Why are supports still considered to be a good form of storytelling in FE?

[Samz707]

15 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

Oh look who missed the entire point of Tharja’s character but you know what you do you. Nothing I say is gonna change your mind. All I’m gonna say is that there’s a reason why I feel like it’s more appropriate to catagorize Tharja as a tsundere rather than yandere.
 

Also would it kill you to show a little respect to creators regardless of your personal feelings towards their work? After a certain author’s recent passing my tolerance for this shit has dwindled immensely.

Gray and Clair is essentially just SeveraxInigo but worse in every way and you won’t change my mind on that.

Well, not my fault the 3 supports for her I got were all just her being a horrible person or just being a tool for someone else to describe their backstory as part of 3 supports. (While Echoes manages to flesh out it's characters more efficiently with one support set and some base convos.)

Tharja is willing to trick Donnel into putting on a  heavily implied cursed ring to "be mine FOREVER" (Whenever mind control or he drops dead if he stops loving her isn't said, just heavily implied to be some sort of magical influence to keep him loving her) that's pretty Yandere if you ask me. (while a Tsundere is just not wanting to spit it out.)

Not to mention as I said, Tharja's marriages are almost meaningless, she becomes obsessed with Libra/Donnel in their final support (Which really only somewhat makes sense for Libra and even then it feels a bit forced), only to snap back to Robin obsession right away and never mention their marriage again, outside of her supports with Noire (Which are also vague and non-committal to try to avoid actually having to change dialogue to account for the father.), her character develepment (for lack of a better word, becoming obsessed with someone else) literally regresses back to avoid having to change the status quo and re-write her generic repeating dialogue, so why should I care about her romances when evidently the game doesn't?

For as much as Faye isn't that good, she's at least consistent with wanting to jump Alm and no one else, as opposed to being able to make her randomly fall in love with Tobin, then go back to being obsessed with Alm as if nothing happened despite the fact she's S-ranking Tobin now. 

 

Well, I'm a "respect earned" person, and Awakening has never done anything to earn my respect. (And plenty to lose it entirely.)

 

Can't speak on SeveraXInigo, since getting them would have required me to extend my Awakening play-time by weeks at least, or pay up for DLC to grind the supports to get them, then their actual supports. 

Edited May 23, 2021 by Samz707

[Ottservia]

7 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Well, not my fault the 3 supports for her I got were all just her being a horrible person or just being a tool for someone else to describe their backstory as part of 3 supports. (While Echoes manages to flesh out it's characters more efficiently with one support set and some base convos.)

Tharja is willing to trick Donnel into putting on a  heavily implied cursed ring to "be mine FOREVER" (Whenever mind control or he drops dead if he stops loving her isn't said, just heavily implied to be some sort of magical influence to keep him loving her) that's pretty Yandere if you ask me. (while a Tsundere is just not wanting to spit it out.)

Not to mention as I said, Tharja's marriages are almost meaningless, she becomes obsessed with Libra/Donnel in their final support (Which really only somewhat makes sense for Libra and even then it feels a bit forced), only to snap back to Robin obsession right away and never mention their marriage again, outside of her supports with Noire (Which are also vague and non-committal to try to avoid actually having to change dialogue to account for the father.), her character develepment (for lack of a better word, becoming obsessed with someone else) literally regresses back to avoid having to change the status quo and re-write her generic repeating dialogue, so why should I care about her romances when evidently the game doesn't?

To be fair Tharja is probably one of the most inconsistent characters in awakening and this is coming from someone who’s read all of her supports. The Robin obsession is probably the worst part of her character all things considered. Again I consider her more of a tsundere because a lot of her supports revolve around her needing to learn that she should trust the people in this army and not be so abrasive and stand-off ish because she’s actually pretty sweet for example in her virion supports has her making him do various tasks that wind up helping people like building a bridge for kids to cross or cooking food for the army. Like I said, inconsistent.

15 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Well, I'm a "respect earned" person, and Awakening has never done anything to earn my respect. (And plenty to lose it entirely.)

And so am I but I can respect anyone who has the courage to create anything and put it out there for the world to see. It takes a lot of work and courage in order to do that and anyone who can has my respect. Especially considering the environment of Japan’s workaholic culture.

[Samz707]

26 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

 

And so am I but I can respect anyone who has the courage to create anything and put it out there for the world to see. It takes a lot of work and courage in order to do that and anyone who can has my respect. Especially considering the environment of Japan’s workaholic culture.

Considering how Echoes managed to just be better all around and seemingly with a smaller amount of devs and money in quite frankly, literally every regard for me personally, I can't really agree with that. (Hell, Heroes is a better game for me than Awakening and it's a Mobile Gacha Game.)

I've played games with probably way worse conditions (With the game's developers pulling all nighters and sleeping under their desks and rushing the game out in under 10 months), that were rushed out, such as Hitman: Contracts (which was literally made to satisfy publisher demand and was a mix of intended levels for the next game and remakes of old levels.)  yet some of them actually manage to become one of my favorite games in those series. (Again, Like Hitman Contracts or Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.)

To be kinda blunt, to me Awakening feels less like a "celebration of the series" as some claim and more like one-last cash grab before they thought the series was going to die, where they threw everything from past games in with no rhyme or reason hoping it'd make someone buy the game and then some crappy DLC practices with a lack of proper play-testing.

 

Regardless, Echoes has supports that made me care for characters and the base conversations made characters feel more fleshed out, while Awakening felt like padding out the supports and the Barracks convos are literally generic copy/pasted dialogue with literally no value beyond reminding you of a character's obnoxious quirk at most, handled poorly enough to the point where I'm going to be blunt and say the more Awakening supports I saw, the less I cared about any of the characters.

