Extrasolar

This. All of this. I've always been less of a fan of RD stripped down generic supports with everyone, and to a lesser extent, the abundance of Awakening and Fates supports, many of which were unremarkable and/or boring/generic. Give me classic POR supports, please. Meaningful conversations that exposed things about both characters. Not a conversation about baking pies. Casual is a good business decision. Newcomers will be able to play without the permadeath scaring them away. And it's optional, so it's all good imo. ....Phoenix was a bit much, though. Took a little too much of the challenge out of the game, provided you didn't just use it to fill support log or breeze through to get all of the story.

Personally, I love the new designs. The older ones had a nice dose of generic, but what else could you really expect, before the FE team could hire a dedicated character artist. Alm in particular has a striking design imo. They're anime for sure though, but I think that's a strength rather than a weakness. Alm is just wearing a bunch of armor...I think he's the most armored lord we have in the series to date, now that I think about it. Cellica is elegant and whatnot. I think it works.

1.) Letting Boyd die is tantamount to sacrilege. The guy is too good to just be thrown away like that. But that's just my own bias, haha. I really should have a Boyd avatar and not a Pelleas one... 2.) Yup, lots of people ship them. They consider Kieran's obsession with showing up Oscar and their "rivalry" as a way of concealing a strong crush on him, considering that Kieran at one point breaks down and says that Oscar leaving the Crimean Knights devastated him, and he never really got past it. I don't ship them, because I find Kieran's cluelessness and Oscar just standing there humoring him hilarious, but I can see why the pairing is popular. Yeah, I know that shipping wars have been a thing since the beginning of time, and that they're always going to be a thing. But Ike x Soren fans are imo the worst in the rabid department, which is a real shame. I know people that have been driven away from the fandom or the Tellius games simply because they didn't like the pairing. It's that scary. It's not that they don't like them, it's just that they're unfortunately never as appreciated as the romantic pairings. Platonic shipping is...not really a thing in a lot of circles, which is why it's always so unusual when people talk about it. People tend to forget that asexual/aromantic people exist. Like, you don't hear about how much someone likes the Sora/Riku bromance, just throwing out an example from another fandom with a huge slash following. Nope, it's all about the Sora/Riku romance.

Oscar is a comparatively minor character in comparison to Soren, which is why I believe that Ike x Oscar doesn't have the following that Ike x Soren does. Pretty much everyone who's not Shinon tries to comfort Ike in the wake of Greil's death, though. Not to mention, Oscar doesn't interact with Ike nearly as much as Soren does. I think the biggest Oscar pairing is Oscar x Kieran, for obvious reasons, considering their support, as well as Kieran's focus on Oscar. I mean, I'm not saying that people can't ship Ike x Soren, because there's nothing wrong with that, but I am tired of people treating it like it's the be-all, end-all word of canon when it is 100% not. When I tell people that the game itself points to Ike as being aromantic/asexual, they treat me like I'm insane or making stuff up out of nowhere. When I tell people that I don't like the pairing and prefer Ike and Soren as close friends, I get looked upon as "someone who hates slash pairings," usually with people accusing me of bigotry. So I've had something against rabid fans of that pairing and that pairing in general for a while. Those are all good platonic relationships, but they get 100% overlooked in favor of the romantic pairings, which is a real shame. And that's not just in the Tellius series or FE as a whole - that's everywhere, much to my frustration.

This is basically my feelings on the matter. Though they do tend to elevate characters above others, depending on how useful/good the skill is in question. But then again, that's with all skills. Some are more useful than others.

This is beautiful. Perfect.

Keep Ike/Soren platonic for me please. I can appreciate the strength of their bond without any romance added in, thanks. Ike/Elincia being platonic is good for me too. Any pairings with Ike being platonic is the way to go for me, since I see him as aromantic/asexual, not to mention Elincia and Geoffrey are meant for each other. I preferred Sothe/Micaiah to stay platonic, stupid pesky already-maxed out support, and the fact that you have to legitimately try in RD not to pair them up. Besides, Sothe's clearly got a thing for Ike. Haar/Jill! Keep it platonic please, for reasons of age gap and the fact that I much prefer Haar as Jill's mentor/older brother figure than them as a couple. Eirika/Ephraim, but that one's obvious. Any royal x Corrin pairings in Fates gotta stay platonic for me, just due to the skeeviness factor in all of it. Give me adorable siblings being adorable, and that's it, please. Eliwood with the other two lords should stay platonic as well, since Eliwood's heart belongs to Ninian (fight me if you disagree. jk, lol...mostly.) Welll.. There is kind of the fact that it's never explained how Nowi, who is probably a Divine Dragon, is able to transform when the backstory of the Archanea games has Tiki as the last transforming Divine Dragon. That's what I was waiting for the whole time. Yeah, I wish we had seen more of Stefan's hidden Branded village in general. Seems interesting...but too bad it's smack in the mid like how we could have seen more of Hatari and the wolf laguz. Too bad Stefan's approach was a bit creepy and Soren is so closed-off. Haha.

