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19 hours ago, Jotari said:

Is it because she is Corrins direct blood sister and they weren't willing to go that far with the incest (obviously giving her supports but not having a marriage S supports was completely out of the question)?

Actually, I didn't know that. B( It's just because I like getting to know characters better, and she was an interesting one because of her design. As for why I think they didn't, it's because

Spoiler

Lilith was the bird in the stable, she came from Anakos' world, and she dies before the game is over.

If she had supports, I don't believe these major spoilers could have been avoided within those supports while still letting the player get the chance to explore her true self and past (which is what I personally believe support conversations are for.)

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43 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

Actually, I didn't know that. B( It's just because I like getting to know characters better, and she was an interesting one because of her design. As for why I think they didn't, it's because

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Lilith was the bird in the stable, she came from Anakos' world, and she dies before the game is over.

There wasn't really much motivation to leave her as an NPC ally. They easily could have made her a regular playable character. And there was doubly little reason to kill her at the end of both stories given it served absolutely no  purpose. It didn't even serve to remove her gameplay function (which at least is something somewhat unique and different from a standard playable character).

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If she had supports, I don't believe these major spoilers could have been avoided within those supports while still letting the player get the chance to explore her true self and past (which is what I personally believe support conversations are for.)

And as for the reveal of who she actually is...there's no reason for that to have been left for DLC! The only thing different between revealing her origin in Revelations and Hidden Truths is a paywall (and this largely goes for Corrin too, though Hidden Truths needed something to justify its existence and Corrin at least serves as something weighty. It's also nice to see the Awakening  Trio in the context of Awakening to justify the DLC, of course that's only because, like Lillith, they were entirely ignored by the main story when they really shouldn't have been).

Edited by Jotari
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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

There wasn't really much motivation to leave her as an NPC ally. They easily could have made her a regular playable character. And there was doubly little reason to kill her at the end of both stories given it served absolutely no  purpose. It didn't even serve to remove her gameplay function (which at least is something somewhat unique and different from a standard playable character).

And as for the reveal of who she actually is...there's no reason for that to have been left for DLC! The only thing different between revealing her origin in Revelations and Hidden Truths is a paywall (and this largely goes for Corrin too, though Hidden Truths needed something to justify its existence and Corrin at least serves as something weighty. It's also nice to see the Awakening  Trio in the context of Awakening to justify the DLC, of course that's only because, like Lillith, they were entirely ignored by the main story when they really shouldn't have been).

You're missing the point. Support conversations give information, and when that information is accessed is largely determined by the player (this was fixed by 3H as certain supports require certain events in the mains story to have occurred (and IS realizing that not everyone needs to be able to S support with everyone else, but that's not really my point here), but that is not the case in Fates.) Written works (novels, videogames, movies, etc.) are only really successful when the information release to the reader is carefully controlled by the writer. Certain bits of information coming to the reader at certain times is an art, and the skill takes time to develop, but the effect is clear. For example, knowing the twist at the end of a mystery before one even reads chapter one pretty much ruins the entire experience. In this case, Lilith has a lot of information associated with her that isn't supposed to be revealed until later on in the game. Bits appear at certain intervals. Now, compare that to the function of support conversations: to thoroughly express a character to the player. These two needs are at odds. So, the simple solution is to not allow Lilith to support other characters. After all, you put yourself in a difficult position as a writer if you do that, risking having to choose between letting the character express herself in-character and controlling the important plot information. Neither should be sacrificed. So, no supports for Lilith. And the easiest way to explain why a character doesn't get any supports? NPC-lock.

As for

Spoiler

Lilith's death

it's a motivator to Corrin, and has impact on the player. I know I certainly had feelings when that happened.

Regarding leaving certain information for DLC, I can't quite answer that since I haven't played Revelations nor the child DLC chapters. However, I understand why (to a degree) the information wasn't included in the normal gameplay: it just never came up.

As I understand it, the behind the scenes story is specifically for Revelations' plot. So, information pertaining to that plot needs to, again, be kept from the player until the proper time to reveal it. A lot of what Lilith knew she kept to herself (just like Azura) because it was directly related to Revelations major plot points. Without this freedom to express these things, certain other related pieces of information had no chance of surfacing.

