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maagicmushies · 2 months

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How Fates Classes Communicate Culture

It is kind of strange to say because horrible worldbuilding is one of the things that Fates has become known for, but I'm really struggling to think of a Fire Emblem game that manages to say more about its world through its classes. Nearly every single class in Nohr and especially Hoshido has a lot to say about the respective cultures of the two nations, either through their names or weaponry or design.

Religion

So, religious aesthetics have been a thing in Fire Emblem since forever. If you want to get healed in Archanea you don't go to a doctor, you go to a cleric. Jugdral with its myriad of references to Norse myth had Troubadours which sort of seem random for a northern european setting, but Troubadours went around reciting poetry and a lot of Norse myth was chronicled through poetry like the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda. The main religious house of Grannvale being House Edda also makes allusion to this. Even seemingly secular classes such as cavaliers and paladins can be seen adorned with crosses in most games. In Fates something interesting happens. Nohr has most of the "traditional" Fire Emblem classes, but loses all of these religious references. Troubadour stayed, but only in the English Localization with the class being called "Rod Knight" in the original Japanese. Troubadour's promotions in Awakening, Valkyrie and War Cleric, were pretty explicitly religious, but no more in Fates. Valkyries have been turned into Strategists, with designs that sort of resemble depictions of Viziers. In the place of War Cleric, we have the Maids, which I'm pretty sure are a reference to old mystery books and the cliche of rich statesmen being killed by their bitter servants. That's why they used hidden weapons. Another Nohrian class which is just a secularized version of an older class would be the Dark Mage and Sorcerer. Nothing within their names or designs have been changed, but they have gone from being followers of Grima in Awakening to a sort of analog to alchemists. I am a little torn on this because trying to draw the line between "religion", "philosophy" and "pseudoscience" with alchemy is EXTREMELY hard, but just like the maids this class has a reference to another icon of European literature - Frankenstein. The faceless that they create and can summon bare a striking origin and visual similarity to many depictions of Frankenstein's monster. That book is coated in a lot of religious subtext, but Frankenstein himself is staunchly a scientist and working within his world's realm of science. While Fates did remove these classes from their religious context, another take was to move classes with religious context over to Hoshido.

The way the religious Hoshido classes are handled is pretty funny because a lot of these classes have been in Fire Emblem before, but were references to western religion, typically Catholicism. Now they're mainly references to eastern religions. The most obvious case of this are priests and clerics who were turned into monks and shrine maiden respectively. This is one of the rare cases of Fates gender-locking and the only case of it having an actual effect on game play. Women in this class line are based on "Miko", Shinto shamans tasked with shrine upkeep and various other rituals. Shrine Maidens can promote into the very vague "Priestess", but the Japanese version once again clears things up by just calling them "Isuka Miko" or "Battle Miko". They're the standard shrine maidens, but with a slight bit more armor and armed with a bow, something that Miko actually would use both for ceremonial purposes and self defense in some cases. The male counterpart is the Monk. Before I go on, I have to clarify that I don't think that the localization made the wrong move by leaving out a lot of the cultural context, but I'm going to have to keep going back to the original Japanese to fully clarify what Intelligent Systems meant with some of these classes. While we got "Monk" they got "Shugenja", which is a lot more specific to what Fates' monks are. They are followers of Shugendo, ascetic mountain-dwelling priests. The lances that Great Masters use were likely a reference to walking poles that such a lifestyle would demand. I don't really like genderlock and it annoys me that Fates completely ignores it except for this one instance, but I sort of get why. Miko are one of the most recognizable symbols of pre-meiji Japan, so if IS wants to make a fictional country based on that era, it'd be such a miss to not include them. However, "Miko" is a strictly feminine title, so Fates used this limitation to just give us another cool cultural reference.

