Fire Emblem Fates
| Fire Emblem Fates | |
|---|---|
 Original Japanese promotional artwork for Fates— featuring the main character, Marth | |
| Developer(s) | Intelligent Systems |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Director(s) | Shigeru Miyamoto |
| Year of inception | June 10, 2014 |
| Release date | June 25, 2014 |
| Genre | Dating Simulator |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo 3DS |
Fire Emblem Fates is a Japanese Dating Simulator developed for the Nintendo 3DS featuring well over 30 waifus to date, marry, and reproduce with. It is the 14th installment to the Fire Emblem series. Shigeru Miyamoto, the director of Fates, rushed the game's development, allowing the team only 15 days to storyboard and program the entire game. This was done so the game would be published before Super Smash Bros. 4, allowing Miyamoto to greater saturate Smash's character roster with more Fire Emblem characters. Miyamoto made up for Fates's rushed development by releasing three separate versions of it (known as Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation), $40 each, and $30 worth of downloadable content. Each chapter of all three versions of the game cost an additional $2 through 3DS eShop micro-transactions. Fates has become the most recognizable entry of the Fire Emblem series in the West.
Gameplay[edit]
Fates offers three different difficulty levels and play-styles for players. Difficulty is split into the categories Normal, Hard, and Lunatic. Infernal Mode, seen in other Fire Emblem entries such as Fire Emblem Heroes, is not present in Fates because of Lunatic's already ass-raping difficulty. Series beginners are suggested to play on Normal mode. Play-styles are divided into the categories Classic, Pussy, and Kids Only. Classic Mode is a throwback to older Fire Emblem games, where units that fall in battle die forever. Fates, however, takes this one step further and completely erases the characters' data from the game cartridge upon death, meaning players cannot reset to an older save, or even properly restart the game for that matter. If a unit dies in Pussy Mode, they do not die, but instead pussy off the battlefield and hide in a corner until the next chapter. In Kids Only mode, units are completely invincible. A unit will survive battle even if they are shot full of arrows, ignited and charred by magic or hexes, have their limbs severed, or other such gruesome things that would normally kill a unit. Because units are unable to die, they suffer extreme anguish and unending pain. The morality of the Kids Only game mode came under question in 2015 in the Supreme Court case Miyamoto v. Human Rights Action Center (HRAC), which ruled Miyamoto was allowed to induce eternal life upon his characters regardless of how much pain they might be in. The court case decided this on the basis that "Fire Emblem characters are not real, conscious people and therefore do not have the same rights as real, conscious people; no number of people attempting to date or wed the characters will sway this truth".
Plot[edit]
Contains spoilers! Real and fake!
The gimmick of Fire Emblem Fates is the ability to choose your path in the story, like a Choose Your Own Adventure book but not as good. The game throws the player into a conflict between two warring nations— Hoshido, a weeabo-styled kingdom, and Nohr, a kingdom modeled after the streets of New York City. The player is apparently split up amongst the two kingdoms and related to both Nohrian and Hoshidan nobility but at the same time not related to either (just in case you wanted to marry your "sisters"). The conflict between the two nations takes inspiration from World War II, because no-one really knows why it started, it all revolves around one person (the player), and the reason it started is irrelevant. Within the first few chapters of the game, the player must choose whether to fight for their homeland, Hoshido, to fight for the other kingdom, Nohr, or to abandon both sides and play a better Fire Emblem game. Every character in the game will unconditionally love and want to fuck the player regardless of what he chooses.
Birthright[edit]
If the player chooses to side with Hoshido (given that they have forked up the cash to download this version), they are given an easy experience. Blessed in a country of such wealth and power, all the player need do is sit back and send his older brother, heir to the throne, Ryoma, into a crowd of enemies and watch their bodies be seared and ripped to absolute shreds by the most unbalanced character in the game. Most maps in Birthright have the objective of "rout the enemy" which essentially means "leave no witnesses alive" as you murder every single enemy of every map in an attempt to storm Nohr and prove your kingdom only wants peace. Come the final showdown against Nohrian royalty, the player is pitted against his older sibling from Nohr, Xander. The youngest Nohrian sister protests the player's and Xander's fighting, so Xander cuts her head off for treason. After this, Xander moves to cut the player's head off, but is ultimately stopped by overleveled Ryoma. After being defeated in a duel, Xander eats a cyanide pill. After fighting all the way to the throne room, the player prepares to fight the King of Nohr. Then he realizes that the King has already been slain by a giant-ass dragon that was just chillin' in the throne room. The player gets Marth to sing an ancient song which subdues the dragon, and everyone (but mostly Ryoma) stabs it to death.
Conquest[edit]
If the player chooses to be edgy (given that they have forked up the cash to download this version), they are relentlessly attacked by Hoshidan SWAT teams and are forced to fight for their lives (so at least they level up in this route). Under rule of the evil Nohrian King, the player nearly gets his head cut off within the first chapter because of his loud mouth. This route is host to some gimmicky maps and levels, so not every objective is "rout the enemy". In fact, the player and Xander mostly try to spare lives, despite being ordered to commit genocide against everyone who isn't of the supreme Nohrian race. After murdering millions of people, the player murders his blood related siblings in a storm of Hoshido. The player meets up against Ryoma in a duel and nearly loses (but he doesn't lose because he's the protagonist) and Ryoma kill-steals by stabbing himself in the gut before the player can do it. The player bring the Nohrian king to the Hoshidan throne room and the King melts into a gelatinous poison sludge because of some stupid Dark v Light motif. In the end it doesn't matter because the King was easier to kill than his stupidly powerful minions and he wasn't the final boss anyways. Instead, a possessed emo kid bursts into the throne room out of nowhere and starts shooting the player to death.
Revelation[edit]
If the player chooses to overcome the Sunk Costs fallacy and play a different Fire Emblem game, they end up much happier with their life choices.
Music[edit]
The music in Fates is fantastic; whatever the game lacks in plot it makes up for in music, and whatever the game lacks in music it makes up for in big-boobed waifus. The game's composer, Mozart, devoted hours of his life to composing, playing, and tuning Fates's 10 second music loops. Fates was a demanding case for music. The game requires two duplicate themes per battle, one for the overworld, and a more intense version of the same theme for in-battle footage. After days of puzzling, Mozart concluded that the most effective way to create a tense mood during the battle tracks was to bass boost the hell out of the calm songs. The amplified bass of the intense battle tracks are such a contrast to the peaceful overworld tunes that players are instantly immersed and barely notice their ears bleeding.