It got to the point where I associate Awakening's "comedy" music track with pain, (As pretty much every time it played, I hated the scene it was in.) and I can't even pretend to say I respect a game's writing where the actual comedy track inspires more dread in me than any of the actual tracks intended for instilling dread simply because now I have to try to sit through the game's attempts at humor. 

Edited May 24, 2021 by Samz707

[Use the Falchion]

On 5/22/2021 at 5:36 PM, Seazas said:

It's not. Supports were always a flawed system that stuck around out of the fandom's attachment. You have people arguing that some casts don't have anything going for them just because the support pool happened to be small.

I mean, Vika has literally no real supports and so few lines of dialogue, that they might as well have had her be an NPC...

Supports are a flawed system, but what the OP is saying is a "better" system isn't any less flawed. That's the real crux of the discussion. So instead of asking what can we do to fix and/or supplement Supports (which some of us have thrown ideas out for), or note the positive changes in the flawed system (which seemingly have been ignored*), we're stuck circling around the same sort of conversation.

There's also the fact what OP wants seems to be inherently different from what Supports offer. This is fine, but conflating the two seems to be another big point of contention - OP wants conversations that 1) include multiple people, 2) aren't dependent on grinding to gain, and 3) are related to the story around the characters. Basically, they want the return of Base Conversations. Well, they say H2Hs, but I think Base Conversations are a more tangible and translatable example.

I don't think anyone here is saying that the return of Base Conversations is a bad thing, or even that IntSys themselves have forgotten this - look at just how much dialogue in the monastery at Three Houses is about characters responding to the story and the plot around them. If you've recruited Dorothea and Ferdinand dies, the songstress comments on it. If you recruit everyone and no one dies, she's thankful for that. If you recruit Felix on AM, he's regretful about Dimitri (in his admittedly Tsundere way). On AM, his dialogue is different due to the situation being different. All they're really missing is having these conversations be full-length and fully independent from the Avatar, and I think we're working our way back to that. But OP wants to replace supports, which are primarily characterization and interaction based with something that, according to their own words...does the exact same thing, but doesn't allow the depth of interaction a good support may allow. One H2H-esque conversation between Leonie, Lorenz, and a third person (take your pick on who that person is) wouldn't develop the relationship between Leonie and Lorenz more than the supports they already have would, unless you're trying to develop an OT3. 

Overall, you and OP are right - supports aren't always a good form of storytelling. But they never were trying to tell the type of story that they're being criticized for not being good at telling. It's like criticizing a bakery for not having pizza. Yes, they could have pizza, and yes, they might even sell pizza bread or something similar, but that's where the similarities would end. If you want pizza, you go to a pizza place. So too I believe that we must work on visualizing what this metaphorical "pizza place" should look like, not criticize the "bakery" for what it never truly promised to do.

 

*To bring those positive changes back, in Awakening and Fates we had potential dialogue tiles on the map and barracks conversations that could help raise supports. In Three Houses we've had supports go from being three and done or "three and confession" to having four or even five (with potential to go to six) conversations! That's HUGE! We also have multiple ways to raise support levels between people - eat with them, have two students do a weekend activity, cook with them, have tea, sing in the choir. All of these things weren't present before, and because they're here, players don't have to spend dozens of turns on a map for one single support. Paralogues are now working in-tandem with characterization to help flesh them out (at their best anyways). 

[Venger_06]

While supports are usually fine, I think it would be better to expand on mechanics like PoR, New Mystery and SoV's Base conversations. This way, we can get things like relationships and character arcs more closely related to plot progression.

Edited May 26, 2021 by Maof06

[Use the Falchion]

1 hour ago, Samz707 said:

Regardless, Echoes has supports that made me care for characters and the base conversations made characters feel more fleshed out, while Awakening felt like padding out the supports and the Barracks convos are literally generic copy/pasted dialogue with literally no value beyond reminding you of a character's obnoxious quirk at most, handled poorly enough to the point where I'm going to be blunt and say the more Awakening supports I saw, the less I cared about any of the characters.

Humorously, I have the opposite opinion here. 

I'm pretty neutral on Echoes, but their supports for the most part were lukewarm at best for me. The worst example (which to me is only comparable by Awakening's Cordelia/Frederick S-Support) is Faye and Silque's supports. I have never, ever seen an offered friendship in a support turned down for the explicit reason to chase after a man. Even Tharja is better than that in her supports. Most supports weren't bad, but they weren't great either. The only other two I can even remember are Gray and Clair's support (which was a terrible romance for my favorite character), and some of Clive and Mathilda's supports. Oh, and I guess Leon and Valbar.

If anything, many of the supports made me care less about the characters than I did previously. Were they better than Fates? Maybe. They were certainly more consistent IMO, opting for a minimalistic style instead of what Fates had. But I wouldn't say it was better than Awakening. HOWVER, in terms of "character interaction and dynamics," I do think Echoes hit the nail on the head, as those aspects were certainly present. 

And yes, while the Base Conversations in Awakening were copy-pasted in most cases (Chrom has unique dialogue with Lissa, Cordelia, and Nowi weirdly enough; Tharja has unique lines with Robin), at least those weren't copy-pasted supports like Radiant Dawn was full of. 

In terms of the obnoxious quirk thing, that's partially true and partially not. Yes, each character had quirks, and some more than others. But there was also a depth to the characters. Tharja writes letters home to her parents and uses Dark Magic to help villagers all of the time, even if they fear her. Donnell is a phenomenal student and has a phenomenal memory (which matches his Aptitude skill). Chrom is atrocious at cooking, whereas Vaike is surprisingly great at it. (Vaike also greatly admires Emmeryn.) Kellam used to have anger problems. Stahl has a brother, and is apparently good at picking out gifts. Sully is a noble who could have simply been knighted without any training, effort, or work involved, but she chose the hard path; she also has concerns about her femininity. Lissa is great at pranks, worries about her place in the army (and her friendship with Maribelle), and has insomnia over about the wars. Robin is atrocious at cooking, and Panne doesn't have the taste-buds a normal human does. Cherche used to be a cleric, is great at domestic fares, and has a hilariously macabre sense of "cute."

