To those who were introduced to Fire Emblem by FEH (or just certain characters), what were your head canons about characters from other games?

[Deathcon]

Also, how right or wrong were you, and were you satisfied or dissatisfied with what they actually were?

I asked this on the reddit thread but decided to also ask here as well.

[Etrurian emperor]

I'm curious what those people would think of Ishtar. Her VA said she didn't voice her as an antagonist, because she wasn't told that Ishtar was one.

As far as power goes newcomers who started with Heroes might have a scewed perspective on how strong certain people are supposed to be. Because its a consistent trend in Heroes that the main villains are pretty lousy units no matter how powerful they're supposed to be. Arvis for instance has killer stats and can(theoretically) wield every weapon but in Heroes he's a lame freebie. The Black Knight's power dominates the plot of POR but as a unit in Heroes he too is a lame freebie. Same with Julius, Gharnef or most villains. Meanwhile the cutest little girls out there who lorewise are probably among the weaker members of the cast keep being among the best units. 

Tell me Ashnard and Julius are supposed to be the final boss of their games and I wouldn't believe you if I only had their Heroes portrayal to go by. 

Edited January 12, 2023 by Etrurian emperor

[DefyingFates]

2 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Tell me Ashnard and Julius are supposed to be the final boss of their games and I wouldn't believe you if I only had their Heroes portrayal to go by. 

If I may play devil's advocate, you'd at least be able to tell that those two are important since Ashnard has flying immunity and Julius got a really cool refine.

But that's just me having a bit of fun; if FEH was someone's first introduction to FE then as you say, they'd think all the waifus were the strongest units ever and all the men and freebies were the absolute worst.

[3PercentCrit]

I didn't exactly start on Heroes but it was like the 3rd one I played and I had assumed Gordin lied about his age to get into Marth's army. Also I assumed Lyon was dating Ephraim for some reason

[Eltosian Kadath]

I don't know if they are still active on the site, but I think @mampfoid did, they even did a thread while going through their first run of FE7 here

 

[ARMADS!!!]

I started with FEH, now I know that lots of stuff that I thought about some FE characters are wrong (since I've played and at least know a lot of the lore and about the characters about most of the games) but i certainly didn't think that the lolis were supposed to be all strong as fuck and that the bad guys were supposed to be weak on their games. The main "head canons" (or rather, wrong impressions) that I had were:

 

 -  That each game tells a completely different story: At first, when you play the first book and go through each world, I had no clue about what they were talking about and got confused with so many worlds, it was just confused to be introduced to so many stuff at the same time wothout realizing that it'd have been better if I had some knowledge beforehand . After very little time tough (when I started to look up online about the characters and other stuff that I found interesting) I realized that each "world" had nothing to do with each other (with the exception of awakening I mean)

 - That Stahl and Sumia weren't able to be together on Awakening: At first I didn't know that marrying characters was a thing, sure, since I started with FEH, but once I found out I just couldn't fathom that Stahl and Sumia wasn't an option (I mean, I shipped them at the time because they were both part of my very first team and I liked their chemistry based on their descriptions, but even now that I don't ship I find it a little strange that pairing them isn't an option) since they looked like they'd work together at least fairly well, but then you have some pretty bad, random, or outright creepy pairings that can be made. Once I watched a fan made suport chain for them it looked pretty cool.

 - That each FE game has THAT many playable characters per game.

 - I thought that permadeath was bullshit since on FEH I liked to sacrifice one or two units to beat the maps (it was just for a short time tough, I started to like it a lot eventually)

 - That on a regular FE game, if you have a bad level it will matter later. It just never occured to me that that was how it worked, since on FEH a unit's stats will always be the same on the end so when I started to play FE7 and got like just +1 HP on a level up, I never cared.

 - I was surprised when I started to play FE7 and learned that you could miss your attacks, it seemed unfair to me at first since on FEH everything is able to be neatly calculated (not its harder, sure, because of the amount of calculus that you're required to do but since when I started to play it was still very fast to calculate, I tended to always calculate everything on my head), but again, it didn't take much time for me to like the feature as well (also I took way too much time to learn the value of a dodge tank)

 - I was also surprised at first about each weapon having a certain amount of uses and some characters being able to wield more than one type of weapon, but this didn't bother me at all, I liked this from the beggining since I was geeing lots of cool weapons.

 - I thought that promotion was sick as fuck. So much that I looked up online ho to get every single promotion item just so I wouldn't lose any. I liked the idea of supports a lot too.

 - I was confused as hell that the weapons that were supposed to be effective against infantry units (that on regular FEs are mounted and armoured units) were not dealing the extra damage to what I thought that was infantry (since in FEH infantry are the units that DON'T have a horse or armour) and during my whole first playthrought I never knew why and only learnt it a lot of time later.

- Lyn and Hector's voices became their Heroes' voices on my head forever and no one will ever be able to change my mind about that (idk why just them, probably I never paid attention to most of the other characters' voices before I started to play their actual games I guess, idk....)

