply to a situation like Corrin's.

And that's disregarding the very likely possibility that Mikoto and Sumeragi just told everyone Corrin was born after they married; they could have smuggled Corrin into the castle in secret, kept them inside for a couple years while convincing the maids to stay quiet about the situation, then announced that Mikoto had given birth a while ago and that Corrin was their child; there's nothing in the game to imply that she met with Sumeragi in public instead of in secrecy when she agreed to marry him, and/or that anyone from Nohrshido saw her carrying Corrin when she left Valla.

> and despite it possibly looking like she planned this all along.

Again, that'd be a fringe conspiracy theory at best, given what we know of the timeframe for Mikoto's arrival.

> However, as the game shows, she's the ideal queen and people love her. Maybe it's the no-fighting-bubble she can keep up 24/7 on a country-wide scale, or maybe she's just so nice that the Hoshidans don't care who their queen is.

Probably; you’re trying to make those suggestions sound ridiculous, but the barrier and her natural charisma probably did go a long way to helping her gain favor with the populace throughout the years, even if they weren't the main reasons.

> I will say one thing though: this is actually mentioned in-game, but in Kagero's B support with Corrin, and the explanation is given three lines without acknowledging a lot of the details I brought up.

Mostly because that conversation can and very likely will be held when Corrin still doesn't know the full extent of their parentage or of Mikoto's backstory, which would be necessary for an in-depth explanation as to why she'd have had issues as queen and would also be a massive spoiler. Still, i'm glad you finally did some research into Fates lore and supplementary material before making an argument; kudos.

> Given how important Mikoto *should* be not just for the overall narrative but also for the chemistry between all the Hoshidan siblings and Corrin, this shouldn't be easily missable.

Why would knowing the exact details of her rule as queen and whether she struggled to gain the people's love at first due to her being an outsider be of any relevance to Fates' narrative, especially given that she stops being important to the story when she dies, which happens very early on in the plot?

Also, what importance should she have had for the chemistry between Corrin and the Hoshidan siblings, exactly? Corrin remembers next to nothing about Mikoto and wouldn't be able to meaningfully connect with any of them on that topic.

> To make a comparison with a similar question of status in Path of Radiance, Sanaki says Ike has to be knighted in order to be able to lead the troops, as his mercenary background would negatively impact the troops and raise eyebrows elsewhere. It's an important distinction that this is brought up in the main plot.

It's brought up because it's in the middle of happening instead of having happened two decades prior to the start of the game; even assuming that Mikoto's cover story didn't include her being born as a Hoshidan (unlikely), she became one as soon as she married Sumeragi.

Also, explain the important distinction between a piece of relevant worldbuilding being brought up in the main plot (Ike can't lead the troops due to his mercenary background unless he's knighted, which he doesn't want to be, stopping him from leading the troops and affecting the plot in an important way) and a piece of irrelevant worldbuilding being brought up in easily-accessible support conversations (Mikoto had a rough time when she first started out as queen but gained her people's love with time, something completely superfluous to the plot of Fates given that she had clearly surpassed whatever stigmas people might have had of her by the time the story starts).

I'm curious, though; if Tellius had started on a game where Ike was a former mercenary leading the troops, it was stated that you need to be a knight to lead the troops, and they never spelled out that Ike was knighted in order to lead the troops, would you be levying the same criticism against those games? Are you consistently against inferrences, or do you only do that for things you dislike?

Link to original post here.

Before anyone asks, yes, the original post is enough of a shitshow to necessitate me having to split this response into multiple parts; blame u/Odovakar, not me.

> The reason why I didn't discuss themes in the main story is simple: it's subjective. Now, you might argue that everything I've said is subjective but for the main routes and DLC campaigns you've at least got to base the discussion on the script.

Wouldn't everything in this series, including discussion of themes, have to be based on the script, due to being where someone would have to get evidence for their claims from?

Also, if you're trying to argue that most, if not all, of your arguments in the main posts were written on the basis of you talking about the internal consistency of the script, which is the only thing i can gather from this line and the rest of the post; lol no. You're so far removed from that standard of discussion it's insane to even imply you were basing your analyses on that.

To give some examples, let's take a small look at the kind of “tangible”, “script-based” criticisms you made throughout the posts:

Complaining that Corrin didn't stay and ask Azura or Yukimura for more information on the Yato or the dragonstone, not because it would make sense for them to do so (it would be a massive character assassination for Corrin to do that, as a matter of fact), but because you personally wanted more of an expostion-dump on those things than the game gave (prologue); assuming developer intentions in order to accuse the game of “forgiving” Corrin of their moral wrongdoings (prologue and part 1 of Conquest); criticizing the game for the cast being “Corrin-centric” without giving any in-universe reasons as to why that's illogical or bad (prologue); criticizing the way the game was *sold*, proceeded by immediately conceding that said criticism has little to do with the game's writing and that it was only brought up due to a personal dislike of the split (ending of prologue); criticizing the Hoshidan/Nohrian siblings for talking about Corrin in their battle/defeat quotes during the route split, which MUST be personal bias against Corrin given how obvious the counter-argument of “Corrin literally just betrayed them, of course they're still going to be thinking about them and being upset about their treason a few minutes after the fact” is (part 1 of both BR and CQ); saying that Xander's obedience to Garon being more understandable if you look at it from the lens of how japanese parent/child relations work is a stupid and silly argument because Xander's from Europe, giving no evidence whatsoever that Nohr shares it's child-raising culture with that of medieval Europe (BR part 2); criticizing Corrin for not killing themselves trying to fight Hans's troops and their own for no other reason than because he found it personally distasteful for someone to let bad things happen (part 1 of CQ); criticizing Corrin and Azura for being happy that the royal families negotiated a temporary ceasefire instead of whining 24/7 about a war that hasn't started yet (part 2 of CQ); dedicating roughly a fifth of part 3 of your Conquest analysis to addressing defenses for why the Nohrian siblings, especially Xander, are loyal to Garon, with all of the responses boiling down to “yeah but we're not shown Garon being nice to his kids, therefore all the plentiful evidence people have found for why the Nohrian sibs would have a strong emotional attachment to him are automatically null and void, also them being afraid of him is invalid because the game portrays them as heroes”. Which is not only pathetic, given how much time he's had to formulate counter-arguments, but also has nothing to do with the script. (CQ part 3)

Tl;dr you should have read your own posts better before claiming they were focused on the story and/or were “tangible”.

> Pointing out that Corrin should logically ask Azura more questions about the crystal ball, for example, has a basis in something very tangible.

The only basis it has is that it's something that happens in the story and can be discussed about, in the exact same way that estabilishing a theme and discussing whether it's well-developed or supported by the plot is based on the fact that said examples show up in the story through various ways and can be discussed about; you really don't understand thematic analysis or discussion, don't you?

Also, the crystal ball point sure as fuck doesn't have a basis in logic or character consistency, if that's what you were trying to imply; Azura uses it immediately after bringing it out and it breaks as soon as it's done showing Corrin Garon's true self. It's use case is obvious, and Azura already explained who could and couldn't use it; at most, it's weird for Corrin to not ask Azura where the ball came from, but she'd already told them they couldn't talk about Valla in the outside world; assuming that they'd already guessed that it came from Valla and, as such, that it'd be a bad idea for them to talk about something so heavily related to the place when they don't know the full extent of the curse, coupled with the fact that they're going to be busy thinking about the new information they just got and contemplating the fact that they'll have to join the war in order to dethrone Garon, it's pretty reasonable for them to not ask Azura for more information about the crystal ball.

> Themes, on the other hand, seem to mean whatever is convenient for the person arguing about something.

> This is a pretty straightforward definition of what a narrative theme is and yet there's so much room for people to say basically whatever they want without technically being incorrect, and therein lies the main problem.

It means a repeated message that a story is trying to estabilish, develop and talk about. It can be estabilished by how many examples of it there are throughout a story and how relevant it is, which can be debated about by people with differing viewpoints, much like the kind of narrative analysis you've been trying to make. Someone trying to claim something is a theme in a story without any evidence to back that up is likely to be ignored, just like when someone tries to claim something happens in a story without providing any evidence to back it up. Isn't it fun to learn about a narrative concept you should have already known since grade school?

> Even so, I figured I should at least give discussing the themes of Fates a shot since using themes to defend a work is very popular because it's easy. "I think it's about this and that's fascinating to me" is simple to say and hard to dispute; the debate has by that point already devolved into vague, subjective interpretations, and even if the theme in question is only tangientally relevant, you can't convince someone to feel a certain way about something.

It doesn't seem too hard to dispute; just provide counter-arguments as to why something isn't like that, which you should be able to do if you think they're wrong with their stance.

Also, stop trying to pretend like your analyses are any different or have any more depth to them than some random fuckwit on the internet saying something is good because it made them feel good; as i've already proven, large portions of your criticisms are just cleverly-worded ways for you to say that Fates is bad because it made you feel bad.

> If you've read my previous posts you'll probably not be surprised when I say Fates doesn't handle its themes well at all. Why? Well, first, let me ask a question: what would you say Fates' themes are? Family? Anti-war? Finding the truth?

Birthright is trusting in your allies, Conquest is finding what justice is and what must be done to achieve it, Revelation is being true to oneself, and the main theme of the game overall is cooperation and setting aside differences for the sake of the greater good. You managed to go 0/4 on Fates' themes; that's morbidly impressive, i must admit.

> The theme of family is undeniably heavily pushed by trailers and really the game itself, but I'd say Fates actively works against that theme at every possible opportunity.

It was pushed by the trailers, not the game. I want you to give me a single instance of family being a theme anywhere in the game, let alone a big enough one for you to claim that it's the major theme of the game overall.

> First, the big one: Corrin can S support all the Nohrian and Hoshidan siblings, as well as their own cousin. Being able to S support every single character in the game seems to have taken priority over letting Corrin find out about the lie that they're not related to the Hoshidan siblings, as the protagonist never once reacts to this in the game. In Revelation, Corrin says nothing about this, while in Birthright, should you S support a sibling, they're just happy to be able to have sex without people raising an eyebrow.

Corrin doesn't care about their relation to the Hoshidan siblings and barely sees them as family already, which is why they don't care about the revelation. The only reason they side with Hoshido in BR is because they know Garon needs to be stopped, and are willing to side with a bunch of strangers they don't know or even particularly care about in order to do so. What does it say about a theme when it's existence is never estabilished, developed or supported by the game?

> However, that's not all there is to it. Azura routinely gets ignored by the Hoshidan siblings despite growing up with them. Even though the "betraying your family aspect" is played up a lot with Corrin no matter the route, I'm not sure Azura doing the same in Conquest even gets acknowledged outside of optional battle dialogue.

The Hoshidans don't care as much about Azura as they do Corrin, plus the “family betrayal” aspect is mostly relegated to Birthright, since the Nohrians are the ones with an actual relationship to Corrin, not the Hoshidans. The Hoshidans barely try to use the “we're your birth family” argument anywhere in Conquest, mostly guilt-tripping them for siding with Nohr in the first place, and it shows up again for a *very* short amount of time in Revelation as part of Xander and Leo's character arcs there, which is resolved by something that has nothing to do with family (Garon telling them he wants to burn Nohr).

> What does it say about a theme when a character whose backstory mirrors the protagonist's is all but excluded from it?

That said character has a different theme in order to differentiate them from the protagonist due to their being wildly different people.

> And then there's Lilith, who's *technically* Corrin's *real* half sister, but this is relegated to a snippet of a DLC campaign and is never made relevant or acknowledged outside of it.

Anankos made Lilith out of magic; this is the equivalent of claiming that a desk is someone's half-sibling because their father was a sculptor and made said desk.

> You have to pay for this information, but what does it add to any character,

It adds to Lilith's character by expanding on her motivation for protecting Corrin.

> and to repeat a similar question asked above, what does it say about a theme when it locks something like this behind a paywall?

That the theme was developed further later on in the story in paid content. These little gotchas aren't nearly as smart as you think they are.

> Speaking of not adding anything, as /u/Warlord41k put it in an earlier post of mine, the twist that Corrin's biological father is Anankos has no bearing on anything. Corrin's draconic powers are never made relevant in the main story

Their draconic powers and/or heritage are the reason they're able to drive the Vallite army and Sumeragi out of Hoshido, the reason they're able to visit Valla in Conquest, kick-starting the rest of the plot, the reason Anankos tries to corrupt them into becoming his new vessel throughout Conquest and Revelation, and is the reason why they can transform into a dragon despite the royal bloodline being so dilluted they can't even remember the last time someone could do that. It's pretty fucking important.

> This might have been to give Anankos a more sympathetic backstory, and if you're being *very* generous you could see this as Corrin's true parents not mattering and that the family you choose is the one that matters.

It's there to add tragedy to Anankos by having him have a child he's never going to be able to properly meet and that will spend the rest of their life thinking he was nothing more than some random evil dragon, along with providing an explanation for Corrin's draconic powers. Why should it be anything more than that, and why is it bad that it isn't?

> However, for that to make sense or have any sort of impact, I think Corrin themselves would have to acknowledge that fact, as well as the lack of any blood relations with the Hoshidan siblings. Corrin doesn't do that, however, and these things become mere setpieces for fanfiction authors.

Explain why Corrin not caring about their blood family needs to be spelled out to the audience to make sense (?) or have impact, and especially explain how you're not being hypocritical for making such a request and still daring to criticize Fates for apparently not having any subtlety.

> All of these points lead me to believe that when the theme of family isn't ignored, like with Azura, Lilith, and Corrin's lack of reaction to finding out the truth about not being related to the Hoshidan siblings, Fates is actively sacrificing the theme in order to appeal to certain players by allowing you to marry the siblings and Azura.

It could also mean that you took the trailers way too close to heart, internalized that as the main theme of the game, and failed to realize that pointing out the multiple ways in which the theme doesn't exist in the game proper is you debunking yourself. Just some food for thought.

> This is without getting into the utter lack of chemistry between the Hoshidan siblings in particular and how they remain strangers to Corrin in all routes, including Birthright.

Seriously, how in the actual fuck do you not realize that maybe, *just maybe*, the fact that there's little to no evidence to support family being a theme in Fates means it isn't a theme, especially when, by your own admission, Corrin's relationship to one of the two families in the game is, at best, them being respectful allies to each other, even in the route where they spend the most amount of time together? How can you write this and not realize how easy this is to debunk?

Also, nice to see you being as tangible as ever. “I don't personally see chemistry between a group of characters” is absolutely not a vague, subjective and undefined point that's going to be very hard to properly discuss, unlike estabilishing what the themes of a story are with evidence; bury the thought.

> You could argue that the important theme isn't family, but rather loyalty vs. justice in the form of Conquest and Birthright respectively, but that carries with it its own issues, chiefly that Revelation merely existing renders that theme completely moot.

Firstly, while justice is basically the reason Corrin chooses Hoshido, they choose Nohr due to a combination of not wanting to kill their own family and friends plus wanting absolute confirmation that Garon was responsible for the attack on the Hoshidan capital. If anything, i'd say that their reason for choosing Nohr is more out of hopefulness.

Secondly, Corrin's initial reason for picking a side isn't a theme of the game at all; It's Corrin's motivation for choosing their side in the first place, but they are never developed, estabilished or mentioned nearly as much as either of BR or CQ's actual themes (“trust” and “where justice lies” respectively), therefore it can't be considered a theme, or at least not a major one worth mentioning in this post.

Thirdly, why does Revelation render that moot? The Corrin from BR and CQ couldn't have known that refusing to take sides was the best option and, as such, chose either justice or hope; why does the fact that a better option existed render different thematic explorations null for a Corrin that didn't know that?

> There is a right choice to make here, but even if Anankos weren't a thing, the game is so heavily morally in favor of Hoshido that Corrin going back to Nohr *should* be portrayed as a strictly selfish and stupid choice, but the script goes out of its way to forgive the protagonist for everything they do.

I already debunked the “muh forgiveness” point in my Conquest responses more times than i care to count, so instead i'll ask you to explain what about Corrin's choice to go back to Nohr was stupid or selfish, especially when they had every reason to believe they'd be rewarded for their stellar performance, no real proof Garon wanted them dead, and a dream that they'd be able to stop the war from ever even happening by changing Nohr from the inside.

Also, how very tangible of you; “yeah, maybe the theme is something else, but they're still broken because the game doesn't portray a character as being solely stupid for following their heart instead of their head in one of the stories and a tiny minority of characters forgive them for their actions, therefore it's not about loyalty”. Not only is this a complete non-sequitur, not only does it blatantly not make any sense on it's own merits, this is very clearly based on your own personal feelings, not the story; why did you ever think it would be a good idea to try and claim that your posts are mostly based on what happens in the story at the start of these posts?

> It becomes less about loyalty and more about "Corrin can't make a wrong decision".

Going back to Nohr is the worst choice Corrin can make, but that doesn't mean they can't try to fix their mistakes or make something good out of the bad situation they put themselves in, which is the entire point of their monologue at the end. Not only is it still very much about loyalty/hope, it's also about “some choices are better than others, but that doesn't mean you can't at least try and make the best out of a bad situation even if you make a mistake”.

> I find the argument for this being a central theme interesting, because Fates is in no way more anti-war than any other entry in the series. It is astoundingly easy to include lines that the vast majority of players can agree with, like "killing is bad, peace is good", or "don't steal from poor old people", but the inclusion of such lines doesn't mean there's a deep theme there.

I don't see what it being deep or not has anything to do with it being a central theme of the game. I could write a story that had all the characters say “war is bad” every five paragraphs and never delve into the inticracies of that, and it'd still objectively be the central theme of the story. This is a massive non-sequitur.