If all that wasn't enough, a lot of FE classes that had nothing to do with religion now do. Standard "mages" were turned into "diviners". One could argue that this was the localization actually adding in religious context where there originally was none, because the original word used for this class just translates to "spell user". I'm inclined to disagree with that because Orochi's entire thing is divination and the main Hoshidan scrolls revolve around the Chinese zodiac. Another hit against that view would be how Diviners, Shrine Maidens and Monks all can promote into the Onmyoji. For some reason, this is one of the few japanese terms that Treehouse refused to swap out. Sage would have worked just fine. Remember how I said Alchemy blurred the lines between "philosophy", "religion" and "pseudoscience"? The same could honestly be said about Onmyodo, from what I know. Going off of how Izana, the poster child for the class, comes from the Kingdom of the Gods and can straight up speak with the Gods, I'd say that Fates' interpretation of the belief is as a faith. By the way, Onmyodo means "The Way of Yin and Yang", a pretty clear reference to how Sages can use tomes and staves, black magic and white magic. Some other Hoshidan classes also got some minor religious flair to them, with Sniper, Swordmaster and Spear Master all having different japanese names in fates than they do in the japanese versions of other Fire Emblem games. In Fates they can be translated as "Holy Bow", "Holy Sword" and "Holy Spear" or “[Insert Weapon] Saint”. I will touch on this more in a bit.

So, that begs the question. What is Fates trying to imply with this? Well.... I don't really know? Like, sure, Nohr has scrubbed away almost all of its religious institutions while Hoshido holds tightly to them and even associates great skill with holiness, but why? As cool as all of this is, it doesn't really seem to mean much besides creating yet another cultural rift between Hoshido and Nohr. I could come up with something about how the Fire Emblem being in Hoshido means that they were favored by the Gods and decided to worship them while the Nohrians felt neglected and forged their own path but that feels like I'm veering off into the realm of fanfiction, it's pure conjecture. It is also possible that Hoshido's faith came from them hunting Nohrian monsters. Gaiden and Sacred Stones both had characters who mostly fought monsters and they came from religious institutions in both cases, with Bishops in the Sacred Stones being especially good at it. So perhaps that is why so much of Hoshido is themed as religious, but once again it feels like I'm trying to guide thread through a needle that just isn't there. There is one thing that Hoshido’s focus on religion says about their culture for a deeper level and I’ll get into that for the next section.

Warfare

If you’re a nerd about Fates’ gameplay, there may be something that you noticed about the “Holy” classes mentioned. They are all capable of attaining an “S” rank in their respective weapons. This could indicate that Hoshido views mastery in the martial arts as either a gift from the gods or something to be used in service of the Gods. In Hoshido, the “Art” aspects of “Martial Art” seems to be something they prioritize on honing. It isn’t just enough to pick up a sword and learn how to swing it, you should strive to master it. The S rank options in Nohr paint a bit of a different picture. First you have the Sorcerers and Maids, being the S rank options for tomes and staves. This is an extension of Nohr’s respect for academia. As Nohrian magic is a bit closer to Alchemy, this magic can be mastered and honed simply through learning enough about it. Nohr loves its Tomes, by the way. Dark Mages are the only base class to start with tomes, but Troubadours, Wyvern Knights and even Corrin’s Nohr Prince(ss) class can use them upon promotions. Leo and Camilla also start in tome wielding classes with it being pretty trivial for Xander and Elise to join them as well. If you want to be respected in Nohr, you seemingly have to be well read, even the nobility follow this rule.

While I think Nohr having the S rank option for staves fits their culture, giving this to Maids feels like a gameplay concession. Strategists have tomes, a horse and two really good skills, so perhaps IS thought this was needed to balance the two classes out. It doesn’t really work, I think Jacob might be the only one who likes that class. The last S rank class that Nohr has is the Berserker, which I think paints an interesting dichotomy with Hoshido. Here the mastery of the weapon is not revered, but instead feared. This could just be because axes are much more unwieldy than lances, sword or bows or maybe because axes in general are associated with lower class in Fire Emblem, so someone who is so proficient with them instead of switching to a more respected weapon should be seen as a mad man. While we’re on the topic of axes, this might be a good time to talk about how many Nohrian classes use those versus how few Hoshidan classes use their counterpart, the club. 4 classes on Hoshido vs 8 in Nohr. This could relate to two things mainly. The first is the status thing I mentioned earlier. On average, Nohr is poorer than Hoshido, so more classes would use this poor “commoner” weapon. The second is that Nohr is heavily forested and so axes would probably just be very common there. Just like how Bord, Cord and Barst went from lumberjacking to axe fighting, it wouldn’t be incredibly surprising to find out that most of Nohr’s army did the same.

