What do you think of Fire Emblem's current state?

[Dismissed]

On 3/25/2018 at 4:59 PM, DragonFlames said:

Well, that would mean less characters in general, I think, since people will always pick a "waifu" / "husbando" if they like a character enough, regardless of whether or not the game has an Avatar or romance options. Just look at how many people say that Lyn or Eirika is their waifu or how Marth or Ike is their husbando. That isn't something that Awakening or Fates introduced to the franchise, far from it in fact. They just made it more pronounced.

As an aside, I love how most people rag on Tharja, Nowi and / or Camilla for wearing skimpy outfits (and rightfully so) but then completely ignore Olivia, who might wear the skimpiest outfit that ever skimpied. Maybe because Olivia is less popular? Regardless, it's still interesting to see.

Oh yeah, I meant less prominent waifu/husbando traits.

Also, I think the reason why people ignore Olivia is because Dancers are a common thing in FE, and they're known to wear those sort of things. Unlike dark mages, which had cool hoodie robes and manaketes just wore ancient-looking clothes that make sense unlike Nowi's outfit.

Bringing back classic class designs would be nice too.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Purple Mage

[Slumber]

5 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

As an aside, I love how most people rag on Tharja, Nowi and / or Camilla for wearing skimpy outfits (and rightfully so) but then completely ignore Olivia, who might wear the skimpiest outfit that ever skimpied. Maybe because Olivia is less popular? Regardless, it's still interesting to see.

No. 

For me, it's because Olivia's a character... Well, scratch that. It makes no sense for her character to wear skimpy clothes... 

Olivia's a profession where it makes sense to wear skimpier clothing. She's a fragile, agile dancer, and she's the one class that has always had character designs(Barring Ninian, Nils, Elphin and the Herons) with skimpier attire. And, despite wearing less clothes, her, uh, womanly charm isn't constantly shoved in your face. If it wasn't for official art and in-game models(Which even then, like half of the in-game models in Fates/Awakening have people hardly wearing anything), you probably wouldn't assume that Olivia is running around in her underwear with some miscellaneous rags. 

Tharja and Camilla don't get this. It makes no sense for them to wear what they wear. Their classes are historically two of the most covered up classes, being surpassed by only Knights. And to make matters worse, Dark Mages have become "Tanks that cast magic" and Dragon Riders have become "Tanks that fly", so their designs make no sense with the evolution of their classes. AND their fanservicey designs are CONSTANTLY shoved in your face. 

And possibly the most shameless bit, Tharja and Camilla exist purely to stroke the player's ego, Olivia doesn't. There's a lot to be said about Tharja and Camilla wearing battle bikinis in a series that typically didn't have them when every other line out of them is "Oh xxx I love you unconditionally no matter what and treat everyone else with uncalled for hostility." 

Edited March 25, 2018 by Slumber

[Guest Dreamyboi]

5 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Well, that would mean less characters in general, I think, since people will always pick a "waifu" / "husbando" if they like a character enough, regardless of whether or not the game has an Avatar or romance options. Just look at how many people say that Lyn or Eirika is their waifu or how Marth or Ike is their husbando. That isn't something that Awakening or Fates introduced to the franchise, far from it in fact. They just made it more pronounced.

As an aside, I love how most people rag on Tharja, Nowi and / or Camilla for wearing skimpy outfits (and rightfully so) but then completely ignore Olivia, who might wear the skimpiest outfit that ever skimpied. Maybe because Olivia is less popular? Regardless, it's still interesting to see.

Whoops, didn't see Slumber's comment before posting this, I'll just edit.

Ignore it.

Edited March 25, 2018 by Dreamyboi

[Guest Dreamyboi]

10 minutes ago, Slumber said:

No. 

For me, it's because Olivia's a character... Well, scratch that. It makes no sense for her character to wear skimpy clothes... 

Olivia's a profession where it makes sense to wear skimpier clothing. She's a fragile, agile dancer, and she's the one class that has always had character designs(Barring Ninian, Nils, Elphin and the Herons) with skimpier attire. And, despite wearing less clothes, her, uh, womanly charm isn't constantly shoved in your face. If it wasn't for official art and in-game models(Which even then, like half of the in-game models in Fates/Awakening have people hardly wearing anything), you probably wouldn't assume that Olivia is running around in her underwear with some miscellaneous rags. 