Also, where did the “Fates is more anti-war than the other games” argument come from? You just proposed that it was a central theme of the game, not that it did so more or less than other games; is there some argument you had that i'm not privy to that would explain this bizzare leap in logic?

> Here is the problem: Conquest goes so far out of its way to forgive Corrin for their role in the war that they even get absolved from the guilt they're meant to feel by characters who've already died.

No they don't; Azura was the one to comfort Corrin and convince them to keep fighting after they had a mental breakdown after witnessing Ryoma kill himself, and Ryoma had already told them he trusted them in his dying moments. The Ryoma, Mikoto and Takumi pep talk was entirely centered on telling them to not give up now that the war's basically over, which would make their sacrifices all be in vain, along with upgrading the Yato so they could beat Takumi.

> We're told over and over again that Corrin is basically a messiah who will bring about a new era of peace, and Corrin keeps saying that they're doing this for everyone's sake. After sacrificing Hoshido and killing off the evil leadership, all problems are swept away.

Because they're going to change Nohr from the inside and bring everlasting peace by killing Garon and (accidentally) Anankos; the war was just a means to an end, not the end itself.

Besides, Hoshido would have lost the war no matter what Corrin did; they spared the nation a worse fate by at least minimizing the bloodshed. Saying that they sacrificed it is a gross misrepresentation of their motivation for joining the war.

> There's a peace treaty and Hinoka and Sakura still love Corrin and will work hard so that they can visit Hoshido whenever they like (Hinoka says she'll address "misconceptions about Nohrians").

Firstly, the Nohrians line is a fabrication from Treehouse; in the original jp, she just says she'll try to get her people to stop hating Corrin and Xander.

Secondly, prove that she succeeds at that. Someone trying to do something is not proof that they'll succeed at it, let alone something as difficult as trying to amenize tensions between victims of war and the people that conquered them; if anything, due to the tone of that conversation, it's pretty clear that Corrin's never going to be welcome in Hoshido again after what they did, which seems like a pretty big consequence to me.

Thirdly, i'm not so sure the peace treaty was by choice; Nohr just finished effortlessly bodying Hoshido while it was in it's own home turf. Hinoka probably just accepted the fact that trying to fight back at that point, or ever, given the strength of the Nohrian military, would be a terrible idea and just counted her blessings that Xander regretted the war and wanted to make amends.

> Basically, Conquest portrays the war as a necessary sacrifice for peace.

No it doesn't; Corrin joining the war was a last resort after their original plan to gain enough favor with Garon to change Nohr from the inside fell through, a plan that would have very likely worked and led to peace in a non-violent way were he not possessed and wanted nothing more than to watch the world burn. Even when they join, they don't say that the war is necessary, only that Nohr winning is a foregone conclusion and, as such, the only thing they can do to help Hoshido at this point is try and minimize the collateral damage of Nohr's victory by trying to spare as many Hoshidans as they can during the war, which they can only do if they're in a leadership position. This is a massive strawman.

> Am I saying that Fates is pro war? No. But I am saying that arguing there's a deep anti-war message is giving the game too much credit.

Again, who said anything about a central theme needing to be deep to be a central theme?

Also, Fates is lot more anti-war than you're trying to portray it as being, not that it's a major theme of the game anyway; both countries have pretty reasonable reasons for engaging in warfare (Nohr's land is infertile and they would all starve to death if they didn't do it, and Hoshido, being an isolationist paradise, doesn't care to try and understand the issues plaguing Nohr, leading to them having to defend themselves after Nohr finally goes after them directly after centuries of letting the country starve while they hoard all their plentiful resources for themselves), but the conflict is still portrayed as a terrible thing for all the people involved that's only solved by achieving a mutual understanding between the leaders of the two countries, allowing them to work together for the sake of a brighter future (which happens in all the routes).

It's still more subtext than actual text, therefore i wouldn't argue it's a major theme of the game, but there's more depth there than you're giving it credit for.

> If I were to choose a Fire Emblem game which really managed to sell the theme of war being bad it'd be Radiant Dawn, as it focuses on the plight of civilians and the losing side of a war through Daein, and demonstrates how keeping the peace even after a victory is difficult but worth the struggle through Crimea. Fates lacks any of these nuances.

Stop dickriding Radiant Dawn and talk about Fates. Those two games are so wildly different there's basically no point in comparing the two, even if this was a sensible comparison, which it isn't; if you're going to analyze a piece of fiction, do so by it's own merits, not by complaining that it's not another piece of fiction you like more when the first one probably doesn't even want to be like the second one.

> **Finding the truth**

> Like I've said, this is the argument I've seen the least, and I think there's a good reason for this. Why? Because Azura already knows everything worth knowing about the conflict. You've just got to pay for the right version and she'll let you in on the secret.

In truth, Corrin just needs to appeal to her emotionally and earn her trust in order to be let in on the secret, but yeah, “finding the truth” isn't a theme of the game in any way. Glad you could at least see it that way, unlike your other two examples.

> And really, how is this portrayed in Revelation? Corrin spends 10 chapters running around the entire continent flailing their arms around and that manages to convince their siblings to jump into an abyss with them.

Bullshit. They spend 10 chapters going around convincing people that there's more to worry about than their petty grievances, which convinces their siblings after they're given ample reason to believe in their claims and follow them; anyone can make any story in existence sound stupid when they reduce it down to such a basic level and remove so much of the nuance and context of said story.

> “Finding the truth" sounds good. It sounds deep, like you've grasped what Fates is *actually* about.

Yet again, explain why a central theme needs to be deep to be a central theme.

> It's also completely defeated by the payment model of the game so that even if it *were* expertly written, it would be seen as a cash grab to sell you the right answer as an extra DLC route which you can't buy on its own anyway.

Irrelevant; i don't give a fuck about how a piece of fiction was marketed or sold in relation to it's content, and neither would anyone actually interested in analyzing Fates purely based off it's writing. Just say that there's not enough evidence to support truth-finding being a major theme of the game and prove it with examples, of which there are plenty of, and leave it at that; there was no reason for this section to have gone on longer than it's first paragraph, and it's all the worse for trying to stretch it out like this.

> I don't think every game needs themes, or at least ones present in every facet of the story.

The vast majority of games with even the barest hint of a story have themes, and even some that don't have a story have themes explored through their gameplay.

> However, a game that does want to really convey something likely makes its message more obvious and prioritizes trying to make it resonate with the players. If players can barely even figure out what the themes of a game are, or if themes are sacrificed in favor of something more superficial, then they were never important to the game in the first place, and using themes to defend the game is giving it more credit than it's due.

It's not the game's fault that you're incapable of picking up on themes as on-the-nose as “whether or not to trust in your allies”, “what justice is”, or “staying true to yourself”, decided to make up new themes that the game never had any intention or promise of exploring, then called it badly-written for not doing what you wanted it to do.

Also, “theme didn't resonate with me/was hard for me to figure out/wasn't spelled out/wasn't important, therefore bad”; regretting your opening statement yet?

> Fire Emblem is also extremely character focused. The units have names and a unique portrait to make you care about them. Support conversations are there to deepen your understanding of the character and make you like them more. This doesn't mean Fire Emblem can't have themes, but given the way Fire Emblem is structured, the story and characters making sense takes priority.

Not necessarily; which aspects of a story take priority are entirely dependent on what the writer wants to do when writing said story. I fail to see the correlation between “characters in Fire Emblem are given depth” and “the most important thing for any FE story is the plot and characters”; this is another non-sequitur.

> I think this is an important point that is often ignored by people who value themes above all. Themes may convey something the writers want to tell you, but they are still a narrative tool.

Without themes, there wouldn't be much of a point to story-telling as a concept; it's extremely easy to argue that a thematic throughline is one of the most important aspects of a narrative, if only because of how heavily integrated it always is into a story.

> What I mean by this is, for example, the Nohrian siblings' loyalty to Garon. They seem to be loyal to someone we rarely see them interact with and never hear talk about positively. This could be boiled down to "he's their father!" which is what they say at the end of Conquest, but nothing has been done to earn that reaction; Garon is ostensibly the symbol of everything the Nohrian siblings hate about Nohr.

What the fuck does this have to do with themes? You're talking about characterization right now; the Nohrian siblings liking Garon isn't a theme, it's a fundamental aspect of their characters that drives the plot forward.

Also, Elise praises pre-game Garon as a kind and wise man in Birthright, there are multiple lines throughout all the routes of the Nohrian siblings excusing his increased temperament as his old age getting to his head, Camilla says that none of them can afford to disobey him if they want to live, and Xander tells Slime Garon to his face in Chapter 27 of Conquest that he's nothing like the man that raised him and his siblings and that he only obeyed for as long as he did because he held out hope that Garon could return to his senses one day and they could go back to being a happy family; the game beats you over the head with the fact that the Nohrian siblings are obeying him both out of sentimentality/wishful thinking and because they're not strong enough to stop him from doing what he wants. Your ignoring important story and character details to push an agenda of Fates being poorly-written isn't the game having bad writing, it's you being disingenuous.

> Leo executes two people for being blemishes on Nohr's "grand legacy" and earlier in the game talks about how often and skillfully he and the other Nohrian siblings undermine Garon's authority by limiting the damage caused by his evil orders.

The “grand legacy” line was added in the localization; JP Leo only says that it sickens him to think that someone like Zola was a part of Nohr's military, and tells Iago that he's a disgrace to Nohr, not it's legacy. Even going with the localized script, what's wrong with him thinking that Zola and Iago's cowardices are blemishes on Nohr's legacy, which would be winning battles via direct confrontations?

The undermining point is completely irrelevant; just because they disagree with Garon's actions doesn't mean they're going to dislike the man who raised them and who they have a bond with.

> I'm not saying they have to be thrilled over killing Garon, but I am saying that the game using "he's their father!" to excuse their lack of spine isn't just unearned, but also reflects poorly upon how the Nohrian siblings are characterized.

I'm incredibly curious about how much of a spine you would have if you were forced to work for an all-poweful tyrant under threat of death if you ever disobeyed even the slightest order, especially when said tyrant is someone you have a deep personal connection with.

Also, explain how it reflects poorly upon the Nohrian siblings' characterization.

> The game hasn't earned using the theme of family as an excuse,

It doesn't use the theme of family as an excuse, because it's not a theme of the game; it uses the characters' estabilished relationships and history with Garon as an excuse for why they remain loyal to him.

> and all of these theories about the mental state of the Nohrian siblings have practically zero basis in the main story.

Xander's cutscene confronting Slime Garon begs to differ, as does my rant a few paragraphs ago. Stop dismissing well-supported theories solely because they cause you to look stupid for being wrong about a game's story and characters.

> Simply put, themes shouldn't be something you use to defend a game's writing with, but rather something which enhances the overall experience. That takes skill and effort and requires prioritizing on the side of the developers.

Does it? What authority do you have on how game development works to make such a claim, especially game development as it pertains to adding themes to a story?

Also, explain why people shouldn't be allowed to care more about a theme than about the plot or characters.

> There is no hidden theme or subtle brilliance which turns everything on its head which only a handful of enlightened people can understand and appreciate; themes just weren't a priority for the developers and they didn't have the skills to pull off a thought-provoking narrative.

> Before talking about Heirs of Fate, a few things have to be sorted out. The first is probably the biggest and most obvious one: this is just Awakening's Future Past DLC but with a different coat of paint.

Explain the similarities between the two DLCs, and why said similarities are a bad thing even if they do exist.

> There are several reasons as to why this structure works for Future Past but not Heirs of Fate.

> **1)** Future Past, in addition to providing challenging maps, also incentivizes players to bring the second generation characters' parents (or your version of the second gen characters appearing on the map) to unlock more dialogue - the fathers all have unique dialogue, too, despite not having unique supports, which serves as an extra reward for players who might prefer a certain "ship". Furthermore, if all of the second generation characters are kept alive, you're treated to some heartwarming epilogues. The character writing is very strong here.

Cool; why would Heirs of Fate need or want something like that, especially when the entire premise of the DLC is that the kids can't talk to their parents anymore, and why is it a negative that it doesn't? Is there a point to this other than criticizing HoF for not being a carbon copy of Future Past?

> **3)** Awakening had 13 second generation characters, one of which you got through the main story and one (or two, counting both genders) being used as an enemy with minimal dialogue. In Fates, there are 21 second generation characters (22 if you count both Kanas, which Heirs of Fate does), and no one is recruited in the main story. This means that, even if you've played all three routes, chances are there'll be quite a few characters you have no idea who they are. The same can be said about Future Past, of course, but with fewer characters and a previously established premise, more time can be spent on characterization than what Heirs of Fate can afford.

Irrelevant; not only are the odds of someone who's played all three routes not having recruited the vast majority of the child characters miniscule, especially with how easy it is to do so, but the entire premise of the DLC is the children getting a route all to themselves. Anyone who didn't bother reading up on some of their supports to get a basic idea of what their characterization is, even knowing full well that they were about to play a DLC where said characterization was going to be important, has no one but themselves to blame if they get confused.

> Heirs of Fate's first four maps are rather formulaic and cover a lot of the same information. The uniqueness comes from how the characters view and deal with their situation, which can be good, but as you'll remember from Conquest's four sibling fights in a row and then Revelations three dead parent fights in a row, Fates can be very repetitive.

Explain why the Conquest sibling fights are repetitive; you only said that they didn't make logistical sense, which i debunked, so this is an entirely new point you're making, not something you went in-depth on previously like you're trying to claim.

> Yes, that's right. They're drawing more attention to the Deeprealms.

They kind of have to; they're the reason the children even exist in the first place, and most of the children's lives and experiences while living in their respective Deeprealms are defining aspects of their characters and relationships, especially in relation to how they view their parents. What's the issue here?

> I generally stay away from discussions of power levels in anime,

Explains Kaze's speed feat of going to the border and back being treated as a contradiction in your prologue analysis, without even giving any anti-feats to explain why.

Also, the correct term is “power-scaling”; power levels are near-exclusive to Dragon Ball, and the art of trying to estabilish how powerful characters are in their own series relative to other characters is almost always done just by analysing and comparing feats and statements, including DB, since power levels were all but scrapped from the series after the Namek Saga.

> but it's curious to me that Corrin can get so easily overwhelmed, even as a dragon, and then the much less experienced characters are supposed to fight Anankos at his seat of power. Sure, Corrin was alone, but wouldn't Anankos have a much bigger and stronger army defending him? Oh well.

Experience can be, and often is, meaningless when it comes to how powerful a character is. This entire DLC is just confirmation that the second gen kids have already surpassed their parents in power by HoF; show some anti-feats that contradict that if you think it's inconsistent, not just “experience=strength”, which is something that Fates has never implied nor tried to portray as being true, especially when Gunter exists and is a walking debunk to that claim.

> I know Takumi's information may have been wrong but didn't Fuga say the Yato could also end the world?

If someone evil got their hands on it, which neither Corrin or Kana are, therefore it's destined to save the world instead. Besides, Takumi isn't present to hear Fuga's explanation in any of the routes; he very likely doesn't even know about that aspect of the Yato's prophecy.

> I'm surprised the Rainbow Sage didn't snap the thing in two when he saw it again considering how much he regretted making it (I think? I've spent so much time analyzing this game yet some things either just slip my mind or are so stupidly diffuse).

> Rainbow Sage: Yes. I am the dragon you've been searching for. Long, long ago... Twelve dragons were filled with desire... They fought over who would control the world... For my part, I create the Yato and the divine weapons. Doing so pulled humanity into our war. I wasn't able to die...until I had atoned for those sins...

He knows that the Yato's going to be necessary to kill Anankos and upgraded it because of that, to the point of calling said action atonement for making it in the first place; why would he knowingly doom the world by breaking it and making Anankos completely invincible just because he's sad that people died a long time ago as an unintended consequence of him making the divine weapons?

> Kiragi explains he's in the same situation as the other kids, and the conversation continues like thus:

> Kana: You think I can do it? Do you really think... I can fight the spooky men?

> Kiragi: I don't think so, Kana—I KNOW so!

> Kana: Thank you, Kiragi!

Which leads to...

> Kiragi: Whoa, what the heck? Why's the Fujin Yumi glowing?!

> Kana: My sword's shining, too! Kiragi, what's going on? Did I mess up somewhere? Yikes!

> Kana: The Yato's different now!

> Kiragi: Nice! I saw the beam of light shoot straight from the Fujin Yumi into the Yato... I think your sword has tapped into my bow's power! I have no idea how that works, but I'm not about to question it.

> They haven't been talking for five minutes and their legendary weapons click, while they're still surrounded by Vallites. Doesn't that seem awfully...simple? Convenient?

Well, there was more conversation than that prior to the Yato upgrading:

> Kana: Oh...but I'm not the chosen one. This is Papa's sword, not mine. I...I couldn't help him... I just had to stand there and watch him fight. I couldn't do what Kiragi did...

> Kiragi: You've got it all wrong, Kana! I was just like you a little while ago. I couldn't do anything to help my dad either. I was so mad at myself... But moping over the past won't help us now. We have to move on. Think about it, Kana. What do you want to do to change things?

> Kana: Um... I want to fight. I wanna beat up these guys my papa was fighting and rescue him. And that's why... That's why I wanna learn how to use this sword.

Kana was doubting her capacity, and even courage, to fight the Vallite soldiers, but Kiragi connecting to her on an emotional level and convincing her to stand her ground and fight's what causes the Yato to evolve; it's no different from how it worked in the main game, where it only evolves after Corrin undergoes character development thanks to connecting to one of their siblings, but this time with Kana in Corrin's place. Besides, it's not particularly convenient when there's no indication that they would have lost the battle if it wasn't for the Yato evolving when it did; Kana could have had that heart-to-heart with Kiragi at any point after this fight but prior to fighting Anankos and nothing would have substantially changed.

