#comparing her to a character who was intended from initial design onwards to be a main character is fundamentally unfair to Steph

[gascon-en-exil]

I Liked Fates Before It Was Cool!: Revelation Part 2

Prologue

Opening Chapters

Revelation Part 1

Chapters 13-19, in which everyone’s going to Valla even though half of them suck.

Chapter 13

Hey look, Hoshidan scum!

Ok, meme comedy done. This is in my opinion the first really strong chapter of Revelation, with satisfying gameplay, escalation of the threat posed by Valla, and some good character development. It’s an utter tragedy that it takes place against the literal backdrop of Cyrkensia’s ruined opera house, but I can (mostly) live with the destruction of my favorite setting in Fates when it’s so effective at getting results. Azura still gets to sing here after a fashion, and although there’s no cutscene to go with it the results of this particular show do a good job of subtly foreshadowing that Azura and Mikoto use similar pacifying magic from the same source.

After Kaden and Keaton are done lampshading why the party always runs into shapeshifters in Cyrkensia, it’s time for Corrin to step between Xander and Ryoma as they left them back in Chapter 6 - at each other’s throats in a conflict ultimately engineered by Anankos. It’s a good demonstration of what the war between the two nations would look like without Corrin’s intervention, and the crown princes’ characters logically follow from their behavior as antagonists in the other routes. Xander is resolved that Corrin is a traitor and merits only death, whereas Ryoma is more hesitant to accept Corrin’s choice and, unlike in Conquest, willing to listen to their stated motivations when he’s not on the verge of death. Ryoma’s mellower outlook may be attributed, oddly enough, to the strong intimation that he’s got something going on with Scarlet, something I completely forgot about until I replayed this chapter. I don’t blame myself for doing so; in an Avatar free-for-all dating game romances between the other playable characters are naturally going to get short shrift in the story, and it doesn’t help that Birthright doesn’t suggest this relationship at all even though it’s the one route where both characters to survive to the end. And...yeah, there’s that part, but that’s for a bit later. It’s interesting to imagine how the different circumstances of Revelation could have encouraged Ryoma and Scarlet to grow closer in Revelation than they do in Birthright, though realistically it probably just boils down to Corrin not being there for most of their time together.

In any case, Ryoma shares what he knows about the Rainbow Sage - odd how the fourth person to visit the Sage is still Xander on this route when in the others it’s unsurprisingly the opposing older brother - and Corrin and co. are off to follow the path of Conquest 10 and 11. At least there’s no sequence-breaking teleport books this time.

Chapter 14

This time I’m not focusing on the cutaway to Garon and co., because his obvious gloating has reached such alarmingly stupid levels that I have nothing more to say about it. The payoff, such as it is, to that plot thread is still a few chapters away anyway...as is the appearance of Iago and Hans, who have yet to do much of anything on this route and yet get to appear as bosses at a plot-critical moment. Boo.

Let’s talk about unit balancing instead. Elise shows up with her she’s-legal-we-swear panty shot, and one look at the stats of her and her retainers showcases another glaring problem with the gameplay of Revelation. From this point onward, there’s really no point in training any of the numerous unpromoted units the game throws at you, because there’s no time to raise them up to par unless you do a lot of grinding. This is one instance where Revelation’s similarities to FE10 are more superficial than they first appear, because 

1) when compared to just one route of Fates Radiant Dawn is a much longer game, and in fact at 43 chapters still holds the record for the longest individual story campaign in the series. Revelation’s pacing and design suffers terribly from the requirement that it cover the same number of chapters as the other routes.

2) Radiant Dawn also has a massive roster (second largest in the series behind New Mystery) with several units who come behind the level curve, but they’re spread across the course of the game rather than lumped into a span of a few chapters. Examples vary from earlygame recruits just a bit behind (Meg) to underwhelming midgame units (Kyza and Lyre) to a bonus run Est type in lategame (Pelleas). 

3) and most notably, units in FE10 are divided into separate armies with different resource pools until lategame. While the balancing between those is infamously unequal, this setup almost requires that you train more units than you’ll ultimately be sending into endgame, giving even the lesser ones a small chance to shine.

