What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

[Ottservia]

2 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

But its not a counterpoint. I said Dresrossa's length was considered a problem. Its a common complaint of that particular arc. So bringing up Dofy and Law doesn't change much. I think Emil and Marta are my favorite Tales protagonists but that changes nothing about their game being kinda meh. 

Oh it is because one of the reasons Dressrossa is so long is because of Law and yet Law is cited as one of the primary reasons people love that arc

[Benice]

Just now, Ottservia said:

Tell me how much can you develop a character in only 100 words? You see my point?

While it's illustrated by the video in far over 100 words, the story itself is originally told in very few- perhaps even less than 50. While FE isn't Dark Souls at all, it proves that you don't need a mountain of dialogue to tell a story.

30 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

In regards to this point I will say this mentality pisses me off to put it bluntly.

It's also irrelevant to the discussion, so I won't address the paragraph.

1 hour ago, Ottservia said:

You can find meaningful characterization in the most innocuous of places.

You definitely can.

You can also instead find meaningful characterization in meaningful places as well as having some innocuous characterzation instead of spamming lots of innocuous characterization that occurs in one way every single time.

1 hour ago, Ottservia said:

you see my point?

No, because it doesn't actually prove that supports are systemically good. You are arguing that Severa is a good character because she has characterization.

[Ottservia]

4 minutes ago, Benice said:

While it's illustrated by the video in far over 100 words, the story itself is originally told in very few- perhaps even less than 50. While FE isn't Dark Souls at all, it proves that you don't need a mountain of dialogue to tell a story.

And I agree especially in regards to a visual medium but you’re still missing my point. It doesn’t matter what you use to tell your story. If you want more fleshed out characters then they need more screentime that should be obvious. Even if there is no dialogue that statement still holds true.

 

7 minutes ago, Benice said:

No, because it doesn't actually prove that supports are systemically good. You are arguing that Severa is a good character because she has characterization.

I never said supports were a good system. I never stated that once in my whole argument because that’s an entirely different argument altogether. No I’m arguing the supports you said were “filler” can still be meaningful that has nothing to do with with whether the support system is a good system. That’s a whole different conversation than the one we’re having. My point is, and I am going to state this as clear as possible, is that if you want to further develop your characters then you give them more screen time and character interaction. In the case of Fire Emblem that means more supports because Fire Emblem uses the support system to develop its characters. Whether or not the support system is a good system is an entirely different argument 

[Dark Holy Elf]

On 12/14/2021 at 5:27 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

Watch the supports: "I don't know what you're complaining about, they're optional, you can just skip them."

Skip the supports: "Don't complain about the characters if you haven't read all their supports, you're missing important information."

Both of these statements are fair and I'll happily make both in response to complaints.

The question is, how much time are you willing to spend learning about the supporting characters of the game? Maybe you want to spend no time at all; you're here for gameplay and maybe the main story. Maybe it's a lot. Maybe it's somewhere in the middle.

If you don't care about the supporting cast much, then of course it's not worth your time to watch many supports and you can just skip them. Complaining about something you can skip generally seems weird, unless what you're skipping is truly offensive. Skipping supports won't stop the story from being functional.

If you do care about the supporting cast, then putting in a few hours per playthrough to doing so doesn't seem unreasonable to me. It takes time to get a good sense of a character, and that's okay. In my opinion, at least, the games which try to give you a good sense of characters in much less time (e.g. the short supports of Binding Blade), often left me with the impression that most of the supporting cast was very flat and uninteresting. So I appreciate that 3H provides ways for you to get to know the characters better. Not just the supports, but their various monastery dialogs, and shorter quips for various activities, the things they like to talk about at tea time, etc... it all paints a very fleshed-out view of them. And I find that very cool.

You can also do something in the middle and only watch the supports of the characters you decide you care about. You can control how fast you watch those supports too, skimming them with the A button until something catches your fancy. It's your experience; get what you want out of it.

[Benice]

5 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

I never said supports were a good system.

Wait, why are we arguing again?

[Ottservia]

1 minute ago, Benice said:

Wait, why are we arguing again?

