Me = Cow Cow
TF = Terranigma Freak
Me: The inspiration for Handheld Wii had another source. It started with a simple little chat I had with Terranigma Freak over AIM. We were casually talking about Fire Emblem remake for the DS. There really isn’t anything to speculate over a game we’ve both played to death, but we did pour over the animation. Our fear is that the game will once again deliver the same cringe worthy animation like its GBA counterpart. At the same time, I found it laughable that some people claim the GBA games had good animation. People are free to love it as much as you want, and I have no intention of making them change their mind, but I feel there are far too many problems that needed to be addressed, and thus, the idea of my own site was spawned. Not only did I have a place to express myself, but also a place to write my own articles about things that interests me. The unsightly Fire Emblem animation was the first thing on my mind.
TF: Unsightly? You’re too kind. The animation looks more like diarrhea vomited out of a buffalo’s di–
Me: I think they get the picture…
TF: I’d rather eat the rotten asshole of a roadkill skunk and down it with beer!!!
Me: Ok, ok, calm down, man. That’s why I brought you here to help me with this article.
Over the years, Intelligent Systems had garnered quite a bit of praise for their Fire Emblem games. Not only did people love the strategic gameplay and story, but they also loved the art and animation. While most Americans were not introduced to Fire Emblem until the GBA, those who were fans through import saw what an ugly sin the GBA games were — I’m, of course, referring to the animation in the game. Now, you might be thinking, “oh well, screw you, it’s just your opinions anyway. Plenty of people love the animation in the GBA games.” While I agree with that sentiment, there is the issue with how your eyes see things. Animation itself is an optical illusion designed to fool your eyes into seeing motion, so I’m here to destroy that optical illusion, and show you the ugly side of Fire Emblem animation. Not only that, but we will try to use as much facts as possible while avoid pushing our personal opinions as facts.
Let’s tackle the simpler problems first — the lifelessness and repetitive battle animation. I don’t know about you, but having two different animation each class (barring the ones with extra special weapons) is hardly what I’d call variety, but each to their own. And yes, I’m aware that some — like Warrior — actually have more than two, but that’s the exception, not the norm. You have the same basic regular attack, and then you have your critical attack.
TF: Now, here’s a list of the variety in each critical attack.
Paladin/Cavalier – spins sword/spear
Pegasus/Falcon – spins sword/spear
Wyvern rider/lord – spins sword/spear
Sniper/archer – spins arrow
Fighter/Warrior – spins axe/entire body (then spinning axe to catch it)/spins bow
Knight/General – spins sword/axe/lance
Do I need to go on? I can spend all day listing how 70% of the classes involves spinning their weapons if you want. If you’ve seen one critical, you’ve seen them all, and different weapon types offers nothing new. I’d hardly call that creative. Class changing doesn’t help, either.
Me: You know what I love — they took the worst aspect from the NES games, and put them back in the GBA games. The way they run back in place kills all suspension of disbelief in combat. Now, you’re probably thinking I’m talking about “realism” right? No. I’m not asking for realism in a world of magic and dragons — I want believability. I’ve never seen someone fight atop a dragon or use magic spells, but at the same time, I can watch and believe that’s how it would look if it were real. When you see someone run forward to attack, then run back in place so that the enemy can strike, that’s just ridiculous. Two combatants fighting is not something you’d only see in a fantasy world. When I can believe someone shooting fireballs, but not melee combat, then you know you have problems in believability. Whoever decided to bring that back to the GBA games should’ve been shot.
Adding to that is a host of other problems ranging from strange backgrounds, and the lack of animation on the map. While I can understand the weird background style being an artistic choice, and it’s just a matter of preference, but then why isn’t it consistent? All the battle backgrounds look like you’re fighting in front of a cheap movie set, then all of a sudden, the arena gives you a full background. I guess that’s nitpicking, but it causes me to ponder the artist’s decision. As strange as it sounds, the lack of animation for when you turn off the animation bugs the hell out of me. The older games have map based animations when they fight. It moves just as fast as the “bump” animation in the GBA games, and still manages to look good. Now this might sound weird to want map animation after turning them off, but I’ll reveal a fact at the end that’ll totally blow your mind. Just keep this point in mind while you read.
TF: Don’t forget the lack of distinct weapons in battle. You used to be able to see each and every single weapon you use in battle. Since the games were (and still are) in Japanese, I actually made a game out of identifying the weapons by watching the battles. That’s just a form of attention the detail that the GBA games lack.
Me: Yes, you do love your weapons, my friend.
