When you realize that Edelgard is the only female lord not to make the cut.

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

To be fair, even though I wrote that comment in the first place, I don't really see Marth using non-swords either. Roy I'm more mixed on simply because it'd be weird to have two Emblems (both infantry-locked at that) who only use swords. Marth has the excuse(?) of being the first Lord and all three of his weapons seen so far being Prfs.

(But hey, I'm not against him pulling Gradvius out of thin air down the line either.)

At this point in the series I think it's time we say nuts to the line about him not being good at magic and just give him a damn Fire Tome already.

[DefyingFates]

13 minutes ago, Jotari said:

At this point in the series I think it's time we say nuts to the line about him not being good at magic and just give him a damn Fire Tome already.

Or even just the Aum Staff. I don't think any of the other Emblems have close associations with something that can raise the dead, and it'd set him apart from Celica and Micaiah. On the other hand, he has cav/ armor effectiveness with one weapon and dragon effectiveness with another, so maybe that's why his kit is so basic so far.

[Jotari]

11 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Or even just the Aum Staff. I don't think any of the other Emblems have close associations with something that can raise the dead, and it'd set him apart from Celica and Micaiah. On the other hand, he has cav/ armor effectiveness with one weapon and dragon effectiveness with another, so maybe that's why his kit is so basic so far.

To be clear I was actually talking about giving Magic to Roy.

[DefyingFates]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

To be clear I was actually talking about giving Magic to Roy.

Oh, oops! My bad! Maybe at the very least he could get a magic sword to split the difference between him using magic and being sword-locked?

Edited November 30, 2022 by DefyingFates

[henrymidfields]

On 11/26/2022 at 1:31 AM, Dark Holy Elf said:

Well, keep in mind that the italicized is the Intsys is 1990-2003, and the bolded is the Intsys is 2017-present. If they were still writing games where the male voices are clearly the most important and then promoting the unimportant female characters from those games in their spinoffs, I would definitely very much agree that this is hypocritical. As is, you can perhaps side-eye SoV a bit, but that is held back by being a remake, and otherwise they have been trying to have more balanced gender roles in their recent games. (You can still quibble some things about the recent games, to be sure, but i think the effort is clearly there.)

Otherwise, because of Intsys's past, I feel like they don't have any perfect option here. Yes, if you just went by the most important character of each game, you'd probably have Alm, Eliwood, and Chrom, resulting in a 9-3 split. But in 2022 that's a bad look. Saying "look everyone, we were kiiinda sexist in the early days of this series" is (a) probably not something Intsys wants to draw attention to and (b) would not mollify anyone pissed off by such a roster today (and rest assured, such a roster would piss a lot of people off!). Toss in the high popularity of Celica, Lyn, and Lucina (all of whom finished ahead of any of their male counterparts in CYL1 / CYL2 in Celica's case) and I feel like Intsys's current choices were very sensible.

To be honest, I think a RD remake should go balance this narrative disparity out thoroughly. At least expanding Micaiah's story, and especially give Ike some character development - mainly stop treating him as some sort of living God, but maybe as someone who struggles having to deal with people who wants to use him for their politically nefarious means, and who actually screws up a plotline or two - would go a long way in addressing the gender narrative disparity. It feels pretty cowardly and insulting on IS's part when it was their more successful attempt at changing up the typical FE story, and it's even feels worse when Ike didn't even salvage the series despite his popularity in Smash Bros.

For all its faults, I'm glad that the other Nintendo franchise I regularly play and their audience has much less beef about, say, Cynthia being the Sinnoh Champion, or girl PCs being playable since Gen 2. (Well, maybe except the special treatment of Red, but he also kind of overshadows other male PCs in addition to Leaf...)

Edited December 1, 2022 by henrymidfields

[DefyingFates]

3 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

To be honest, I think a RD remake should go balance this narrative disparity out thoroughly. At least expanding Micaiah's story, and especially give Ike some character development - mainly stop treating him as some sort of living God, but maybe as someone who struggles having to deal with people who wants to use him for their politically nefarious means, and who actually screws up a plotline or two - would go a long way in addressing the gender narrative disparity.

I could not agree more with this. Ike has absolutely 0 growth in RD and while I didn't have a word to say it before you nailed it on the head: the story treats him as a living god who eclipses everyone else into irrelevancy. I hate him in RD so much...

