Has Fire Emblem "promoted" as a series?

[Phoenix_Kensai]

Not saying this is you, but I don't understand why people get mad when a small series they like gets popular. I, for one, like the idea of playing senpai to many series newbies.

I feel the same way, yeah; I wasn't being serious (though you weren't talking to me anyway). I understand the fear of change and the fun of being a fan of something obscure, and feel some of that myself, but I'm glad Fire Emblem is growing. I love introducing people to things I like, and I'm looking forward to seeing where the series goes, even if it might be a direction I'm not used to in the games.

[Anacybele]

Awakening's fanbase was only the "worst" in the sense that it was the biggest. Pretty much every FE game had pairing wars among the fans. I distinctly recall getting into some arguments (when I was much younger, mind you) over whether Lyn's canon husband was Rath or Hector...

That's a good point. Awakening DOES have a bigger fanbase than other FE games due to it having brought new fans to the series. I just never imagined them to be as vocal as they are...

[dondon151]

Yeah, but I always found the Awakening fanbase to be the worst because of all the pairing wars, the annoying "waifu" business, the rabid Chrom/Lucina fans (they tend to go on about them paired with the Avatar or that Lucina matters more than Chrom now because she's in Smash, when she didn't even give a game over in Awakening when she died. Chrom x Avatar fans also worship the pairing and like to act like no other pairing can possibly be canon when it really should be that ALL pairings in the game are canon and happen in some reality of the Ylisse timeline), and yeah. People even said everywhere that Chrom and Lucina should replace Marth and Ike in Smash!

awakening is successful precisely because it was capable of spawning a cesspool of users. if fire emblem wants to continue experiencing this degree of success, this is what fire emblem has to be.

EDIT: this is also totally pot calling the kettle black. rabid chrom and lucina fans are bad but rabid ike fans are fine because...?

Edited January 16, 2015 by dondon151

[blyegg]

Omg, yes. A lot of my friends at school got into Awakening and they keep asking me about older FEs and stuff.

I got some people to FE and I'm encouraging everyone to try the GBA games (specifically FE7)... I need to bring my GBA for my friend someday soon, lol

[Ein]

The new FE has a Giant Dad looking golem thing. The series should be fine unless Nintendo doesn't actually try to promote a game they are funding to make them more money.

[Anacybele]

Oh, on the subject of teaching newer fans, I enjoy telling people all about Ike too, especially those who play him in Smash but never played his games. ^^ I've turned several people into Ike fans already!

[Radiant head]

Waifus made FE a major Nintendo franchise.

[Hardin]

From a Japanese perspective, Fire Emblem is absolutely on a tier higher than Star Fox or Metroid. It's not going to reach the tier of Animal Crossing, Pokemon, or Mario anytime soon (if ever), but the series is in a good place.

[Draco]

ahhh ha I see what you did there

Yeah Awakening was a pretty big deal, and I'm sure the series will only get better. But the fanbase is still shit.

Basically this. I wasn't a fan of FE13 myself but I agree with this.

I dunno if it's really evolved, but I am glad it isn't as niche anymore. Even if half of the new fans of the series are only because of WaifuEmblem. ;n;

[Fei Mao]

I think Awakening did a good job at promoting interest for FE. (and reviving it) If they make the right decision for the upcoming game and it becomes a hit, the series could evolve further.

IMO I feel the soundtrack of the series is devolving in a way, from POR to Awakening (excluding the DS remakes) there wasn't a lot of music that were memorable or enjoyable.

[Anacybele]

You know, I agree on the music thing. Awakening's music isn't bad, but they need to get the composer for Tellius back. Nothing beats Tellius music. Eternal Bond/Ike's Theme is the goldest gold can get in the music department, imo!

Just, the reasons I loved Tellius so much was that I thought it had the best characters, the best writing, AND the best music. The best art style too, actually.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Anacybele

[Ownagepuffs]

awakening is successful precisely because it was capable of spawning a cesspool of users. if fire emblem wants to continue experiencing this degree of success, this is what fire emblem has to be.

EDIT: this is also totally pot calling the kettle black. rabid chrom and lucina fans are bad but rabid ike fans are fine because...?

Damn dondon talk about shots fired. But I'm inclined to agree.

It should go without question that Awakening has thrusted the series into the spotlight. A lot of people in my school's anime club mentioned Fire Emblem as one of the games they love despite having only played Awakening. Some in the fire emblem subreddit even consider Awakening the default FE.

