Children in future games

[Emblem Lugh]

I like children, but there needs to be a much better reason to have them then in Fates. Awakening and Holy War had good reasons. In Fates, it felt like a gimmick.

[Rezzy]

I don't care about the kids as a whole, though, I do like a select few. As someone said on another response, I would have liked it if they were apprentices/squires; Percy could have easily been Arthur's little sidekick that followed after him due to hero worship and admiration. I also do not particularly care for how they were implemented into the game; they could have used the Bond Unit system and treated the children characters as beings tied to the Astral Realm that takes on characteristics of the "parents" to totally fulfill my same sex pairings and head!canon.

If they do come back, all I ask is for a sensible reason for them being there and implemented with the fact that the player army is at war and does not have time for babies in mind. I don't mind romance; I don't even mind marriage; but having babies while one is in the middle of a conflict makes me squint somewhat.

Arthur-Percy seems like one of the few legit age differences. Arthur looks like he's in his 30's and Percy looks like he's 12-14 range.

Another thing I don't like about Fates children is it just doesn't seem like a healthy parent-child relationship for the most part. I'm a parent myself, so maybe it's personal bias, but seeing a teenager, who suddenly has a child about the some age or in some case even older than them interacting with their same-aged child just seems wrong.

And a few of the kids, like Shiro address this, but their parents are borderline negligent and definitely had a nearly nonexistent relationship with their children growing up. Unless the main story took place over years, the couple conceives, gives birth, and has adult offspring in a matter of days, weeks, if we're generous. That gives the parent a few days over the course of decades to see your child grow up. That's not a healthy way to raise your kid. That's more akin to the relationship you have with your aunt that lives in New York you see maybe once a year at Thanksgiving, not a parent. How is that baby supposed to bond with you? Going back to work after having a kid is one of the toughest things in the world. I can't imagine trying to dump my son off in the baby realm right after squeezing him out.

[Meiko]

Children are an interesting mechanic but they seemed a bit thrown in. The poor kids seemed so lonely in the Deeprealms... like why would we send them off and barely visit them? Seemed a bit odd, but I like some of the characters.

[kcirrot]

Like many others, I like the gameplay aspects of the children, but their placement into Fates's story was really awful.

First, there simply wasn't enough time for the Gen 1 units to have the kids at all. In Awakening, only Lucina had been born and that was during a time skip of two years. The story made it clear that the other married couples hadn't yet conceived which makes sense given that they were in the middle of 3 wars. In Fates, by contrast, we know from Revelations that only a few months at most have passed from the beginning until they descend into Valla.

Second, the Deep Realms is just plain idiotic. No parent would send their kid to a place where they could conceivably live their whole life in what would feel to you 1-2 years. At the first visit when your baby is now 5 years old, most parents would be horrified and pull their child out ASAP. Plus, the story excuse for why the children were sent there is that they needed a safe place away from the fighting. You know, it's too bad that the army didn't live an fortified castle on the Astral plane outside the war between Nohr and Hoshido....oh wait, they did.

It's just really hard to accept all that. I would have been much better to do a time skip. Perhaps destroying Garon in a major Act I and then going after the real threat in an Act II that took place 15-20 years later.

All that said, some of the kids are really great characters though so I still get them.

[Azure Sen]

I have mixed feelings about the kids in Fates. On the one hand, some of my favorite characters (Shiro, Forrest, Ophelia, Kiragi) are children characters. On the other hand, they add absolutely nothing to the story, they're not my favorites because they're children characters, they could have easily been removed from the game with little change, and nothing about how they were implemented makes any sense. Plus, as other people have mentioned, the Babyrealms are just bad writing incarnate.

I would only be happy to see kids again if a( they're worked into the plot better a la Awakening, or b( they do a remake of Genealogy or a Genealogy-esque remake of Binding Blade and FE7. Otherwise, I don't think they should return.

Edited April 20, 2016 by AzureSen

[saisymbolic]

Arthur-Percy seems like one of the few legit age differences. Arthur looks like he's in his 30's and Percy looks like he's 12-14 range.

Another thing I don't like about Fates children is it just doesn't seem like a healthy parent-child relationship for the most part. I'm a parent myself, so maybe it's personal bias, but seeing a teenager, who suddenly has a child about the some age or in some case even older than them interacting with their same-aged child just seems wrong.