I couldn't tell you half of this information with the Echoes cast. (But maybe you could tell me, and that would be just fine!)

In terms of how every support feels the same, I empathize, but I disagree. Lon'qu's supports cover most of the same problem, but they every woman handles it from her own background and personality, creating a varied set of circumstances and situations. Sully and F!Robin beat the fear out of Lon'qu, Miriel tests the parameters, Cherche tries to heal the wound by completing the story, Panne shares her own nightmare solving tea, Tharja gives Lon'qu the option of a world without the memories or a chance to grow forward with them, and Maribelle takes her time by letting the swordsman go at his own pace. In many ways, the supports about Lon'qu shed more light on the women and their perspectives than it does on him. 

Other supports take on different flavors, each matching the character with their personality to create something that's special to them. 

[Lightcosmo]

4 hours ago, Samz707 said:

While I've not experienced Severa or Inigo, at all. (Since it's tedious grinding in Awakening to get them, let alone get their supports)

I'm not sure this is the best argument to use as to whether or not somethings good or bad. I mean, it's not the devs fault people dont want to play the game the way its intended.

They want you to grind in Awakening. In fact, they support it. Heavily. 

I'm on the side that Awakenings supports are fine for the most part. They get the job done in most cases and are surprisingly depth in others.

Edited May 24, 2021 by lightcosmo

[Ottservia]

15 hours ago, Use the Falchion said:

Humorously, I have the opposite opinion here. 

I'm pretty neutral on Echoes, but their supports for the most part were lukewarm at best for me. The worst example (which to me is only comparable by Awakening's Cordelia/Frederick S-Support) is Faye and Silque's supports. I have never, ever seen an offered friendship in a support turned down for the explicit reason to chase after a man. Even Tharja is better than that in her supports. Most supports weren't bad, but they weren't great either. The only other two I can even remember are Gray and Clair's support (which was a terrible romance for my favorite character), and some of Clive and Mathilda's supports. Oh, and I guess Leon and Valbar.

If anything, many of the supports made me care less about the characters than I did previously. Were they better than Fates? Maybe. They were certainly more consistent IMO, opting for a minimalistic style instead of what Fates had. But I wouldn't say it was better than Awakening. HOWVER, in terms of "character interaction and dynamics," I do think Echoes hit the nail on the head, as those aspects were certainly present. 

And yes, while the Base Conversations in Awakening were copy-pasted in most cases (Chrom has unique dialogue with Lissa, Cordelia, and Nowi weirdly enough; Tharja has unique lines with Robin), at least those weren't copy-pasted supports like Radiant Dawn was full of. 

In terms of the obnoxious quirk thing, that's partially true and partially not. Yes, each character had quirks, and some more than others. But there was also a depth to the characters. Tharja writes letters home to her parents and uses Dark Magic to help villagers all of the time, even if they fear her. Donnell is a phenomenal student and has a phenomenal memory (which matches his Aptitude skill). Chrom is atrocious at cooking, whereas Vaike is surprisingly great at it. (Vaike also greatly admires Emmeryn.) Kellam used to have anger problems. Stahl has a brother, and is apparently good at picking out gifts. Sully is a noble who could have simply been knighted without any training, effort, or work involved, but she chose the hard path; she also has concerns about her femininity. Lissa is great at pranks, worries about her place in the army (and her friendship with Maribelle), and has insomnia over about the wars. Robin is atrocious at cooking, and Panne doesn't have the taste-buds a normal human does. Cherche used to be a cleric, is great at domestic fares, and has a hilariously macabre sense of "cute."

I couldn't tell you half of this information with the Echoes cast. (But maybe you could tell me, and that would be just fine!)

In terms of how every support feels the same, I empathize, but I disagree. Lon'qu's supports cover most of the same problem, but they every woman handles it from her own background and personality, creating a varied set of circumstances and situations. Sully and F!Robin beat the fear out of Lon'qu, Miriel tests the parameters, Cherche tries to heal the wound by completing the story, Panne shares her own nightmare solving tea, Tharja gives Lon'qu the option of a world without the memories or a chance to grow forward with them, and Maribelle takes her time by letting the swordsman go at his own pace. In many ways, the supports about Lon'qu shed more light on the women and their perspectives than it does on him. 

Other supports take on different flavors, each matching the character with their personality to create something that's special to them. 

Pretty much took the words right out of my mouth. My main issue with SoV supports is that they lack any real sense of characterization. Kliff and Tobin’s support is literally just Tobin saying hi and Kliff telling him to fuck off. That is the entire support. There’s no interesting character insight, conflict, comedy, nothing really. And that’s not even getting into how mysoginistic GrayxClair is because it basically amounts to Clair settling for Gray because she can’t have Alm without Gray having to do anything to win her heart otherwise. Say what you will about Cordelia but at least with her S-supports she settles for them because they’ve already proven that they will love and care for her more than Chrom will. It’s just kind of a gross implication that I am not okay with in a game already filled with mysoginistic tendencies. 

[Seazas]

On 5/22/2021 at 3:49 PM, Ottservia said:

Hey it isn’t my fault SoV supports and characters are more flat and one dimensional than Cordelia’s chest. It’s not the quantity of supports. It’s always been a matter of quality.

