Fire Emblem Echoes and the Myth of Thematic Inconsistency

Here's a mini-breakdown of the Alm half of Echoes along with a theory discussion about theme and thematic analysis.
Edited by ‪@easy_nin‬
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[@DaniDoyle]

8:57 you said the funny word!

[@noishfanboy1141]

The bonds are in fact fire 🔥🔥

[@blindcocostudios]

This really Fired my Emblem

[@Drayze1]

Your videos have made me realize just how much time other video essayists spend on pointless setup to stretch out the video length. You say what you need to say, and then you're done, and I think that deserves to be pointed out and respected. Smart fast and all that.

[@cringekid3993]

Thought everyone knew this

[@Drayze1]

@@cringekid3993 I knew they wasted time, I just didn't realize HOW much time they wasted. Bopsman can make a whole-ass point in the time it takes some people to get through bullet point 1 in their introduction.

[@emmettracine8310]

When your teachers in school are trying to set you up for failure by insisting all essays need a length requirement

[@sohn7767]

@@Drayze1I mean half the time they want to sound smarter than they are

[@ProfessorBopper]

At 1,500 words, this video is longer than most essays students are asked to write even into lower level undergrad classes. It’s wild just how long some setup is in some video essays

[@majikalmcmuffin6258]

its the final evolution of the themes of echoes, by rejecting the construction of aristocracy as a commoner, it only makes sense, no commoner should be able to rise to the level of aristocrat within the system, of course they would want to tear down the institutions that dont benefit them. revealing after the fact that Alm is royalty gives him the ultimate test of character, by casting off the institutions which give the governments power (the divine dragons) and vowing to 'work the fields himself' he proves the strength and consistency of his character and virtues.

[@theargawalathing]

And that's basically why Alm is my favorite lord of the series.

[@trekledownborgonomics4638]

You know Bopper is about to cook a three Michelin star essay when he says "at least it seems to" to a counterpoint

[@ProfessorBopper]

Chowing down

[@squatch1565]

As said in the Star Wars prequels, "good is a point of view." Though maybe I shouldn't be quoting a fictional dictator who ruled a galaxy for about twenty years in this instance.

[@TommySkywalker11]

Something else to point out is that it's established right from the start that Alm is (supposedly) the grandson of former nobility, he's given his leadership position because of that lineage Right from the beginning his status as a commoner was always about how he's lived not how he was born, so finding out he's exiled royalty instead of nobility changes nothing about his life as a commoner

[@coldeed]

Big fe 2 fan. The remake sucks and ruins every theme it touches. Alm wasn't someone that despised class and this moronic remake focuses on that. Alm is pretty much a militant darwinistic pragmatist. The theme is intent to have him be a self made man. The remake doesn't understand that. Alm and Celica are intended to represent a duality that is also present in the gods Doga and Mila. An active and aggressive approach and a passive and benevolent one. Both exist to be flawed and criticize both angles of extremes of such behaviors. Echoes fucking blows at at all understanding, establishing and building off of any of that. Instead we get plotlines of Alm being "forced" into the violence instead of zealotous and self righteous. He literally doesn't not represent any type of flaw he should. Celica is also characterized strangely, from her pretty much throwing fits at plenty of times when she sees things she doesn't like despite her "plan" asking her God to fix it all. The conflict between the two feels moronic and plenty of other additions simply fill up time with moronic and pointless drama that isn't engaging or impactful. To put it bluntly, Alm is pretty hard into a power fantasy character originally. His intention is to carve his way to the capital of the people he blames for what he doesn't like. Celica embodies an opposing philosophy that there is always some alternative or compromise. Mix them in appropriate measures and you get a powerful and gentle leader. Discard either and you get impotence or cruelty. The remake writers added so much lame drama involving noble nonsense and pathetically backwards characterization. They start talking about really stupid stuff like class that doesn't apply or hold weight at all with 2 royals actually restoring and improving their homeland. It's nothing but squandered potential. The story required a level of maturity and honestly darkness that just isn't present for it's story to actually flow in a meaningful way. It's setting and world feel so out of place with its characters and the mellow dramatic writing. Neither of its protagonists are flawed in an appropriate manner and everything injected into it is so sub par it's depressing.

[@Luna-pk7gz]

Someone needs to calm down jesus christ. Mf writing english essays and whining. Sorry, people just like the story.

[@coldeed]

@@Steflora it clashes because it lacks any depth to give him such a middle of the road reasonable take when realistically he should have some extent of flaws in his motives and thinking, while they would be contextually sympathetic. Nothing is deep about injecting classism talk and making him an ideal middle ground guy, it's just shallow politics talk

[@coldeed]

@@Steflora Literal plot points of the story are Alm is somewhat fanatic in pursing this war. It doesn't make sense he's being middle of the road guy. That was more what caused Celica to be dumb enough to accidently make things worse on her end. They characterized things strange in a backwards way, with her aggressively seeking "peace" and him passively and reluctantly pursuing war. It's really bad, and ironically stupid. That's why we got dumb vision shit to stitch it back to making sense, like a clumsy amateur writer wanted to ham fist a "deeper" plot, when they just wrote the most shallow shit they could.

[@coldeed]

@@Steflora It is stupid because Alm is a farm boy. For the most part he should be largely ignorant to why and how everything is going on. It's not like he has full insight on the events leading up to all of this, and frankly it's nothing is reasonable about him having such a long measured approach like he's been studying some kind of politics. He should in turn be just more vengeful and upset with the current state of things. That's the aspect of it that's not reasonable. He's a young man that is you know pretty heavily affected and tired of the current status quo. It literally doesn't make any sense for him to be like "I know that there's more to it than that", into not react off of the part that would more personally affect him. It's also stupid how you paint it as reasonable as if him being a disgruntled native of the land isn't a reasonable thing in the first place. He's one of the people that signed up to be a soldier to fight in the war. He literally goes to his actual real-life friends and gets them involved in it. He's annoyed that his grandfather doesn't want any part of it. It legitimately just makes more sense for him to be pretty pro-war in that regard. Doesn't have to do with him agreeing with any of the Duma shit just him being tired of things and thinking enough is enough now is the time for action, and not really caring about all of the greater reasons and believing that this simply needs to be resolved in some time immediately. You understand the idea that a character's actions don't reflect the type of things that they're speaking on and what they're supposed to personality is right? To some extent is being kind of unreasonable with Celica. Celica idea the simply enlist the aid of a Divine goddess that is literally real isn't a bad idea. The entire concept that disagrees with that kind of notion and is literally committed to going into war should reflect in some degree in character flaws not character strengths. You know he's kind of complaining as if there's no out to do something else that could be considered productive towards improving things, and Celica legitimately knows of something that potentially could be exactly that. Even in the games own confused writing it's way too flippy floppy. Alm is basically complaining about how he can't avoid conflict, but he legitimately makes no efforts to do so and specifically does things that lead him deeper and deeper into conflict intentionally. Meanwhile Celica acts like she tries to avoid conflict but gets involved in literally anything with a large degree of violence which frankly I don't think is all that bad, but considering the way that the characters talk especially between each other, it's just ridiculously stupid. Alm saying dumb things like he thinks Celica is better at settling things non-violently when a large majority of him talking in the script is about how he doesn't want more conflict but literally makes such weak attempts to attempt to resolve things peacefully, basilica proceeds to start another conflict because someone did the wrong and she can't let it slide is dumb.

[@TIDbitRETRO]

I still maintain that SoV has by far the best written dialogue in the series. The characters talk more like characters from a fantasy novel whereas in other entries they talk like a Saturday morning anime.

[@VJ-Vice]

Yeah Echoes and Path of Radiance have my favorite dialogue in the series. It’s so nice to have characters with strong personalities actually talk naturally and eloquently instead of spouting their gimmick. I can die happy if an FE4 remake has the same dialogue quality as echoes

[@captaincringe9312]

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. Echoes has always been one of my favorites in the FE series ever since I first played it and coming off of fates and awakening to an extent probably helped with that. A lot of the characters in those games felt very one dimensional and moving to echoes from those titles felt like a huge upgrade in the character department as I felt a lot more attached to echoes' units as characters than I did with the previous entries. Though that probably also has something to do with the Amazing presentation of echoes as well.

[@Arkholt2]

The story of Echoes and by extension Gaiden certainly has issues, but I agree that theme isn't really one of them. In fact, I think the theme of common birth vs. royal birth is quite consistent on both routes. Alm doesn't know he's secret royalty until later in the game, at which point he has to grapple with what to do about that (and his answer is that it doesn't really matter and his original goal remains the same because he cares about people), but Celica knows she's secret royalty from when she's a child, and has to grapple with what to do with that over the entire game. She's on the run from those hungry for power from an early age due to her status, she doesn't tell any of her friends about it out of fear, and even after it's revealed, she still identifies more as a priestess and servant of Mila than a princess. However, this causes problems, because she has learned to not be open with people which leads to her fighting with Alm, as well as trying to deal with the whole Jedah situation on her own, which causes her to make poor decisions. Anyway, this is all to say that I agree wholeheartedly, and also that the story in Celica route is a lot better than people think and Celica is a better written character than people give her credit for.