> ???: There. This is your Dragonstone. You must take very good care of it. Never let it our of your sight.

> **How are you doing this?!** Where do you get your rocks and your crystal balls from?! You're a ghost!

She never gave them a crystal ball and, more importantly, doesn't this just mean that, whatever state she's in, Azura can still carry stuff around? I'm pretty sure this is the first time ghosts have appeared anywhere in Fates, so it's not a contradiction for her to do this.

> Even with the world hanging in the balance, Azura refuses to stop being cryptic. I'm not sure why, since what ultimately saves them are superweapons, not some kind of personal introspection and growth.

Superweapons that only become usable after the wielder goes through personal introspectin and growth; the fact that the Yato only evolves after Corrin and Kana undergo character growth is so obvious and consistent that there's no way in hell you didn't notice that as you read the scripts. Stop being disingenuous.

> It does establish that they know each other, to which I ask: how? Weren't they locked in their Deeprealms until today? I know there's more shenanigans going on than meets the eye, but I'm still a little uncertain of this. It might be me misunderstanding something though, so I'll leave it at that.

There's nothing in the DLC stating that this map takes place the same day they lost their parents; the closest we have is Shigure saying that this was “shortly after the other Kana took the Noble Yato”, which could easily mean days or weeks after the fact, which itself happens an undefined amount of time after the deeprealms invasions, given how Kana hid in a cave for a while before wandering, giving the kids more than enough time to meet and get acquainted with each other. First baseless assumption of this post, i see.

> The scene transitions to Forrest, Nina, and Ophelia, and we notice a trend here: Hisame, Hinata's son, was with Kiragi, Takumi's son. Ophelia and Nina, Owain's and Niles' daughters respectively, are with Forrest, Leo's son. The retainers' children are with their respective lords, but there's an issue with this: one of the few good pieces of worldbuilding in Fates is that the Hoshidan retainers come from clans and families with a lot of history, so their children serving the Hoshidan royalty makes sense. The royal Nohrian retainers, however, are a ragtag bunch of misfits who got their job because they're good at what they do; their positions are *not* hereditary.

Nina and Ophelia are pretty good at what they do, better than their fathers even; why couldn't they have earned a position as Forrest's retainers out of merit or, if we're to take the more likely interpretation, that they just ran into each other by coincidence and teamed up out of either necessity or pre-existing friendship? Where is it even stated that they're working as his retainers officially? How would they have landed that job if they were in separate Deeprealms? Aren't they just playing pretend at this point? This is the second baseless assumption in as many paragraphs.

> You could argue Nina and Ophelia teaming up with Forrest makes sense since they'd know (of) each other, but I still think this throws away one of the few interesting pieces of worldbuilding in the whole game.

How is that aspect of the worldbuilding thrown away when Ophelia and Nina AREN'T Forrest's retainers? They're just friends working together for a common goal and who just so happen to parallel their fathers's dynamics; how does a symbolic parallel contradict the fact that Nohrians get their jobs out of merit when Ophelia and Nina don't even work for Forrest in the first place?

> Sophie: Dang! You know you've got a cool magic sword going when it GLOWS!

> All your parents just died and the world is ending.

Sophie still believes that their parents survived and are doing fine, they don't know that the world is ending yet, and it's mighty rich of a grown person to expect a jovial teenager to not be impressed or enthusiastic when they see a glowing sword for the first time; a lack of perspective and/or empathy, perhaps? It'd certainly explain your treatment of CQ! Corrin.

> The song was already only as powerful as the plot needed it to be,

Not really; it semi-exorcises Birthright Takumi because he's only recently been possessed, severely weakens and injures anyone who's been under Anankos's possession for too long and can't be saved, including Anankos himself, and calms people down, such as feral Corrin in the prologue and Xander and Ryoma in Revelation. The only other thing the song does in any of the routes is her using it to dispel Iago's magic in Birthright after he gets a power-up, and i assume that's only because said power-up had something to do with Anankos. It's actually pretty consistent in it's capabilities and limitations throughout all the routes, if you bother to actually look at when and how the song's used.

> and Anankos' crazy plan to weaken himself just enough to allow somebody to off him was already convoluted enough.

Again, he didn't have much choice; it's implied multiple times that the Omega Yato's the only thing that could kill him, the Yato chooses it's wielder and has spent a long time inside the statue in Hoshido, meaning he couldn't get it himself, and the song was more to make things easier for whoever was chosen to put him out out of his misery; it's convoluted, sure, but by necessity.

> Now you're telling me Anankos thought "you know what? I'll add an extra fourth verse. Just in case I'm too big and strong to be killed and the heroes *really* need some help. There's no way this plan can possibly backfire! Now, let's think of the lyrics...".

I...genuinely don't see the issue with this logic; he'd foreseen that he'd go insane when he made the song, knew he could still grow stronger if he started dimension-hopping, and made a fourth verse for if that worst-case scenario ever came to pass; what's the issue with any of that? How **could** it backfire on him when the only person that song hurts/weakens is himself and his entire plan is coming up with a way to get himself killed?

> Hang on, this goes against the canon established by Hidden Truths. Anankos blessed the new kings more because he wanted them to be strong enough to kill him when he became mad. The ancient kings should be weaker than the modern ones, but I guess that doesn't sound as cool.

This just estabilishes that the ancient kings were strong enough on their own that, even with less of Anankos's power than their successors, they were still the strongest. Hell, that's probably why Anankos had to start pumping up the power amps in the first place; he saw that, as the Vallite bloodline got more and more dilluted with each new king, so did their strength wane, and as such he was forced to give them more and more power just so they stood even a chance of beating him if and when he went mad, as opposed to Cadros and the first few kings, who could have beaten Anankos without needing nearly as much help from him. Not only is this not contradictory, this is actually pretty good writing if you think about it; with one throwaway line, it explains why Anankos felt the need to give the Vallite royal family more and more of his power as time went on, whereas that went pretty unexplained in Hidden Truths itself.

> The two discuss the ancient kings and that singing the fourth verse is dangerous. Considering the regular song turns Azura into bubbles in two out of three routes, I'm not sure the stakes needed to be raised even further.

Explain why the stakes shouldn't have been raised.

> The Kanas go berserk and turn into dragons, wanting to kill the other group despite the Dragonstones being meant to keep their impulses in check and everyone else wanting to stop the battle after seeing something else was going on. Sure, there *is* a lot going on, but the Kanas' rage sort of comes out of nowhere, and I imagine it's only there to justify Shigure showing up to calm them down with his song and inform them of what's going on.

> Kana: ... Kill them...

> Siegbert: Kana?

> Kana: They have to die...

> Forrest: Gracious, Kana, what's gotten into you?

> Kana: My head hurt when I got a good look at them...but that doesn't matter! They attacked my home and hurt Mama. If it wasn't for them, none of this would have happened! That's why... That's why!

They were put in an illusion that made them think the other Kana was one of the soldiers who attacked their Deeprealm and hurt Corrin, which understandably enraged them beyond what the Dragonstone could control, and the dialogue explaining that happens right before they transform. It's not a fault with the game's story that you're not paying attention to important plot points and dialogues and saying that things come out of nowhere as a result.

> Shigure can calm down dragons, weaken Anankos and dispel illusions. The problem with these vague powers, as I have mentioned before, is that they can easily fill whatever hole the plot needs.

Shigure can calm people in general with the sing, not just dragons, as demonstrated by Azura using the song again to calm Xander and Ryoma down in Revelation; Anankos made the song specifically to weaken him and, as such, anyone he possesses; Azura didn't know that she and the rest of the team were in an illusion when it happens in the main routes and, as such, didn't use the song to break out of it; those are the only things the song is shown or implied to be capable of doing, therefore they're the only things it can do unless you can prove otherwise, and as such it has estabilished rules and isn't vague.

> With that fourth verse, this problem is only amplified; for all we know he could sing Anankos to death without the kids' help and it would still fit within the realm of possibility because of the song's vague limitations.

Shigure can do that because the fourth verse is significantly more powerful than the normal song, therefore it fits the realm of possibility because it's a new power, not because the original power was vague.

> Do you think they speak English in Valla?

What?

> While not a bad idea to have your enemies kill themselves, doesn't Anankos have a massive army of undead, dimension-hopping invisible soldiers who are confirmed to be super strong? How couldn't they finish them off when they were wounded, tired, and in small groups? Also, while that might be part of the illusion, didn't the characters notice they were fighting alongside regular Vallite soldiers?

Because the kids are that much stronger than the soldiers; that's shown directly thanks to the fact that they body dozens of them while being vastly outnumbered whenever the two armies fight. You answered your third question; the Vallite soldiers they were fighting alongside were made to not look like such in the illusion.

> I'm still not sure why Anankos would be weaker outside of Valla, especially when his powers seem to work just fine, both in the form of his soldiers and whatever blessings Garon and Mikoto had.

Just because his soldiers, Garon and Mikoto can still use powers doesn't mean they're as effective at it as they would be if they were in Valla; this literally just means that whatever power they're shown to have outside of Valla is significantly weaker than what they would have inside of it, which is perfectly consistent with the statement that Anankos would grow weaker if he left.

> Also, how on earth would "warriors come running" if Anankos attacked a Deeprealm? They make it sound as though they'd instantly know another world is under attack and come running within a few minutes.

People have ways of coming and going from their Deeprealms; it's a certainty that civilians would run back to the main world to try and get help as soon as the soldiers started attacking and that people would rush in to protect the place, and with how quickly it'd happen, it doesn't even have logistical issues with the fact that time moves more quickly in the Deeprealms.

> I've read it over and over, and while I understand the words and that traveling to Valla is conveniently easier now, I don't get the part about the Astral Dragons or the kids' parents...is he saying he teleported the first gen characters to the Deeprealms to protect their kids? But if he had that power why not just drop them over a cliff? I realize there's a chance I'm just being stupid here, but this line is really all over the place.

Anankos's homeland is a Deeprealm? That's news to me, what an interesting lore develop- Shigure is obviously and unambiguously saying that Anankos teleported the first gen characters from the Deeprealms they were fighting in by opening portals to Valla and throwing them through said portals, presumably so he could possess them more easily; what part of that sentence is in any way vague or confusing, exactly?

> Again, lots of things going on here and while you can't expect the characters to be 100% calm and collected, this seems so contrived. They're angry for what might've happened in other potential worlds, all while they're slowly being brainwashed and having just gotten an explanation for what's going on as well as the target they need to defeat.

Explain why someone getting angry at people who killed their family and friends is contrived.

> It's easy to raise stakes and add drama. It's much harder to do it in a way that's satisfying and grounded in previously established conflicts. One of my favorite scenes in the entire series is Skrimir confronting Naesala near the end of Radiant Dawn, which serves to highlight Naesala's inner turmoil and closest relationships as well as Skrimir's character development. Here, we've got 20+ characters arguing about what might have happened in another world.

Firstly, what's satisfying or not in a story is entirely subjective; we'll get back to this next post.

Secondly, given how vague the described scene is and that i don't know what he's referring to, i'll just ask how the HoF scene doesn't do the exact same thing as the RD scene, with it highlighting Shiro and Siegbert's inner turmoils with them suspecting each other, their closest relationships with them being pissed because they think the other one killed their fathers, who they liked, and character development because they agree to bury the hatchet next chapter.

Thirdly and most importantly, giving an extremely vague description of a scene in another game that you personally like, making no comparisons between the two scenes whatsoever, and acting like you just made some deep, scathing critique isn't a point, or at least not a worthwhile one. Stop dickriding Tellius and make an actual argument for why the scene where the two teams suspect each other is bad instead of just appealing to this subreddit's massive, evident biases towards certain eras of Fire Emblem whenever you realize how shallow your point is.

> In essence, this goes exactly as you'd think. I'm not sure what Arete was thinking here. If she's that powerful, why not just zap them?

Because it's easier to kill isolated groups than it is to kill nearly a dozen at once; she didn't kill them on the spot because she couldn't, and splitting them up would make her job easier.

> Arete, Mikoto and Sumeragi serve as the bosses here. I was skeptical of their dying speeches in Revelation, but here their battle dialogues are even less impactful since they've never interacted with these characters before. The problem of the Nohrians having nothing to do with any of these characters remains,

Explain why it's a problem that characters with no relation to other ones don't have anything special to say when fighting them; you never did in your Revelation analysis, and i still want to read an explanation for that point.

> I do wonder if the Kanas are supposed to be as old as Corrin was when they were kidnapped, as Mikoto says they look identical to a younger Corrin, but that doesn't seem to line up with the very few memories Corrin has of Hoshido.

Yes, because the few memories Corrin has of Hoshido implies that they were decently old when they were kidnapped, and Mikoto's saying that Kana reminds her of a younger Corrin because she remembers Corrin when they were young. I still want evidence for your claims that Corrin was a toddler when they were kidnapped btw.

> He then says this:

> Shigure: The Silent Dragon now rules this world, just as he planned. But that wasn't enough. He invaded another realm, and then another. Those were your realms—worlds where the Silent Dragon is still sealed. Everyone you knew there has most likely fallen prey to the Vallite army.

> So one world wasn't enough. Apparently Anankos is so powerful he can conquer at least ~20 other worlds on his own. Doesn't this mean he can team up with his other selves too and rule all worlds?

He preferred to absorb them and hoard what little power they still had for himself, because he's paranoid and greedy like that.

> I guess Anankos is "sealed" in other worlds, but what does that even mean?

Him being sealed either means that he's incapable of doing anything to the world outside of ordering his soldiers and hosts to do things for him, aka he's back to square one but without any hosts (outside of maybe Gunter in Conquest if he survives that route) to do his bidding and is going to have a much harder time instigating conflicts between Hoshido and Nohr now that they're in a much more stable state than they've been in years, or that killing his hosts while he was in direct control of them, which are the only times Anankos directly intervenes in either of the routes and, as such, must be what “sealed” him in this hypothetical, rendered him powerless/killed him/whatever else that neutralized him in some way.

The second one has more guesswork than the first, i'll admit, but even going for the simpler explanation of “Anankos was sealed the whole time” makes it pretty clear that him being stuck in Valla was what Shigure was referring to.

> We've seen that Anankos is capable of influencing the world from Valla in all other routes,

Give an example of Anankos interacting with the world outside of Valla in any way that isn't through a third party in the main routes.

> and the excuse we've been given for why he stays in Valla is that his powers will disappear outside of it.

These aren't mutually exclusive; Anankos can't directly interact with the real world from Valla and would lose what little power he has left if he were to try and travel to the real world himself. What's the contradiction?

> ...Wait, then how does he keep his powers in other worlds?

A sealed, weakened Anankos follows different rules than an Anankos at the peak of his power, plus when we don't even know if the main Anankos got weaker when he dimension-hopped.

> One might assume Anankos being sealed is why he needs Corrin as his vessel, but this is so incredibly underdeveloped that I don't even know what this means or why it's necessary.

It's there mostly to prove that the Birthright and Conquest worlds are doing fine, either by having everything return to the status quo with Anankos or by implying that Anankos's no longer a threat in those timelines.

> Another question I have is what the point of there being a bunch of other worlds is. Is it an excuse for why all routes are canon, or is it to show how cool and strong Anankos is? Regardless, I'm more confused than awed, but that might just be me.

The fact that there were three different worlds in the main game wasn't proof enough that there were multiple worlds in Fates, and as such, all of them were canon? How did it take you this long to realize that?

> I think the most important takeaway from this is that the world gets messed up if you play Birthright or Conquest, confirming that those routes are bad endings.

I already said why they aren't in the previous paragraphs, but even steelmanning you on this, doesn't this mean that Revelation is also a bad ending by your logic? Shigure comes from a Revelation route where Anankos won at the end and killed everyone; how is that any less confirmation of Revelation being a bad ending for the game than the fact that there are some Birthright and Conquest routes where the Anankos from the failed Revelation timeline showed up and also killed everyone from those worlds?

> Moving on, Shigure says he'll take on Anankos on his own with the power of his song.

> Shigure: Essentially... Though dying in this way would release far too much power. Instead, I would have to absorb the curse entirely. This would prevent me from death and condemn me to eternal suffering.

> So, he's going to sing the secret fourth verse no one has been able to use and he knows that absorbing the curse will condemn him to eternal suffering presumably even after Anankos dies. How does he know that and what even is the curse at this point? In the main route you just can't talk about Valla but in this DLC it seems to erase memories and slowly brainwash others,

I'll give you that it's weird that Shigure knows exactly what singing the song will do to him, presumably without even asking Azura about it, but where are you getting the idea that whatever is causing the kids to lose their memories is some sort of curse, let alone that it's supposed to be the same curse from the main game? It clearly doesn't have the same prerequisite for being activated and does something completely different from the main game's curse.

> all while Anankos has the power to invade other worlds, raise undead armies and cause mass hallucinations.

He could and did raise undead armies just fine in the main game; the other two are explained by him breaking free of the seal and absorbing multiple other Anankos, giving himself a massive amp in the process.

> This seems like typical shounen power level spiraling out of control, but this is an optional DLC seemingly trying to hype up Anankos way after the player has likely put him down like the sad, dying animal he was in Revelation. It's hard to take such a pathetic villain seriously after such lackluster evil monologues and immature arguments like "I'm not a dick! Humans are the real dicks!".

Firstly, it's power scaling/escalation. This isn't pre-Cell Saga Dragon Ball Z, stop using terms that only apply to that series, and even then only at a very specific time-frame.