You only prove my point. You find them one dimensional purely from the supports while ignoring anything else. A lot of the characters definitely aren't super deep but acting like they're flat and have absolutely nothing is absurd. Hell, a lot of the supports in the game absolutely provide personality, you seem to focus on some of them that may not do it for you.

They have the base conversations, the small amount of supports, memory prisms, and various amount of small lines in story even for characters like Atlas and Silque. Everyone that can be recruited has unique dialogue if you reject them and even if you talk to them again they get lines changed to reflect their personalities. At worst, SOV's crew reach the bare minimum of other FE side casts. 

22 hours ago, Samz707 said:

Grey,  Grey admittingly is mostly just an sword dude,  though he does learn to get less pushy for Clair's affections, which ultimately lead to them falling in love together.

Gray goes from a dude that barely took things seriously with a desire to do... something, anything than just rot in Ram Village to genuinely caring for Clair with the war maturing him more. He's one of the rare characters in the entire franchise to have a line like: "Maybe all the people I killed could forgive me".

Edited May 24, 2021 by Seazas

[JimmyBeans]

On 5/23/2021 at 6:56 AM, Ottservia said:

Here’s the the problem with SoV characters. What can you tell me about Gray, Tobin, or Kliff besides their surface level personality traits? Oh right nothing because they’re so one dimensional and boring that there is nothing you can say about them. Where as with Severa or Inigo, I could tell you loads of things about them just by reading only a couple supports. I never really understood this idea that SoV characters are better written than the ones in awakening in fates cause they really aren’t but I suppose that’s a discussion for another time.

It's called subtext, and it's something that most games with less dialogue in the series makes great use of to tell you about characters without giving you redundant and pointless dialogue. One of my favorite examples in SOV is Forsyth, who is a goofy and light hearted character, similar to what you get a lot of in awakening and fates. 

Forsyth is a character who wants so badly to be a knight in a society where he can't be one, he is comical in his patriotism and eagerness that it even makes Clive a bit uncomfortable. His father wanted him to be a scholar, but he wanted to join the war effort as opposed to Lukas who has the opposite deal.

Spoiler

Forsyth supports can be found here  (I didn't use SF because it doesn't have the dlc supports)

Ironically enough, despite not being a knight and not feeling worthy of being one, he is one of the most knight-like people in the entire game. And while he is a goofy character, he has a grounded and good in universe reason to be who he is.

The problem I have with many of the characters from the other 2 3dsfe's is that fact they have so much, yet I feel like so little, so many of those things they talk about really just don't add much, a character like Setsuna from fates has all these supports yet she mentions that she comes from a noble family briefly in like one of them, and iirc she makes mention of her father briefly in only one as well. The main issue for me is that so much time is taken on things that really don't tell you anything interesting about the characters part in said game, and in Setsuna's case they devote almost all of it to that ridiculous gimmik that makes me feel more and more separated from that character. 

There are characters I like from both Fates/Awakening, I like Virion, Gunter, and Benny. But that's because they seem to break away from the pattern of redundancy (in Benny's case his gimmik just isn't in your face because that's the point). SOV has more of these grounded characters who solidify their existence in their world than the other 2 games in my opinion. And to tie this in to the subject at hand with this thread, it is an example to me that you can have great characters with little to no supports, and that while supports can be good, they can also damage relationships us players have with them as well as drowning what makes them good characters in loads of repetitive nonsense. 

  

[Ottservia]

1 hour ago, Seazas said:

You only prove my point. You find them one dimensional purely from the supports while ignoring anything else. A lot of the characters definitely aren't super deep but acting like they're flat and have absolutely nothing is absurd. Hell, a lot of the supports in the game absolutely provide personality, you seem to focus on some of them that may not do it for you.

They have the base conversations, the small amount of supports, memory prisms, and various amount of small lines in story even for characters like Atlas and Silque. Everyone that can be recruited has unique dialogue if you reject them and even if you talk to them again they get lines changed to reflect their personalities. At worst, SOV's crew reach the bare minimum of other FE side casts. 

As far as base conversations go I can count on one hand the amount of base conversations I’ve read in that game that were worth a damn. Tobin’s is okay but the information found in it doesn’t really amount to much because yeah he has inferiority complex but my problem with it is that doesn’t add anything to his characterization. Yeah we have a couple battle quotes here or there that play into it but neither of his supports dig into it at all nor is it something the story itself focuses on despite the amount of screen time he has. You compare him to a character with an inferiority complex like Severa and the difference in how much nuance each one has is vast. So no I don’t think SoV’s characters are that much better than awakening or fates. 

 

1 hour ago, JimmyBeans said:

The problem I have with many of the characters from the other 2 3dsfe's is that fact they have so much, yet I feel like so little, so many of those things they talk about really just don't add much, a character like Setsuna from fates has all these supports yet she mentions that she comes from a noble family briefly in like one of them, and iirc she makes mention of her father briefly in only one as well. The main issue for me is that so much time is taken on things that really don't tell you anything interesting about the characters part in said game, and in Setsuna's case they devote almost all of it to that ridiculous gimmik that makes me feel more and more separated from that character. 

To be fair, you are comparing one of the more one dimensional Fates characters to one of the more nuanced ones in SoV. Not every character in SoV is a miss mind you Forscyth being one of them. The same goes for fates and awakening. For a cast that large you’re gonna have a few one dimensional characters here or there. Some characters are just gonna be more interesting than others and that’s fine. If you want a better comparison to Forscyth then it’s better to compare him to characters like Sophie, Cynthia, or Arthur who are all more similar to him and much more nuanced than Setsuna(at least to my knowledge I haven’t really read Setsuna’s supports). 

