Are supports a flawed method of character development?

[IceBrand]

I mean FE games usually have around 25+ playable characters in the game. Gameplay wise this is nice since it gives you plenty of options in battle. Story wise, a good majority of these characters are usually thrown to the side and are forgotten about in the main story. The only other way to know about said characters are supports. And sometimes important details are not told at all in the story unless you read the supports( you never get a proper conclusion on Lyn's revenge against the bandits who killed her clan unless you support her with Wallace). My argument here is that if we had less characters, would this give them more development in the story?

Edited September 26, 2015 by Silver Ninja

[Alex95]

While I agree a large number of characters in the series are tossed to the side when their introduction is finished, I actually rather like the supports.

It's a nice break from the main story and it can delve into a character's past and story without completely destroying the story-line. They even add to it.

Sometimes it's best to just let the characters talk...right?

[alatartheblue42]

While I agree a large number of characters in the series are tossed to the side when their introduction is finished, I actually rather like the supports.

It's a nice break from the main story and it can delve into a character's past and story without completely destroying the story-line. They even add to it.

Sometimes it's best to just let the characters talk...right?

I agree. It makes the characters feel a bit more real. It's sort of like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel. You learn different things about the story and it changes (very slightly, as in just epilogues for the most part, but still) the story. It's nice to have something off to the side once in a while.

[Maritisa]

I'd personally prefer a much smaller cast, with stuff like Base conversations instead of Supports. They could stay, of course, but with a smaller cast they might not even be necessary.

The problem with support conversations and the fact that most characters, in the words of Walhart, "FALL TO THE WAYSIDE", is that if they die you'll never get to know anything about them, bar some rare scenarios in the Tellius games where other characters acknowledge their existence. Or, lack there of...

It makes the already extremely punishing permadeath mechanic even more brutal, because now not only did you lose that unit, you also lost every opportunity to learn anything about them. ...All the more infuriating if they had a marriage support before they kicked the bucket, and their spouse acts like nothing ever happened.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

it really depends on the context of the supports and the world building of the game.

base conversations are the best with that said

[Beelzebub]

Path of Radiance probably did it best, with support conversations that were so easy to get, and base conversations.

[Radiant head]

I don't think it's inherently flawed, but the problem here is that 3 support convos barely even scratches the surface to exploring a character, and then there are sooo many characters, that it feels like a lot of the supports for characters who aren't integral to the plot are half-baked. This is especially a problem in Awakening where they jump from A support, where characters are only beginning to understand one another, to marriage.

In contrast, you have a game like Persona, where the social links are 10 parts, and while some of these social links can be truly awful, the ones that are good work because it feels like you're narrowing in on the nuances of a character. Something I don't feel FE ever accomplishes.

I think Telliius using base convos to supplant supports worked kind of well in theory. In PoR, Jill's personal story feels like a living breathing, ongoing thing because it's updated in base convos as the story progresses. Feels much more organic. And then with Radiant Dawn, the base convos could have filled the role of the missing support convos, but the game didn't have nearly enough base convos as it should have to truly replace supports.

Edited September 26, 2015 by Radiant head

[secondworld]

Echoing the PoR supports/base convos praise, I would've liked to see IS go further with this set-up and expand upon it in later games.

[Alazen]

For a FE like Awakening, you write supports in mind of how you can have a load of units support a load of units in a game with Gaiden's map system.

The Jill Scenario apparently at least required Jill to have noticeably more limited options for supports than you'd see for assorted Awakening and Fates characters, a time limit to get those supports, and a boss fight that can shift what happens to her. Shinon required all that and being talked to by Rolf. The Base Conversations helped but they also had time limit.

Although to be honest, a narrative doesn't automatically need many characters to develop beyond the lead. Hamlet's character development focuses on the titular character. Rather, I'd say that a game like FE should do what it can to make sure the playable cast at large is integrated with what's happening.

Edited September 27, 2015 by Alazen

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

are we going to get into the quantity over quality/ quality over quantity debate in this thread?

i'm calling it now, the thread is going to turn into awakening shit-flinging between the parties that like it and hate it

[Rizziah]

Not to get into nitty gritty specifics (I've been talking about this topic a lot lately, it seems), but I do think support system does have flaws, yet I still find myself favoring them more then the other systems I've seen, which includes base conversations. I feel the pros outway the cons, so much so that the cons don't really bother me much.

