My Unit

                 

                    So Christian Alonzo started a great thread about Conquest Corrin and the My Unit mechanic in general. I really liked it and wanted to give it a proper wall of text but I was too busy at the time and made a bookmark comment promising a long wall of text. Weeks transpired, I got busy and I never delivered on my promise. Since I just barely finished my Top 10 Lords list and since I don’t want to start my Best Wyvern Riders list yet I thought I could follow through on my promise and share my thoughts on the My Unit concept in general.

                     The short answer to both questions are that I really do not like EITHER of them. The My Unit mechanic is one that may have garnered new fans and may be appealing to some people, but I think it is one of the worst things to happen to the Fire Emblem series. I know it’s a pretty heavy-handed accusation so allow me to explain why I feel that way. Conceptually speaking the My Unit concept is extremely lazy. I’ve never liked the idea of a blank slate character that I’m supposed to project myself into. It doesn’t work for me in the vast majority of instances. It feels like the writers are trying to justify not even bothering to create an actual character with motivations, feelings and a personality. The My Unit concept basically says that the player is supposed to do the writer’s work for them. The writer is supposed to create a character that pulls the player in because of how well written / likeable they are.

                    Speaking of likeability all of the My Units that the series has had thus far (Mark doesn’t count. He’s not playable) have had a really negative impact on the stories of their games. Awakening and Conquest have the worst stories in the series and FE 12’s story is only hurt by Kris’s inclusion. All three My Units take the term ‘Mary Sue’ to a whole new extreme. Their casts all worship them and in each new installment the player worship gets more and more extreme. There are characters in Awakening and Fates whose personalities solely revolve around or are heavily defined by their relationship to these characters leading some fans to refer to certain characters as Robin / Corrin-sexuals.  The narratives do everything in their power to portray the My Units as special snowflakes who can do no wrong and they rarely, if ever, have to face the consequences of their actions. 

                   In terms of plot integration two of the three My Units are at polar opposite extremes. Kris is literally the definition of a self-insert character that has such a minimal impact on the plot of FE 12 that you could just cut him / her out of the game and nothing of value would have been lost. Corrin, in my opinion, goes to the exact opposite route and is so crucial to the story that EVERYTHING revolves around him or her. Nobody else really gets that much time in the spotlight and if a plot point isn’t immediately relevant to Corrin it’s not relevant to the game. Robin seemed to be the best of the three in terms of plot integration but even Robin has issues and flaws of his / her own. Chrom is WAY too trusting of Robin from the get-go and the plot goes from a Chrom show to a Robin show with little in-between. While I consider both Chrom and Robin to be the protagonists of Awakening, I kind of wish the narrative would do a better job letting them both be equally as important to the game’s story.

                        What’s even worse is that the My Units fail spectacularly at representing me. I don’t feel like I’m immersed in these poorly developed worlds (let’s face it, the world-building in Fire Emblems 12 -14 is not very good at all). I can’t project myself into Robin, Kris or Corrin because they all have bland personalities of their own. They don’t do things the way I would do them nor would they react to certain situations the way I would. So for me personally the My Units all fail at doing at what they’re supposed to do.

                  So that’s my take on the My Unit concept. It’s terrible for the story, it’s a lazy concept and it’s the death of storytelling. I want characters like Ike or Leif back. 

                 P.S. Conquest!Corrin is my least favorite character of the entire series. I hate him / her so much that my issues with characters like Severa, Lyn or Micaiah seem relatively tame by comparison. Corrin is a freaking wuss and a terrible person and yet somehow Conquest's narrative tries to make him / her look like a good person. Corrin is a Black Hole Mary Sue that makes Robin and Kris look tame by comparison. I've already bashed Corrin in these posts here:

http://thecrusadergrant.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-i-hate-conquest-part-3-abominable.html

http://thecrusadergrant.blogspot.com/2016/03/why-i-hate-conquest-part-4-these-lousy.html

                          So read those if you want to know my full thoughts on Corrin. They are spoiler-ific though so don't read them if you haven't beaten Conquest.