Do you feel that children and marriage should come back in future titles?

[The Radiant Hero]

Marriage, I'm okay with, since I'm a pairing nut. But children, no, I want them to go and stay gone for awhile. If they have to come back, do them like they were done in FE4.

I'm sorry to tell you Ana, you can't have it like that it's either both or nothing....I like the children (more units yay!) but I hate Marriage...but it's a package deal...

[Tamarsamar]

I'm sorry to tell you Ana, you can't have it like that it's either both or nothing....I like the children (more units yay!) but I hate Marriage...but it's a package deal...

Fallacious. Marriage is (usually) a prerequisite for children, not (usually) the other way around.

[X-Naut]

I'm sorry to tell you Ana, you can't have it like that it's either both or nothing....I like the children (more units yay!) but I hate Marriage...but it's a package deal...

Tell that to the GBA games which let you pair units despite the lack of playable children.

[NekoKnight]

No and no.

With marriage, you're forced to come up with reasons for two people to socialize when they may have nothing in common. It just devolves into characters discussing their gimmicks. And when you get to the S-Rank support, the relationship changes into a romantic (and implied sexual) relationship with no realistic continuity or reason. S-ranks that don't sound completely forced make up the exceptions. Children are even worse because they warp the whole story around them (Awakening) or are explained so poorly, they hardly make sense at all (Fates). Genealogy is obviously the exception here but losing half your cast to replace them with children is also not very agreeable.

If I were to change the direction of the series (because let's face it, marriage and children are going to be a permanent fixture, writing and story be damned), I'd make it so people only support with a selection of the cast and S-ranks will be to mark paired endings (be they romantic, bonds of fraternity or otherwise). Romantic S-ranks would just be the start of a relationship and their marriage would be discussed in the epilogue. The only thing that makes children special is the inheritance system but there are plenty of other ways to share classes and skills.

I wouldn't mind marriage for just the avatar (another feature unlikely to go anywhere) or other select characters if their marriage were tied into the plot like a political marriage to secure military support. They could even have post marriage supports to develop the relation further.

[DaPaperBoy123]

Yes only if the game has grinding because I've found it hard to get supports in Games like fire emblem 7.?

[Scrublord]

I think marriage can stay if, and only if, they limit the marriage options to characters that actually have chemistry with each other. Like, I can't imagine why someone would want to make, say, Gregor marry Lissa, support-wise or gameplay-wise. But I'm not really opposed to the Avatar being able to marry anyone they want, I guess (I have more problems with the concept of an Avatar itself, but I digress).

Children can go. Awakening at least had a plausible reason for them, but Fates royally screwed it up and I cringe at whatever other excuse they would come up with later on.

[AnonymousSpeed]

So yeah, sure it makes a lot of money for IS and it's optional and whatnot, but it's mere existence is salting the earth for any attempt to do anything interesting with these themes.

Come now, no need to soil the good name of salt.

Now, Marriage has technically been around for a whole bunch of games, as paired endings. As far as a plot thing goes, this is far more desirable. You can do more unique things, non-romantic endings, and it's much less forced. I don't really appose to the idea of S-supports, but I don't really like having to make everyone able to marry everyone. That sort of detracts from the other potential marriage options, doesn't it? If anyone can get married, why should I feel the relationship between any two characters is special?

Children, from a gameplay standpoint, I really like. You get a lot of strategy and options in who you pair with who, what skills to pass down, their modifiers, yeah they aren't really balanced, but the potential is great and I enjoy that. However, from a perspective of story and dialogue, it's more often than not author's suicide. It requires forcing a bunch more S supports (yet, as with Sumia, not actually giving all the S-supports you might want from one perspective or another), and so far I've not liked the execution of either. FE13 is okay, but still weird, and the children just sort of 'appear' on the map, which forgoes a lot of potential for stories featuring the children. FE14 apparently doesn't even have a story reason, and FE4 kills off most of your Gen 1 characters for it.

I don't know, maybe the Gen 1 characters could raise the Gen 2 characters and still actually fight alongside them. No losing units, no time travel nonsense. I mean, it's not that implausible for middle-aged people to fight, is it?

[Jedi]

I don't know, maybe the Gen 1 characters could raise the Gen 2 characters and still actually fight alongside them. No losing units, no time travel nonsense. I mean, it's not that implausible for middle-aged people to fight, is it?

Middle Aged and Older Fighters do appear in FE so its not implausible.

But I agree that marriage needs to not be in the next FE, I remember how Genealogy was unique for its system and now every FE is starting to go back to that, this wouldn't be bad if it was handled well, but it isn't.

