Fixing Fates story issues (spoilers)

[gayserbeam]

One fix, and one that is possible in the localization, is to remove marriage altogether. I don't mean removing S-supports or children -- I mean re-tooling the dialogue in S-Supports to be about the beginning of a romantic relationship and not a sudden declaration of marriage to someone you barely know. Marriage Seals could be renamed "Lover Seals" and we could have much more realistic support lines.

The only issue would be "why did they already have children?" and that is already absurd and implicitly non-canon. If I am expected to believe that my unit held a wedding, conceived a child, was pregnant for nine months and had their baby at the same time as everyone else, then I don't need to see the actual narriage proposal taking place right at the beginning of the relationship. Besides, the dialogue that appears after the player completes their first S-Support explains they get married, so the eventual marriage proposal would have been implied anyways without the contrived S-Supports we have now.

Edited August 13, 2015 by gayserbeam

[Yari]

Good idea gayserbeam that would indeed be better. Even if it's unlikely the localization will do anything like it. But it makes sense and it would greatly improve the S-supports because we wouldn't have a "marry me" but yes a "go out with me". Wich is in my opinion better.

[Azz]

I agree with gayserbeam.Maybe it is just me, but while yes many of the supports are better in this game, the S supports are way more rushed.I mean Aqua and Zero go from discussing the weather to marry me.

[The DanMan]

I third Gayserbeam's opinion.

[Cinnamon Bun]

One fix, and one that is possible in the localization, is to remove marriage altogether. I don't mean removing S-supports or children -- I mean re-tooling the dialogue in S-Supports to be about the beginning of a romantic relationship and not a sudden declaration of marriage to someone you barely know. Marriage Seals could be renamed "Lover Seals" and we could have much more realistic support lines.

The only issue would be "why did they already have children?" and that is already absurd and implicitly non-canon. If I am expected to believe that my unit held a wedding, conceived a child, was pregnant for nine months and had their baby at the same time as everyone else, then I don't need to see the actual narriage proposal taking place right at the beginning of the relationship. Besides, the dialogue that appears after the player completes their first S-Support explains they get married, so the eventual marriage proposal would have been implied anyways without the contrived S-Supports we have now.

ALL OF THIS.

Also I must say I've been seeing a lot of your comments on various threads. I really appreciate your contribution to the forums! You always have something awesome to say, and you always say it in a nice and thoughtful way. Kudos!

[Medeus]

I fifth that opinion, I really feel that the jump from platonic to marriage was pretty bad with the S supports this time around. That's one of the reasons why Saizou/Kagerou is one of my favorite pairings in the game, they ease into the relationship, they don't just give each other rings and promise to get married on the spot.

[Neofranky]

One fix, and one that is possible in the localization, is to remove marriage altogether. I don't mean removing S-supports or children -- I mean re-tooling the dialogue in S-Supports to be about the beginning of a romantic relationship and not a sudden declaration of marriage to someone you barely know. Marriage Seals could be renamed "Lover Seals" and we could have much more realistic support lines.

The only issue would be "why did they already have children?" and that is already absurd and implicitly non-canon. If I am expected to believe that my unit held a wedding, conceived a child, was pregnant for nine months and had their baby at the same time as everyone else, then I don't need to see the actual marriage proposal taking place right at the beginning of the relationship. Besides, the dialogue that appears after the player completes their first S-Support explains they get married, so the eventual marriage proposal would have been implied anyways without the contrived S-Supports we have now.

I think it might end up making things much more convoluted since the entire purpose of characters marrying and the support system half-revolving around this in the first place IS the children. Shotgun weddings are sensible it's a fantasy setting based around medievalish times. Marriage in medieval times didn't required much dating, and in fact by the ages of 15 most had family and children and that held true until around the 19th century. I may be wrong.

