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What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?


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56 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

ambition has often been the enemy of FE in this case.

For me it's the other way around. I tend to like the ambitious titles much more than the straightforward ones. Before 3H RD was my fav., and before i played RD Conquest was my fav. mainly due to gameplay.

I can't help but think that if FE returns to straightforward narrative that i will really dislike it. Even if PoR is among my fav. titles in the series, it's the only ''straightforward'' one i really like and mainly because it's very strong characterization and storytelling, something other FE don't usually offer.

For me ideally next non remake FE would've a structure like RD. I really really dig the the multipe army aspect of it. Even with the balance problems such structure might bring.

Honestly if it wasn't for Part 4 maps in RD being the kind of maps i detest the most RD would still be my fav.

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3 hours ago, Jotari said:

So then do you think Soap Operas have the most developed and complex characters in literature?

No cause I haven’t seen them and even if I said no to that question that’s not my point. I’ll admit I’ve been arguing my point rather poorly so far but to clarify myself I’m not saying longer stories are inherently better. That’s just not true. I more so agree with @vanguard333 in that a story should only be as long as it needs to be. However in regards to Fire Emblem supports specifically the more supports the better because more opportunities for fun characterization or development is NEVER a bad thing. And I want to make this as clear as humanly possible because people keep misinterpreting my point. When I say more supports are inherently better what I mean is that learning more about the characters is never a bad thing. A character with more supports is typically gonna be more fleshed out than a character with less supports. What can you tell me about Tobin as opposed to say Stahl. Do you get my point?

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On 12/17/2021 at 9:40 PM, Ottservia said:

Can we stop with this mentality that more supports = bad because that’s just blatently not true.

I disagree with this in a sense, less as a failure of writing, but as a failure of editing. Writing more is good, but you need to trim down to the best of it for the sack of quality. Trimming down the supports to the better ones, or important ones would improve the system, as opposed to this massive (seeming mandated to be so, in spite of the quality of writing) glut of them we have seen repeatedly. As that famous Shakespeare quote goes "Brevity is the soul of Wit".

 

On 12/18/2021 at 10:24 AM, Ottservia said:

My point is as I said earlier longer means more opportunities to flesh out your setting and characters.

I don't think this really holds water, as length can easily be a detriment to the effective fleshing out of your character and setting. The classic example of this is the prequel problem, a simple statement about a character's past, or explanation of world building that lets the reader/viewer/player fill in the blanks is often more effective at fleshing a character out then explicitly spelling it out, as writers can rarely make it more engaging, relatable, or powerful to the reader/viewer/player then they themselves can, with the prequel issue being that filling in these details can often ruin the characters, world, and narrative they created without it.

 

On 12/18/2021 at 10:46 AM, Ottservia said:

Well that has nothing to do with Quantity as much as quality. Like it doesn’t matter if there are 2 or 200 supports. If you have a shitty writer then they’re going to write bad supports no matter how many of them there are.

This is assuming that the abilities of a writer is some simplistic and binary skill. Some writers have things they do well, and things they do poorly, and the more they are forced to write about one character the more likely they are to stumble into territory that they are weak in, or be forced to fall back into repetitive territory (which I will get to after my next quote). In either case you are saddling a character with moments of bad writing, and bad writing isn't canceled out by good writing (nor good writing canceled out by bad, each have their own impact on a piece).

 

On 12/18/2021 at 10:46 AM, Ottservia said:

Also repetition isn’t inherently a bad thing. One Piece arcs are relatively repititive but that doesn’t make them bad. Hell in a lot of cases the repitition is intentional. The same is true for Bleach btw. Like I said with Benice. This mind set just comes from being unreasonably dismissive 

While repetition can be really useful to a narrative, timing is extremely important with regard to repetition. Reminding people of things that were established a long time ago that will be touched upon soon is really important for keeping the reader on the same page. The issue is repetition doesn't work in supports inherently because the player is in control over when they watch supports. Watching two repetitive supports in a row, or a support that is repeating an issue that has been resolved in another support weakens the narrative, and the character they concern, as it makes them more one dimensional.

 

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Not stepping into the Support conversation, especially since there's a perfectly good thread about it where I've stated everything I can and want to about this topic already. Maybe bumping that would be a better place for conversation about the support topic if it's coming back. Or not. 

https://forums.serenesforest.net/index.php?/topic/94464-why-are-supports-still-considered-to-be-a-good-form-of-storytelling-in-fe/

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9 hours ago, Vicious Sal said:

ell said. If I were a sculptor and just brought a rude brick of marble over instead of an actual detailed sculpture my patrons would look at me quizzically. If I then told them that "There's more stone so obviously that is going to be better than less stone, that's basic logic!" I would lose my job on the spot.

I'll admit there's some wiggle room here. A chef might let you salt your own dish to your taste, for instance. However, he'd do most of the seasoning and preparations himself, and there are some spices which would clash with the rest of the dish which he would keep out of it. Adding mustard to your tiramisu is not an improvement even though you're adding additional distinct flavors. Having the option of adding mustard to your tiramisu is not an improvement. At best it's a neutral, but it's more realistically a negative because you run the risk someone might actually try it.

5 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Like if you can craft a well written character in a single chapter just imagine what you can do with 2 or 3 chapters with that same character. It’s almost never a bad thing to learn more about your characters by giving them more screentime.

Have you ever heard of the basic economic concept of marginal utility?

You could write a book detailing every minute detail about how a character uses the bathroom, and even if everything you learned in the book was new information, it would still be a waste of your time. Stories are not almanacs of trivia about a fictional world- there's a reason the Silmarillion doesn't come included with the Lord of the Rings.