I dunno you tell me. You’re the one who started it.

[Benice]

8 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

I dunno you tell me. You’re the one who started it.

My brain is one of the world's seven wonders.

Sorry about wasting your time!

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Ottservia said:

I mean if One piece is any indication this is not true at all because if it were true then the series would not be 1000+ chapters long. Not that I necessarily disagree with this stance it’s just in regards to the argument being presented I disagree because less is more is a good piece of advice. If you can create an interesting character for the audience to get invested in with only 100 words or less yeah that is good but you can only do so much with 100 words and if you want to develop the character further then obviously you’re gonna need more words than that. Like that’s just how it works. How does less screentime = more development. That’s just inherently illogical. How does that even begin to make sense. A well written character with 100 chapters of screen time will always be more fleshed out and developed than a character with only 10 chapters of screentime.

No, One Piece is not any indication. Because it is one piece of literature (pun legitimately not intended), not an example of everything that exists. As I said, there are manga out there that are longer than One Piece that are less developed. The longest stories in existence are soap operas and they are widely not considered to be the pinnacle of character development and world building. In fact they're considered quite melodramatic and low brow. And I personally think people do underestimate the quality of story telling in soap operas, but I also think their length absolutely in no way makes them better stories with better characters by virtue of having a staggeringly large amount of screen time.

Edited December 18, 2021 by Jotari

[AnonymousSpeed]

2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Both of these statements are fair and I'll happily make both in response to complaints.

lmao

2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

If you don't care about the supporting cast much, then of course it's not worth your time to watch many supports and you can just skip them. Complaining about something you can skip generally seems weird, unless what you're skipping is truly offensive. Skipping supports won't stop the story from being functional.

Nah. This view of supports completely ignores pacing. It's like saying that, if a movie is too long, you can just skim the screenplay, or watch the scenes you might want to on the BluRay. Sure, it's...a work around I guess, but it's a pretty severe indictment against the construction of the original work when you're trying to tear it apart to make it digestible before you've even seen it the first time. Not even because its rich or dense, either.

2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

If you do care about the supporting cast, then putting in a few hours per playthrough to doing so doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

lmao

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

I'm throwing my hat in the "less is more" ring. A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left to take away.

-Pac

[Shrimpica]

57 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

It's like saying that, if a movie is too long, you can just skim the screenplay, or watch the scenes you might want to on the BluRay.

Just like with the one piece comparison above, that comparison doesn't work. Games are an interactive medium where you can choose what to view and what not to. 

Especially with optional content like Supports

58 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I'm throwing my hat in the "less is more" ring

while i am inclinced to agree on ''less is more'', when it comes to FE it becomes ''Less is nothing/meaningless''. Like in Echoes. Or many of the older games with supports.

[Jotari]

8 minutes ago, Father Shrimpas said:

Just like with the one piece comparison above, that comparison doesn't work. Games are an interactive medium where you can choose what to view and what not to. 

Especially with optional content like Supports

while i am inclinced to agree on ''less is more'', when it comes to FE it becomes ''Less is nothing/meaningless''. Like in Echoes. Or many of the older games with supports.

Less is more isn't literal  the less you have the better. Otherwise no supports would be preferable to any supports. Less is more means it's better if you can achieve the same result in a smaller amount.

[Shrimpica]

6 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Less is more isn't literal  the less you have the better. Otherwise no supports would be preferable to any supports. Less is more means it's better if you can achieve the same result in a smaller amount.

I know what it means, it's just isn't always achieveable.

Between 3H support amount and ''classic'' i would take 3H any day of the week.

I prefer removing/replacing the support system completely to both these options tho, but 3H is like the only game where i actually enjoyed reading the supports

Edited December 18, 2021 by Father Shrimpas

[Jotari]

6 minutes ago, Father Shrimpas said:

I know what it means, it's just isn't always achieveable.

Between 3H support amount and ''classic'' i would take 3H any day of the week.

