Do you think they'll bring back character customization in future games?

[youaskedfurret]

So I'm pretty disappointed that fire emblem 3 houses doesn't have character customization. I understand why the last game didn't have it since it was kind of a remake of an older game, but character customization is something I really like.

Do you think they'll bring it back in future games? Has Nintendo said anything about it? 🤔

[Captain Karnage]

Probably, but to be honest they should have made Byleth just Byleth and give them their own personality. 

Honestly I just want an avatar that has little to no baring on the story.

Edited July 4, 2019 by Captain Karnage

[Ottservia]

Eh we’ll see. Personally I like this direction allows them to use pre-rendered cutscenes without having to worry anout covering up the avatar all the time. It gives them more creative freedom for what they can do visually while also retaining that avatar element. It’s something I like about the Persona series honestly 

[Florete]

If they want to show the character in pre-rendered cutscenes, no.

[Captain Karnage]

2 minutes ago, Florete said:

If they want to show the character in pre-rendered cutscenes, no.

They were able to do it with Robin and Corrin,

hell they could even hide their gender in both of those games

or every cutscene could just be a first person POV

[Florete]

2 minutes ago, Captain Karnage said:

They were able to do it with Robin and Corrin,

hell they could even hide their gender in both of those games

or every cutscene could just be a first person POV

Show the character without restrictions.

You know what I meant.

[Bloom]

I hope so as well, even though people hate self-inserts... I just like being able to see my character become part of the adventure I'm partaking in.

I'm not going to be angry or anything if customization never returns, just disappointed.

Awakening is my favorite game because it was my first FE game. I feel a connection to the units who I worked with... and my love, Libra!

[thecrimsonflash]

honestly if there is no customization, I would rather just not have a player character at all, I mean corrin, robin, and byleth will never be near as great of characters as Eliwood, Ike, or Marth and that is because they are forced to be generic enough to insert yourself into them.

[Yexin]

probably yes, but i hope not

in fact, i hope they completely ditch avatars, since they add nothing to the game, and most of all, i don't want to be the main character, i want to live a medieval-like story with magic, pegasi and more which is not determinated by a complete stranger to the world and the characters, and surely i don't need the game to tell me which character i should identify myself as

 

if the game's writing is good enough, that is

Edited July 5, 2019 by Yexin

[youaskedfurret]

16 hours ago, Bloom said:

I hope so as well, even though people hate self-inserts... I just like being able to see my character become part of the adventure I'm partaking in.

I'm not going to be angry or anything if customization never returns, just disappointed.

Awakening is my favorite game because it was my first FE game. I feel a connection to the units who I worked with... and my love, Libra!

Honestly the self-insert hate is super childish. It's very 2009. Hardly anyone cares about that kind of thing anymore, and the people who do stick out like sore thumbs and look like jerks when they are rude to people who are just trying to have fun with OCs and self inserts. 

I'm 24 now and I remember back when I was 14 the internet was far more hostile to that sort of thing. Now it seems like it's only a very small group of people and they tend to get called out on it. 

[Violectrolysis]

Maybe, if they decide to switch to in-engine cutscene or hide their hair and face in cutscenes. While I much prefer not to have an avatar, I wouldn't mind seeing more customisation with skin tones, eye colours etc. What annoys me is having a customisable name when there's full voice acting, because then the characters just awkwardly avoid saying your name, making it kinda pointless to be able to choose your own in the first place. Since Byleth isn't customisable appearance-wise, I really don't get why you can change their name when everyone just calls you 'teacher' or doesn't address you at all. But if they continue to have avatars in Fire Emblem (which is pretty likely), I presume their name will still be customisable.

[Timlugia]

Only reason Byleth being hard lock is anime cutscenes. In game render cutscene can generate different models.

Question is if they should keep anime cutscene in the future games? In game render is getting really good nowadays, it technically could replace it in most cases.

[thecrimsonflash]

11 hours ago, youaskedfurret said:

Honestly the self-insert hate is super childish. It's very 2009. Hardly anyone cares about that kind of thing anymore, and the people who do stick out like sore thumbs and look like jerks when they are rude to people who are just trying to have fun with OCs and self inserts. 

I'm 24 now and I remember back when I was 14 the internet was far more hostile to that sort of thing. Now it seems like it's only a very small group of people and they tend to get called out on it. 

OCs and self inserts impact how the story is told this can hurt writing quality, if you want to throw an OC or self insert in your own creative works, fine, go right ahead, but when the developers introduce a character who is required to be do impossibly dull that anyone can use that character as a conduit for themselves and have them play the largest role in the story I fail to see why it is wrong to take issue with it, this isn't TES or mass effect where a heavy emphasis is made on player choice, this is a circumstance where the character exists primarily for the game to felate the player. You want to make your own characters, no one will get on you over it, you want to write fanfiction, fine go right ahead, but such things are better left in a vacuum where the original works are not impacted because these can hurt the overall quality of writing, fates' bad writing has corrin as the root cause of this, because massive efforts are made to prevent the player from being morally questionable in any capacity.