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

So then do you think Soap Operas have the most developed and complex characters in literature?

To be fair, the most developed character in fiction might be the Fonz.

1 hour ago, Ottservia said:

What can you tell me about Tobin as opposed to say Stahl.

That I enjoy his dynamic with other characters in the story. Stahl being the son of an apothecary with messy hair means much less to me than Tobin's show-boating and bromance with Gray. Y'know, things that affect how he acts and interacts. SMH you probably don't even know the secret Stahl interdimensional travel Basilio lore.

10 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

I loved 95% of 3H supports, even the ones with just quiet life moments where characters talk about nothing.

I-M-O the supports are a tedious pace-breaking nuisance. They don't flesh out anything because they either contribute no new information or information that is essentially meaningless rather than insightful. I appreciate that some of them end at B, but that doesn't cut out that much time, and if anything is an implicit acknowledgement that many of these interactions needed to be cut short.

2 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

For me it's the other way around. I tend to like the ambitious titles much more than the straightforward ones.

Why?

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3 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

Oh; I agree with you guys that, mechanically, it was pretty good. I might disagree about saying it was the best, but I agree that it was good.

I agree that Radiant Dawn did make up for the lack of proper support conversations through things like base conversations... but only to an extent; the characters in Radiant Dawn have more flesh to them than most FE games, but they still have less flesh overall than the characters that were introduced in Path of Radiance, even when only considering the amount of flesh the PoR characters had in PoR. A huge amount of that can of course be attributed to Radiant Dawn having to juggle both the new characters and the ones from Path of Radiance, but the lack of proper support conversations is part of it.

 

Anyway, I've tried to stay out of the "long stories vs short stories" argument, largely because I lost track of what arguments everyone was making, but I thought I'd say my opinion on the subject:

I think a story should be as long or short as it needs to be to have everything it needs without having bloat. That amount of length will vary with the story; a long story isn't inherently better or worse than a shorter one. However, a longer story is riskier, since a longer story needs more time. It's similar to simple story vs complex story: neither is inherently better, but the latter is riskier and needs more time.

Fire Emblem has been shifting towards longer, more complex, and overall more ambitious stories, and ambition has often been the enemy of FE in this case. I still maintain that Path of Radiance has the best narrative of any FE game, and it's a very straightforward narrative.

I kind of briefly touched on this, but I'll elaborate again here. I don't think the new cast in Radiant Dawn being underdeveloped is a result of them not having support convos. As a lot of the "newly playable" characters in Radiant Dawn are characters that were in Path of Radiance, but weren't playable and thus have no support convos. Sanaki is a completely well rounded character despite not having support convos in either game, as is Sigrun (I'd argue even more so than Tanith), Oliver, Naesala (playable but no support convos in Path of Radiance) and pretty much all the Path of Radiance characters that became playable with the exception of Garith (who is barely in Path of Radiance and just in general is probably the least developed character this side of Thracia). All of these characters have exactly the same amount of support convos as Edward and Nolan, 0, yet they're more fully fleshed out. Part of that I think is that they were already existing characters in Path of Radiance, so the writers already had a sense of them even if they didn't give them supports, that made them easier to work with in Radiant Dawn. They're also, to varying degrees, quite plot relevant, and indeed the new plot relevant characters that Radiant Dawn introduces, Micaiah, Pelleas and Skirmr are also very well developed. Now I'm not necessarily saying making Edward and Nolan and the like more plot relevant would have helped much, Radiant Dawn is already a very tense game and inserting them directly into the plot could get quite messy, but Radiant Dawn shows very well both with its characters that were NPCs in Path of Radiance and with its new plot relevant characters that making a fully fleshed out character is completely possible without supports. You just have to give them some role in the story. Skirmr's role isn't even that big, it's necessary but not massively important, yet they manage to give him a proper arc and easily definable personality and relationships with other characters. Overall my main point is that I don't think the Dawn Brigade and the random new Laguz we got being underdeveloped is really because they lack support, but because as is Radiant Dawn has over seventy freaking characters in its cast+villains. And as I said, I played Radiant Dawn before Path of Radiance, yet even then the Dawn Brigade stuck out to me as underdeveloped compared to everyone else. I think the writers were just more comfortable writing dialogue for existing characters than putting much effort into the new ones. Like Tauroneo's role in the plot for example, it's pretty small, but also pretty distinct, that easily could have been filled by a new character like Nolan (technical leader of the Dawn Brigade), but they were more comfortable giving it to Tauroneo.

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29 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Why?

Oh boy

  • From a story standpoint, i pretty much dislike (to detest) most straightforward FE stories all usually ending with some ''Dragon/Cult mind control/Bad'' moment. Even FE4 gen 2 falls into that trap eventually. Even Thracia fucks up at the end with the final map being Cult-kun. All of them start blending together eventually. PoR and maybe SS are the exceptions here with PoR having very robust characterization and talking about some other themes like racism and power, and SS Lyon wanting to use the stone to save his country. While 3H and RD also fall into some of the traps, in 3H the Dragon bad is very argueable as she only really snaps in CF due to betrayal and had pretty much human reasons to do what she did (and not stupid dragon mad plot) and while RD has the stupid blood pact, most of the game was still a conflict of ideals and seeing multipe PoV is something i really love. And different Events & view points from routes is something i also really dig, even if Fates was a mess and 3H was quite repititive. Also adds quite alot to replayability.
  • Gameplay wise i really dig Army switching. It breaks the monotony that happens in most games and let's you play differently with different Teams. When it comes to Routes the different teams do also offer different playstyle, and in Fates the routes are straight up different experiences. Even in 3H with the heavy map reuse my experience was quite different with every team (Maybe because unlike everyone else i didn't go 15 Wyverns, i also pretty much never recruited from other houses).

