Should child units be attached to their mother or their father?

[AnonymousSpeed]

In FE4, child units were attached to their mother. Awakening continued this tradition, but Fates flipped it on its head by making child units attached to the father instead.

Now, for a long time I thought Fates made a weird decision and was strongly in favor of child units being attached to their mother. After all, children are more biologically "attached" to their mothers. Furthermore, Fire Emblem games tend to have more male characters than female characters, at least until recent games where they're about equal- either way, your pairing choices aren't quite as flexible as when you have a surplus of "free-floating" parents.

However, I'm a little more understanding of Fates' decision these days, because it both produces variety and reflects the emphasis often given to paternity.

I'd still say I prefer child units be attached to the mother, but there's debate to be had about it, and I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter.

[SoulWeaver]

I'mma be honest, I'd rather it go mixed, with some children locked to mothers and some locked to fathers. It allows for more sibling conversations, which Awakening and Fates could really have used more of. I understand why they probably didn't do that, but still.

[Acacia Sgt]

I'd say... fine either way, so long they don't make it so you can lock yourself out of at least one of them due to the pairing choices you do. *looks at Sumia and Male Corrin*

[vanguard333]

I'm honestly fine with either method so long as there isn't an imbalance that can result in missing out on 2nd gen units.

Honestly, I think it would be interesting to see both: for every unit, there's a 2nd gen unit attached to them, meaning every pairing results in two kids.

[GuardianSing]

Mixed is my best guess for any future games that'll have child units.

Another idea that popped into my head was the idea of specific parings resulting in specific child units, that way the child in question doesn't have to be tied to just one parent for their characterization.

It certainly would be time consuming to do, and not every pair would be able to have a child, but I could still see it happen. It could even go a step further and have it so gay pairs result in the parents adopting a child.

[Morgan--Grandmaster]

19 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I'd say... fine either way, so long they don't make it so you can lock yourself out of at least one of them due to the pairing choices you do. *looks at Sumia and Male Corrin*

13 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

I'm honestly fine with either method so long as there isn't an imbalance that can result in missing out on 2nd gen units.

Honestly, I think it would be interesting to see both: for every unit, there's a 2nd gen unit attached to them, meaning every pairing results in two kids.

Yeah, I almost made that mistake on my first Awakening playthrough. Had to swap out Kellam with someone who could marry Sumia at the last minute (He went to Tharja by the way).

As a budding biologist, I can see it both ways, with the whole "each child is the product of the crossing of several pairs of their parents' chromosomes thing," and also making a tad more sense for the child to be tied to the mother. She is the one who produces the egg and bears the child after all. And the X chromosome, to my knowledge, usually dominates over the Y chromosome, hence why you see so few colorblind females.

However, I can get Fates wanting to mix things up, Lord characters having their own children, and that technology is limited resulting in the only alteration being a partial palette swap, and in Selena's case iff you pair her with Subaki, a brief conversation at the end of Caeldori's paralogue. That's a step right? In an exercise where I gave Byleth, the House Leaders, and women all children, I gave the children hair color, Budding Talents, and Crests all based on the father.

5 minutes ago, Edelguardiansing said:

Mixed is my best guess for any future games that'll have child units.

Another idea that popped into my head was the idea of specific pairings resulting in specific child units, that way the child in question doesn't have to be tied to just one parent for their characterization.

It certainly would be time consuming to do, and not every pair would be able to have a child, but I could still see it happen. It could even go a step further and have it so gay pairs result in the parents adopting a child.

I would definitely also do this if I had the time. Encourages replayability and could make for some good extra lore.

[indigoasis]

Either option is good with me. Even then, there's always been a mix of both in each game that includes 2nd Gen units, albeit extremely limited; in Awakening, Chrom and Male Robin are the outliers, and in Fates, Azura and Female Corrin are the same way (they're the main characters, sure, but they still stand out). Sigurd and Quan kinda fall into that outlier category, but they're forced into pairings with Deirdre and Ethlyn respectively, and Seliph, Leif, and Altena are units that you get in Gen 2 regardless. I think @Jotari also mentioned in another thread that Seliph is most likely attached to his mother rather than his father (like other child units; Leif and Altena would probably be the same way with Ethlyn).