Tharja and Camilla don't get this. It makes no sense for them to wear what they wear. Their classes are historically two of the most covered up classes, being surpassed by only Knights. And to make matters worse, Dark Mages have become "Tanks that cast magic" and Dragon Riders have become "Tanks that fly", so their designs make no sense with the evolution of their classes. AND their fanservicey designs are CONSTANTLY shoved in your face. 

And possibly the most shameless bit, Tharja and Camilla exist purely to stroke the player's ego, Olivia doesn't. There's a lot to be said about Tharja and Camilla wearing battle bikinis in a series that typically didn't have them when every other line out of them is "Oh xxx I love you unconditionally no matter what and treat everyone else with uncalled for hostility." 

Let's not forget Nyx who's one of the few characters in Fates with actual depth but still has to wear something that shows off her underage looking body even though that's the last thing she'd do. 

[Etrurian emperor]

On the subject of gimmicks, I felt Fates actually decreased their number rather then increase them. 

In Awakening every single character had at least some eccentricity to them aside from Chrom and Robin who then could play the straight man.  But in Fates there were more actual characters. Nyx has already been mentioned and Takumi's a pretty clear example as well, then we have characters like Saizo, Oboro, Hinata, Xander and Siegbert. Even Forrest who seemed destined to be a gimmick character turned out to be much more nuanced.

The gimmick characters are a lot more wackier then they were in Awakening but I don't mind because the more nuanced characters are also there any if they insist on making gimmick characters they might as well go all out like with Arthur. 

Edited March 25, 2018 by Etrurian emperor

[Slumber]

2 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

On the subject of gimmicks, I felt Fates actually decreased their number rather then increase them. 

In Awakening every single character had at least some eccentricity to them aside from Chrom and Robin who then could play the straight man.  But in Fates there were more actual characters. Nyx has already been mentioned and Takumi's a pretty clear example as well, then we have characters like Saizo, Oboro, Hinata, Xander and Siegbert. Even Forrest who seemed destined to be a gimmick character turned out to be much more nuanced.

The gimmick characters are a lot more wackier then they were in Awakening but I don't mind because the more nuanced characters are also there any if they insist on making gimmick characters they might as well go all out like with Arthur. 

I actually agree. However, there are absolutely egregious examples that drag Fates down to possibly worse than Awakening's level. They gave the characters more to work with, but the character writing is absolutely atrocious at times. 

Namely Peri. It seems like for every solid, less gimmicky-character(Say the aforementioned Nyx), you got an absolutely despicable character like Peri. 

But yes, there are absolutely less characters that are just "I like this one thing. This one thing is all I'll talk about" compared to Awakening. Characters were given more dimensions, and even at their worst, I have a hard time thinking of anyone as bad as Gaius or Vaike in that regard. 

There were still too many examples of characters falling back on character quirks as a crutch for my liking. 

[Book Bro]

I wanna point out there is a difference between people calling Lyn or Eirika their waifus and Tharja and Camilla being created with the intention to be waifus.

It's evident to me at least that when creating the former 2, they were more concerned with "what's her personality?" and "what are her motivations?" while with the latter two it was "what should her outfit be like?" and "what fetish can she represent?" 

And I say this as someone who likes Camilla.

People will always latch on to their favourite characters, but I personally prefer less pandering to the player. Let the characters speak for themselves instead of praising the player with every line. 

[Ottservia]

I personally would like to add on to the whole gimmicks discussion. To me it’s never the gimmick or idea that is the issue. It’s. The exection is usually what’s botched. I mean I don’t mind gimmicky characters so long as it’s done well. If the gimmick is literally the only thing the character has going for them and nothing else(I.e. sumia) then you know it’s a bad thing(then again sumia’s gimmick is a lot harder to explain/dissect in comparison to other characters that I don’t mind like Severa or gaius but I digress). Where as if the gimmick is used in a way that either helps develop the character further or is just a small quirck the character has that they bring up from time to time then that’s totally fine. In the latter case it’s because it’s not intrusive and is only used every so often.