Meanwhile in Hoshido, it seems to be normal for most soldiers, not to be equipped with a certain weapon, but to be equipped with some sort of non-scroll magic. And by magic, I mean the seal skills. We are never really told how they work, but because they fail to go off if the sealer dies mid battle, I am convinced it is some kind of curse. The poisoned hidden weapons do not work this way and will apply their effects whether you kill the user or not. Of the 5 stat sealing skills, 4 belong to Hoshidan classes that do not use scrolls. The odd one out, Seal Magic, belongs to the Nohrian Dark Knight, pretty much cementing this as a magical skill. The Hoshidan Kinshi Knight’s also have the magical “Amaterasu” skill, once again linking back to the Hoshidan religiosity. I suppose now that I’ve brought up Kinshi Knights, it is time to talk about another thing that shapes the warfare of these two countries and that is the wildlife. Whereas Hoshido has their Pegasi and Kinshi, Nohr has Wyverns. The most notable distinction here is that Wyverns are just bigger and suitable to carry more, so while Nohrians can afford to be heavily armed and armored while flying, Falcon Knights have to settle with one naginata and specialization into staff use, once again hammering in that link between Hoshido and Religion. Wyverns also bring up some more of that dubious Nohrian science because they have an entire class of “Malig Knights”, people who fight on crudely resurrected Wyverns. The thing I find interesting about this class is that its two skills, Savage Blow and Trample are implied to be the Wyvern fighting independent of its rider. Shooting flames in the vicinity of the rider’s attacks and also landing on people its rider chooses to fight. To my knowledge, this is the only instance of this in Fire Emblem. This could indicate that the resurrected Wyverns are hard to train and instead of seeing this as a weakness, Nohrians chose to experiment with how they could take advantage of this “downside”. The last wildlife boon that Nohr has is that they actually have horses! You might not notice it, but Hoshido has no ground cavalry. This gives Nohr a huge mobility advantage and they capitalize on that. Out of all of Nohr’s starting classes, the only two who don't start on a horse or have the option to get on a horse are the mounted Wyvern Riders and the Fighter class, which has historically had associations with poverty. This insistence to just hop on a horse might go back to how much Nohr seems to value versatility in combat. A sword fighting mercenary getting on horseback isn’t exactly the most natural progression, but it gives that mercenary a wealth of new options in how to fight. They don’t care about specialization and mastery, just getting their job done. Nohrian classes in general lack that flair Hoshidan classes have and while I could say that's because a lot of these classes were codified back in the NES days, I think it’s just an extension of Nohr wanting to be efficient. You don’t NEED to be ornate or masterful or graceful as long as you win.

Leisure and Arts

So, what do any of these people do when not trying to kill each other? Well, for Hoshido we have a wealth of answers. Hoshido is the nation that got the classic “villager” class, so we can pretty safely say that a lot of people in Hoshido just toil. They farm peaches and daikons and rice. The villagers can promote and I find one of these promotions to be very interesting. I’m talking about the Merchant. Merchants show up a lot as part of Hoshido’s army, but it is a bit strange that they would be deployed as merchants and not as any formally integrated part of the Hoshidan military. We could take this as meaning that Hoshido is not particularly suited for war, they need to arm common merchants to defend from Nohr and don’t exactly have time to properly train them into becoming Spear Masters or Sky Knights. Another possible take away from this could be that Hoshidan patriotism is such a thing that these people weren’t conscripted, they just decided to go out and fight for their country independent of their background. It wouldn’t be a first in Fire Emblem, as I mentioned earlier, most Axe Fighters from early on in the series were simply lumberjacks who wanted to contribute to the war.