The big problem is the children since it just gives the middle finger to the gestation period as a whole and they're just there for the sake of returning the feature from awakening. They could always just say "I'm your children from a different dimension that came to your aid because of reasons!" in the localization, since any attempt to actually justify it would only hurt the plot. Then again, that would kill the drama of many good supports since those are the only well written thing about the game, apparently.

The concept of putting children into a hyperbolic time chamber is very interesting, but it doesn't resonate well at all with this plot in particular.

[Great Geargia Gateway]

I can't help agree a bit with gayserbeam and Neofranky. Though, if this was an actual plan, it would be much more moralizing. But I think the children could get in the way of this. Though, I thought the entire point of the Marriage system was because the fanservice that IS is leading this game into. And another two cents: I think that would ease the crack between fandoms a little. It's not so panderous as it's actually realistic somewhat.

[gayserbeam]

ALL OF THIS.

Also I must say I've been seeing a lot of your comments on various threads. I really appreciate your contribution to the forums! You always have something awesome to say, and you always say it in a nice and thoughtful way. Kudos!

Wow, thanks! Your post is nice and thoughtful too!

The concept of putting children into a hyperbolic time chamber is very interesting, but it doesn't resonate well at all with this plot in particular.

The existence alone of alternate worlds where time passes faster makes time seem meaningless. Any task that takes more time than you have could be done immediately, and any child could become an adult weeks after they are born.

It begs the question: Over how much time has the game actually taken place?

Let's pretend that immediately after the proposal, the characters run straight to the nearest official and get married on the spot before darting off to conceive their child that very night. They would still need to wait out the nine months of pregnancy, and for much of that time the mother wouldn't be able to fight.

Let's also ignore the fact that all the kids are seemingly different ages and pretend that they were all born in the same year. They still all have different birthdays so it would take at two years for all of them to be born. Since Shigure will always have a sibling, but will never be a twin, we have to add another year on to that to account for Aqua having two pregnancies.

That leaves at least three years of completely unexplained time that is happening at some point during the player's quest. Meanwhile, no one has aged, learned knew things, or went on maternity leave. It's impossible this is canonical, and was clearly just to allow for the return of the breeding meachanics of FE4 and FE13.

That's another reason why I would advocate for replacing marriage proposals with romantic confessions. Plot-wise and gameplay-wise, them becoming lovers instead of immediately marrying eachother makes no difference. The only thing it affects is child bearing, which relies on an impossible explanation in the first place.

Edited August 14, 2015 by gayserbeam

[GoXDS]

Wow, thanks! Your post is nice and thoughtful too!

The existence alone of alternate worlds where time passes faster makes time seem meaningless. Any task that takes more time than you have could be done immediately, and any child could become an adult weeks after they are born.

It begs the question: Over how much time has the game actually taken place?

Let's pretend that immediately after the proposal, the characters run straight to the nearest official and get married on the spot before darting off to conceive their child that very night. They would still need to wait out the nine months of pregnancy, and for much of that time the mother wouldn't be able to fight.

Let's also ignore the fact that all the kids are seemingly different ages and pretend that they were all born in the same year. They still all have different birthdays so it would take at two years for all of them to be born. Since Shigure will always have a sibling, but will never be a twin, we have to add another year on to that to account for Aqua having two pregnancies.

That leaves at least three years of completely unexplained time that is happening at some point during the player's quest. It's impossible this is canonical, and was clearly just to allow for the return of the breeding meachanics of FE4 and FE13.

simple. the baby making and pregnancy happened within the hyperbolic time chamber. it's still a very poor mechanic.

IS is also pretty much forcing themselves into a corner with marriages and especially children 2 games in a row. they're almost going to be EXPECTED to put those into the next game or riot. it would've been easier to hold off in Fates. they had a very good excuse with having 8 characters that no normal person would marry irl in Kamui's shoes and yet are important characters (thus would feel weird to have an important section of the cast barred from you)

Edited August 14, 2015 by GoXDS

[Yari]

I'm not against marriage and children being in this but it would have been so much better with an FE4 time skip. Without the first gen getting slaughtered. If they wanted children they could try to put them in the story that way. I don't know how hard it would be to change the first gen portaits and possibly models but I would be willing to wait longer for something that makes sense and in my opinion would largely improve the mechanic.