[@nuibaba280]

Celica is a great character, FE fans just don't know religion works

[@squatch1565]

0:58 Okay, that transition from NES to 3DS music was epic I heavily agree that the reveal doesn't compromise the apparent themes of the story. I see it in fact as a "nurture triumphs nature" message, as you have the child of royalty coming from a rustic village that is barely a spot on the map, as I'm pretty someone says in the game. It also parallels Celica's journey where, despite knowing she comes from royalty, is raised in a humble convent for her formative years. Their roles as the chosen heroes on a predestined path also plays into that, as they have the "natural power" of the highest classes yet the experience and wisdom of the lowest. Assuming that this was all a master plan individually constructed by Mila, Rudolf, and maybe Duma, it could be seen as all of them realizing that there cannot be one single perspective with all the control.

[@MetalAetus]

Being reintroduced to a subject like English and finally grasping at an understanding of it that I struggled with so very much in middle school and high school has been fantastic! This and the curtains aren't blue have been great watches and I'm looking forward to more!!! Keep it up Bopper!!!

[@ianleather5699]

We know Rudolf sent Alm to live with Mycen to keep him safe, but having Alm grow up as a commoner was also likely a way for Alm to understand and relate to the struggles of a commoner, while still having the royal blood that gives him the strength to fell Duma

[@Diamond_Aura]

Found this video after finishing a 2nd playthrough; and yeah it’s pretty funny how much they hint at Alm’s real heritage even in Act 1. Like things Fernand or Lukas or Clive say is helping the player understand why royals are treated why they are, and Fernand would almost go as far as saying that “being Royal matters more than being capable”; yet, of course, I’d argue the *true* theme of Alm’s whole story is that the nature of your character is most important; and whether you are of Royal “chosen” blood, or one of the many “commoners” who help in that same cause, all will stand as equals at the end of the day. It’s why giving everyone quotes in the final battle really stands out: everyone, regardless of origin, has lines as to why they are willing to reject Duma and the imperfect, dying “gods” of their world. Yet, they are all united in their choice to do so, knowing it may become harder to live as a result, but knowing too that their freedom to choose and not be subject to the whims of a violent dark god is more important. So although Alm is a “Royal” by technicality, and must bear the brand and the Falchion to strike Duma down, his cause is ultimately the cause of everyone else who surrounds him. To protect friends, unite Valentia, and bring peace to the world.

[@bld9826]

I love your vids and understand the frustration of someone taking the wrong theme away from a story you enjoy and then blaming it for not reaching the expectations they made up for it. However, I can't agree that themes are as fluid as you describe them. Like, yeah to an extent the reader should update their assumptions about the themes... but I'd argue that not even Echoes does this. Because the theme of echoes extends beyond the relationship between Commoners and nobles, into the realm of man vs god. "Commoners vs Nobles" isn't THE theme of the game, even by the concept that the game fails that theme. The endgame of Vaentia, I'd say, is an echo of those same themes. It expands the theme into more of a general concept of uprising against a stronger, controlling force, not necessarily JUST nobles. It's about mankind growing past the need for gods, growing past the very definitions gods have tried to ascribe to them, evident in the stark differences between the people of Rigel and Zofia. Except... it also isn't really that either, is it? Because at the end of the day, Alm and Celica were still destined, by prophecy, to do what they did. If you can use the killer bow for ludonarrative, allow me to bring up Falchion - the only weapon which is supposed to be able to kill Duma - is literally just the fang of another god. And Nosferatu, the glitch/easter egg weapon, is, funny enough, still a weapon that relies on faith. So that's multiple different layers of narrative and ludonarrative (the story, the "intended" gameplay of the Falchion, and the "unintende" method of Nosferatu) all agreeing that you can't kill the gods, without the gods, on some level. And in extension back to the royal reveal - we couldn't, or at least, didn't, overthrow the royals, without a royal of our own. And while you can contrast Alm and Berkut and say that Echoes is a story not about uprising, but about how people use their power, or their station in life... you can't do the same with the prophecy. There is no moment in the game where the prophecy is subverted. Maybe if Berkut had been marked as a chosen one too, but gave in to Duma anyway, that might've said something more. If I'm not supposed to judge Echoes on any of the themes I'd argue it absolutely purports to be about throughout its runtime, what I'm left with is something even more boring, IMO. The only theme Echoes succeeds on unambiguously is that some people who were predestined to save the world, actually saved the world. Alm is good, some other guys are bad, and maybe that would've meant something if Alm wasn't literally predestined to save the world, and if we were ever given any reason to actually believe that failing, breaking a prophecy, was ever possible. The only other possible reading I can imagine is if you want to subvert the game entirely, to claim that it's actually about how people suck, and actually did need gods - and moreover, that we need royals and nobles to oversee us. Alm needed to be royal to beat the royals (and beat the gods, with the literal magic barrier of Rigelian royalty). He needed the help of a god to revive Celica, and to beat Duma, and presumably to write or manifest the prophecy in some way to begin with. Sure, the fact that humanity "wins" in the end seems to subvert that, but the ominous narration at the end suggests that violence will just continue. Heck, the ending literally says "For whatever madness lay in the hearts of gods… a darkness deeper still beats wild in the hearts of man…". The game literally end saying humanity sucks worse than gods. I don't really think the game MEANT for that to be the message, but if themes are fluid things then this, I'd argue, is an interpretation more directly validated by the text, by the events of the game, than anything else. But I dunno, that kinda sucks.

[@ProfessorBopper]

The irony of your comment is that I think you did a better job selling Echoes strengths than it’s weaknesses. This comes down to personal taste, but I think what makes a story really interesting is when all of these questions you’re posing don’t have neat answers. Class, heritage, humanity’s relationship with god(s) and religion, fate and free will, there’s no answer for any of this in our world and the lack of a clear answer to these questions in Echoes (questions that, as you illustrate, it very much poses) makes it, for me, much more thought provoking. I guess where I disagree, and it’s a small point, is the use of the word “judge,” since the approach I try to take most of the time (not all of the time, not very much of this can truly be universal) is to take from art rather than attempt to quantify its quality. Why I love Echoes is that I get out so much from it from the aesthetic pleasure of playing and listening to it all the way to the intellectual challenge of thinking about everything you outlined here. It might not have been what you meant to do, but you sold the game better than anyone else I’ve seen (and to illustrate this perspective better, if I wrote your comment, I would swap the word “succeeds” with “depicts” when you’re taking about Echoes only unambiguous theming)

[@theargawalathing]

One thing that I'll throw in, is that the whole premise of the prophecy is something that both countries of Zofia and Rigel are seeking to avoid. For the age of gods to be over and those with the brand seize their destinies, Zofians will have to tend their own soils, and Rigel will not reign supreme with their strength hierarchy. Both Alm and Celica not only come to terms with their role in the prophecy independently, but ultimately leads to the best outcome for all people in the continent, including the gods themselves.

[@theargawalathing]

Inb4 "the gods are dead" yeah but their legacy and grace in death is better than prolonging the madness Jedah and King Lima's eign would have brought to each respective country.

[@VagueKatti]

Another Bopper banger! While I do disagree with/would love to discuss some stuff you say in the video, I think Echoes is often dismissed in its entirety solely for the Alm twist, when I think there's still plenty of things in its narratives worth engaging with. * When you say at the 2-minute mark that a story *cannot* be thematically consistent, I'm not sure I can really agree with that part. I lack the background in literature that you have, so I don't know if I have a leg to stand on or the words to articulate how I feel on it, but I feel as if you can absolutely come out of a piece of art feeling that, on some level, that it is self-contradictory to its detriment. To use a more drastic, but still FE example, I'd say that the information that the Hoshidan siblings are, in fact, not Corrin's sibling really undercuts anything that Fates really wants to say - the question of what family is and what it means to you is rendered irrelevant in service of wish fulfillment. * I agree with Alm functionally not acting in accordance with being royal insofar as how he was raised and how he acts as leader of the Deliverance, but I think it's pretty undeniable that his royal status grants him material benefit. This isn't just referring to the Royal Sword, which I think you make a compelling argument for - his connection to Mycen only exists as a product of his ties to Rudolf, and more importantly for the narrative, Alm can only wield the Falchion, and enter the royal vault to retrieve it to begin with, because he's of the Rigelian royal line. Echoes is a narrative of humanism, and like you mention in the video, Alm ultimately uses these advantages in service of all people, but Alm specifically has advantages - divine advantages, at that - because he is of a certain bloodline. * Your point on first impressions being strong is compelling, and I'd say there's something to be said for how the audience feels *betrayed* by this twist in the same way that Alm is. Alm's first reaction to this news is shock, of course, but then it's anger that he unleashes on Mycen - almost a mirror to how I've seen people react to the twist. One could argue it's undercut by how obvious the foreshadowing for Alm's royal status is - Desaix all-but-says it in his dying words - but I think that kind of betrayal - both to Alm, and to the audience - is pretty interesting to think about. * You discuss Fernand and Berkut in the video, which is understandable since they're antagonists and the most obvious opponents to Alm's journey, but I think it's also worth discussing how Clive fits into all this. Clive, for all his good intentions, is a byproduct of a feudal system, and his doubt of Alm throughout Part 3 solely based on his lineage fits in really well with the artificiality of nobility. Clive has seen Alm get results - reclaiming the capital, saving Mathilda, slaying Desaix - but his very first instinct is to doubt Alm, because his first instinct is to judge a person's worth in that hierarchy he's spent his whole life in. Coming to accept Alm as a leader and friend is meaningful not just for Clive's growth as a person, but for exposing how vapid and hollow the class system is.