 

1 hour ago, JimmyBeans said:

It's called subtext, and it's something that most games with less dialogue in the series makes great use of to tell you about characters without giving you redundant and pointless dialogue. One of my favorite examples in SOV is Forsyth, who is a goofy and light hearted character, similar to what you get a lot of in awakening and fates. 

Might wanna revaluate your definition of subtext. It’s kind of hard to imply something about a character if there’s hardly anything to imply. Characterization is a very important part of character writing and I find that SoV characters have very little of it. Let me ask the question again. what can you tell me about Gray, Kliff, or Tobin beyond just their surface level personality traits? Tobin has an inferiority complex. Other than that nothing. Kliff? I got nothing. Gray? He likes Clair I suppose but other than that I couldn’t tell you anything more about his personality if you paid me. If you wanna talk subtext then fine but know that characterization and subtext are more or less the same thing in this situation. Forscyth and Python I won’t deny have good characterization. They’re a couple of the few SoV characters that do alongside Boey, Lukas, Clive, and Saber. 
 

Also if you wanna talk subtext Setsuna is fully aware of how air headed she is but the implication as to why she’s like that is because she knows people will help her out of whatever mess she’s gotten herself in so she doesn’t feel any need to worry about anything. At least that’s what I got from the few supports I have read of hers. Or hell if you wanna talk about subtext then look at Morgan. Now that’s a very interesting character in regards to the things solely implied about them.

Edited May 24, 2021 by Ottservia

[Seazas]

38 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

As far as base conversations go I can count on one hand the amount of base conversations I’ve read in that game that were worth a damn. Tobin’s is okay but the information found in it doesn’t really amount to much because yeah he has inferiority complex but my problem with it is that doesn’t add anything to his characterization. Yeah we have a couple battle quotes here or there that play into it but neither of his supports dig into it at all nor is it something the story itself focuses on despite the amount of screen time he has. You compare him to a character with an inferiority complex like Severa and the difference in how much nuance each one has is vast. So no I don’t think SoV’s characters are that much better than awakening or fates. 

Except all of them provided backgrounds for the characters and gave them their own stories to tell than being nothing characters. Hell, some of them are the primary sources for a character's thought process on what's going on. It showcased Gray's change as a character and that there's more to him than just jokes and Clair. This stuff absolutely adds to their characterization, it doesn't go in depth but only a small few FE characters went in depth about themselves in main stories. 

Feels like you're overrating some characters you like while underrating characters that didn't catch your attention. Severa talks more sure but she isn't this super nuanced multi-level character like you claim. We just see more of her gimmick and same personality.

Edited May 24, 2021 by Seazas

[Etrurian emperor]

Supports in Echoes weren't all that interesting. They tended to be pretty shorty and there weren't a lot of them. 

But I never found that much of a weakness because much more than most games Echoes managed to include the main cast into its story. The supports didn't need to be anything special because the characters were allowed to have screentime and development through other means. I think Tobin and Gray being fiercely loyal to Alm when he seemed to get fired was far more meaningful then anything they could have talked about in supports. And from the other team Mae's constant support of Celica throughout their adventure was a much better indicator of how close they were than their support. Likewise I don't think any support Saber could have had with Celica would have been better then him slowly growing from shady mercenary to a man really being fond of his charge. 

 

Edited May 24, 2021 by Etrurian emperor

[NinjaMonkey]

I'd say it's because Treehouse's localisations are garbage, just look at the awful supports we got in Fates compared to the original Japanese ones.

[Etrurian emperor]

3 hours ago, JimmyBeans said:

The problem I have with many of the characters from the other 2 3dsfe's is that fact they have so much, yet I feel like so little, so many of those things they talk about really just don't add much, a character like Setsuna from fates has all these supports yet she mentions that she comes from a noble family briefly in like one of them, and iirc she makes mention of her father briefly in only one as well. The main issue for me is that so much time is taken on things that really don't tell you anything interesting about the characters part in said game, and in Setsuna's case they devote almost all of it to that ridiculous gimmik that makes me feel more and more separated from that character. 

Its a shame IS seemed to forgot how to write gimmick characters properly. Haar was such a gimmick character. Such a wacky fellow, always napping, talking about the best nap spots and mentioning he's going to return to his nap at the end of many conversations. And then it turns out Haar actually has a lot of strong opinions on a variety of topics. The wacky sleepyhead can converse with monarchs about loyalty, to the royal's aid about strategy and he has a great many things to say the many boss characters. At first glance you'd never imagine that Haar's was such an interesting character and that the writing actually tricks the player in underestimating him helps a good deal in that. In Three Houses I think Hanneman most closely resembles Haar as a character who tricks the player into assuming he's just a gimmick.

I really missed that in Fates. Very few characters are more than they appear at first glance. Perhaps some more boss conversations might have helped with that but I think the general tone of the writing is more to blame. Most characters don't go beyond their gimmick because they were never intended to be, which is a missed opportunity. Fates characters live and die by their gimmick and if that particular gimmick isn't to your liking there's nothing to them. I'm fond of over the top super heroes so of course I love Arthur, but I have no affinity for garbage or constantly falling in pitfalls, so Keaton and Setsuna fall completely flat for me. 

22 minutes ago, NinjaMonkey said:

I'd say it's because Treehouse's localisations are garbage, just look at the awful supports we got in Fates compared to the original Japanese ones.

In some cases such as with Beruka and Saizo. But other times I think ThreeHouse was forced to make due as best as they could with the problematic material they had been given. Sometimes ThreeHouse even managed to salvage what little they could such as with Soleil. For a game that helped solidify Fire Emblem's growth in the west Fates was paradoxically the worst nightmare project a localisation team could have been given. 

