Do you hate Avatar character(s)? If so, why?

[Vitezen]

I'll use comparisons from other games within the same genre, as to why I feel it's mediocre. Using actual traditional RPGs, Movies, Novels, etc, would be completely unfair.

Alright let's begin, I'll try to be thorough, and not just do a 1 or 2 vague sentence answer.

Main Characters; They're all generic good guys. They're all literal copy paste of one another, Hector was a bit different, who rather than being gentle, he was brash. But he shared that lime light with a copy paste lord. And Ike was basically, what if Marth and Hector had a baby? well, there you go, you get Ike. And Chrom was just a "nicer" Ike. Now, having a good person isn't bad within itself, it's the delivery. And on top of which it's the same with pretty much all FE lords, they all share the same backstory, which ties into plot, which I'll get into later. Most jRPG heroes are "good guys.", but their delivery is completely different. I'll use Ramza Beoluve from the original FFT as an example. Although not a prince, he's a noble, so the standing is similar. From a story telling perspective and how they show the struggles of Ramza, his relationships with the people around him, his personality, etc... is very, very well executed. They make sure that you understand where Ramza is coming from without breaking flow, and everything felt natural with story transition to battle sequence. and they added some neat things too, like you're 1v1ing someone and after a certain point, the rest of your party catches up with you and helps you out if you didn't manage to beat him in time. Anyway, going on a tangent there. The MCs of Fire Emblem, had easy motives, and easy to understand personalities, they're all lords who got chased away by an evil empire, who are secretly undercontrol of some evil god, and they must reclaim their kingdom to return peace. Yeah sure, you learn some little quirks about them in support convos, their backstories are very cut and dry, that's hardly on the same level as Ramza.

Now I'll touch on story telling more in depth, will also help cover the issue with the mains. Story transition for Fire Emblem games had always been rather bland, you get a short scene of the characters talking and jump straight away into the next battle sequence. It was "just enough", for you to understand why the battle is taken place. It doesn't try to do anything more. Again falls under delivery and presentation. Awakening was the first to attempt actual cutscenes in an attempt to change the delivery by improving the presentation of the story, whether it was successful or not is for another topic, but it's a step in the right direction. And Fates tried to improve upon it, the problem lies not with Kobayashi, but rather Nintendo's philosophy of "make the game first, fit the story in later", which is a great set of mind to build a game with great gameplay but narrative suffers for it. Other companies have managed to build rock solid gameplay but doesn't allow the narrative to suffer for it. Fates is taking things in the right direction, I'm only hoping they improve upon it with the next installment.

Using some SRPGs as comparisons on narrative delivery and presentation; I'll start with an obscure one, tears to tiara. Fantastic example, the only SRPG that's ever made me legitimately shed a tear. Not only was it well written, the voice acting delivering it was top notch, with strong emotions that can pierce the viewer. It was a stereotypical Man vs Heaven theme, found commonly in games and anime, but the delivery and main character puts an entertaining and unique twist on things. If anyone here is familiar with games from Leaf, will know what I'm talking about, their stories are simply top notch and sets a really high bar. The Ogre Battle games, wow, I mean wow, if Fire Emblem wants to take some notes on how to make plot progression through protagonist choice, they just need to play the Ogre Battle games. Not onlly does important story choices effect how the narrative plays, sometimes small things can effect it to. And the narrative changes were massive, and they're not easy choices either, they put your sense of morals to the test. In any case, these examples have great, well written stories, that doesn't sacrifice anything for it.

And finally supports, well what can I say about supports? a lot of that tie into secondary characters that joins your army. They were simple and fun, not much else to say about it. But, the main problem with supports to, is that it's the ONLY way to get to know a character that isn't a main in Fire Emblem. Despite not having supports, I'll use FFT as an example of how characters join you. Every NPC that joins you, joins you on good merit, and they all play a role in the narrative to a certain point, without taking focus away from the overall plot. They all fit in somehow and play a major role for the period you recruit them. For example, Rafa and Malak... wow, this one was good. Malak who's the twin brother of Rafa, was sent out to assassinate you, you had to deal with them a few times, and eventually you discover that the Baron who is Malak's owner, is a target objective that needs to be taken care of, and on the way you meet Rafa who helps you fight her own brother. And further down the narrative you learn about the two, how they were war orphans, trained to be tools for the Baron, and how when Rafa gets raped, is when she finally decided to run away. In comparison, you get, send A unit to talk to B unit, and you get a new unit. And if you bother to do the handful of supports, you may learn a thing or two.

In the end, it doesn't matter if something is cliche or overdone, it's all about delivery and presentation, and in my opinion, it's been severely lack in past fire emblems, and only as of recent, IS had been trying to remedy it. And I commend them for it.

Main Characters: This point doesn't make previous FE games inferior to Awakening and Fates, because they share the same style of protagonist. The only difference is in Fates where you have Kamui, who is arguably worse for having inconsistent characterization based on the choices you make. Also, comparing non-FE games to FE doesn't reflect on the internal quality of the series.

Story: The use of cutscenes can make story more interesting but a much more critical component is the story told within them. A well-written story in a black screen with a text box is higher quality writing than a mediocre story with good visuals.

