Mathiu Silverberg, Bad stratagist or the worst stratagist

Hypotheses for, and analyses of, the various Suikoden characters.
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Silverberg
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Re: Mathiu Silverberg, Bad stratagist or the worst stratagis

Post by Silverberg »

Really, the only ones who ever seemed to care that Tir had the Soul Eater were Windy, Cleo, Pahn, Gremio, and I guess Viktor?

Something I've always pondered about the first Suikoden was the plot and subplot. Was the main plot, Tir having possesion of the Soul Eater and how had had to overcome trials, or was it there's this big war going on, and Tir just happens to have a very powerful weapon to help win it.

I ponder this because for the most part, no one knows or even seems to care about the Soul Eater. For example, when you're up in Seek Valley, and you have that confrontation with Windy and Ted, Milia seems to look at Tir like "um, alrighty. Sorry for your loss? But here's what we came for, let's just move on shall we?" And then when Gremio is revived, Mathiu is just like, "right, anyway, war time!" It's like, dude, this thing on the hero's hand just brought someone back from the dead, does that not make you want to just throw Tir over to Gregminster and just have him suck up the palace with Barbarosa right up with it? Mathiu never even suggests that Tir should use the Soul Eater to shave off most of the 100,000 troops in the final battle, Tir does; even though he's shot down by Leknaat for, what I can assume to be his own sake.

And if Leknaat didn't want Tir to use the Soul Eater because it'd hurt him, regardless of the awesome results, shouldn't Mathiu have been like, "hey, sooooo, I did say I'd do whatever I had to to win this war right?" and then, of course, toss Tir to the front lines waving his right hand in the air shouting "HELL, HELL HELL!"

Not to go too far off topic here, but speaking of Leknaat and not wanting Tir to use the Soul Eater . . . . Was she in her office half the time doing her taxes and booking vacations to Crystal Valley? Hello! Did she not care that Tir was using it THE ENTIRE TIME?? She was about as useful as Mathiu. Might as well been named Leknaat Silverberg. What kind of sick b*tch wakes you up in the middle of the night like she was Glinda in her magic bubble and tells you something profound when you're at your least capable of conscious thought? Think her rude blind face would see Tir's staff heading towards it in a raging fit of confusion?

It's probably what caused Luc to go off the deep end tbh. Not the realization of the future world. It was because he'd be inside the big magic cauldron scrubbing it down, when Leknaat would just pop in and scare the crap out of him, causing him to hit his head hard on . . . whatever cauldrons are made of.

Leknaat: "Luc."
Luc: "waaaaah!! Where'd you come from?"
Leknaat: "The Imperial Guard have arrived for the astral conclusions, go down and try to kill them with a golem."
Luc: "You want me to kill them?"
Leknaat: "No, just test them."
Luc: "Why can't you do it? You can teleport too."
Leknaat: {disappears}
Luc: "OMG, you stupid lazy woman! Fine I'll go. But one of these days, one of these days . . . bang, zoom, boom goes the Grasslands!"

Anyway, yeah . . . . Mathiu, he does stuff not good . . .
"Black Rune, pink balloon! This guy killed Gremio!!!"
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Wolf Kanno
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Re: Mathiu Silverberg, Bad stratagist or the worst stratagis

Post by Wolf Kanno »

Lucretia, along with Shu to some degree and definetly Albert Silverberg, are so utterly flawless as strategist that they can all be considered Mary Tzu's in their own right. It's kind of hard to compete with some characters who pull off some of the craziest and convulated plans ever and have some kind of major contingency plan for any kind of set-back no matter how random or out of nowhere it can be.