In short, it was good writing techniques applied to a delivery (of the story) experiment (splitting the story up into separate games.) It seems to me like IS learned from this experiment, too, since 3H has...I think 5 story routes? And all in the same game, with only one of them being DLC. FE players tend to like to understand the whole story of what's going on, but have certain limits to time and money. IS seems to have realized that the demand of Fates was too high, while the demand of Awakening worked a lot better. So, we see 3H took more that route (again, extra story was in 1 DLC package, much like Awakening's child chapters.) It could also be that the system/game card itself wouldn't support as much information as they wanted to relay in one game (with the Switch being a more powerful system than the 3DS) but that's just speculation on my part of one potential other factor. Anyway, when you combine all these separate components together, you get the scenario we have today.

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17 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

You're missing the point. Support conversations give information, and when that information is accessed is largely determined by the player (this was fixed by 3H as certain supports require certain events in the mains story to have occurred (and IS realizing that not everyone needs to be able to S support with everyone else, but that's not really my point here), but that is not the case in Fates.) Written works (novels, videogames, movies, etc.) are only really successful when the information release to the reader is carefully controlled by the writer. Certain bits of information coming to the reader at certain times is an art, and the skill takes time to develop, but the effect is clear. For example, knowing the twist at the end of a mystery before one even reads chapter one pretty much ruins the entire experience. In this case, Lilith has a lot of information associated with her that isn't supposed to be revealed until later on in the game. Bits appear at certain intervals. Now, compare that to the function of support conversations: to thoroughly express a character to the player. These two needs are at odds. So, the simple solution is to not allow Lilith to support other characters. After all, you put yourself in a difficult position as a writer if you do that, risking having to choose between letting the character express herself in-character and controlling the important plot information. Neither should be sacrificed. So, no supports for Lilith. And the easiest way to explain why a character doesn't get any supports? NPC-lock.

No, no, I get you. I realize I went on my own mini rant, but I understand what you were trying to say. I also just think you're wrong. Like, for one, Fates just doesn't give a crap as it reveals that Corrin's lineage isn't to Hoshido in random support conversations to permit incest (this actually is something revealed in Revelation, though it doesn't have as big an impact on Corrin as it should as they had to half ignore it due to the possibility that Corrin already knew because of said support convos).

For another, a characters can have their own secrets in supports that just plain aren't reveal. Fates again demonstrates this with Odin, Laslow and Selena. Even when talking amoungst themselves they never reveal anything of their origin beyond "from another world". Why they're there, how they got there and even who they were before is completely unexplained (until you get to the same DLC that explains Lilith). They let us know there is a secret, but don't say what the secret is yet still maange to have a full library of supports. Azura also gets through Birthright without ever even hinting at the existence of Valla. So, no, a character can have plot relevant secrets that are an integral part of their character that are not divulged in Supports. The only issue with any of these secrets is that none of them were actually explained in the main story, rendering the characters as excessively minor in the scope of the plot while dangling a secret the story doesn't actually care about in front of the player and doesn't intend to answer unless you fork over more money (or just go to youtube).

17 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

As for

  Reveal hidden contents

Lilith's death

it's a motivator to Corrin, and has impact on the player. I know I certainly had feelings when that happened.

Regarding leaving certain information for DLC, I can't quite answer that since I haven't played Revelations nor the child DLC chapters. However, I understand why (to a degree) the information wasn't included in the normal gameplay: it just never came up.

As I understand it, the behind the scenes story is specifically for Revelations' plot. So, information pertaining to that plot needs to, again, be kept from the player until the proper time to reveal it. A lot of what Lilith knew she kept to herself (just like Azura) because it was directly related to Revelations major plot points. Without this freedom to express these things, certain other related pieces of information had no chance of surfacing.

No, that's the problem. Lilith never comes up at all in Revelations. Like, I actually think she doesn't have a single line nor is mentioned in Revelation at all. For as pointless and random as her death in Birthright and Conquest, at least she jumped out of nonexistence to appear in the story, if only briefly. And that's the major issue (along with the Awakening trio). It's fine for everything to not be revealed in Birthright and Conquest. They are, after all, while largely complete in their own right, still installments in a larger story. But Revelation, as the name implies, is meant to actually reveal the actual secrets. Not only is it narrative cocktease to ignore such characters, it makes absolutely no sense in universe for characters not to step in and explain their place in the world when it actually becomes directly relevant to the goings on.