I prefer removing/replacing the support system completely to both these options tho, but 3H is like the only game where i actually enjoyed reading the supports

Well that depends on what "classic" is. Obviously no one wants to have a Thracia where a character's death quote is literally the only line of dialogue they have (okay not strictly speaking true, everyone has an escape quite too). But a game without supports that can still characterize its cast? Yeah I think thats definitely possible. In fact I think we've already had it. Radiant Dawn has no supports in a narrative sense yet still does a great job at characterizing its massive cast. And yes, the Dawn Brigade are a bit under developed, but I don't think that's because they lack supports. Sigrun, Oliver and Skrimr all lack supports and are still fully fleshed out characters. I think they were just less interested in the Dawn Brigade compared to the existing characters. Supports in Path if Radiance no doubt gave the writers and idea of who these characters are, but I'm talking about literally taking Radiant Dawn in isolation (as I played it, years before I touched Path of Radiance), it does a satisfactory job of characterizing and utilizing the majority of a cast of over seventy characters well without relying on a mechanic where two characters are standing around taking. Now a lot of this is done via base convoys, which involve more than two people standing around taking, but a lot of it is also done just by virtue of including a really big number of characters in the story in meaningful ways.

[Shrimpica]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well that depends on what "classic" is. Obviously no one wants to have a Thracia where a character's death quote is literally the only line of dialogue they have (okay not strictly speaking true, everyone has an escape quite too). But a game without supports that can still characterize its cast? Yeah I think thats definitely possible. In fact I think we've already had it. Radiant Dawn has no supports in a narrative sense yet still does a great job at characterizing its massive cast. And yes, the Dawn Brigade are a bit under developed, but I don't think that's because they lack supports. Sigrun, Oliver and Skrimr all lack supports and are still fully fleshed out characters. I think they were just less interested in the Dawn Brigade compared to the existing characters. Supports in Path if Radiance no doubt gave the writers and idea of who these characters are, but I'm talking about literally taking Radiant Dawn in isolation (as I played it, years before I touched Path of Radiance), it does a satisfactory job of characterizing and utilizing the majority of a cast of over seventy characters well without relying on a mechanic where two characters are standing around taking. Now a lot of this is done via base convoys, which involve more than two people standing around taking, but a lot of it is also done just by virtue of including a really big number of characters in the story in meaningful ways.

yeah base convos ala PoR and RD and expanded upon would be goat honestly. If they still want support bonuses gameplay wise the same way just make those base convos increase the bond level between all members involved in it.

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

yeah base convos ala PoR and RD and expanded upon would be goat honestly. If they still want support bonuses gameplay wise the same way just make those base convos increase the bond level between all members involved in it.

One thing I like about Radiant Dawn and earlier games that I think the "everyone supports everyone" perspective kind of lacks is that characters have a place in the world. Like I know where all these units come from and, more importantly, who they share connections with. Just imagine trying to write supports for every unit with each other in Radiant Dawn. Like imagi e what a support between Laura and Naesala would be about. Theyre sich vastly different characters doing such vastly different things in their world. Oh it's surely possible to come up with something for them, but if you're committed to giving supports to every pair in a massive cast then the majority of supports will be "coming up with a reason" to talk rather than the characters coming from a similar place and having similar concerns. Like in Awakeneing I know Henry and Tharja cone from Plegia, but you'd barely be able to tell that in their supports. They have no connection to Gangrel or Validar or Mustafa or anything going on in Plegia. Tauroneo and Tharja are both enemy defdctors, but only Tauroneo feels like he's from a place. Virion is probably the best example, he's a foreign exiled Prince, but that doesn't cone through in his character at all. He's just the fancy guy. Having everyone support everyone means people need a degree of commonality, which sort of erodes their individual, separate positions in the world. Three Houses takes this to the extreme by literally having everyone go to school together. They put the threebcoubtries from and centre, but with only a few exceptions, a lot if characters could easily swap their home country and very little about them would change. All the supposed connections they have with their home are with offscreen characters we never see.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Jotari

[AnonymousSpeed]

39 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Like I know where all these units come from and, more importantly, who they share connections with. Just imagine trying to write supports for every unit with each other in Radiant Dawn. Like imagi e what a support between Laura and Naesala would be about. Theyre sich vastly different characters doing such vastly different things in their world. Oh it's surely possible to come up with something for them, but if you're committed to giving supports to every pair in a massive cast then the majority of supports will be "coming up with a reason" to talk rather than the characters coming from a similar place and having similar concerns.