[@ProfessorBopper]

Great comment, and I want to get more into the first bullet point. Theme is a very complicated component of writing and it’s hard to define exact rules, and this is honestly made much harder with examples like the one you give. Fates, I think, is poorly written. It has sophomoric symbolism, is overwrought, and, in general, extremely contrived to the point of being dramatically flaccid. In regards to theme, I think the point would be less that it fails to produce a consistent theme or message, and more so that it just has no interesting perspective or attitude and most audiences can’t be emotionally bothered to think about metaphorically.

[@ebongatseabong202]

Personally I don’t think Corrin not being blood related to the hoshidans is a problem at all, and if the game were called anything but birthright people probably wouldn’t ever bring it up. Corrin was kidnapped by Nohr and lied to about their lineage. Even if Corrin isn’t related to the hoshidan siblings, being misled and effectively a hostage (hence why Corrin was never allowed to leave their tower) gives good enough reason to side with hoshido instead, not to mention that Mikoto is still their biological mother.

[@VagueKatti]

@@ProfessorBopper Yeah, I don't think I elaborated on my Fates example well enough. I think the quality of the story is - well, it's bad, I agree with everything you said here on it - but the quality itself is less the point and more how this choice undercuts a core thematic element of the game. It could be argued, like you do in the case of Alm's heritage in this video, that this creative choice does not result in contradictory theming but in a shift in what our understanding of what the theme is. This is an argument I'd pretty vehemently disagree with, because it's a choice that, in my opinion, kinda obliterates any meaning the game is trying to aim for. I guess what I was trying to get across with that example is this: I feel like the thematic elements of a work of art can absolutely be undermined by throwing in something that shatters what the work has been building up to. Not to say that alienating an audience or 'subverting expectations' that way never has value, but I think themes aren't found strictly in the totality of a work of art, but in the experience and progression of it - and from that lens, themes can absolutely be contradictory. (I feel like I'm not explaining myself super clearly, so feel free to ask more if I'm being too vague)

[@jotarokujo4754]

It is true that Alm has material advantages due to divine inheritance, but it is also important to note that he uses those advantages to slay the very god that upholds the significance of them. Who cares about divine right when the "divine" is 6 feet under? He uses the advantages he has now to ensure that those advantages are forever irrelevant in the future.

[@ymcan6427]

Great video. I think there is something to be said about how the Royal Sword iirc is a blood pact weapon from Duma or at least tied to his bloodline. The whole schtick of Duma and Mila is also that they aren't really gods and arbitrarily maintain certain structures on Valentia, which Alm and Celica tear down. Divinity is a concept that is questioned as much as nobility/royalty is in SoV, and divinity is even often portrayed as the source of royalty/nobility in SoV and FE as a whole.

[@forgototherpassword]

I never got the logic behind claiming the story had any sort of inconsistency in theme. I mean they literally told us Alm had royal blood right after we beat Desaix, when Alm weilds the ROYAL sword, which can only be weilded by those with ROYAL blood. That combined with literally nobody in Zofia knowing who he is had me guessing he was of Rigelian royal blood from the end of the Zofia Castle map... which is the end of act one of six. I saw it less as a twist and more like a classic tragedy. The game makes it very clear by the time you beat Desaix that Alm is of Royal blood, but not Zofian, so for the rest of the game I was waiting for them not to reveal a twist, but instead, for them to twist the knife in showing how messy the situation truly is. Alm is a Rigelian prince, raised as a Zofian farmboy, who later went to conquer what turned out to be his home of birth, in the name of the home he was raised in, only to find out that he's been a cuckoo in the nest the whole time, and everything has been smoke and mirrors.

[@yakadefi9579]

Your analysis is very interesting, and I'd like to add that oftentimes people are obsessive in trying to find what it is the "theme" of a piece, and how well it explores such theme as if that should determine how good it is. So like you said, instead of the theme being brought up by the piece's elements a posteriori, it feels like people treat it as a prescriptive for a checklist of things an author most explore in order to talk about anything. However there are some other things I wanted to point out. While it's true that Alm's bloodline sheds light to some interesting narrative aspects that you mentioned, the first problem is that, nonetheless, the expectation of the viewer being shattered is still a valid concern for a storyteller. It seems like this revelation caused a bitter taste in a lot of people's mouth, and even if that's because they thought the story would be something that the writers never intended it to be, it could still be viewed as a flaw from a writing perspective, because that expectation was built by the material the writers themselves provided up to that point. I haven't played Echoes in a loooong time so I'll stop myself from talking about something I don't know haha. Nevertheless it's always a pleasure to watch your videos.

[@starryslight7095]

What you said about an audience's attachment to the first theme they latch onto !!! Yes!!!!! Noticing that for myself rip lmao I hated xenoblade 1 for a short time bc of some reveals that had blind sided me the first go around I do feel like on a reread/watch/play we get a better sense of the true craft of the story and its full scope ..... or at least simmering on it for awhile. Idk I get so mad at stories when it doesn't do the theme I wanted sometimes LOL clearly echoes is an example of that. Sometimes we really need to give ourselves time to take in a new turn... Anyways this was a great dive into the echoes zeitgeist, love your takes 💜

[@beauoddball1435]

8:23 This Statement is Awesome. There can be something called Emergent themes. Themes that the Author never stated but the readers pick up on over time.

[@ramenbomberdeluxe4958]

I do think that Alm being secret royalty is still a disappointing part of the story though. Worse still, when you realize when it originally came out on NES? There was almost no hope it would have bucked a then-still super common trend. So even if it doesn’t break whatever theme, I still personally find it a shame that it plays into that trope, removing that wish fulfillment and good message both, in favor of an epic twist. Maybe we “commoners” irl want to feel special and capable of doing stuff for once. Instead, it seems like yet again, Alm only had his opportunities and chance for glory due to lineage. It may not seem to matter, but him literally not being a commoner detached him from us just a bit more. It’s ultimately a small thing but, it still bugs us for good reason.

[@ProfessorBopper]

I addressed it a little bit, but this really is a separate topic so I let it go. What you’re saying is a great example of taste and that drives enjoyment. Taste is subjective, and I think sometimes people want to “prove” their taste, and that can lead to weird analysis like “inconsistent themes.” Personally, I would prefer the game you described, but being that that’s taste, I don’t feel any pressure to prove the game is bad because I’d prefer a different version of this story

[@ramenbomberdeluxe4958]

@@ProfessorBopperand that’s what I was going for. I hope I haven’t come off rude or anything, and I hope I was able to articulate my thoughts well :)

[@lazykatie42069]

tbf, while the original NES game did have the plot twist of Alm turning out to be Rudolf's son, it also lacked the classism subplot that echoes added, in the original NES game there was no Fernand contesting Alm becoming leader of the deliverance because he's a commoner or anything like that

[@ramenbomberdeluxe4958]

@@lazykatie42069 Right, thats a good point too tbh

[@queenofnowhere]

@@lazykatie42069 Yeah, it feels like yet another flaw of the game caused by it being too faithful to the original Gaiden. Definitely think it would have been a better game if the writers didn't feel forced to include this original plot twist, likely because it was one of the few story elements that Gaiden actually had.

[@tomatosauce5775]

The whole argument reminds me of how much Genealogy’s story changes based on if you use replacement units and how you play Gen 2. Replacements can fall to the side of the royal and holy blood kids as they themselves talk about, but you can also use them to destroy gods in human form and undermine the social system that had existed for over the century since the miracle of Dahna. My generics playthrough is ongoing, but I can only imagine my satisfaction if I kill Ishtar with the supposed “lowly commoners”

[@gmerc1333]

absolute banger. i think there definitely exists a trend for people to see 'themes' in media that they want to be there, in the way they want them to be there, whether that is actually part of the text or not.