But yeah, that's not the first time IS messed with a female lead to puff up the male one(s), and I can only hope we don't see it happen again.

I'm sure Ike's going to end up with one of the main Lords in Engage though, just you wait and see. The story trailer even showed the Lords paired with Marth, Roy, Ike, Lucina (and presumably Lyn), so...

Edited December 1, 2022 by DefyingFates

[Ayra]

37 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

I could not agree more with this. Ike has absolutely 0 growth in RD and while I didn't have a word to say it before you nailed it on the head: the story treats him as a living god who eclipses everyone else into irrelevancy. I hate him in RD so much...

But yeah, that's not the first time IS messed with a female lead to puff up the male one(s), and I can only hope we don't see it happen again.

I'm sure Ike's going to end up with one of the main Lords in Engage though, just you wait and see. The story trailer even showed the Lords paired with Marth, Roy, Ike, Lucina (and presumably Lyn), so...

If I'm not mistaken, we did see Timerra using Ike in a cinematic and in another there was a big zoom on her ring. So yes, he's most likely linked to Timerra. We got Alear-Marth, Diamant-Roy, Timerra-Ike, Alfred-Lucina and... yeah, Ivy with Lyn if she gets it from her dad, I suppose. Unlike all the other ones though, Ivy-Lyn feels like a complete miss from a gameplay standpoint. In FEH, Micaiah is often a flying unit and she's obviously a mage, so I feel like she'd be a much better fit?

But yeah, as you just discussed, Ike gets a ton more attention and I don't think they'd want to double-up on "eras" for the main lords. Marth, Roy, Ike and Lucina all cover different eras of Fire Emblem; the main missing era is Switch with Byleth (plus Smash favoritism). Which would make a 4-1 male/female split as far as main lords default rings go... You could argue Sigurd or Leif instead of Byleth, but you'd still get the same ratio either way.

[DefyingFates]

35 minutes ago, Ayra said:

yeah, Ivy with Lyn if she gets it from her dad, I suppose. Unlike all the other ones though

Funnily enough my thought process went in the opposite direction, from Ivy being the main showcaser for Lyn in the Engaging trailer, then remembering that her dad used her. Same end result though, combined with noting the oddity of a mage using a bow Emblem. Then again, Celica's meant to be used by fliers instead of mages, so maybe Lyn has something similar going on. Either that or the bow/ sword use is meant to round out Ivy's weaknesses or it's a narrative decision (either thematic or simply that Ivy and Lyn can relate to each other).

37 minutes ago, Ayra said:

Marth, Roy, Ike and Lucina all cover different eras of Fire Emblem; the main missing era is Switch with Byleth (plus Smash favoritism). Which would make a 4-1 male/female split as far as main lords default rings go... You could argue Sigurd or Leif instead of Byleth, but you'd still get the same ratio either way.

Which finally gets us back on topic (kinda) about FE being heavily skewed narratively to male-centric plots in the past, with arguably 3H being the only one to flip that.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Funnily enough my thought process went in the opposite direction, from Ivy being the main showcaser for Lyn in the Engaging trailer, then remembering that her dad used her. Same end result though, combined with noting the oddity of a mage using a bow Emblem. Then again, Celica's meant to be used by fliers instead of mages, so maybe Lyn has something similar going on. Either that or the bow/ sword use is meant to round out Ivy's weaknesses or it's a narrative decision (either thematic or simply that Ivy and Lyn can relate to each other).

Which finally gets us back on topic (kinda) about FE being heavily skewed narratively to male-centric plots in the past, with arguably 3H being the only one to flip that.

I'd say Fates flips that just as much as 3H.

[DefyingFates]

On 12/1/2022 at 5:08 PM, Jotari said:

I'd say Fates flips that just as much as 3H.

Really? Granted Azura, Mikoto and Arete are more relevant in Revelation, but I'd argue that Garon and the princes are the focal points of Birthright and Conquest. Still, Azura doesn't count for nothing so thanks for reminding me about her!

[Mysterique Sign]

I bet this thread feels really dumb now

[Rose482]

7 hours ago, Mysterique Sign said:

I bet this thread feels really dumb now

Yes, this thread did NOT age well lmaoooo. 

[DefyingFates]

2 hours ago, Rose482 said:

Yes, this thread did NOT age well lmaoooo. 