I imagine that the design philosophy behind Revelation is that the player would be expected to spend a lot of time grinding on this route to get its numerous unique supports and raise a much larger army. It seems intended for a slower pace, particularly as this also helps with building up the castle base when you’ve got duplicates of most buildings to upgrade. I still don’t care for it though, because I don’t feel like taking that extra time to raise an oversized army and because some of the recruitments continue to be unexplained in story. Why would two border guards join in the invasion of a foreign port? Revelation doesn’t know or care, but it’ll make you run your new underleveled healer to both sides of this large map to recruit them regardless. At least Elise is mounted....

Chapter 15

Seriously, look at this. These two join in the same chapter, what the hell. This isn’t even mentioning that these are also some pretty random recruitments. Shura is awfully nonchalant on hearing that Corrin got his revenge for him, and Nyx has no more reason to be here than she did in Conquest 9. With her it really feels like the writers had a great (if highly fetishistic) concept for a character and came up with a plausible backstory only to find that there was no way to fit her into the plot, so...here she is. On a related note, Nyx is the only first generation character other than Gunter to outright not appear in one route, and at least there’s an explanation for Gunter’s absence in Birthright. Her presence really is just that random.

Before doing the write-up for this chapter I read back over what I’d written for the Sevenfold Sanctuary in the other routes. The gameplay of the Revelation iteration offers nothing really to speak of, lacking either Conquest’s class and skill-themed rooms or Birthright’s power jump. The Rainbow Sage uses an alternate old man sprite initially to make it less obvious that he’s repeating the same trick he pulled in Birthright, but his exposition at the end is worth the trolling for finally confirming that he is indeed a dragon and giving us the obligatory Fire Emblem name drop. Fates’s cosmology reveals itself to borrow mostly from Jugdral of all places, though I’ve never yet seen anyone try to piece together the scattered hints of worldbuilding to link the twelve dragons of the two settings. I’m certainly not going to attempt it, because even with divine weapons and draconic-blooded families in the mix there’s remarkably little to conclude definitively that the First Dragons of Fates are/were the dragons that appeared to Jugdral’s Crusaders. My pet theory aligns it a bit more with Tellius because of certain other observations about Fates’s setting and because something is going to have to connect the dragon laguz to the rest of the series’s lore eventually.

Chapter 16 + 17

I’ve been pretty down on Revelation thus far, and at first I was fully prepared to rip into these two chapters in similar fashion...and then I finished playing through them and changed my mind. If I had to pick one moment from FE14 to represent in miniature the beautiful mess that is this game, with all its inventive concepts and missed potential, its stirring emotional moments and lazy copouts, I would choose these chapters. In spite of everything they nail the very best of what Fates offers on an emotional level, and as a midgame climax they land almost as well as the Branch of Fate lands as an establishing moment.

And yet there’s so much wrong with them! Hans and Iago have never been flatter or more inconsequential antagonists; note that before this point in Revelation they’ve done nothing aside from knock Gunter off a bridge and use an illusion to piss off the Wind Tribe. The Ryoma/Scarlet angle is abruptly dialed back to the friend zone, presumably to make it okay for the Avatar to bone them, while Hinoka abruptly joins in the action after having been forgotten about for eleven(!) chapters bar one throwaway mention in Chapter 13. Xander and Leo’s apparent betrayal of Nohr has little bite to it even from Iago as Garon might as well not exist by this point, and their retainers fail so hard as backup I almost always just send them to a corner to wait out the battle. Speaking of which, the trend of underleveled units reaches its zenith, here where maybe four of the eleven units obtained in these chapters can reasonably be used without grinding after this point. It’s even worse than the torrent of garbage units the Archanea games throw at you, because at least those sometimes come with nice stuff in their inventories (hence the “Free Silvers” tier jokingly used on some of the DS tier lists back when those were popular). And to cap it all off the ticking timer that’s been running from Chapter 7 up until this moment, of the skies over Hoshido and Nohr switching as the moment that the portal to Valla will close, makes no sense either (meteoro)logically or narratively except to add unneeded urgency and entice a few of the characters to the Canyon. For that matter, since Revelation appears to take place in the same time frame as the other two routes it’s baffling that this bizarre bit of worldbuilding goes unmentioned in them. Wouldn’t it be kind of a big deal for Nohr to get a normal sky every few decades, and for Hoshido to get a bad one?