Secondly, main game Anankos and HoF Anankos are two completely different beasts; the former is an insane, power-hungry animal barely capable of forming a rational argument when pressed on it out of his blind anger towards humanity, and was also nerfed during that time, as estabilished by this very DLC. HoF Anankos is a nearly all-powerful being that got to where he was by not only beating his route's protags, but breaking free of his seal, meaning he was at full power again, destroying his world, and proceeding to give himself a massive power boost by absorbing multiple other dimensions's Anankos; any normal version of Anankos pales in comparison to the power of HoF Anankos, and that's why he can do all this significantly more powerful shit now than he could before, and why he's threatening. This is the strongest being in all of Fates, and unlike his old self, he's not a pathetic animal anymore; why is he hard to take seriously now?

> The kids are discussing how to get back to save Shigure, and they start quoting what Azura said. For some reason they don't remember her name but they remember what she said about the ability to weigh one's memories against someone's life. They all surmise that they can sacrifice their memories to stop Shigure from dying when singing.

Azura said that certain memories would remain. What she told them is what remained, and the name is what left.

> I think we're due for a summary of everything that has transpired up until this point because while I'm trying to make this easy to take in, I realize this must be a confusing mess if you haven't played/watched the DLC.

> * All kids have lost their parents from their respective worlds, and apparently only this lost world remains. They spent four out of six chapters fighting each other due to Anankos' illusions

> * Anankos went on a killing spree across at least 20 other worlds

> * The curse now also erases memories and slowly indoctrinates you to serve Anankos

Again, show evidence that this is the same curse from the main game.

> * The curse can be absorbed by a secret fourth verse of Anankos' song, but the singer would be subject to an eternity of torment from absorbing so much power. These consequences can be offset by people sacrificing their memories.

Shigure states that he could die after singing the song if he wanted to, but that it would “unleash too much power”, and therefore he needs to absorb the “curse” (much more likely to be a metaphor for the consequences of singing the fourth verse rather than any actual curse from Anankos, especially given that such a thing is never mentioned elsewhere in the game). I have no idea what he's talking about when he says it'd unleash too much power if he did it normally, but he's not talking about the memory-wipe thingy. Otherwise, nice summary.

> This is a lot of really out there stuff. Practically nothing of this gets elaborated on to any meaningful extent,

The third and fourth one sure, but characters talk about the first two plenty of times throughout the story, even if mostly in relation to how scared they are that their parents might be dead. Even then, explain why a lack of elaboration is a bad thing.

> and character interactions are primarily solely tied to the plot. Yes, you can discern their personalites from how they talk, but they say so very little of value. It's not odd considering there are over 20 characters involved.

There's still a pretty solid chunk of interactions that showcase the kids's personalities, and again, it's the player's fault for not doing a minimum amount of research into the characters that they know are going to be the protags of a DLC.

> What's worse, there's a very clear solution to everything here: Azura and Shigure have repeatedly said that killing Anankos will return everything to normal. So...yeah. I wonder how this will end.

It's implied that Shigure would have stayed in eternal torment if he'd used the song to kill Anankos, so no, not everything would have gone back to normal.

> The discussion continues, and Ophelia and Soleil reveal that they do in fact have teleportation crystals on hand; they just didn't know what they were. Apparently Owain and Inigo decided not to head back to Ylisse in their worlds after failing in their mission, and then they didn't explain what the magical teleportation rocks did.

Owain and Inigo's mission was to help Corrin gather the legendary weapons, go back to Valla, and kill Anankos. Their mission still wasn't over given how Corrin had only upgraded the Yato twice, the legendary weapons could still pick other wielders, and Anankos was still alive; why should they have quit their task mid-mission when it hadn't even failed yet?

Laslow and Odin not telling Soleil and Ophelia that the crystals are teleporters when they were getting overwhelmed is stupid tho, i'll give you that.

> Forrest, however, says the two crystals are too small to teleport them all back to Shigure (apparently he used a much bigger one). Upon hearing that, Lilith shows up (yes, really) and gives the last of her power to charge the crystals. ..Except she shows up later again.

Lilith showing up here is an asspull, sure, but just because she gave the last of her power doesn't mean she'd die because of it; she could easily mean that she wouldn't be able to help anymore, plus the world resets at the end. Why would she be exempt from that when everyone else that died got restored?

> Why on earth would you include this teleportation back and forth if it was solved this easily and quickly?

To give Lilith something to do; as poorly done as the execution was, capitalizing on the relevance given to Lilith by Hidden Truths was a decent enough idea.

> Honestly? I like the idea of this villainous motivation. However, it is a motivation that requires far, far more build-up than what we've got. Anankos casually invading at least 20 other worlds and killing all humans there is so far removed from what the main story dealt with that it just becomes noise. It means nothing.

Explain why it needs more build-up or why it being different from Anankos's motivations in the main game makes it bad.

> How can I put this...imagine if Anankos had said this in Revelation, that he looked across 20 different worlds for a better Valla and couldn't find one - what would that actually change? Nothing. Different worlds and all that they imply are such a massive concept that they need more fleshing out than a few lines said in passing.

Well, it would have raised the stakes significantly, for one; now the team isn't just fighting to protect their world, but to protect multiple worlds, and the consequences for failing would be even more disastrous than it already was, along with giving Anankos slightly more depth by estabilishing that he wants to go to a world where people liked him/he suceeded, instead of the one he lived in where he was a failure and a pariah.

More importantly than even that, though, is the fact that he wouldn't have said that at the time because that wasn't his motivation back then; he was still pissed at and wanted to destroy the world, and presumably couldn't even dimension-hop due to the sealing on him nerfing his power, only doing so after regaining his full strength and becoming curious as to whether there was another world where he suceeded. This doesn't become his motivation until Heirs of Fate, so criticizing it because Revelation Anankos didn't want to dimension-hop back then is nonsensical.

> Anankos: Yes... A promise that spanned vast reams of time and space... Fulfilled by the power inside those crystals of yours...

> Anankos destroyed this world and then at least 20 more so their daughters had to step up and clean up their mess, but yes, well done, Inigo and Owain. Promise fulfilled.

When does he thank Inigo and Owain? When he talks about the power in the crystals, couldn't he be talking about either Lilith or his good half from Hidden Truths?

> So, here we are. The entire DLC has led up to this point. Basically, you hit the reset button. The memories of what happened here will be erased, everyone will go back to their worlds and all of their loved ones will be alive. It'll be as if nothing ever happened, to which I ask why the DLC was even made to begin with. If they wanted to flesh out the second generation characters, there must have been better ways of doing it than this, and if it was to flesh out Anankos, well, that should've been in the base game (and he had a starring role as it were in another DLC as well). This is one hell of a plot convenient song.

Just because things get reset doesn't mean that the information learned wasn't valuable; Anankos got a decent chunk of extra characterization and the kids all had a chance to show off their personalities in non-optional ways. Besides, again, Anankos didn't have the motivation he does here in the base game; it would have been impossible to flesh him out like this, or in Hidden Truths for that matter given how Evil Anankos has five seconds of screentime there and the DLC is focused on Good Anankos.

> You get a quick look into the characters' personalities, yes, but I don't think that's any writing worth celebrating.

Explain why writing that estabilishes characters's personalities, motivations and histories isn't good.

> Anankos is given a decent motive after the main routes are over and both he and the curse are made much more powerful for no real reason other than to raise the stakes, which in turn get annihilated by a convenient song power-up.

Is there any serious story in which an antagonist gets more powerful for reasons other than to raise the stakes?

Unless you're talking about in-universe logic, which only makes this worse, because Anankos is so heavily implied to have absorbed the other Anankoses he met it's barely even sub-text, and it's directly confirmed that he broke the seal on him after beating the team at the end of Revelation, which can be easily seen as having nerfed his power in some way, both of which are perfectly reasonable explanations for why he got so much stronger in HoF.

And for the last time, give me a single piece of evidence that the memory loss is a curse, let alone the same one from the main story.

> Heirs of Fate tries to be Future Past but fails in the important areas where Future Past succeeded. I think nothing shows this better than the battle conversations of Heirs of Fate vs. the parent conversations in Future Past. I'll take two random examples to compare the two.

Was the transcribing the reason why this comment was too long to be integrated into the main post? Why? The only point made by doing that is proving that the fact that the fathers talk to their children in Future Past but not in Heirs of Fate is true, which you not only already argued for in your main post (without any elaboration as to why that's a flaw with Heirs of Fate or why the two DLCs are even being compared), but i highly doubt someone was going to try and challenge you on the claim that FP has different conversations than HoF. I'm challenging you on the claim that a difference in intent, tone and context makes one better than the other, especially when it's never explained why, but that's a different conversation altogether. As it stands, this is painfully redundant.

> In Heirs of Fate they're talking to dolls and like I said before, while that's better than nothing, it's much harder to establish a dynamic when one character out of two speaks in ellipses.

Both the conversations you transcribed make it perfectly clear what the children's relationship with their father was like prior to their being possessed; why do you keep debunking yourself throughout these posts and not realizing it or pointing it out?

> Future Past having superior characterization and interactions doesn't automatically mean Future Past is bad, and sure, there's even more Fates DLC where the parents interact with their kids. However, given how big of a deal the loss of the second generation characters' fathers (parents, I guess, but they really do keep saying "fathers" specifically as if the mothers never existed) is portrayed as, I think the battle conversations simply aren't enough.

They spend the rest of the route being pretty worried and upset that their fathers probably died; i fail to see how that, along with their heart-to-hearts if they ever fight them directly, isn't enough.

> There's on question above all others which remains. Shigure singing this song hits the reset button and everything returns to normal, but does that mean Anankos is dead in all other worlds, or did he just erase everything Heirs of Fate Anankos did in other worlds? As in, when Heirs of Fate Anankos entered another world, would there be two Anankoses in that world? Keep in mind in both Birthright and Conquest, Anankos survives in Valla. If he's killed in all worlds, then no main route ever needed to be played as this world's Shigure took care of Anankos by himself, but if he only killed the Heirs of Fate Anankos, then the Anankos of Birthright and Conquest remains to threaten the world forever, cementing those two routes as bad endings.

> Anankos: No harm has come to them. The world will return...to what it was... Your father...your mother...and all of your friends... You will find them at the end of the path that was meant to be. The one where I no longer exist.

The fact that Anankos told this to the Kanas who come from the BR and CQ worlds is confirmation that whatever happened to him at the end of those routes (presumably killing his hosts) neutralized him to the point he's no longer any threat to those worlds, and that Shigure did nothing more than restore the worlds to what they were like prior to HoF Anankos's rampages.

Even going with the theory that Shigure killed all Anankoses, Hoshido would have lost to Nohr in BR if Corrin hadn't killed Garon, causing multiple unnecessary casualties by the time Anankos was killed, a lot more people would have died during Nohr's invasion in Conquest if Corrin hadn't helped, along with the kingdoms probably not being in good terms by the end, and ditto for what would have happened in Revelation. Hoshido and Nohr would have already torn each other apart by the time Anankos was killed if Corrin didn't kill his hosts and put him in a coma/killed him directly, so there's still story value to them.

> I'll just say it, this DLC is a confusing mess, the song is poppycock,

How dare you. Lost in Thoughts All Alone is an excellent song; sure it's overused in the game, but that doesn't make the song itself bad.

> it doesn't succeed in what it set out to do due to a lack of focus and poor structure, and returning everything to normal was a cowardly move.

Yes, because i'm sure that having the children be stuck in Valla, literally alone in the universe because Anankos had a sperg-out and destroyed everyone else in every universe in a fit of rage, would have been such a satisfying and brave ending that would have made perfect sense after it was thoroughly estabilished from the very start of the story that killing Anankos would fix eveything.

> I wish I had more positive things to say here outside of not minding Anankos' motivation on paper and Mitama's way of speaking, but as it stands, Heirs of Fate is just a worse Future Past. I somehow feel worse being so negative about Heirs of Fate than most other things because due to its structure, it's hard to really convey how contrived it is so I just sound like an angry old man. Well, more than usual.

Maybe that's just a sign of your lackluster analysis skills, not age or the game.

In summary: this might have just dethroned Conquest part 2 as the worst post so far. Large portions of the “analysis” here is Odo pointing out something that happens in the story, saying that it's bad, and refusing to give any semblance of a explanation as to why it's bad, which was an issue in other posts but hit critical mass this time around, along with unprovoked comparisons (mostly Radiant Dawn and Future Past shilling) and the typical issues of asking questions he'd know the answer to if he paid more attention to the story/read between the lines more and using heavily subjective arguments. This is a disaster.

> I know I haven't mentioned it in this series until now, but Inigo, Owain, and Severa showed up in the main routes of Fates under different names. This DLC explains how they found themselves in a different world, and Intelligent Systems assures you those three placing the highest (barring Lucina) among the second gen in an Awakening popularity contest is purely a coincidence and not at all cynical pandering.

You got a source for that popularity contest claim?

Also, i don't see what's cynical about it; all of the trio have clearly grown from their Awakening characterizations, and a lot of their supports explore said newfound maturity and other aspects of their characters that they didn't in Awakening. As far as reusing archetypes go (a trend that's existed since FE2 and has been going strong ever since), the Awakening trio is one of the better examples of doing so.

> Or, I think he's supposed to be sane, but he immediately says Inigo, Owain, and Severa will need to change their hair colors, clothes, and names so that no one will recognize them in the world of Fates. I'm not sure who he expects would recognize people in another world, but, uh, really? Clothes? Can't they just buy some new outfits once they get there? It's not like any in the trio wears anything distinctly unique that would only be associated with them, surely.

Outrealms exist; there could easily be people from Archanea hanging out in Nohrshido that could recognize the trio.

> Severa goes on to say:

> Severa: But we finally achieved peace here! I can't go DYING before I've had time to enjoy it!

> Which is the first major problem I personally have with the excuse of bringing the trio into Fates that I haven't seen discussed much: they're doing this even before the prospect of a reward. They had just traveled back in time to save the world, achieved peace after losing their childhoods and parents to Grima, and now they're going to go help save a world they've got no connection to because a guy asked? When I've asked why they would do this, people have suggested that growing up like they did, they became restless and couldn't settle, but, like...that's not what the dialogue says. It's pure speculation that seems to be, well, flat out wrong.

They explain why a few lines later:

> Anankos: You agree to my request? I must ask... Why?

> Owain: Well, it's clear you're in a real mess. You need us.

> Anankos: Hmm...

> Severa: Look. We may be young, but we have tons of experience on the battlefield. And we've all been through a lot. We can tell when someone really needs help.

> Inigo: It's true. And when someone truly needs our help, it's not in our nature to refuse. The stakes are high—that much is clear. We want to help in any way we can. Even if it all turns out to be a lie, we're choosing to believe in you.

They want to help because they like helping people; why should they want a reward for that? Wouldn't refusing to stop a world-ending catastrophe from happening unless they got a reward out of it be a pretty dickish and, more importantly, out-of-character thing for them to do?

> Owain: And the first thing out of your mouth was, "Please save my kingdom!" Even though you wouldn't tell us more, that certainly got our attention.

> I see asking for help in the worst possible way is a trait that runs in the family.

Is this supposed to be a Revelation reference? Did you forget about the Valla curse? Especially since Corrin did a pretty decent job explaining things to the team while also not knowing how much they could say about the kingdom? “There's a third party manipulating events to cause Hoshido and Nohr to go to war with each other, meet me at the Bottomless Canyon at this time if you want to hear more and/or want evidence for what i'm saying” is a pretty decent ask for help, under the circumstances Corrin was in at the time.

> Inigo: No, I don't think so. We can sense them, but we can't see them. They clearly intend to kill us. But why?

> So that's the third reference to "sensing" something in Fates now, I believe. Camilla sensed something was "out of this world" with Garon in Revelation, Azura could sense something being wrong in Valla, and now Inigo says they can sense the invisible blokes. Question: why was this never mentioned in the main routes when fighting them? Wouldn't it be kind of a problem to fight people you couldn't see and only "sense"? If it's not a problem, then why have them be invisible in the first place?

Is there any indication that that, and the Camilla line for that matter, wasn't a metaphor? Couldn't he just be talking about the noises they soldiers make when they move?

Also, their invisibility is flawed; they have purple flames around them whenever they get ready to attack, are hard to spot from afar but are only turning opaque, meaning that anyone can see them when they get close enough, and they still make noises. They're harder to deal with than regular soldiers, but aren't invincible; that doesn't mean their invisibility is irrelevant.

> The battle begins, and the trio all have conversations with each other which are pretty nice and establishes who they are very well, but it's nothing we didn't see in Awakening.

Irrelevant. Good writing is good writing, regardless of whether or not something similar was done in an earlier game; either ignore the dialogue or praise it for being good. Don't just pull this “oh it's good but the character dynamics were already estabilished in Awakening so it's nothing noteworthy” cowardly bullshit just because you're so desperate to not give Fates's writing any credit.

> We've already dissected the curse at length and how poorly it's explained, used, and how little sense it makes, so I'll just add that I think it's odd that it even applies to Anankos, weaker of the two halves or not.

Why wouldn't the curse apply to Anankos? Just because someone made something doesn't make them immune to it's effects, especially when he has a fraction of his true power.

> The trio is stunned by this but really take the whole Anankos being a god thing in stride. They decline this offer, and after Anankos says he can't revive the dead, they say they want the land in their original timeline to be blossoming again and for there to be tombstones where the people died. I don't think the writers quite understand what this insinuates; the trio, and their friends, traveled back in time and *abandoned* their timeline, since it still exists. I think a drama CD explains the second generation Awakening units were the only ones left alive when they left, but if you haven't listened to it, you wouldn't know that. As far as the average player who also played Awakening knows the Risen will destroy the new flowers immediately.