The neat thing about limited supports which people don't talk about is that when two random characters actually do support, it's exciting. "Oh wow, Trek and Miledy can support? So can Saul and Igrene? That's awesome, I wonder what they're going to talk about?" It helps that Trek is an amazing character and Saul is the best character in video games.

It also helps draw attention to these supports, so Wallace knowing Renault in a previous life actually stands out instead of getting lost in an endless sea of characters remarking how Renault reminds them of somebody they used to know. We complain about everyone being able to marry everyone, but insist everyone can be talkative with everyone?

From a strictly mechanical point of view, it encourages using certain character combinations over others.

6 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

Just like with the one piece comparison above, that comparison doesn't work. Games are an interactive medium where you can choose what to view and what not to. 

Especially with optional content like Supports

That's ridiculous. Games may be an interactive medium but they still have pacing. In fact, pacing becomes even more important because the medium relies on the player's initiative for progress. If I open the list of available support and it fills me with dread, killing my desire to progress the experience, that's a massive pacing issue.

6 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

I prefer removing/replacing the support system completely to both these options tho, but 3H is like the only game where i actually enjoyed reading the supports

But...why? Even ignoring the glut of them, the writing and presentation are, well...bad.

[vanguard333]

6 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

yeah base convos ala PoR and RD and expanded upon would be goat honestly. If they still want support bonuses gameplay wise the same way just make those base convos increase the bond level between all members involved in it.

Bringing back base conversations and expanding on them would be great.

 

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

One thing I like about Radiant Dawn and earlier games that I think the "everyone supports everyone" perspective kind of lacks is that characters have a place in the world. Like I know where all these units come from and, more importantly, who they share connections with. Just imagine trying to write supports for every unit with each other in Radiant Dawn. Like imagi e what a support between Laura and Naesala would be about. They're such vastly different characters doing such vastly different things in their world. Oh it's surely possible to come up with something for them, but if you're committed to giving supports to every pair in a massive cast then the majority of supports will be "coming up with a reason" to talk rather than the characters coming from a similar place and having similar concerns. Like in Awakening I know Henry and Tharja cone from Plegia, burnt out barely be able to tell that in their supports. They have no connection to Gangrel or Validar or Mustafa or anything going on in Plegia. Tauroneo and Tharja are both enemy defectors, but only Tauroneo feels like he's from a place. Virion is probably the best example, he's a foreign exiled Prince, but that doesn't cone through in his character at all. He's just the fancy guy. Having everyone support everyone means people need a degree of commonality, which sort of erodes their individual, separate positions in the world. Three Houses takes this to the extreme by literally having everyone go to school together. They put the three countries front and centre, but with only a few exceptions, a lot if characters could easily swap their home country and very little about them would change. All the supposed connections they have with their home are with offscreen characters we never see.

To add to your point, Radiant Dawn did allow everyone to support everyone, and it was terrible for a number of reasons; the biggest one being that the conversations were completely generic and easily missed.

[Acacia Sgt]

51 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

The neat thing about limited supports which people don't talk about is that when two random characters actually do support, it's exciting. "Oh wow, Trek and Miledy can support? So can Saul and Igrene? That's awesome, I wonder what they're going to talk about?" It helps that Trek is an amazing character and Saul is the best character in video games.

It also helps draw attention to these supports, so Wallace knowing Renault in a previous life actually stands out instead of getting lost in an endless sea of characters remarking how Renault reminds them of somebody they used to know. We complain about everyone being able to marry everyone, but insist everyone can be talkative with everyone?

I'm now reminded Dorcas and Vaida can support. Though all three conversations boil down to missing each other, then finally meet in the A support... and still not realize they are who they were supposed to meet up with.