Basically every straightforward FE story has me going like

AdorableHandmadeIrishdraughthorse-size_r

and they tend to be coupled with the gameplay i find most boring, too (although that's not always the case). 

So i'd rather FE be experimental, ambitious and get some stuff wrong/fail rather than stick to the old known formula.

Edited by Father Shrimpas
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5 hours ago, Jotari said:

So then do you think Soap Operas have the most developed and complex characters in literature?

To be precise, American soap operas. The Arab world has their variant of the genre, and I did read that one fundamental difference between the two- is that the Arab ones (not uncommonly Egyptian to be more precise) end.

 

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Some writers have things they do well, and things they do poorly, and the more they are forced to write about one character the more likely they are to stumble into territory that they are weak in

More character exposure also creates issues of character development. It is easier to have a freshly created character develop, since they are starting at 0 development, obviously. Handling a character's presence after the big easy first character arc is a trickier matter, increasing the likelihood of failure.

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Some writers have things they do well, and things they do poorly

I wonder, has there ever been such a such a thing as a composite character, who from the start had more than one writer active at the same time? The risk on paper would be creating two or more discordant personalities in a single body from the audience's perspective. But then, letting someone write a character's romantic life and another their public persona, could at least make the aspects individually stronger?🤔

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

The classic example of this is the prequel problem, a simple statement about a character's past, or explanation of world building that lets the reader/viewer/player fill in the blanks is often more effective at fleshing a character out then explicitly spelling it out, as writers can rarely make it more engaging, relatable, or powerful to the reader/viewer/player then they themselves can, with the prequel issue being that filling in these details can often ruin the characters, world, and narrative they created without it.

Retcon, which is "filling in the blanks" when the blanks have already been filled (so only somewhat more brazen), is just as possible in sequels as prequels as we should all know. Nothing like adding a Super God whose existence was never mentioned in the prior well-built game/movie/book to ruin it. Not that said story didn't outright preclude the possibility of the Super God, but who in the audience would've reasonably thunk it in the first place?

 

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

They're also, to varying degrees, quite plot relevant, and indeed the new plot relevant characters that Radiant Dawn introduces, Micaiah, Pelleas and Skirmr are also very well developed.

Being someone who surprised themselves when they realized they're a Skrimir fan years after first having played RD, I will second this.

Skrimir when you look at it IMO, gets a full character arc over his appearances in Parts 3 and 4. Not the most sophisticated of character arcs- he goes from raging brainless proud bestial meathead, to realizing the importance of strategy and calmly backing off from pursuing a target of his aggression (Naesala during 4-P). But, it's an arc. Told over just two parts of a four-part game, and almost entirely just the longest part. Am I wrong to commend this?

And is it wrong my intellectual platonic appreciation of Skrimir followed with a desire to run my hands through his thick red locks?😆

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I don't care for the more ambitious entries of FE because IS always seems to find some way to fuck it up. And they're a professional company, so they don't get credit just for trying something cool if they faceplant on the landing.

And yeah, while gameplay is obviously the most important factor in a game, I've failed to finish one FE game path because the story pissed me off too much, and failed to finish another path because I got bored and the new TWEWY existed. Story and character are important enough to me to give me motivation to finish the game, especially if the gameplay isn't the most amazing thing in the world.

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33 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Have you ever heard of the basic economic concept of marginal utility?

You could write a book detailing every minute detail about how a character uses the bathroom, and even if everything you learned in the book was new information, it would still be a waste of your time. Stories are not almanacs of trivia about a fictional world- there's a reason the Silmarillion doesn't come included with the Lord of the Rings.

This is a strawman. I never argued this

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3 hours ago, Ottservia said:

No cause I haven’t seen them and even if I said no to that question that’s not my point. I’ll admit I’ve been arguing my point rather poorly so far but to clarify myself I’m not saying longer stories are inherently better. That’s just not true. I more so agree with @vanguard333 in that a story should only be as long as it needs to be. However in regards to Fire Emblem supports specifically the more supports the better because more opportunities for fun characterization or development is NEVER a bad thing. And I want to make this as clear as humanly possible because people keep misinterpreting my point. When I say more supports are inherently better what I mean is that learning more about the characters is never a bad thing. A character with more supports is typically gonna be more fleshed out than a character with less supports. What can you tell me about Tobin as opposed to say Stahl. Do you get my point?

For Tobin what motivates him in life, how he feels about his place in the world and how his attitude and opinions change over the course of the story. For Stahl the random things he gets up to in his free time and when his birthday is.

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5 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

For me it's the other way around. I tend to like the ambitious titles much more than the straightforward ones. Before 3H RD was my fav., and before i played RD Conquest was my fav. mainly due to gameplay.

I can't help but think that if FE returns to straightforward narrative that i will really dislike it. Even if PoR is among my fav. titles in the series, it's the only ''straightforward'' one i really like and mainly because it's very strong characterization and storytelling, something other FE don't usually offer.

I like some of the more ambitious games as well; namely Radiant Dawn and Three Houses. I'm not saying that those games are bad; I just meant that they tend to bite off more than they can chew. However, I do not like any version of Fates at all; the story reeks of biting off more than they could chew, and the gameplay felt like they were cramming in every idea they could think of without thinking them through just to see what fans would like and what they wouldn't like.

I disagree; I think a return to more straightforward narrative may help provide more time to ensure strong characterization and storytelling.