Supports: This problem can be solved with higher quality supports that go more in depth in each of them, perhaps also with a reduced amount of supports if necessary, instead of a smattering of supports for each character that either tell you exactly the same thing about their shallow personality. Again, comparing FE to FFT does nothing when talking about the internal consistency of the quality of FE.

[HTakara82]

Main Characters: This point doesn't make previous FE games inferior to Awakening and Fates, because they share the same style of protagonist. The only difference is in Fates where you have Kamui, who is arguably worse for having inconsistent characterization based on the choices you make. Also, comparing non-FE games to FE doesn't reflect on the internal quality of the series.

Story: The use of cutscenes can make story more interesting but a much more critical component is the story told within them. A well-written story in a black screen with a text box is higher quality writing than a mediocre story with good visuals.

Supports: This problem can be solved with higher quality supports that go more in depth in each of them, perhaps also with a reduced amount of supports if necessary, instead of a smattering of supports for each character that either tell you exactly the same thing about their shallow personality. Again, comparing FE to FFT does nothing when talking about the internal consistency of the quality of FE.

You're dodging everything, Using something of the same genre is a perfect way to show how something can be done better. That's how everything is compared, from cars, to brands, to the toilet paper you have in your bathroom (if you use toilet paper)

[shadowofchaos]

Basicly what Loki and Zasplach said, every characters have their own flaws that makes them human. Kamui, on the other hand, everyone worships them like they were god or something like that, and Kamui just plays along with it. It's important for your main character to have human like flaws to make them good, if not then there will be little to nothing interesting about them.

While I love If and Awakening to death...

It's kinda funny that the ENTIRE meaning of their Japanese name "Kamui" says that.

They are *NOT* subtle.

Their literal "fix" for Robin taking Chrom's spotlight... is to give another MU the ENTIRE spotlight.

Even with me, who actually likes "self-inserts"... there is a GIANT disconnect.

The time I fully connected with Kamui... was during a spoiler in Chapter 5.

Otherwise, I feel a giant disconnect with them.

Unlike how it was with other FE lords.

Like how Ike learned about Laguz in FE9.

Did I ever mention how much I love FE9 Ike and hate FE10 Ike?

Edited October 11, 2015 by shadowofchaos

[Sunwoo]

Kamui may be what some of us secretly wish to be (loved, worshipped, always right, charismatic, etc.) but no one can actually relate to.

[shadowofchaos]

Well in a way, you could relate to Robin... the first time you play the game, because you have NO idea who these people are and where you are.

...I did.

[Sunwoo]

That's probably true. Kamui feels like they'd be harder to relate to, they are just comprised of special thing after special thing and never really seems to grow or learn in any of the three paths. I'd say it's worst in Nohr but even Hoshido Kamui doesn't seem to grow that much because of … various spoiler-y circumstances. And of course no one is that loved or so special that a conspiracy to make them suffer affects the fate of the whole world. The fuck.

In my earlier post, I don't mean to say that everyone secretly wants to be loved and admired to the extent of Kamui. But I think that many people to some degree want to feel special and unique and loved by everyone, whether they realize it or not. Kamui is, in a way, the ultimate fantasy, but isn't really enjoyable as a character you are observing. And, considering the ridiculous extent of their naivety, sometimes even to pretend to be.

[eclipse]

In my earlier post, I don't mean to say that everyone secretly wants to be loved and admired to the extent of Kamui. But I think that many people to some degree want to feel special and unique and loved by everyone, whether they realize it or not. Kamui is, in a way, the ultimate fantasy, but isn't really enjoyable as a character you are observing. And, considering the ridiculous extent of their naivety, sometimes even to pretend to be.

There's people who project a part of themselves onto Kamui (check out any of the huge topics regarding characters). Thus, having a character that's oh-so-special, IMO, is meant to provide an outlet for the player, whether it be familial love, admiration, etc.

I don't think it's the best approach, and would rather have characters that were made to be characters first and foremost, but eh. Alternately, make Kamui a full silent protagonist.

As for the actual topic. . .nope. Where Kamui fails in character, he/she excels in customization. Rather than focus on what's bad, I'd rather leverage what's good.

[Phoenix_Kensai]

I've always liked avatar characters in Fire Emblem, personally. It was just a silly little thing, but... something about being the tactician in Blazing Sword struck a cord in me at the time, and I was excited when I learned the feature was going to be expanded in later games. I think I like the avatar having more of a supporting role in the story, but I'll reserve my judgment for when I've actually played Fates.

There might be problems with the way it has been handled in any individual game, but the idea itself is something I still like.

[Sasori]

So far i've found the previous two avatars to be alright. Chris was very boring and not very good for Marth, but he was so unimportant that I did't grew annoyed by him. Robin meanwhile was an alright character, who just happened to be far too broken when it came to gameplay.

I don't know much about Kamui's character yet so I can't comment on that yet, but I can't say I liked how he was handled in the story. Fates had the ability to make the best avatar characters in the series. The side picking alone could be used to great affect to shape your relationship with the families, the two sides and individual characters. Sadly from what i've heard the game goes out of their way to have everyone adore Kamui, even when you don't side with them.

