Onestep

A vow of celibacy would prevent us from S-supporting any hot nuns, and we can't have that. This post was brought to you by Nintendo. S-supports print money™!

Man, I hope there are peasants/commoners that you can go 'I like the cut of your jib' to and basically get a scholarship for. By definition, pretty much everyone (even the technical commoners) in the school are in the top 0.1% of the population, so I want to drag some absolute peasants in (and then consign to the bench because I've already got a good team set up).

Byleth's whip sword might actually be unique enough to avoid the Marth Clone problem in Smash.

It actually DID for most of it's history. It's just that the current anime artstyle (as you recognise it) is a fairly recent thing. Compare the original FE's design choices to the anime Record of Lodoss War, which came out in the same year. This continued right up until Sword of Seals, where pixelated graphics made it impossible, but even then you can see hints through the armour design. Tellius was arguably the only game that had a truly unique style for it's time, free of technical limitations. Awakening, Fates and Echoes all had a fairly typical design for modern anime. It's just the shading on the screen obscured it.

I don't want to be mean, but Fire Emblem has lived and breathed anime tropes since it's inception. It's just moved with the culture.

If not, we've still got E3.

I want a game that doesn't have a single mechanic that decides the entire game (Thanks, Pair Up!), has solid maps and a likeable cast with meaningful supports. Supports actually affecting the plot in a more than cursory way would be my ideal, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Best thing about Growlanser: WoT was how the game actually scored your personality. If you continually acted brave and confident, then the game opened up more brave conversation options and closed off more villainous ones. Act like a villain? Game closes off some more heroic options and opened some mean responses. And so on.

The Exile isn't a silent protagonist. They simply aren't voiced. That's like saying the Nameless One (Probably the best protagonist in Video Game history, in my own opinion) is silent.

He could pull off a great Kubrick Stare.

I love how Byleth is both a silent protag and a teacher. I just can't help but imagine him beaming knowledge directly into the students brains like he's in a 80's sci-fi film.

Honestly, I kind of expect it to serve as a 'homebase' of sorts for the vast majority of the game, much like in Valkyria Chronicles 2. Too many game mechanics just seem invested in the place. ...And now I'm thinking about Valkyria Chronicles 2. Man, I really hope this game turns out better than that hot mess.

Honestly, it'd be a pleasant surprise if it is the case. I think most people took one look at him and assumed he'd have a stick right up his bum. He's already probably the least popular of the three lords by a decent margin.

Oh, don't worry. It's absolutely sarcasm. The idea that the entire cast of Fates were A-OK with letting their children grow in a magical time-warp realm with little-to-no supervision is absurd. And yet, here we are.

And then you have the Fates kids, who have the universal theme of being abandoned by their parents in the hyperbolic time chamber.

Not them, but I cannot get JoJo out of my head when I see it.

I'm perfectly happy, don't worry. I thought we were having a fairly respectful discussion, and I'll be the first to apologise if I upset you, or the sheer volume of replies you were getting created an impression of genuine anger or vitriol on my part. How about we just agree to disagree on certain aspects of the scene as we know them, and wait for the full release before rendering any real judgement?

I mean, if that's what you're running with, isn't it highly unfair to judge Byleth when we don't know the full situation? You're accusing him of a number of flaws, when we don't know how the game represents him or his decision making. And while people do question operations, we do have to accept the results. Any given situation is determined by the skills of the people involved. It's insanity to send raw recruits to undermine a fortress, but a sound strategic move to send an experienced group of sappers to do the same. Byleth is skilled mercenary. He messed up the first time (we think, see my first point, we don't actually know the full story) and then flawlessly saved both himself and Edelgard the second, which is the result everyone saw. You're mistaking a cautious plan of action with a successful one, which isn't always the case. Honestly, at this point, rather than comparing him to actual real life military strategy, we'd be better off comparing him to stuff like All You Need Is Kill or Edge of Tomorrow, it's Americanised counterpart. I guess in the end, I have two main points. First, we need to know the circumstances. We need more context, both for Byleth and the situation he's in. With those, we can judge whether Byleth's initial decision making might have been flawed. Second, even without that, we need to accept the result. Byleth used time magic to save Edelgard and himself. You might say he could have done it better, or that without time magic, it would have gone poorly (it did) but in terms of actual results, he clearly did as well as could possibly be hoped.