---

It would've been interesting if they had really gone with that idea of specific support pairs in RD having unique conversations. I think that's what people think the unused FF index values were for in the support data:

https://serenesforest.net/radiant-dawn/characters/supports/buddy-supports/types/

Edited December 19, 2021 by Acacia Sgt

[Jotari]

21 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Bringing back base conversations and expanding on them would be great.

 

To add to your point, Radiant Dawn did allow everyone to support everyone, and it was terrible for a number of reasons; the biggest one being that the conversations were completely generic and easily missed.

On the contrary, I'd say that was probably the best support system, at least mechanically. And as I've been saying, a full narrative support system wasn't needed for Radiant Dawn as it fleshed out its characters in other ways.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Jotari

[Florete]

3 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

To add to your point, Radiant Dawn did allow everyone to support everyone, and it was terrible for a number of reasons; the biggest one being that the conversations were completely generic and easily missed.

I'm agreeing with Jotari on this one. The lack of proper conversations is unfortunate, but it is mechanically the best support system in the series.

[Shrimpica]

4 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

The neat thing about limited supports which people don't talk about is that when two random characters actually do support, it's exciting.

Not...really. That's only the case if i care about the characters and can get the support in the first place, and not limited by the old 5 classic support talk limit.

Most of the time outside PoR older games support had me mostly going "ok.." or if there's character whose supports i cared about i either couldn't get them or the 5 talk limit hit. 5 talk really annoyed me in PoR because that's like the one game in the series before 3H where i cared about supports from a writing standpoint.

4 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

But...why? Even ignoring the glut of them, the writing and presentation are, well...bad

That's like, your opinion. I loved 95% of 3H supports, even the ones with just quiet life moments where characters talk about nothing. It fleshed them out and added to their characterization.

Not to mention in 3H everyone can't support everyone, and there're quite a few supports that end at B, for example.

I do like the 3H cast miles more than anything else the series had to offer tho, so maybe that's why i liked reading them so much.

Like even if 3H had a system that's actually good instead of the support system, i would've liked to see the same amout of interactions.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Father Shrimpas

[Vicious Sal]

23 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

This comes across as a platitude without  backing evidence. Shadow Dragon has particularly weak characterizations outside of a select few, owing to the absence of support conversations. And while Echoes has some great ones, a good chunk of them are "wait, why are we tslking again?" supports.

Like I don't believe "more supports always better", but saying the direct opposite is an over-correction.

Jotari had a great response already with this post: "Less is more isn't literal  the less you have the better. Otherwise no supports would be preferable to any supports. Less is more means it's better if you can achieve the same result in a smaller amount." Shadow Dragon and 3H aren't comparable since opne has a support system whereas the other doesn't (bond supports aside). Three Houses has so much fluff that could be trimmed. That's a case of less is more within the context of writing. Less is more does not mean that it's better to remove the supports alltogether. If Shadow Dragon were to have a support conversation system the same thing would apply; Don't overly fluff up the supports and don't use 50 words when 25 would suffice.

20 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Well I mean if you want a more fleshed out world, story, and cast of characters yes, a longer book/story is always better than a shorter one. It’s just basic logic. A character with more screentime is always gonna be more fleshed out and better developed than a character with less screen time. Like I don’t understand how anyone could come to the conclusion that less screen time for a character equates to them being more fleshed out. That just doesn’t make any sense.

No it's really not. There are examples of long stories being great and having fleshed out characters. There are short stories that have more fleshed out charactewrs than long saga's. Arance recently came out on netflix and is 9 episodes currently. The series has recieved universal praise for how it handled its characters. Meanwhile Game of Thrones(Tv) was longer and butchered many of its characters. If Arcane is not a suitable example for you since it's going to get more seasons, we can look at the short stories of Love Death Robots. A few have amazing characterization that puts the shallowness of characters such as Arya, Jaime or Dany to shame. As Yexin said:

19 hours ago, Yexin said:

that's because good writing and acting (if any) is what makes a character "more fleshed out", not their screen time
more=/=better

Sadly however, FE has not always stuck the landing with the "better" part. So yes, you'll most likely know more about a charcter with 20 shitty supports compared to one with 2 shitty supports and nothing else. But you'll know way more about a character with 2 great supports than one with 20 shitty supports. 