Anyway, I think it should depend on the game on whether children are tied to their mothers or fathers. How? For what reasons, you may ask? I have no idea.

A neat idea I liked from Awakening and Fates was having two children tied to the mother and father respectively, like when pairing Chrom, Male Robin, Azura, and Female Corrin (for instance, pairing Chrom with anyone other than the village maiden nets you Lucina, who is tied to Chrom, and the child of who Chrom married, so two units from one pairing instead of the typical one unit). FE4 did this, but not really. Both children were tied to the mother, but the idea for one child per respective parent was a concept at some point; Lex and Lester's suspicious similarities are some evidence of that.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

It's entirely situational, honestly. Characters like Severa need to be attatched to Cordelia, while characters like Shiro need to be attatched to Ryoma. I'm fine with whatever, just whatever works best. I guess I'd prefer a mix.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Edelguardiansing said:

Mixed is my best guess for any future games that'll have child units.

Another idea that popped into my head was the idea of specific parings resulting in specific child units, that way the child in question doesn't have to be tied to just one parent for their characterization.

It certainly would be time consuming to do, and not every pair would be able to have a child, but I could still see it happen. It could even go a step further and have it so gay pairs result in the parents adopting a child.

This is what I'm very much in favour of now that both mothers and fathers have been done. I even made a thread about it once but everyone who responded shot down the idea 😞 It just seems like the most interesting way to handle things character wise. You can install more of a proper family dynamic and a more specific position in the plot if both parents are defined characters the child unit can relate to. Of course every unit being able to reproduce with every other unit would make such a thing completely untennable, but if parents only had three or four potential partners then it becomes a lot more feasible. This would mean a significant hit to gameplay diversity though. But really most characters only have a few parents that are truly optimal and you'll find most fans gravitate towards three or four obvious parings for gameplay or plot reasons too anyway.

[Sunwoo]

If we had to do children and a second gen again, I'm in favor of giving most of the parents (so both the mothers and fathers) one child character attached to them AND having limited support options for all the parents so dealing with variable sibling pairs doesn't become a fucking nightmare. Also, I think there should be at least two male and female options who don't have children of their own but can support and marry everyone of the opposite gender, just in case someone fucks themselves out of getting all the kids because the characters they have left unmarried aren't compatible.

When children are tied to one parent only while the opposite parent cast can be literally anyone, it's really hard to write in an effective relationship with both parents. Which is why Larcei and Scathach don't seem to give a fuck about their father while they constantly talk about their mother. Or why Arthur and Tine don't care about their father, just Tailtiu. And so on and so forth.

[Captain Karnage]

I'm going to throw this out first

Child units were a waste of resources in Fates, and that should have been put into the main game and same sex supports. (like seriously, so many supports were so just boring so you could get child units(

Rant over

Considering that we exist in a patriarchal social environment that mother/son relationships aren't explored as much in media from what I've seen and have been exposed of through media. Just because that's something I think is lacking in any media

So I agree that they should be tied in with their mothers

(But I don't want to see child units again for a long time, becauseI feel it takes away from the game)

 

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Captain Karnage said:

I'm going to throw this out first

Child units were a waste of resources in Fates, and that should have been put into the main game and same sex supports. (like seriously, so many supports were so just boring so you could get child units(

Rant over

Considering that we exist in a patriarchal social environment that mother/son relationships aren't explored as much in media from what I've seen and have been exposed of through media. Just because that's something I think is lacking in any media

So I agree that they should be tied in with their mothers

(But I don't want to see child units again for a long time, becauseI feel it takes away from the game)

 

Well if that's the starting point, why not have female units tied to sons and male units tied to daughters like is typical of avatars?

[Captain Karnage]

9 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well if that's the starting point, why not have female units tied to sons and male units tied to daughters like is typical of avatars?