Uh, it's not forbidden, but designing a female character near-explicitly for the purpose of titillating the heterosexual male audience is...you know, generally frowned upon. As is treating women as sexual objects. Contrary to popular belief, you can do revealing outfits tastefully - look at Nailah's outfit from Radiant Dawn. More revealing than other female outfits in the Tellius games, but not so damn blatant as to be tasteless and kinda gross. Though Camilla is nowhere near as bad as Charlotte from the same game, so I guess there's that point in her favor. I'm not saying she has no other features than that, but when it's kind of thrown in your face, you tend to focus on that over anything else.

Uh. No. That's not how objectification works. First of all, as people were saying above, Camilla is a fictional character with absolutely no agency. She cannot decide what she wears or why she wears it. She was designed by real, human people for the purpose of appealing to people who are attracted to women, plain and simple, personality be damned. I mean, there's nothing saying you can't like a character that the game objectifies, but you can't deny that the game is what's disrespecting her, if anything. Do you think people are thinking about her personality when the camera is orbiting her cleavage and ass? No. They're not. The game treats her as a sex object, to the point of the camera focusing on that specifically during her introduction cutscene on the Birthright path. Do any of the other royals get the same treatment? No. They aren't being objectified like she is, nor are they designed purely for fanservice in mind. And "everyone else does it too" is not an excuse. There is no justification for transparent fanservice designs like Charlotte and Camilla.

I know that men have emotional ranges, I was just saying that the media treats it like the very second a man has an emotional reaction to something (or, better yet, someone), it's either a.) a sign of weakness or b.) a sign that they must be romantically attracted to said person, male or female. Not to mention, can we stop treating every positive interaction between a male and female character as a sign of blossoming romance? Like...what if they're just being nice friends to one another? Why can't they just chill and chat without everyone reading romance into it? Why can't I have my platonic interactions? Speaking of which, we need more platonic supports in the series that don't end with two opposite sex characters marrying. Can people just hang out, chill, maybe open up an archery school or something without being married and having kids? Please, IS?

The difference is objectification. While older FE games may have had fanservice elements in design (but it was heavily, heavily downplayed, to the point that you didn't notice unless they drew attention to it, like Eirika and Amelia's miniskirts in Sacred Stones), the female characters were never outright objectified. Tellius was the best in this regard, easily. The vast majority of the women in Tellius are just as fully covered as the men, albeit with the occasional FE-favorite miniskirt like Ilyana or Mist, or long dress with slits in the side which dates all the way back to the Jugdral games. On the other thread someone brought up Nephenee as a fanservice design; sure, Nephenee doesn't have leg armor, but again, she's never objectified. Whereas you get things like Camilla's cutscene in Fates, with the camera ogling her every step of the way, not to mention Charlotte's battle bikini and, ahem, "victory pose."

I feel your pain. So many times, I've liked two male characters as a best friends/bromance sort of way, only to run into the usually VERY vocal minority of slash shippers or even those people that say "x and y looked at each other for more than three seconds or touched one another's hands for a split second? must be a gay couple!" There's absolutely nothing wrong with shipping two same-sex people, of course, but does every time a male character shows even the slightest bit of emotion or tenderness toward another male character have to be romantic in nature? It's just frustrating. I know, men are supposed to be unemotional and stoic. It's the media. But damn if it isn't annoying in fandoms and works. Why can't Ike be the casual, aromantic guy he is in canon, and still be there as a supportive pillar to comfort Soren when he needs it? Why can't Soren be the cold, snappy guy who has exactly zero interest in romance, and still care deeply for the person who saved his life? WHY DO WE NEED TO FORCE ROMANCE INTO EVERYTHING ARGH. Sorry for caps. Just...that's one of my biggest pet peeves.

