Anyone hope IF's characters will be less shallow?

[HeartTranquil]

FEA was all good at first but when I finished the game… I felt hollow, like you interact with the characters and all but they felt really really superficial.

I was so hyped at the game and when I reached the ending… I couldn't go back and replay the game a second time.

Is this just a consequence of the game having loads of characters? Hopefully IF, being a story and choice focused game, will delivery a much better story and characters.

They didn't even have to tweak the game engine that much!

[Ishi]

Yeah I think with a new script writer they should definitely go for detailed interesting characters not just "Oh he has a candy addiction lets make everything revolve around that" take Sain or Luke for that matter sure they did lots of things just to get "laid" but not every convo had them rambling on about this you could see different sides of them.

But yeah the story is looking to be an interesting one which leads me to believe the characters are going to be complex. Or well just get some Garron guy who is invading another country for the hell of it cuz hes pure evil...

[Tryhard]

Does anyone who plays a game think, "Gee, I wish these characters were more shallow"?

[Book of Ereshkigal]

Hope? Of course. I don't have high expectations, though (At the same time, low expectations leaves me hope for being pleasantly surprised? Maybe?).

Edited April 12, 2015 by L95

[Honey Bunny]

Well, yeah, I mean I don't think "This product has complex, deep, characters." has ever been said in criticism. I do think that characters will be a bit deeper this time around though. At the very least the families will be simply because they look to be in the spotlight so much. Hopefully Kamui will have depth too, but I'm not holding out much hope for that.

Also I'd like to point out that not all of the character's in Awakening were completely shallow. Kellem for instance had some hidden depth, I thought.

[Thane]

As previously stated, no one plays a game like this hoping the characters will be uninteresting and lack depth. Besides, I think that while Awakening had some pretty boring characters, the problem is blown way out of proportion, especially since out of the - admittedly few - games of the series I'm familiar with, "deep characters" has never been a term I've associated Fire Emblem with. The writing is usually fairly entertaining and some characters are memorable, but complexity is simply not something I expect in terms of story at this point, I'm afraid.

And like I said, was Awakening that bad? Yes, some characters took their gimmick way too far, and some people were essentially a token, walking trope, but I've seen a lot of people complain about characters being shallow even when they have fairly developed personalities and backstories, like Virion.

[Flamy]

(At the same time, low expectations leaves me hope for being pleasantly surprised? Maybe?).

That's how things usually work. The higher your expectations, the bigger the morale drop when it goes below it. Edited April 12, 2015 by ScarletFlame

[DeadGame]

As long as "less shallow" doesn't mean "more cheesy"...

[Book of Ereshkigal]

I didn't know deep characters were cheesy.

[Florete]

Nah, I want the characters to remain shallow, simple, and one-note across the board.

Does anyone who plays a game think, "Gee, I wish these characters were more shallow"?

But really, this. Obviously anyone should want better-written characters.

[Radiant head]

Does anyone who plays a game think, "Gee, I wish these characters were more shallow"?

Obviously no, but I imagine some people just don't care whether the characters are deep or not?

[Gocciole]

FEA was all good at first but when I finished the game… I felt hollow, like you interact with the characters and all but they felt really really superficial.

I was so hyped at the game and when I reached the ending… I couldn't go back and replay the game a second time.

Is this just a consequence of the game having loads of characters? Hopefully IF, being a story and choice focused game, will delivery a much better story and characters.

They didn't even have to tweak the game engine that much!

FE:A definetly has shallow writing and mostly one dimensional characters,but you could say that for pretty much every FE game.Those have never been the series' selling points.

It looks like they're trying something different in IF at least.

[Ϲharlie]

As long as "less shallow" doesn't mean "more cheesy"...

I'm quite sure these two phrases are completely antithetical to one another.

[Thane]

I'm quite sure these two phrases are completely antithetical to one another.

I got the impression that he meant something along the lines of trying too had to add depth to a character usually ends up feeling forced and cheesy. There are so many characters out there in games, books or what have you that are supposed to have something holding them back in order to score sympathy points with the audience, but it never really affects their character unless necessary, if at all. Dead parents usually turn out like this, although there are of course plenty of examples where it's handled correctly.

Of course, I may misinterpret Ragnar's message completely.

[Darros]

To be honest I never found FE13s characters to be that shallow. They did kind of fit tropes, but it was major improvement over FE11 and FE12, and I'd argue some of FE10 as well. FE is progressing, and despite there being room for improvement FE13 was a step up from where the series was.

[Sentacotus]

I think they'll have more depth. The game seems set up to have deeper characters with the whole moral ambiguity of the factions. As long as they give more backstory of the characters involved they'll be golden.

Look at Lon'qu. At first his "trope" seems to be gynophobic but in his supports its revealed the reasons why he is that way with having failed saving someone close to him and its even revealed in other supports that the person's family he failed to save had forgivin him. Along with it he has his badass silent rough killer characterization.