[@Arcanist_The]

Doesnt Bopper try to argue the opposite: that themes don't inherently exist and people instead find themes based on how they digest the information the story gives to them rather than being "baked" into the narrative themes.

[@gmerc1333]

@@Arcanist_The sometimes people invent themes that are directly contradicted by the game clumsily blurting out the "intended" themes of the game to you verbatim

[@michael-oy7rt]

Really happy to see a video on this as I have always thought of this as a somewhat shallow knee-jerk criticism of a game that has, at least for a FE game imo, a story that is very much worth analysing and criticising. In general gamers appear to often take a very functionalist stance when criticising games' narratives -- looking at how things operate in the story and whether they make sense. Even the whole common "Celica made a dumb choice" thing people repeat over and over is usually only (and somewhat weakly) rebutted with the fact that it is consistent and makes sense for her character. But what does this scene actually *mean* in the text is the more interesting question which I think offers a greater rebuttal. I don't have the energy to further elaborate on it at the moment but I do think it has a lot to do with questions of faith and religion, & how those can manifest personally vs structurally/organisationally (also I think there should be more said about how just as Alm/Berkut mirror each other, Celica and Jedah do too). Anyway it is very nice to see someone who both cares about literary criticism, and takes games seriously as narrative works of art (something that most gamers don't do!). Edit: Watched your previous video after this and you put it into words much better than I do, I didn't realise you've already spoken on functionalist views of art haha Terry Eagleton mention awesome

[@troykv96]

Yeah, I can agree with this, Alm isn't a nobody, but until he was told about it by Rudolf himself, he didn't know that, and he acted like a man of the people, unintentionally (and latter intentionally) becoming essentially a class traitor in the pursue of ending this conflict and unite Valentia, in peace and crops. And because he didn't know he was the highest kind of noble in Valentia (the one chosen by Naga to wield Falchion), he acted like a regular guy, unintentionally making fun of the "apparently" "natural pose of the nobles" for completely lacking, showing the artificiality of it when is raised in completely unbiased enviroment; Alm in the other hand believing that the most remarkable thing about him is being the grandson of a knight; and a competent fighter.

[@The_Big_Jay]

The thing I see most people dislike about this twist is that Fire Emblem, and most fiction, take place in fantastical worlds, where your bloodline can quite literally give you a physical advantage. Most people read the reveal as, "Oh, Alm didn't work for his place because his magical bloodline gives him better stats than everyone else." And that's not as interesting of a story. And I'm not using the word 'magical' literally.

[@ilavain]

Good video, Professor. I think it is very important to look at a story as what it achieves and not what it fails to achieve, you can't account for what others want from you while in the middle of creating after all. The reveal serves as both a play on nurture vs nature, since Alm's upbringing is still what really defines him as a character, and as a final obstacle to Alm's conviction. It makes him understand that royalty, as you said, is a costume. It makes his killing Rudolf not just an easy decision, but a test of character. They couldn't make a story about a commoner and a royal, that would make their stories completely parallel. I really like that Celica knew and rejected her birthright, but it still affected her decisions. While because of Alm's upbringing he had no illusions of somehow being different from everyone else once he finds out. Both were brought up in the middle of nowhere and kept safe, but that was their main difference. SoV is my favorite game in the series so excuse my wordiness. Your video just inspired me to write this.

[@soc7967]

Brilliant, I like how despite knowing that you are of importance (royal blood in Alm’s case) it doesn’t change or put pressure on who you are and still keep doing the things you’ve always did

[@lagspike7763]

Does the Falchion fall in the same category as the Royal Sword? In the game, aside from the really weird Nosferatu interaction which I still don’t fully understand, Alm using the Falchion is clearly the intended way to defeat Duma and the canonical way it happens. Alm can use the Falchion ONLY because he’s royalty and the true-born heir of Rudolf. If the plot can’t be concluded without Alm using the sword that’s his divine birthright, gifted to the land of Rigel by a literal god, then how do we reconcile this with the idea that Alm being royalty exists to show the artificiality of the concept of royalty? If the plot CAN’T conclude without someone specifically of royalty doing it, then how is that happening not Alm exploiting his advantages as a prince of Rigel the way berkut exploits his connections to have a badass map theme?

[@TommySkywalker11]

Mila is the one who grants him Falchion so it wouldn't have mattered if he was royal blood or not, she could've made anyone able to wield it if she wanted

[@lagspike7763]

@@TommySkywalker11 duma originally gave it to a hero from Rigel who became royalty. Maybe you’re right I could be tripping

[@TommySkywalker11]

@@lagspike7763 it was originally duma that made it, but it's Mila that unseals it and gives it to Alm so she could've just done that for anyone since she's a dragon too, they made the bloodline rules so they could just apply it to any bloodline if they wanted

[@CorrellLeo]

“Only someone of the upper class has the power to end a system which favors the upper class” is not the argument you think it might be

[@lagspike7763]

Damn I really mentioned once on stream last week that I didn’t like how alm being rudolf’s kid is at odds with the rest of his route and got a whole 10 minute video essay call out post

[@longsocks7798]

Deserved bozo don’t ever disrespect peak again

[@amellyyyy]

​@@longsocks7798Holy based

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

No, please dont be afraid to do it again so that the class can learn too!

[@anzyroadside2374]

For anyone thinking that this issue is the same as the one where Rey being revealed as the granddaughter of Palpatine destroyed the thematic consistency of the sequel trilogy, the inheritance of nobility and the inheritance of force powers are two different issues. Star Wars made it seem like talent for the force can be inherited through bloodline as demonstrated by the Skywalkers, while the influence nobles hold over other people is limited by recognition of their membership under certain families (usually inherited by blood relation, but adoption is an exception). Alm was not recognized as a royal until this fact was revealed to the world, as such he couldn't possibly have used it to wield influence over others and instead used other means to do so (he was quite the charismatic leader). Meanwhile, Rey Palpatine always had the ability to wield the Force because she's inherently awesome and the force is female and because she inherited her powers from the greatest Sith Lord we've seen from the original trilogy.

[@clairerogers9223]

I think the thematic inconsistency argument against SoV is generally pretty weak, and you do a good job arguing why. I do have a difficult time conceptualizing Alm as a class traitor when he was not aware of his class until he was already leading a revolution; realistically, if his aim was to become some sort of Valentian despot, erasing all preexisting power structures and then using his later discovered noble birthright to claim unchallenged power would be the way to go. It's not exactly like it would be in his best interest to defect once he realized he had power in a system he was already in the midst of destroying. Now, the misogyny argument against Shadows of Valentia... That's a lot stronger.

[@MythrilZenith]

THANK YOU!! I personally love the story of SoV and it drives me crazy when people dismiss it all with the whole "thematic inconsistency" brush and refuse to listen to any arguments to the contrary. Maybe your way of putting things so much better than I can will help explain things and let me actually publically enjoy the story again.

[@katenawolfenstein9468]

Thank you for highlighting Berkut's excellent voice acting at the end there. Truly favourite antagonist, and one of my favourite games

[@projectmessiah]

Honestly i didn't even have a problem with the Alm royal thing but this just made it so much better to me.

[@ungulatemanalpha]

gaiden is the fire emblem game that most obviously rips off star wars. the 'issue' with this is that star wars is very anti-monarchy, while fire emblem is very pro-monarchy, so people who see a father villain twist mentally substitute what star wars did over how gaiden does it without realising that star wars is criticising the dynamic that gaiden is arguing for (that bad kings need to be replaced by good kings and that this is like how sons succeed their fathers). luke is secretly the son of the guy right behind the emperor! this does not give him the right to rule, and his success is borne from forming an authentic moral connection with his father rather than his birthright or conquest. leia is a princess and also the daughter of that guy! her 'kingdom' gets blown up and she becomes a guerilla fighter that strangles tyrants to death with her chains (foreshadowing what her father does to the emperor). alm is secretly the prince of rigel! he kills his dad and uses his newfound authority to unite the evil kingdom and the good kingdom in holy matrimony. celica is secretly the princess of zofia! this makes her relationship with alm politically expedient. (they're both nice people but that goes back to the whole 'bad kings need to be replaced by good kings' idea that a lot of fairy tales and other monarchy-containing media has.) this is also why alm stabs the equivalent of emperor palpatine (duma) and solves all his problems, while if luke did that in star wars he would've failed. echoes backsolves this by having duma (and mila!) be God, making alm's victory Man overcoming God rather than 'i will defeat evil by killing it until it dies. i am very moral'. in conclusion fire emblem echoes is a bad star wars story and a good fire emblem story, shocking no one

[@Mercurialites]

Virgin thematic analysis that struggles to internally justify a proposed contradiction because it runs contrary to a neat little grand narrative VS Chad Derridean deconstruction of Echoes, that welcomes the opposition and in turn derives meaning only found from the juxtaposition.