The first one is...okay, I guess. Nothing really noteworthy about it. Second one is cliche, and I've seen it many times before, and only done well one time. Third one is just convoluted, as most plots with time travel tend to be.

Boyd will always be a legend to me. He deserved so much better. /solemn

Well, he does cheer up Gatrie by offering to pay for a dinner after he's done mercilessly teasing him. That's just the kind of "friend" Shinon is. I think we'd all be so lucky as to have a Shinon by our sides (not really. Having Shinon around would actually kind of suck, cause the guy is a dick. Great shot and all, but still a douche.) Wait...that's it! The OTP for Gatrie all along was Gatrie x Shinon! Shinon is just sending mixed signals because he's too shy to tell Gatrie how he truly feels! *shot* Yeah...that was always kind of weird. I can imagine that the reason you gave there is why they downplayed any sibling-like feelings between Geoffrey and Elincia.

Yeah, fate yanking Gatrie around is kind of cruel, considering the guy was a bit of a flirt, but he was chivalrous about it...like giving that con artist woman all of his money for an "operation" to cure her "brain stones," and treating all of his dates out to nice dinners. ...Jesus, the dates that he gets are horrible people, now that I think about it, to take advantage of such a sweet guy. He doesn't seem to have any real ulterior motives. Poor, dopey Gatrie. Even Shinon makes fun of him. But now that I think about it, it is kind of weird that Mist x Rolf wasn't the pairing, and they went for Boyd instead. Maybe it's because Rolf is the younger of the two? You don't see too many older woman x younger man pairings, whereas the reverse is much more common, and true with Boyd x Mist. Hmm. Yeah, I'm skeeved out by any of the royal x Corrin pairings in Fates, for the Nohrian royals because you regularly see them interacting as siblings and calling each other "brother and sister," and for the Hoshidans because they're blood related and consider themselves siblings. But never had that reaction with Geoffrey and Elincia. I guess it helps that Geoffrey never considered himself Elincia's brother the way Lucia considers herself Elincia's sister. And it helps that they never referred to each other as "brother" and "sister" like they do in Fates. But then again, I'm also one of those people that doesn't like Alm x Cellica because they were childhood BFFs, and looks like we're actually gonna see them in Echoes running around and being friends. Why couldn't they stay platonic, IS? DX

I'm going back to the old school on this one. Give me another FE1 Marth. You know, the wide-eyed, adorable and childlike dork that says silly things. He or she would be a noble raised in near-isolation, in what to them was essentially a perfect, happy world. They'd be in for a rude awakening for sure once the plot got kicked off, and once they were forced to flee and raise an army, you'd get this great juxtaposition between everyone else in the army being like, "...are you kidding me with this guy/girl?" People would consider them annoying, and "just a kid." Kinder characters would treat them gently, but perhaps with pity. I.E., "They're in for it, eventually..." He or she can become more serious over the course of the game like Marth did in Mystery, but keep to their kind and sweet outlook. But give me lines like: Mentor: Your Majesty, you have to choose which units to deploy. Lord: Um...all of them. Mentor: You can't do that, Majesty. You must choose. Lord: Oh, okay! Um...all of them.

Omg Ike just up and leaving the mercenaries bothered me so much back when I got his and Soren's paired ending way back in the day. I was just like, "Uh. Bruh. You do realize that you're essentially giving your dad's legacy the shaft, right? And what about your adoptive family that you've grown to adore and would do anything in the world to protect? Hello? Hello??" Like, there's walking the earth, and then there's just...what the hell. Lol. At least Mist marries Boyd and lives happily ever after in their paired ending, though! I always thought that pairing was cute. Gatrie being forever alone is actually really funny, in a dark and slightly depressing sort of way. It's great irony. I always joked that Gatrie x Tree in a skirt was the most canon pairing for Gatrie. I mean, the guy kind of invites misfortune on himself. He knows he's gullible, but he's not gonna change because he thinks it makes him charming. Lol. I actually like Geoffrey x Elincia, because I'm a sucker for "lady and knight" type dynamics. Because we never saw them as children together, it kind of lessens it for me. Plus, there's the fact that Geoffrey becomes a giant dork around Elincia. It's too cute.