 

4 hours ago, Ottservia said:

No cause I haven’t seen them and even if I said no to that question that’s not my point. I’ll admit I’ve been arguing my point rather poorly so far but to clarify myself I’m not saying longer stories are inherently better. That’s just not true. I more so agree with @vanguard333 in that a story should only be as long as it needs to be. However in regards to Fire Emblem supports specifically the more supports the better because more opportunities for fun characterization or development is NEVER a bad thing. And I want to make this as clear as humanly possible because people keep misinterpreting my point. When I say more supports are inherently better what I mean is that learning more about the characters is never a bad thing. A character with more supports is typically gonna be more fleshed out than a character with less supports. What can you tell me about Tobin as opposed to say Stahl. Do you get my point?

More support conversations on paper provides the opportunity for learning more about the characters, but I think there is a bit of a trade-off in that all this is being written within a given time frame. 

As for Tobin and Stahl; what I can say about them is that they're both characters who define themselves as the generic guy; Tobin due to being friends with a Gary Stu his inferiority-to-Alm complex, and Stahl because of his nature as a jack-of-all-trades... and that's about all I can say about either of them. Neither Shadows nor Awakening were the best at characterization.

 

@Jotari I agree that most of the problem was due to the PoR characters overshadowing most of the new characters; I guess I was just trying to say that the change to the support system made an already-existing problem worse.

 

2 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

 

  • From a story standpoint, i pretty much dislike (to detest) most straightforward FE stories all usually ending with some ''Dragon/Cult mind control/Bad'' moment. Even FE4 gen 2 falls into that trap eventually. Even Thracia fucks up at the end with the final map being Cult-kun. All of them start blending together eventually. PoR and maybe SS are the exceptions here with PoR having very robust characterization and talking about some other themes like racism and power, and SS Lyon wanting to use the stone to save his country. While 3H and RD also fall into some of the traps, in 3H the Dragon bad is very argueable as she only really snaps in CF due to betrayal and had pretty much human reasons to do what she did (and not stupid dragon mad plot) and while RD has the stupid blood pact, most of the game was still a conflict of ideals and seeing multipe PoV is something i really love. And different Events & view points from routes is something i also really dig, even if Fates was a mess and 3H was quite repititive. Also adds quite alot to replayability.

The ambitious games are guilty of that as well. The main villain of Fates is a senile dragon, and let's not forget that Three Houses has TWSITD.

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18 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

The ambitious games are guilty of that as well. The main villain of Fates is a senile dragon, and let's not forget that Three Houses has TWSITD.

I admitted as much with RD's blood pact as an example, but they do not steal the spotlight from the games like how it happens in the rest of the series.

As for Fates and senile Dragon that's pretty much every FE (with some exceptions).

FE4 was my 2nd FE after Fates, and at the end of it all the main thought i had was ''Even back in 1995 they had Anankos in this series''. I loved gen 1 aloooot, but Gen 2? I couldn't help but think people overblew how bad Fates is if the suppossed best Story in the series (what people told fe newb me back then) had that Dragon issue as well.

I grew to learn that it's a series staple and it's pretty much one of the things i hate the most about the series. It was a ''curse/dragon/cult/whatever all along'' is one of my least fav. story tropes/elements ever. 

RD an 3H (my fav. titles in the series) suffer from those issues as well as mentioned above and before, but not nearly to the same degree as the rest of the series. My only trouble with RD is the blood pact. 3H atleast did Dragons in a way i love and approve of, but twistd is a sore point yeah, but they were largely not in the focus.

18 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

and the gameplay felt like they were cramming in every idea they could think of without thinking them through just to see what fans would like and what they wouldn't like.

Not really an unpopular opinion, but Conquest is imo the most well designed gameplay in the series, and no other FE comes even close in that regard. They weren't cramming, aside from a couple maps (like Fox hell) everything was designed very carefully and with consideration to what the game gives you.

Of course the story and cast massively suffer in this game, so if you even care a bit about those it can be a painful ordeal

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Quote

However, I do not like any version of Fates at all; the story reeks of biting off more than they could chew, and the gameplay felt like they were cramming in every idea they could think of without thinking them through just to see what fans would like and what they wouldn't like.

Actually I think the problem with Fates was more a lack of desire to do any biting at all. There seems to be a real dearth of artistic ambition. There was ambition on a production level in the sense that they wanted three games out of it, but the story is almost defined by short cuts, easy answers and pursuing the least interesting scenarios for the least amount of work. 

Kotaro and Corrin turning on each other for example has no higher ambition than getting to fight a stage against ninjas and ensuring that Corrin doesn't have to work with a shady ally. The story is supremely uninteresting in the implications of Corrin randomly picking fights with Nohr's allies, nor is it very interested in an explanation as to why Garon has people executed just for being in the same room as him but is very chill about his pawns getting murdered.

Actually Garon himself is the best example of Fates lack of ambition. It takes a certain mindset to set up a villain as being motivated by the poverty of his kindom and then suddenly decide that actually he and his inner circle are solely motivated by being psychopaths. 

All in all I think lack of interest and not an abundance of ideas is what can be traced to most of Fates story problems. I do think more highly about its gameplay though. I think they honestly did sit down and think on how to best handle things. Pair up for instance was immensely improved compared to how they did it in Awakening, and the map variety was quite good in conquest. 

Quote

rom a story standpoint, i pretty much dislike (to detest) most straightforward FE stories all usually ending with some ''Dragon/Cult mind control/Bad'' moment. Even FE4 gen 2 falls into that trap eventually. Even Thracia fucks up at the end with the final map being Cult-kun. All of them start blending together eventually. PoR and maybe SS are the exceptions here with PoR having very robust characterization and talking about some other themes like racism and power

I've always considered POR to be very straightforward. It might lack the obligatory dragon but it got almost all the other Fire Emblem staples. The good guy nation being conquered by the villain nation, the flight to a friendly third nation to seek aid and finding out that nation is secretly corrupt, the mysterious princess who's hunted by the villains and who needs the lord's protection, the quirky miniboss squad of four members, etcetera

But that's a good thing. POR's so conventional that it never stumbles as many of the more ambitious games do, and its simplicity is made up for by exploring this very conventional tale in much more depth than the previous games did.