[@gregster1016]

YEESSS, SOME ECHOES CONTENT! Always down to watch someone talk good about this game :)

[@coreypunch424]

While it is a fair point that the apparent themes of a piece of media can change, I still feel like the twist of alm being a noble serves to seemingly make alot of the enemies you fight suddenly be justified, like how Jerome, the boss of the zeke map, says how a blue blood could be defeated by someone like alm, with the game then basically just going “don’t worry Jerome, he’s a noble, your worldview is apparently correct”. Plus, a bit I find gross honestly is in the prologue where gray says Alm and Celica are different from them (the commoner gang) in every way which to me is implying that their nobility is seemingly so apparent that child Gray can just tell which is just really strange to me and really makes it seem to me they were trying to make a point of the nobility being different. But anyway, great video Bopper, love your stuff!

[@TommySkywalker11]

It doesn't justify anyone since as pointed out in the video, it's his life as a commoner that angers them, knowing he was royalty wouldn't have made anyone see him differently And Gray expands on that saying the reason was because of their drive and duty to others,, their personalities aren't a royal trait especially considering how it makes them polar opposites to the majority of royals and nobles in the game

[@RSimpkinuk57]

It isn't just Gray: Clair recognises that how Celica carries herself is likes how Alm carries himself. Here is my take on this (as a Fire Emblem newcomer). The story Slayde knew wasn't just propaganda: a Zofian royal ancestor really was Mila's child (whether literally by natural parentage with a human father, or by some divine magical equivalent to IVF and surrogate pregnancy, doesn't matter). Likewise, a long-ago Rigelian royal was Duma's descendant. Many generations later, this divine genetic inheritance is much diluted, being carried and transmitted by many but manifesting in few. Alm's and Celica's birthmarks, that some call the Brand are an early outward sign of such. Only those few - Alm and Celica may be the only ones in their generation - can wield the royal sword, or the falchion, and they possess a "star quality". Gray and Clair respond to this in Alm, Tobin tried to deny it, Faye is infatuated and Kliff is oblivious. (Gameplay problem: why is it only Alm who can equip the royal sword, and not Celica too?)

[@RSimpkinuk57]

4:18 "many players fall in love with their first ... reading of the game": spoken over Faye's B support conversation with Alm, how apposite. I appreciate how Faye is characterized because of her A supports with him and with Silque.

[@TheTrains13]

5:35 fernand, lorenz and ferdinand are the three different examinations of nobles that wear the costume of noble flamboyantly

[@juicyjuustar121]

I always disagreed with people who say that SoV is thematically inconsistent, but I've never really been able to put my thoughts into words. This video does exactly that in an amazing way

[@zacharyh.9565]

Maybe it’s because I knew a little of Gaiden's plot ahead of time, but I never really got where people were coming from with this. I mean, the entire reason Alm is chosen is because he's apparently the grandson of a general. Just from his starting class alone he’s differentiated from the people of Ram.

[@noishfanboy1141]

Echoes players when they see a good map (thematically inconsistent with this games shitty map design)

[@longsocks7798]

I love desert maps 😋😋

[@shadowsofvalentia]

i want to put all 10 minutes of this video on my wall. this video is very concise in what it has to say and makes very strong points and i’m now going to go on a ramble with my own thoughts on the matter :) while other people commented this too i really want to add that the royalty reveal itself isn’t even a twist by the time it’s revealed? alm’s lineage has been cast in doubt since the end of act 1 and desaix’s dying words of “rudolf’s pup” and the royal sword in act 3 just tell you in no certain terms where this story is going. while i imagine people playing this would dread the oncoming reveal it also gives plenty of time to reconstruct what the theme echoes is going for? (that and maybe it’s the fire emblem virus in me but i genuinely think echoes wouldn’t be echoes if they played that theme completely straight because of how much they bash you over the head with foreshadowing before the other shoe drops). overall alm is a character who combines the best of echoes’ major dichotomies (mila and duma, zofia and rigel, commoner and noble) and while it feels more than a bit like preferential treatment compared to celica that is ultimately what they’re going for rather than celica being the mila and alm being the duma. or celica and berkut being the royalty and alm being the farm boy. that said i do think they could have still made some use out of that straightforward hard work vs birthright theme (alongside alm being made into a proper hero specifically BY his humble upgringing and not his birthright) with all the commoners in the deliverance. if we got more tobin and gray action for example it’d highlight how commoners are still instrumental in changing the world here. and while an optional recruit i always think about python’s dlc support with clive and especially the A support where clive admits he believes in a class system and python thinks it’s complete bullshit but they both respect each other as people anyway. though that still works with the main theme in discussion here. God i fucking love echoes

[@shadowsofvalentia]

Also killer bow good

[@DollyBowman]

I agree that Echoes has interesting things to say, and says what it wants to. I generally disapprove of the consistent FE element of "royal blood gives you superpowers, and the rightful heir is a good person over the corrupt usurper lacking divine lineage." Some aspects complicate this throughout the series - Celica's father was the rightful king but also an awful man - but it's true far more often than not and that has always irked me. Im playing FE4 now and it's so funny how the good guys are always the ones with the right to the biggest throne

[@sharpse8268]

Spoilers just in case This was a nice video. I remember not liking the revelation when I first played the game but now I believe it to be a good move. My personal view of the game and its theme is simply attached to the overarching ideological conflict between Duma and Mila. The revelation that Alm is actually royalty mirrors Celica's royal lineage. She starts off knowing she's royalty and pretending to be a commoner whilst Alm believes he's a commoner but comes to find out about his royal lineage. It's, in a sense, having an experience in the other's shoes and the blurred lines between them showing that all people are people in the end. Alm's journey ends (of the world map) with his "Duma mindset" betraying him as his desire to bring peace via war ends with him killing his father. Similarly, Celica's "Mila mindset" betrays her as the faith that simply finding Mila will lead to the restoration of Zofia is a child's fairytale when the truth is revealed that both dragons went mad. Ultimately, the duel between the two in the catacombs is the resignation of the fringe of their (Duma/Mila's) ideals. Celica begs Alm to kill her which is simultaneously a self sacrifice (Mila action) while calling for blood to be shed (Duma like approach). Alm is the one to do the killing (Duma action) while having faith (Mila like approach. The Trust in Falchion) that what he's doing is the just course. The atonement for their stubbornness back at Zofia castle and that of Mila and Duma is the character driven reasoning behind the miracle. This is the point in the story where the Duma brand bearer having Mila's colors and the Mila brand bearer having Duma's colors makes sense. I haven't played the game for a while so I'm probably missing stuff but that's sort of the way that I look at it and it's made me appreciate the game a lot more than I thought possible.

[@michaelberube5236]

Love the essays Bopper, please, keep them coming. Your point on first takes being insidious misnomers, and our unnatural adherence to them, is beyond accurate; shockingly so. It took me a while before I understood that a work of art existed as a whole, not a sectional, and that only once the entirety of the thing was viewed should I form a "complete" opinion. Given that you posit that all revolutions require class traitors, I would be interested on your thoughts on the French Revolution. Yes, the two most prominent actors of that saga, Robespierre & Bonaparte, were born into what would be considered today the middle class. But given that the French Revolution nominally obliterated class, and it's goals, a France free of the a "king", were ultimately successful, arguably, at the hands of Bonaparte, a man who not only did not oppose the militaristic, monarchic power structure, but entrenched it, would seem to offer a refutation. I don't argue that class traitors are not important to a revolution; instead, that force is the ultimate deciding factor of revolutions, at least in society as we recognize it today.

[@Anarchist2]

This video just didn't hit home with me, and I think that your replies in the comments about "justifying taste" play a role in elucidating why that's the case. As some background, I'm currently working on a collaborative writing project attached to a game as a hobby. For the most part, especially with smaller stories, this works great: people are able to build up a universe with far more depth and perspective than a single person in their free time ever could. The problem is what to do when a writer disagrees with the content of another writer's story. The game is distributed centrally, meaning that there is a hard and definite canon, and that having two clashing stories (in the sense of the two having contradictory information) is impractical at best, and creates a mess whenever somebody tries to build on top of a story. Telling people to just make their own branch of the project if they disagree is the same as telling people to put their writing where nobody will read it, and trying to silo writers so that their writing doesn't clash with each other completely defeats the point of collaboration in the first place. All of this leaves only one real way to resolve disputes... which is to argue for what you want the story to be, and to justify taste, through arguments such thematic inconsistency. This is admittedly a very different situation from what goes on in the Fire Emblem community, though, but I hope my comment showed why ideals such as never needing to justify taste aren't always possible.