[Radiant head]

Although to be honest, a narrative doesn't automatically need many characters to develop beyond the lead. Hamlet's character development focuses on the titular character. Rather, I'd say that a game like FE should do what it can to make sure the playable cast at large is integrated with what's happening.

Yeah, but for me, it's annoying and strikes me as lazy to have all these characters who are not generic soldiers - they have portraits, names, etc. but they have zero characterization. And then the other problem is even the Lords have about as much depth as a muppet show compared to Hamlet's title character. I mean the latest Lord is going to be the fan pandering self-insert.

Edited September 27, 2015 by Radiant head

[Alazen]

I was thinking of that actually. For a game like Thracia 776, the playable cast at large isn't developed but I doubt the game was trying to be an ensemble peace as opposed to Leif's troubles as he rebels against the Empire. So on that front it worked.

On the flip-side, none of Awakening's leads were really handled well. So nobody really steps up.

[Phoenix_Kensai]

Support conversations are one of my favorite parts of the series, to be honest. While I think the system has room for improvement in any of its forms (a combination of Elibe's approach to endings, Fates' mechanical benefits, and Tellius' base conversations and ranking up just by deploying would be my ideal, I think), I've always felt it's a good way to add replay value to the games and give a little more character to things that the story would otherwise ignore.

I would like to see minor characters get a little more attention in the main story, though. It always bugged me that Canas joined you because he wanted to see the Dread Isle, and never said a word about it when he was there... or why he was still around after you left...

Base conversations help with that, of course, which is one reason I liked them. But still...

[Knight]

Base conversations should be implemented more often methinks, since they allow secondary characters to have dialogue with the context of the current events of the story, and sometimes allow for more than two characters to talk. I actually wouldn't mind if this was the preferred method of communication between characters, and Radiant Dawn sort of did that, but Radiant Dawn never treated all its characters fairly. The Dawn Brigade is a sad case of underdeveloped characters when really they should've got the most dialogue. One advantage of Support Convos does remain, however, and that's having a relationship between two characters grow through the efforts of the player, which is satisfying and my argument as to why they should stay.

tl;dr PoR did it best.

[bookofholsety]

when a friend of mine was first getting into fe13, she actually had more or less the same critique with respect to how they end up partitioning characterisation (such as it is in fe13) off to the side. it's been a while so i can't remember her exact wording, but she was sceptical of how the game's primary narrative spent little to no time on each character, and how each basically disappeared from the main story after a while. i can see where she's coming from and i don't entirely disagree, but at the same time, my feeling is that it's inevitable with a series like fe. the very nature of its gameplay demands a fuckton of playable characters, and it's just not practical for the entire proceedings of a game to take 40+ characters into account. not only does the possibility of a character being permadead or not recruited at any given time mean that you REALLY have to be prepared and take a massive number of possibilities into account, but the problem is that we're playing a game, not playing a novel. as fun as the story content of fe tends to be, at the end of the day if we're presented with too much of it, then it just becomes tedious. fe9 was arguably the best at integrating a greater number of playable characters into the story, albeit mainly early on when it was just the greil mercenaries as a smaller group rather than the entire 46-strong cast, which is probably for the best

as far as solutions to this go, supports are pretty solid, imo. making extra information on these characters more or less optional, and allowing the player to pick and choose which characters they want to devote more time to reading up about, seems like a good compromise. of course, there's issues with how supports work in just about every game since they were introduced, but that's another story. there's certainly also something to be said for base conversations in exactly the same way, though they tend to be less meaty (ilyana is arguably the only character who's better characterised in base conversations than she is in supports, though that's not exactly a high bar in her case)

[Radiant head]

At the same time FE13 was kind of a wishy washy attempt at being a quasi-visual novel with the awful attempts at giving the player "decisions" to make as the avatar that ended up having zero impact on the story. And then you have Fates, which while I'll reserve judgement until I actually play it, sounds like it's a mess of an attempt to fuse Game of Thrones style fantasy politics with wish fulfillment pandering. While it's true that FE can't realistically flesh out the dozens of playable characters, if FE wants to try to fall behind the "this isn't a visual novel," the attempts to incorporate novel elements in the game don't work.

In other words, without a strong backbone of characterization, the novel/narrative aspects of FE games just fall flat.

Edited September 27, 2015 by Radiant head

[Alazen]

To be honest, I wouldn't say most Lord characters in the post-Kaga games (which shouldn't suffer from the Kaga FEs' technological limitations or searching for direction) really hold up or don't have any issues holding them back.