Irrelevant, again. Just because a lot of people don't know about a piece of information doesn't mean it no longer exists or is invalid evidence; if so, the entire concept of having supplementary material to a story would be pointless. I can get ignoring said information if it contradicts the source material, but that doesn't seem to be the case with the drama CD.

> I understand they can't ask for something like what Anankos offers, and since they're heroes they have to ask for something suitably heroic even if it means they'll never see it, and I do get where the writers are coming from, but this never sat well with me. Perhaps it's the ease with which Anankos makes this offer, or how easily he fulfills their request (producing tombstones in another timeline seems like such a bizarre power),

Why is it strange for Anankos to offer to give them an (admittedly impressive) reward and being easy-going about it? Ditto for him being able to make some tombstones in what's, for all intents and purposes, an alternate dimension?

> or perhaps it's even that Anankos never says he can't both fulfill their wish and give them some other boon. He technically only granted one wish, so do they have two remaining? I don't know about you but when a benevolent god-dragon who can travel to other worlds and cast spells which affect different timelines wants to reward his little assistants, I think there need to be some kind of rules or limitations that explain why he doesn't give them more boons. Yes, he later says his power is waning at the end of this DLC, but look at how casually he restores their world and offers them both incredible tangible and intangible rewards; that doesn't sound like someone lacking in power.

Just because someone has a lot of power doesn't mean they have an infinite supply of it; the fact that he's operating at a fraction of his full potential, along with him saying that his power is waning by the end, is more than reason enough for him to not give them more than one wish. He only gave them that in the first place out of gratitude for helping him out of the kindness of their hearts; he can't go around wasting his limited supply of power on the trio when he knows he's going to need it later.

> In addition to geography just being suggestions in Fates, now timelines and death are also just minor obstacles to having a chat.

Hearing someone's voice isn't the same thing as talking to them. Do we even know if there's an afterlife in Archanea, and if so, wouldn't that be the explanation as to how that happened, given how clearly attuned to the supernatural Anankos is?

> Anankos then gives them each a crystal ball which can return them to Ylisse, either the current timeline or the future they came from. However, it can only be used once. Question: why does he only give them one each?

> Severa: So if we decide to return to the future, we can never come back here again?

> Anankos: Yes. It is taboo for humans to travel through time as it is. Even I do not have the power to break this rule anymore than I already have.

The trio hasn't time-traveled to the future yet, he never mentions having time-traveled himself or someone else somewhere (or somewhen) prior to this moment, and he's not even teleporting them to another time; he's teleporting them to another dimension. The only thing he could possibly he referring to when he says he's broken the time travel rule recently and can’t do so anymore would be making the crystal balls, estabilishing that creating those three was his limit.

> I also wonder why they would go to a place where everyone is dead. Severa is almost tempted by it, and - sorry for my personal opinions getting a little too obvious again - it bothers me as someone who has played Awakening that she would consider ditching everyone in the Shepherds just so she can leave flowers at a grave, especially after she just made sure her old world became beautiful again for the sake of the ones who have died. Did the relationships forged in Awakening mean nothing?

What relationships? Where is it stated that this version of Severa made meaningful connections with anyone other than Inigo and Owain in the Awakening timeline she came from, to the point that it'd be out-of-character for her to even consider the possibility of visiting and staying with her dead parents and friends, especially when she knows she'll never get the chance to do so otherwise?

> "Taboo for humans"? What taboo is this, and among who? Dragons? I mean they seem fine with breaking it given Awakening and Fates.

Anankos also describes it as a rule; i'm pretty sure taboo in this context is supposed to mean something really difficult/taxing to do, especially since he follows that up by being shocked that Naga pulled it off on a much larger scale than him.

> Also, why is Anankos in awe over Naga's ability to send more people back in time? Heirs of Fates shows Anankos is some kind of menace for all possible worlds,

A fully-powered Anankos is different from a weakened, barely operating at a fraction of his strength Anankos. This version of him is barely capable of causing three people to time-travel; Naga did that casually with four times the amount of people to teleport. He should be in awe.

> Our heroes arrive in Valla. Anankos makes it clear that "hardly anything dwelling here is alive anymore", which just makes me wonder why Valla was "restored" with land donations at the end of Revelation, as it clearly wasn't for a large number of people still alive in that country.

According to Anthony, the people living there do so as little more than mindless slaves; either Anankos is saying that the miserable existence of the Valla citizens is comparable to death or this is a retcon. Given that he proceeds to say that “only Vallite soldiers roam the outdoors”, implying that there's people living indoors, i assume this is just really poor/vague wording on these lines.

> I've asked this before, but why didn't Anankos just kill himself? He clearly feared what he would become and deviced a needlessly complicated plan only a few people would be able to pull off (who would also need to remember the lyrics and have access to what one can only assume is a *very* rare stone).

Didn't the Rainbow Sage say that the only thing that could kill Anankos was the Omega Yato (and the song, apparently)? Doesn't that mean that he literally couldn't kill himself no matter how hard he tried?

Also, yeah, hearing it straight from the horse's mouth, that is a pretty convoluted plan. To be fair to him, he at least bothered spreading the song around specifically so that people in the Vallite royal family would know how to sing it. And i'm not sure i'd call it needless either; complicated, sure, but by all accounts, that WAS the only possible way for him to die. It was convoluted by necessity.

> It might sound callous, but it's a pretty obvious question that should probably be the first to be answered, especially in a game where another ancient dragon kills himself to preserve the world he loves, meaning one out of two ancient dragons you meet in Fates *does* commit suicide, setting a precedence.

That other dragon doesn't state that it'd take a legendary weapon to kill him; it's also baseless to assume that, just because they're the same species, Anankos and the Rainbow Sage share the same ability of being able to kill themselves at will.

> ...Also, a dragon soul can procreate with humans?

Magic has done weirder shit than that in the FE verse; a dragon creating a weaker clone of itself by separating the good parts of his soul from the bad ones and said clone still being able to breed with humans, while weird and out there, doesn't strike me as impossible for a borderline god to be able to do.

> Anankos also says he asked Mikoto to never talk about him with Corrin. Allegedly it's because he doesn't want Corrin to know their father killed an entire nation, but that's a pretty weak excuse that masks the real reason: money. Oh, not Anankos' money, but Intelligent Systems'. Easier to sell or justify the DLC this way.

Why is it a weak excuse?

> ...Just putting it out there that two out of three Corrin daddies are nation-destroyers, and the third killed their mother. I'm pretty sure Corrin could handle knowing about their connection to Anankos.

Corrin only ever finds out that Sumeragi was the hooded man near the end of Revelation, and even then they've had a heart-to-heart with Mikoto already, meaning they can more easily forgive Sumeragi; they never had much of a relationship with Garon thanks to spending most of their life locked inside a fortress, turn on him immediately in both BR and Rev due to said lack of a connection, and only work for him in CQ due to wanting to stay with the Nohrian siblings and, as such, rationalizine away their suspicions about him as unfounded, and even then they realize he's ireedemable as early as Nestra; they never find out that Anankos's their father at all.

In short: We really don't have a big enough sample size to gauge how poorly Corrin would have taken to finding out that Anankos's their father.

> Anankos: You're very sharp, Severa. Yes, it is. Hoshido is one of the two great kingdoms outside of Valla. It's where Mikoto fled to. I'm sure she would be happy to offer safe harbor to all of you. I want you to accompany our child in a quest to obtain the five divine weapons. Once you have them, I trust that fate will somehow lead you back to this land. When you return here, I want you to defeat me...to defeat the beast I have become.

> Alright, so the trio now has their mission. "Grab the five legendary weapons". No names, no locations, and "fate will somehow lead you back to this land". That is *vague.*

Not that vague; “Go to a kingdom called Hoshido, which should be easy enough to find due to it being one of the two biggest countries in the world, talk to Mikoto, who's also going to be easy enough to find due to being the current queen of Hoshido, wait until our child goes on a quest to get five legendary weapons and help them do so, then come back here and kill me.” He's already seen the future somewhat if he knows that Corrin is going to go on that quest someday, and as such, should know that the Awakening trio will find their way back to Valla even without his assistance.

> Anankos: Impossible! The wicked dragon that is my former self fathered a child?!

> We're on so many levels of Fates writing right now, ladies and gentlemen.

Elaborate; i genuinely have no idea what you mean by that.

> Anankos tells them to teleport back to their world with the crystal balls, as his powers are weaker than he thought and that the other Anankos having created a daughter is bad news for the world. Yes, really.

> Anankos: I'm so sorry... It seems my powers are weaker than I thought. The fact that my former body has created a daughter means the future of this world...is far, far bleaker than I foresaw. I once had a vision of a daughter, and her presence meant the death of you three! I can't ask you to remain in a world that is beyond saving!

He says that he foresaw that Lilith's presence meant the death of the Awakening trio, thus dooming the world if some of the only people who knew the full story of Valla were destined to die by her hands. This is a really disingenuous way to frame Anankos's reasoning, even for you.

> It's almost time for the player to start, well, playing, but not before Anankos explains Dragon Veins and offers his blood to the trio - enough power to last a few *years.* I'm assuming they didn't have this power by the time the main story of Fates begins because a few years have passed by then, but why do they look exactly the same after all that time?

We don't know how many years it's been. Assuming that enough time has passed that the trio should look noticeably older is completely baseless when they don't look older by the start of the campaign.

> Also, did they plan on staying that long? In *Nohr?*

Yes...? Anankos tells them to get in the good graces of the royal family once they reach Nohr, and even if that failed, they could have just joined the army if they needed the food; why is this an issue?

> Question: who are the astral dragons and how does Lilith know about them if she was recently created to be nothing but a tool to evil Anankos?

When is it implied that Lilith was recently created?

> Also, why wouldn't she want Corrin to know they're related?

> Lilith: King Anankos, I'm sorry. I am a pitiful daughter who betrayed you. Forgive me. But as proof of my faithfulness to you... I promise that even if Corrin someday comes here... I won't tell him a single thing about you.

She knows about Anankos's wish for Corrin to not know who their blood father was, and doesn't want to dishonor Anankos by telling them after he's dead and can't do anything to stop her. I have no idea how she knows that, given that she stumbled across him after that wish had already been discussed and he never so much as implied that he had that desire in any of his interactions with her, but i never said that Fates didn't have any bad writing.

> I'm sorry for the unprofessionalism again, but what on earth is this? Why is this here? Why would they taunt us with Corrin never finding out about Lilith or Anankos being related to them? Do they think it's some kind of poetic tragedy? Because all I'm left with is the question of why they would do this and why they'd think it was a good idea to not have Corrin's true family matter in a game supposedly about family mattering. They don't even pull the tried and true "you're not my real family; my real family is the people who care about me" or *anything.*

Give me a single instance in any of the main game's routes of family being a major theme of any of the stories, let alone it being important enough to be the entire point of the game overall and, as such, it being a bad idea for Hidden Truths to estabilish that Corrin's blood family doesn't matter to them due to their never finding out about their relation.

> So why is this the case? Well, I think that's easy: if the Awakening trio had been active in trying to get Corrin to Valla, we wouldn't have three routes, and Azura's plot relevance would've completely disappeared outside of her ability to sing the song (which is only as useful and powerful as the plot needs it to be). The question then becomes who thought it was a good idea to have a DLC set up the trio as an important factor in the main story when they're anything but.

You keep bringing up Azura as if she isn't plot-relevant, but she is; she's the one who calms Corrin down and stops them from slaughtering the rest of the Hoshidan royal family in the prologue; saves the team multiple times in Birthright with her song, along with allowing the party to defeat Garon by sacrificing herself to weaken him with her song; reveals Garon's true identity to Corrin and comes up with a plan to stop him, along with being the person that most supports and motivates Corrin to keep moving forward when they start losing their will to fight in Conquest and allowing the team to, again, defeat Takumi by weakening him with her song; tells Corrin the truth about Valla and who the real enemy is, causing the entire plot to kick into motion, along with having an emotional scene dedicated to her reunion with her mother and, for the last time, being the only reason that the team suceeds thanks to weakening the final boss with her song. She's far and away the most important character in all the stories, second only to Corrin.

The trio not saying anything about, or acting on, their knowledge on Anankos in the main story is stupid tho; i'll happily concede to that point.

> We're not done. Remember the orbs? The Awakening trio could have, at any point, returned home, but didn't. In Birthright, Inigo is more interested in protecting Xander than he is trying to get the two to work together to stop Anankos, and unlike Owain and Severa he can die in this route.

The real issue with the Awakening trio in Birthright is them not deserting to Hoshido as soon as they find out that Corrin's siding with it; him being willing to die to protect Xander just means that he likes and respects the guy enough to fight to the death for him.

> But what's worse is Conquest, in which the Awakening trio, which has spent their entire lives fighting against Grima, participate in the destruction of an innocent nation rather than trying to save it or even just calling quits on the mission.

Non-sequitur; they spent their lifes fighting against a dragon trying to destroy the world, therefore they shouldn't be willing to help one nation conquer another, even though they believe that doing so will save the world due to Corrin choosing Nohr and being destined to kill Anankos? What???

> Speaking of calling quits, in the characters' epilogues, they're stated to just vanish after the war, presumably returning home. This happens in both Birthright and Conquest as well, meaning that in two out of three routes, they simply fail, ditch the world of Fates and head home despite knowing there's a big world-ending dragon waiting to destroy the world.

Why would Birthright dedicate a character ending for two random enemy retainers? That sounds unlikely. As for the endings, again, HoF implies that his hosts being killed while he was in direct control of them in BR and CQ fucks Anankos over badly; they didn't just leave Nohrshido to get taken over by him after the war.

> In short, the cynical move to include Inigo, Owain and Severa in Fates was made despite it making zero sense, and the DLC makes them come across as idiotic and incompetent.

Firstly, elaborate on why it was cynical. Secondly, explain what about their original, non-DLC inclusion doesn't make sense; it's gonna be hard, given that there's nothing to explain how or why they're in Nohrshido in the base game and, as such, nothing to contradict, but i'd like to see you try.

> Lilith gets my vote for the strangest character in all of Fire Emblem. She's the asexually produced spawn of evil Anankos, technically making her Corrin's sister. Why did Anankos make her? We don't know. What did she do when she served him? We don't know.

The fact that she was leading a platoon of Vallite soldiers would imply she's a general of some kind of the Vallite army.

> When she flees, she goes to the "astral dragons" who we never see or or hear about again outside of a line or two by Lilith. Who are they?

The dragons who rule over the astral plane and granted Lilith permission to live there; it's a woefully under-explored aspect of Fates's worldbuilding, but they're not important anyway. The astral plane is irrelevant to the plot, and how often the team visits it is of dubious canonicity; it's not important enough to warrant wasting screen time on when Fates already has a rushed pacing and often struggles to properly explain major plot points, let alone explain details that only exist to give a flimsy justification to a possibly non-canon base-building minigame.

> Are they the reason why Lilith's dragon form looks so different? But why is that; does their help change Lilith's dragon form (if she had one before)?

> They do mention her powers waning if she leaves Valla (and that the same would apply to even the evil Anankos), but would that change what kind of dragon she can turn into?

Where'd this come from? Why can't she just have a different dragon form either because Anankos felt like giving her one or due to basic biological differences? Corrin and Anankos's dragon forms look nothing alike, and they're father and child; by all implications, dragons either just look radically different from each other by nature, or the difference is because Corrin's half-dragon, at which point Lilith's form is explained by the fact that she probably doesn't even have any dragon blood in her and was artificially made by Anankos with magic; why's this treated like an issue?

> Also, why would she lose her powers? I mean Mikoto could keep that 24/7 country-wide no-fighting barrier up in Hoshido seemingly without effort. If Mikoto's powers came from Anankos, what with her being part of the royal Vallite family and all that, wouldn't they also disappear outside of Valla?

There's no quantification for how difficult and/or taxing the barrier was to use and maintain; her being able to do so even after losing most of her power is not a contradiction.

> My question is simple: why? Why give Lilith all of these bizarre traits and this convoluted backstory if none of it will matter in the main story? Again, not even in Revelation does she say a word about this.

I assume that they were trying to give more depth to Lilith by expanding on her backstory, along with maybe making her death scenes in BR and CQ have slightly more oomph to them by adding in that she had a tragic backstory, therefore making it sadder now that the players know anything at all about Lilith instead of being expected to be sad that the non-entity that is base game Lilith died; i'm not entirely sure it suceeds at that, but i see where they're coming from.

The rest of the post has nothing new, so to summarize this one: this is probably the best post so far, if only because Hidden Truths does genuinely have a lot of contradictions and retcons with the main story, along with sloppy writing in general; there's no good explanation as to why Mikoto and Arete stayed in Valla while the evil half of Anankos was rampaging despite having visited Hoshido already, meaning she must have known how to leave Valla at that point; the added context by the DLC makes it so that the Awakening trio are either uninterested in completing their mission or have developed hardcore amnesia in the main game, given that they never mention any of what they learned again, even in Valla, and take actions that would actively contradict the completion of said mission, especially in Birthright (“what's that, Anankos told us to help Corrin in their quest when the time came? Nah, screw that, we're just gonna stay fighting for our lords and actively try to kill Corrin when given the chance. Who cares about saving the world?”); Lilith magically gains the ability to read people's minds while cradling good Anankos, or at least i assume so, since that's the only possible explanation for how she knows that Anankos doesn't want Corrin to find out about him being their father; etc....