[@ProfessorBopper]

Interesting point; I think it’s worth differentiating between a creators perspective and a readers perspective. If you are working on a collaborative project, the creation process is going to be fundamentally different than creating art individually or as a reader. Everything I say in the video and in the comments is about a reader’s perspective.

[@XellossBoi]

Really great analysis. Thank you!

[@rapidriver]

A very concise and effective defense of Echoes! The story is ultimately not going to be for everyone (with my personal issues surrounding the consistent poor treatment of the female characters) but to act like that means it's a bad story is silly, especially when it actually challenges the status quo of nobility, something lacking in other FE games. Which doesn't make those games bad, of course, it's just not the type of story they're telling. Err anyway just wanted to say I hadn't played Echoes in a while and fell into the trap of thinking the story is bad just because of the plot twist so I wanted to say your video helped changed my viewpoint on things!

[@cabbusses]

So, does Alm and Celica's 2nd act breakup play into this in any way? Was disappointed it did not come up in this video in any way since it has all the controversy of the Alm reveal with none if the presence in the original game.

[@ProfessorBopper]

Might be it’s own separate video. I really wanted to focus this video down on Alm because I wanted this to be a theory discussion about theme. Adding Celica would’ve made this a much different video, that I will do at some point, but it would’ve eaten this one

[@sylv3053]

I never saw Alm's royalty as a problem, because even though Alm is *technically* of royal blood, he was raised alongside commoners, so his perspective is one of a commoner, and even after the reveal, it doesn't suddenly change who he is as a person. He may be more mature and verse with the ways of the world, yet he's still Alm. He doesn't fall into the same delusions that befell Fernand, Berkut, and the others. And the game goes on with its themes that this empathetic attitude will change Valentia for the better, one where the rampant classism and corruption of the past remain in the past.

[@okapi_q]

Incredible analysis as always!

[@shanksmudfish5583]

I disagree (sorry for my broken english in advance), the reason why people says it's thematically inconsistent, it's not about if Alm is royal blood or not, it's because it's revealed that Rudolf and Mycen manipulated Alm since his childhood to become the hero of the prophecy, he is not a hero that choose to oppose the tyrany, he was driven to do it. And he never breaks that role that the prophecy assigned him. He is not a hero, he is just a chosen one. Heroes chooses, chosen ones obeys. Also, that point on the brave bow, we both know it's just bad game design on trying to fix bows because in the original they were one of the worst weapons of the game, excluding that funny silver bow alm build, but generally bow knights are very bad units with no hit.

[@luma4682]

Well, Alm was free to choose the whole time tho. The way you are raised will change how you become, just look Berkut. The way he was raised make him a person guided by pride and power, and if Alm was raised by Rudolf or in the nobility, that would have happened the same, not maybe the same as Berkut, but something soft like Clive with giving priorities to noble could be a result. Having a ruler who understand what is for commoners how they are living, and being in a position that can give everyone equality regardless of status, is a costructive manipulation, or for to say in a more precise way, a constructive parenthood to teach a child how to see. But in all of this, Alm was never obligated to do everything from the start. Lukas recruiting volunteers from Ram village, Mycen wasnt there to make Alm choice, he left without impacting on his personal decision. Yeah, it could happen that Alm was indecisive so refuse the call, but when the entire continent is in a costant assault from brigands, war is there, people are starving to death, is like “If I stay here, eventually something bad will happen here anyway, so why not being the active one rather than wait until an attack come here” it was a lot for sure that Alm would accept, bc of the situation the country is, you know its bad, and you know that staying in the village wont protect you, so the fact he join was the best option for his ideal, personal being, and for the others. He always was given the choice, and he chose just the better one that suit his ideals, personal and ecc, so it just happen that the prophecy was come true.

[@shanksmudfish5583]

Yes, but you are ignoring the fact that mycen left the house and the game impies that he did it, so Alm didn't want to come back home and also Mycen response of not joining the rebelion was in order that he will get mad at him and he will take his place just to mend his denial. And that ended up with him being the leader of the rebelion and the game implies that Mycen saw it coming that way. In the original there is no prophecy, there is no rudolf planning his son life all along, Rudolf originally tried defeating Duma, he failed, so he made the doors that are imposible to open from the inside, send his child with his close friend and the used the fact that Zofia didn't sent their annual tribute to start a war, with the hopes that this war will bring someone stronger than him that will defeat Duma, and it was a coincide that this person was his own son. In the case, yes Alm was a hero, that made the choices that he made with no prophecy or manipulation involved.

[@luma4682]

@@shanksmudfish5583 yeah, I have agree that the prophecy thing is what make the choice of Alm a bit predictable from Mycen point of view. but Alm becoming leader of the deliverance wasnt in their plan, it was out of Mycen controll and Rudolf too. The prophecy ruin the thing, bc they wanted to put more focus on the fate between Alm and Celica, like the perfect couple, and that make the chosen hero being with minor choice in his possibilities

[@chadam917]

Themes are a nice addition to a story to me. They aren't often the be all, end all of a narrative anyway. Is the story impactful through the use of its characters? Do you like its characters? If you don't like a character, is that intentional(Villians, characters that have growing to do)? Does the story make sense ? Those are just some examples of things that aren't necessarily dependent on themes. As much as themes can make you think about a story more, they often times aren't needed for people to enjoy the story being told.

[@lux3239]

What a great video, been saying all of this for years, Echoes is not a story about just a rebel overthrowing royalty, its about seeing conflict from both sides and doing what is right in the face of adversity.

[@ilngsisfh]

I think that if say they had included lines how Rudolf was a peasant who had become king, that would have allowed them to have the “commoner” alm and royal alm with less issues. Also would make Berkut much more interesting as his pride would only be a generation old at best

[@Zek3nator]

I like to think that the main theme is nurture vs discipline, with Zophia’s people and Jedah being representative of the desire of people to be taken care of, and Berkut and Fernand being representative of being willing to throw away all worldly attachments for power and self determination. Alm and Celica are meant to represent the mean. Zophia falls because they are complacent and cowardly. It takes Four Rigelians, Alm, Mycen, Rudolf and Celica (culturally she was raised by Mycen) to make Zophia sober enough to defeat Duma. Although Jedah appears to sacrifice his kin for power it’s really just a cowardly tactic to keep a dying dragon in power. He’s desperately afraid of living without duma providing for Rigel. Ultimately, it seems to me that the argument of Echoes is that Nurture is ultimately unable to secure a good future without the instilling discipline in the people. TLDR Duma was right, but don’t kill your wife.

[@tuffemily1431]

Wow this was really cool and its something ive been thinking about. I used to say this about echoes myself as i disliked the twist. However reading a lot of other stuff kinda expanded my mindsets on what a theme could be. For instance the nika stuff in one piece ive seen a lot of people say thats inconsistent but really its just a evolution of the stories theme. I think perhaps one could easily bring a less generous reading about thr stuff with berkut, seeing it as condemning him for refusing to learn his place for instance but thats subjective and ultimately this has changed how i thought about the story as a whole, even if i still have issues with it

[@blueberriesinmycoffee1234]

I remember watching the ending to "Whiplash" and finding it really moving and cool, but not really feeling comfortable defending it when people brought up how they saw it as destructive, playing into the "art is suffering" trope. I think moving beyond needing to agree with a character's final decisions has been a good thing for me personally (sorry). Anything that keeps my brain moving while I'm working through a story has some promise to me if it takes me somewhere new. I've never thought about it in terms of my relationship with the text evolving over the course of it, but that makes total sense. I'm like, happy and also creeped out by the ending to "Whiplash." And I didn't know those were two emotions art could give me at the same time. I don't think I would have been able to feel that if my idea of what the movie's theme or main conclusion should or should not be was too concrete too quickly. So I think I would tentatively say I agree with you about thematic inconsistency, Professor. I'm going to pull a Wittgenstein and leave space for an exception to the case, but I don't know if one can exist until I've found one and thought about it more.

[@blueberriesinmycoffee1234]

Oh, I should throw in I don't think people who read Whiplash as harmful are wrong necessarily, I just brought that as an example because it's a case of me getting more out of a story by letting it do what it did to my brain.

[@absoul112]

I can not get over the idea of Alm being a class traitor.

[@absoul112]

The more I come back to this, the more something rubs me the wrong way. Is it not possible that the game sent its message poorly, and people went with what they got out of it?

[@ProfessorBopper]

That would be the case if the game didn’t massively foreshadow Alm’s heritage and if we conflate themes and messages/morals, which many people do even though it’s reductive for both of those concepts

[@absoul112]

@@ProfessorBopper Let me rephrase, because this isn’t about the twist or its foreshadowing. I’m essentially asking if the way the game is written makes it easy to miss the themes laid out in the video.

