Would any of you actually be upset by "canonized" pairings?

[Jotari]

It's something that crops up when speculating on sequels or a Binding Blade remake or basically anything where the original continuity is revisited. There's an overarching sense that potential character pairings can't be touched as canonizing any pairings would send a portion of the fanbase into a rabid frenzy for not canonizing their particular favorite pairings.

But...do those people actually exist or are they purely hypothetical? Would you genuinely be upset and less likely to buy the game if an Awakening sequel were released and Chrom was married to Sully or Sumia? And if such people do exist are they in any kind of appreciable number to influence sales?

They've done it before with Thracia, which wasn't a huge seller, but was never going to be what with being a SNES game released almost in the Game Cube era (and just being deliciously spiteful to players in general). Still I don't think any, or at least many players booted it up and we're aghast to see Finn was Nana's father.

On the contrary the evidence that this is a concern for the developers can be see on Heroes where they haven't gone with Thracia's pairings for their characters, most noticable Ced not getting Forseti. But it's possible they're just saving Thracia Ced for an Ascended or Legendary hero.

Edited May 6, 2023 by Jotari

[Punished Dayni]

I am a bit tipsy writing this, but canonised pairings have been less of an issue for me, especially as fanon does what it wants anyways. I may have picked the bottom option, but that's less because of the pairing in the option and more because unless it comes to be outright terrible I don't often have much of any issue with even the ones pushed slightly.

None of this means there aren't people who'd take it very seriously mind.

[AnonymousSpeed]

29 minutes ago, Jotari said:

There's an overarching sense that potential character pairings can't be touched as canonizing any pairings would send a portion of the fanbase into a rabid frenzy for not canonizing their particular favorite pairings.

I think the issue is that it would, in some odd sort of way, disregard the autonomy which the games ostensibly gave to you. It's not all about shipping, because I'd feel the same way about character deaths (though most people don't ironman so you can more safely assume everyone lived). Part of the appeal of Fire Emblem is having control over who lives, who levels up, and who marries who. If games want to have canon pairings out of the gate (like Shadow Dragon), I'm fine with that. But it's weird to give me the option and then say it doesn't matter.

I do disagree that this is "rare" though. FE10 assumes everyone in FE9 lives, FE3/12 assumes no deaths in their prequel, etc.

29 minutes ago, Jotari said:

They've done it before with Thracia

I don't think it impacted Thracia sales either, but I can imagine that, where I invested in FE4, it would be weird or even off-putting to see all those choices ignored. They're separate games, but it makes it Kaga's fanfiction more than my playthrough, which is weird.

In this since, I actually favor the FE7 approach (as loathe as I am to praise the game). Or at least the reverse approach, since it's a prequel. If a pairing in canon in FE6 (like Bartre and Karla), it's canon in FE7. Things which can change in FE7 aren't canon/specified in FE6 (like Wolt's father). In a game so full of retcons, I respect that attempt, though I would appreciate if FE games instead put games within the same universe sufficiently far apart that it wouldn't matter whether Radd married Laim or not.

This is also coming from the perspective of someone who replays these games with different units and different pairings, so I'm not totally attached to any vision of what it "should" be. Then again, I'm also used to these things not being set in stone.

[vanguard333]

Just to be be clear, "So long as it isn't Robin x Tharja, we're good" means, "So long as Robin x Tharja is not canonized, then we're good", correct? I want to make sure I fully understand all the options before I vote.

Anyway, I honestly don't really care if they canonize pairings that were optional. I'm far more concerned that they might do the reverse: take fixed pairings and make them optional so people can ship them with other characters instead. Mandatory pairings are usually mandatory for story reasons, so making them optional would mean IS rewriting the story to accommodate a fixed pairing being made optional, and that could harm the story.

Don't get me wrong; if I can have Elincia end up with someone other than her foster-brother, that would be great.

[indigoasis]

Assuming this is from the perspective that we're going back to canonize particular pairings, I would be perfectly OK with it as long as it's the ones I want.