It's even weirder, considering the great development the Oscar, Boyd and Rolf and their sibling relationship got, and they're all secondary characters! I still consider the "Brothers" Base Conversation in Radiant Dawn one of the highlights of the game. What the heck, IS? Makes no sense. ._.

Yeah, the lack of Ike and Mist development as siblings is one glaring fault of the Tellius series imo. There's this light teasing between them at the beginning of POR, and they bond after Greil's death...and then...they're kind of completely separate people who are, oh yeah, brother and sister. I'm not saying it had to get to the level of Ephraim and Eirika's A-Support, with them swearing eternal fealty to one another or anything (and...maybe a little more, according to the localization. I'm mostly kidding, lol.), but I mean, something more would have been better. And Haar and Jill... I don't know, I just never liked them paired up. I think they would have worked great as BFF/Partner Friends running their shipping business, because Haar was a mentor to Jill. I mean, she's half his age, for crying out loud! I know age gaps are a thing, and were much more of a thing back in the pseudo-medieval FE days, but...I never got past Haar seeing Jill as a hotheaded kid that was his responsibility to watch out for, and Jill looking up to Haar as an older brother she can take advice from. Just can't picture them as an item. Of course, it could be something to do with Shirahim's death, with Haar wanting to make 100% sure that she'd be safe and cared for. But...eugh.

Nope. Awakening has the worst concept(s) imo. First it was "Guy wants revenge because he believes he was wronged by parents of enemy country's royals while amnesiac guy/girl is along for the ride," then it's "evil cult wants to revive evil apocalypse dragon because villain hates humanity or whatever and amnesiac guy/girl is actually gonna bring the apocalypse," and then it's "kids from bad future come back to save the world and maybe kill amnesiac guy/girl," all crashing and stumbling over one another like people in a dark room. Pick one, develop it and stick with it, please. POR was "average kid gets catapulted into responsibility after his father falls to a mysterious enemy; he seeks revenge while also attempting to free home country from enemy country's invasion." Simple, interesting, to the point.

I wouldn't necessarily call Soren's love for Ike unhealthy. Well...maybe it is, because the boy pretty much isolates himself from everyone but the guy (though for good reasons, considering other peoples' reactions to finding out he was a Branded). I mean, Ike is basically his savior. Soren would be dead if it wasn't for him, and Ike was one of the few people he met in his life that didn't treat him differently. No wonder he practically worships the ground the guy steps on. I'll admit, I loved the fact that Ike and Elincia didn't hook up after POR, because I absolutely adore opposite-sex people, you know, being friends, especially in fantasy. Plus, having a main character that shows absolutely no romantic interest in anyone? That was fresh and original as hell back in the day. Asexual/aromantic Ike? Hell yes. More please. Of course, I despite most romance stories, considering that romance is extremely hard to write well, and a lot of the time comes off as grating/unbelievable or annoying. Also. Voting for Boyd x Ike, because they were the original bromance, way back in the prologue of POR. I'm old school, son. Also, I just love Boyd. Lol.

Well, it still doesn't change my answer. I still think POR's concept is the best, and Awakening's is the worst. Partially because Awakening just had so many concepts jumbling into one another that they couldn't decide what they wanted to do.

Huh? How can you talk about the story concept without talking about writing? Unless you mean being so general that you literally are reduced to the general concept of all of FE: "Army battles across continent to accomplish goal." Like...every FE has the same concept then, if you can't talk about writing and characterization.

The Archanea games are more or less your bog-standard fantasy story. Good guy, naive and pure hero journeys to get magical weapon blessed by gods to slay evil resurrected dragon. It's not extremely original, and a lot of the characters are good 'ol fantasy cliches. Kind, self-sacrificing healer woman? Check. Cackling sorcerer who wants the whole world underneath his thumb? Check. Wise old mentor who gives the teenage protagonist advice? Check. Now, that's simplifying it a bit, I understand. The story has more twists and turns than that, but at the end of the day, it's a straightforward, what you see is what you get affair. Good vs. evil. Now, I'm never gonna hold that against them, considering they were written pre-1990 for a system with a fraction's fraction's fraction of memory in comparison to the games we have in the modern era. I'll always prefer a more complex story like the ones that the Tellius and Jugdral games have to offer, simply because I love deep stories. But Archanea's comparative simplicity doesn't make it any inferior...just...simple and on the nose.