Part 1: (Cutscene) Suddenly, Sothe!
Let's get this thing going!
It was a dark and... well, it was a dark night.
"Was" here being used in the perfect, rather than the imperfect tense. It certainly isn't a dark night anymore now that these guys are running around with torches. Are the torches really necessary? It isn't even that dark! Even if you account for Videogame Visibility Standards, that moon looks like it means business.
Who or whatever you guys are looking for is going to see you coming from miles away. Just saying.
Find anything?
Not yet, sir, no. Someone's gotta be here. Keep looking. Sir!
We're wasting our time. There's no one here. I know I heard something...
Hush, Yune! Please, don't cry. If they hear you, you'll give us away.
Tweet! Who's there?
(I should tell you this now because otherwise this could get super confusing: something has gone very very wrong in the way Dolphin handles the subtitles in these prerendered movies. Namely, they seem to run at about half the speed of the actual movie and end up completely out of sync with the dialog. So ignore any subtitles in screenshots of prerendered cutscenes.)
Is it the Dawn Brigade? No. It was just a bird.
Fortunately for our hideaway, these soldiers are clearly antagonists and thus not particularly smart.
...or is that just what they want you to think?
Ha ha ha! Thought we didn't see you?
Look... Silver hair... If it's the fortune-teller, we'll be heroes! Without her, the Dawn Brigade is nothing. Oh, the general's going to love this. Bind her. Sir. Listen up, lass. If you don't want to get hurt, don't struggle.
But suddenly...
Sothe!
She's not alone!
In Path of Radiance, Sothe was of very little use as a fighter, being small, a child, a thief (with no promotion prospects), and a Lv 1 recruit (though with characteristically superior stat growths for anyone willing to put the time in). Now, though… In any case, Sothe is now the early game's crutch character, this games closest answer to a Jeigan. The key difference between Sothe and, say, Marcus, however, is that Sothe is still a thief - always handy to have around - and now he's got durability.
Oh, sorry, I almost started talking about game mechanics during the opening cutscene. Where were we?
DOUBLE POSE!
"Sothe, we should probably get moving now"
"But we're posing! In a cutscene! In Fire Emblem! Don't you know how rare these cutscenes are?"
If this were Final Fantasy Tactics (or maybe VII) he could probably have killed us with that horn.
Got you now!"Goddamnit Sothe. Fine. I can be badass too. But I'll need a one-liner, and fast..."
"Time for some light reading."
My eyes!
"'Light reading'? Seriously?"
"You wanna wait until the soldiers come to and see if you can do any better?"
Good job, Micaiah. Let's go. Right. Yune!
Well, that was certainly a cutscene.