In order to keep the slew of new fans, the series will more or less have to follow Awakening's footsteps from this point onwards. But it might not be all bad. The "Tales of" JRPG Series established a western presence after a relatively lackluster title as well (Graces f) but used that success to bounce back with really good new installments.

I have a hunch that the difference between FE13 and FE14 will be like FE7 and FE8. Same assets and gameplay, different everything else.

[Flamy]

this is also totally pot calling the kettle black. rabid chrom and lucina fans are bad but rabid ike fans are fine because...?

Ahahahahhahahahha...

AHAHHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA. *stabs next poster*

[Vorena]

I am still bewildered by what exactly about FE13 made it as successful. The only thing I can think about is the overall success FE13 being advertised and the game content to back it up. As far as I know in the past I never remember seeing any commercials or any marketing for Fire Emblem. Hell, I got into fire emblem simply because it was sitting on a shelf in Wal-Mart 2 years after its release date and I remember seeing FE in the game trophies of Melee. I thought I would try playing the game. That is a pretty weird way of entering into a franchise.

Anyway, I looked out for the games and each one on its own was fun to play and everything. However, I feel that way about many Nintendo games. No one Nintendo game I think is so great that it warrants being more special than the rest. The only difference I see in Nintendo games are the effort they put forth into advertising and appropriating content specifically for it. If I recall, I think Super Mario Galaxy and Skyward Sword employed a very good orchestra for the games. At least they were trying to make it seem like this made the game all the more different. When in reality the games are fun, but not spectacular. Okay, Galaxy felt spectacular mainly because of the space theme.

Either way, the same thing happened with FE13 it feels. They advertise this game and gave it the extra attention to attempt to make it better. Giving it exclusive DLC content and subsequent merchandising to follow it up. Now, with a better base applied Nintendo is going to be marketing more strongly for the series and eventually it will develop into something else I bet.

[Refa]

Regardless of whether FE is considered to be more important in the eyes of Nintendo (which is entirely possible), that's really not the case here. Maybe I missed something, but from the looks of things, FE14 was pretty much the only significant new release of that whole Nintendo Direct (don't remember any other popular franchises that could have competed with it on that front); so the reason that it was the first big announcement was because Nintendo had nothing better to announce.

EDIT Super Mario Galaxy is generally considered to be fucking fantastic (although I've never played the original, I certainly thought the sequel was very good); opinions are more mixed on Skyword Sword, so I'll just shrug here (besides, I'm not much of a Zelda guy, so my opinion means very little on that front).

Edited January 16, 2015 by Refa

[Shin]

It's probably gained a little more publicity but it's still a fairly unheard of series. People are more likely to know about FE from "the sword guy from Melee" more than anything else. It's probably hanging around with stagnant series like Metroid and Starfox, but it probably was to begin with.

[Anacybele]

Damn dondon talk about shots fired. But I'm inclined to agree.

Well, Ike fans aren't as numerous. And I haven't seen any of them say ridiculous things like he's the most important thing in FE or that he and Micaiah/Elincia should've replaced Marth and Roy in Brawl. xP

I also don't see many Ike fans as rabid as myself. And I do consider myself rabid because I admit I take my love for him a bit far sometimes. I'm really trying to work on that, I am. It's just hard lately with him being in the newest Smash games and having an Amiibo figure and stuff. XD

Edited January 16, 2015 by Anacybele

[DragonLord]

As much as I think this series deserves promotion, it bugs me that Awakening is the only game that is getting all the attention. Chrom, Lucina and Robin are being considered the face of Fire Emblem than Marth, or Ike, or any of the other lords by most new fans, which really annoys me. On top of that, it has the huge fan base due to the shipping wars and waifus. I fear that Fire Emblem will lose the original charm it had that made it a niche game series, because of this.

Edited January 16, 2015 by DragonLord

[Ownagepuffs]

Well, Ike fans aren't as numerous. And I haven't seen any of them say ridiculous things like he's the most important thing in FE or that he and Micaiah/Elincia should've replaced Marth and Roy in Brawl. xP

I also don't see many Ike fans as rabid as myself. And I do consider myself rabid because I admit I take my love for him a bit far sometimes. I'm really trying to work on that, I am. It's just hard lately with him being in the newest Smash games and having an Amiibo figure and stuff. XD

What? No Ana I didn't mean his comment towards you. I got no problem with you being Ike's #1 fan. I was talking about his remark about FE13 drawing in a cesspool of users and that the series would have to maintain FE13's direction in order to keep them.