[Taka-kun]

simple. the baby making and pregnancy happened within the hyperbolic time chamber. it's still a very poor mechanic.

IS is also pretty much forcing themselves into a corner with marriages and especially children 2 games in a row. they're almost going to be EXPECTED to put those into the next game or riot. it would've been easier to hold off in Fates. they had a very good excuse with having 8 characters that no normal person would marry irl in Kamui's shoes and yet are important characters (thus would feel weird to have an important section of the cast barred from you)

Debatable.

That said, what gayserbeam proposed aligns more with perception of modern day romance but as Neofranky pointed out, it's not uncommon for marriage to happen in such manners during the medieval times. Be even glad that they even MET and TALKED to each other before marriage.

The mechanics with the children are just a mess and the hyperbolic time chamber (it does have an official name right?) might be total nonsense but is the only way aside from time-traveling from another dimension to justify why the children are grown up and fights along their parents. Pulling a timeskip would require to include it in the story and maybe redraw the character sprites to older versions, which logisticswise is a pain.

I understand why the children mechanic is popular (I mean, characters have children, how often does that happen in JRPGs?) but this time they are not part of the narrative at all, unlike in Awakening. It's best to just write it off as non-canon.

[GoXDS]

Debatable.

That said, what gayserbeam proposed aligns more with perception of modern day romance but as Neofranky pointed out, it's not uncommon for marriage to happen in such manners during the medieval times. Be even glad that they even MET and TALKED to each other before marriage.

The mechanics with the children are just a mess and the hyperbolic time chamber (it does have an official name right?) might be total nonsense but is the only way aside from time-traveling from another dimension to justify why the children are grown up and fights along their parents. Pulling a timeskip would require to include it in the story and maybe redraw the character sprites to older versions, which logisticswise is a pain.

I understand why the children mechanic is popular (I mean, characters have children, how often does that happen in JRPGs?) but this time they are not part of the narrative at all, unlike in Awakening. It's best to just write it off as non-canon.

was speaking mostly with the royal siblings. while shotgun/arranged marriages may have been common in medieval times, sibling marriages were not. plus, it's still put into the context that it IS voluntary so that should be the main consideration. imo there's a strong reasoning for IS to have held off S Ranking = Marriage for Fates with the inclusion of 8 siblings but even if you disagree, at the very least there is an excuse. it probably would've been better since those were very messy supports (you never even learn Hoshido side isn't even true siblings outside that S Rank or outside IK DLC)

even if there was only a weak excuse not to include marriage or children (especially children since it's hard to come up with a legitimate way to include them easily), it probably would be healthier for the series in the long run if IS isn't forced to always contain it from now on and forced to use it as a crutch. especially if it will impact the story. there doesn't really even need to be an excuse to not include marriage but it'll be harder to do so without angering some fans now that they included it twice in a row

Edited August 14, 2015 by GoXDS

[Thane]

I'm curious about something. A lot of people seem to prefer Genealogy of the Holy War's child mechanic, which is understandable since it requires zero mumbo jumbo. However, what it DOES require is a big enough time skip in the main story to allow it to happen in the first place, and that would require a lot of character portrait updates unless you want to kill everyone of the first generation. If this has already been done, wouldn't it feel odd to do it again just for the sake of the child mechanic? It could really mess up the plot if it felt forced.

Also, GoXDS, while I agree that I think it's harder for them to back out of adding children again now that they've done it twice in a row, the reaction of the mechanic this time around has definitely been lukewarm, and they seem aware of it, since they added a question about children in that Famitsu poll with plenty of different answers.

