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Portraits that change throughout the story and class choice


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This is a feature I've been wanting for an eternity now and it adds so much emersion to the game when its used. I think the new title should have portraits that change as the story progresses and as your classes progress. For example the portrait of an archer character would look different than one of a sniper. I always hated that portraits remained exactly the same.

Alm, Celica, Sothe, Volke, Micaiah and Ike are great examples of what Im referring to. It always felt wrong having a character like Rolf as a marksman yet his portrait showed him in basic clothing and looking like a child. Or Lukas as a Baron or Spartan yet still looking like a common soldier in his portrait. It could allow for characters to age in appearance as the story progresses and years go by and could offer some awesome new replay ability if there are branching promotions. What do you guys think?

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It always felt weird to me that Chrom, Lucina, Robin, and others had the same portrait after promotion. It kind of breaks the immersion a bit.

I'd like to see changing portraits in the next game, thought if they have branching classes, it would be more work.

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I like how they did it in Echoes. Alm's portrait depicts him standing taller with a braver, more optimistic expression, while Celica looks less nervous or withdrawn from the conversation as she looks squarely forward.

I don't think they can do it if the game features branching promotions, or reclassing. They'd have to draw each character for each possibility, and leaving them in plain clothes just skirts the issue entirely. Granted it's not consistent when you reclass Kellam or Effie into thief and maid while their portrait still depicts a suit of armor. I think they went for this in Tellius simply because the lords have no choice in what class to become. Echoes has villagers forks, but it's a DLC extra. 

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2 minutes ago, Gustavos said:

I like how they did it in Echoes. Alm's portrait depicts him standing taller with a braver, more optimistic expression, while Celica looks less nervous or withdrawn from the conversation as she looks squarely forward.

I don't think they can do it if the game features branching promotions, or reclassing. They'd have to draw each character for each possibility, and leaving them in plain clothes just skirts the issue entirely. Granted it's not consistent when you reclass Kellam or Effie into thief and maid while their portrait still depicts a suit of armor. I think they went for this in Tellius simply because the lords have no choice in what class to become. Echoes has villagers forks, but it's a DLC extra. 

Agreed. If I'm the next game they have changing portraits for every character, they'd most likely have to limit the number of different classes a unit can be in. They probably wouldn't be able to do DLC classes in that case.

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I'd love this and would be fine if there wasn't as much reclassing. They should design portraits for all the available classes so you can just take the head from one character and put it on another class.

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I'd really like to see it back in the games for a second round after their presence in Shadows of Valentia for Alm and Celica. It really helps with the immersion, especially when outfits are radically different after promotion.

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I've thought about this for a long time too, and yes they should update portraits and cut scenes at a certain point in the game when players are very likely to have promoted the main character and units by now to their most direct advanced classes. I guess they should/could also update it whenever there's a time skip (which I'm against) or after a lot of time has passed, so that the units look like they've actually aged.

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19 hours ago, Midnight Torch said:

Agreed. If I'm the next game they have changing portraits for every character, they'd most likely have to limit the number of different classes a unit can be in. They probably wouldn't be able to do DLC classes in that case.

Considering how quickly theyve been able to pump out artwork for heroes and the TCG I think they could do it. Especially since this is a huge FE project thats been in the works for a long time now and still has over a year before release. At the very least varying portraits for the main class tree of a character would be nice. 

Edited by RennacIsUnderrated
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I would enjoy it for sure.

Although, I was kind of thinking, so long as knights don't look too ridiculously armored, or if promotions/reclassing are limited, characters could keep their own unique outfits no matter their class. Maybe. I kind of like seeing their outfits change, but at the same time I would appreciate some consistency.

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It would be pretty easy to pull of if they did away with portraits and instead had animated models appear above the dialogue boxes. These models could simple be the same models used in battle animations. Unlike other systems FE was on in the past, the Switch is more than powerful enough to make character models as detailed and good looking as artwork.

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On 2017-6-7 at 4:04 PM, Night Zap said:

It would be pretty easy to pull of if they did away with portraits and instead had animated models appear above the dialogue boxes. These models could simple be the same models used in battle animations. Unlike other systems FE was on in the past, the Switch is more than powerful enough to make character models as detailed and good looking as artwork.

This could work. Reminds me of the Bravely games. Although I would miss the art. The battle models have improved greatly and consistently ever since PoR-- you can even see a huge difference from Awakening to SoV-- so I think it would be doable.

Edited by Book Bro
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On ‎05‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 2:03 AM, RennacIsUnderrated said:

 and could offer some awesome new replay ability if there are branching promotions.

I don't see how having new portraits would do that.

Anyway, I'd rather that IS spend their time and effort on making the gameplay good and enjoyable than do pointless little things like this.

Edited by NinjaMonkey
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4 minutes ago, NinjaMonkey said:

Anyway, I'd rather that IS spend their time and effort on making the gameplay good and enjoyable than do pointless little things like this.

the people who make the gameplay are not the same people who do the visuals, so I doubt those two things are related

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I'm not sure. I get why people would want it, but I like characters looking the same, regardless of what I do with them. I wouldn't want Lukas to be more armoured up, for instance, especially going off the huge armour they have... so yeah, it'd make me worry about the characters ending up looking worse as they promoted.

Of course, it could come into it and I end up liking it. Who knows?

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On 6/9/2017 at 4:53 PM, NinjaMonkey said:

I don't see how having new portraits would do that.

Anyway, I'd rather that IS spend their time and effort on making the gameplay good and enjoyable than do pointless little things like this.

So you can pick different classes each playthrough...duh

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14 hours ago, RennacIsUnderrated said:

So you can pick different classes each playthrough...duh

Having new portraits has nothing to do with increasing the re-playability of the game. Features like re-classing (as seen from Shadow Dragon onwards) do.

Edited by NinjaMonkey
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I think it depends on how flexible the class choices are. If there is a set class route for a character, then I don't see why not - even the likely DLC classes should have portraits since you're playing money for them. But there is a class route similar to Awakening, where a character could be almost any class, then it becomes less likely - the developers would have much more work to do and they know they can get away with not bothering.

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6 hours ago, Zelgius said:

I think it depends on how flexible the class choices are. If there is a set class route for a character, then I don't see why not - even the likely DLC classes should have portraits since you're playing money for them. But there is a class route similar to Awakening, where a character could be almost any class, then it becomes less likely - the developers would have much more work to do and they know they can get away with not bothering.

What if it's like Sacred Stones: One base class, two promotion options (barring Lords and trainees), could it work then?

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What if each character's portraits (barring units that have a strict promotion line) have 3 variations to it for the amount of armor their class is wearing.

 

For example say Tharja as a dark mage her portrait has little armor. Her archer class gives it some armor and her knight class makes her heavily armored.

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On 6/15/2017 at 8:02 PM, ThatOneWeakArcher said:

What if each character's portraits (barring units that have a strict promotion line) have 3 variations to it for the amount of armor their class is wearing.

 

For example say Tharja as a dark mage her portrait has little armor. Her archer class gives it some armor and her knight class makes her heavily armored.

As much as I would love that, it would still be too much work to do for a cast the size of Awakening and Fates. Awakening had 54 characters, and that would be 162 different portraits in total. This isn't counting having to also do this for all the different facial expressions. We also know IS is a bit lazy when it comes to class changes because of how they have been using one standard model for most classes in Awakening and Fates.

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