[Slumber]

1 hour ago, Otts486 said:

I personally would like to add on to the whole gimmicks discussion. To me it’s never the gimmick or idea that is the issue. It’s. The exection is usually what’s botched. I mean I don’t mind gimmicky characters so long as it’s done well. If the gimmick is literally the only thing the character has going for them and nothing else(I.e. sumia) then you know it’s a bad thing(then again sumia’s gimmick is a lot harder to explain/dissect in comparison to other characters that I don’t mind like Severa or gaius but I digress). Where as if the gimmick is used in a way that either helps develop the character further or is just a small quirck the character has that they bring up from time to time then that’s totally fine. In the latter case it’s because it’s not intrusive and is only used every so often.

I've made the comparison before, but compare Canas to Miriel. 

Canas is more or less as you described. He's a bookworm who loves to read, and the writers of FE7 used as a way to get him to talk to certain characters. "Brawns vs brains" with Bartre, two nerds fanboying over each other with Pent, bonding with this illiterate mage only to learn that she's his niece, or using his knowledge to worldbuild with Renault... These all feel like there's meat to these conversations, and the only time it ever boils down to "Oh, books books books" is with Vaida, which is far and away Canas' worst support chain. 

Then you get to Miriel, who is dozens and dozens of support convo that boil down to "Oh, books books science books science books books." She never/rarely uses her gimmick to ever build her character or explain anything about the world they live in. Her and Ricken touch a bit on the nature of magic, but as far as I recall, that's the MOST we ever get out of Miriel. While Canas provides meat, Miriel provides only fluff and empty calories. 

And Miriel's not even the worst when it comes to one-note gimmick characters out of the recent games. But it she still feels like a character centered around a single thing and never deviates in any meaningful way. 

If they can do character gimmicks like Canas, which is in-line with how characters used to be handled, I'd be fine. But Awakening was gimmick hell and Fates had its own issues. 

Edited March 25, 2018 by Slumber

[Guest Dreamyboi]

55 minutes ago, Slumber said:

I've made the comparison before, but compare Canas to Miriel. 

Canas is more or less as you described. He's a bookworm who loves to read, and the writers of FE7 used as a way to get him to talk to certain characters. "Brawns vs brains" with Bartre, two nerds fanboying over each other with Pent, bonding with this illiterate mage only to learn that she's his niece, or using his knowledge to worldbuild with Renault... These all feel like there's meat to these conversations, and the only time it ever boils down to "Oh, books books books" is with Vaida, which is far and away Canas' worst support chain. 

Then you get to Miriel, who is dozens and dozens of support convo that boil down to "Oh, books books science books science books books." She never/rarely uses her gimmick to ever build her character or explain anything about the world they live in. Her and Ricken touch a bit on the nature of magic, but as far as I recall, that's the MOST we ever get out of Miriel. While Canas provides meat, Miriel provides only fluff and empty calories. 

And Miriel's not even the worst when it comes to one-note gimmick characters out of the recent games. But it she still feels like a character centered around a single thing and never deviates in any meaningful way. 

If they can do character gimmicks like Canas, which is in-line with how characters used to be handled, I'd be fine. But Awakening was gimmick hell and Fates had its own issues. 

Let's not forget gems like Kellam the invisible who only exists to repeat the same joke over and over again, I feel like zero effort was put into him. Then there's Ricken who wants to be treated like an adult but rarely acts like one, Panne who constantly disrespects her mothers dying wish to not have prejudice toward humans and has an inconsistent backstory, Effie who went from gentle giant with devotion to Elise to Muscles McEatsABunch via localization, Arthur who (while fun to listen to due to how absurd he is) is one of several things that made Fates impossible to take seriously, Faye who likes Alm and likes Alm and likes Alm and likes Alm, and then there's MOTHER FUCKING PERI.

I don't think modern IntSys can do gimmicky characters anymore, I think they should just focus on actual people instead of quirks to build off of because it's basically guaranteed that they'll half ass it.