[@Namingway248]

I think there are still implications of some kind of mandate-of-heaven-adjacent force behind royalty if we look at what gameplay and mechanics do tell us though, specifically on the topic of deicide. Other than Alm, Roy and Marth can also kill duma. In spite of the fact roy's personal sword's key trait is its ability to seal away without killing. That being established, Ike cannot do this. Ike carries a sword that was once blessed by ashera to kill yune, and once blessed by yune to kill ashera. There is no reason I can think of for ragnell not to be able to kill duma. Why can Roy do this but Ike cannot, if royal blood has no intrinsic bearing on power in this world? I ultimately think though that the problem is that these themes of classism weren't really addressed in the original draft of this plot, they were added into a remake that (in many other ways) wanted to be incredibly faithful to its source material. The reason that ends up feeling off or bad to so many people is because even without having ever played FE2, players can easily clock where the new story content is, and how its clashing with the original's much simpler premise. Its like buying a book but then another author comes in to staple a few new pages here and there to mix it up. This isn't to say any of the new content or ideas presented were worse than the original famicom game, its just to say maybe if so many people think it comes off weird then its perhaps the fault of how the creators integrated this new content moreso than the players' inability to interpret the story.

[@LunoeShadow]

I hate to sound argumentative, but this video is sophistry. In the purely technical sense anyway. In your argument that "thematic inconsistency is a myth," you have fundamentally misconstrued the contention around thematic inconsistency. "Thematic inconsistency" is not a term people discovered, applied to FEE, then became disappointed in the story. "Thematic inconsistency" is a label people have chosen to try and describe their pre-existing disappointment in the story. The real issue is that Fire Emblem Echoes disappointed them, not whether "thematic inconsistency" exists or not. Now, as your argument is at least logically sound, if resting on a cherry-picked definition of "theme," I will attempt to describe the actual issue at hand here: Fire Emblem Echoes set up expectations for the player that it then changed *without warning.* Every story is built on expectation: it is the basis of narrative, plot, and continuity. If Jimmy is alive on page 1, we expect him to be alive on page 2, unless explicitly killed. This is why so many subversions fail: the author attempts to cheat this rule, but you cannot. If you look at good subversions, there is always groundwork. Patterns of behavior, unreliable narration, symbolic events. Fire Emblem Echoes didn't do the groundwork, and *that* is why people are unhappy. They weren't outfoxed by a clever narrative, they were cheated by a lazy one.

[@ProfessorBopper]

I mean, if you want to argue what you say, it'd be better to target a story that doesn't foreshadow its twist through Mycen, Desaix, and Zeke, and pretty explicitly at that, so it's less that it changed without warning, and more like you missed the warning and are upset that you missed the warning. And if you're gonna call my argument "technical sophistry," then you're going to have to actually argue against the definition of theme I provide, which isn't cherry-picked or duplicitous, unless you want to call the generally accepted definition of theme cherry-picked. I cited Eagleton, but I could have also cited the definitions by Samuel Jonson, Harold Bloom, or Aristotle which are all similar to Eagleton's. I'm not making up new concepts willy-nilly to trick anyone. Like you said, if it's all about people trying to illustrate why they're mad, then most people need a better vocabulary for analysis than just lashing around wildly, or at least a way to put their anger into a perspective that isn't just analytical self-indulgence

[@gemguy5951]

Huh, it never really occured to me Clive is technically a class traitor. That type of stuff is usually about lower class conflict.

[@dealmakerscasino9762]

Damn this is a great video. Thank you. I'm a huge fan of Echoes, and it was my favorite until Engage released (as much as i love Awakening I must admit it has Flaws), and I was never good at putting into words why. It's very linear, and by no means perfect ofc. (Conrad. Why is Conrad. How is Conrad. I love him but why.) But this is good at discussing the merits. I never got the hate tbh.

[@lovelymouths]

James Franco voice "so good"

[@PallaEmblem]

To echo some of the complaints of this video, the argument presented is fairly weak because it pushes back against the words people use rather than the feelings people have. People use "Thematic inconsistency" to describe a real feeling they have and unless that feeling is addressed you can't convince someone of anything. What you should have done is provided an avenue for players with this feeling to describe what they feel in a more dictionary definition way.

[@theargawalathing]

This video is super refreshing as a diehard SoV enthusiast, so thank you.

[@konstantinos-iliasstrempas4594]

i hope they remaster it for switch or switch 2

[@cpc205__yt]

I haven't watched this video but I agree with evetything you said. Once I finish the game I'll come back to this and watch it

[@MultiSkidding]

the idea the alm twist undoes the idea of "hard work vs inheritance" is kinda insane. because alm is a hardworking peasant boy, he's worked hard as a peasant his whole life before that point. who his dad is doesn't change all the years of his life before he knew his dad's identity

[@Posby95]

It doesn't, but the game effectively declares at the end that inheritance overrides effort. Alm wouldn't have won if he was a commoner. Which I think is realistic but no less disappointing.

[@CometX-ing]

Being honest, I don't really get how one could legitimately walk away from Echoes thinking that it undermines its own themes with/be disappointed by the reveal that Alm is royalty because the illusion of it being about some nobody rising up to defeat the nobility is pretty much shattered the moment Alm picks up the royal sword. You'd have to have basically just been ignoring a majority of Alm's story and choosing to be bothered by the story doing what it had set out to do from early on. The war was effectively just a way to explore the topic of nobility and the perception/importance of status to the individual.

[@Mark-nn2ce]

The main problem is not inconsistency, but that the story would have been much, much more wholisticslly interesting if Alm were not royal. Of key importance, you dont engage with Celica. Any discussion of a work that ignores half the story, especially one that fails to even mention one of two protagonists, is a weak critique. This video is no exception. Once you properly include Celica, you will see that having both of them be royalty leaves the "peasant vs. nobility" plot point either unresolved or resolved in a silly way. The theme becomes "birth is destiny and nobility is superior but nobles and royalty should wield their superiority virtuously." Which is fine, I guess, but not terribly interesting. It boils down to "be a good guy who is generous, brave, and wise." Not terribly inspired. Celica is royal - and known to be royal - from the start. Celica rejects her royalty because her father was a lecherous, abusive man who disgraced the very concept of royalty. But Celica is drawn to her lineage and must take up her place as a leader and eventually a queen. Alm is seemingly a peasant who loves a princess and whose route is focused on his common blood and common friends coming in conflict with Berkut, Fernand, and supported by the more egalitarian minded Clive. And yet Alm, like Celica, is drawn to leadership and victory by his superior royal blood. At first, Berkut seems to be wrong because he looks down on commoners and Clive good because he gives them a chance. But the error Berkut makes is lack of foresight. He was not wrong to look down on commoners. Berkut was wrong because he was illinformed. He didn't know that the two highest born characters in all of Valentia were on the other side. If Berkut had full information, his expressed worldview would have him join Alm and Celica (he might not actually do that as a character, since he ultimately doesn't want to have his birthright stolen). Combine this with the fact that Alm's friends often talk about how he is more talented than them, the royal sword, etc. You have a story where Alm is better than his friends because of his parentage and better than the villains because he's just a good guy. Celica is better than her father because she too is a generous, kind person. The problem isn't that it is thematically inconsistent - these themes are notably consistent across both Celica and Alm's routes - but that it is thematically uninteresting. If Alm were common, the story would make a more categorical and interesting statement about worthiness, status quo and revolution rather than a milquetoast statement about general virtue fit for a children's fable. The fact that the game almost makes this more interesting point, but instead opts for Rudolf's frankly pretty silly scheme that hinges entirely on the power of birthright and destiny is ultimately pretty disappointing.