[Yari]

I'm curious about something. A lot of people seem to prefer Genealogy of the Holy War's child mechanic, which is understandable since it requires zero mumbo jumbo. However, what it DOES require is a big enough time skip in the main story to allow it to happen in the first place, and that would require a lot of character portrait updates unless you want to kill everyone of the first generation. If this has already been done, wouldn't it feel odd to do it again just for the sake of the child mechanic? It could really mess up the plot if it felt forced.

Everyone was waiting for this dark story to be in Fates, and when we think about a dark FE story we think about Genealogy. A war so violent that lasted trought generations. They could have found so many ways to do it without it seeming forced because they wanted a second gen. It could have been a very good story with both sides strugling to end the war.

[Thane]

Everyone was waiting for this dark story to be in Fates, and when we think about a dark FE story we think about Genealogy. A war so violent that lasted trought generations. They could have found so many ways to do it without it seeming forced because they wanted a second gen. It could have been a very good story with both sides strugling to end the war.

Oh I agree, but we were talking about future installments now, and like I said, it's already been done, so I think it would leave a lot of fans just feeling neutral towards it. At least they haven't forgotten about the mechanic as a whole, seeing as Genealogy of the Holy War's time skip was one of the answers to the question of how or if one wanted the child mechanic in later games.

[Alazen]

Having Awakening's system (the custom character can marry every base playable character, every base playable character can marry another base playable character, a 2nd Gen without a timeskip long enough for the children to all reach a fighting age) limits what's to be done with the characters and narrative.

First off, you can't have characters like Quan and Ethlyn who are married for all of their time since the custom character has to be able to marry them both. Every couple, no matter how shady the members are or how mismatched it is stays together in marriage with a ring and at least one child, ruling out any situations like most of Priscilla's paired endings having the man leave her. There has to some excuse for the children being around without a timeskip going over a decade, whether it's time travel or putting babies in another dimensions.

Edited August 14, 2015 by Alazen

[Yari]

Oh I agree, but we were talking about future installments now, and like I said, it's already been done, so I think it would leave a lot of fans just feeling neutral towards it. At least they haven't forgotten about the mechanic as a whole, seeing as Genealogy of the Holy War's time skip was one of the answers to the question of how or if one wanted the child mechanic in later games.

Oh! Okay. Honestly I wouldn't mind if children weren't in future installments or a player avatar for that matter. As long as S-supports came back and I could ship people, pair them up for stats boost and still use marriage seals (or whatever name they would have).

Edited August 14, 2015 by Yari

[Alazen]

GotHW's 2nd Gen was more integrated into the narrative than Awakening and Fates. Aside from including a time skip so long that it lets children the reach a fighting age, the game has a motif of heritage, inheritance, and old feuds. Descandants of Loptyr's servants scheme to build an empire with Cigyun's children as key pieces, Arvis was blackmailed into allying with Manfroy using his bloodline, Reptor and Langbart are enemies of Sigurd's father Byron, and Lewyn ran away from his kingdom instead of fighting for his inheritance. This is all in the 1st Gen, which was a buildup to Seliph and Leif's rebellions.

In Awakening and Fates the children aren't anywhere near as important. Lucina is the only required one and she serves as an expositionbot who aspires to matricide.

[Neofranky]

The existence alone of alternate worlds where time passes faster makes time seem meaningless. Any task that takes more time than you have could be done immediately, and any child could become an adult weeks after they are born.

It begs the question: Over how much time has the game actually taken place?

Let's pretend that immediately after the proposal, the characters run straight to the nearest official and get married on the spot before darting off to conceive their child that very night. They would still need to wait out the nine months of pregnancy, and for much of that time the mother wouldn't be able to fight.

Let's also ignore the fact that all the kids are seemingly different ages and pretend that they were all born in the same year. They still all have different birthdays so it would take at two years for all of them to be born. Since Shigure will always have a sibling, but will never be a twin, we have to add another year on to that to account for Aqua having two pregnancies.

That leaves at least three years of completely unexplained time that is happening at some point during the player's quest. Meanwhile, no one has aged, learned knew things, or went on maternity leave. It's impossible this is canonical, and was clearly just to allow for the return of the breeding meachanics of FE4 and FE13.