In that regard Fates could have learned something from Dragon age origin. In that game your companions had no problem calling you out on behaviour that displeased them and they could really grow to dislike you or even turn on you if you pissed them off enough.

[I love fire emblem]

While I love If and Awakening to death...

It's kinda funny that the ENTIRE meaning of their Japanese name "Kamui" says that.

They are *NOT* subtle.

Their literal "fix" for Robin taking Chrom's spotlight... is to give another MU the ENTIRE spotlight.

Even with me, who actually likes "self-inserts"... there is a GIANT disconnect.

The time I fully connected with Kamui... was during a spoiler in Chapter 5.

Otherwise, I feel a giant disconnect with them.

Unlike how it was with other FE lords.

Like how Ike learned about Laguz in FE9.

Did I ever mention how much I love FE9 Ike and hate FE10 Ike?

Huh, never knew that, well I guess that kinda disproves my reasoning then. Well still a character needs to be relatable to be at least decent (and I think I was trying say that in the original post).

[Knight]

Ooh boy, here we go. I'll start with supports since that'll lead into the other stuff better.

And finally supports, well what can I say about supports? a lot of that tie into secondary characters that joins your army. They were simple and fun, not much else to say about it. But, the main problem with supports to, is that it's the ONLY way to get to know a character that isn't a main in Fire Emblem. Despite not having supports, I'll use FFT as an example of how characters join you. Every NPC that joins you, joins you on good merit, and they all play a role in the narrative to a certain point, without taking focus away from the overall plot. They all fit in somehow and play a major role for the period you recruit them. For example, Rafa and Malak... wow, this one was good. Malak who's the twin brother of Rafa, was sent out to assassinate you, you had to deal with them a few times, and eventually you discover that the Baron who is Malak's owner, is a target objective that needs to be taken care of, and on the way you meet Rafa who helps you fight her own brother. And further down the narrative you learn about the two, how they were war orphans, trained to be tools for the Baron, and how when Rafa gets raped, is when she finally decided to run away. In comparison, you get, send A unit to talk to B unit, and you get a new unit. And if you bother to do the handful of supports, you may learn a thing or two.

First I want to get something across that I think a lot of people have as a common misconception, more dialogue doesn't equate to more character development. As an actual FE related example, I'll use Heath in FE7. Heath doesn't get a big role, but his personality is portrayed well in the few cutscenes he has, he's an exiled soldier from Bern who's lost his dignity, but not so much of it that he's willing to kill women and children, he has a sense of morality that he has made himself obey. His supports don't really develop his character from here (except his Vaida support sorta), he's not really a character in need of development, what they do instead is flesh out his backstory and provide interesting interactions with his personality to others, but we know enough about his character already. There are supports that do develop characters more, but never is 100 lines of dialogue needed to complete a character's development, that's ridiculous.

I'd argue that it isn't development we really want from Fire Emblem characters, it is, for lack of a better term, connection, connection to other characters that can have interesting or meaningful interactions with said character, or to the plot and the current events in the story, but to say we know nothing of characters like Heath or Jill or Joshua without reading their supports is false. There are characters that do get the short end of the stick with their introductions, mostly in early games, FE6 and FE10, but again, you only need to read a couple of support conversations to get them. I'd argue that Awakening's method of supports ruins the novelty of having two characters talk in the first place, at least with opposite-sex members. With each character in Awakening, you know that it was mandatory for the dev team to make each conversation, so they had to come up with something before release date, instead of the method in previous FE games, where the dev team likely made supports because it was intended for the character or they thought that those characters could have an interesting conversation. This makes me think...

"make the game first, fit the story in later", which is a great set of mind to build a game with great gameplay but narrative suffers for it.

...that actually the opposite is true for the older games. Many of the supports in FE: A and If were likely made to accommodate for the baby-making mechanic and the writers had to suffer through writing them. There is no other intent behind many of these conversations. At least when a bizarre support pairing like Canas and Bartre occurred in past games, it's because some developer had an idea for them to talk about, not to fit into a game mechanic. The amount of supports that develop, provide backstory, or give meaningful interactions to much of Awakening's cast is likely the same if not a little less than in previous games, but then we have a ton of supports that are just filler and are boring as hell, often having to resort to each and everyone's cliche anime gimmick to bump up against each other in the hopes that conversation can ensue. In any case, I don't think supports are the only way, or even the best way (I could get into the merits of Base convos and have another 3 paragraphs to talk, but I did that in another thread) to describe, develop a character, and the ones Awakening provides is hardly an improvement. I'll finish this segment by proposing this question: Are Basillio and Flavia any less developed than the rest of the cast of Awakening? Since they have the least supports, they must be. What about Say'ri?

I want to take a break right now, I'll get into the main lords in a while, and also try to tackle your baseless story claims.

[Phantom037]

It'd be neat if IS knew how to make an avatar character outside of "make their appearance customizable"

[Knight]

It'd be neat if IS knew how to make an avatar character outside of "make their appearance customizable"

Ya, I know. It seems to me like they thought of a thing that'd sell without any idea of how to do said thing.

Edited October 12, 2015 by Knight

[Topaz Light]

I'll use comparisons from other games within the same genre, as to why I feel it's mediocre. Using actual traditional RPGs, Movies, Novels, etc, would be completely unfair.