My accusation is that I've repeatedly mentioned that I'm aware Byleth is a silent protagonist, and you keep bringing it up as your main point at to why the scene is poorly done. I can't argue over this as our only disagreement is over accepting the implications of a silent protagonist (that they often say things the playe cannot directly hear and must interpret from NPC responses.) I've acknowledged this from my first post. Why is it an unfair comparison? Would you prefer Link? Or another silent protag? Because they all have the same issue. They have words and reactions that are not outright said, but must be interpreted from NPC responses. And yes, you're right. Context is important. And this particular context is a military operation. And as military history is pretty clear on, what works, works. A military commander who makes a brash call that works will be called daring. One who makes a brash call that fails will be called foolish. In the end, post timerewind, Byleth makes a call that results in he and Edelgard both living. So he's daring and brilliant. You can say 'Oh, but he only won because he can literally rewind time' and that's true. But that's no more valid an argument than saying 'Superman won because he can benchpress the planet' or 'Robin won because he's a strategic genius'. If a character has a talent, and they use that talent to achieve results, then the results are still valid. Now if you want to complain that the ability to rewind time is narratively broken and completely overpowered, then believe me, I agree with you.

If your complaint is purely with silent protag, then I won't argue. I'm ambivalent on the matter. Joker talks a lot in battle. I suspect Byleth will too. He says nothing in cutscenes, even when he's doing crazy stuff like sidetackling Makoto out of an attack. For now, leave this complain aside until we see how Byleth's characterisation pulls together as a whole. If he's routinely shown to say things in combat even if he doesn't vocalise those things in cutscenes t then we just have to accept that's how the devs wanted to portray him and can assume he says a lot more than he does. If that's not the case, then we can all discuss it then. And that's not a great comparison. Teams are meant to work together, yes. But Byleth and Edelgard, at the early point this cutscene occurs, are not a team, or equals. They are two strangers, one a talented mercenary, one a highborn noble who's heir to half the continent. In universe, Byleth would be commended for literally throwing himself between them. And I repeat, an action like this can only truly be judged on the result. If you had the best of intentions, but messed up, then the action was wrong. If you had the best of intentions and succeeded, (as in take two, Sothis electric boogaloo), then surely it was a rousing success?

At this point, you're just attacking a stylistic choice. I'm not going to continue repeating myself if you're just going to ignore me. Byleth, so far, seems to be a silent protagonist. This doesn't mean he DOESN'T speak in cutscenes, merely that the player doesn't get to hear him. Much like the P5 protag is shown to be quite the talker, but we never hear a line. In much the same line, we know Byleth does talk, but we haven't heard it yet. For all we know, Edelgard suddenly turning round might be a reaction to Byleth suddenly calling out to her. Also, that first line, to be blunt, is puerile. Something that achieves your goal is not a mistake. If Byleth had flawlessly blocked the attack and sent the bandit flying the first time round, his choice would not have been a mistake. It would have been an absolutely perfect decision. But he didn't, so it WAS a mistake. If he repeats more or less the same action, but this time does flawlessly block the attack and sends the bandit flying etc etc, then he has, again, made a perfect decision. Any action can only be measured by results, and the second time round, the results were spot on.

The only point I agree with you on is the silence, which is, as I said, probably a limitation of IS not wanting Byleth to speak in cutscenes (for some reason). Taking this scene with the fact we have, taking this stylistic choice in to account, we have a scene that shows Byleth making a decision to protect their VIP, even at the risk of their own life. And that's important, because this is the scene where Byleth get's an Axe to the back, and only Sothis's ability to rewind time stops the game from ending there. I think you're forgetting that. Byleth literally blocks the attack on Edelgard with his own life the first time round, and only a rewind let's them get a clean parry. Byleth overestimates their skills and pays for it the first time round, but still makes the same decision to move to block the attack the second time round, because they STILL don't trust Edelgard to be able to block the attack (and with good reason, since Edelgard is almost certainly less skilled than Byleth at this point in the game, and if he can't stop the attack with a sword, she's in big trouble with that knife).

No idea then. Somehwhere being called a Holy Kingdom implies that if you're going to have fanatics anywhere, that's a safe bet. But this is all true too. We'll just have to wait for more info.

I mean, Farghus is literally called the Holy Kingdom. That seems to indicate they have strong links to the Church.

We have no real facts of the situation. Edelgard being ready to fight does not mean that a mercenary (presumably hired to protect her or travelling in her company) should treat her as being combat capable. What if Byleth did his sneak attack, but the bandit managed to seriously wound Edelgard in the process? What if Edelgard's nerve breaks? We KNOW that this is near the beginning of the game, so Byleth has no reason to trust her or her capabilities. What we get from this is that Byleth chooses to trust their own skills over an unknown factor, in order to protect a VIP. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.