On the topic of Hoshidan classes who don’t exactly fit the bill as soldiers, I finally get to talk about my favorite class from the game, the Basara. Basara is another japanese term that treehouse refused to translate, which basically means someone who lives unrealistically and with excess. Their skills further cement this with the flashy activation skill “Rend Heaven”, which can actually activate pretty often compared to other skills but it's pretty damn useless. And then there’s the second skill, Quixotic, which does not actually increase damage or anything useful like that, but instead increases the chances of these activation skills going off. If you like, you can see this as an extension of aspects of Hoshidan culture that I mentioned earlier. Basaras do not want to beat you, but instead want to flaunt their mastery. It’s just that while Swordmasters want to flaunt their mastery of hitting you hard with a sword, these guys want to flaunt their mastery of flashy skill combos. The skill name being “quixotic” is also a fun allusion to Don Quixote, but it only exists in the english localisation. Basaras sort of fill the role of wandering fighters which I find pretty interesting because that role has usually been held by Mercenaries and Heroes. The main difference is that Mercenaries and Heroes are going around and saving people to get paid while Basaras are doing it to prove that they can. It really shows the difference in priorities between these two cultures. It is also possible that most Basaras are nobles or former nobles, as the term “Basara” was coined to criticize the flamboyance of Japanese nobles during the 14th century. So perhaps they’re happy doing this for no pay because they don’t really need money. It is worth noting that Basaras promote from Spear Fighters and Diviners, two classes that I’ve already noted as having religious subtext to them. It was a common practice for noble families to have their second son adopt a religious life as the oldest would inherit their fortune. A family with a hand in both the secular political world and the religious world would have a lot of influence. These basaras could be sons who weren’t able to inherit their parents’ wealth, but also did not have the discipline to make it in religious life, so they simply absconded and lived as excessive wanderers. Not particularly exceptional, but very hard to ignore.

Does it feel like I’m dodging the topic of leisure in Nohr? That would be because I am. There are exactly two Nohrian classes which do not have a role in their military. There are Outlaws and their promotions, the Adventurer. That isn’t a joke, I’m not fucking with you. The only non-war hobby there is in Nohr is robbing people. If you’re kind, you could fit the maids into here, but it wouldn’t exactly be correct to say that they don’t have a role in Nohr’s military, they are the defining staff using class and seem to exclusively serve high ranking members within the Nohrian Court. You are either directly contributing to Garon’s war machine, subservient to someone who is directly contributing to Garon’s war machine or actively breaking the law. It paints a really dire picture of this country. Every aspect of it is literally just in service of this war. Let's pivot somewhat and look at art. Hoshido not only has a culture of poetry that is popular amongst its monks, but has the Mechanist class, tasked with making these very intricate puppets. When Hoshido wants to carry out missions without risking too many lives, they deploy these Puppeteers. When Nohr wants to do the same, they create monsters. The only form of artistic expression we ever get to see is literature, go figure. In general, Nohr just sucks. You would not want to live here under any circumstance. However, even if I am disappointed in how little flavor there is for Nohrian life outside of fighting, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A country so consumed with war that they forgot to develop a culture is in a certain sense a form of culture, look at how many so called “gross” british foods are just a product of wartime rationing. It’s bland and unpleasant, but it IS culture. The classes on display do such a good job of painting what life in these two nations are like and it’s sort of insane wondering what a slightly more tightly written game could have accomplished with this. One of the downsides of Fire Emblem embracing less and less restricting reclassing as the series goes on is that we will likely never receive anything that attempts to do this again, which is a shame to me.

#Fire Emblem #FE #Fates #Hoshido #Nohr #mucho texto #long post #god fates is so good when it isnt bejng bad

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