Alright let's begin, I'll try to be thorough, and not just do a 1 or 2 vague sentence answer.

Main Characters; They're all generic good guys. They're all literal copy paste of one another, Hector was a bit different, who rather than being gentle, he was brash. But he shared that lime light with a copy paste lord. And Ike was basically, what if Marth and Hector had a baby? well, there you go, you get Ike. And Chrom was just a "nicer" Ike. Now, having a good person isn't bad within itself, it's the delivery. And on top of which it's the same with pretty much all FE lords, they all share the same backstory, which ties into plot, which I'll get into later. Most jRPG heroes are "good guys.", but their delivery is completely different. I'll use Ramza Beoluve from the original FFT as an example. Although not a prince, he's a noble, so the standing is similar. From a story telling perspective and how they show the struggles of Ramza, his relationships with the people around him, his personality, etc... is very, very well executed. They make sure that you understand where Ramza is coming from without breaking flow, and everything felt natural with story transition to battle sequence. and they added some neat things too, like you're 1v1ing someone and after a certain point, the rest of your party catches up with you and helps you out if you didn't manage to beat him in time. Anyway, going on a tangent there. The MCs of Fire Emblem, had easy motives, and easy to understand personalities, they're all lords who got chased away by an evil empire, who are secretly undercontrol of some evil god, and they must reclaim their kingdom to return peace. Yeah sure, you learn some little quirks about them in support convos, their backstories are very cut and dry, that's hardly on the same level as Ramza.

Now I'll touch on story telling more in depth, will also help cover the issue with the mains. Story transition for Fire Emblem games had always been rather bland, you get a short scene of the characters talking and jump straight away into the next battle sequence. It was "just enough", for you to understand why the battle is taken place. It doesn't try to do anything more. Again falls under delivery and presentation. Awakening was the first to attempt actual cutscenes in an attempt to change the delivery by improving the presentation of the story, whether it was successful or not is for another topic, but it's a step in the right direction. And Fates tried to improve upon it, the problem lies not with Kobayashi, but rather Nintendo's philosophy of "make the game first, fit the story in later", which is a great set of mind to build a game with great gameplay but narrative suffers for it. Other companies have managed to build rock solid gameplay but doesn't allow the narrative to suffer for it. Fates is taking things in the right direction, I'm only hoping they improve upon it with the next installment.

Using some SRPGs as comparisons on narrative delivery and presentation; I'll start with an obscure one, tears to tiara. Fantastic example, the only SRPG that's ever made me legitimately shed a tear. Not only was it well written, the voice acting delivering it was top notch, with strong emotions that can pierce the viewer. It was a stereotypical Man vs Heaven theme, found commonly in games and anime, but the delivery and main character puts an entertaining and unique twist on things. If anyone here is familiar with games from Leaf, will know what I'm talking about, their stories are simply top notch and sets a really high bar. The Ogre Battle games, wow, I mean wow, if Fire Emblem wants to take some notes on how to make plot progression through protagonist choice, they just need to play the Ogre Battle games. Not onlly does important story choices effect how the narrative plays, sometimes small things can effect it to. And the narrative changes were massive, and they're not easy choices either, they put your sense of morals to the test. In any case, these examples have great, well written stories, that doesn't sacrifice anything for it.

And finally supports, well what can I say about supports? a lot of that tie into secondary characters that joins your army. They were simple and fun, not much else to say about it. But, the main problem with supports to, is that it's the ONLY way to get to know a character that isn't a main in Fire Emblem. Despite not having supports, I'll use FFT as an example of how characters join you. Every NPC that joins you, joins you on good merit, and they all play a role in the narrative to a certain point, without taking focus away from the overall plot. They all fit in somehow and play a major role for the period you recruit them. For example, Rafa and Malak... wow, this one was good. Malak who's the twin brother of Rafa, was sent out to assassinate you, you had to deal with them a few times, and eventually you discover that the Baron who is Malak's owner, is a target objective that needs to be taken care of, and on the way you meet Rafa who helps you fight her own brother. And further down the narrative you learn about the two, how they were war orphans, trained to be tools for the Baron, and how when Rafa gets raped, is when she finally decided to run away. In comparison, you get, send A unit to talk to B unit, and you get a new unit. And if you bother to do the handful of supports, you may learn a thing or two.

In the end, it doesn't matter if something is cliche or overdone, it's all about delivery and presentation, and in my opinion, it's been severely lack in past fire emblems, and only as of recent, IS had been trying to remedy it. And I commend them for it.

This entire argument is at once kinda relevant and also dodging the actual criticism people are giving.

Because the comparison being made isn't between "Fire Emblem as a series" and "other SRPGs", it's between "pre-Awakening Fire Emblem" and "Awakening and onward".