17 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

In short, it was good writing techniques applied to a delivery (of the story) experiment (splitting the story up into separate games.) It seems to me like IS learned from this experiment, too, since 3H has...I think 5 story routes? And all in the same game, with only one of them being DLC. FE players tend to like to understand the whole story of what's going on, but have certain limits to time and money. IS seems to have realized that the demand of Fates was too high, while the demand of Awakening worked a lot better. So, we see 3H took more that route (again, extra story was in 1 DLC package, much like Awakening's child chapters.) It could also be that the system/game card itself wouldn't support as much information as they wanted to relay in one game (with the Switch being a more powerful system than the 3DS) but that's just speculation on my part of one potential other factor. Anyway, when you combine all these separate components together, you get the scenario we have today.

Three Houses only effectively has two effective story routes. Two and two halves if you want to be generous and count the Cindered Shadows and Azure Moon  (but if we're counting the DLC then Heirs of Fates would have to be counted for Fates as it's about as long as Cindered Shadows). Largely though the differences between the routes are about as on par as the differences between leaving Pelleas alive or killing him in Radiant Dawn. How the route split was handled in Three Houses has actually endeared a lot of people to how it was handled with Fates, as you get far more unique content for the same amount of money in Fates compared to Three Houses.

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

No, no, I get you. I realize I went on my own mini rant, but I understand what you were trying to say.

Ah, okay. I'm glad I was able to communicate that. I can't tell you how many times I try to explain myself and things get misunderstood, so this comes as a relief. Thanks for taking the time to tell me. 🙂

Quote

I also just think you're wrong. Like, for one, Fates just doesn't give a crap as it reveals that Corrin's lineage isn't to Hoshido in random support conversations to permit incest (this actually is something revealed in Revelation, though it doesn't have as big an impact on Corrin as it should as they had to half ignore it due to the possibility that Corrin already knew because of said support convos).

For another, a characters can have their own secrets in supports that just plain aren't reveal. Fates again demonstrates this with Odin, Laslow and Selena. Even when talking amoungst themselves they never reveal anything of their origin beyond "from another world". Why they're there, how they got there and even who they were before is completely unexplained (until you get to the same DLC that explains Lilith). They let us know there is a secret, but don't say what the secret is yet still maange to have a full library of supports. Azura also gets through Birthright without ever even hinting at the existence of Valla. So, no, a character can have plot relevant secrets that are an integral part of their character that are not divulged in Supports. The only issue with any of these secrets is that none of them were actually explained in the main story, rendering the characters as excessively minor in the scope of the plot while dangling a secret the story doesn't actually care about in front of the player and doesn't intend to answer unless you fork over more money (or just go to youtube).

I get what you're saying, but I'd caution you about assigning motives such as "only wants money" or "doesn't care at all" to the writers. After all, they chose this as their career, which is no small investment, and it's a career in the arts at that. (Artistic careers are not easy things to make work, and a devotion to one's craft is basically required for any level of success in the field.) That said, I don't doubt that there are some things they didn't mind sharing/couldn't get away with not sharing with the player early on (such as Corrin not actually being the kid of Garon or Sumeragi.) Even then, though, that wasn't made super obvious at the same points in time in both Birthright and Conquest. I never said the games' writing succeeded completely in what they set out to do. (There were a LOT of flaws resulting from certain restraints other aspects of the games put on them, like trying to make the entire cast capable of reaching S-rank with virtually everyone else. Unfortunately, keeping everyone in character became a sort of impossibility with that goal in place and slaughtered character development potential since supports were only gated by support points being achieved, meaning that even if a character learned a life-altering lesson in one support, it would need to somehow be nullified to try to keep the character consistent in other supports. Hence Selkie's supports with Kiragi.) All I said was that they were applying good methods. Unfortunately, employing good methods doesn't always guarantee success in one's endeavors, as there could be (and in this case, were) other complicating factors involved. That doesn't mean they just didn't try, though, as there is evidence that an effort was, indeed, made (not to mention a motive to do their best.)

Basically, they bit off more than they could chew, but at least they learned from it and made practical application of what they learned.