Jokes aside, I generally prefer the open-ended nature of pairings. It adds a layer of freedom and player customization that I think more or less benefits the games that feature it, especially games like Genealogy and Awakening that use it as a core gameplay mechanic. In my opinion, giving the player as much freedom as possible in (nearly) any video game is important, so letting the player have some input in who's with who is really just a nice bonus, and stuff like paired endings are largely inconsequential anyway.

That being said, it's not like it hasn't already been done before. The FE4 Mitsuki Oosawa manga took creative liberties with some of its pairings, but I'd say it's pretty far removed from the game enough that it doesn't really matter.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Punished Dayni said:

None of this means there aren't people who'd take it very seriously mind.

Personal views are more what I'd prefer as anyone can say anything about the masses.

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I think the issue is that it would, in some odd sort of way, disregard the autonomy which the games ostensibly gave to you. It's not all about shipping, because I'd feel the same way about character deaths (though most people don't ironman so you can more safely assume everyone lived). Part of the appeal of Fire Emblem is having control over who lives, who levels up, and who marries who. If games want to have canon pairings out of the gate (like Shadow Dragon), I'm fine with that. But it's weird to give me the option and then say it doesn't matter.

I do disagree that this is "rare" though. FE10 assumes everyone in FE9 lives, FE3/12 assumes no deaths in their prequel, etc.

They actually have done this to some extent too, mainly in Mystery of the Emblem. Arran is the canon choice for the Samson Arran scenario. Granted their choices there were to canonize one or the other or to ignore what's mechanically possible and go with both, but it is a bit funny to encounter Samson in the sequel and he has appearantly never met Marth before (still, it worked for giving Gra more...moreness). More obvious canonizations would be Marth defeating Camus in battle (though Gradivus still winds up in Valentia), Marth obtaining the Falchion, Marth never meeting Nagi (though he still feels like he has), Frey being the canon sacrifice (which was obvious), and, mechanically impossible, all the Gaiden characters existing and knowing Marth despite a full and robust army. Aside from Samson Arran where something had to be done, all of these are very obvious choices, though from a narrative perspective I'd kind of argue a lot shouldn't have happened. Particularly Camus, Gharnef and Michalis being defeated in battle (it's possible to spare Michalis in Old Mystery, though in that game it's also impossible to spare Camus, Gharnef can always be spared, though I do think mechanically possible is best fudged there so he's not killed but you still get Falchion), mainly because Mystery made the rather uncreative choice of bringing all of these characters (and Medeus) back from the dead, so them just not dying when it's mechanically possible to do so seems more logical than the flipflop of "defeating them was the canon scenario...but it didn't matter". Pretty much all of this applies to the Ike Black Knight duel in Path of Radiance (and uh, I guess Largo kind of died but didn't in Path of Radiance, just losing an arm instead, unless that was meant to be an intergame injury when he was chopping wood or something).

Oh and obviously of Shadow Dragon's two endings the one where Shiida lives is obviously the canon one (though stay tuned for Fire Emblem: Artemis's Curse, the project I'll be working on after Pyrathi 609).

1 hour ago, vanguard333 said:

Just to be be clear, "So long as it isn't Robin x Tharja, we're good" means, "So long as Robin x Tharja is not canonized, then we're good", correct? I want to make sure I fully understand all the options before I vote.

Yes.

1 hour ago, vanguard333 said:

Anyway, I honestly don't really care if they canonize pairings that were optional. I'm far more concerned that they might do the reverse: take fixed pairings and make them optional so people can ship them with other characters instead. Mandatory pairings are usually mandatory for story reasons, so making them optional would mean IS rewriting the story to accommodate a fixed pairing being made optional, and that could harm the story.

But then how can I give Seliph Balmung (okay that wouldn't be possible even if Sigurd could hook up with Arya, but I'm sure there are people out there who would sacrifice Sigurd and Deirdre's relationship for the sake of ugenics fun).