There's still plenty of assumptions that are implied nowhere by the game that only seem to exist to try and make it look worse (why's this version of Severa, who we don't know anything about and have no idea what kinds of relationships she's formed with the other people from whichever Awakening timeline she's from, willing to abandon her supposedly deep relationships just to be able to properly mourn her dead parents and friends?), asking questions that are answered by the game itself (why did Anankos only give the trio one crystal ball each after he said he couldn't break the rule of time-travel more than he already had by making the crystal balls?), or assuming developer intentions in the most bad-faith way possible (Anankos not wanting Corrin to know that their father is an omnicidal psychopath is a weak motivation for completely unexplained reasons, it must have been that dang dirty IS and their greed!!), but it's nothing particularly new to this series. All in all, this is the first post i'd consider relatively decent.

> Corrin explains the curse (once again raising questions of the limitations of said curse, especially as /u/GameBooColor pointed out last post Corrin says Anankos' name outside of Valla, meaning the curse can very easily be worked around)

Can you tell me when that happens?

Also, yeah, Anankos's name isn't Valla; it's not going to hurt anyone to say, and in fact, Garon (and i think Iago) say it multiple times throughout both Birthright and Conquest. The only thing this changes is that we now know that Corrin and Azura can try to claim that some random Nohrian deity is actually the leader of the third party, which isn't going to be much more convincing than what they already said.

> I'm still not over people going from considering Corrin a traitor to jumping into an abyss before them (and even wanting to be ordered to do so, according to Scarlet!)

They got over the traitor thing throughout the story, so i don't see the issue with them believing in Corrin now, especially when Xander, Leo and Takumi were basically the only ones to take serious offense to Corrin's deserting.

> almost as confusing is Azura being able to "sense" something from below. If you'll recall, Camilla also sensed something otherworldly from Garon earlier in Revelation. Where does this sense come from and why do they have that ability?

I'll give you that Camilla's line is weird, but i'm fine with Azura being able to vaguely sense things in Valla from the Canyon; she was born there, lived there for years, has a bunch of Vallite blood in her, and made constant trips back to Valla even after leaving. If anyone in the party was to have a connection to Valla, it'd be Azura.

> Oh, and like mentioned last post, Azura is consistently ignored. The siblings are here because of Corrin's actions and they're ready to jump into the abyss for Corrin's sake, but Azura's contributions are neglected and her entire character ignored.

What contributions? Her only involvement in this story so far was her telling Corrin about Valla; Corrin's been the one making decisions, gathering allies, regaining people's trusts, and generally pushing the plot forward ever since Chapter 7; what contributions did Azura EVER make that were neglected, especially from the royal families who probably don't even know about her only important action in the story?

Also, again, Azura is shy and doesn't like attention, and it's unknown how much time she even spent with the Hoshidan royal family; she doesn't get much attention from the other characters because she doesn't want to.

> Azura confirms Garon and Sumeragi knew about Valla and that royalty from both their countries visited Valla. Question: if the country is so peaceful, wouldn't some people from Valla live in the outside world? Furthermore, wouldn't there be written records of Valla, especially if they send gifts to the royal families of Nohr and Hoshido? I just find it difficult to believe all knowledge of the place would vanish within less than a generation, curse or no.

She never states that Sumeragi knew about Valla, only that Garon started worshipping Anankos after being possessed and that, “a long time ago”, Hoshido and Nohr had good relations with Valla:

> Aqua: A long time ago, the Invisible Kingdom was apparently a peaceful kingdom.

> Their royal family had positive relations with those of Hoshido and Nohr...

> Ryouma: What? That's the first time i've heard of that...Hoshido and Nohr knew of this place?

> Aqua: Yes. Hoshido's “Throne of Truth” is said to have been a gift from the Invisible King.

> But, when Hydra went mad...this country changed.

Ryoma and the rest of the royal siblings not knowing about that, along with the “long ago” line, pretty heavily implies that Valla had already cut off contact with the real world long before Anankos took over; beats me as to why, but it seems to be what happened.

> Given how easy it was to convince Leo and Xander of this, if that overhearing a particularly crazy evil monologue helped, I will say that I find it unlikely they'd be so reluctant to believe Azura and Corrin explaining the Garon situation in Conquest, once again reinforcing the idea that the invasion of Hoshido was for nothing.

They're only convinced so easily because Garon started going completely insane right in front of them, much more so than he does in any of the other routes, and they had time to think over Corrin's claims of Garon being manipulated prior to being told that he was straight-up possessed; this is a completely different context from Conquest's situation, and trying to equate the two is incredibly disingenuous. I do wish more time was spent showing the Nohrian siblings being surprised and/or upset at the reveal, but i never said nor will say that the pacing in Revelation isn't rushed.

> How on earth did Arete tell Azura all of this? I guess they could've gone back to Valla,

Who said anything about going back? We don't know how long it took Arete and Azura to flee Valla; couldn't she have told her most of that while she was still in Valla, prior to making it out of there and into Nohr?

Besides, it's not like Arete seems to have told Azura that much, or at least not much that couldn't be explained in either the real world or Valla. She told Azura about Anankos and how he killed her father, took over Valla and wants to do the same to Nohrshido; probably told her about how to go back there if she wanted and/or that anyone without a lot of dragon blood would have to jump off the Canyon to reach Valla, along with how the curse works; and might have told Azura about how the crystal ball works and where the hiding spot she later gives Gunter is, though those are both unsubstantiated and Azura's just as likely to know about that from experimentation as she is being told so.

None of those pieces of knowledge would be impossible, or even difficult, to convey outside of Valla, given how none of those need to name the kingdom in order to work and can be easily phrased in vague ways.

> but Fates has thus far said that Arete both died in defense of Nohr and that she died to the curse; does Azura mean Arete telling her about Valla is the same as defending Nohr? Did Arete know about the curse, and if so, did she know how much time she'd have before she disappeared? Given that it only works outside of Valla it seems unlikely she would've been able to know the details of it.

Why not? Arete was Vallite royalty; she, of all people, should know how the curse works, especially since we don't know who was told about it or how long it'd been since Anankos put said curse out on the world, or who was told how it worked. We don't have enough information on the specifics of the curse to claim that Arete knowing how it works doesn't make sense.

> And if Valla was so dangerous that all its denizens died, why did Azura go there so frequently, as stated in Conquest?

She liked the peace and quiet, felt homesick, and knew about a hiding spot good enough that Gunter was able to hide away in it for days if not weeks without getting into serious fights with the Vallite soldiers; there's nothing stopping her from using that exact same hiding spot herself, nor anything implying that she didn't.

> The curse is and has always been a small band-aid on the gaping wound that is Fates' structure; it is ostensibly the single reason as to why there is more than one route, yet as Fates continuously demonstrates, all it leads to are questions upon questions upon questions, and the game refuses to both ask and answer them.

It's ONE reason. The other one is that Azura's bad at talking to and convicing people and doesn't think the royal family would believe her without evidence, especially when she'd have to convince people to jump off a cliff if they want proof for her claims. Remove the curse and that reason for why Azura doesn't tell people about Valla still remains.

> Anthony gets transformed into a Faceless, which begs one question: if Anthony was indeed a living human, couldn't Anankos just turn all the playable characters into Faceless?

Anthony's also been under direct control from Anankos for an unspecified amount of time; there's nothing to imply he could turn anyone he wishes into a Faceless as long as they're in Valla just because he did so to someone who'd been working directly for him for a while. I'd give you this point if there was anything in the game that implied Anankos could just do that to anyone he wants, but since he doesn't and there's nothing to imply he can, this is not a contradiction.

> Corrin was too trusting, as they themselves say, but Xander and Ryoma practically tell Corrin not to change. While the game unlikely intends it, the lines come across as actively stopping any character development on the protagonist's part.

Corrin only got as far as he did in Rev by trusting people, even former enemies, and said trust is what ultimately causes the ceasefire between the royal families to happen and Anankos to be defeated. Corrin being convincing and a good judge of character is the main reason they're as succesful as they are in this route; not only is trying to change such a fundamental part of who they are unlikely to suceed, it's likely to cause them to fail later on if they do, if Rev is any indication.

It'd also fuck with one of Revelation's themes; throughout the game, Corrin confides in people, even if they're currently his enemies, to try and get them to ally with him, and they end up trusting him back after he's proven himself with his actions; having Corrin undergo that negative character development, after being proven right in being trustful for 20 chapters, because of one instance where said trust hurt them more than it helped, would make the theme of unity and trust ring pretty hollow.

> I also want to point out just how common it is for Fates to temporarily include a traitor in your ranks or center a map/mini arc around them: Hans (prologue), Zola (Birthright), Flora (Birthright), Takumi (Birthright, involuntarily), Kotaro (Conquest), Anthony (Revelation), Gunter (Revelation).

Was Kotaro a traitor, at least in the way that the others on this list were? Sure, he tried to lie to the team about kidnapping Kagero, but the team clearly takes Saizo's word over Kotaro's as soon as they hear his explanation, demand he prove his innocence, and were about to beat/kill him prior to him defending himself. I'm not sure he should be here.

> This feels so incredibly lazy and it's part of the problem with having a main character like Corrin who lacks agency and rarely initiates fights nor plans ahead.

Yes, because it's not like there's a consistent theme throughout Fates (though mostly BR and Rev) of trusting in people and how that can be beneficial and detrimental, exemplified and developed by Corrin's experiences with trust throughout the stories, with multiple characters betraying that trust and Corrin having to learn and grow from the betrayal. It's just lazy writing, don't think about it any harder than that or try to analyze the story or characters on any deeper levels than surface-level feelings and hunches along with calling anything that isn't explicitly explained/has to be inferred from context and dialogue a plot-hole or, if there's no logistical issues with a chapter or scene, meaningless filler; that's how you get hundreds of updoots on the circlejerk that is r/fireemblem.

Rant aside, what does Corrin's supposed lack of agency (which, even if Odo had given any explanation on why that's supposed to be a bad thing in the first place, is mostly relegated to BR, with Corrin taking initiative and starting most of the fights they participate in in CQ and Rev, the very route Odo's criticizing) and planning (unsubstantiated btw) have to do with people betraying them? How would being more active or more of a planner stop them from having their trust in people betrayed? What's the correlation?

> Conquest had you face the Hoshidan siblings neatly four chapters in a row to savor the dramatic effect at the cost of logistics and logic, and here the enemies are Arete, Mikoto, and Sumeragi.

Explain what the costs to logic were; the only thing you had to say about the Hoshidan family chapters of CQ in your analysis was complain that it didn't make sense for them to be defending important and well-fortified military positions separately instead of all together (leaving the other important positions undermanned), that they weren't fighting in the open fields of Hoshido against the Nohrian army at random (which would be a stupid decision for any military leader to make), and that there weren't guerilla attacks (ignoring that there was a significantly larger army than Corrin's fighting the Hoshidans off-screen and that we can't know what they did to that portion of the army; baseless claim).

> 3) The Nohrians are completely unrelated to these speeches, and the main plot doesn't advance either. You're just walking towards Anankos and the Hoshidans get some closure while the Nohrians temporarily disappear.

Why is that a major issue? The Nohrians don't have any relationship with the dead parents; why should they have any involvement in these scenes, alongside the Hoshidans, who actually care about the people who are dying in front of them?

Also, again, something not being completely relevant to the main plot doesn't make it bad; these scenes are there to give the charactes involved closure. Not every scene or aspect of a story needs to be of extreme importance to the plot for it to be there.

> So, what do the dead parents say? Well, Arete merely says she loves Azura and is glad she got to see her again. It's very short, very basic, and no new info is given.

She also apologizes to Azura for causing her to have such a rough upbringing, though that's still minor; the focus of the scene is more on Azura's emotional response to getting to connect with Arete again for the first time in years anyway, what with her special smiling portrait being used for the first time in any of the routes, along with her following Corrin's lead and trusting Arete not to betray her when she goes to hold her and telling Arete that she made a lot of friends during her journey, ending with Azura crying, again for the first time in any of the routes. So i'd argue it's not exactly fair to the scene to focus solely on what the dying character has to say instead of the alive one.

> This is never once acknowledged despite how important the family feud is supposed to be in Fates. This should be a major revelation (gott'em) but it isn't, same as in Birthright, only this time Corrin also ignores their actual blood related family member as well.

I won't repeat myself here; go to the first part of my Birthright response (link here) if you want the full explanation for why Corrin wouldn't, shouldn't and doesn't care about the reveal in the slightest. It still holds just as true here as it did there.

> It's possible Sumeragi took Mikoto in as a concubine, but why is this so vague? Either Sumeragi cheated, which makes him an asshole,

Sure, but the Hoshidan siblings still care about and like him; even assuming that this is the explanation for that, they're not going to shit-talk someone they deeply like and respect in his final moments by bringing up that time he cheated on his wife instead of saying their goodbyes to the man who raised them, and apparently did so well.

> took Mikoto as a concubine, which is what Garon does and it's framed in a negative light,

Garon taking concubines isn't really framed negatively in and of itself; it's him not caring to try and stop the concubines's rampant infighting, murdering and scheming that's portrayed as a mistake. Sumeragi having concubines but it not being portrayed negatively isn't a contradiction if things went better for him, his children and his wives than they did with Garon, which it evidently did thanks to how much better off the Hoshidan siblings are mentally compared to the Nohrian ones.

> or Ikona was completely fine with being replaced. None of these options reflect well on the characters involved in this.

How does Ikona willingly and gladly accepting being replaced, according to this possibility, a bad look for any of these characters? Doesn't that just mean that she didn't want the responsibility of being queen anymore and left it to Mikoto? Isn't this by far the least morally questionable option for how Mikoto became queen, aside from Ikona conveniently dying soon after having Sakura?

> Can I ask one more thing? What are the odds that Arete and Mikoto are, to our knowledge, the only two adult survivors outside of Valla and also end up becoming queens of Nohr and Hoshido?

Do we know if they're the only people who made it out of Valla and survived to adulthood? Where's the evidence for that?

> I mean, even ignoring the astronomical chance of that happening, and ignoring Garon's concubines and Sumeragi's actual wife (which are two huge things to just set aside, don't misunderstand me), it hardly feels like something two people fleeing a crazy god with their infant children would do. Feels kind of high profile.

Why should they care about Anankos at that point? They know he's in Valla, preparing to take over the world, and that he's incredibly unlikely to remember, know or care about two Vallite royal members leaving Valla and never coming back when he has an army to build and kingdoms to instigate; they're perfectly safe as long as they don't say Valla's name, so i don't see why they shouldn't aim high and try to live a comfortable life as royalty.

> Also, one last thing: how did Sumeragi know Mikoto had traveled from Valla? Could you talk about Valla back then? If so, why did only the royal families of Hoshido and Nohr know about it, as implied by Azura earlier?

Where is it implied that he knew where Mikoto came from as soon as he met her? Isn't it much more likely that he learned about her birthplace, or at the very least it's name, after he became one of Anankos's soldiers, and that's how he knows that?

> "I killed this unrelated character because I don't like you" is basically Iago territory. Even so, didn't Scarlet shield Corrin? I don't think Gunter ever actively targeted her, so not only does Gunter's answer not make much sense, Corrin is also asking the wrong question.

The conversation goes pretty differently in the jp script: (linkmstr fates rev playthrough chapter 26 timestamp 4:10)

> Corrin: Why...?!

> ...What did you...do this for...

> Gunter: What for? Because you weren't paying attention.

> Thus, i took your naive trust and ripped it to shreds.

In this context, they're much more likely to be talking about Gunter's betrayal in general, not specifically him killing Scarlet and trying to kill Corrin.

> And what's more, if Gunter had this kind of power, why did he stop attacking and hide until now? Couldn't he have stabbed them in the back during a fight?

I assume that's what he was going to try and do once they started fighting Anankos; he only revealed himself once Corrin proved he was the traitor, after all.

> To start with, Gunter's offer to drink dragon blood is the first and only time we've heard about this process. What exactly would it entail? Would it be Garon's blood, or would it come straight from Anankos? If Garon had the ability to power people up with dragon blood, which is often what happens when characters in Fire Emblem are descended from people who got a similar offer, wouldn't he do so more often as it'd improve the strength of his army?

We don't know if the dragon blood would have strengthened Gunter; there's no indication anywhere in the game as to what it'd have done to him if he'd drank it. This entire paragraph is guesswork.

> I'm also in awe that Nohr manages to conquer anything considering the land is barely hospitable (and also cursed), but its king arbitrarily kills off his own people and is rebelled against on multiple fronts.

The land in the capital is barely hospitable; not so for the conquered territories, which is where they get all their resources from. Also, killing people on a whim is something you get to do when you're a tyrant with complete control of the military. We only know of two rebellions in the game against Nohr, both of which are quickly and easily destroyed once Garon loses his patience with them.

> So, I think this is supposed to be some kind of political commentary...? At the end of the final path. Or maybe it's just a hamfisted excuse for the Gunter twist. Regardless, I think the dialogue here is also incredibly bizarre too; Xander and Ryoma seem to think this is some kind of misunderstanding and that royals aren't like that at all. However, in Xander's case, hasn't he seen and heard enough about Garon and his ilk to know that this should be happening regularly? I mean Leo's line in Conquest about all the Nohrian siblings stealthily disobeying Garon's orders seems to imply as much.

> This dialogue is asinine and, I don't know, childish? Characters in Fates feel like an AI's approximation of how humans talk, but essential pieces are missing.

Corrin, Xander and Ryoma's lines don't exist at all in the jp script:

> Gunter: ...Well? ...I don't understand how royalty thinks.

> For royalty like you, you probably think commoners and weeds are no different.

> Kamui: ......

> Marx: ......

> Ryouma: ......

I don't think i need to explain why this difference makes the previous few paragraphs innacurate.

> Do we know how much of this was Gunter and how much was Anankos?