Quote

No, that's the problem. Lilith never comes up at all in Revelations. Like, I actually think she doesn't have a single line nor is mentioned in Revelation at all. For as pointless and random as her death in Birthright and Conquest, at least she jumped out of nonexistence to appear in the story, if only briefly. And that's the major issue (along with the Awakening trio). It's fine for everything to not be revealed in Birthright and Conquest. They are, after all, while largely complete in their own right, still installments in a larger story. But Revelation, as the name implies, is meant to actually reveal the actual secrets. Not only is it narrative cocktease to ignore such characters, it makes absolutely no sense in universe for characters not to step in and explain their place in the world when it actually becomes directly relevant to the goings on.

I see. If that's the case (and I have no reason to doubt your testimony to the fact here), then you're absolutely right. I wonder if they just didn't have enough time/space to put everything they wanted to into it. It was DLC after all.

Quote

Three Houses only effectively has two effective story routes. Two and two halves if you want to be generous and count the Cindered Shadows and Azure Moon  (but if we're counting the DLC then Heirs of Fates would have to be counted for Fates as it's about as long as Cindered Shadows). Largely though the differences between the routes are about as on par as the differences between leaving Pelleas alive or killing him in Radiant Dawn. How the route split was handled in Three Houses has actually endeared a lot of people to how it was handled with Fates, as you get far more unique content for the same amount of money in Fates compared to Three Houses.

While I'm only on my 2nd run of 3H, I think it's pretty clear that Azure Moon, Crimson Flower, Verdant Wind, Cindered Shadows, and the church route are all separate routes which, when combined, give the whole story (although it could be that the new Warriors game will give yet another piece, it is its own game, so I'm going to ignore it for now.) Just to be fair. As for the Pelleas comparison,

Spoiler

you can only actually keep him alive in your 2nd playthrough and beyond

and it only changes a couple of events, not give you an entirely new perspective, so I don't actually think that's a very good comparison. That's kind of a side issue, though. Anyway, I don't think it's all that disputable how the public received 3H vs Fates, and it's pretty clear why, too. 3H gave less freedom in supports to the player, freeing up their writers to do their jobs of keeping information compartmentalized and allowing characters to grow with certain events that happen in their lives. They also had a more zeroed-in focus on the overall tone of the narrative (which was more serious and suited FE's writing in general, appealing to the existing fan base's taste and attracting new players who enjoy that kind of story.) Basically, cutting the fat equated to greater success. I also think that making Byleth less of a silent protagonist and more of a character (less customization than previous avatars, for example) suits FE's strengths in writing better. (They just do better with deeper and more complicated, serious-toned stories that is more reminiscent of a book than a self-insert experience since they like to give purpose to their characters, world, and events.) All this to say that I still see that they learned from the past as to what works well with their strengths and what their player base wants. I expect they'll keep trying new things as they go into the future, too, but they don't generally go too crazy with this (which, in their case, is a good thing, given the kind of games they put out and the kind of players they attract.)

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40 minutes ago, Mercakete said:

While I'm only on my 2nd run of 3H, I think it's pretty clear that Azure Moon, Crimson Flower, Verdant Wind, Cindered Shadows, and the church route are all separate routes which, when combined, give the whole story

Just chiming in on this point here, 3H does have 4 separate main paths and one side-story DLC path, but as far as the actual story goes:

  • Crimson Flower has the most unique, not sharing hardly any story details with the other paths at all
  • Verdant Wind and Silver Snow are exceedingly similar in terms of how the story progresses and how maps go, with Silver Snow only having two major map differences in skipping the events of "Blood of the Eagle and Lion" and having a different final boss and map. As for the story... different things are revealed in both, but otherwise events happen largely the same.
  • Azure Moon shares many maps with VW and SS as well as many story events, but things are notably different with the smaller story details, most notably the near absence of Those Who Slither in the Dark as a major individual faction and the battle within the Imperial Palace being where the final boss is fought.
  • Cindered Shadows I honestly don't remember if it fills in any major gaps in the bigger story. I remember talk of Byleth's mother, but that's all I can say with certainty without checking the scripts (which I am doing right now)

Pre-timeskip is even worse, with almost every single event happening the same across all 3 paths and only minor differences to be found as a result of choosing a different house.