But at least all the bickering can maybe possibly end, right? 😛

[henrymidfields]

17 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

But at least all the bickering can maybe possibly end, right? 😛

20 hours ago, Rose482 said:

Yes, this thread did NOT age well lmaoooo. 

On 12/9/2022 at 1:39 PM, Mysterique Sign said:

I bet this thread feels really dumb now

Oh for fuck's sake what the fuck have we been discussing lol??? 😅🤣

On a more serious note:

On 12/1/2022 at 10:52 PM, DefyingFates said:

I could not agree more with this. Ike has absolutely 0 growth in RD and while I didn't have a word to say it before you nailed it on the head: the story treats him as a living god who eclipses everyone else into irrelevancy. I hate him in RD so much...

But yeah, that's not the first time IS messed with a female lead to puff up the male one(s), and I can only hope we don't see it happen again.

I'm sure Ike's going to end up with one of the main Lords in Engage though, just you wait and see. The story trailer even showed the Lords paired with Marth, Roy, Ike, Lucina (and presumably Lyn), so...

At least it would have been much better if the portrayal was much different. If the main focus was actually on Micaiah, and other important female figures like Sanaki and Elincia, the narrative would have been truly groundbreaking and might even have made RD the absolute gold standard. Anacybele had some discussion about this, and I'm linking that here.

I would also have accepted a less drastic change in gameplay. Have Ike return, but actually have him be portrayed as a political pawn by Begnion, and he has to constantly do their bidding, otherwise Crimea is in danger of being annexed. And both Elincia and Ike really hate this, but Ike's skill doesn't extend to politics, Elincia was nearly assassinated numerous times as a implicit threat of what will the Senators do if Ike steps out of line, and their other friends and allies are also blackmailed by the Senators. And Ike and Elincia has to constantly deal with them (at least more cutscenes to make this lack of political power more explicit) and the main soldiers from Begnion they are backing, throwing their weight around. So he has no choice but to participate in the occupation of Daein, while trying to mitigate the damage Begnion is doing. And he gets scapegoated at every turn thanks to propaganda from both sides. The Daeins scapegoat him as someone who destroyed their country, the Begnions (and the Senators in particular) despise him for not putting down the proverbial "GOP-style Law and Order", and Ike's allies understandably also resent him for not standing up to the Senators. Eventually, Ike learns how he can't preserve the peace and can't keep the Begnion chauvinists off Crimea, that so many typical Lords are able to do, because, surprise, real-life politics gets in the way. Disillusioned from all of this, Ike learns the painful lesson of how "the Great Man Theory" just doesn't work at all in Tellius (or in real life), and thus led to disbanding his merc crew and the as-per-canon decision to leave Tellius. Ike is hailed as a hero, but he ends up as a mentally broken and cynical man, he ends up having to break off a number of his friendships while his other friendships have not been the same either. That would have been a good narrative too.

Edited December 10, 2022 by henrymidfields

[Jotari]

19 hours ago, Rose482 said:

Yes, this thread did NOT age well lmaoooo. 

Why? Has she shown up in a trailer?

[henrymidfields]

Just now, Jotari said:

Why? Has she shown up in a trailer?

https://serenesforest.net/2022/12/08/fire-emblem-engage-expansion-pack-announced-tour-of-the-somniel-base/

At least she's with Dimi and Claude.

Edited December 10, 2022 by henrymidfields

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, henrymidfields said:

https://serenesforest.net/2022/12/08/fire-emblem-engage-expansion-pack-announced-tour-of-the-somniel-base/

At least she's with Dimi and Claude.

Expansion pack? So is it like day 1 dlc? I dont really want to deep dive as I usually stick away from fire emblem prerelease stuff after the inital trailer.

[henrymidfields]

Now that I'm watching the trailer, it would be super funny and weird if there was a crossover DLC with cast from TMSFE (or holy shit, them with actual SMT and P3, P4, and P5 characters, or alternately non-FE Nintendo characters) appear as emblem characters. One half of myself doesn't want to see it (NGL it's super-ridiculous), but the other half of myself is super curious...

Edited December 10, 2022 by henrymidfields

[Acacia Sgt]

Itsuki Emblem who also summons Mirage Chrom.

Stand-ception!

