Nohr Wrapup (Part 2)

[amielleon]

Aesthetics:

Like FE13, FE14 is incredibly polished. It feels really slick. I love the way the battle animations are incorporated seamlessly, with the camera swooping into the battlefield, which resembles the actual terrain of the chapter more than ever, and then swooping back out. It feels so fast and smooth that despite the lengthiness of the chapters, I didn't turn off animations until chapter 25.

The animation in the movies are pretty. The animation in battles less so.

The music is gorgeous, and the way the music is incorporated is so cool: there are parallel tracks for the background music and the normal battle music, and they seamlessly switch tracks as you enter battle so that it just feels like the music is intensifying as you enter battle.

The differences between Nohr and Hoshido are probably also best conveyed through these ambient details, like spellcasters with fans, the foodstuffs you get in the My Castle, and so on.

Also, I didn't particularly think that FE13 had any less facial diversity than its predecessors, but FE14 does extremely well at making its characters look distinct (with the exception of a few parent-child pairs but it's arguable that this is completely intentional). The expressions are pretty well done too, with characters all flinching, smiling, and scowling in their own ways.

If I were to say that FE14 had any failing in terms of its look, it's that it's a little too pretty. Not only do we have a lot of very moe girls, we also have a lot of overly attractive men. I mean, if it were just a few attractive pretty boys, me and my ovaries would be okay with that, but the Joker+Suzukaze+Tsubaki+Not!Inigo+Leon+Takumi combo miiiiight be a biiiiit too much. It kind of kills the idea of this being a Very Serious War--there are too many pretty people who could be models running around, and probably not enough grumpy middle-aged people. (I think Gunter, Asura, and Yuugiri might be the only middle-aged people you get. The latter two are exclusive to one route or the other.) This is probably a complaint that I should've started waving with FE13, but I couldn't really take FE13 seriously on any level at all, whereas FE14 is at least nominally serious enough that this can start bothering me.

Which brings us to what you're probably all here for...

Story:

First, let's make one thing clear.

The storytelling is a mess from about chapter 7 to 14 (AKA almost half the game). And it is decidedly not the Deep Gritty Thracian War Story you were hoping for.

I think the central failing is that they didn't really want to make Nohr out to be in the right, and so if you play the Nohr route, you're still fighting (the evil half of) Nohr. You are also incidentally fighting Hoshido, but it's completely clear that you are doing horrible things to these innocent souls. If you were hoping for some sort of ambiguity a la Travant and "we need farmland also your hero cuan looks like an asshole from where we're standing", you should not play Nohr.

What you actually get is a Totally Evil Mastermind Who Likes To Watch You Suffer repeatedly contrive situations so that Kamui suffers. This is not to say that past FEs didn't have Totally Evil Masterminds. I mean, they did--it's practically an archetype. (Hello, Gharnef Manfroy Narcian Valter Riev Lekain...) The difference is that previous Totally Evil Masterminds were all in it for some manner of petty self-gain and Macbeth/Iago, well... he just wants to see you suffer. There really does not seem to be much more to it than that.

More than the problem being that of cut-and-dried good'n'evil (because c'mon, let's face it, outside of Thracia that's pretty much always been a Thing to some degree) it gives the impression that the world revolves around Kamui. There are many shits given about the slaughter of innocents, but it seems to be framed as some sort of personal tragedy for poor innocent Kamui. I think that's one major thing that's keeping Nohr from making any truly interesting statements about war.

Because these aren't tragedies naturally arising from war. These are tragedies meticulously designed to put you, specifically, through hell.

And when you combine this with the meandering early chapters, and the sense that there are a lot of dangling plot threads that you've been given no answer to unless you shell out for other routes, I think you can't help but feel like Nohr's story is a mess of broken promises between developer and player.

[Warning: The links in the following section contain serious spoilers.]

Still, there are some good things to be had. There are some great character development moments for Kamui, who learns very slowly to conceal his disapproval and his sorrow from the people who would destroy him, overlooking massacres for the sake of the greater good. The Nohr siblings (especially the brothers) are excellent, absolutely wonderful sad child siblings who keep each other afloat in the face of an evil father they can't openly go against. (Marx gets fantastic development too.) There are some wonderful monologues that defy everything FE13 stood for, proclaiming that there are no such thing as perfect choices in this world. Even the little things are done with more weight than in FE13: the FE14 analogue to Donnel witnesses the slaughter of her entire village in a zombie attack. No convenient in-the-nick-of-time heroism here. And the ending is lovely.

It's unfortunate that it's all buried in an overly convenient narrative where everyone seems profoundly interested in maintaining Kamui's purity. It's simply too difficult to believe the story when it wants to tell you anything serious. If anything I was very surprised when the story did end up letting some major plot-important characters die... but not by Kamui's hand, of course.

Not to mention, it spends the first few chapters of the route screaming "I THINK YOU MADE THE WRONG DECISION!!"

I think Nohr shouldn't have been its own game. It is neither satisfying nor complete in its own right, and now that I'm halfway through Hoshido I realize that it recycles a lot of things as well. It should've been a free New Game+ choice. Either that, or better.

ETA: I should also mention that the worldbuilding is surprisingly flat outside of the aesthetic cues. It feels a bit better so far in Hoshido route, but either way, somehow you don't really get a sense for the heartland of Nohr, the Empire.

SJ Stuff:

So, I had male Kamui marry Zero, the bisexual (male) thief. Who also happens, in what I'm sure is a COMPLETE coincidence, to have a backstory involving being used as a child prostitute serving men. In another amazing coincidence, he also has a habit of making people uncomfortable by constantly saying things suggestively. I mean, I'm SURE this is just a coincidence that the ONLY man would gay marry you is also a sexually abused pervert! What do you think this is, the kind of game where you can stroke your waifus while they whisper in your ear about how hard they're going to fuck you? The kind of game where only the evil side is filled with sexual women with asses and tits hanging out of their armor?

Anyway, the creepy bits are mostly as bad as they sound. My Room is unsettlingly erotic. Camilla is a yandere with only a few decent character relationships to redeem her even slightly. Charlotte's personal skill involves being out to get other women, though I hear some of her supports are good (I will grant you that she and Inigo suit each other well).

ETA: I should also mention that the sisters have very little plot presence all considered. It's mostly the brothers being cool.

The part that did surprise me was that Kamui/Zero S is surprisingly sincere. And in many ways it's done in a fairly egalitarian way: Zero actually asks you to marry him, with that exact language, and thereafter you get an S support that is treated in every way like an S support. You can turn into each others' classes with the Marriage Seal, etc.

But then you realize that marrying Zero screws you out of two child characters, because I guess putting babies in the Starrealms where kids grow up in the blink of an eye makes a lot more sense than adoption. So it's not exactly egalitarian.

So, well, thanks for the S support, Nintendo. But this feels like quite a half-hearted gesture, giving us exactly one same-sex option in either game, specific to one gender, which is a bad mechanical decision and must necessarily involve a character with questionable morals. Why can't I gay marry Silas? His love is so true.

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I'm presently on Chapter 19 of Hoshido route. So far the storytelling has been significantly better, though Sukesou says it has some of FE13's failings, so I'm trying not to be too optimistic.

Comments

[amielleon]

Well, one could potentially plead mechanics on that one. You can S support one character and A+ support one character, and change into either of their main classes with a marriage or buddy seal respectively. A+ gets no conversations, and in the Avatar's case, there is no A+ because they can buddy seal anyone they A support.

But yes, the S vs A+ thing is distributed across gender lines.