[Sunwoo]

Self-inserts are fine only and only if they don't hurt the story and the other characters around them. The problem with self-inserts in FE is that once they become playable (so, everyone except for Mark), the writers become more and more wanting to make them "special" and the focus of attention. Also, even if a self-insert character makes mistakes that are objectively terrible, the self-insert nature makes it so that the writers don't want to offend the players and call them out for the stupid choices they make, which gives the story a very protagonist-centered morality. Which doesn't work well in a series like FE, which try harder to not be so player-centric. Not to mention that FE traditionally has a large cast of characters anyway, putting so much attention on "the special self-inserted one" feels a bit less forgivable than something like the Etrian Odyssey series or Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, where all your characters are avatars/self-inserts.

And that's kind of another thing with self-inserts. I'm really put off by the idea that there are people who cannot be invested in a story unless they get to insert "themselves" into it. The games without a self-insert have a more detached and objective story, in which there are good guys and bad guys, but the narrative itself seems to be freer to just present the stories without sucking up to the players. If a game could have a self-insert while still telling that detached and objective story, I'd be fine with it, but IS seems incapable of doing that.

To be honest, I don't want to see any more FE games with self-inserts, but I know that's not realistically going to happen. What I'd like to see at least is no avatars in any remakes  of games without one, and for not every new game to have an avatar. Let's get some new continents without avatars, please, and then I won't give a fuck about what the ones that have one do, whether they have character customization or not.

[Lewyn]

Hopefully not, they never should have been a thing in the first place.  The writing and story suffers greatly for them and detract from the setting and mood.  There are only negatives and no positives.  

Want to do a self insert anyways?  Then don't make it some messiah pimp daddy who can sleep with everyone.  Don't make it someone the story revolves around or is even important to the story.  Make it someone that is a soldier (maybe they get a single back story chapter and that's it) who you can customize their growths (which would be very good but not the BEST/OP), class tree, skills and appearance.   They can have supports but no romantic ones.  There you have your self insert and it won't hurt the story that much.

 

[Ottservia]

1 hour ago, Lewyn said:

Hopefully not, they never should have been a thing in the first place.  The writing and story suffers greatly for them and detract from the setting and mood.  There are only negatives and no positives.  

Want to do a self insert anyways?  Then don't make it some messiah pimp daddy who can sleep with everyone.  Don't make it someone the story revolves around or is even important to the story.  Make it someone that is a soldier (maybe they get a single back story chapter and that's it) who you can customize their growths (which would be very good but not the BEST/OP), class tree, skills and appearance.   They can have supports but no romantic ones.  There you have your self insert and it won't hurt the story that much.

 

I’d argue those kinds of self-inserts can still work(I mean that’s exactly how I’d describe Joker and Yu Narukami and imo those are good self inserts). As far as I’ve seen, Self-inserts are done best when written like flat-arc characters. Characters that start off the story as “perfect” and don’t change at all but instead invoke change in others. There are plenty of great characters and stories in media that fir this mold. The most prominent examples are Saitama, Goku, and Luffy. It’s all a matter of not focusing too heavily on the avatar. You can still make them the main character but don’t make them the center of the emotional pay off in regards to other characters. They should invoke that pay off not be at the center of it. The only emotional pay off they get should be in regards to beating the main villain. It’s all about how others react to them not how they react to others. That’s where the core of the conflict should lie

Edited July 7, 2019 by Ottservia

[underthedorktree]

Perhaps, but the way they do it has to be better than Corrin, and more like Robin.

Robin was a good self-insert because for the most part, they are a mysterious person with no inherent backstory (for the most part for you don't know Robin's back story until most of the way through Awakening) so it is much easier to project yourself onto a character with no backstory. Robin does have a stock personality, but it's not so one dimensional that he doesn't have one, but three dimensional enough to still be a character in a story. He would do anything for his friends, which is something that most can relate to. He doesn't have any special powers, he's just a tactician in a cloak, which allows the player to be able to see themselves as him. Like a player in the story. The player is able to kinda put themselves in Robin's place (that is, if the player is able to self project like that; this can't work for everyone but it does for most).

Corrin, on the other hand, was the worst way they could've handled it. They gave Corrin an extremely unique backstory and in turn an extremely flat personality. Since everyone would react differently to this situation, Corrin's personality couldn't be tailored to the stresses each route would give them. They gave Corrin a static personality, with a convoluted set of abilities. But of course, IS flew too close to the sun that was Awakening's success, and went with the characters customization anyway. Fates's big problem was trying so hard to be Awakening, but also trying to introduce far too many things at once. (I mean come on, the endings are literally just Awakening's).

To answer the question: Yes, but only depending on how it would affect the story

I think gender, however, should be customizable still, because for some people it's more comfortable (I usually like playing as females more than males). But it depends if they want to do a lord character like Chrom or Eliwood or a general character.