What people are arguing doesn't have to do with the presentation of the story, but rather the story that's being presented. It's probably true that Awakening's and Fates' stories are presented better than past Fire Emblem games, but the stories themselves are in many ways not as good. Almost every villain in Awakening, for instance, is a mustache-twirling Saturday morning cartoon villain during the main plot, with no real motivation that wasn't pretty obviously thrown in hastily near the end when it came time to write their Support conversations. On the other hand, villains of past Fire Emblem games, while they may have come off as mustache-twirling Saturday morning cartoon villains at times during their stories, actually did have some kind of motivation that was relevant in some way to topical happenings in their worlds or that at least tied into backstory events and/or lore. For example, Medeus had become embittered with humankind's racism against the dragonkin, which eventually led to him trying to claim the continent for his own people. Gharnef took advantage of Hardin's inner turmoil and used the Darksphere to twist his personality into that of a cruel tyrant, while Gharnef himself was bitter because another student of Gotoh's was chosen over him. Travant was trying to do what he thought was best for his people even though it entailed him doing a lot of less-than-savory things. In contrast Validar wants to revive Grima because ???????????? profit. Grima is evil... because he's evil, basically. Walhart was allegedly attempting a "utopia justifies the means" plot, but this isn't really hinted at at all during the main story. Gangrel was trying to unify the continent against Walhart by conquering it himself, which, in addition to being a terrible idea if one thinks about it for more than four seconds, is also not hinted at even a little bit during the main plot. Granted, Fire Emblem games have had villains who were just kind of evil because they were evil before Awakening (Fomortiis comes to mind immediately), but at least for most of the villains they tried to give them some kind of motivation that wasn't tacked on at the last minute, even if those motivations usually weren't groundbreaking original or anything.

If you have an example of a plot point or character type from Awakening or Fates that you thought was done better than a similar plot point or character type from an earlier Fire Emblem game, then please present it, but what you presented here was a counter to a different argument than what most people here were making.

Edited October 12, 2015 by Starlight36

[Baldrick]

Base conversations are the optimal way to flesh out minor characters; because they activate at chapter X, characters can talk about current events, you don't need to deploy or use the characters in battle, and because they're not tied to the support mechanic you don't need to contrive any base conversations.

That Rafa/Malak example reminds me of Nino/Jaffar. I haven't played FFT, but do the former get that much more development than the latter?

[HTakara82]

Ooh boy, here we go. I'll start with supports since that'll lead into the other stuff better.

First I want to get something across that I think a lot of people have as a common misconception, more dialogue doesn't equate to more character development. As an actual FE related example, I'll use Heath in FE7. Heath doesn't get a big role, but his personality is portrayed well in the few cutscenes he has, he's an exiled soldier from Bern who's lost his dignity, but not so much of it that he's willing to kill women and children, he has a sense of morality that he has made himself obey. His supports don't really develop his character from here (except his Vaida support sorta), he's not really a character in need of development, what they do instead is flesh out his backstory and provide interesting interactions with his personality to others, but we know enough about his character already. There are supports that do develop characters more, but never is 100 lines of dialogue needed to complete a character's development, that's ridiculous.

I'd argue that it isn't development we really want from Fire Emblem characters, it is, for lack of a better term, connection, connection to other characters that can have interesting or meaningful interactions with said character, or to the plot and the current events in the story, but to say we know nothing of characters like Heath or Jill or Joshua without reading their supports is false. There are characters that do get the short end of the stick with their introductions, mostly in early games, FE6 and FE10, but again, you only need to read a couple of support conversations to get them. I'd argue that Awakening's method of supports ruins the novelty of having two characters talk in the first place, at least with opposite-sex members. With each character in Awakening, you know that it was mandatory for the dev team to make each conversation, so they had to come up with something before release date, instead of the method in previous FE games, where the dev team likely made supports because it was intended for the character or they thought that those characters could have an interesting conversation. This makes me think...

...that actually the opposite is true for the older games. Many of the supports in FE: A and If were likely made to accommodate for the baby-making mechanic and the writers had to suffer through writing them. There is no other intent behind many of these conversations. At least when a bizarre support pairing like Canas and Bartre occurred in past games, it's because some developer had an idea for them to talk about, not to fit into a game mechanic. The amount of supports that develop, provide backstory, or give meaningful interactions to much of Awakening's cast is likely the same if not a little less than in previous games, but then we have a ton of supports that are just filler and are boring as hell, often having to resort to each and everyone's cliche anime gimmick to bump up against each other in the hopes that conversation can ensue. In any case, I don't think supports are the only way, or even the best way (I could get into the merits of Base convos and have another 3 paragraphs to talk, but I did that in another thread) to describe, develop a character, and the ones Awakening provides is hardly an improvement. I'll finish this segment by proposing this question: Are Basillio and Flavia any less developed than the rest of the cast of Awakening? Since they have the least supports, they must be. What about Say'ri?

I want to take a break right now, I'll get into the main lords in a while, and also try to tackle your baseless story claims.

Now I never said, that they need billions of lines of dialogue. But rather the quality, don't try to squeeze in meaning where there isn't, just so you can have an argument.

Also having a few sentences is enough to know about the character, it's a far cry from being enough to have any meaningful connection to a character. Yes, you know about Jill being a rude obnoxious generals daughter without any supports, but you'll never see what becomes of that without support dialogue.

And how is it "opposite is true for older games" when that's exactly how Nintendo's philosophy had been since they started making games.

Sayri Basillio and Flavia, are all story related characters, you see their character growth and who they are through the story, support wasn't necessary.