[SageOfAnys]

Marriage shouldn't return as a mechanic and should be an end of game thing. Children should never appear again unless thy're actually important to the plot at hand and are almost required to actually have the story make sense, not like Awakening where all you needed was Lucina and could ignore every other child in the game.

The thing is that the marriage mechanic along with the children, while fun to mess round with for optimization, made the writing for supports a lot more awful. Characters that really shouldn't have any romantic interest in each other still end up marrying and the S-ranks are absolutely rushed in most cases even if the two characters have chemistry between them, so changing it may allow more sensible S-ranks (have couples express some interest in each other but don't jump to the whole proposal) and maybe the return of platonic endings for characters, which is something that should really return.

[Thor Odinson]

I can do entirely without kids. Marriage should be a lot more limited to select pairs with actual reason and chemistry and there should be platonic paired endings that doesn't necessarily end in marriage.

[Magical Glace]

Marriage is fine. I prefer GBA style where you get a limited amount of convos and A has a chance at a paired ending, but still. It doesn't hurt anything.

Children, on the other hand, need to go unless they're making FE4 2.0. The explanation in Fates is really weak (and makes trying to make a super Kanna really creepy, creepier than making a super Morgan in FE13.) FE13, as bad as the plot is, would be different without Lucina's entire time travelling shtick, while the kids in Fates have literally no point whatsoever and are very forced. And since I'm sick of time-travel... Yeah.

[Loki Laufeyson]

it should only if its handled like in fire emblem 4.

i'm sick of time travel

I agree with this tbh. Next time, i want to see children/marriage/eugenics in a multifaceted and sprawling epic type story. One that spans a couple of decades. Just having children magically appear is just...its a little trite to say the least.

[CyborgZeta]

Marriage needs to be more limited. Having tons of marriage options limits the quality of supports.

I think children need to go. Their appearance in Fates feels incredibly shoehorned.

[The Geek]

I'll jump on the bandwagon of "Marriage yes/maybe kids only if there is a generational split in the game's story"

In Awakening kids were fine because it was the first time it had been done like that and it made sense in the context of Awakening's story.

In Fates though, it feels really shoe-horned in. Not to mention some of the sour implications arising from the Hyperbolic Time Chamber system this time 'round (all the women getting pregnant in the middle of a war including the underage ones (Elise and Sakura), the kids being essentially deprived of a proper childhood (at least in Awakening it was known that there would be other versions of the kids who would be raised normally in that timeline), and some other stuff that I can't think of but is probably there.)

[Mrs Chrom]

Marriage was great. Children lead to overpopulation :-)

I also dislike that they were essentially more powerful versions of their parents AND they looked like them. It made it feel like the best characters in the game were less original designs.

[bookofholsety]

i'd say yeah, it should return in a future game

note that the emphasis here is on "a future game", in the singular sense. it absolutely should not be a series standard feature, but rather something occasional to be a bit of a unique treat when the game's setup calls for it. before fe14 came along and did it again, it was something that stood out about fe4 and 13 compared to their respective immediate predecessors, and despite there being a LOT to be said about fe13's... er, let's call it a "story", the children thing at least fit in pretty well with its general setup. fe14's use of it, as many others have said, just feels cynical and repetitive

the ramifications it has on the ability to write supports are also profound. the babymaking setup inherently demands that a fuckton of pairings are possible, and under the modern support system, this means lots of goddamn dialogue is needed. the sheer strain this caused really showed with the quality of fe13's supports, and by all accounts 14 is not much better. but on the other hand, these days it wouldn't be particularly acceptable for them to go back to fe4's approach to this for pretty obvious reasons, so from this perspective matchmaking as gameplay is inherently caught between a rock and a textless place. one solution would be limiting the pairings each character can have, vaguely in line with gba/fe9-era support options, but when the draw of the system is the ability to mix and match daddy genes in each child, limiting the marriage options per character really isn't the best idea

way i see it, it should be given a rest for a couple of games so that a) it's a bigger deal when it does come back, and b) the end result has a better chance of actually fitting this hypothetical future game and not being as hamfisted as fe14's implementation. the support writing will still most likely take a huge dive if it does continue, but by the look of it, intsys is okay with that

Edited August 10, 2015 by bookofholsety

[DeadGame]

Not like this... not like this.

Unfortunately, that train has left by now, as much of a shame it is.

Edited August 10, 2015 by Ragnar

[Xzedopau]

I really don't want it to come back all the time.

It may sound strange but my problem with Awakening is that keeping units alive are a bit too important because of children and extra missions and all this stuff. I'd prefer things to be more like FE9, where all units have well developed personalities and has their own great supports but aren't too important storywise except for the ending.

I like to let units I dislike die without worrying about losing a good portion of content later on.