Edited May 6, 2023 by Jotari

[lenticular]

Generally speaking, if I like a game enough to play it multiple times, I'll want to try out different options on different runs rather than get attached to a single specific pairing. And if I don't like a game enough to play it multiple times, I'll mostly end up forgetting details like which characters I paired together. Either way, I'm not super invested in any pairing.

And anyway, it's not as if the original game isn't still there if I want it. If there's some pairing -- or other story element -- that I like, I can still go back and experience it whenever I want. Basically, a game is like a branching multiverse of different possibilities. A sequel or adaptation picks out a single universe from within that multiverse and focuses in on it, but it doesn't stop the rest of the multiverse from existing. 

I guess ultimately, I just think that canon as a concept is overrated.

[Florete]

I wouldn't go into some spiraling rage, but I wouldn't like it since I know it wouldn't be my preferred pairings. For Fire Emblem specifically it probably wouldn't prevent me from buying a game because I enjoy the series enough, but in another series I'm not as attached to I might skip an entry if it canonized a pairing I didn't care for, so I can see how someone who feels that way about FE might skip an entry for such a reason.

It also depends on the way in which it gets "canonized." Canonizing a pairing in a Fire Emblem manga spin-off (if that would even be "canon") is much less of a deal to me than doing so in a mainline game entry, for example.

As far as the poll, none of the options fit for me. There is definite potential for me to care, but I would not be "deeply upset," most likely.

[Jotari]

6 minutes ago, lenticular said:

 I guess ultimately, I just think that canon as a concept is overrated.

Very, very true.

[SnowFire]

I think the poll needed a middle option of "mild discomfort" if the goal was to get an accurate reading.  If I pretend I'm an Intelligent Systems executive, and a design team charges into my office and says they have an idea for a new Fire Emblem game that's totally fire and will be great, but for it to work it needs to be a direct sequel to an existing Fire Emblem game AND it'd work a lot better with some canon pairings...  sure, fine, do it.  But if their great game would still be great and it either doesn't need to be a direct sequel, or it doesn't really need canon pairings...  then it's more complicated.  To be clear, I'm a fan of canon pairings myself, but I think that to get the most benefit, it usually needs to already be baked into the (previous) game itself.  Adding them in after-the-fact can be tricky.  Maybe not so bad in cases like Chrom x Sumia where the game clearly hints at it as a "default" choice, but otherwise, yeah, it kinda retroactively takes away the player's autonomy.  If we're getting something better in return for paying that price, fine, but it shouldn't be done for no reason.

I will say that judging by recent Fire Emblem writing, this may be a moot point, as recent FEs have tended to make it hard to escalate the stakes after massive world-defining threats.  Awakening, Fates, and Echoes ended with basically all of the villains dead and the world-defining threat gone.  Three Houses actually did have a direct sequel in Warriors, sort of, but did more like a sequel to White Clouds rather than a sequel to any of the endings of any route, thus maintaining flexibility to reuse the basic threats in-setting.  (I guess the same could be said of Thracia 776, which was a bit of a sidequel).  For direct sequels to make sense, you need to ensure there's still threats and problems in the living lifetimes of our heroes, so basically the situation at the end of FE9 where there's clearly still major problems afoot in Tellius.  FE3/12 cheated and just resurrected all the villains for no reason, and they had about as much weight as you could expect, but Marth-era Archanea is a game with canon pairings anyway and no player agency to overturn.  Alternatively, you can do the FE6/7 prequel route, but...  not a lot to work with here that would intersect with canon pairings.  Oh no, Gunter got married in the Fates prequel?!  Oh well, just write she died in the epilogue.  A 3H prequel would presumably take place a thousand or more years earlier and thus not impact pairings in the "present."  An Awakening or Echoes prequel would make zero sense (yes, yes, I know, FE1 is technically a prequel to both, very witty).

I am curious if they ever do more with Engage's setting.  I feel like if they had intended a sequel or prequel, we would have seen a somewhat deeper setting with more unsolved mysteries than just the Emblem of Beginnings.  A 1,000 years earlier era prequel wouldn't require canon pairings, and the A-endings are so platonic in Engage that it probably wouldn't feel that disruptive to write a sequel where most everyone is just still Officially Single.

