SkyknightXi

I will admit that I'm not a fan of player insertion at all. How much do you need to identify with (as opposed to empathize and/or sympathize with) the protagonist to like the story they're in? So yes, I'm not a fan of silent protagonists, although I can at least tolerate them in certain situations (e.g. Persona 4; haven't played 3 or 5 yet). The player is the director, anyway, not the lead actor. (The producer here would be IS.) That said, the apparent lack of customization beyond male/female, and paucity of voicing, does appear to be a movement away from the more pronounced avatar-work of Awakening and Fates's MyUnits. (We haven't heard Byleth called a MyProfessor or the like, have we? Honest question, mind you.) Still, I'd rather see the idea of a player-defined strategist (which, technically, was there in Blazing Blade; you just weren't on the battlefield) abolished. I'm not convinced artistry benefits from being that mutable and/or intended for vicariousness. On a side note, the reason I aimed at Sacred Stones and Awakening is because of the possibility of class/skill customization. Hopefully that survives the removal of player-inserts. (Fates? A little too amorphous in customizability...)

And when I say everyone, I mean EVERYONE. I do not like leaving characters to gather dust, so my unit choice is always "whoever is lowest in experience" (promotes like Reina are considered to have a level 20 higher than is listed). My way of trying to make everyone commensurate. Only I'm starting to feel like I'm entering a landscape of bland at the 11/0 mark. I suppose it's the promise of no new skills until 20/5, but...the low amount of experience gained from Challenges (doing the Birthright scenario, Casual) doesn't help much. Then again, my compulsive need to clear the menu of Challenges before taking on the next chapter is probably a factor as well. For the record, I'm at ch. 12; I'm not entirely sure if things will pick up after this. (Is everyone L11-14 normal for that point, or did I overdo the Challenge-cleansing?) {sigh} I don't even know how I'm going to avoid leaving characters to stagnate in the Conquest scenario...

Now I learn about the filedumps. I just finished transcribing the Tsubaki*Hana supports onto the wikia...At least that removes some effort for the filedump users. (...I guess Tsubaki somehow does better on airborne steeds than landbound...)

(I don't think this goes in the pinned marriage topic; that's about the mechanics and timbres of the romances, as best as I can tell.) I'll confess that in my case, with my limited knowledge of the characters, I used random.org to allocate (might as well, if you have any intention of filling up the whole support file...). This is being done with the Birthright scenario (I can't say I'm looking forward to charting out the Revelation scenario...The list randomizer just won't work with that, and I'm not necessarily planning a full swath of cross-border romances.) and a female Corrin. 1. Jakob*Felicia 2. Kaze*Mozu 3. Silas*Hinoka 4. Ryoma*Corrin 5. Takumi*Orochi 6. Tsubaki*Hana (Tsubaki is pretty much my only unwillingness to use the localized names) 7. Saizo*Oboro 8. Hinata*Azura 9. Hayato*Rinkah (I'm not sure why I have no problem with Rinkah when I shrink from "Subaki"; must be the identical pronunciation.) 10. Azama*Sakura 11. Kaden*Setsuna Not marrying within the coterie: Kagero Now...let's see what everyone else is planning. (Maybe this way I can tell which pairings have the best timbres with minimal spoiling...)

Starting with the Hoshido scenario, I determined the aspects based on totaling all the recruitables' stat modifiers, then picking as a boon what was reduced the most, and vice versa for the bane. In essence... Boon: Sturdy (+DEF) Bane: Clumsy (-SKL) Nature: Lancer (->Basara)

I'm more interested in why the children were put in as a last-minute idea, suggesting they weren't part of the original scheme. Was there fan outcry for it in Japan? (Note to IS: There is such a thing as catering to the fanbase too much. That way lies compromising of artistry--and, I think, a good bit of amorphousness.) Maybe the S-supports wouldn't have bloomed to needing another company if the children option weren't instilled...

I know I felt that the Stahl*Nowi S-rank felt out-of-place, juxtaposed with the C-A set--and that's probably one of MANY such in Awakening. Probably a side-effect of having to make the A-ranks work in both strictly platonic and at-least-partially-romantic fashions. Mayhaps it's time for IS to jettison the children conceit, at least with regard to the wide range in Awakening and Fates. Because that seems to be the primary motive behind the wide-range S-rank capability. EDIT:

...I'd think that having to outsource the supports would be a sign to IS that they're overdoing it with support amounts. Just what kind of sword is the fandom at large hanging over them? Well, if we're lucky, Treehouse will have tempered much of the quandary in question. But IS may want to retract to Sacred Stones level of support profusion or thereabouts for the next installment, to avoid the issues with outsourcing. (Yes, I realize this will put a thorn in wide-range waifu/hasubando-seeking. Thy point?)

Name: Corrin (Why change it? I never regard custom units as self-inserts...I the player am the producer, not the lead actor.) Sex: Female Scenarios: Birthright, Revelation Class: Basara+White Blood (I hope I'm interpreting the primary/secondary class setup correctly...). Conquest scenario character would probably be Revenant Knight+Dark Blood. Spouse: Undecided (I don't know enough about the characters at all) Appearance: Not sure how the customizer expects me to paste the coordinates for the picture, so...