And a few of the kids, like Shiro address this, but their parents are borderline negligent and definitely had a nearly nonexistent relationship with their children growing up. Unless the main story took place over years, the couple conceives, gives birth, and has adult offspring in a matter of days, weeks, if we're generous. That gives the parent a few days over the course of decades to see your child grow up. That's not a healthy way to raise your kid. That's more akin to the relationship you have with your aunt that lives in New York you see maybe once a year at Thanksgiving, not a parent. How is that baby supposed to bond with you? Going back to work after having a kid is one of the toughest things in the world. I can't imagine trying to dump my son off in the baby realm right after squeezing him out.

I was just throwing Arthur out as an example. You are right, though. Arthur seems like the only character old enough to logically have a kid; or, at least, he looks old enough. A better example probably would have been Corrinmui or Azura.

I'm not even a parent yet but I would like to think that I would have enough sense not to dump my helpless infant into a world essentially by its lonesome. If anything, I would have to give up fighting to take care and be with my kid.

That's another thing. Apparently, they dump their children with the people in the Deep Realms.. If not, where do they get these people that they trust enough to care for their children?

Edited April 20, 2016 by SaiSymbolic

[Nym]

Another thing I realized is that some children blamed their parents of leaving them which makes sense since this is literally what I would feel if the situation would happen to me.

[FoliFF]

I like the idea of children units. Just as long as they flow in the story line, I would be happy.

Same thing here. I like the mechanic and the children. Just make it work with the story and I'm happy. Just don't do a lame excuse for having them like Fates.

[Truthblade]

I like the children characters and I would like to see them again (but with a much better explaintion).

[Jedi]

I'd rather the series move away from children entirely, I liked the days where we got later game powerful prepromotes, and not easy bake kids.

I like some of the kids in Fates, but they were really shoehorned in, same in Awakening. If they do kids again, I'd like it to actually be done where a 2nd generation is actually needed and relevant, not some cheap plot device.

Edited April 20, 2016 by Jedi

[Dark Paladin X]

I like the concept of children in terms of game mechanics (the idea of having extra units that reward you based on support pairings and the results of the child), but in terms how they implemented the children in Fates, I felt that it was forced. Having the "hyperbolic time chamber" excuse is probably one of the poorest ways of writing children into the Fire Emblem Fates games.

That being said, I do wish to see children characters again in future Fire Emblem games, but implemented in a better manner. More specifically, it would be nice to have a Fire Emblem game that is actually built around three different generations in a single long timeline and each generation has a different story related to a single large story (and what I mean by different generation, you are focusing on a different set of characters related to the previous generation). Apparently, this would be much harder to implement since it'll require a large memory space for Nintendo 3DS (but it can be pulled off easily in the Wii U though).

[Admiral "Bull" Halsey]

Have mix feelings about the children features in Fates, and certainly not looking forward in future FE titles. Maybe it was nice back in Awakening, but I wasn't really enthusiastic about Fates.

[nordopolica]

I posted this in the other topic, but might as well reiterate here.

[spoiler=Spoiler for Length]I have very mixed feelings about the kids.

On a very general scope, I dislike them. None of them really stand out to me (ok, I love Little Cheese but thats different), especially in terms of comparing them to Awakening's. 90% of them are so forgettable and boring I usually only use them for paralogue grinding in Conquest. I mean, I really wanted and tried to like Kana but he's basically a "cuter" Morgan 2.0 who has no reason to be as Mama-crazy as his counterpart and has literally no personality outside of this. At the very least the Awakening children has personality and presence IMO, perhaps due to the story shenanigans which made them kinda relevant or perhaps due to the fact that there were just less of them altogether, but in Fates they just don't sit well.

In terms of plot, they are an absolute shoehorned mess that I'd rather pretend doesn't exist. They have no plot relevance and only serve to make the world even more contrived than it already is - which is a feat. It's very obvious that they're just in there because of Awakening's popularity and I think that can be said of a lot in Fates, which may have benefited a little more from being developed in more of a vacuum.

However, I do like the idea of children. I absolutely adore the ideas of G1+G2 presented in FE4 and I loved the kids in Awakening and expected them to at least improve on them in this game. I'd love a full-blown timeskip in the next game, however I'm not confident IS is willing to take the risk of isolating the more fanservicey, player-catered aspects of these past two games by killing off/aging up G1 characters and restricting marriage. I don't really want a timeskip if all it yields is an Avatar character who magically doesn't age and can marry the kids of their fallen/aging allies.