But somehow despite all that when the Nohrian brothers show up in Chapter 17 and the music switches to “A Dark Fall” (quick aside, but one thing I love about Fates as a whole is its soundtrack) I fully got what the developers were going for, and to see all the royals finally interacting with each other - something sorely missing from Chapter 6, if you recall - and calling a truce to face whatever awaits them in Valla together just sealed that feeling. The Hoshidan and Nohrian contrast to these two chapters followed by a scene of Corrin’s families united for the first time really sells the main draw of Revelation, even if for some of them the buildup to that moment was rushed (Takumi, Camilla) or just not there at all (Hinoka). Yeah, it comes with the distinct aroma of Avatar-centered plotting like everything else on this route - as Ryoma actually points out in Chapter 16, funnily enough - but even though some of the particulars are undercooked and most of the circumstances are downright silly I can completely get on board with this group of people in this moment banding together to, uh, jump off a bridge before an interdimensional portal closes because the sky is changing color and...ugh, never mind.

Chapter 18

I will say this for Valla: I really enjoy its visual style, a sort of supernaturally-ruined pastoral idyll that resembles nothing like the world above. It also helps that it’s not tied directly to any real-world cultures like Hoshido and Nohr are, and its nods to Middle Eastern, Indian, and exclusively in localization (I think?) Greek cultures come across in the series’s more typically understated fashion. Of course that otherworldly quality lends itself to more frustrating map mechanics, so it’s not entirely a positive. This one isn’t so bad provided you’re fielding a bunch of royals to activate all the Dragon Veins - and really, it’s not as though the player needs another excuse to use them to the exclusion of almost everyone else.

But of course the big moment of this chapter is Scarlet’s death. The bit with the flower is a painfully obvious hint to recall when it comes time for the reveal of her killer, but nevertheless the sequence does well despite that and some awkward staging with battle models. What doesn’t work quite as well is the reintroduction of the Ryoma/Scarlet angle just to add more punch to her death...completely ignoring the possibility that Corrin might be married to either of them (and Scarlet just undergone what had to have been one of the most hyper-accelerated pregnancies in all of fiction, if you want to be really sadistic). Because of their earlier buildup this may be the most egregious example of Fates needing to ignore its own support mechanics for the sake of the main plot. In any case, if Corrin didn’t shack up with one of them the scene after the chapter is pretty solid. I consider it comparable to Lilith’s death scenes on the other routes, since she also dies taking a hit for Corrin, but as the circumstances are less random and Scarlet actually gets most of her characterization outside DLC it’s much more effective overall.

Chapter 19

Enter the strange child with the oversized forehead. At least it’s not immediately obvious that’s he’s evil, I guess?

It’s interesting to note that the Valla chapters are structured almost as a route unto themselves, having to establish a new set of characters previously unseen in Revelation and not seen at all in the other routes. Although in terms of gameplay they function more like an extended endgame in the vein of Radiant Dawn’s Tower of Guidance, bizarre architecture and all. I’ll be talking more about Anthony and Arete and the others later on, but I wanted to note the setup for when I talk about it in the next post. 

The intro to this chapter also delves into a bit more of Fates’s cosmology, specifically its deified dragons. Xander asks what only Iago thought to question in Conquest, namely why Garon would worship Anankos and not the Dusk Dragon, only to get the obvious but still technically necessary reveal of Garon’s true nature. I do like that the First Dragons are vague enough in their presentation that I could believe either that the Dawn and Dusk Dragons are just different interpretations of Anankos or that they’re all separate entities. As I recall however this is somewhat muted by the knowledge that the emotional payoff re: Garon is going to be rather muted when it finally happens, so this really is just more vague worldbuilding. 

Oh, right, the chapter. It’s Conquest 15 with a bigger party and entirely too many items drops on the optional path. Why the developers think the player needed so many items thrown at them in a game with no durability and a route with no shortage of funds I’ll never know.

Next time: Revelation Chapter 20 - Endgame

#Fire Emblem #Fire Emblem Fates #Fire Emblem Revelation #FE14

[talktowendysblog-blog]

Things You Didn’t Know About Wendy’s

1. The originator of Wendy's was companions with Colonel Harlon Sanders

Dave Thomas was working in the inexpensive food industry at the time of only 12 years. He worked at an eatery in Fort Wayne, Indiana as the head culinary specialist of the foundation that was called Hobby House. The café was before long bought by KFC and changed over into a Kentucky Fried Chicken establishment by Colonel Harlan Sanders actually. It was as of now that Dave Thomas and Sanders met and they moved toward becoming companions in the mid-1960s.