While I can agree Mathiu Silverberg is an underwhelming strategist compared to some of the other strategist from later games, I don't feel any of the TC's arguments hold as being bad:
1)Taking Toran Castle as an HQ
Not a bad idea really, of anything the real question people should be asking is why the Empire didn't send Sonya to take care of them in the first place? I mean Teo is a cavalry unit attacking a naval base in the middle of a lake, the Navy should have been sent in instead and would have probably crushed the Liberation Army.
2)Suggesting to recruit Lepant
Honestly, this is something that can be argued about JRPGs in general to some extent. Still if you look at the fact Lepant is the head of a powerful merchant company, chances are he's a valuable source of money and resources for the army so getting him was quite important if that was the case. He's also famous, so getting him to join would probably add some widespread appeal to the Liberation Army's cause.
3)Orchestrated creating the forged document to save Liukan
Also not a bad plan, I mean they needed someone to help fight against a guy using biological weapons on people. Your forces can't even get close to the castle due to the pollen and god knows a clever use of a wind rune could probably knock out a long range siege trying to kill the plant with arrows, fire, or catapults. I mean Milich is a master swordsmen and magician.
4)Fooling the spy into thinking there was a training exercise while attacking the northern checkpoint
This is brilliant simply because the bad intel given simply tells the Scarlet Moon Empire superiors that the spy has been compromised and his intel can't be trusted anymore, notice how it's never brought up again until the spy reveals himself? Sanchez could have easily warned Kasim Hazel about Mathiu's plan to send diversionary forces to the border fortresses to get the main army out and allow the Liberation Army to sneak into his fortress but it doesn't seem that Kasim did do it, if the info was reported, or Sanchez didn't tell them because he wasn't sure the plan was the real plan... Seriously, this was one of the better plans he formed and one that is pretty common in real world battle situations.
5)Getting the city-states to ambush Kasim's forces.
As was stated, the Liberation Army didn't have the numbers to win a direct assault against him, the fact that what appears to be a rescue mission turns into a victory for the Liberation Army is pretty clever on Mathiu's part. This plan also, as has been stated already in this thread, reduced military casualties for the Liberation Army, and better yet, will keep the rather large chunk of Kasim's forces busy trying to hold off the City-States of Jowstone instead of coming from behind and attacking the Liberation army in a pincer attack when they try to take Gregminster. This was quite a clever plan and was also some pretty clever foreshadowing of the political conflicts seen in Suikoden II.
6)Making Ice boats to storm Sonya's fortress
There are two problems with the TC's alternate plan to take Shasarazade:

1) Anji's pirate crew would probably have been killed in the process of just trying to get Sonya's attention, it's pretty clear she has no tolerance for pirates. Not to mention this act would probably had resulted in her forces storming the Toran Lake Castle, which would have probably ended with a blockade and the Liberation Army would have been waited out in a long siege.

2) You don't even realize she has a grudge against Tir until you meet her at the storming of Shasarazade, so their would have not been any way for the Liberation Army to know that such a tactic was a possibility.

While I can concede that the Ice Boat strategy is silly and even with surprise on their side, there is no way the Liberation Army would have been able to get into the fortress without experiencing some heavy casualties cause let's face it, we have people in flimsy boats made of ice going up against the countries actual navy, it's like Sir Francis Drake going up against the Spanish Armada with a fleet of life boats and the element of surprise. It would have been ugly...

So overall, I don't consider Mathiu all that bad of a strategist, he just happens to appear in the game that had an inexperienced design team, so he comes off pretty underwhelming compared to later Strategists. It's the same reason why people give the plot some slack compared to SIV, I mean it's hard to justify judging an early work with the same criteria of the later work.
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wataru14
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Re: Mathiu Silverberg, Bad stratagist or the worst stratagis

Post by wataru14 »

Mathiu isn't one of the series' best strategists, but he's far better than Elenor.
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Sasarai10
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Re: Mathiu Silverberg, Bad stratagist or the worst stratagis

Post by Sasarai10 »

For me he was emotionless and cold like Shu....and for me this is a bad thing.

When he asks you if you hate him,i really would like to tell him that "you are just an ***hole" :twisted:

Anyone else noticed that he is a bad cook too? His walls in his house,above the kitchen, are a little burnt :mrgreen:
Wolkendrache
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Re: Mathiu Silverberg, Bad stratagist or the worst stratagis

Post by Wolkendrache »

I have a different explanation:
Suikoden 1 is understandably the game closest to the novel. Suikoden 1 is based on the novel, Suikoden 2 is based on Suikoden 1 and so on. Now, in the novel, no character is flawless, not even strategist Wu Yong, even though his schemes are often the key to success. In short, Mathiu is more "Suikoden" (like in the novel) while the others are more "Genso" (fantastic).

Everyone interested is welcome to read my comparison between game and novel in the General Discussion section ;-)
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Re: Mathiu Silverberg, Bad stratagist or the worst stratagis

Post by BrucePrintscreen »

Wolkendrache wrote:I have a different explanation:
Suikoden 1 is understandably the game closest to the novel. Suikoden 1 is based on the novel, Suikoden 2 is based on Suikoden 1 and so on.
Are you sure about this? I seem to remember reading somewhere that the creator of Suikoden actually wrote S2 first, and then wrote S1 as a prequel. If I remember correctly, when he was asked to do his first game, he was afraid of lacking experience and thus waste the story he wrote for S2, so he designed S1 as a sort of training.
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Re: Mathiu Silverberg, Bad stratagist or the worst stratagis

Post by Wolkendrache »

S1 characters are definitely closer to the novel than S2 characters. Wu Yong (Mathiu) was a school teacher for literary arts before joining, and it was his idea and scheme to recruit the Tengou star (Lepant) and so on, and it's not only the strategist, it's the majority of the stars.

I can imagine he created the Rune of the Beginning and its legacy, as well as the S2 storyline frame, first. But I highly doubt he created the final S2 characters themselves, as well as character specific S2 plot elements, before those of S1. The similarities between S1 and the novel are too striking.
"Within the four seas, all men are brothers" Shuihu Zhuan
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