One of the bigger criticisms (if not the biggest) of FE among many reviews coming out since last week is it's lack of a "soul". Many feel that the components do not meld very well together and things feel a bit disjointed. I've felt something similar as I've played the game.
The art is incredible, the lore of each faction is awesome, and the effort and love put into a backstory is fabulous. The problem is that this doesn't translate well into the game itself. Sure, I'm traipsing around the wilderness doing quests, conquering (and losing) towns, but none of it feels that memorable or meaningful in the long run. It all feels as if I'm just racking up my faction power so I can ultimately beat the AI. That's the major disconnect for me: we are given a presentation of this incredibly rich universe, yet are meant to play it like a soulless strategy game.
There are probably quite a few ways to remedy this, but a relatively simple solution I came up with was a story or event log. This would be a timeline that would track many of the meaningful events happening during the game, slaying a powerful monster, winning or losing a village, recruiting a new champion, finding a neat artifact, or completing a quest. These events would be logged for the current game, along with their date and a nice little description of the "who, where and what" surrounding it. It would look something like this:
In the Fall and Winter of the year 173, Lord Relias left the city of Hope and slew a pack of wolves.
In the Spring of 174, Lord Relias rescued the panther, "Kitty" from bandits who then joined his army. During that year, the city of New Hallas was beseiged by the armies of Kraxis and was sacked in the Winter of that same year.
During the Summer of 177, Lord Relias was killed by a Fire Elemental at the battle of Rochtleltl. His grandson, Edward, took over the throne and married the daughter of Empororr Karavox in the Fall of that same year.
Inane, brother of Lord Edward set sail in the Winter of 181 and was killed by a Drake in the Fall of 183.
If you've played Dwarf Fortress, you get the idea. At any point during the game, and at the end, this log could be pulled up and even exported out of the game. I think this would be an awesome way to make our games feel more rich and fulfilling, and give them more meaning than they currently do. They'd also be a lot of fun to post and share with others.