2. The KFC proprietor confided in Thomas to turn his business around

Here's another fun truth that we wager the greater part of you didn't know about. Harlan Sanders had such a great amount of confidence in Dave Thomas that he requested that he help him in pivoting four of the chicken establishments in Columbus, Ohio which were on the very edge of disappointment. The organizations were neglecting to flourish and in the wake of getting to be familiar with Thomas and his capacity to run an eatery, Sanders accepted that on the off chance that anybody could spare the four coming up short KFC areas, it would be him. His impulses demonstrated to be right in light of the fact that, inside only a couple of years, Thomas who was conceded establishment rights and offers in the four bombing eateries had the option to sell them all back to Sanders at an astounding cost of over $1.5 million.

3. Thomas opened Wendy's with cash produced using KFC

When you think about the conditions, it was extremely Thomas' association with KFC that gave him the assets that he expected to open up the new eatery that he named Wendy's. He named the new foundation after his little girl, Melinda Lou. Her moniker was Wenda and this is the place he inferred the name that is comparatively known as Wendy's. He established the main Wendy's eatery in 1969.

4. Wendy's is the third biggest burger chain in the country

Wendy's has turned out to be one of the best inexpensive food chains in the whole United States. It comes in third just behind it's two biggest rivals. McDonald's holds the position of number one and Burger King comes in runner up. It would be intense for Wendy's to make up for lost time with these two or even to outperform them since it involves a far off third spot, yet the chain is doing fine and dandy.

5. Wendy's is universal in its extension

What number of you realized that Wendy's isn't only an American cheap food chain? This is one more truth about Wendys that a ton of its dedicated clients don't know about, except for the individuals who make regular visits to Canada, that is. Wendy's had 500 areas all through the United States and Canada by 1976. They've kept on developing and venture into Canada just as all through numerous different nations all through the world. They currently claim and work in excess of 6,650 cafés all through different pieces of the world.

6. The Wendy's originator designed KFC's mark basin of chicken

Here's another fun certainty that a great many people don't think about. It was Dave Thomas that created the Kentucky Fried Chicken establishment's acclaimed Bucket of Chicken. He concocted the thought when he was working intimately with Colonel Harlan Sanders to help in making the KFC chain increasingly productive. This is a menu thing that has turned into a mark of the cheap food chicken brand and we've even been favored to see ads with the Colonel himself advancing the chicken pail alongside a snappy signature melody with verses that stated, "get a container of chicken, finger-lickin' great, have a barrel of fun." They owe this ground-breaking deals trick all to Dave Thomas.

7. Wendy's was propelled by a Michigan burger joint

Dave Thomas got the thought for Wendy's from a set up burger joint in Kalamazoo, Michigan where he had spent his initial adolescence. It was known as Kewpee Burger. Kewpee Burger initially opened its entryways in 1923 and had an exceptionally interesting style of cheeseburgers. They were antiquated however as opposed to serving them in the customary round configuration, the burgers were square molded. We see that Thomas conveyed forward this custom with Wendy's burgers.

8. Wendy's doesn't have a mark burger

This is one refinement about Wendy's that separates them from Burger King and McDonald's. They don't have a mark burger fundamentally. McD's has the Big Mac and Burger King ha the Whopper however there isn't one demonstrated from Wendy's. They keep it basic and offer burgers in a decision of two patty estimates that incorporates the single and the lesser size.

9. Wendy's terminated their 84-year old on-screen character

What number of you recall the well known TV ads from the 1980s? They're the ones that contained the unbelievable expression, "Where's the meat." The business was a striking move that separate them with an expression that would stick in the psyches of everybody that heard it and it was exceptionally successful in picking up consideration and winding up very outstanding in pop culture. Wendy's really terminated the 84-year old Clara Peller who was the entertainer with the renowned blunt voice that requested to know where the hamburger was. They did as such after she featured in a Prego spaghetti sauce business in which she announced that she had "at last found the hamburger." We can't generally censure them for it on the grounds that the new plug genuinely undermined their popular promoting effort by hinting that the meat wasn't generally found at Wendy's yet rather in the Prego sauce.