[vanguard333]

Well, now we know the real reason that none of the House Leaders made the cut; Nintendo decided to section them off and charge extra for them.

Seriously; if they're already announcing this DLC a month before the game's release date (EDIT: and releasing it within the same month as the base game; I forgot to mention that important part), there's no way that DLC isn't already finished and wasn't originally supposed to be in the main game.

I'm used to other companies severing parts of a game before release to be charged extra for as DLC, but I'm not used to this from Nintendo; at least with Nintendo, DLC generally didn't appear until months afterward and was actually bonus content and not something ripped out of the main game. Nintendo just gets increasingly anti-consumer every year and there's no sign of them stopping anytime soon.

Edited December 17, 2022 by vanguard333

[Omegathekid]

I mean, since we know the game has been done for close to 2 years at this point, I'm strangely okay with the Day 1 DLC. I'm normally against it, but... this feels like a weird area to be in.

The other thing to consider, and I'm not saying it applies to this circumstance, but a game will go green months in advance, and be shipped out with cartridges/disks being printed, and since DLC is purely software based, you can send that out at a quicker time table, kind of like day 1 patches that are just bug fixes.

Of course, once again, the game's been ready for a while at this point, so they probably could have squeezed in at least wave 1, but then you could potentially end up with something unfinished if all of the bracelets are connected to a larger narrative. I don't know, it's weird.

[Crubat]

6 hours ago, Omegathekid said:

I mean, since we know the game has been done for close to 2 years at this point, I'm strangely okay with the Day 1 DLC. I'm normally against it, but... this feels like a weird area to be in.

The other thing to consider, and I'm not saying it applies to this circumstance, but a game will go green months in advance, and be shipped out with cartridges/disks being printed, and since DLC is purely software based, you can send that out at a quicker time table, kind of like day 1 patches that are just bug fixes.

Of course, once again, the game's been ready for a while at this point, so they probably could have squeezed in at least wave 1, but then you could potentially end up with something unfinished if all of the bracelets are connected to a larger narrative. I don't know, it's weird.

Agree with all of this

[NeonZ]

On 12/11/2022 at 4:36 PM, vanguard333 said:

Well, now we know the real reason that none of the House Leaders made the cut; Nintendo decided to section them off and charge extra for them.

Seriously; if they're already announcing this DLC a month before the game's release date, there's no way that DLC isn't already finished and wasn't originally supposed to be in the main game.

I'm used to other companies severing parts of a game before release to be charged extra for as DLC, but I'm not used to this from Nintendo; at least with Nintendo, DLC generally didn't appear until months afterward and was actually bonus content and not something ripped out of the main game. Nintendo just gets increasingly anti-consumer every year and there's no sign of them stopping anytime soon.

They announced the first Awakening DLC pack before Awakening was out too (which included Marth, Roy and Micaiah). Of course, the difference is that Awakening's DLC was clearly less fully fleshed out than this, using just customized avatars for the "new" characters.

As far as sectioning part of the game though, note that the DLC Emblems aren't even rings, but bracelets. They're clearly something separate from the 12 rings of the main plot, and Three Houses already has Byleth as one of the rings. Still, it's obvious they made the 3 Lords DLC because they knew people would pay for them due to their popularity, yes.

Edited December 16, 2022 by NeonZ

[Jotari]

19 minutes ago, NeonZ said:

They announced the first Awakening DLC pack before Awakening was out too (which included Marth, Roy and Micaiah). Of course, the difference is that Awakening's DLC was clearly less fully fleshed out than this, using just customized avatars for the "new" characters.

As far as sectioning part of the game though, note that the DLC Emblems aren't even rings, but bracelets. They're clearly something separate from the 12 rings of the main plot, and Three Houses already has Byleth as one of the rings. Still, it's obvious they made the 3 Lords DLC because they knew people would pay for them due to their popularity, yes.

Before Awakening was out in Japan? Because I remember waiting a hell of a long time to actually get that game after its actual inital release. Indeed it was dark days back when games didn't have simultaneous global releases.

[Acacia Sgt]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Before Awakening was out in Japan? Because I remember waiting a hell of a long time to actually get that game after its actual inital release. Indeed it was dark days back when games didn't have simultaneous global releases.

Yep. We first knew there would be DLC in December 2011:

A couple months before Japan's release date of April 2012.