All you're doing is dancing around what I say, and actually even covering the actual points.

[Alazen]

Sayri Basillio and Flavia, are all story related characters, you see their character growth and who they are through the story, support wasn't necessary.

All of those characters have far less of an arc than Jill. Actually, Awakening is worse when it comes to character development.

Edited October 12, 2015 by Alazen

[Baldrick]

Jill's character arc is also told through base conversations rather than supports. So you don't need to deploy Jill in order to see it.

[Irysa]

Main Characters; They're all generic good guys. They're all literal copy paste of one another, Hector was a bit different, who rather than being gentle, he was brash. But he shared that lime light with a copy paste lord. And Ike was basically, what if Marth and Hector had a baby? well, there you go, you get Ike. And Chrom was just a "nicer" Ike.

...

This is a gross oversimplification. You're deliberately phrasing things vaguely to suit your point instead of examining each character in detail. I'll only be addressing Archanea and post FE6 games as I haven't played any Jugdral titles, and there is little to say about Gaiden.

In terms of protagonists, the characterisation of Marth isn't even consistent across all the games; FE11 (even in Japanese) had him be slightly angrier and be more forthcoming about his convictions compared to his FE3 counterpart, this was played up further in the English localisation. A large part of this is due to the additional context the new Prologue gives, which frames the start of Marth's journey in a much more sombre light than the original, somewhat aloof opening. This more frustrated and perhaps self-centred Marth develops over the course of Shadow Dragon and grapples with the problems of having to recognise his enemies as other human beings. It's easy for Marth-In-Exile to develop bitter resentment towards the countries that betrayed him and killed his family, as he doesn't have to come face to face with the people of those countries whilst hiding in Talys. But when he does, the situation stops being as simple and clear cut. Marth comes to realise that his own emotions and struggles aren't special or predominant just because they're his, everyone has them. In that sense, it helps him to view the world in a much more mature and empathetic manner, because his own capacity for strength of feeling illustrate the capacity for strength of feeling within any human. This is why Marth comes to value lives so much, and it's why after retaking Altea, he puts his people before himself.

"I am a Prince before I am a son or a brother."

The Japanese release of FE12 goes the opposite direction and emphasises the meeker and weaker side of Marth by having him become clingy and dependant on Kris. These Marth's have similar values here, but rather than being proactive about living up to them like FE11 Marth, FE12 Marth has a nasty tendancy to be very openly insecure, and require emotional support and reassurance in order to carry on.

Roy personally does not suffer the same kind of loss that Marth does. It's true, his country is invaded, but he is not forced into exile, his family is not killed, and the invasion from Bern is nullified as soon as the end of Chapter 8(x). His homeland does not suffer a long period of opression or anything of the sort. Roy's perspective compared to Marth's isn't strongly coloured, instead he is generally shown to be objective and calculating about most situations. This is very well realised in the Western Isles segment. In Chapter 10B (Bartre/Elphin route) Roy initially wishes to relay a message to Cecilia regarding concerns he has about the conduct of the Eturian nobles. But when confronted head on with the reality of Eturians trashing a village to uncover a resistance member, he decides to act to help the people, even though Lycia is indebted to Eturia and currently in their service. You could be forgiven for thinking this demonstrates Roy's rashness, but it's offset perfectly at the end of the chapter where Elphin tests Roy by tempting him to immediately return to Lycia, through implications that Eturia sent his army away so that Bern could invade freely. Instead of succumbing to the bait like Merlinus does, Roy calmly states that such hearsay can't be implictly trusted, and that the people of Lycia have Eliwood and Cecilia to rely on, wheras the people of the Isles only have him. This demonstrates that Roy does not simply act impulsively, and is not rash in his decisions at all.

I must admit, I can't be bothered to write a concise defence of Eliwood because it's been so long since I've played Eliwood mode of FE7, and I've never particularly liked him either. I also think FE7 has a very weak plot. I think the fact you'll at least agree Hector is brash means I don't have to bother explaining why he's different, but the differences aren't just in mannerisms. Hector's mentality about many things contrasts to Eliwood, he's much less considerate of others and almost has something of an inferiority complex. The things he gets hung up over are also much pettier than what Marth had to work through, and even if he comes out as a more mature young man by the end of the story, it's more to do with being called out on his behaviour than introspectiveness.

Eirika and Ephraim work as contrasts to oneanother. Eirika is the idealistic and inexperienced Princess who eventually learns how to steel her resolve and harden her heart, and Ephraim is the suave and shrewd Prince who eventually stops distancing himself from his emotions. I think the best way to exemplifiy this is in their different exchanges depending on route with Lyon/Demon King throughout the story, and prominently, these extracts from the final Chapter.

Eirika: Listen, everyone. I can never repay you for all you’ve done so far. Now, please, one last time…Lend me your strength. To defeat the Demon King! To restore peace to our lands! To take the peace we all dream of and make it real!”

Ephraim: “I understand. Everyone! Listen to me! This is the final battle. If we can defeat this thing, it’s over. We face the king of demons, the monster that once ruled all Magvel. He’s more powerful than any one of us here. But we have something that beast will never have. We have community, friendship, love… We have all the virtues of humanity. That is our weapon. That is our strength.”