That's another reason why I would advocate for replacing marriage proposals with romantic confessions. Plot-wise and gameplay-wise, them becoming lovers instead of immediately marrying eachother makes no difference. The only thing it affects is child bearing, which relies on an impossible explanation in the first place.

Now that you made me think, a romantic sex-filled honeymoon to the hyperbolic time lands could be an explanation, but the characters would have to look at least a year older from the pregnancy perod(s), plus I think the idea to put children in the hyperbolic time things happens after the first child is born. It'd be honestly much better if they avoided explaining it altogether and just keep it as "from a different dimension".

[Taka-kun]

How about not including the children at all? Feels forced to do a timeskip, feels stupid to do hyperbolic time chamber and feels cheap to do alternate dimension. Why not skip the children altogether to make a better narrative.

I am not even sure what the discussion here is.

[Yari]

This thread has lost its way.

Me being me I need to include the children in the fanfic someway. But I think children won't be in the next game at all, marriage will probably return but children won't. I hope.

[Alazen]

Moving on, let's discuss the siblings.

The siblings at large have issues in the narrative. But let's focus on Takumi, and the older sisters.

Takumi has one of, if not the strongest, presences in the narrative. Unfortunately, the game goes out of its way to present him as being damn wrong for his contempt towards Kamui. If he's not getting chastised for his approach to Kamui then he's getting a hate monster to pop-up who serves as a final boss.

The sisters are all ultimately superfluous. Sure, Elise has a small role in Birthright, but really. Hinoka's greatest moments include seeing through Zora's disguise and Kamui pretending to execute her. Camilla is defined by being marriage fodder for Kamui.

Edited August 15, 2015 by Alazen

[Yari]

The siblings except for Takumi have very small roles in the story of a game that's suppose to be about family. Camilla and Hinoka disappear from the storyline entirely and Elise and Sakura are just there to look cute. The brother are the more important to the story but Takumi seems to take the spotlight.

[Thane]

Moving on, let's discuss the siblings.

The siblings at large have issues in the narrative. But let's focus on Takumi, and the older sisters.

Takumi has one of, if not the strongest, presences in the narrative. Unfortunately, the game goes out of its way to present him as being damn wrong for his contempt towards Kamui. If he's not getting chastised for his approach to Kamui then he's getting a hate monster to pop-up who serves as a final boss.

The sisters are all ultimately superfluous. Sure, Elise has a small role in Birthright, but really. Hinoka's greatest moments include seeing through Zora's disguise and Kamui pretending to execute her. Camilla is defined by being marriage fodder for Kamui.

You should probably put that in spoilers

Oh wow, it's like you summed up my feelings on the matter for me.

[spoiler=Xander spoilers] Xander has almost as big of a problem as Takumi. He's supposed to be the kind but stoic crown prince of Nohr who always puts the country's needs first...yet he accepts everything Ganon says through gritted teeth and that's it, which is the exact opposite of doing what's good for the country. It's as if he's either spineless, blind or thoroughly stupid, or a lovely combination thereof. People like to try and defend his actions by saying he was afraid of Garon when he was a kid or just that he loved his father so much, but the problem is that the game never focuses at all on Xander's thoughts or feelings, outside of a few nods in support conversations - the main narrative doesn't explain his actions or even what he's really thinking at all, so it just comes across as horrible, horrible writing.

I also like how in chapter 14 of the third route tells Leo off for thinking Kamui might be right, but then joins in chapter 17 even though you haven't seen him since that last conversation three chapters earlier.

At least he's got good supports for the most part; Ryouma, on the other hand, is almost as bland as Hinoka. He never deviates or adds to the "kind bushido prince" traits at all, as far as I know. Ah well, at least he didn't just disappear like the four sisters. Poor Hinoka is an afterthought in all three routes AND she's got no noteworthy supports either.