The way this is going, maybe it would be for the best if Treehouse wrote the story for the next game? IS can still do the actual programming and game design. At the very least, it sounds like IS is (and, from the sounds of things, has been) a little too reliant on stereotypes, even irksome ones. (Not sure how the Japanese audience would take it, of course...I can't help but wonder if any notable amount of the Japanese audience thought any number of Awakening's localizations were superior to their original.) Or more plausibly, IS should take notes on how and where Treehouse altered things and characterizations, to have a better sense of how to appeal to the beyond-Japanese audiences, in both mores and precepts. (Although I have to wonder how well they appeal to the more liberal elements of Japan. Somehow, some of the elements that had to be re-localized don't look auspicious to me in that regard.)

I am curious as to what those cultural roots ARE. i.e. what it is that makes a flawed hero less popular among Japanese audiences than non-Japanese, why they prefer an obvious basal couple (e.g. Chrom*Sumia), why they don't look strongly for agency, etc. I mean, really delve into what's at root (e.g. the reason cuteness/childlike innocence is given such a premium in Japanese society is apparently that it suggests an existence free from the swarm of obligations that defines adult life there). I will admit that I never see myself as the lead actor, but rather the director (the programmers would be the producer); it's probably telling that even though I'm male, I like to make custom lead characters female when possible--extra remove between myself and them. Hence why Silent Protagonists irritate me; what kind of actor is THIS supposed to be?! Wish fulfillment isn't any better; the character shouldn't be so malleable, they certainly wouldn't be such in a play or novel. This is not to say I dislike customization, but it's usually in the matter of gameplay (i.e. choice of promotion classes). Never mind that the scenario isn't going to work so well if the player CAN'T see theirself as a typical goody-two-shoes, whatever the milieu. Then again, I wonder how much social pressure there is in Japan that everyone be a goody-two-shoes (remember the obligation swarm I referenced before?). This may explain why Chaotic Good doesn't seem to show up much, as opposed to Lawful Good and Neutral Good. That said, we really should have expected this sort of idolization from the default name being "Kamui"--the Japanese version of "Kamuy", the Ainu word for "deity". ADDENDUM: Now that I think of it...Just how low does quality have to get before the player/reader/viewer-adulation stops being able to hide it? I speak generally here, NOT of the FE series in particular. I figure that no matter how much ego-stroking someone wants, they're not going to abide it if bad quality is unavoidable. At least, I trust people prefer high-quality art to low-quality art, given the choice. (On a side note, was there a noticeable change in IS's staff just before they began including MyUnits? That might give us a sense of whether or not there's someone in particular we can blame.)

Bah, let me rephrase that to main story characters (i.e. Donnel's the only one from a paralogue that I count).

Thanks to my puzzle mentality, I'm trying to figure out an ideal way to allocate all 25 promoted classes among the first generation (yes, including the maligned Bow Knight and Griffon Rider; this is a matter of principle, not raw power). Anna, Tiki, Flavia, and Basilio are not counted for this exercise. Only problem is, I keep ending up with someone in a class they're not suited for (usually Bow Knight Ricken). I'm tempted to blame Libra's extremely constricted class choices for this...{sigh} At least there are some aspects that keep popping up that one can work around, besides the usual ones (i.e. Chrom-Great Lord, Robin-Grandmaster, etc.): Sully-Griffon Rider Cherche-Wyvern Lord Henry-Berserker (...maybe) Sumia-Dark Flier Cordelia-Falcon Knight (even if their basal class choices would suggest the reverse) Part of it is that I tried comparing each character's stat modifiers to their stat growth rates to get a sense of where innate talent (modifiers) and aptitude (growth rates) intersected. Unfortunately, I recently discovered that (for example) resistance growth is on the low side as a matter of course; I don't think anybody gets above 50% for that (skill growth, meanwhile, never seems to dip below 45% from my recollections). I like to think of this in terms of figuring out everyone's as-close-to-canon-as-the-game's-precepts-will-allow classes, but...this is getting a bit frustrating...

Just remember that the hackneyed aspects of the story can probably be chalked up to Intelligent thinking there was an excellent chance this would be the last FE game at all; might as well make the possible end as optimistic as possible. It also explains the wide range of choices and the ridiculous swarm of pairing possibilities. That last bit REALLY feels amorphous to me, to the point that I'm currently trying to figure out a way to winnow EVERYBODY'S pairing possibilities to the same 4+Robin situation as Chrom and Sumia (as in which ones make the most sense; I can already tell you that Stahl*Nowi and Virion*Lissa do NOT make the grade). For the record, I've never felt like I was in the position of the main character in ANY game. I feel more like the director than the lead actor, no matter what. Probably because I feel like I'm supposed to internalize the psyches of all the protagonists...(Not to mention my inherent dislike for Silent Protagonists. Some artistry...) Support blandness probably can be ascribed to the luckless authors having to deal with the sheer number of possible pairings. Somewhere over 144 for just the first generation, I believe? They were dooming themselves from the onset... Anyway, I don't expect pairing amorphousness from the next FE; it was here mostly for customizing the second generation (and/or giving the Crack Pairing specialists a bit of meta-fanservice). And now that FE is actually in genuine popularity (I do believe this is the only game to have had notable commercial success?), I'm expecting that Intelligent can re-integrate some of the advanced elements from other games. (Just...no more making characters that are supposed to represent the player, hm? Remember: director, not actor. Intelligent would be the scriptwriter.) EDIT: And hopefully no class formations as amorphous as Robin and Morgan's, either; even most of the ways the second generation can get extra classes overwhelms me a little. The variation in the first generation (less Robin) is PLENTY; that should be some kind of Mohs-10 ceiling for character customization.