 - I never knew that Roy was gonna be a bad unit and nothing could prepare me to how bad he was (I know that it was likely intentional and I like a lot that he is brains over brawns but still, I never suspected it...)

 - I saw lots of people complaining when a game repeats the same kinds of map too much (like FE6 with the seize maps) but it never bothered me since on Heroes there are only two kinds of maps on the main story anyway ("kill every enemy" and "survive") and I was used to it.

 - When I learned all the shenanigans that staves (specially status staves) could do, I froze in shock, it started when I got a random staff that did something other than heal (I don't remember which one) on my first playthrought of FE7 and got curious so I decided to search for a list online of what every staff on the game (or on every FE, I think that it wasn't a list just for FE7) could do. The power of those staves was sinister, alarming, bone chilling and completely frightening. I remember wondering why didn't they ever try to implement any of these effects on FEH because those effects were way cooler than Pain and Gravity (I mean, imagine berserk, or sleep staff or any shit like that!) and every other staff on feh was absolutely bad, so much that I never bothered using a staff unit on FEH until NY!Laevatein. Also since there's not permadeath on FEH and the maps are short and you usually have only 4 slots, it just made even more of a waste to not give staff units any game changing effect I mean why on earth would I ever use them (with very few exceptions)?! I still think that it's a waste to not have implemented almost anything of those gross staff effects that we have on other games, it'd be so broken! (at least as of last year they made some pretty cool, although usually still pretty tame, staff effects like Hatari Xane and Mikoto's refine, and I'm looking forward to see more and wilder effects on the future)

- I liked a lot the "different" classes that we don't get on FEH like thieves, assassins, staff units (with their awesome staffffffs)

 - I knew a lot (I mean A LOT) of spoilers, both because of heroes and because I used to read a lot of characters' pages on FE wiki thinking that I was probably never gonna play an actual FE game so I wasn't careful of spoilers. But yeah, after I started to care about actual FE games I stopped to read at least most of Brave and legendary characters' descriptions since they're full of spoilers.

 - I liked a lot that there are special boss dialogues and this kind of this on regular FEs

 - I didn't like that almost every character dies on FEH (that was when I was still on book 2, I couldn't imagine the amount of bloodshed that I'd see on the future of that game) I thought that characters like Laegjarn and Hellbindi would join our side and have a happy ending and that they only died to make the game edgy, but I stopped minding once I learned that it's like that too on normal FEs too and that thats how its supposed to work on Fire Emblem.

 

 

 Gee, I guess that there are a lot more but I think that that's enough for now, but if you wanna know more I can continue the list.

[Keikyushi]

6 hours ago, ARMADS!!! said:

- I was confused as hell that the weapons that were supposed to be effective against infantry units (that on regular FEs are mounted and armoured units) were not dealing the extra damage to what I thought that was infantry (since in FEH infantry are the units that DON'T have a horse or armour) and during my whole first playthrought I never knew why and only learnt it a lot of time later.

Yeah the whole "effective against infantry" description is just a localization fucked up from FE7, those weapons are indeed effective against armor and horse only. I don't think there's any weapons in regular FE that are truly effective against infantry either

[Mercakete]

Hmm good question. I don't think I can answer it, unfortunately, since I'm pretty sure that the only characters I was introduced to by Heroes are from games I haven't played yet (like anyone from FE5 or 6, except that I knew a little bit about some of them from FE4 and FE7. Funny how that worked out, huh?) I don't remember if I played Heroes or Fates first...

But even as someone in my situation, my perspective is that Heroes is great at keeping characters in-character, and in expanding on their personal lore, allowing the player to experience a character more deeply. It's like getting to hang out with someone in more situations, which is also why I really like seasonal events. It feels like you get to go to a celebration with a friend and see them in a new light!

@ARMADS!!!

Oh my gosh, that's actually a really good point about the staffs. XD I was just recently playing through some of Conquest's later chapters and reminiscing about the last map in Birthright. Staffs really made things easier, between warping, freezing foes (saved me from having to restart a fourth time on one map), healing, healing at range... And, one that I still find hilarious, cutting the big bad's max HP in half with a staff before roflstomping said big bad (Dwyer MVP.) Staffs can be really, really useful!

And I likewise don't tend to read about characters I haven't encountered in their home games, but I've been doing that since before I played Heroes, so I didn't see that as something I could list. Your experiences make so much sense, and it was fun reading it all!

Edited January 29, 2023 by Mercakete

[DefyingFates]

So, uh... I thought Cordelia was Awakening's Jeigen because her art made her look old. I explicitly remember thinking how neat it was to have an old lady be a part of the main cast and... yeah. Also, I thought Lachesis was a kid and thought it odd that she had such a deep voice, when it turned out the opposite was the issue (i.e. the voice was right, the art was not).