EDIT: I would, on the other hand, like a timeskip where perhaps you can create your own child (maybe with a fixed hair colour based on your marriage partner so they are acknowleged?) IF the Avatar aspects remain (which I'm quite certain will, given now they're kind of moving towards it being a staple of the series.) But again, I'm also confident that it will never happen.

Another reason I don't think they'll do a timeskip even though I love FE4 RIP remake is because it means that if there are no substitute characters there's the issue of time limits on S/A rank supports in order to get the kids, which could lead to Chapter 11 Chrom automarry shenanigans, and would also mean a potential Avatar character doesn't get their pick of the lot and we know we can't have anything that puts the player's marriage candidacy at risk!!!!

Edited April 21, 2016 by nordopolica

[Sunwoo]

I fucking hate kids in Fates. I'm not opposed to the children mechanic in general, but Fates makes it so fucking obvious just how shoehorned these kids were. They had no reason to exist, and it feels like the only reason they (and marriage as it is) existed at all was because they were popular in Awakening.

And even though I'm not opposed to children in general, I don't want to see it anytime soon. We've had two games in a row with kids, three with an avatar, can we mix it up and get something different? That, and I don't want to give IS an excuse to poorly implement kids again because I just don't trust them to do anything other than good gameplay right now.

[darkestdarkness]

I just like to pretend that the kids are not canon. none of the kids contribute anything to the story, and the deeprealm stuff makes no sense. doesn't really help that I feel indifferent or flat out dislike most of the children units as well this time around.

Edited April 21, 2016 by darkestdarkness

[Jedi]

I fucking hate kids in Fates. I'm not opposed to the children mechanic in general, but Fates makes it so fucking obvious just how shoehorned these kids were. They had no reason to exist, and it feels like the only reason they (and marriage as it is) existed at all was because they were popular in Awakening.

And even though I'm not opposed to children in general, I don't want to see it anytime soon. We've had two games in a row with kids, three with an avatar, can we mix it up and get something different? That, and I don't want to give IS an excuse to poorly implement kids again because I just don't trust them to do anything other than good gameplay right now.

I still remember us discussing this before kids were even shown, we were actually happy they hadn't mentioned em yet. Then a certain bit of information came out...

[Res]

Arthur-Percy seems like one of the few legit age differences. Arthur looks like he's in his 30's and Percy looks like he's 12-14 range.

Another thing I don't like about Fates children is it just doesn't seem like a healthy parent-child relationship for the most part. I'm a parent myself, so maybe it's personal bias, but seeing a teenager, who suddenly has a child about the some age or in some case even older than them interacting with their same-aged child just seems wrong.

And a few of the kids, like Shiro address this, but their parents are borderline negligent and definitely had a nearly nonexistent relationship with their children growing up. Unless the main story took place over years, the couple conceives, gives birth, and has adult offspring in a matter of days, weeks, if we're generous. That gives the parent a few days over the course of decades to see your child grow up. That's not a healthy way to raise your kid. That's more akin to the relationship you have with your aunt that lives in New York you see maybe once a year at Thanksgiving, not a parent. How is that baby supposed to bond with you? Going back to work after having a kid is one of the toughest things in the world. I can't imagine trying to dump my son off in the baby realm right after squeezing him out.

Also a parent, and yes to all of this. Bonding in the first couple of years is so essential. Apparently all the Fates parents should probably be worshipping at the feet of their children's caretakers, because the children in this game are remarkably well-balanced characters and it's certainly not due to how any of the parents have parented.

And that doesn't even touch upon the physical demands having kids has on the mothers... Or the emotional demands, of course.

[SniperGYS]

I'm ok with them around, since it give you to see a different side of the older characters, for example in Fates... Look at Leo, you learn a lot about him from the main story, and then you see him having problems to accept his kid, and at least I didn't expected a reaction like that from him.

I'm also ok with a children mechanic in future games, but like a lot of people have said already, I would like it more if they have a better reason to be included, like a post game bonus or having importance in the main story... I don't know, something to make them more important.

Edited April 21, 2016 by SniperGYS

[Mox]

That was me. The original thread is here. http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=62557&hl=in-laws

That was a really awesome idea. :) I'll edit the comment and put your name in it now. :D

[Time the Crestfallen]

No and no, people have already put it far more eloquently than I could, so I won't explain my reasoning.

If they did bring them back though, I'd like it if they could change the inheritance mechanics. Currently, it feels like (at least in my opinion) that child characters are much better than their parents (barring the ones that get prf. weapons) in pretty much every category other than availability.