I have hope for FE Switch's story, but not for gimmick characters.

Edited March 25, 2018 by Dreamyboi

[Ottservia]

1 hour ago, Slumber said:

I've made the comparison before, but compare Canas to Miriel. 

Canas is more or less as you described. He's a bookworm who loves to read, and the writers of FE7 used as a way to get him to talk to certain characters. "Brawns vs brains" with Bartre, two nerds fanboying over each other with Pent, bonding with this illiterate mage only to learn that she's his niece, or using his knowledge to worldbuild with Renault... These all feel like there's meat to these conversations, and the only time it ever boils down to "Oh, books books books" is with Vaida, which is far and away Canas' worst support chain. 

Then you get to Miriel, who is dozens and dozens of support convo that boil down to "Oh, books books science books science books books." She never/rarely uses her gimmick to ever build her character or explain anything about the world they live in. Her and Ricken touch a bit on the nature of magic, but as far as I recall, that's the MOST we ever get out of Miriel. While Canas provides meat, Miriel provides only fluff and empty calories. 

And Miriel's not even the worst when it comes to one-note gimmick characters out of the recent games. But it she still feels like a character centered around a single thing and never deviates in any meaningful way. 

If they can do character gimmicks like Canas, which is in-line with how characters used to be handled, I'd be fine. But Awakening was gimmick hell and Fates had its own issues. 

While I agree with most of what you said, I don’t think you’re giving awakening characters enough credit. I mean I can think of plenty of awakening characters that get the whole gimmick thing right. Cordelia is an excellent example of this. Her gimmick is that she has an unreauited love for chrom. However there’s a given reason for that and it’s a big part of the many many struggles that she has tangled up in her head. Her supports with virion, sumia, and gaius explore her more bossy and perfectionist side. Plenty of supports also delves into how the struggles she’s facing affect her as a person. I honestly could do a more in depth analysis but I feel ghast did it best in his support science video. Other characters I feel do the gimmick thing right are: Owain, Severa(in her case it’s more of an archeatype), virion, gaius, lissa, olivia, to a lesser extent libra, lon’qu, Inigo, and Cynthia(though in her case the added depth can only really be found in DLC). In gaius’s case the gimmick works because it’s not too intrusive. I mean yeah it’s there but it’s not the main focal point of a good chunk of his supports. Heck he has a couple of supports that hardly even mention candy like his lissa and chrom supports.

[Armagon]

2 hours ago, Dreamyboi said:

Let's not forget gems like Kellam the invisible who only exists to repeat the same joke over and over again, I feel like zero effort was put into him. Then there's Ricken who wants to be treated like an adult but rarely acts like one, Panne who constantly disrespects her mothers dying wish to not have prejudice toward humans and has an inconsistent backstory, Effie who went from gentle giant with devotion to Elise to Muscles McEatsABunch via localization, Arthur who (while fun to listen to due to how absurd he is) is one of several things that made Fates impossible to take seriously, Faye who likes Alm and likes Alm and likes Alm and likes Alm, and then there's MOTHER FUCKING PERI.

Faye's different imo. Yes, her obsession with Alm is essentially her only defining trait but it's treated as an actual problem instead of a "haha funny joke" like every other gimmicky character in the series. 

[Guest Dreamyboi]

1 minute ago, Armagon said:

Faye's different imo. Yes, her obsession with Alm is essentially her only defining trait but it's treated as an actual problem instead of a "haha funny joke" like every other gimmicky character in the series. 

Doesn't change the fact that she barely changes and doesn't even get over her obsession after the story ends but okay.

At least we're tip-toeing in the right direction I guess.

[Armagon]

1 minute ago, Dreamyboi said:

Doesn't change the fact that she barely changes and doesn't even get over her obsession after the story ends but okay.

True, but i still wouldn't put her in the same boat as all the other characters you listed, especially Peri.

And the fact that Faye's the only one of the Catria archetype that actually confesses automatically makes her the best character in that archetype imo (though the Catria archetype needs to stop).

[Aegiz]

1 minute ago, Armagon said:

True, but i still wouldn't put her in the same boat as all the other characters you listed, especially Peri.