Eirika talks about making desires into reality as opposed to more passively wishing for it or letting other people do things which is a huge difference from her starting point of dependancy. Ephraim talks about human feelings and the power they have which is a huge difference from his starting position of being somewhat detached from everything emotionally. I can actually write a lot more about the twins but I think this is enough for now.

I will talk about Ike tomorrow because that's worth an entire post.

Now I'll touch on story telling more in depth, will also help cover the issue with the mains. Story transition for Fire Emblem games had always been rather bland, you get a short scene of the characters talking and jump straight away into the next battle sequence. It was "just enough", for you to understand why the battle is taken place. It doesn't try to do anything more. Again falls under delivery and presentation. Awakening was the first to attempt actual cutscenes in an attempt to change the delivery by improving the presentation of the story, whether it was successful or not is for another topic, but it's a step in the right direction. And Fates tried to improve upon it, the problem lies not with Kobayashi, but rather Nintendo's philosophy of "make the game first, fit the story in later", which is a great set of mind to build a game with great gameplay but narrative suffers for it. Other companies have managed to build rock solid gameplay but doesn't allow the narrative to suffer for it. Fates is taking things in the right direction, I'm only hoping they improve upon it with the next installment.

@bolded, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn have CG cutscenes...

To the general point, this is just conjecture. Quantity =/= Quality. FE1 (and it's remake) does have this issue where a fair few maps don't add much narratively, but it's a very old game, and it preforms very well on the actual important chapters. FE7 and to a lesser extent 10 suffer badly from it though, where there are a large amount of chapters that don't seem to drive the narrative forward or develop important characters at all. However to say that there are no developments in the middle of maps in other games is just lying. Many maps have narrative related developments occur throughout the chapter; FE6 does this in almost over half it's chapters. Again, it's simplification to say "they're just enough for you to understand for why the battle is taking place", because everything within the story is contextual. These are not battles strung together for no real reason, a battle and a development in the story has a purpose to further the story. What you're doing is like complaining that an episode of LOGH with a space battle sucks because all they did was frame the space battle then the space battle happened, and completely ignoring everything surrounding that battle and what's going on in that battle.

You make absoloutely no backups to the claim that somehow Fates is taking anything in the correct direction. What did it do that was better or more developed than past Fire Emblems with regard to storytelling?

Using some SRPGs as comparisons on narrative delivery and presentation; I'll start with an obscure one, tears to tiara. Fantastic example, the only SRPG that's ever made me legitimately shed a tear. Not only was it well written, the voice acting delivering it was top notch, with strong emotions that can pierce the viewer. It was a stereotypical Man vs Heaven theme, found commonly in games and anime, but the delivery and main character puts an entertaining and unique twist on things. If anyone here is familiar with games from Leaf, will know what I'm talking about, their stories are simply top notch and sets a really high bar. The Ogre Battle games, wow, I mean wow, if Fire Emblem wants to take some notes on how to make plot progression through protagonist choice, they just need to play the Ogre Battle games. Not onlly does important story choices effect how the narrative plays, sometimes small things can effect it to. And the narrative changes were massive, and they're not easy choices either, they put your sense of morals to the test. In any case, these examples have great, well written stories, that doesn't sacrifice anything for it.

@bolded, Did you miss the part where people were actually asking for this to be implemented into Fire Emblem, in this very thread? <_< (although just to be Devil's Advocate, I would say there's plenty of room for not making the decisions yourself and observing the actions of others and judging them for it, like in more traditional media)

Most of this paragraph is conjecture again...it's not an argument to simply say "if anyone here is familiar...they will know what I'm talking about" or other such nonsense. You're making entirely unsubstantiated claims without providing examples of what makes these stories great.

(Also just saying Leaf games are pretty mostly stereotyical moege in various skins and are considered just above entry level tier shit for any eroge enthusiast. I bet you think KEY melodrama is the bees knees too lol)

And finally supports, well what can I say about supports? a lot of that tie into secondary characters that joins your army. They were simple and fun, not much else to say about it. But, the main problem with supports to, is that it's the ONLY way to get to know a character that isn't a main in Fire Emblem. Despite not having supports, I'll use FFT as an example of how characters join you. Every NPC that joins you, joins you on good merit, and they all play a role in the narrative to a certain point, without taking focus away from the overall plot. They all fit in somehow and play a major role for the period you recruit them. For example, Rafa and Malak... wow, this one was good. Malak who's the twin brother of Rafa, was sent out to assassinate you, you had to deal with them a few times, and eventually you discover that the Baron who is Malak's owner, is a target objective that needs to be taken care of, and on the way you meet Rafa who helps you fight her own brother. And further down the narrative you learn about the two, how they were war orphans, trained to be tools for the Baron, and how when Rafa gets raped, is when she finally decided to run away. In comparison, you get, send A unit to talk to B unit, and you get a new unit. And if you bother to do the handful of supports, you may learn a thing or two.

Please define "major role" because if you're seriously saying every named character in FFT plays a major role at some point I may as well argue that somehow Oujay and the Ostians play a major role in some part of FE6 beacuse of the cutscene they get when they appear...additionally, base conversations address this criticism perfectly and are very well realised in Path of Radiance.