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

For Tobin what motivates him in life, how he feels about his place in the world and how his attitude and opinions change over the course of the story. For Stahl the random things he gets up to in his free time and when his birthday is.

Or how Stahl is really nice guy who wants to help his friends in any way he can despite his own deficiencies. Or how he’s genuinely curious of learning of different cultures and perspectives. He doesn’t view himself as that interesting or have any real aspirations of his own but if he can be a shoulder to lean on or lend a helping hand when needed that’s all he really needs. He’s kind, soft spoken, and willing to work hard if it means he can better help others. He knows a good deal about apothecary too. In comparison to Tobin all I can really say is that he has an inferiority complex to Alm and works hard for his friends and family which is similar to Stahl but the difference is in the details. But I don’t feel like writing an essay right now.

 

46 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

and that's about all I can say about either of them. Neither Shadows nor Awakening were the best at characterization.

I feel like we played completely different games

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On 12/18/2021 at 2:07 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

lmao

Three Houses supports take way more than a "few hours", it's more dialogue than game.

Adding "lmao" does not make your argument stronger. And being mockingly dismissive of others' opinions when you seem to want to champion Binding Blade's cast as superior to 3H's is an odd choice, given that all data points to you being in a tiny minority on that one.

 

A typical playthrough of Three Houses might pick up maybe... 50-60 support chains or so? A full complement of in-house supports (plus Byleth) is 36, as a reference; I'm just rounding that up some. The average length of a full support chain appears to be about 6 minutes, judging from YouTube... assuming you don't press A to speed it up. So 5-6 hours of supports, or 3-4 if you speed 'em up. Certainly a decent chunk of time, but "a few hours" is absolutely accurate. And it definitely shouldn't be more dialog than game unless you're speedrunning the "game" parts; speaking anecdotally, most people (unless skipping scenes) seem to take anywhere from 40 to 100 hours on a playthrough of the game.

When it comes to developing supporting characters, I don't really think a broad "less is more" brush really applies. A Fire Emblem with minimalist writing is going to inevitably have very little development for its 25th or 30th most important characters; in 3H, if you choose to read that character's supports (not to mention various other interactions), they will feel very fleshed-out. I would suggest this is what has led to the supporting cast's dramatic popularity compared to other games in the series. I have a waaay better sense of Ferdinand than I do Tobin or Alan or Forde, and I suspect my experience is common.

Games are constantly providing choice in terms of how players interact with them. Fire Emblem has been doing this for years. Do you want to arena grind or not? Do you want to use the Tower of Valni or not? Do you want to promote early or late? Ironman or reset when you die? Skip scenes or not? What difficulty mode? FE has long been a series that respects that different players may want to approach it differently (it did both scene-skip and difficulty modes before the vast majority of other RPG series), and that absolutely includes "do you want to watch supports or not". If they're not for you, skip 'em - the game is better for giving you this option, even if I personally greatly enjoyed them.

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4 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

When it comes to developing supporting characters, I don't really think a broad "less is more" brush really applies. A Fire Emblem with minimalist writing is going to inevitably have very little development for its 25th or 30th most important characters; in 3H, if you choose to read that character's supports (not to mention various other interactions), they will feel very fleshed-out. I would suggest this is what has led to the supporting cast's dramatic popularity compared to other games in the series. I have a waaay better sense of Ferdinand than I do Tobin or Alan or Forde, and I suspect my experience is common.

Finally someone fucking gets it

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4 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

And different Events & view points from routes is something i also really dig, even if Fates was a mess and 3H was quite repititive. Also adds quite alot to replayability.

I don't necessarily agree here. Three Houses was very repetitive, which kind of kills the replayability argument, but mostly because Fire Emblem already has an inherent replayability factor because you can use different units.

4 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

Gameplay wise i really dig Army switching. It breaks the monotony that happens in most games and let's you play differently with different Teams.

Y'know, I won't argue with this one. I disagree, I prefer focusing on the one army, building my units, using different teams by swapping units in and out, but it's a bit too far from what I was interested in arguing.

4 hours ago, Ottservia said:

This is a strawman. I never argued this

You might not think you didn't, but you did. To quote you: "It’s almost never a bad thing to learn more about your characters by giving them more screentime". I showed you the logical extreme, but the idea is your own.

1 hour ago, Ottservia said:

Or how Stahl is really nice guy who wants to help his friends in any way he can despite his own deficiencies. Or how he’s genuinely curious of learning of different cultures and perspectives. He doesn’t view himself as that interesting or have any real aspirations of his own but if he can be a shoulder to lean on or lend a helping hand when needed that’s all he really needs. He’s kind, soft spoken, and willing to work hard if it means he can better help others.

I'm hard pressed to think of a blander, more generic, more insipid, more generally applicable description of a character.

EDIT: I could also some this all up as "he's kind, helpful, and unambitious".

I've written a fairly long fanfiction in which Stahl played a large roll and worked on idea for one in which Tobin played a fairly large roll. It was actually much easier to write for Stahl than it was for Tobin, because Stahl is plain enough that anything I wrote for him fit. Tobin has a distinct manner and worldview which required actual effort to capture and imitate- sometimes what was written would feel "off" because it didn't truly fit the character, which was never a trouble Stahl gave me.