And the fact that Faye's the only one of the Catria archetype that actually confesses automatically makes her the best character in that archetype imo (though the Catria archetype needs to stop).

She's not Peri level, but she's still pretty bad. Faye doesn't really have anything to her other than being infatuated with Alm. There's not much more to her than what's on the surface, and the small amount of supports don't help.

[Slumber]

2 hours ago, Otts486 said:

While I agree with most of what you said, I don’t think you’re giving awakening characters enough credit. I mean I can think of plenty of awakening characters that get the whole gimmick thing right. Cordelia is an excellent example of this. Her gimmick is that she has an unreauited love for chrom. However there’s a given reason for that and it’s a big part of the many many struggles that she has tangled up in her head. Her supports with virion, sumia, and gaius explore her more bossy and perfectionist side. Plenty of supports also delves into how the struggles she’s facing affect her as a person. I honestly could do a more in depth analysis but I feel ghast did it best in his support science video. Other characters I feel do the gimmick thing right are: Owain, Severa(in her case it’s more of an archeatype), virion, gaius, lissa, olivia, to a lesser extent libra, lon’qu, Inigo, and Cynthia(though in her case the added depth can only really be found in DLC). In gaius’s case the gimmick works because it’s not too intrusive. I mean yeah it’s there but it’s not the main focal point of a good chunk of his supports. Heck he has a couple of supports that hardly even mention candy like his lissa and chrom supports.

Ugh. See, Gaius is the absolute worst to me. He might not outright mention candy at every opportunity, but every single conversation he has is geared towards how many candy puns he can cram in a sentence.

The guy basically has nothing going on for him when he isn't directly talking about candy, which makes him even worse than the gimmick characters who just bring up their gimmick at every opportunity. Because when HE'S not doing that, he basically can only contribute puns to any conversation, which is just the worst, and I hope whoever wrote his dialog his dialog got fired. 

[Guest Dreamyboi]

4 minutes ago, Aegiz said:

She's not Peri level, but she's still pretty bad. Faye doesn't really have anything to her other than being infatuated with Alm. There's not much more to her than what's on the surface, and the small amount of supports don't help.

Small amount of supports with conversations that don't really go too far is a problem SoV has.

Alm can't talk to his three childhood best friends that aren't Celica but he CAN talk to Mycen (makes sense), Faye (Good for her), and Clair (why her specifically?).

Then there's Kliff and Genny who only get one support chain each, hell Genny doesn't get any at all if you decide to kill Sonya.

[Ottservia]

11 minutes ago, Slumber said:

Ugh. See, Gaius is the absolute worst to me. He might not outright mention candy at every opportunity, but every single conversation he has is geared towards how many candy puns he can cram in a sentence.

The guy basically has nothing going on for him when he isn't directly talking about candy, which makes him even worse than the gimmick characters who just bring up their gimmick at every opportunity. Because when HE'S not doing that, he basically can only contribute puns to any conversation, which is just the worst, and I hope whoever wrote his dialog his dialog got fired. 

yeah I get that. Honestly I can't help but blame localization for that one. It honestly doesn't bother me too much cause I kind of find it to be funny but I can see where you're coming from.

[Strullemia]

Somewhat negative.

I'm not worried about gameplay but they really need to get their stuff together in the story department. Conquest is only fun to play through as long as I press the start button every time a cutscene starts lest I'll be reminded that the same people who made the Judral/Archanea/Tellius world somehow came up with this nonsense.

Oh and please do less fanservice. I'm fine with mages having a slightly short skirt or whatever have you but Effie or Camilla's armor just doesn't make sense.

Edited March 25, 2018 by Hekselka

[Pentao]

I, for the most part, am very happy with the series and it's current state. There was some real creativity in fates on all fronts, and I was worried with how it would go. 

I hope that the series refines itself more and that some map gimmicks are improved upon. While the original "sneak around the prison" map from PoR is one of the most memorable maps, it dragged on way too long in Revelations. 

I think the character art has been great overall, and many characters have depth if you go looking for it, even in Awakening and Fates. Echoes makes character depth harder to find though, I feel.