[@ProfessorBopper]

I mean, yeah, but also this isn’t a wholistic critique of Echoes, rather a look at a common critique and how it misunderstands the concept of theme itself. How interesting or uninteresting Alm, his narrative/structural relationship with Celica, or his relationship with the other characters in his army are is immaterial the very specific goal of this video, which is simply to discuss theme as a narrative element, using a common critique of Echoes as a basis, not to be an actual deep dive critique into Echoes. I am sorry for not personally addressing your specific grievances with this specific video game

[@Mark-nn2ce]

​@@ProfessorBopper I don't know why I didn't get a notification for this, but here's a late response. I think you misunderstand my criticism of your video. I don't think that your video was insufficiently thorough. I think you misunderstand what theme is and how thematic inconsistency can be a useful critique of both this game's story and other stories. The problem with your discussion here is that your understanding of "theme" is tautological to the point where thematic inconsistency cannot exist. That's a useless understanding of the concept. Thematic inconsistency does exist and it is a useful way to understand how stories fail. If you take Lord of the Rings, for example, one of the key themes is about power and the use of force. Power and force, in LOTR, are perilous things. The lore of the world reinforce this theme. In Fellowship we are introduced to a world in which the most powerful artifact in the world is also supremely evil and force cannot be used to destroy it. The power the Ring represents is so great and so terrifying that Middle Earth's most power beings are afraid to use it. The story that is told is one where the heroes pretend to meet force with force, but in the end it is by the hands of the meek and gentle that the Ring and Sauron are destroyed. Now imagine if after the Fellowship of the Ring, the Two Towers sort of scrapped all that. It decided that the problem with the ring was simply that the wielder needed to be virtuous enough. The ring bearer could work great good so long as they overcame tests which prove their virtue and goodness. Well, this would be a bit of a retcon lore wise, but that's not the real problem. The real problem is that it clashes thematically with the story told in the first book. At the end of this new Lord of the Rings when the new Hero of Goodness and Light defeats Sauron by meeting (virtuous) force with (evil) force, you can look back and say "the theme of this story was never one about the perilous nature of power and force, just look how it ended!" and you'd be half right. That story would not be about that theme, but the story being set up in the first book *would* be setting up that theme and it would clash thematically with the rest of the story.

[@danielpayne1597]

I finally finished Echoes a month ago after being gifted it half a decade ago. The polish is lovely, I adore a fair number of the characters, and the game has a lot of fans. As an RPG, it's got merit. As a strategy game, I can't stand it for so many mechanics that make my strategic choices meaningless. I never once thought Alm becoming king was contrary to his commoner roots because he acts like a commoner the entire game. It's who he is. The destiny that he experiences doesn't change who Alm is. My problem with the game's theming has nothing to do with nobility, it has to do with humanity's relationship with deities. The later part of the game hammers home the message of "mankind doesn't need gods!" and all these idiot cultists follow a mad dark deity blindly. Yes, Japan, we know you hate religion by now, thanks. Pay no attention to the fact that all unit promotions occur by praying to Mila's statues.

[@luma4682]

Damn, with this video, I CAN UNDERSTAND MORE RUDOLF wanting to Berkut to watch and doing nothing for being weak He is a completely slave of the noble and social power structure and its costumes, that is just a way for people to have power toward others. At first I think for years that Rudolf was a bitch by not telling about Alm and what Berkut rolewoild have to embrace, but now with the quote of watch, he mean that Berkut as to see how Alm want to destroy the system of nobility and create something that would let anyone being important and have value, insted of just status like the Delthea rescue 😂example for Clive Rudolf problably also thanks to Mycen, make Alm grew up in a different enviroment, and luckily, Alm raised with good ideals, maybe Ideals that also Rudolf wanted to apply, but couldnt bc of the society and the role he is in. The war between the two nation help destroying the nobility, or at least the importance of every person over the status. Rudolf wanted Berkut to see how a true strong person will lead a country into something new that help everyone, and that is by the heart and will Alm want help people regardless of who he is, where it was born, and ecc, while Berkut try to based his strength for his status of niece of emperor, so he feel he is gifted bc he is born strong with status, he didnt earn his true streght like Alm bc Alm achieved that by his work. Now I see things like this, I hope is not wrong what I am saying from what is meant in this video, but now you have mademe thinking better about Rudolf, Berkut hypocrisy and Alm journey

[@PTCreeperKiller]

In other words, it's peak.

[@wayward41]

I swear, a crash course on dialectic philosophy should be required before people are allowed to engage in internet critique. SO much about "thematic inconsistency" stems from a lack of understanding of the is-ought dichotomy. The world would be so boring if every piece of literature existed entirely within the "ought", no thematic exploration would be able to occur. Every story would be a new coat of prosaic paint slapped on a sentiment that is broadly agreed upon. The entire point of literature is to exist within the dichotomy between thematic expectations and subversions thereof within the text, and comment upon the gap. If "thematic consistency" people had their way, the point of Crime and Punishment would be "murder is bad"

[@aninymouse1651]

0:00 Do yourself a favor and just skip the first half of this video.

[@Choops6969]

i agree.

[@b-d9099]

Bruh this is almost exactly the same problem people STILL have with naruto and thinking that hard work vs natural talent is the series' main theme when it was never supposed to be

[@coldeed]

This video is dumb. Echoes sets up a theme are on the issues of an oppressed class. Alm is presented as part of that class being mistreated and fed up. Story pulls a 180 of him being the rightful heir, that's what thematic inconsistency is, when a theme present in conflict is contradicted by the overall conclusion. People are not "applying a theme thats not there". They recognized a theme that is and recoginze how poorly the conclusion dismantles that theme. This was present as well in the original, but its a problem all the same, and with this shit remake having far more actual story and writing its just a absolute failure of the author to characterize Alm accurate to give resonate meaning to anything you're saying by the end of this video. Its themes are inconsistent and its protagonist lacks intruge and depth. Overall, you incorrectly define something for 5 mins, wrote a bad justification about it for a few more, then pretend like any of it is at all complex. It's almost insulting how simpleminded a reading of this is. You have the balls to be critical other peoples reading of the game while selling the most circular logic of "its themes not consistent because themes are a subjective reading and the story actually flips a 180 from Alm being the revolutionary to being the rightful king. Thats not inconsistent, its just the the exact opposite of the formerly easily identified them happening immediately after it has established that theme for convenience of the plot. Its really deep to have shallow 180s for convenience if you think in circles long enough". A short version is "its good because it's written by the authors and its the audiences fault for paying attention". To anyone that wants to tell me i shouldn't be critical of the uploaders take, this is literally a video aiming to be critical of a well established take. I gave the uploader respect by actually watching the video, nothing is rude about being critcal over these types of opinions of things. Just like its not rude for him to make this in the first place.

[@Fenrirk-c2i]

Imagine expecting good writing from a Nintendo game

[@coldeed]

@@Fenrirk-c2i Nintendo doesn't write shit.

[@amefurino8707]

what you think is a question of taste, but what i think is Analysis™ i should also add that this video's thinking lends itself very well to defenses of bigoted and reactionary works. not liking the way a work might be extremely misogynistic, homophobic, or racist is merely a matter of taste, i guess there's no use in addressing or analyzing e.g. the japanese nationalist anti-korean shit in ousama ranking. oh, but there is, since it's Analysis™ to SHOW something is racist you see, "separate" from commentary on racism! but you've already fudged the question since the japanese nationalist constructs a reading of the text denying the very existence of any such political content in the work. is it a wrong question to ask which one is more accurate, which one is "better"? it seems to me that this Analysis™ is useless as a tool without a political motive or framework to inform your understanding that, for example, the hideous racism of the birth of a nation is after all to its detriment as a film. to say anything at all you have to decide something is good and something is bad at some point, might as well do it from the outset rather than this weird and frankly cowardly displacement of what's contested

[@amefurino8707]

i also like the feudal-brained take of "well people respond poorly to this, but actually the people are wrong and too stupid to really get it." sincerely interrogating why they might have this poor impression of the work is a waste of time, since OP - the Master of the Text - has already dismissed it as an immature reaction. let's just say the players turned their brains off before finishing the game and that they're all trying to "justify their tastes" like a precocious child. take notes peons, this is what we in the university business call a Charitable Reading, a Steelman if you will. in the absence of the abstract, absolute truth of a work with its images and symbols and relations existing solely to be one day decoded by the Text Understander (with credentials to prove it) - what makes one view of a text more compelling than another? what makes a view of a text compelling or interesting at all? hint: it's also just taste. that and politics.

[@ProfessorBopper]

This is, without a doubt, the most incoherent piece of writing I’ve ever seen in the comment section for any of my videos. I am impressed, frankly, at the idea that the idea that themes can’t be internally inconsistent could be used to support racism and reactionary politics. Besides, what we’re talking about is fiction stories. To say the idea that “analysis should be based around a complete reading of a work rather than first impressions” is cowardly is outrageous. Basing an analysis off of an entire text instead of a first impression isn’t some new, radical idea. It’s standard practice for first graders.

[@ivanlagayacrus1891]

I do *see* what you're saying but I fundamentally disagree because I feel like the overt theme the game leads with is a stronger, more interesting theme than the one it follows up with. "Inconsistency" isn't the right word for it, but an eyeroll and a "of course they couldn't help themselves, so much for bucking the trend" is a mouthful

[@ProfessorBopper]

This is where I think taste and analysis split, because your initial reading of Acts I-III was more to your taste than the back half, and the reason I approach it this way is because I don’t think we need to be worried so much about trying to prove our own taste through analysis. Thematic inconsistency only exists as an argument in order to justify taste, and I just don’t think taste needs justification as much as it needs constant development and challenge