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Adding "lmao" does not make your argument stronger. And being mockingly dismissive of others' opinions when you seem to want to champion Binding Blade's cast as superior to 3H's is an odd choice, given that all data points to you being in a tiny minority on that one.

I made two comments mocking statements dismissive of criticism of FE16 and you agreed with both of them. Then for some reason you bring popularity of a position into play?

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I have a waaay better sense of Ferdinand than I do Tobin or Alan or Forde, and I suspect my experience is common.

I can honestly say the exact opposite is true for me. Ferdinand has distinctive and exaggerated mannerisms which make it easy to think he's a character, but he's really not, not to the same extent Tobin and Forde are. Don't get me wrong, I kinda like Ferdinand, but he's a meme. If you can get a better sense of him, it's because he's a caricature.

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Games are constantly providing choice in terms of how players interact with them...If they're not for you, skip 'em - the game is better for giving you this option, even if I personally greatly enjoyed them.

I can't understand where you got this idea. Arena grinding, late promotion, and resetting are strategic decisions based on risk and reward. Players might not have perfect knowledge of what the results will be and what you'll need in the future, but they at least know what the risks and rewards are. You know arena grinding risks gold and the unit in exchange for more gold and experience. You know promotion brings an immediate power boost but costs a promotion item (a limited resource) and reduces how many levels you can get if you promote before level 20. You know resetting will force you to face the challenges of the map again and costs you time, but it's either that or go on without the unit that died.

That doesn't apply to supports. Firstly because whether to read them or not isn't a strategic decision, and secondly because it's a blind decision. What 'content' are you missing? Well, you won't know unless you read it, but at that point you've already sunk the time in.

People who complain about large numbers of supports and especially the glut of them in Three Houses aren't objecting to the fact that there's skippable dialogue in the game. Their issue is that you have to give them your time to know if they're worth your time or not- no, worse. You have to give them your time to even have enough information to guess about whether they're worth your time or not.

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11 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I'm hard pressed to think of a blander, more generic, more insipid, more generally applicable description of a character.

EDIT: I could also some this all up as "he's kind, helpful, and unambitious".

I've written a fairly long fanfiction in which Stahl played a large roll and worked on idea for one in which Tobin played a fairly large roll. It was actually much easier to write for Stahl than it was for Tobin, because Stahl is plain enough that anything I wrote for him fit. Tobin has a distinct manner and worldview which required actual effort to capture and imitate- sometimes what was written would feel "off" because it didn't truly fit the character, which was never a trouble Stahl gave me.

Personally I find them both boring as sin but at least I know more about Stahl than I do Tobin like his hobbies and such which is better. A lot of what you can say about Tobin isn’t very definitive because there’s so little to draw from. Sure, Tobin has something of a worldview(not much of one mind you) but that’s really it. Like what else is there to Tobin besides his inferiority complex? And even that aspect of his character is hardly ever shown outside of a few voiced lines. It’s also extremely shallow in its execution and only really serves as another excuse for the game to make Alm look better as if it doesn’t suck his dick enough as it is. At least Stahl is his own character with his own hobbies and life outside the main story. He’s a chill dude that likes to help people. Sure he’s got about as much of a personality as a stale piece of white bread but his character works because it bounces well off of other characters. It’s the same reason M!Robin works because they’re chill dudes you can have a cup of coffee with. Though I find Robin a million times more interesting than stahl but whatever. 

 

13 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

You might not think you didn't, but you did. To quote you: "It’s almost never a bad thing to learn more about your characters by giving them more screentime". I showed you the logical extreme, but the idea is your own.

Honestly, I’m the last person to think you should show every minute detail of world building or a character’s life. Also that’s a bit of a false analogy(I think that’s the right term) because your argument only refers to exposition and the structure of a story not optional supplementary material. Fire Emblem supports more so fall into the latter rather than the former because Supports are optional(for the most part) short little character interactions that allow us to learn more about them and in that regard you wanna cram in as much as you can in those. and even beyond that, the reason we don’t show every second of a character’s lives in a story is mostly because it’s not interesting and doesn’t add anything the reader absolutely has to know for the story to function. Again supports are a completely different beast simply for the fact that they are mostly optional and the point of them is give more information on these characters. The reader doesn’t need to know anything found in supports for the story to function but the things you do find in supports help flesh out the world and characters. The point of supports is to learn what these characters do in their day to day lives, what their hobbies are, likes, dislikes, worldview, etc. that’s why you read supports in the first place. It’s to allow the audience to learn these mundane facts about them. And in that regard more supports is not inherently a bad thing

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1 hour ago, Ottservia said:

Personally I find them both boring as sin but at least I know more about Stahl than I do Tobin like his hobbies and such which is better. A lot of what you can say about Tobin isn’t very definitive because there’s so little to draw from. Sure, Tobin has something of a worldview(not much of one mind you) but that’s really it. Like what else is there to Tobin besides his inferiority complex? And even that aspect of his character is hardly ever shown outside of a few voiced lines. It’s also extremely shallow in its execution and only really serves as another excuse for the game to make Alm look better as if it doesn’t suck his dick enough as it is. At least Stahl is his own character with his own hobbies and life outside the main story. He’s a chill dude that likes to help people. Sure he’s got about as much of a personality as a stale piece of white bread but his character works because it bounces well off of other characters. It’s the same reason M!Robin works because they’re chill dudes you can have a cup of coffee with. Though I find Robin a million times more interesting than stahl but whatever. 