[Lewyn]

On 7/7/2019 at 3:01 PM, Ottservia said:

I’d argue those kinds of self-inserts can still work(I mean that’s exactly how I’d describe Joker and Yu Narukami and imo those are good self inserts). As far as I’ve seen, Self-inserts are done best when written like flat-arc characters. Characters that start off the story as “perfect” and don’t change at all but instead invoke change in others. There are plenty of great characters and stories in media that fir this mold. The most prominent examples are Saitama, Goku, and Luffy. It’s all a matter of not focusing too heavily on the avatar. You can still make them the main character but don’t make them the center of the emotional pay off in regards to other characters. They should invoke that pay off not be at the center of it. The only emotional pay off they get should be in regards to beating the main villain. It’s all about how others react to them not how they react to others. That’s where the core of the conflict should lie

It can be done well but it hasn't been in Fire Emblem.  Joker, the clown prince of crime?  Persona 4 I'm familiar with, and that character was done well.  I also wouldn't call (don't know Saitama), Goku or Luffy self inserts.  They are the main character but they don't represent the viewer.  Therefore there is much more freedom with the story and universe it doesn't have to worry near as much about offending, they can have flaws they can make poor decisions/mistakes and be called out on it by other characters.  

I think Fire Emblem using avatar character hasn't been for the betterment of the story/plot but a type of fan service for the player.  

 

[side bee]

33 minutes ago, Lewyn said:

Joker, the clown prince of crime?

joker from persona 5

[Ottservia]

21 minutes ago, Lewyn said:

Joker, the clown prince of crime?

No, Joker as in Ren amamiya(Or Akira Kururusu whichever you prefer) leader of the phantom thieves.

22 minutes ago, Lewyn said:

I also wouldn't call (don't know Saitama), Goku or Luffy self inserts.

Yeah I never said they were self-inserts. What I was saying is that they are good examples of a flat-arc character. A character by most accounts that can be considered "perfect" as in they start the story already 'complete' as it were. They don't need to go through any character development. They don't necessarily need 'flaws' either because that's not the point of the character. The point of the character is not how they react to the world but rather how the world reacts to them. They may not develop as characters themselves but rather they invoke that kind of development in other more dynamic characters. This is why Persona protagonists work so well despite being self-inserts because that's exactly what they do. Yu through his ventures in the T.V. world and social links helps the members of the investigation team as well as the people inaba overcome their struggles and realize the truth behind the lies they tell themselves. Yu, himself, has no real character flaws or struggles. By all accounts he fits the definition of what most would call a mary sue but the reason he works is because the story's focus isn't on his struggles and conflicts. But rather the story's focus is on the struggles and conflicts of the world and people around him and how he helps them overcome those conflicts. 

34 minutes ago, Lewyn said:

I think Fire Emblem using avatar character hasn't been for the betterment of the story/plot but a type of fan service for the player.  

y'see that's something I can agree with

[Lewyn]

2 hours ago, side bee said:

joker from persona 5

 

2 hours ago, Ottservia said:

No, Joker as in Ren amamiya(Or Akira Kururusu whichever you prefer) leader of the phantom thieves.

Yeah I never said they were self-inserts. What I was saying is that they are good examples of a flat-arc character. A character by most accounts that can be considered "perfect" as in they start the story already 'complete' as it were. They don't need to go through any character development. They don't necessarily need 'flaws' either because that's not the point of the character. The point of the character is not how they react to the world but rather how the world reacts to them. They may not develop as characters themselves but rather they invoke that kind of development in other more dynamic characters. This is why Persona protagonists work so well despite being self-inserts because that's exactly what they do. Yu through his ventures in the T.V. world and social links helps the members of the investigation team as well as the people inaba overcome their struggles and realize the truth behind the lies they tell themselves. Yu, himself, has no real character flaws or struggles. By all accounts he fits the definition of what most would call a mary sue but the reason he works is because the story's focus isn't on his struggles and conflicts. But rather the story's focus is on the struggles and conflicts of the world and people around him and how he helps them overcome those conflicts. 

y'see that's something I can agree with

Ah okay, heard great things about Persona 5 don't have ps4.

Yes those characters you mention are flat but don't detract from the story.  Some Fire Emblem lords are considered 'Mary Sues' and that is fine, the story can still be good.  

I think cause of how avatars have been handled many people do not trust IS to do a good job.  

[MagicCanonBalls]

I sure hope so. Inclusion of Avatar is what makes me pick up FE12 in the first place and Awakening + Fates avatar customization is what's keeping me interested in the franchise. I like having a self-made character that I can mold from the beginning, classes, weapons, and hair colour that sort of thing. I don't really care about the character writing, as long as it's acceptable. And Corrin, who's perceived as the worst avatar, is actually quite ok to me. Though class customization for the students in 3H seems pretty open and fun, in a way it made up for the lack of cosmetic aspect of avatar customization, so I am still very excited for 3H (and potential gay romance, one can hope) .

[side bee]

22 hours ago, Lewyn said:

Ah okay, heard great things about Persona 5 don't have ps4

if you have a ps3, persona 5 is also on that