10. Dave Thomas showed up in more than 800 Wendy's ads

Presently, this is a touch of random data that we're sure that not very numerous Wendys fans know about. Dave Thomas made his acquiescence and retirement from Wendy's legitimate in 1982. It wasn't even an entire three years after the fact than the executives accountable for Wendy's figured out how to persuade him out of retirement after the Where's the Beef" crusade was finished. They convinced him to return in 1985 and Dave started making visits to a few of the establishments as the official essence of the organization and their official representative in 1989. He made a high number of TV advertisements and all through his vocation at Wendy's and even past, Dave Thomas has showed up in more than 800 ads for the establishment.

11. Wendy's utilized to publicize on the Ellen Show however halted

Something intriguing and sudden occurred with Wendy's enterprise in 1997. They had recently publicized Wendy's on the Ellen Show, however they pulled the majority of their promoting with her when she exposed the unadulterated truth broadcasting live. This was a move that wasn't normal, and it brought about some negative ramifications for the inexpensive food chain. Due to their activities, the gay and lesbian network required a blacklist of their eateries.

12. Wendy's is the pioneer of the Dollar Menu

Presently here is a reality we found that was a surprising bit of information to us all. This time we just assumed that it was McDonald's who spearheaded the Dollar Menu that offered incredible deals on mainstream inexpensive food things. We couldn't have been progressively mixed up. It was really Wendy's who advanced the principal Dollar Menu of arrangements. They considered it their worth menu and it propelled in October of 1989. Wendy's offered a set cost of 99 pennies for chose things while Burger King offered their 99 penny menu in 1998 and McDonald's didn't participate in the worth menu technique until some other time in 2002. They were trailed by Taco Bell's worth menu in 2014.

13. They cut back the parts in 2007

Here is a little-well established certainty about Wendy's that most fans really won't appreciate. Preceding 2007, the Junior Patties gauged a strong two ounces. In 2007, Wendy's settled on the choice to curtail the weight to 1.78 ounces. They didn't do anything to the Single patties which have constantly kept up a weight of four ounces. They cut back on the Junior patties trying to set aside cash when the expenses of sustenance went up, however this was certifiably not a splendid proceed onward their part.

14. Wendy's closed down its unique area

It's difficult to accept, however the first Wendy's and the principal café that was opened was shut down in 2007. The area of the eatery was in Columbus, Ohio. After it had been doing business for a long time, it shut down. The structure was changed over into a Catholic Foundation for the city subsequent to experiencing a $1.7 million redesign.

15. Wendy's has opened labs in Dublin, Ohio

The "Labs to Fuel Future Technology Innovation" is one of Wendy's later endeavors. The 90-degree labs are intended to help make a communitarian situation for the workers of the organization to get together and investigate better approaches to utilize innovation to accomplishes Wendy's key business activities. It's only one of the manners in which that the organization is attempting to incorporate computerized innovation into the client involvement with Wendy's.

16. Wendy's is taking part in a brand change

You are probably going to see a ton of changes in your nearby Wendy's areas soon. They are changing their image and his methods refreshing their nearby eateries by fusing a structure that is totally new highlighting differed seating choices a chimney, relax seats, corners, advanced menu sheets, a self-administration booth, WiFi, level screen TVs and the sky is the limit from there. It's an energizing recommendation for Wendy's devotees.

17. Moving Hamburgers were highlighted on the main Wendy's ads

What number of you recollect the absolute first Wendy's TV ads that broadcast? The greater part of us don't, yet once upon a time, Wendy's paid for a 30-second spot reporting in real time that highlighted an accumulation of three of Wendy's popular burgers, including the triple, the twofold and the single in liveliness, hitting the dance floor with Wendy while singing one of their own wildernesses. The advertisements were communicated in Ohio locally just, so on the off chance that you didn't live there, you have a decent reason for not recalling the business.

18. Wendy's still uses its unique trademark

Do you recall the absolute first motto that Wendy's utilized when it begun promoting? To revive your memory, it was "Quality is our formula." They've kept the renowned saying on their logo this time. T