New favorite pic.

I tagged the bent over girl as Mareeta, though I'm not sure if that's her. At least I'm 99% sure the pink-haired one is Marisa, the leftmost one is Aira, and the one showing off her bust is Athena. And of course, the one sporting the glorious ass is Lyndis.

The one of the left looks more like Karla than Ayra while the bent over one look like Malis/Malice from the Broadcast satellite/FE12

The girl bent over is Mia.

It's always nice to see a new, well appreciated Fire Emblem pic. As good as many of the games were (are, whichever verb you prefer), I'm surprised they don't have a bigger fan following.

Ipswich67 said:
It's always nice to see a new, well appreciated Fire Emblem pic. As good as many of the games were (are, whichever verb you prefer), I'm surprised they don't have a bigger fan following.

If you ask me, that is because most of the games are so damn black and white - The Evil are Evileer, the Good are Goodest. Very few diverge the grey border. Aira is one of them, Nabarl is another.

Though it's probably because most of the games were never released outside of Japan.

Zeithri said:
If you ask me, that is because most of the games are so damn black and white - The Evil are Evileer, the Good are Goodest. Very few diverge the grey border.

Eh. I feel like ambiguity is kind of overrated lately. Yeah there are plenty of good stories, even great stories where it wouldn't have been even half as impacting if we hadn't sympathized with the villain, or seriously questioned the motives of the hero.

Sometimes though, it's just nice to settle down with a good old-fashioned comic-book story. Where as you said: "the evil are eviler and the good are goodest."

Female swordmasters unite. A pity more couldn't join them.

Zeithri said:
If you ask me, that is because most of the games are so damn black and white - The Evil are Evileer, the Good are Goodest. Very few diverge the grey border. Aira is one of them, Nabarl is another.

Though it's probably because most of the games were never released outside of Japan.

But aside from that...come to think it,nearly all Nintendo games are black and white.(Save for some of course)
Then again...it has to do with the difficulty of the Fire emblem or its artstyle.

Zeithri said:
If you ask me, that is because most of the games are so damn black and white - The Evil are Evileer, the Good are Goodest. Very few diverge the grey border.

I think Fire Emblem generally avoids the pitfalls of a black and white story by having a mixed group of antagonists. Rather than have all the antagonists be evil for the sake of itself, most of them are average soldiers/people being manipulated by truly evil key figures. All of the games have enemy soldiers who defect to your side because they are only involved for personal reasons. It's really less to do with good vs evil as it is "war is bad for everyone involved".

I suspect the strategy rpg genre is the limiting factor, not the story type.

NekoKnight36 said:
I think Fire Emblem generally avoids the pitfalls of a black and white story by having a mixed group of antagonists. Rather than have all the antagonists be evil for the sake of itself, most of them are average soldiers/people being manipulated by truly evil key figures. All of the games have enemy soldiers who defect to your side because they are only involved for personal reasons. It's really less to do with good vs evil as it is "war is bad for everyone involved".

I suspect the strategy rpg genre is the limiting factor, not the story type.

Couldn't have said it better myself. A perfect example is 'Genealogy of The Holy War', which is considered the darkest Fire Emblem.

Thing is,

No.

Most antagonists have really crappy reasons to be evil. They're all the typical "Want to rule the world / kingdom" until the true big bad shows up who says "Oh hai, I want to destroy your world." or "I want to summon dragons" or "I want to control the world-creating dragon".

That you point out FE4, the greatest one of them all as one of the darkest ones only proves my point in it. That is why -IT IS- the greatest one of them all because many characters in that feel very ambigious and it's a fullscale war with a lot of dark corners.

As one of you said, the only ones that defect to your side were really good all along and that is what justifies calling the Fire Emblem series - a black / white series.