[FE Switch Discussion] The Avatar

[IV-Red]

54 minutes ago, InfinityAlex said:

This is more to do with the death mechanic really. While it would be relatively easy to have an event flag depending on a character's existential state, I can see why IS may not want to write dialogue for characters who may not necessarily be at the event, barring the group rallying cry parts of Awakening and Fates.

It was worked with in the past, having character intrusion de cut out when said character was dead-- or having characters with strong story presence not die, but "retire" permanently from battlefields. In the most recent games, a loooooot of characters just retire and not die. Considering that it was worked with in the past, I can't imagine how it stopped being done, but I really doubt it's the cause of not giving them development. Thanks for the input and sorry if I sound too negative disagreeing!

[AlexArtsHere]

Just now, IV-Red said:

Thanks for the input and sorry if I sound too negative disagreeing!

Goddamnit, now you're making ME feel bad about disagreeing! D:

I digress, though. I do think that the lack of main story dialogue from secondary characters is noticeable, but its existence and the existence of the Avatar aren't mutually exclusive.

[KMT4ever]

6 hours ago, InfinityAlex said:

This is more to do with the death mechanic really. While it would be relatively easy to have an event flag depending on a character's existential state, I can see why IS may not want to write dialogue for characters who may not necessarily be at the event, barring the group rallying cry parts of Awakening and Fates.

They did it for FE7 with the pre-battle dialogue for some characters. I don't see why they couldn't do it now. I'd like other characters to have more of a role in the story. Take Silas as an example. We do see him show up every now and then, like when heading for the Ice Tribe village or entering Windmire. He could have had some comments to make on the underground district given his noble birth, or on how Corrin's army was fighting fellow Nohrians in Ch. 18 of Conquest.

[mikethepokemaster]

On 1/31/2017 at 10:42 AM, IV-Red said:

I'm glad to read a lot of people against the existence of an avatar altogether. I, too, think it seriously hurts the story and unless it's DIRECTLY a storyteller character or practically inexistent like FE7's Mark, chances are it'll lead to the same spotlight excess seen in Awakening and Fates.

The problem with a self-insert avatar is that it causes a need for the narrative to revolve strongly against them. It's different from a protagonist. The protagonist is the character who's quest you're watching; it's hard to tell a story without a protagonist or with too many of them because there's no clear start or end, making it hard to have a story climax. But a protagonist still shares the spotlight. Ike, as protagonist of Path of Radiance was the one who's quest we were watching, but wasn't always the most important guy around. Sometimes it was more important to watch Naesala, Tibarn and Reyson's scenes, sometimes what was goin on with other countries was more important than him, sometimes he was quiet because he had nothing in particular to add to the scene, leaving it up to the other characters to have their development, opinions and overall spotlight time. The same goes with Blazing Sword's interesting three-lord approach (granted, in the GBA ones there was less varied-character dialogue, but it existed nonetheless) and many other early FE titles.

It's different with a self-insert avatar. By making it exist to start with, you're forced to give them all the spotlight; 'cause you're telling the gamer "this story is about YOU". It's a type of importance that goes way beyond that a protagonist; they're not the quest person, they're the more-important-than-anybody-else person. This CAN be handled tastefully, but the FE series has proven not to have a neat way to make avatars work. Robin was handled MUCH better than Corrin, but in general hey, can't blame them, that's just what self-insert avatars do to a story. But what is this damage I'm talkin about? What's the actual disadvantage of having 1 character who is more important than everybody else? Why is it bad, when having a character's story (protagonist) be the spine of the whole game is good? Because it absolutely erases the voice of most other characters. That's what it does. In Fates, in-between maps, in the development of the story, who talks? Corrin and their family members, mostly. (Thank god the family members got their share of spotlight!) The other army characters only speak when it's their recruitment chapter or if they're filling a plot-tool role, such as Kaze saving Corrin, but other than that, nothing to say, no opinions, no life, no development of their own. How about Awakening? Did Tharja and Henry seriously have NOTHING to say or do when their god was about to awaken? No character complexity or development from going against Plegia, but then knowing Robin was their actual god all the time? There are no scenes for the others, usually just their first scene and that's that, even when it's something they might wanna have some self-expression in, such as Oboro when recruiting nohrians. Because the avatar must be the one to speak, and their closest of course.

It might have a lot to do with the way supports work in avatar-centric stories. There's a lot more conversations, a lot more writing, leaving less time and space for in-story writing. Though I don't consider it a fair trade, personally I think getting development, participation and a voice in the actual story is much better than having everybody silent and only get to have a personality and their own actions in the supports...

I know it's nice to have a customizable character, I know it's fun, i know it's food for the ego and a real easy way to get people interested in the game, but it's something I really have to reject in order to support a proper story.

But what chances do avatars have of being in the Switch FE game? I've no idea if avatars are present in handheld FE games cause of something to do with the handheld's capacity in some way, or just because they're the most recent ones. I've no idea whether the Switch FE being a console FE influences the existence of avatars or not D: Does anybody know anything about this? Whether avatars are a handheld-game thing or if it has nothing to do with that?

You sound bitter about the avatar function it more than likely to stay in the game hey at least echoes probably won't have it.About Tharja and Henry not mention grima they probably don't care Tharja defted from her homeland prettt easily and Henry he just and like to kill. He was raised by wolf's.

[Cyan1456]

Personally, if the Avatar was to come back as the protagonist (and I'm betting it will), I just want a character that I can customize. Corrin didn't work because IS wanted to have their cake and eat it, and gave them a "vanilla" personality so that players can 'immerse' themselves in their role. This ended up making them come across as bland and uninteresting, as this aspect prevented Corrin from receiving any character development. Ironically enough, as a player, this made me fell less immersed in the game, as Corrin (and to a far lesser extent Robin) felt like an overly bland caricature, rather than a character. Simply put, Avatars can work very well in most games, however IS hasn't implemented them in the correct ways yet.