If it looks like I gave up writing an in depth reply after the first quote it's because the amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. It is very tiresome to extend the courtesy of providing evidence to counteract arguments that are not backed up by any evidence in the first place.

Edited October 12, 2015 by Irysa

[blinkingbrave]

While I can't speak on Tellius, I thought Awakening (and IF improved on that, but it's not localized, so I dunno how relevant you want to count it) did do a better job characterizing its playable units overall than the GBA games and FE4. While the GBA supports covered backstory, did a lil subplot, whatever, it could be hard to tell exactly what the opinions/feelings of the characters in that support were. The supports were often a lot more about what was happening action-wise or simply relaying information than conveying anything about the characters' emotional state.

How to explain... A lot of the supports I read, at least, fell into this weird... emotional middle-ground. The characters didn't seem to have lows or highs or much strong personal input into what they were saying. Perhaps it was realistic, but in a game where characterization is optional and limited to five conversations tops, it seems to me like it should be important to clearly convey in the smallest amount of words 'who these people are, as people' so you know if you want to spread your support points, which in the older games are a limited pool, to explore that character further. Which is something Awakening manages to achieve in the recruitment dialogue, while the GBA games often spend that time to layout relative social status, a generic moral statement, or another odd 'middle-ground' type comment, not quite strong enough to leave an impression. There are, of course, exceptions to this and there were some characters I knew and loved, but in my experience, the GBA games don't achieve clear, prevalent characterization terribly well overall.

It's just a more... Lord of the Rings writing style. All 'this happened, then this happened, then...', etc. Very action-focused, not very character/emotion focused. I'd imagine that's why the backstory for a good deal of characters is more memorable than their personalities. The plots are written the same way.

Awakening, though heavy-handed at times, clearly conveyed what its characters' personalities were in their recruitment scene/dialogue, supports, plot dialogue, etc, and still conveyed backstory. I knew which characters I wanted to use, which I didn't, and had opinions on everyone. Compared to the GBA games, where I could (and did several times) complete entire support lines without getting a grasp of the personalities or even an opinion on the characters I supported, Awakening got the job done and got it done faster, in my experience.

Perhaps there was no GBA character I truly disliked, but the majority I barely grasped the personalities of to begin with. Though Awakening had characters I disliked or even hated, I had an opinion on every single member of the cast, they were all unique, and I could tell you who they all were, given a name or face.

It's definitely an opinion thing, but I find Awakening's support system overall better. The GBA system certainly had its pluses, but for me, the negatives weigh a lil too much.

Edited October 12, 2015 by blinkingbrave

[Irysa]

That's pretty much a subset of the fact that the characters in Awakening are supposed to be easily identifiable because they predominately exist to entertain and cater to the player's preferences as opposed to existing within the world for their own sake. The same idea continues in Fates. I've actually written at length about this in previous topics; it's part of an overall trend that the Avatar player worship and groping minigame is very much connected to, and even arguably introduction of things like Phoenix Mode.

Note this isn't an attempt to say earlier characters are more realistic, deeper, or that there was no intent to create entertaining characters in earlier games (but I'd say that was generally secondary except for some gag characters like Serra). It's simply that making characters larger than life and identifiable makes it much easier for the player to distinguish which characters they want to use and pair up and which ones they don't, decide which ones to marry and which ones to bench, etc.

Edited October 12, 2015 by Irysa

[blinkingbrave]

That's pretty much a subset of the fact that the characters in Awakening are supposed to be easily identifiable because they predominately exist to entertain and cater to the player's preferences as opposed to existing within the world for their own sake. The same idea continues in Fates. I've actually written at length about this in previous topics; it's part of an overall trend that the Avatar player worship and groping minigame is very much connected to, and even arguably introduction of things like Phoenix Mode.

Note this isn't an attempt to say earlier characters are more realistic, deeper, or that there was no intent to create entertaining characters in earlier games (but I'd say that was generally secondary except for some gag characters like Serra). It's simply that making characters larger than life and identifiable makes it much easier for the player to distinguish which characters they want to use and pair up and which ones they don't, decide which ones to marry and which ones to bench, etc.

Whatever the intent, being easily identifiable still strikes me as a plus.

Edited October 12, 2015 by blinkingbrave

[Knight]

You know, I don't even know why I bother, when people accuse me of ignoring key points and then immediately commit the same sin. I'm not going to even follow up, plenty of the others here have said some of the things I'd have said anyways. Then when you make baseless claims without evidence, citing unrelated game series, and begging so many questions, I've lost all interest in this argument.

[TheInternetExplorer]

I've got an idea I'd like to throw out here.

In PMD, you are given about a dozen questions, and the way you answer them determines your nature, and by extension, the Pokémon your main character becomes. If IS could incorporate that into the Avatar and have him/her address situations differently depending on your nature, would this improve the Avatar?

[Knight]

Except in PMD it doesn't really do much narrative-wise, your character is a silent protagonist who has a lot of inner-reflections. I guess they could try something like that, but that wouldn't solve all problems. Your character is still bound to say something you disagree with, for one.