Edited May 6, 2023 by SnowFire

[Jotari]

45 minutes ago, SnowFire said:

I think the poll needed a middle option of "mild discomfort" if the goal was to get an accurate reading. 

Alright, fourth option added.

[AnonymousSpeed]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

Alright, fourth option added.

Coward.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

None of the options on the poll really fit my feelings. My feelings are mixed.

If they were to canonize a pairing like Eliwood x Ninian, or Roy x Lilina, I'd be totally fine with it because there's just so darn much in all they've done with those characters that it feels like they clearly WANT to make them canon pairings, they just haven't actually pulled the trigger on making it officially official. So, yeah, pairings like that where it feels like they're basically already canon, just do it already.

But for any pairing where there doesn't seem to be any developer bias one way or the other, I don't think I'd want any of those pairings canonized. Any pairing from Three Houses, or Sacred Stones, or Fates, most of them from Blazing Blade and Awakening. It would probably be a bad idea to canonize those.

[𝐍𝐲𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐥]

As a guy that is a pretty big shipper and is very into pairing characters together in games like Fire Emblem and Persona, I would actually really like some pairings to be canon. It means that we would get more content related to that pairing compared to a non-canon pairing. This could upset some people that aren't fans of the pairing, but you can't please everyone so it's not that big a deal. Honestly, it just depends on the pairing. If it was for example Tharja x Robin, I would be upset but if it's like Cordelia x Robin than I'd be pretty happy.

[NotYourKindOfPeople]

I think Engage had the right idea by making romance Avatar-exclusive but it was flawed in execution. Persona does a better job at handling romance in general, and I wish FE would take a few lessons from that series. 

[ping]

12 hours ago, lenticular said:

I guess ultimately, I just think that canon as a concept is overrated.

+1

And I agree with the rest of the post, too. I generally don't care about the shipping aspect of supports at all, but even more generally speaking, I don't mind too much if a sequel cuts off the branches instead of accounting for every single combination of possible choices made in the original game. It's impressive if a game can make the latter work, of course, but I think a lot of the time, the result is just that the sequel carefully avoids looking that direction.

I guess that, hypothetically speaking, I would be annoyed if a BinBla remake would decide that actually, Sain/Florina is a thing, so maybe I should've picked the third option over the second. But I would only be annoyed because I think that would be a terrible match, not because it retroactively makes the original games worse or because it ruins my favourite ships (I do read the Lyn/Florina supports as romantic).

Edited May 6, 2023 by ping

[Etrurian emperor]

Not really. Often its always fairly obvious which pairings are the most ''canon'' anyway.

[FlamesOfRagnell]

I think it would be silly to remove one of the trademark features of (at least more recent) FE games. It's one of the cool aspects to play around with and see different outcomes for. Or, if you're the type to only play once, it's a nice way to personalize the player's experience even just a little more.

However, if they wanted to improve the system, here's what I'd do: Reduce the number of potential pairings. Firstly, the vast majority of players won't even be interested in seeing them all anyway.

Secondly, many pairings in FE games are... not great, for at least one of a few reasons. Obviously I don't work for IS, so I'm not sure why, but it could very well be because there are too many pairing options, so some are just shoehorned in. This often results in simply lame pairings without much chemistry (ex. Lysithea x Ignatz) or, worst of all, creepy weird shit (ex. Hanneman x Dorothea).

If they were to remake, say, Awakening, with full voice acting and all, I feel like they could just cut like half of the romantic pairings without losing out on much of anything. But please let me keep Robin x Chrom lol.

In any case, I think it would be a mistake to canonize pairings. Limiting the options would almost certainly solve any potential problems in my mind, while retaining the intent of the mechanic.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I would be really exhausted by the hetero-normative pairings being pushed on us. But I think that's just me and not a Fire Emblem specific thing.