Anyway, let’s do a quick little recap before we move onto the next part. So far, most of the issues we touched upon are all based on facts. It’s a fact that the classes contains only two different animations. (again, barring the special weapons for the lords) It’s a fact that they run back in place. (whether you like it or not is entirely subjective) It’s a fact that there are no animations when you turn the battle animation off. It’s a fact that a vast majority of the critical attacks — though animated differently — lacks diversity. It’s a fact that there are no discernable weapons in animated battles. (again, not including special lord weapons) So far so good, right? Now comes the hard part — explaining the animation.
What is animation? Well according to this: “Animation is a visual technique that provides the illusion of motion by displaying a collection of images in rapid sequence. Each image contains a small change, for example a leg moves slightly, or the wheel of a car turns. When the images are viewed rapidly, your eye fills in the details and the illusion of movement is complete.”
Ah, there we go — the key to unraveling the flaws in the GBA animation. Note the sentence: “Each image contains a small change, for example a leg moves slightly, or the wheel of a car turns.” This is very important, and a fundamental rule ignored by the GBA games. Now we’re NOT saying this actually applies to all of them. Certain classes are very well animated, but then there are the larger sprites that looks like a horrible slideshow. The newly created amounted classes for FE8 are actually pretty well animated. Just watch Valter fight Seth in the intro, and you might see how badly the FE6 sprite’s aged. What’s worse, they use cheap tricks to try and cover the lack of animation, but it’s no match for a knee eye. Allow Terranigma Freak to demonstrate with some animated gifs he’s created.
TF: I’m going to show you the NES Fire Emblem Gaiden’s cavalier charge with the FE6 cavalier charge. We’re only going to be looking at them run towards the enemy.
See anything interesting? That’s right, the NES game is smoother. FE6 looks so bad that I had to cheat and give it one extra frame from the attack part of the cavalier animation to keep up with the NES game. The attack is composed of one frame for both GBA and NES, but wouldn’t look right when it was left out of the GBA gif. The horse’s legs are animated with five different frames on the NES, compared to only two frames — not counting the neutral starting position. (neutral position isn’t even included in the NES gif) While there are more unique individual frames for the GBA games, they ignored the part about “each image contains a small change, for example a leg moves slightly.” Even if I included the rest of the animation, it wouldn’t make a difference unless you count the two step back from the horse’s legs. The animation doesn’t move slightly, it travels a huge amount of area with very few frames in between. Here, let me slow it down to 0.3 second delay between each frame and let’s look again.
See that? The NES animation slows down, but still retains a relatively smooth look — looks like slow motion. The FE6 cavalier breaks apart even further, revealing a complete slide show of movements. *note* Although it looks fine for me, different browsers might have odd timing for animated gifs, thereby completely destroying the point I’m trying to get across. Here, let me show you the difference I was talking about. The final part of the cavalier animation when the horse takes a step back.
This contains four frames, but because it didn’t move across a huge span of area, it was able to retain a smooth motion despite the lack of frames. This is literally the only part of the horse’s legs that actually looks animated. You can not smoothly animate a horse’s legs running in the GBA games unless you use the Paladin’s horse charge section of his critical. Since I’m lazy, I didn’t bother to make gifs for the other mounted units, but I think you get the point. This isn’t just an issue with the Cavalier, it applies to all the mounted units in the game. They also have better end animation, just like the Cavalier.
Me: Here, let me use another simple example to illustrate the art of animation. Here’s a sheet of the Fighter’s attack animation.
Click on the image to see the full size.
Notice how each frame differs slightly from the next? Looks ok, but then the final frame jumps a huge area, but it uses action lines to try and cover up the lack of frames. Look at the long trail of blur behind the axe. That trail is the distance where they skipped frames. But this sheet isn’t there to show the flaws, but rather how animation can work differently depending on the situation. In this case, the lack of frames is justified due to the depiction of speed. A relatively simple motion as an axe chop works well in contrast to a large animal running. It’s not about having a lot, rather having enough frames to illustrate your movements.
Note – The following paragraph contains incorrect assumptions from two guys with no programming knowledge. It’s been pointed out the size of the cart means nothing about how much is there. I’m leaving it here to show our own ignorance, but the point about it having less animation still stands no matter the size of the cart.