[Tribute]

As a mechanic, I like gen 2.

But I would like to see some more varying age ranges.

[Thor Odinson]

If we had to have another inheritance-type mechanic I'd rather have a trainee system as well that doesn't require time travel or time chambers or whatever. Geneology did it best from a story pov, but pulling another Geneology would just be rehashing Geneology which, isn't ideal because Geneology already did it and it's such a major part of its plot. As is we have room to change it up anyway--FE mechanics are always changing, who's to say we have to have children in every installment from now on? I wouldn't mind it returning down the line provided it's implemented in a less bullshit manner. As a pure gameplay mechanic it is pretty fun.

However, the way it's implemented in fates forces all the parents, many of whom would probably be actually pretty solid parents under normal circumstances, into becoming deadbeats. Because of the shitty implementation. It's not fair to the kid and it's not fair to the parents.

[Mackc2]

I have never liked the children units especially in awakening. They had always joined when I had decided I had a full team usually far lower level and in a doubled up class to their parent so I never bothered training them and never really learnt to care for them, (I have never even used Lucina). They made sense plot wise in awakening but it sort of unnecessarily split the recruitable units into the two groups (especially with the whole gen 2 cannot support gen 1 stuff) which was not a good thing, made me feel like I had less units. Fates is worse as the children have no reason to be fighting either or even belong in that world.

So unless we get a genealogy of the holy wars style game I want them gone. Though it doesn't have to rehash genealogy just give us a reason to be fighting with an army of kids all the adults don't need to die, hell you could have them be off on some important business and then evil happens while they are away leaving the children to protect the world, they could even join back before the end. (As long as they actually look older than they did pre-timeskip.)

Edited April 21, 2016 by Mackc2

[The Archsage]

I'm mixed about the children in Fates, and I voted on maybe for them being in future games.

As a mechanic in general, I don't think they should have been in Fates at all, even if there were a few great ones that I really liked, and I feel they should have been in the main canon group of characters. Selkie and Velouria specifically. I'm sure there's more that other people might have liked, but for me that's pretty much it. But, the children in Fates did nothing for the story. You could grab all of them, or none of them, and the story doesn't change in the slightest. And none of them are mandatory.

However, that same argument can be used on characters that don't automatically join you in the main story as well. As a result, one could look at the children characters as merely a way to inflate the cast of recruitable characters, and give you more options to choose from, while simultaneously giving you the option of choosing which additional classes they could have, as well, as some of their starting skills, and their stats.

The point here is that the children are a gimmick, but a gimmick that gives you extra characters, with control over the way their stats and skills are set up. And, in past Fire Emblem games, there was plenty of characters that had nothing to do with the story, and could be missed without effecting it. I think I recall only one character that could be missed and who, if he wasn't missed, added to the story. Legault from FE7. Unless I'm mistaken, he's the only character who has a few lines of dialogue in a later chapter after you recruit him, but if you don't, he doesn't speak. It doesn't change the story in the end, but I thought it was a nice touch.

Now, as to whether they should bring back children in later installments, well, that's iffy.

I think that, for now, the child mechanic has overstayed it's welcome. Of course, I also think the Avatar mechanic overstayed it's welcome with Corrin, but that's another matter altogether. In Awakening, children had a legitimate reason for being there. It was a weak reason, but it was legitimate. That said, in Awakening, they had a reason to be there, but they also weren't shoved in your face.

Now, Fates may not be shoving the children in your face either, but they also have no reason to be there. I mean, the main cast is fighting a war. I understand that, after a good fight, you get an itch you need to scratch, but, they should have realized it wasn't a good idea to scratch that particular itch, considering they were fighting a war. Until the first child is even conceived, they don't even know about the Deep Realms, so, they were doing this with the knowledge that half their army, the female half, might end up incapacitated for the rest of the war. That's exceedingly irresponsible for a soldier.

If the child mechanic is to ever return again, it should be for a good reason, and for a story reason. To be honest though, something similar to Genealogy is the only good way to really implement it, but perhaps a few changes to how that was done to make it work. Like making the parent characters remain characters, but make them older, and maybe, as a result, show a decrease in their stats by one or two points, as well as a drop in their level by a few levels.

[nhaer042]

Of course, I also think the Avatar mechanic overstayed it's welcome with Corrin, but that's another matter altogether.

I've actually been toying with the idea about making a poll about this too.