Edited May 24, 2021 by Etrurian emperor

[Samz707]

26 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Its a shame IS seemed to forgot how to write gimmick characters properly. Haar was such a gimmick character. Such a wacky fellow, always napping, talking about the best nap spots and mentioning he's going to return to his nap at the end of many conversations. And then it turns out Haar actually has a lot of strong opinions on a variety of topics. The wacky sleepyhead can converse with monarchs about loyalty, to the royal's aid about strategy and he has a great many things to say the many boss characters. At first glance you'd never imagine that Haar's was such an interesting character and that the writing actually tricks the player in underestimating him helps a good deal in that. In Three Houses I think Hanneman most closely resembles Haar as a character who tricks the player into assuming he's just a gimmick.

I really missed that in Fates. Very few characters are more than they appear at first glance. Perhaps some more boss conversations might have helped with that but I think the general tone of the writing is more to blame. Most characters don't go beyond their gimmick because they were never intended to be, which is a missed opportunity. Fates characters live and die by their gimmick and if that particular gimmick isn't to your liking there's nothing to them. I'm fond of over the top super heroes so of course I love Arthur, but I have no affinity for garbage or constantly falling in pitfalls, so Keaton and Setsuna fall completely flat for me. 

 

If I had to sum it up.

Old gimmick characters (even minor ones like Dorcas for instance, in my experience with FE7/FE6 and I guess Echoes as well if you wanna count that) feel like gimmicks because they have small screentime, you generally don't get the feeling that their entire existence revolves around said gimmick.

If anything, the increased amount of supports and event tile dialogue and such in Awakening (and I presume similar systems in Fates do the same.) only serve to hamemer home a character's gimmick, which makes it feel like they are the gimmick, as opposed to the gimmick being a character trait.

Or even simply the same gimmick being significantly more heavy-handed.  (Such as Sain's womanizing versus Virion's womanizing.)

[Ottservia]

2 hours ago, Seazas said:

Feels like you're overrating some characters you like while underrating characters that didn't catch your attention. Severa talks more sure but she isn't this super nuanced multi-level character like you claim. We just see more of her gimmick and same personality.

I mean have yet to hear you give an argument as to what makes Tobin a more nuanced character than Severa so from my perspective it looks to me that’s what you’re doing not me. I could write a decently sized essay on the nuances of Severa’s character(and in fact I have). If I were to do the same for Tobin, it would probably be a paragraph at most. I’m mostly against comparing characters but my point here isn’t that Tobin should be more like Severa just that Severa is a more nuanced character. 

 

2 hours ago, Seazas said:

Hell, some of them are the primary sources for a character's thought process on what's going on. It showcased Gray's change as a character and that there's more to him than just jokes and Clair.

I mean if you wanna enlighten me on this supposed depth of Gray’s character go ahead but from my 3 play throughs of this game I have yet to see anything to even remotely suggest that his character is anything more than “Alm’s village friend that likes Clair”. 

[Seazas]

22 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

I mean have yet to hear you give an argument as to what makes Tobin a more nuanced character than Severa so from my perspective it looks to me that’s what you’re doing not me. I could write a decently sized essay on the nuances of Severa’s character(and in fact I have). If I were to do the same for Tobin, it would probably be a paragraph at most. I’m mostly against comparing characters but my point here isn’t that Tobin should be more like Severa just that Severa is a more nuanced character. 

 

I mean if you wanna enlighten me on this supposed depth of Gray’s character go ahead but from my 3 play throughs of this game I have yet to see anything to even remotely suggest that his character is anything more than “Alm’s village friend that likes Clair”. 

I have "yet to give it" because I wasn't trying to come in the thread to make paragraphs about characters and compare them to Awakening. I really do not care for that, I already said that the Echoes characters aren't massively deep, but they're good characters that have a fair amount going for them. Not what you claim about them being super boring with nothing at all, that is just not true. Also, even remotely bringing Severa: a character with an appearance of two games to work with in comparison to side characters in a remake is inherently disingenuous. From what I saw and from your analysis, Severa isn't that deep at all... You just enjoyed digging through the loads of dialogue she has and display it for her overall consistent and slightly simple character. Which is fine, but it's not a multi level thing. 

How about the fact that he actively changes over the war and has guilt over the people he murdered? His friendships and how he had experiences outside of the village unlike Tobin, Faye, and Kliff? His nagging desire to do something with himself? How he tends to be fairly optimistic yet real on some things at the same time? Gray isn't just "Alm's village friend that likes Clair" with nothing else to him. Gray has a few other things that he admires or bounces off of. The small detail of him admiring "THE Clive" really adds to him as a person than just having 1-2 connections. Gray interacts with the world and isn't just the Clair and Alm guy. Lastly, he's given reasons to fight with Alm and has more reflection than a surprising amount of side characters in the entire franchise.

Edited May 25, 2021 by Seazas

[JimmyBeans]

3 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Snip

Maybe rather than reevaluating my definition of subtext you should look a little deeper, given the little dialogue in the game it's a lot easier than reading the dozens of supports other games have. It seems you have based your opinion solely on his base convo 2 & 3, so read 1 & 4 again. I know you are smart enough to understand and catch subtext from those 2, which imo focuses on the more interesting parts of his character. @Seazas already summed up some of the basic stuff in this post below and there is even more than that, and this is just in the base convos! while not groundbreaking, it is a good use of lines. Keep in mind that I'm choosing to ignore the supports of his this time because I want to prove the point of the op that supports are not needed. 

4 hours ago, Seazas said:

Gray goes from a dude that barely took things seriously with a desire to do... something, anything than just rot in Ram Village to genuinely caring for Clair with the war maturing him more. He's one of the rare characters in the entire franchise to have a line like: "Maybe all the people I killed could forgive me".