Edited September 27, 2015 by Alazen

[CrimeanRoyalKnight]

My crappy internet made me double post. Pls delete.

Edited September 27, 2015 by CrimeanRoyalKnight

[CrimeanRoyalKnight]

In contrast, you have a game like Persona, where the social links are 10 parts, and while some of these social links can be truly awful, the ones that are good work because it feels like you're narrowing in on the nuances of a character. Something I don't feel FE ever accomplishes.

But does FE need to be like Persona? FE is also about loving characters, but I don't think it should have a focus on them as strong as the one in the Persona games.

FE should focus gameplay first, then story and characters later. I want it done well, I want it to be enjoyable, but at the same time I don't want it to become too much like a story heavy JRPG.

I personally like the system in Path of Radiance the most. It works the the best. I never felt that game had awful characters or awful interactions, I think it worked out its cast better than other games, so I'd say its system is spot on for FE.

(Radiant Dawn sucks at units interactions, BUT there are some really good base conversations too, and those I think were probably were the best way to flesh out the Dawn Brigade (too bad they were so few). I think an excellent base conversation is the one where Rolf meets his crazy mother. I'll never forget that.)

The best supports text-wise are from FE7 and FE8. I always learn something peculiar about the characters, and some supports are real gems IMO (like Knoll/Natasha, it really fleshes out the characters and the world building).

Oh, I also like the "Talk" events in Genealogy. They work very well if you want two characters to talk about something specific in a specific situation/battle.

So, if it were for me, I'd bring PoR style support system, base conversations and the events from Genealogy.

There would be many variations to be done in the base conversations, though, so I'm not sure how they would be able to pull it off well again in a game with a cast larger than PoR.

Yeah, but for me, it's annoying and strikes me as lazy to have all these characters who are not generic soldiers - they have portraits, names, etc. but they have zero characterization.

That is mostly a gameplay thing though: units are given a face not only to make them more human (and thus their strenght more important), but also to make them more recognizable between eachother. This would not be a problem if you only had one unit per type, but you don't.

And would you rather have actual generic units when you play?

[Radiant head]

But does FE need to be like Persona? FE is also about loving characters, but I don't think it should have a focus on them as strong as the one in the Persona games.

FE should focus gameplay first, then story and characters later. I want it done well, I want it to be enjoyable, but at the same time I don't want it to become too much like a story heavy JRPG.

No of course not. The point I was trying to make is that 3 support convos barely even breaks the ice on a character.

I feel like FE in its current form already tries half-heartedly to be a story-heaven JRPG, and it's done badly.

[Knight]

I disagree, more dialogue isn't going to develop characters better IMO, dialogue that's better written and more involved with the story will.

[Loki Laufeyson]

Path of Radiance probably did it best, with support conversations that were so easy to get, and base conversations.

The best part about PoR's supports, is that they all moved with the plot. No matter how much you have Mist and Jill hang out together, you arent going to see the A support between them until after chapter 17. Period. Depending on when after that point you get the A between them, it changes. That kinda shit is awesome.

Soren wont tell Ike about himself until after they reach Begnion. The A wont come until they are back in Crimea. This all has to do with plot progression reflecting supports. This method is the method that allows for actual character development. The GBA games had good supports and the discussions would reflect when characters joined the team. But they didnt really reflect the plot's actual progression. Example: Joshua and Gerik in FE8. The convos are the same regardless of route. But its really in Eirika's route it makes sense (what Joshua is actually trying to lowkey suggest to Gerik) only because Eirika's route deals with Jehanna's queen (and Joshua's real identity). This kind of thing is passable and all right, but for real development, PoR Method is the best.

[Alazen]

The thing with PoR's approach is that well, it was more limited. Be they time limits or locking out supports until a certain point even with both characters recruited. PoR's approach doesn't really go with Awakening's "No time limits unless the pairing has Chrom, Avatar can marry every other base playable unit who isn't his or her child, Gaiden style maps'' style.

[Loki Laufeyson]

The thing with PoR's approach is that well, it was more limited. Be they time limits or locking out supports until a certain point even with both characters recruited. PoR's approach doesn't really go with Awakening's "No time limits unless the pairing has Chrom, Avatar can marry every other base playable unit who isn't his or her child, Gaiden style maps'' style.

Unfortunately, you are correct. The only way to really put this back into the games is to ditch the Avatar, or make the Avatar's support pool hella limited.