There are two ways to implement an Avatar character: either give the protagonist a preset personality, or give them no personality at all (basically a silent protag). The latter is self explanatory, and has been used in other games such as Pokemon and Persona. I'm not sure how this would function in a series like Fire Emblem however. The former option would give some sort of benefit to the story; it would allow the writers to experiment with the characters more, and give overall more flexibility to the story since the main character would have a lot more personality to work of off. The main focus would be to make the Avatar seem relatable and sympathetic. People would be able to relate to and immerse themselves more in characters that feel more human, make mistakes, get into conflicts, and have doubts or conflicting emotions, thus maintaining the whole 'extension of the player' aspect of being an MU. This doesn't even have to be off the wall or anything, it can be certain aspects like having them be trusting, distrusting, childish, or snarky.

That being said, some options I'd like to see for the main character are:

Race (Manakete, Laguz, Taguel, etc.)

Skin Color

More Builds (like in Awakening)

More Voice Options (No they can't be all Yuri Lowenthall)

And going what I wrote earlier, the option to pick some sort of personality, maybe just three or four would be fine. It'd also be neat if it influenced supports and/or the story too.

[Sage of Ylisse]

On 1/17/2017 at 10:29 AM, BlueBloodEmblazer said:

EDIT: Awakening's Robin would be fine with just a little less plot involvement, and no Robin/Grima arc, Grima could have been an evil Lucina or something.

I agree with this, What if Grima was like a possessed Chrom though? An even more devious plan to destroy the world instead of "lol god powers, purple lighting" Wait...I just described Conquest...Dammit.

Edited February 9, 2017 by Sage of Ylisse

[BlueBloodEmblazer]

On 02/09/17 at 4:03 PM, Sage of Ylisse said:

I agree with this, What if Grima was like a possessed Chrom though? An even more devious plan to destroy the world instead of "lol god powers, purple lighting" Wait...I just described Conquest...Dammit.

Or what if Chrom's party is actually being manipulated into bringing Grima back, and masked Lucina is played up as more of a bad guy. Then Garnef... er I mean Validar? gets the emblem and falchion to summon Grima. Then we find out Lucina was the good guy all along trying to stop us. Then she joins us and it turns out she's just a girl who misses her dad.

EDIT: And I would make it so in earlier chapters the other kids do make appearances, but Lucina seems to be their leader. Then you still recruit them all in paralogues because they would get separated.

Edited February 11, 2017 by BlueBloodEmblazer

[AlexArtsHere]

So here's an interesting idea that I had:

I know some dislike the idea of an Avatar specific class, but how about one which is very much player specific. Rather than the Tactician or Nohr Prince/Princess, I think the game should let players create their own class. They can choose from a selection of armours (and colours, with their own set promotion variants) and, as an evolution of the Boon/Bane system, allocate skill points from a pool in order to set base stats, with the Boon/Bane fields modifying growths and a Personal Skill being tied to a selectable personality option. Players can also choose their starting weapon, with a secondary weapon being a choice at the cost of a considerable amount of skill points. These weapons would dictate secondary class branches (for example, lances allow for reclassing into Cavaliers or Knights), with the mainline promotion being determined by the initial customisation, and the Avatar specific weapon (if existent) being locked to the primary weapon of the mainline class line in order to avoid a Yato situation.

Kind of complicated to explain, but I would really love to see this implemented.

[ZessDynamite]

4 hours ago, InfinityAlex said:

I know some dislike the idea of an Avatar specific class, but how about one which is very much player specific. Rather than the Tactician or Nohr Prince/Princess, I think the game should let players create their own class. They can choose from a selection of armours (and colours, with their own set promotion variants) and, as an evolution of the Boon/Bane system, allocate skill points from a pool in order to set base stats, with the Boon/Bane fields modifying growths and a Personal Skill being tied to a selectable personality option. Players can also choose their starting weapon, with a secondary weapon being a choice at the cost of a considerable amount of skill points. These weapons would dictate secondary class branches (for example, lances allow for reclassing into Cavaliers or Knights), with the mainline promotion being determined by the initial customisation, and the Avatar specific weapon (if existent) being locked to the primary weapon of the mainline class line in order to avoid a Yato situation.

As the kind of person that would spend hours just tinkering with the avatar creator in a game instead of actually playing it right away, I would absolutely love a fully customizable system like this. Would the avatar's class have a preset name once completed or would the player be able to create their own name for it? For the people that don't want to spend forever creating a class from scratch, there should definitely be some preset builds to choose from, like "Speedy", "Defensive", "Strong" or "Magical", which could also work as a starting point to edit from.

[mikethepokemaster]

11 hours ago, BlueBloodEmblazer said:

Or what if Chrom's party is actually being manipulated into bringing Grima back, and masked Lucina is played up as more of a bad guy. Then Garnef... er I mean Validar? gets the emblem and falchion to summon Grima. Then we find out Lucina was the good guy all along trying to stop us. Then she joins us and it turns out she's just a girl who misses her dad.

EDIT: And I would make it so in earlier chapters the other kids do make appearances, but Lucina seems to be their leader. Then you still recruit them all in paralogues because they would get separated.

I think she is the leader, she is chrome daughter after all. In the alternate timeline dlc she becomes the Exalt.

[AlexArtsHere]

@3+2=Pie I didn't bring it up because I couldn't decide. It could have a set name based on the Avatar's role in the story or the armour picked, but I don't think players would be able to do a completely custom name as they'd need to name their promotion too, which seems strange to me.