At the time of release I very quickly got bored of having to play though the game a second just to get more of the story, especially knowing there were still two other paths with even more story. At least Fates first 6 chapters were quick and simple enough to get through...

Edited by Xenomata
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1 hour ago, Mercakete said:

Ah, okay. I'm glad I was able to communicate that. I can't tell you how many times I try to explain myself and things get misunderstood, so this comes as a relief. Thanks for taking the time to tell me. 🙂

I get what you're saying, but I'd caution you about assigning motives such as "only wants money" or "doesn't care at all" to the writers. After all, they chose this as their career, which is no small investment, and it's a career in the arts at that. (Artistic careers are not easy things to make work, and a devotion to one's craft is basically required for any level of success in the field.)

I didn't actually say that. I said Fates, doesn't give a crap, and by that I meant the game itself and what it values. I wouldn't criticize the writers directly because I honestly don't know them, but with a game like Fates it doesn't really matter. Because the writers do not have free reign to determine what direction the story actually goes in. The marketing teams evidently had a massive say in how things went down. I don't think any serious writer would ever want to implement the child units into the game. They were not included as a natural element of the story, evident by the fact that they can literally be removed without affecting a single line of dialogue outside of their paralogues. The child units are in the game because someone other than writers decided the game needs to have child units. And to the writers credits the child units aren't awful characters in of themselves, they just have the minimum effort put into actually justifying their existence in the story.

Quote

 

I see. If that's the case (and I have no reason to doubt your testimony to the fact here), then you're absolutely right. I wonder if they just didn't have enough time/space to put everything they wanted to into it. It was DLC after all.

Eh. Maybe. Though Revelation is actually kind of super light on story. It's a tonne of just wandering around in Valla doing very little. You fight Azura's mother like three times just because the story is stalling. If it is a case that they just couldn't fit it in to Revelation, then I pin that down to insufficient writing talent, which is definitely possible. But the notion that someone said "Don't reveal anything about why the Awakening kids are here, we can sell that as DLC" doesn't seem impossible.

Quote

While I'm only on my 2nd run of 3H, I think it's pretty clear that Azure Moon, Crimson Flower, Verdant Wind, Cindered Shadows, and the church route are all separate routes which, when combined, give the whole story (although it could be that the new Warriors game will give yet another piece, it is its own game, so I'm going to ignore it for now.) Just to be fair. As for the Pelleas comparison,

  Reveal hidden contents

you can only actually keep him alive in your 2nd playthrough and beyond

and it only changes a couple of events, not give you an entirely new perspective, so I don't actually think that's a very good comparison. That's kind of a side issue, though. Anyway, I don't think it's all that disputable how the public received 3H vs Fates, and it's pretty clear why, too. 3H gave less freedom in supports to the player, freeing up their writers to do their jobs of keeping information compartmentalized and allowing characters to grow with certain events that happen in their lives. They also had a more zeroed-in focus on the overall tone of the narrative (which was more serious and suited FE's writing in general, appealing to the existing fan base's taste and attracting new players who enjoy that kind of story.) Basically, cutting the fat equated to greater success. I also think that making Byleth less of a silent protagonist and more of a character (less customization than previous avatars, for example) suits FE's strengths in writing better. (They just do better with deeper and more complicated, serious-toned stories that is more reminiscent of a book than a self-insert experience since they like to give purpose to their characters, world, and events.) All this to say that I still see that they learned from the past as to what works well with their strengths and what their player base wants. I expect they'll keep trying new things as they go into the future, too, but they don't generally go too crazy with this (which, in their case, is a good thing, given the kind of games they put out and the kind of players they attract.)

Like I said, the differences in the routes in Three Houses are about on par with the differences in Radiant Dawn if you choose to spare or kill Pelleas. Which is to say extremely minor, particularly with Verdant Wind and Silver Snow.

 

 

Why are we talking about this? Isn't this meant to be a Heroes thread?

Edited by Jotari
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48 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Why are we talking about this? Isn't this meant to be a Heroes thread?

Fallen Lilith, though I was beginning to think that this was going on too long. I have more I'd say (such as commenting on whether a writer would want to implement the child characters or not, as I wouldn't say that no good writer wouldn't have that desire) but I think we're in agreement that this has kind of gone on too long for the thread it's in.

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