The Original Tale 2

During the project’s beginning stages, I’d planned to finish three tales. After three, I would decide whether I ought to continue the project or not. Tale 1 was pretty straightforward, it was only later that it came to be overhauled (this was due to me following Nayr’s outline for the chapter). Tale 3, more of my own ideas went into its planning, but it was also quite straightforward. Out of the original trio of tales, the second went through the most radical changes.

Tale 2 actually began as an escape mission. Thorben wasn’t a Sage, he was travelling in a carriage (he had no combat skills whatsoever). The Marquess and his team of guards were travelling across Araphen’s countryside for a meeting with Marquesses Laus, Tuscana, and Ryerde (the rebelling Marquesses from Tale 5). Raven’s team had intelligence of his movements, and lay in waiting for Thorben to pass. The chapter’s goal was to kill Thorben, after which you needed Raven and his party to escape at a point in the north.

The idea was solid: a hit-and-run chapter in Fire Emblem. It was going to be unique, it was going to be good. Then came the honeymoon-killer: engine restraints. GBAFE had never done an escape mission. “Well, it couldn’t be terribly difficult to create.” Man, was I wrong; I ran into a bundle of problems! The largest of which was; if a unit waited on the escape tile, the event that activated for him to leave the map didn’t make him leave. If I couldn’t make units leave the map instantly, it wasn’t really an escape chapter. I tried having the game run the escape command at the end of each turn, but that meant only one unit could get away as you were being heavily pursued by Thorben’s elite guards.

There was Tale 2, floating dead in the waters of hacking restraint. It simply couldn’t work with its current structure intact. So I had to either scrap the tale or bite the bullet and move to a more “traditional” Fire Emblem approach. It ended up with Raven charging Thorben's castle in a ballsy, revenge-filled rage. Raven showed up in Ostia, ready to murder Hector...but he wanted to hear Hector’s version of the “truth.” Raven’s hatred having waned in recent years, he finally realized that he may have been wrong. Hector told him, and so Araphen became the target of Raven’s rage. It felt in-character for Raven’s order a head-on assault against his new mortal enemy. The new idea worked, and so it became Tale 2.

Just thought people might find a scrapped tale idea interesting. If I ever find a way to pull off an escape chapter....maybe this could be revived in some other context (I certainly hope so, at least).