[Irysa]

In order to keep the slew of new fans, the series will more or less have to follow Awakening's footsteps from this point onwards. But it might not be all bad. The "Tales of" JRPG Series established a western presence after a relatively lackluster title as well (Graces f) but used that success to bounce back with really good new installments.

But Graces f is like, the only good 3d tales game. It's also the only geninuely good Tales game released in the West, and leagues better than crap after it like Xillia beacuse the combat approach of Graces is far closer to the peak of the series (in 2d) in Destiny R rather than the Team Symphonia rubbish which has just been rehashing Eternia forever. I mean sure, the characters suck and so does the plot, but that's pittance compared to the fact you aren't stuck with TP what's meant to be an action inspired series and actually have lots of moves with different applications instead of XXX O the game (oh boy you can add a like, an extra O halfway through the game and maybe 2 extra X!), and have tons of cancels and are actually mobile.

Er, on topic point, yes. Remember how Reggie didn't even mention in an E3 event for 3ds games after the conference a few years ago that Awakening was being localised and we only got the info backstage on someone's twitter account? Now we get a full fledged trailer? Of course there's a difference.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Irysa

[Anacybele]

What? No Ana I didn't mean his comment towards you. I got no problem with you being Ike's #1 fan. I was talking about his remark about FE13 drawing in a cesspool of users and that the series would have to maintain FE13's direction in order to keep them.

Oh! My bad, I totally misunderstood you. I wasn't meaning to sound hostile or argumentative, just explaining the difference between rabid Ike fans and rabid Chrom/Lucina fans.

But thanks, Ike's #1 fan sounds sweet to me as a title. ^^

[LuxSpes]

I do feel like FE has been pushed by Nintendo a lot more since Awakening. They put a lot of effort into publicizing the game and it worked if we look at the sales of the game. Then they surprised a lot of people by including 4 FE characters in Smash. And it did feel like it was the most important reveal of the direct (but like Refa said, it could be because it was pretty much the only big news regarding a nintendo franchise. Maybe it wouldn't have seemed it as importan if Zelda Wii U had been revealed in the same Direct.)

I think Awakening did a good job at promoting interest for FE. (and reviving it) If they make the right decision for the upcoming game and it becomes a hit, the series could evolve further.

IMO I feel the soundtrack of the series is devolving in a way, from POR to Awakening (excluding the DS remakes) there wasn't a lot of music that were memorable or enjoyable.

This is extremely subjective though. I for one really liked Awakening's soundtrack and there are a lot of tracks that I enjoy listening even out of the game. I even remember listening to a podcast focused on FE in a series made by 2 guys with academic music formations that found that the music in the FE series only evolved for the better, reaching it's peak in musical complexity in Awakening (though it was made by people who IIRC hadn't played most, if any games in the series and had only tracked the different OST)

[Jotari]

So we've promoted now. I guess we get extra Mov based on the fact it's western focused from the initial announcement. Extra points in Con is probably the wallet hit we'll feel when DLC becomes standard. So then what should our new weapon be?

[dondon151]

Well, Ike fans aren't as numerous. And I haven't seen any of them say ridiculous things like he's the most important thing in FE or that he and Micaiah/Elincia should've replaced Marth and Roy in Brawl. xP

I also don't see many Ike fans as rabid as myself. And I do consider myself rabid because I admit I take my love for him a bit far sometimes. I'm really trying to work on that, I am. It's just hard lately with him being in the newest Smash games and having an Amiibo figure and stuff. XD

what they supposedly say about chrom/lucina replacing ike in smash has some basis. ike's games sold very poorly and awakening sold very well. one of them is a better representation of the fire emblem franchise than the other.

[Anacybele]

what they supposedly say about chrom/lucina replacing ike in smash has some basis. ike's games sold very poorly and awakening sold very well. one of them is a better representation of the fire emblem franchise than the other.

Yeah, and that one is Ike. Ike's games selling poorly doesn't mean shit. He was added to Brawl, therefore Sakurai doesn't care about that, and neither does IS. IS was the one that suggested Ike in the first place.

Also, I said that these fans are saying that Chrom and Lucina should've replaced both Ike AND Marth. Not just Ike.

Ike starred in two games, which is more than any other lord barring Marth himself. He's also the only lord with more than one game out west. And he's more unique than Chrom or Lucina because of his hunky-ness, his strength, his Aether skill which he had before them, etc. These were the reasons Ike was kept and Chrom was not added. Chrom was dubbed too similar to Ike and Lucina was already going to be a Marth alt/clone.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Anacybele