Just no Kellams please. That to me is an example of a character done wrong.

[Xyr]

Having loads of characters, like FE:A did, probably does mean that one or two of them will get the short stick in character development in the game, but that doesn't mean that if you have 20+ characters they can't all be well-written characters. For me, I thought that some of them were not really too shallow. If you went around looking at their support, you could find bits and pieces of information about them that adds more interest to some of them. This doesn't help all them, but it does in some cases.

I do hope the characters in FE:if are all better developed, if just the core characters in the two families. I'm not keeping those expectations too high, though. I get the impression from playing Awakening and Shadow Dragon is that the series knows pretty well what it likes and wants to do mechanically, but progress towards making the story and characters more relevant and memorable seems to be moving at a slow pace. This would be a pretty good opportunity to improve on that.

[Draco]

Definitely. Fire Emblem Awakening had an abundance of trope-y characters that have one gimmick and revolve around it with every word they say. That's annoying. Right off the bat I like the designs of the characters in this one way better so I'm really hoping they're not annoying.

[Book Bro]

And like I said, was Awakening that bad? Yes, some characters took their gimmick way too far, and some people were essentially a token, walking trope, but I've seen a lot of people complain about characters being shallow even when they have fairly developed personalities and backstories, like Virion.

I think a big factor in the cast seeming shallow was that there were too many supports, so the boring ones kinda hid the odd ones here and there that were actually good. Also how the little bits of dialogue for level ups and shiny spots were written as one liners that played up each character's gimmick even if they contradicted development they got in supports (like married Cordelia still lusting after Chrom or Maribelle realizing she wants to help the poor but still acting stuck up).

So, I guess what I hope is that those things are handled a little differently so the character development feels a little more real.

[Thor Odinson]

Yeah, the "everyone support everyone of the other gender regardless of actual character compatibility" and "we didn't flesh out these characters enough so let's just run these gimmicks into the ground" was really the worst of the Awakening's one dimensional issues. I do think a fully fleshed out character could theoretically use those support slots for good since there would be actually variety in content, but one thing I noticed when I was doing supports for FEA was my reaction went from "oh hey this is pretty entertaining" to "didn't I read pretty much the same thing in like 5 other supports"

Here's hoping for less repetition and more nonromantic supports. The majority of the best supports in FEA were the ones where you didn't have to worry about shoehorning a romance in and just let the characters be themselves. Meanwhile, some characters you'd expect to support (Basilio/Olivia, for example) in a non-romantic sense but rather just have interactions due to background, well, didn't. Nothing inherently wrong with romantic supports, though. Romantic supports can be as good as nonromantic if it's written well and the characters are compatible. If children are out of the storyline this time, there's no reason to bring back everyone marries everyone, and hopefully the pool is limited to people who would actually make interesting interaction with each other.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Thor Odinson

[Sroy]

Just no Kellams please. That to me is an example of a character done wrong.

I cannot express how much I agree with this. Kellam was WAY too gimmick-y.

On the note of characters with more depth, I have to agree with what most people are saying. Awakening had some better-written characters and some not, and of course I hope IF improves on that. Honestly, I hope for some more serious supports as opposed to silly supports in this game.

[Honey Bunny]

What's with the Kellam hate? I found he had a surprising amount of depth, certainly not the deepest, but not this shallow puddle people make him out to be. There was one support line in particular that greatly influenced my opinion, but I forget which one it was and it doesn't appear to be in any of his listed supports here.

[NinjaMonkey]

As someone who cares about gameplay above anything else, I couldn't care less about this.

Yeah, the "everyone support everyone of the other gender regardless of actual character compatibility" and "we didn't flesh out these characters enough so let's just run these gimmicks into the ground" was really the worst of the Awakening's one dimensional issues.

You do know that there's a child mechanic in Awakening, right? And that the child gets different classes and skills based on who their father is?

Edited April 12, 2015 by NinjaMonkey

[Draco]

His Donnel support was good. That's about it.

[Raguna]

Ehh, I must be weird for liking that big guy Kellam nobody noticed, first ever knight I used seriously with my pal Stahl backing him up. Yeah, he wasn't the deepest character due to the habit of people ignoring him. His supports with Donnel, Panne and Nowi show him off a little better, but it was ultimately the fact that his gimmick surrounded almost every support he was in that made him tiresome to people so I can understand. Maybe it's more because of the sympathy points I have on the guy since being ignored is not something anyone likes and he's pretty much doomed to hold onto it eternally.

Anyways, on the topic of IF's characters, we will probably see some archetypes being thrown into the game. I'm sure the plot itself will be way better than Awakening, but the characters are a bit of a blank note. So far, we've only seen rather normal cutscenes that these types of games typically offer. I do have more hope do to Shin Kibayashi being around as the script writer, but until I can really get a feel for the characters myself I won't know if they can be deconstructed in some way or add something new to the table. At the very least, I'm hopeful that these new batch of characters will be more interesting than the previous one.