Anankos's possession works by taking already-existing negative emotions like sorrow, resentment, or anger, and slowly amplifying said feelings more and more until it reaches unreasonable degrees, to the point of being able to mind-control someone eventually, as demonstrated by Takumi in Conquest. By all accounts, Gunter is near-completely blameless for this.

> Forgiveness being given so easily in this game is one of those contributing reasons to why everyone feels so lifeless.

Some people are just quick to forgive someone who wronged them; i don't know what else to say to that.

> Ryoma doesn't say a word about Scarlet here,

Ryoma also knows that that was Anankos's fault, not Gunter's; why would he blame him for being possessed and being forced to do something he'd never have done otherwise?

> and Corrin doesn't mind Gunter, a man they grew up with, having been around purely for selfish reasons.

Corrin's memories of Gunter, and their friendship with him, are more important to them than the fact that he didn't have good intentions for doing so; plus, they're the forgiving sort in general, as evidenced by all the routes. I don't see the issue with them still liking Gunter.

> Also, how exactly did Gunter plan to use Corrin, again? Corrin was locked inside a fortress most of their life, and we saw none of Gunter's scheming in the prologue nor in Conquest.

Taking a member of the royal family hostage is pretty good leverage; i don't doubt that Gunter would have tried to take Corrin hostage in the prologue if Hans hadn't thrown him off that bridge.

> The subplot has no real thematic, character or story value, meaning it was likely added to increase the tension of the journey to Anankos,

Idk about it not having the first two; it's a pretty blatant continuation and development of the trust theme that's been prevalent throughout both Birthright and Revelation, what with Corrin choosing to continue trusting Gunter even after finding out that most of his affections to them were likely an act and that he directly betrayed them, even if only due to mind-control; it also gives a nice amount of depth to Gunter as a character by expanding on his backstory and motivations. I won't argue it couldn't have been easily removed from the story, but there's enough interesting details there to justify it's inclusion.

> but surely a dragon as powerful as him would have a stronger presence on his home turf than acting through Gunter for the few chapters where the plot remembers to make use of him or even acknowledge there being an assassin in their ranks.

Anankos assuming direct control (if you know you know) of his hosts is a pretty massive buff to them; just look at Gunther and Takumi pre- and post-possesssion.

Besides, he's pretty much thrown everything he has at the team already, other than fighting them directly; they've beaten his army every time they fought, foiled an assassination attempt on their leader's life, killed his most powerful generals, and freed one of his only two hosts from his control. I genuinely don't see what else he's supposed to do against them at this point; he's certainly not been shown or implied to be capable of doing anything else to Valla or the team.

> At long last, our heroes reach Anankos, who starts whining over humans thriving while he's left alone. We know the guy is crazy and the Rainbow Sage told us about dragon degeneration, but like...does he have to be so pathetic? Maybe it's just meant to be sad and it's like you're taking a pet to get euthanized, but this is the true big bad. The one responsible for manipulating (I use that term VERY generously) the Nohrian royalty into attacking Hoshido, someone who has been scheming to take over the world above (?) while remaining hidden. Maybe I was wrong to expect more than whining and stock evil monologue.

Why does one contradict the other? Someone can be manipulative and ambitious while also feeling slighted over a perceived injury done to him by an entire race; what's wrong with Anankos having gone mad and still being angry and upset at humanity for betraying him, to the point of sounding pathetic when airing his grievances?

> Xander, as is also tradition at this point, says something strange:

> Xander: After all that we've suffered... We lose our father as well?

> Not to sound callous, but what have the Nohrians lost at this point? Hans and Iago? Sure, there has been fighting between Hoshido and Nohr, so a generous interpretation is that Xander is talking about the casualties of the war. But, like...there has been zero attention put on them. In Valla, all we see are the royal siblings, Azura, Corrin, Gunter, and a very warped family tree.

Why is the fact that the casualties of the war aren't given much attention supposed to be a counter-argument to the possibility that Xander's talking about the people that died during the war tho?

This is an issue with these posts that i've alluded to previously, but since we're nearing the end of them, i'll make it clear one last time: dozens of times throughout this analysis series, Odo brings up an issue he has with the story, points out a possible counter-argument for said issue, then uses the fact that said counter-argument is based on a plot point/line of dialogue that doesn't have an unquantifiable and unexplained amount of screen time dedicated to it as a defeater for said counter-argument; not only is it never once explained why a plot point needs significant amounts of screentime before it can be used as an argument, not only is it never explained how much time that even is, ignoring plot points and character details that could explain and inform what happens in a story just because they're minor is terrible argumentation.

I wouldn't have as much of an issue with these moments if they were at least rare, but these posts are positively fit to bursting with these points; i implore anyone reading this to go back through Odo's posts and count how many times he brings up possible counter-arguments to his positions only to dismiss them as false solely due to insufficient screentime/bringing up dev intentions when talking about in-universe logic/complete non-sequiturs. It's one of the worst and most consistent parts of a series of already terrible analysis posts.

> Even with KotOR II being rushed out the gate despite the developers' protests, the writing of the game is generally top notch even for people who aren't fans of Star Wars like me, and it mostly remains thematically consistent and features a well-thought-out cast of characters who all have something to contribute to the overarching story. Fates lacks any of this, so when the entire cast is suddenly standing in the Valla throme room, I can't help but think that the infamously unfinished KotOR II has a more coherent ending.

This is a nonsensical comparison; the only thing i can even imagine the two games having enough in common with to warrant it being brought up in this post is Odo equating a timeskip to the multiple logistical issues with base Kotor 2's ending, which is incredibly disingenuous.

Even then, the arguments made by Odo as to why he thinks Kotor 2 has a better ending than Rev are nothing short of bizarre; he says it has good writing, good characters and is thematically consistent and, because Fates doesn't have any of that (citation desperately needed), it automatically makes the ending of Kotor 2 more coherent?? What do any of the previous points have anything to do with which of the two games has the more logical ending???

> Corrin's coronation in Valla is perhaps the single strangest scene I've personally ever seen in any game that tries to tell a serious story. Not once did this come up, outside of mentioning in passing that Corrin is part of the Valla royal family. But, like, the country is dead!

No it's not:

> Anthony: Yes. Right now, all the people left here...

> Without even being able to leave, we now live like slaves.

There's plenty of people still alive in Valla, and the country itself seems to be doing relatively fine on resources and such; why can't Corrin rule over what's left, exactly?

> Azura is also alive!

And doesn't want to take the throne; being king or queen of a country isn't easy, let alone of one that's going to need a lot of rebuliding. Plus, it's possible to marry her to a male Corrin so they rule together, making this entire point null and void if that happens.

> You can't just make the protagonist the king or queen of an otherworldly country locked underneath a magical gate with all its inhabitants dead without any sort of planning or preparation!

It's a timeskip; we don't know how long it's been since they killed Anankos, a point you yourself bring up just a few paragraphs later, making me wonder why this point is even here if you already knew when writing it that the game answers your criticism.

> And what happened to the shifting skies which would keep Valla sort of sealed for a few vague decades or so?

Given that Xander and Ryoma can still visit Valla a few months later at most, Anankos's death seems to have fixed that issue; no idea why, but it evidently did.

> Right. Land donations. Of course. They can't stay in Valla, so Xander and Ryoma literally create a country for Corrin to rule over. Why would they do this?!

Because Corrin saved the world and is going to need resources if they want to rebuild Valla? Why are you so surprised at Xander and Ryoma being willing to give them some land when Corrin's the only reason they're still alive and they know they're going to need help to run a kingdom?

> I understand a time skip is implied since Ryoma and Xander are referred to as kings, but couldn't they at the very least fade to black and write "a few months later" or something? The way the game transitions into this scene you'd think they walked from fighting to Anankos to this, and it's honestly what I thought before reading the script again now.

I thought Fates didn't leave anything open-ended or had any subtlety, and that you'd have preferred if it did; why are you now complaining that the game didn't spell out the fact that it's been a while since Anankos died and instead trusted players to figure out as much by context clues from the dialogue and story? Isn't this exactly the kind of thing you wanted when you complained about Garon being teleported in and killed just to tie up the remaining loose ends?

> But why? Why are you doing this? Why is this necessary?

What else are they supposed to do with Valla now that it doesn't have a king? Give up on any hopes of ever rebuilding the place, hoping that the remaining Vallites just agree to abandon their home and live in Nohr and/or Hoshido, instead of giving the place over for someone to rule? Why is this being treated as an issue?

> And why would Corrin be a good monarch because they're a good person? I thought Revelation more than any route established that they're naive and guillable.

Not really; Corrin trusting in people is the only reason they managed to defeat Anankos, and the only times they're truly tricked in Rev by someone they trusted are Anthony (partially; they immediately suspected that he was going to do something shady and warned the rest of the team to look for them and kill Anthony if they didn't return, and went along with him on the slim chance that Anthony wasn't lying) and Gunter (even then still figures out that he's the traitor after realizing a contradiction in his arguments, before he can do any further harm to the team); they may be trusting, but they aren't naive or guillible.

> So, uh, Camilla doesn't want to become queen in Birthright, Hinoka has to become queen in Conquest because her brothers are dead, and here Azura says she doesn't want to be queen because of Corrin's magic sword. This is a very, very concerning pattern.

Camilla doesn't want to become queen in Birthright because she knows she isn't fit for the job, Hinoka says she never thought she'd take the throne and that she always expected it to be Ryoma or Takumi, who's younger than her, implying that either Hoshido's succession line is patriarchal or that she, just like Camilla, doesn't want the responsibility of running an entire country, and Azura demonstrates herself to be a poor leader multiple times throughout Rev. Her mentioning the Yato is a very minor point compared to the other one.

Being in charge of a country, in case you don't know, is a tremendous pain in the ass; them not wanting to deal with all that bullshit isn't what you're implying it is, and why would it be? Why is it that three women not wanting to dedicate the rest of their lives to leading a country, preferring to give that burden away to someone better-prepared for dealing with the issues that would come with being a monarch, giving themselves more freedom in how they live their lives, sexist?

> I've always wondered, if Anankos knew he'd be crazy and created an elaborate plan for others to kill him, why did he make it so needlessly complicated and why didn't he kill himself? The Rainbow Sage could die whenever he wanted, so there's precedence.

I haven't looked at the DLC in a while, so i can't speak on that, but just from what Azura said in this convo, Anankos's plan doesn't seem to have been particularly convoluted; hell, it doesn't even come across as if he had a plan. The only thing Azura says here is that Anankos made a song that could weaken himself and hoped that someone would use it to kill him if and when he went mad; doesn't seem like much of a plan to me, or at least not a convoluted one, though maybe the DLC complicates things.

I also don't see why Anankos should share the Sage's ability to kill himself whenever he wants; they're both dragons, sure, but i don't understand why they should share abilities just because of that.

> And, like always, questions that should be asked aren't. Despite offering so little in terms of subplot and main plot progression, Corrin doesn't even ask who their father is after Mikoto reveals they're part of the Valla royal family. And why is that? Likely to sell more DLC.

Also because they don't care who their father is; why should they, when they have the much more pressing issues of their mother dying in front of them and having a dragon to kill? Why's that a question that would be running through Corrin's mind with all the shit going on when Mikoto being Vallite was revealed, especially when they still consider Sumeragi their real father, as evidenced by their convo with him in the next chapter?

> Because even though this is the golden ending, they chose to confirm that Corrin is Anankos' child in DLC, despite the fact that it should have been of monumental importance for the Revelation route.

What importance would Corrin knowing who their father was have had for Rev? Corrin feeling slightly more bad about having to kill Anankos to save the world, only to do so anyway because they don't have any relationship with him whatsoever and, as such, wouldn't have any emotional problems with killing him? The only times that Corrin's heritage matters in Rev is that it's why they take the throne, and that's just because they're descended from royalty, not because of Anankos; i genuinely have no idea what importance you're trying to argue that that reveal's supposed to have.

> From a certain point of view, Revelation renders Birthright and Conquest obsolete in terms of story value, as even if you choose them, you'll always know that you picked a bad ending. Anankos will still be alive, Corrin won't know about him, at least one legendary weapon wielder will be dead, and so he'll always be able to come back.

Do we know whether or not the remaining siblings can pick up the legendary weapons? The children of the wielders evidently could, so i don't see why their siblings shouldn't also be able to. The Sage also seemed to think things were going to work out fine for them, or else he'd have told them about Anankos; something must have happened post-game that made things end well for the world, even if we don't know what, and it's still possible for Anankos to be killed thanks to the other siblings still being alive.

And even if i were to give you that the BR and CQ worlds are fucked, why does that make them obsolete? That'd just mean it's in a worse state than in Rev; there's still plenty of unique stuff that happens in those stories, with their own story values. One route having a better ending for the world than the others doesn't mean the other two routes, with worse endings for the continent, don't have story value anymore.

This post was...okay. It wasn't as good as the last one, but it also wasn't the trainwreck that was CQ part 2; the only things i have to say about this is that Odo really toned up the subjective arguments for this part in general (though none of them are as individually bad as the Izumo feast; that part was insane in how bad-faith it was), made a pointless and nonsensical Kotor 2 comparison completely unprovoked (though perhaps i shouldn't be surprised at the existence of non-sequiturs in these posts; god knows i've dealt with enough of them already while trying to read these), misinterpreted Corrin's character (as usual), refused to use simple inferrence to easily answer his own questions (also as usual), and made what i think is the first, or at least most blatant, contradiction in one of these posts by complaining about Fates's lack of subtlety and/or unwillingness to leave things open-ended, only to complain that a scene was too subtle about how much time it'd been since the last one and asking that the game spell it out for the audience (not a particularly important issue but a funny one nonetheless).

Starting this off with a nitpick:

> "Why are you making me do this?!"

That's not even close to what Corrin said; they just apologized to Elise for fighting her and said that they saw no other way to end the fighting. I fail to see how that's supposed to be interpreted as Corrin blaming Elise for what's happening.

> Firstly: how is this place safe? Last time Corrin went here, a "soulless killing machine" attacked immediately, and now she's talking about being spotted.

It's safer than staying in the normal world; there's two armies hunting the team down over there, whereas the Vallite soldiers probably don't even know they're there and would have to stumble across their hiding spot on accident.

> Secondly, and more importantly, unlike in Conquest, Azura immediately tells Corrin what Valla is and that it's behind the conflict behind Nohr and Hoshido in this route. It took her about two seconds, raising questions as to why she didn't immediately do this in Conquest considering she allegedly wants people to know about this.

She said she was afraid more soldiers would show up if she lingered in Valla back at Chapter 15 of CQ, so i'm willing to accept that as an explanation, especially since the actual exposition about Valla and Anankos is quite lengthy.

> ...Do you think Azura is making a joke when she calls Anankos' manipulation of Garon "subtle"?

She never said that:

> Azura: He's also the one manipulating Garon from the shadows.

Incredibly minor and petty nitpick, but that's hardly one-sided on my part.

> Within two chapters of the same route the fate of Azura's mother is made needlessly confusing at best and at worst directly contradictory (it doesn't need to be, depending on Azura's point of view, but why leave it so incredibly ambiguous?).

I don't find it that ambiguous; Azura said that Arete died protecting Nohr and, more specifically, from Valla's curse. It's not hard to infer that she must think that Arete was trying to protect Nohr in some way when she unknowingly killed herself by speaking Valla's name.

> I've seen it said that Corrin's choice is what pushed Azura to explain all of this, or even that Azura waited for Corrin to make the right choice before revealing this information, but I think that is a very silly interpretation of Azura's exposition bomb. Why would her willingness and determination to save the world be tied to which side of the conflict Corrin chooses?

Because she sympathizes with and trusts Corrin more in Rev than she did in CQ and especially BR; she heavily implies with her whole “even if i wanted to talk i couldn't because of the curse and had to keep my feeling bottled up inside” spiel that she didn't trust that anyone would believe her if she just told them about Valla without proof, let alone be willing to jump off a cliff if they wanted evidence for her claims. Rev! Corrin, meanwhile, is an enemy of both nations, trusts her, and reminded Azura of Arete; if there was anyone who'd be willing to believe her and risk jumping off the bottomless canyon for proof, it'd be Corrin, especially the Corrin with nothing left to lose by doing so. It's a matter of Azura not expecting herself to be capable of saving the world, not of her not wanting to.

> The fact that she didn't even hint at anything in Birthright nor explained all she could in chapter 15 of Conquest casts a huge shadow over her entire character.

I wonder why she'd have doubts as to her ability to convince people of Valla's existence when she has such strong evidence on her side, like asking people to blindly believe her unsubstantiated claims and to jump off a cliff if they want proof of said claims.

I'm very interested in what she could have said to convince anyone of Valla in BR or the non-chapter 15 parts of CQ, and even in Chapter 15 she clearly doesn't trust Corrin enough to tell them the whole truth.

> Here's a thought experiment: if Anankos is powerful enough to create this curse where anyone dies if they talk about Valla, doesn't that mean he can make a curse where everyone dies if they say the word "what"? Wouldn't his victory be borderline instantaneous if that were the case?

We don't know how he made that curse, but there's nothing to imply that Anankos could have just picked any random word he wanted and have that be off-limits; again, Fates's signature underexplaining of things sucks, but i don't see the issue with assuming that the word Valla was special, if only because he'd have certainly picked another, more common word if he could have and nothing in the game implies that he could have done that.

> Let me put this in the form of a question: do you think there's an actual story or character reason behind Azura not telling Corrin any of this while in Valla in Conquest, or why she doesn't try to hint at it in Birthright, or do you think the developers just gated off the golden ending behind a 20 dollar DLC paywall?