 

17 hours ago, Ottservia said:

I mean I’m not trying to say longer is always better.

"a longer book/story is always better than a shorter one. It’s just basic logic. A character with more screentime is always gonna be more fleshed out and better developed than a character with less screen time"

You sure about that?

13 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

 

I'm throwing my hat in the "less is more" ring. A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left to take away.

-Pac

Well 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.

12 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

Just like with the one piece comparison above, that comparison doesn't work. Games are an interactive medium where you can choose what to view and what not to. 

Especially with optional content like Supports

while i am inclinced to agree on ''less is more'', when it comes to FE it becomes ''Less is nothing/meaningless''. Like in Echoes. Or many of the older games with supports.

It absolutely is tru that while "less is more" is something to strive for when writing, writing something that's actually good in the first place is also quite important. And FE has not always done that. I can keep removing bits and pieces from a turd but in the end it'll still be a turd. And sadly some support conversations are just not that good. 

 

2 hours ago, Florete said:

I'm agreeing with Jotari on this one. The lack of proper conversations is unfortunate, but it is mechanically the best support system in the series.

I'm actually working on a revamped support system of Radiant Dawn. It'll stay the same mechanically, but I want to use the Mist/Boyd A support and Ike/Soren A support requirements to spawn in extra Base conversations for certain support pairs. It'll work like the PoR support system, going by chapters deployed together. The only thing I am not able to do is removes the 1 person limit for viewing supports. But in the end it'll be PoR chapter based support leveling, with base convo's becoming available after certain chapters, with the RD stat bonus system.

[Ottservia]

3 hours ago, Vicious Sal said:

21 hours ago, Ottservia said:

 

"a longer book/story is always better than a shorter one. It’s just basic logic. A character with more screentime is always gonna be more fleshed out and better developed than a character with less screen time"

You sure about that?

Well yeah in that specific circumstance yes Longer is typically better. Or rather a better way to phrase it is that more is not inherently bad. 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. It just doesn’t make sense to me when people say say less supports are better than the opposite because typically more supports is usually a good thing because more character interaction prompts more opportunities for development and characterization. If the goal of supports is to allow us to learn more about these characters then more is typically better because you can throw them into a variety of different scenarios which can prompt interesting characterization. If awakening or fates had less supports, we wouldn’t half the things we do about these characters like how Peri is a good cook, or Kjelle’s love of armor, or How Laurent is secretly a huge bottom that wants to be berated constantly. You know small stuff like that. They’re minor things but it’s all those little that really bring a character alive to me. There’s a lot that can be found in “filler”. Not everything needs to to be this deep meaningful conversation on the meaning of life or a character’s tragic backstory. Sometimes some light hearted slice of life works just fine.

[Jotari]

19 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

Well yeah in that specific circumstance yes Longer is typically better. Or rather a better way to phrase it is that more is not inherently bad. 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. It just doesn’t make sense to me when people say say less supports are better than the opposite because typically more supports is usually a good thing because more character interaction prompts more opportunities for development and characterization. If the goal of supports is to allow us to learn more about these characters then more is typically better because you can throw them into a variety of different scenarios which can prompt interesting characterization. If awakening or fates had less supports, we wouldn’t half the things we do about these characters like how Peri is a good cook, or Kjelle’s love of armor, or How Laurent is secretly a huge bottom that wants to be berated constantly. You know small stuff like that. They’re minor things but it’s all those little that really bring a character alive to me. There’s a lot that can be found in “filler”. Not everything needs to to be this deep meaningful conversation on the meaning of life or a character’s tragic backstory. Sometimes some light hearted slice of life works just fine.

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

[vanguard333]

10 hours ago, Jotari said:

On the contrary, I'd say that was probably the best support system, at least mechanically. And as I've been saying, a full narrative support system wasn't needed for Radiant Dawn as it fleshed out its characters in other ways.

7 hours ago, Florete said:

I'm agreeing with Jotari on this one. The lack of proper conversations is unfortunate, but it is mechanically the best support system in the series.

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.