I don’t really think the character designs, even ones like Tharja and Camilla are really that big of an issue, but I can understand why some may want that sort of thing toned down. I feel like the series can make attractive characters of both genders with more modest (or at least less obviously erotic) clothing anyway.

Moving forward, I would like to see the game mechanics evolve further. My biggest gripes regarding recent games is that I don’t feel like there is enough variety in regards to objectives and subobjectives. Awakening did it worst with unlimited rout works.

[Sentacotus]

I'm glad the series is healthy and financially sound at this point.  Awakening isn't really that long ago when you think about it and the series was about to die.  I'm less concerned about fanservice and more concerned about more of the grievous flaws like bad avatar archtypes and mediocre to terrible storylines.  If IS can improve those things come FE Switch than some major strides can be made.

[Interdimensional Observer]

On 3/25/2018 at 5:12 PM, Dreamyboi said:

Doesn't change the fact that she barely changes and doesn't even get over her obsession after the story ends but okay.

At least we're tip-toeing in the right direction I guess.

As someone else once pointed out, Soren has the same issue (as does Malicia) of not getting past his Ike-centricism from what we are told. Although Soren likely has better shown reasoning behind his obsession and it likely is less extreme.

 

On 3/25/2018 at 2:04 PM, Slumber said:

If they can do character gimmicks like Canas, which is in-line with how characters used to be handled, I'd be fine. But Awakening was gimmick hell and Fates had its own issues. 

And Haar's gimmick wasn't overdone either. He plenty of great conversations with no mention or focus on his sleepiness, ironically his two PoR support chains are actually rather lacking though, the Makalov awful. Then you have Calill whose gimmick is only relevant to her Neph chain, the other two do without the hoi polloi aspect of her.

Vaida was terrible overall by the way, only the Heath was good from her lot. Just too aggressive. And on the topic of FE7, don't forget Lowen existed, albeit he was only one character in a cast of over 40. Though Florina is much like him if not actually more of gimmick.

[Slumber]

2 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

As someone else once pointed out, Soren has the same issue (as does Malicia) of not getting past his Ike-centricism from what we are told. Although Soren likely has better shown reasoning behind his obsession and it likely is less extreme.

 

And Haar's gimmick wasn't overdone either. He plenty of great conversations with no mention or focus on his sleepiness, ironically his two PoR support chains are actually rather lacking though, the Makalov awful. Then you have Calill whose gimmick is only relevant to her Neph chain, the other two do without the hoi polloi aspect of her.

Vaida was terrible overall by the way, only the Heath was good from her lot. Just too aggressive. And on the topic of FE7, don't forget Lowen existed, albeit he was only one character in a cast of over 40. Though Florina is much like him if not actually more of gimmick.

It just goes back to the idea that even if IS does want to focus on gimmick-centric characters, they have a history of doing them well. But they've been more of a problem recently. 

I think there are 4 problems they're hitting with their gimmick characters:

1. As I mentioned, they're leaning waaaay to much on the gimmicks driving the characters. Rather than it being something they use to explore or explain something about the characters, it has become a trait that just takes over the character and they rarely deviate from. There were examples of this in older FE games(Ilyana is a good example. She stands out in a cast of normal characters and gimmick characters as being one who is far too focused on her gimmick), but they were few and far between. Most of the gimmick characters offered... Something outside of their focus. It's fewer and farther between with this, though Fates was better in this regard... But Fates also had some of the worst gimmicks, so it's hard to cut it slack. 
2. There are far too many gimmick characters in the rosters. Again, Fates was a bit better than Awakening when it came to balancing normal characters and characters who had one major trait that they'd just bring into every conversation... But Fates had Peri and Nina, and brought back Tharja and Gaius, so... again, hard to give it slack. Compared to older games, though, both lean much more on the "Hahaha, oh this guy/girl is so goofy. They're doing their thing again!" thing for defining their characters. 
3. Touched on, but they're repeating gimmicks and just doing it worse. Oh man, Stahl likes naps. Haven't seen that before. Miriel's a huge nerd who likes books. That sure is original. Sumia likes cooking. Donnel sure is a downhome country boy. Olivia sure is a shy and timid person who's not great when eyes are on her. It goes on and on, and these are just the gimmicks that were repeated from characters in this conversation(Stahl and Haar, Miriel and Canas, Sumia and Lowen, Donnel and Nephenee, Olivia and Florina). Not only are many of these things not original to begin with, Fire Emblem has already done them. What more can many of these characters possibly add that wasn't touched on before? Turns out, not a lot. Especially when they ride their gimmicks so much harder. 
4. The overabundance of supports might be the thing driving this all. It's nearly impossible to write 1000+ lines of dialog for 60+ characters, with dialog that has no impact on others, ALL in different contexts, and make it convincing. It's probably why they rely on gimmicks so much for so many characters to provide consistent throughlines from topic to topic. It's probably why these characters struggle so much to add much beyond their gimmicks in 90% of their conversations. It's probably why the gimmicks are repeated. 