 

Honestly, I’m the last person to think you should show every minute detail of world building or a character’s life. Also that’s a bit of a false analogy(I think that’s the right term) because your argument only refers to exposition and the structure of a story not optional supplementary material. Fire Emblem supports more so fall into the latter rather than the former because Supports are optional(for the most part) short little character interactions that allow us to learn more about them and in that regard you wanna cram in as much as you can in those. and even beyond that, the reason we don’t show every second of a character’s lives in a story is mostly because it’s not interesting and doesn’t add anything the reader absolutely has to know for the story to function. Again supports are a completely different beast simply for the fact that they are mostly optional and the point of them is give more information on these characters. The reader doesn’t need to know anything found in supports for the story to function but the things you do find in supports help flesh out the world and characters. The point of supports is to learn what these characters do in their day to day lives, what their hobbies are, likes, dislikes, worldview, etc. that’s why you read supports in the first place. It’s to allow the audience to learn these mundane facts about them. And in that regard more supports is not inherently a bad thing

Yeah, so like I said, I can tell you more about Tobin's outlook on life, his place in the world and how his attitude and opinions change over time, while I can tell you more about the random stuff Stahl gets up to in his free time and his birthday. And for a third comparison, Skirmr has even fewer supports than Tobin yet I can tell you a lot more about how he is characterized, grows and influences the world and characters around him. I don't know what his hobbies are, but knowing wether he prefers Laguz basketball or rugby doesn't really tell me much more about him. That'd just be trivia for the most part.

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4 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

Not really an unpopular opinion, but Conquest is imo the most well designed gameplay in the series, and no other FE comes even close in that regard. They weren't cramming, aside from a couple maps (like Fox hell) everything was designed very carefully and with consideration to what the game gives you.

Of course the story and cast massively suffer in this game, so if you even care a bit about those it can be a painful ordeal

I see. I honestly disagree. In fact, a long time ago in a galaxy far away on this topic, one of my unpopular opinions that I posted was that I really did not like the gameplay in Conquest.

 

4 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Actually I think the problem with Fates was more a lack of desire to do any biting at all. There seems to be a real dearth of artistic ambition. There was ambition on a production level in the sense that they wanted three games out of it, but the story is almost defined by short cuts, easy answers and pursuing the least interesting scenarios for the least amount of work. 

Kotaro and Corrin turning on each other for example has no higher ambition than getting to fight a stage against ninjas and ensuring that Corrin doesn't have to work with a shady ally. The story is supremely uninteresting in the implications of Corrin randomly picking fights with Nohr's allies, nor is it very interested in an explanation as to why Garon has people executed just for being in the same room as him but is very chill about his pawns getting murdered.

Actually Garon himself is the best example of Fates lack of ambition. It takes a certain mindset to set up a villain as being motivated by the poverty of his kingdom and then suddenly decide that actually he and his inner circle are solely motivated by being psychopaths. 

All in all I think lack of interest and not an abundance of ideas is what can be traced to most of Fates story problems. I do think more highly about its gameplay though. I think they honestly did sit down and think on how to best handle things. Pair up for instance was immensely improved compared to how they did it in Awakening, and the map variety was quite good in conquest. 

That's certainly possible. I don't think it was lack of desire to do anything with the story, but any desire the writer(s) may have had being met with an ever-present need to get three games' worth of story content completed within a timeframe (in other words, I think a lot of those shortcuts and such are likely a result of rush), so when I said that Fates bit off more than it could chew, I meant in terms of "writing three full games' worth of story within a lot less than three years" and not having too many ideas. Of course, that's just my theory.

As for gameplay, regardless of how the gameplay turned out, I do think that a lot of it was thrown in; not necessarily haphazardly, but definitely with a mindset of "throw everything in and see what they like". There really is no other reason for Fates to have stuff like the 2nd gen characters other than "it was in Awakening and we got a whole bunch of new customers from Awakening and we need to see if they want us to keep using this mechanic".

 

4 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

 

I've always considered POR to be very straightforward. It might lack the obligatory dragon but it got almost all the other Fire Emblem staples. The good guy nation being conquered by the villain nation, the flight to a friendly third nation to seek aid and finding out that nation is secretly corrupt, the mysterious princess who's hunted by the villains and who needs the lord's protection, the quirky miniboss squad of four members, etcetera

 

But that's a good thing. POR's so conventional that it never stumbles as many of the more ambitious games do, and its simplicity is made up for by exploring this very conventional tale in much more depth than the previous games did.

Same. Path of Radiance is very conventional, but it doesn't stumble and it's a very refined narrative with a lot more depth. It's honestly one of my favourite examples to illustrate what I mean when I say that complexity is not the same thing as depth, and I would gladly prefer a simple-yet-deep narrative over one that's complex and shallow.

 

4 hours ago, Ottservia said:

I feel like we played completely different games

I didn't say that those games were bad at characterization; if I had to give them a rating overall out of 10, it would probably be somewhere between 4 and 6 for both of them. If it helps, I agree about Robin sometimes being interesting despite their blandness.

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I think I've said this some time ago in this thread already, but I'm of the opinion that supports, generally speaking, don't add anything to the main story at all. They exist in isolation and while sometimes those small self-contained stories are funny or cute or even deep, they scarcely relate to the plot. Characters can't comment on the current status, because it's not predetermined when a specific support convo happens. Stuff happening in supports doesn't translate to the main plot, or even to other supports, because a specific support may or may not happen at all.

You can make the point that all these little exchanges makes it easier to feel a connection to all those recruitable characters, but again - this does not really relate to the main story, either. The only narrative feedback you get for recruiting Calill and Largo comes from their respective support options. The main plot advances completely unchanged if you didn't check the base convos, recruited and immediately benched them, or had them as major contributors to your fights. Fire Emblem writing, in the games that feature significant support dialogues, can be neatly cleaved in two without really harming either half. Fates (probably not deliberately) gives us the nice physical metaphor of supports literally happening in a different dimension, but figuratively, that's not really anything new.