There are little to no characters that even feel bad about killing people in the other 3ds games (ironically corrin is one of them but dead horse is dead horse). Also “Alm’s village friend that likes Clair” is choosing to ignore everything else and doesn't really mean anything toward this argument, I could say "Severa is just a tsundere" it would be just as ignorant because neither of those statements are true. No one here needs write paragraphs upon paragraphs to show you how deep Grey is to try and get you out of your bias against SOV, but again as Seazas is also saying, the characters in that game have something going for them, and imo have all they need which is why they are a good argument for the original point of this thread. 

p.s. I just wanna say while it may seem that I am getting heated as it turns out I just like discussions and really get into them, I promise you I'm not trying to be aggressive and am not fuming with rage

@Etrurian emperor Also yes Haar is such a good example of taking a surface level gimmik and still having an iconic character in this series with it, I can't believe I didn't think of him for this thread. I posted earlier about RD's qualities regarding base convos, but I failed to mention boss convos, which RD has the crown of what every FE game should aspire to be in that aspect.

 

 

Edited May 25, 2021 by JimmyBeans

[Ottservia]

45 minutes ago, JimmyBeans said:

There are little to no characters that even feel bad about killing people in the other 3ds games (ironically corrin is one of them but dead horse is dead horse). Also “Alm’s village friend that likes Clair” is choosing to ignore everything else and doesn't really mean anything toward this argument, I could say "Severa is just a tsundere" it would be just as ignorant because neither of those statements are true. No one here needs write paragraphs upon paragraphs to show you how deep Grey is to try and get you out of your bias against SOV, but again as Seazas is also saying, the characters in that game have something going for them, and imo have all they need which is why they are a good argument for the original point of this thread. 

This is the last I’ll say on the matter cause I don’t wanna derail the thread too much. If anyone wants to continue this in PM I am willing. I think you miss my point. In that when you really look at Gray’s character what’s really there? We know he was Alm’s childhood friend, he has a couple sisters, has a thing for Clair, and has some self-reflecting on the people he’s killed. That’s all cool but generally speaking none of that is relevant to his characterization. Okay maybe that’s the wrong way to phrase it. Like you have these components of his character but how do they connect? How are they shown to the audience? They aren’t really. A nuanced character is one where each individual component feeds into one another. As an example with Severa, we know she has a massive inferiority complex which is why she acts so abrasive. She’s also extremely insecure as shown in her Inigo support where he compliments and she immediately accuses him of making fun of her. This is because she is so used to people looking down on her she just assumes everyone is looking down on her by default even when they’re not. Subtle bits of characterization like that can mean so much in regards to giving the audience insight into a character’s psyche. That’s what you call good characterization. 

The problem with Gray is that he doesn’t have moments like that at least as far as I can tell. I’ve played through SoV two and a half times and I have yet to see that level of characterization at least with any of the ram villagers. When a character dispenses their backstory or whatever that should click in my brain and everything should connect. I don’t get that with SoV characters because their characterization is so weak. Yes, Tobin has an inferiority complex but how does that inferiority complex effect his personality, speech pattern, mannerisms, how he interacts with others, etc.? As far as I can tell it doesn’t and that’s the problem. Like Forscyth we know he wants to be a knight and takes it very seriously which is why he’s always getting on Python’s case for being lazy. That’s good characterization. Most other SoV characters don’t have that but I can name plenty of awakening and fates characters that do across multiple supports(like Peri being a really good cook for instance or Lucina’s terrible fashion sense). This is what I mean when I say the characterization is bad because if the game didn’t tell me this shit about these characters I would’ve never guessed because it’s shown so poorly. You can tell me this shit about Gray being guilty all day but if doesn’t connect with the rest of his character in a meaningful way then it’s ultimately pointless and that’s the biggest problem here.

Edited May 25, 2021 by Ottservia

[Lightcosmo]

I feel like an issue with SoV's cast is they never step outside a "comfort zone".

That could be just me but they never explore alot of the stuff that could make Gray deep. Just using him as an example since hes on hand.

Edited May 25, 2021 by lightcosmo

[Use the Falchion]

17 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

I feel like an issue with SoV's cast is they never step outside a "comfort zone".

Circling back to the main conversation at hand, that's one of the reasons why I think a Base Conversation/H2H system exclusively wouldn't work. No character would step outside of a "comfort zone," because they wouldn't have the chance to. If you're given two, maybe three conversations in a group setting to make a person memorable, you're going to stick with their gimmick or quirk. But if you have 10-12 Supports, all between 3 to 6 conversations long, then you have options. On some, you can play it safe. Others can be risky. Few will be perfect, but not all have to be, so long as the job gets done.

[MagicCanonBalls]

Like some already pointed out, it's because the main story is as bare bone as it is, and personally that is a good thing. If someone like me who just skim or outright skip all the pre-battle dialogue in FE games, only chance for me to know the character better is through supports, especially side characters who barely has any presence in the main story I am not too keen on storytelling aspect in games, especially FE. But 3ds and 3 Houses supports make the side characters more memorable (except SoV I guess unless you are Alm and Celica lol).

There are definitely some bad supports here and there in each games, but I think the good one outshines the bad one. For example, in my 1st playthrough of Conquest I benched Arthur as soon as possible because he wasn't good in my gameplay, but in my second Hard Mode playthrough I used him in the starting few chapters and unlocked his C support with Effie and Corrin, from there he went on to become one of my favorite characters in FE. 2nd gen in both Awakening and Fates also shows a lot of personality which would be impossible to do it all in main story, some are even better than their parents in their support convo. Like Asugi, he supposed to be Gaius clone but his beef with Saizo made him stands out, and that's why he was my favorite FE character of all time.