Think I'll go with the bottom option. I can't think of any likely pairing that would bug me. Yet I also can't think of any likely pairing that would get me to say "Ah, finally". I can imagine most of them would be decided purely to fridge one or both characters in order to up the stakes. And from that perspective choosing to pair up two legacy characters is kind of mean. Writers always looking for parents to kill. Weddings to ruin. So it's less "I don't care" and more "I don't trust them". 

[Sunwoo]

I can't say I'd give a shit.

Even if they canonized a pairing I absolutely hate. I just don't have the capacity to care about it beyond griping about it once or twice then moving on.

After all, things I enjoy have canonized things I hate without affecting my ability to like the thing as a whole.

[Morgan--Grandmaster]

While I would feel happy for the couples if they had good chemistry, I would also feel bad for the poor characters (and their fans) who would feel left out. Take Awakening: There are 13 main first-generation male characters, but only 11 main first-generation female characters. While this is likely for gameplay purposes even if one or two fall men fall, you can still get all the children, assuming that everyone lives, the only way to give all of them a paired ending is to do both of these actions:

a. Play as female Robin and marry Frederick, Virion, Stahl, Vaike, Kellam, Lon'qu, Ricken, Gaius, Gregor, Libra, Henry, or Donnel.

b. Force Chrom to marry the village maiden.

Somehow, I doubt that would be the case if Awakening had canonized pairings, so at least one of the other guys will feel left out. It makes me wish all the more that Anna or Say'ri were more involved in the group.

[Sunwoo]

2 hours ago, Morgan--Grandmaster said:

While I would feel happy for the couples if they had good chemistry, I would also feel bad for the poor characters (and their fans) who would feel left out. Take Awakening: There are 13 main first-generation male characters, but only 11 main first-generation female characters. While this is likely for gameplay purposes even if one or two fall men fall, you can still get all the children, assuming that everyone lives, the only way to give all of them a paired ending is to do both of these actions:

a. Play as female Robin and marry Frederick, Virion, Stahl, Vaike, Kellam, Lon'qu, Ricken, Gaius, Gregor, Libra, Henry, or Donnel.

b. Force Chrom to marry the village maiden.

Somehow, I doubt that would be the case if Awakening had canonized pairings, so at least one of the other guys will feel left out. It makes me wish all the more that Anna or Say'ri were more involved in the group.

Still better than Fates fucking up marriage so badly that if you play as male Corrin you could end up not even being able to get all the kids! XD

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, Morgan--Grandmaster said:

While I would feel happy for the couples if they had good chemistry, I would also feel bad for the poor characters (and their fans) who would feel left out. Take Awakening: There are 13 main first-generation male characters, but only 11 main first-generation female characters. While this is likely for gameplay purposes even if one or two fall men fall, you can still get all the children, assuming that everyone lives, the only way to give all of them a paired ending is to do both of these actions:

a. Play as female Robin and marry Frederick, Virion, Stahl, Vaike, Kellam, Lon'qu, Ricken, Gaius, Gregor, Libra, Henry, or Donnel.

b. Force Chrom to marry the village maiden.

Somehow, I doubt that would be the case if Awakening had canonized pairings, so at least one of the other guys will feel left out. It makes me wish all the more that Anna or Say'ri were more involved in the group.

While there's gameplay benefit to having everyone pair up, from a storytelling perspective, I think things are much more interesting if they don't. I like a good romance subplot as much as the next woman, but I don't need to see a dozen variants of the same story within a single work. Let's add in some gay guys, some ace guys, some guys who are looking but didn't find anyone, some guys who are just too busy with other aspects of their lives right now, and so on.

There are lots of interesting stories that can be told about characters that have nothing to do with them pairing up and having kids, so not getting a canon partner wouldn't mean the character would feel under-utilised or left out.

[Jotari]

Nowi shouldn't be paired with anyone in Awkaening anyway!

[Metal Flash]

In general, it wouldn`t effect my enjoyment much. While I would prefer some pairs would be canonized over others, even if the ones I don`t like were made canon it would not prevent me from enjoying the game.