As far as I'm concerned, RD's decision to move all its characterisation to base convos was a good move, even though it left several characters quite underdeveloped. But honestly, a story is allowed to have side characters that don't make as much of a splash as the friggin' protagonists. When I read LotR, I'm not in despair that I never learn more about Farmer Maggot, even though it's hinted that there's more to him than just a simple hobbit farmer.

 

TL;DR: More supports are more supports.

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12 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Then for some reason you bring popularity of a position into play?

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I am a fool.

I am a duuuuuuuuuuuumbass.

12 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Personally I find them both boring as sin but at least I know more about Stahl than I do Tobin like his hobbies and such which is better.

Why is it better?

12 hours ago, Ottservia said:

The point of supports is to learn what these characters do in their day to day lives, what their hobbies are, likes, dislikes, worldview, etc. that’s why you read supports in the first place. It’s to allow the audience to learn these mundane facts about them.

Is it, though? Do people read the Matthew-Jaffar support so they can learn about their hobbies? See, now you're changing tune (not accusing you of doing this intentionally by the way) where you're folding what you said and what Jotari and I said into a single statement. You said hobbies and mundane facts, we said worldview.

12 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Like what else is there to Tobin besides his inferiority complex?

He's showy, fucks bitches gets money, level-headed (at least by comparison to Gray), etc. You can tell what kind of people Tobin gets along with just by his demeanor and the kinds of people he already gets along with already. You can't even tell what king of person Stahl would fall in love with because he can marry basically anyone woman recruited in the first half of the game.

12 hours ago, Ottservia said:

At least Stahl is his own character with his own hobbies and life outside the main story.

Not as much as Tobin.

Tobin is "there for his friends" just as much as Stahl is, if not more so, because I actually buy that Tobin has friendships that precede the main story's events.

Not that it's much of an argument anyway, since characters are not rocks. They are not iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiislands. They exist inside stories.

Likewise supports exist inside games, and their quantity and distribution affect the pacing, even if they're optional. Using the Jeigan is optional but the design of the Jeigan is still impactful to the overall experience.

3 hours ago, pong said:

I think I've said this some time ago in this thread already, but I'm of the opinion that supports, generally speaking, don't add anything to the main story at all.

3 hours ago, pong said:

Fates (probably not deliberately) gives us the nice physical metaphor of supports literally happening in a different dimension, but figuratively, that's not really anything new.

Very insightfully said. In Benice's old "why are supports considered a good storytelling medium" thread, it was brought up how supports are necessarily separate from the main story.

Fates really is a based and genius game.

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3 hours ago, pong said:

I think I've said this some time ago in this thread already, but I'm of the opinion that supports, generally speaking, don't add anything to the main story at all. They exist in isolation and while sometimes those small self-contained stories are funny or cute or even deep, they scarcely relate to the plot. Characters can't comment on the current status, because it's not predetermined when a specific support convo happens. Stuff happening in supports doesn't translate to the main plot, or even to other supports, because a specific support may or may not happen at all.

 

3 hours ago, pong said:

. The only narrative feedback you get for recruiting Calill and Largo comes from their respective support options.

I find it funny that you use Largo and Calill, and thus PoR as an example here whilst saying characters cannot comment on the current status of the story. PoR is pretty much the oly one that is actually able to do so since the support convo's are locked behind chapters deployed together. So yes, the y actually do reference stuff that has happened in the world. 
You do have a point in the fact that all supports are still optional and do not make the plot unable to move forward if missed, I'm not challenging that. I am challenging your statement that supports are entirely in isolation and cannot comment on the current status. You've got a solid point but it's not as all encompassing as you say (in PoR's system at least)

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47 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

He's showy, fucks bitches gets money, level-headed (at least by comparison to Gray), etc. You can tell what kind of people Tobin gets along with just by his demeanor and the kinds of people he already gets along with already. You can't even tell what king of person Stahl would fall in love with because he can marry basically anyone woman recruited in the first half of the game.

I feel like that’s only the result of good voice acting and dialogue which credit where credit is due. 8-4 certainly did their job right in that regard. Personally I feel like Silas is just a better version of Stahl cause at least Silas has more of a personality and fun quirks that make him more endearing. I will admit that maybe Stahl was probably a poor example. 

47 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Not as much as Tobin.

Tobin is "there for his friends" just as much as Stahl is, if not more so, because I actually buy that Tobin has friendships that precede the main story's events.

 

That said, I would still disagree on the idea that Tobin is more of a character than Stahl cause at least with Stahl he has a number of decent supports that shed light on the better aspects of his character. His support with Cherche for instance is a rather wholesome one about them talking about the cultural differences between Ylisse and Rosanne. Or how in his Maribelle supports he admits to not having much of an ambition because he’d rather see others succeed before really deciding on his own goals. Honestly I would argue Tobin has just as much of a personality as Stahl. It only doesn’t seem that way because of Robbie Daymond’s excellent performance which Stahl doesn’t have. You take away that performance and that demeanor you spoke of kind of disappears or at the very least it’s a lot less prominent. 

 

On the topic of characterization though. I am of the opinion that the more tropey a character is the better their characterization usually ends ip being

47 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Likewise supports exist inside games, and their quantity and distribution affect the pacing, even if they're optional. Using the Jeigan is optional but the design of the Jeigan is still impactful to the overall experience.

I mean that depends on the game and support system in question actually. In 3H I would agree it effects the pacing but in a game like Fates or awakening not really because you have to actively work for those supports 

Edited by Ottservia
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