Personally I think with addition of group convo like in Tellius games plus 3H support time-gated system would be perfect for FE. Whether romance should be involved though, that would be another matter.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, MagicCanonBalls said:

Like some already pointed out, it's because the main story is as bare bone as it is, and personally that is a good thing. If someone like me who just skim or outright skip all the pre-battle dialogue in FE games, only chance for me to know the character better is through supports, especially side characters who barely has any presence in the main story I am not too keen on storytelling aspect in games, especially FE. But 3ds and 3 Houses supports make the side characters more memorable (except SoV I guess unless you are Alm and Celica lol).

There are definitely some bad supports here and there in each games, but I think the good one outshines the bad one. For example, in my 1st playthrough of Conquest I benched Arthur as soon as possible because he wasn't good in my gameplay, but in my second Hard Mode playthrough I used him in the starting few chapters and unlocked his C support with Effie and Corrin, from there he went on to become one of my favorite characters in FE. 2nd gen in both Awakening and Fates also shows a lot of personality which would be impossible to do it all in main story, some are even better than their parents in their support convo. Like Asugi, he supposed to be Gaius clone but his beef with Saizo made him stands out, and that's why he was my favorite FE character of all time.

Personally I think with addition of group convo like in Tellius games plus 3H support time-gated system would be perfect for FE. Whether romance should be involved though, that would be another matter.

I think that says more about how they were (Fates especially, but also I think Awakening too) poorly implemented into the story than anything about their supports. Personally to me the 2nd Gen of both those games are most memorable from the DLC campaigns where they actually are involved with the plot. Though maybe that's just my bias putting more precedence on an actual narrative rather than supports. Still though, I think if the issue is that you have characters who literally can't be developed in the main story, that's a bigger problem than the relatively small band aid of giving them supports can help..

[JimmyBeans]

On 5/24/2021 at 7:45 PM, Ottservia said:

This is the last I’ll say on the matter cause I don’t wanna derail the thread too much. If anyone wants to continue this in PM I am willing. I think you miss my point. In that when you really look at Gray’s character what’s really there? We know he was Alm’s childhood friend, he has a couple sisters, has a thing for Clair, and has some self-reflecting on the people he’s killed. That’s all cool but generally speaking none of that is relevant to his characterization. Okay maybe that’s the wrong way to phrase it. Like you have these components of his character but how do they connect? How are they shown to the audience? They aren’t really. A nuanced character is one where each individual component feeds into one another. As an example with Severa, we know she has a massive inferiority complex which is why she acts so abrasive. She’s also extremely insecure as shown in her Inigo support where he compliments and she immediately accuses him of making fun of her. This is because she is so used to people looking down on her she just assumes everyone is looking down on her by default even when they’re not. Subtle bits of characterization like that can mean so much in regards to giving the audience insight into a character’s psyche. That’s what you call good characterization. 

The problem with Gray is that he doesn’t have moments like that at least as far as I can tell. I’ve played through SoV two and a half times and I have yet to see that level of characterization at least with any of the ram villagers. When a character dispenses their backstory or whatever that should click in my brain and everything should connect. I don’t get that with SoV characters because their characterization is so weak. Yes, Tobin has an inferiority complex but how does that inferiority complex effect his personality, speech pattern, mannerisms, how he interacts with others, etc.? As far as I can tell it doesn’t and that’s the problem. Like Forscyth we know he wants to be a knight and takes it very seriously which is why he’s always getting on Python’s case for being lazy. That’s good characterization. Most other SoV characters don’t have that but I can name plenty of awakening and fates characters that do across multiple supports(like Peri being a really good cook for instance or Lucina’s terrible fashion sense). This is what I mean when I say the characterization is bad because if the game didn’t tell me this shit about these characters I would’ve never guessed because it’s shown so poorly. You can tell me this shit about Gray being guilty all day but if doesn’t connect with the rest of his character in a meaningful way then it’s ultimately pointless and that’s the biggest problem here.

Considering what the argument is it isn't really derailing, because if I'm correct than it proves that supports aren't needed which is tied to the beginning of this thread. 

As to how Gray's traits connect with each other there is something you seem to miss, and that like *most* of the starting Ram Crew, they start as pretty blank slates and as the war goes on they change, they don't really have these moments at the beginning, but they make something of them selves as the game goes on, and as they get XP and level up and get farther down their chosen classes their views on things develop and change. 

Their personalities are open enough that someone like Tobin could be a total pushover and you could believe it, or maybe even rival Alm as the legitimacy of this varies depending on who is playing the game, so many fans of the older games bring this kind of stuff a lot because it can help others get attached to characters better, this is why people like iron mans as well because death of player characters is an integral part of this series. You say you don't understand how people like the Ram villagers so much, but maybe this will give some insight as many in this community are attached in a way to atleast 1 on them. So as for what's really there, there is a lot when you add the gameplay and I choose to bring this up because I don't think I can convince you that the lines he has are sufficient even though I still believe that there are. (I recommend doing a quick read of Tobins base convos and seeing that change in tone especially towards the end).

Other characters have more going for them right away because they have different established standings in the world at large, we already discussed Forsyth and Python being good minor characters, something SOV does as well as instead of being just the lord and his advisors (like in the older games) a lot more people contribute in the main story like Clair, Clive, Lukas and even Gray and Tobin, which is where a lot of their characterization lies as well. There are bad characters that would of benefitted from lots of supports in the game, but overall this game showed me that even in modern FE supports are not needed for great characters, loads and loads of lines do not equal = good and more often than not characters telling unique stories from gameplay is what will always be the real seller.

Lysithea did not get popular because of her supports after all...