Until now, we’ve tried our best to avoid comparing the GBA games to the SNES games. We used the NES to illustrate the extreme gap in technology didn’t help, but there’s a reason we avoided SNES. For one thing, not everyone’s had the chance to play them. We also wanted to save it for the grand finale. You want to know why Terranigma Freak and I are so agitated about the animation? I never even realize until TF revealed to me that FE6 is 64 megabits in size, while FE4 and FE5 are both merely 32 megabits. So FE6 is twice the size, 1/10th the animation. (we’re not even counting the butchery to the gameplay) You could fit both SNES games into one cart. The size difference gets even worse when compared to FE7 and 8, each being four times the size of the SNES games. So you see, with a cart this big, they couldn’t even animate the map sprites when animation’s turned off. I know it is an oxymoron to have animation with the animation off, but the extra bit of quality is baffling when there’s less memory in the SNES games. Even as tiny map sprites, you can see the difference when someone uses a wind spell, or a fire spell. Then there’s the crazy amount of different attacks for some classes with animation turned on. Most contains at least two different critical attacks, with some containing four or more. You can tell by the animation whether the critical attack is a first attack instant kill, first attack non-lethal, mid fight non-lethal, or mid fight fatal critical hit. If that wasn’t enough, some classes even have two different styles for each stage mentioned before. Let me give you a small taste of what some of the older FE fans got to see, then you’ll realize how aggravating it is to go back and see the GBA games. Here’s a tiny sample of what they look like.
Video 1 with all the different critical attacks are from Fire Emblem 5 and the second is from Fire Emblem 4.
Note the second video with Skasaha vs Julius. Every single attack was a critical hit, and they are not set in any particular order. It’s just a bunch of critical attack animation being played, so you’ll never know what you’ll see next. Plus, that video didn’t even show off all of the critical animations possible. Also notice how the backgrounds are taller than a single screen. A high jump will reveal extra detail you normally wouldn’t see. It’s really hard to go back to watching the GBA games after seeing that. For some of us, we had to see a horrific downgrade from SNES to GBA. The flaws in the GBA game should be apparent based upon observation with or without experiencing the SNES games.
So is there anything that the GBA games can compete against the SNES games? Yeah, the spells. The spells are lame in the SNES games. They took scrolling images from the intro to use as their ultimate spells. Gotta love Holsety’s moving green strips of… god knows what. Even then, the SNES animation’s not perfect, and there’s still much they can improve upon, but dammit, compared to the GBA games, they are godly. (and even compared with other SNES games) The 3D games are a step in the right direction, but Intelligent System’s lack of experience in 3D does put a damper on things. At least they’ve learned to use EMBM and indirect textures for Radiant Dawn. With the GBA games, Intelligent Systems has proven they don’t just suck at 3D, they suck at 2D as well.
As we all know, a new 2D remake of Fire Emblem: Sword of Light and Dragon of Darkness is coming out for the DS. The game will use traditional 2D graphics. Naturally, I (and TF as well) will scrutinize the animation once again when it is released. We won’t be doing another article, but come review time, I will make my feelings known.
Intelligent Systems, you see that little kitten? Terranigma Freak’s going to punch it if you don’t make up for the awful animations in the GBA games. The man’s vicious. He’ll torture it to death, skin it alive, and puncture it’s skull with a straw and suck out its brains unless you make the GBA games a distant memory. The life of this poor kitten is in your hands.
Special Thanks to:
Terranigma Freak – for his help and providing some gifs
Fire Emblem Planet – for the other gifs that Terranigma Freak was too lazy to make.
Intelligent Systems (Team Emblem) – for being epic fail at both 2D and 3D. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have been inspired to make this place.
Just for fun, I’ve already hidden clues about the next weekend article in this article. It shouldn’t be too hard to spot the clues and figure out what I’m going to do next. It probably won’t take as long to complete, so I hope you look forward to my next installment.
My first experience with the Fire Emblem games came from Path of Radiance for the GameCube. The animations in that were gorgeous, but I turned them all off after about a day or three of playing the game. After all, the appeal behind the franchise is its great learning curve, coupled with its customization and replay value. Plus, when you lose a character it really hurts, on multiple levels.
I’ve only recently started playing the GBA titles (thank you, emulation), and I don’t mind the animations as much as I did the ones on the ‘Cube, since they are MUCH less intrusive to the total flow of the game.
This article is just meant to get people talking and thinking. You’re still free to love whichever style you choose. We wrote this article for fun as well, and I for one certainly enjoyed writing this.
I enjoy Path of Radiance aswell its a great game 🙂 Personally I like all the fire emblem games, I haven’t beaten all of them yet tho…
You know, you’re right. The GBA animation is pretty bad. But I don’t really think the SNES games had that great animation either. Yeah, there’s a lot of variation there, but the sprites are small and the contrast is bad. The SNES games had an art style that was frankly pretty ugly; they tried too hard for realism when the hardware wasn’t cut out for it. The GBA games have much sharper, cleaner graphics, even with the jerky terrible animation.
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