If they scale back the supports, I think that they can fix a lot of their character problems. I think Echoes exemplified this, but I think a lot of people think they probably went too far. Unless you were Alm, Celica, Gray, Tobin, Mae, Bowy or the small handful of other units who stayed relevant to the plot, you didn't get too many lines in general. But they still felt more like real characters on the whole, compared to many of their 3DS peers. Obviously there's the exception with Faye, but I still argue that Faye is supposed to be a deconstruction of the Tharja/Camilla archetype. 

[Guest Dreamyboi]

1 hour ago, Slumber said:

The overabundance of supports might be the thing driving this all. It's nearly impossible to write 1000+ lines of dialog for 60+ characters, with dialog that has no impact on others, ALL in different contexts, and make it convincing. It's probably why they rely on gimmicks so much for so many characters to provide consistent throughlines from topic to topic. It's probably why these characters struggle so much to add much beyond their gimmicks in 90% of their conversations. It's probably why the gimmicks are repeated. 

This right here is one of the main reasons why I think Matchmaker Emblem has overstayed it's welcome, all a fuckton of support conversations does is make the writing team's job of making unique, layered characters harder and it makes them need to stretch characterization thin and spread it throughout each conversation. This would naturally be frustrating and exhausting so of course the solution is to make the characters comedic one trick ponies so it doesn't take an eternity. Unfortunately this makes the characters hard to care about because the singular joke they revolve around gets annoying fast and you become uninterested in them. My least favorite character in Awakening is Kellam and when you mentioned that he was a hometown hero in another thread maybe, my memory sucks I was shocked, I never gave a shit enough to look through the others because I was just sick of Kellam the same way I got sick of Faye immediately.

At the same time what they did with Echoes was a bit TOO limited since it felt like the support conversations themselves were too short to really tell us anything or get us invested and there were too few of them. I've said this before but I'll say it again, KLIFF. GETS. ONE. SUPPORT CHAIN. and that one support chain dicks around until the final one where we finally start to learn more about Kliff and that's that. Some of the other supports/characters themselves could get pretty repetitive too. As much as I like Leon he mentions Valbar a little too often and hearing Clive and Mathilda fawn over eachother over and over gets old fast.

What they need to do is find a healthy amount of supports for each character, while having said supports take place during downtime so they don't rush through the dialogue because "BUH ITS A BATTLEFIELD THO". So like how Path of Radiance handled it only the number of supports aren't limited and have building support done the Awakening/Fates way with units acting next to one another. This is something that can't happen if we keep trying to bring back marriage/child units over and over. It's time to move on from Awakening.

[Etrurian emperor]

On 25-3-2018 at 11:17 PM, Armagon said:

And the fact that Faye's the only one of the Catria archetype that actually confesses automatically makes her the best character in that archetype imo (though the Catria archetype needs to stop).

I'd say that honor belongs to Claire because she still manages to form a relation with Alm despite her feeling. Maybe its her lack of screentime but I don't think Catria ever got the guts to talk to Marth, Cordelia starts hyperventilating when having to talk to Chrom and Faye is Faye.

Claire on the other hand has her feelings but when they aren't returned still managed to have a really close and healthy friendship with Alm. They're pretty much the best of palls in their supports.