Why are you framing those as mutually exclusive? Why can't Azura not have told Corrin the truth about Valla until Rev due to her trust issues and the curse making it impossible for her to prove any of her arguments other than asking people to seemingly kill themselves if they want actual evidence, and IS did this so people would buy the “good” ending? One of those arguments is talking about developer intention and the other is talking about in-universe logic; they have nothing to do with each other, or at the very least don't contradict each other, so why is this here?

I'd be fine with Odo going for the Doylist viewpoint in these posts btw, if it weren't for the fact that the vast majority of the points he makes are from a Watsonian viewpoint, making it jarring to pivot as hard as he does from one to the other, and that he tries to use the Doylist explanation as a reason for why the Watsonian one is an inherently invalid argument; this borders on non-sequitur, and it first happened in part 2 of his BR analysis.

> So, uh, remember how he in Conquest said that Mikoto would've likely just smiled and said joining Nohr was Corrin's path to choose?

Again, him saying Mikoto would have forgiven Corrin says nothing about his personal feelings towards them; immediately afterwards, he says he's not going to let them get away with their betrayal and tries to kill/capture them.

> Dragon possessed Takumi and villains aside, Yukimura practically gets more angry with Corrin here than anyone else did while Nohr was cutting a bloody swath through Hoshido.

Idk, his CQ version called them a soulless monster after Hans started killing people, Hana went off on a rant about how much she wanted to kill Corrin for making Sakura depressed due to their betrayal, Ryoma gets pretty angry with them during his duel while he still thought they'd killed Hinoka, and the Hoshidan civilians are shown bad-mouthing Corrin directly. There's plenty of people in CQ that got angry at Corrin for what they did, arguably as much as Yukimura does here.

> As mentioned in Conquest, Corrin can explicitly mention "that world/country", and as we see in this chapter, they can also mention the curse. That seems like enough elbow room to at least say something more coherent than this.

They don't want to risk activating the curse, especially since they've already said that there's a third party manipulating events to get Nohr and Hoshido to destroy each other; specifying that said third party is a hidden kingdom isn't going to be much more coherent or convincing than what they already told the Hoshidans.

> Camilla then says they need to hold back and watch, so...is she already prepared to ditch Garon?

Not really. She just says that they shouldn't do anything for now and to observe the situation. If anything, she's saying that she's not prepared to betray Garon.

> I'm not quite sure why we had to go to the Wind Tribe in all three routes only for Corrin to get it confirmed that, yes, their sword is indeed a legendary sword of great power.

Well, in BR and Rev it's more so it can be estabilished that the Yato can grow stronger, which neither Corrin nor (possibly) the audience knows yet, and in Rev Fuga even tells the team to go meet Izana to learn more about the Yato. In CQ, since Corrin already knows about the Yato's evolutionary powers, their trip to the Wind Tribe serves as character development for Corrin, with Fuga confirming that they were worthy to wield the Yato, giving Corrin the determination to keep moving forward when they started doubting themselves after the Kitsune massacre. Even if i were to grant you that the BR and Rev versions are somewhat redundant thanks to the Rainbow Sage, some foreshadowing never hurts.

> I find it interesting that she can't disobey Garon after just having said to Elise that they should lie low and wait to see how things play out.

Again, what part of that implies that Camilla's willing to disobey Garon? Isn't that more evidence for her loyalty to him, given that she just got strong evidence that Garon wants Corrin dead at this point but still chose to do nothing and keep listening to and obeying him? I'm genuinely confused as to what part of this is supposed to contradict her line here.

> Most of Camilla's character also revolves around Corrin, so is it really just fear that makes her do this?

Fear and loyalty. I'm repeating myself here, but why should those two be mutually exclusive?

> By the way, remember back in Birthright where Camilla was shocked and disgusted Garon even thought about hurting Corrin?

No, because that never happened:

> Kamui: Camilla… listen to me. King Garon… I was tricked by the man I used to call “Father.”

> Camilla: Father…?

> Kamui: Yes. The reason I was let out of the castle was not because he loved me like his own child. I was a pawn for him to use to invade Hoshido at the cost of my own life!

> Camilla: ! That’s…

> Kamui: The cursed sword he gave me before I left was a weapon to destroy Hoshido. Because of that sword, innocent people of Hoshido were killed! This is a war started out of his cruel ambition, and if you do not bring him down from the throne, more lives will be lost!

> Camilla: Is… Is that so… Nohr… Father- did such a terrible thing… I’m sorry, Kamui. I- didn’t even know such a thing had happened…

Her only moment of shock in that scene is her being surprised about the Ganglari suicide bomb, not at the thought of Garon being willing to hurt Corrin, and she's not even particularly disgusted at that reveal either.

> For as much as everyone loves and adores Corrin in this game, very few seem to actually listen to a word they have to say. I just don't understand Camilla's deadpan reaction to this; hasn't she known Corrin all their life? And before the battle Corrin clearly didn't want to fight.

Firstly, the amount of characters that like Corrin are vastly outnumbered by the amount that are indifferent to/dislike them; since this is going to be a reocurring claim Odo makes, i'm going to adress this right now so i don't have to repeat myself over and over.

Secondly, her expression is more toned down in jp:

> Camilla: Eh...

She's clearly still surprised, but i don't think it's too weird; she did just try to kill Corrin and had convinced herself that they were going to execute her for it. Her being told otherwise should be surprising to her, especially since she thinks Corrin's a traitor.

> Oh. So hiding was an option in Birthright. So why isn't she lighting herself on fire out of shame for having attacked Corrin in this route, and why was that even necessary in the first place? Is it because Kilma isn't dead in this route? But wouldn't his death have been what prompted Flora to attack Corrin in Birthright?

Going into hiding and hoping that Nohr won't find them is much less safe than following orders and almost certainly getting to still live there as a result. There's a reason why this was Flora's plan B.

Also, Flora was much more depressed in BR than she was in here, and given the fact that Kilma is almost certainly dead in BR, it's safe to assume that yes, his death was what tipped her mental state over the edge; this just means that she got an opportunity to try and fulfill Garon's orders earlier than in BR, before Garon lost his patience and started punishing the Ice Tribe members. I assume that's what your last point was supposed to be, anyway; the phrasing there is pretty confusing tbh.

> Camilla and Azura have a chat, and then Takumi also agrees he'll work on that trust between them. I feel like we're missing a step or three, as she just tried to invade his homeland and now murder the group on the orders of Garon.

Yeah, Takumi said he's going to try and start trusting them as allies; he doesn't say anything about liking them, but when they're fighting on the same side, mistrusting someone fighting alongside him could easily get him killed. What she did prior to joining the team is irrelevant.

> Takumi didn't even trust Azura, who he grew up with in peace, whereas Camilla has attacked him twice within a few maps.

That was just him acting tough, as explicitly stated by his chat with Corrin at the end of Conquest. He doesn't take as much to trust someone as he tries to make it seem like he does, as evidenced by his reason for joining Corrin in Rev.

> Last chapter, Xander branded Corrin a traitor and told them to discard any relationship they may have had. However, even before chapter 14 begins, Xander is already on his way to meet up with the protagonist to defeat the true big bad.

Yeah, because he just saw with his own eyes that Garon had gone completely insane, what with the whole “i want to destroy the entire world, including Nohr” speech that he just gave to Xander and Leo, validating Leo's suspicion that there was more wrong with Garon than just his bad health and mental state. That's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Xander changed his mind about Corrin's possession argument.

> Even so, the fact that Xander isn't more concerned about his own father wanting to burn the country and then the entire world to the ground is...strange.

What the hell do you mean he isn't concerned? The man was so shaken by that psycho speech that he started seriously considering a traitor's claim that his father, whom he's undyingly loyal to and loves dearly, has been possessed and is being controlled by someone else, to the point of heading out to meet with them for the chance of receiving proof for said argument. Given that he dies loyal to Garon in BR and had to be shown undeniable proof of Garon's possession in CQ before rebelling, the fact that that speech alone caused him to start believing in Leo and Corrin's claims, to the point of commiting treason by confiding in a traitor, speaks volumes as to how concerned he is about Garon burning down the world and Nohr.

> but even after having undeniable proof of Garon's insanity, Xander rejects it, and even shuts down Leo for having doubts. How is this meant to be a sympathetic person or a good future king?

He shuts down Leo in response to him starting to consider defecting to Hoshido; in the jp script, he only says that they aren't allowed to betray the country. He never says anything about not betraying Garon, which is because he's about to do exactly that by meeting up with Corrin. This is one of the more major mistakes in the localization of Rev, if only because it has Xander immediately contradict himself and makes it look like even that speech by Garon wasn't enough to convince him, which is not true because it shook him enough to get him to go meet Corrin at the Bottomless Canyon.

> Furthermore, why did the Rainbow Sage not mention the four weapons in Birthright or Conquest? Surely the all-knowing Rainbow Sage would want to point Corrin in the right direction before he dies, as he says he wants to take responsibility (for...creating the weapons I guess)? In Birthright and Conquest, one or two of the other legendary weapon wielders die, thus more or less making it impossible to kill Anankos. That feels like a pretty important detail to leave out before leaving the fate of the world in Corrin's hands.

Is it stated anywhere that Xander, Takumi and Ryoma are the only ones who can ever use their respective legendary weapons? Don't their children in Heirs of Fate (dubious canonicity, i know, but it's the only source as to how using the legendary weapons works, which isn't contradicted by anything in the game either, so i'm taking it) eventually use the legendary weapons, meaning that the remaining siblings could probably use them too?

> ...Wait, wait wait wait! What?! Are the Nohrian forces only a few meters away from the seat of power in the Hoshidan capital? Shouldn't this be a bigger deal?! Also, they manage to do that without any Nohrian siblings or Garon by their side.

Is there any evidence that there were more soldiers than the ones that Ryoma killed that made it to the castle? I don't see the issue with it not being a big deal that some stragglers made it to the castle and were immediately routed.

> I'm sure these allied no-names will keep the massive Nohrian army from taking the castle while he's off to Valla.

Again, where are you getting the idea that the entire Nohrian army made it to the castle from? The closest the game gets to saying that is having Ryoma send some soldiers to fortify the castle, which he could easily be doing because it was just attacked and he doesn't want to risk a repeat of what just happened, not because the Nohrian army is about to take the castle.

> You heard Ryoma right. Corrin, as a toddler, acted like a true leader. Not only that, but they were such a good ruler that Ryoma got jealous of how awesome this toddler was. I really don't know what to say here.

Where is it stated or even implied that Corrin was a toddler when Garon kidnapped them? Doesn't the fact that Ryoma remembers them having all those attributes point towards them having been kidnapped later in life than that? What is your evidence for that claim?

> Sure I want to ask Ryoma how he can know that someone he knew as a baby and then until only recently thought was a traitor to his country is incapable of lying, but to be honest Ryoma could start quoting Shakespeare and I'm pretty sure my mind would still be stuck on the toddler jealousy part of the script.

Another mistranslation: (linkmstr fates rev chapter 16 timestamp 1:23)

> Ryoma: ...Kamui isn't one to tell lies. He's been like that since childhood. He's always genuine and honest...

The reason Ryoma trusts Corrin is that he remembers them being a truthful person during their childhood (a word very rarely used to describe a toddler btw), along with wanting to repent for his perceived failing the night of the kidnapping.

> Ryoma says he'll go meet with Corrin at the Bottomless Canyon, if only to atone for not being able to defend Corrin when they were kidnapped, and Hinoka soon chimes in saying more or less the same thing. I'm not quite sure why they'd blame themselves for Sumeragi bringing a baby on a diplomatic mission and then losing it,

Same chapter, right after the previously transcribed line:

> Ryoma: The reason i couldn't save him... maybe my absurd feelings were what stopped me.

> Even now, i sometimes feel that way.

Some reassuring comments from Yukimura later:

> Ryoma: Thank you...

> But, someday, i won't be able to handle these thoughts.

> ...That's why i'll be going to the Infinite Chasm. I'll believe in Kamui, and fight for his sake. There's nothing else i can do to make up for what i've done.

Ryoma blames himself for Corrin's kidnapping not because of his strength, but because he suspects that a part of him, deep down, let Corrin be kidnapped without a fight not because of pragmatism but because of jealousy, and he wants to atone for that.

I'm not transcribing all of Hinoka's justification, but in essence, she states that she regrets not having trained more prior to Corrin's kidnapping, that if she had done so maybe she could have been strong enough to protect Corrin back then, and wants to atone for that perceived mistake. Both of them believe that they could have done more to help Corrin but didn't, and regret it; it's perfectly reasonable to feel guilty under those circumstances.

Also, Sumeragi wasn't omniscient. He couldn't have known that Garon would ambush him while he was passing through what was supposed to be a neutral country. He cannot be reasonably blamed for taking his (not) kids to visit a peaceful country and getting blind-sided on his way there.

> especially when they were children at that time and not even anywhere near Corrin to the best of my knowledge, but okay.

The multiple statements made by Ryoma and Hinoka in this very scene that necessitate the two of them being, at the absolute least, in eyesight of Corrin when they were being kidnapped beg to differ. How would Ryoma or Hinoka even feel guilty for not trying to help Corrin when given the chance if they never had said chance in the first place because they weren't nearby when it happened and wouldn't have even known about it until after the fact? Where in the fudge did you get the idea that they weren't near Corrin from???

> Some people would no doubt argue "trauma" playing a part in the siblings' decision, and while that would have been an interesting angle, we run into the same problem as the Nohrian siblings' loyalty to Garon: there's just not enough focus on the topic to make it stand out or justify it, making it come off more as a convenient excuse than anything else.

I already responded to this in the last part of my Conquest response, so i'll make this short: elaborate on why a plot point or character detail needs substantial screentime before it can be used as a valid argument, and ideally also explain exactly how much screentime said detail needs before it becomes valid.

> We know next to nothing about the Hoshidan siblings or their relationships with each other, both before and after Corrin's abduction and subsequent "return".

That's what supports are for.

Also, why is return in quotes? Corrin DID return. They were in Hoshido, spent a decade or two in a fortress, then returned to Hoshido for a while; why is that phrased as if they didn't return?

> Four chapters ago you called the protagonist a traitor and withheld crucial information from them, you absolute tosser.

What information was Xander withholding from Corrin during Chapter 13?

> I've said my piece on Xander in both Birthright and Conquest but this line really is shameless.

Why? Because he apologized for taking so long to see that Garon was beyond redemption? Why is that shameless?

> Garon has loudly and publicly stated that he wants to destroy the world, so what does Iago get out of that?

I wouldn't count publically stated as “stated it in his private throne room when only two other people were listening”; is there even any evidence that Iago knows about the whole “destroy the world” part of Garon's motivation?

> The ease at which these people put aside a long history of conflict to team up like this is questionable as is, but it becomes worse when you consider that this could've just as easily happened in Conquest chapter 18 when they were eating together in a neutral territory far away from Garon.

The Nohrian royal family was still loyal to Garon in chapter 18 of Conquest; they aren't loyal to him in chapter 17 of Revelation. There's this little thing called “context” that you might have heard of, and it's a pretty important tool when analysing a story.

> Or is the game trying to tell us that Xander hearing Garon monologuing about torturing Corrin for funsies isn't enough and Garon has to say he wants Nohr to be destroyed as well before Xander considers peace without Hoshido in ruins?

Garon said that he was doing this for Anankos during that monologue, and even then, being willing to torture someone and wanting to destroy your own country are very different things; the former is sadism/religious fervor, and the other is madness that would accomplish nothing but self-destruction. Xander being convinced that Garon can't be reasoned with after hearing that speech but not the first is, again, perfectly reasonable.

>That leaves the sisters, who have no real stated purpose in the plot despite being supposed main support characters, making it feel like they're here as part of a set and not because of their own value they bring to the plot, while the brothers serve as glorified batteries for Corrin.

> Sure, Corrin likely needs the manpower, but not only is it impossible for them to know the scope of the danger that lies ahead, I personally also think it's odd that the main support cast's value is primarily judged by combat performance.

Better to over-prepare than under-prepare. Also, one of their goals is to make Hoshido and Nohr be at peace with each other for once; recruiting all the members of the royal family so they have experience fighting together for a common goal will almost certainly improve relations between the two countries, and that includes the sisters. That's why it was necessary for Corrin to get the siblings.

> Oh, and one final thing: Corrin takes and will continue to take center stage at Azura's expense. Like in chapter 18 of Conquest, the other royal siblings just ignore her existence. This is despite the fact that her exposition dump is what allows this route to exist, and she should be leading the charge.

Why should she be in charge? She can't fight very well, is shy, isn't a good leader, doesn't have the special weapon that can kill the final boss, and isn't nearly as talkative or concincing as Corrin; unless you made up an entirely new character that had nothing to do with Azura other than name and appearance, this is a bizzare point to make.

> Instead, Corrin is the leader and the only reason people decide to go to Valla, and the Hoshidan siblings are far more focused on someone they knew as children over a decade ago rather than the person they grew up with.

Do they even like Azura as much as they do Corrin? She clearly preferred being alone to keeping them company if her introductory scene and the fact that she constantly visited Valla was anything to go by, and she's shy regardless; i can see why they'd care more about Corrin, especially since half of them still blame themselves for their kidnapping.

Now, for my summary: this is probably the best post so far.

It still has issues, like the strawmanning of fictional characters, ignoring context to make things look dumber than they are, and his dislike of Xander becoming very apparent in this part, but that's to be expected of Odo; the interesting part is that there are, for once, multiple points raised that i actually agree with him on near-completely, like the retreading, the rushed pacing, and things being too convenient. It's something approaching decent, if you ignore the numerous and heavy flaws still present here. Well done.