From a game play point thats fine

But,

Then you'd have to account for siblings and cousins, and that's just going to be more and more writing I feel that the writer's will get tired and half-ass it

Like I said, I think child units in Fates took away from the core game. I think the relationships of the current and present cast could be explored more than having every male character have a C-S support for every female character and vise versa

For simplicity sake I think they should be tied to 1 gender in it's respective game so it's not too overwhelming in design and for the players

edit: I play a lot more tabletop games and am working on one, complexity creep is a thing and can make games hard to design and play

Edited October 21, 2022 by Captain Karnage

[Jotari]

12 minutes ago, Captain Karnage said:

From a game play point thats fine

But,

Then you'd have to account for siblings and cousins, and that's just going to be more and more writing I feel that the writer's will get tired and half-ass it

Well cousins I think are pretty much a non issue, aside from canon Seilph and Leif, cousins are never acknowledged in game as relevant or significant. As for half assing it, the only thing that comes to mind is is Sleena saying she's the same age as Gregor XD yes, complexity creep is a thing, but there are ways to mitigate complexity while still letting every first gen charatcer have their own dedicated child. Not having unique siblings supports would be another one. Like Inigo and Lucina already have a support where they talk about something (presumably, can't remember that specific one). Turning it into a sibling support only takes away by making it as generic support you've already read on a previous playthrough (I don't remember Lucina and Inigo's support, but I certainly remember Lucina and [insert sibling]'s support. You could just have Inigo and Lucina's regular support if their siblings and just not bring up the fact that they're siblings because it's not actually relevant to their respective charactiersation (and sibling relationships will never be relevant to characterization unless it's canon siblings). Morgan's amnesia vanishing for his sibling support with Lucina is a particularly egregious example of how sibling supports don't actually offer anything (and another example of them already half assing things).

[Use the Falchion]

11 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

I'mma be honest, I'd rather it go mixed, with some children locked to mothers and some locked to fathers. It allows for more sibling conversations, which Awakening and Fates could really have used more of. I understand why they probably didn't do that, but still.

Same. I think we're at a point now where that's possible and should be done for any future game with child units. 

[X-Naut]

I second Sunwoo, including the part about some characters naturally being childless. If they played the support cards right you could potentially have all the kids be available even with unequal gender ratios.

[lenticular]

Well, my number one wish is for no more child units for a long while, with a potential exception for a Genealogy remake. But if we're assuming that we have to have them and the only choice is how to have them:

Assuming that we're having children work similarly to how they do in Awakening and Fates (that is, added to the existing characters, not replacing them), my main wish would be that not everyone has to be a parent. One of the things I didn't like about those games was how the mechanic reduced the cast diversity and just turned it into "hot young singles in your area", more or less. If characters are too young, too old, not interested, in a pre-existing relationship, etc. then they shouldn't be shoehorned to try to fit into the system.

If we're assuming a much smaller group of potential parents, then that would make it much more practical to implement some of the more bespoke solutions people have mentioned above, like having a unique child for every pairing. Imagine that there are 30 (non-child) characters, but that only 10 of them are potential parents, then each of those 10 has 3 possible partners. That would mean there'd only need to be 15 total children, of which you could see a maximum of 5 in a specific play through. Which seems like something that could plausibly be made.

If we're just talking a straight up repeat of the Awakening/Fates mechanic, then I really don't care. I don't think there's much of a difference between having kids tied exclusively to their mother or exclusively to their father.

[Fabulously Olivier]

I don't think there's a right or balanced answer here that is in any way realistic to implement. I can say that I historically tend to favor the games where it's based on the mothers, with the exception of lords where applicable.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

15 hours ago, Morgan--Grandmaster said:

As a budding biologist, I can see it both ways, with the whole "each child is the product of the crossing of several pairs of their parents' chromosomes thing," and also making a tad more sense for the child to be tied to the mother. She is the one who produces the egg and bears the child after all. And the X chromosome, to my knowledge, usually dominates over the Y chromosome, hence why you see so few colorblind females.

It's not exactly the case that the X chromosome "dominates" over the Y chromosome - or at least, that doesn't explain colorblindness rates by sex. Rather, it's that people with two X chromosomes essentially have a "backup" for each gene. If a man (XY) has the "colorblindness allele" on his X-chromosome, then he's colorblind. Whereas, if a woman (XX) has a "colorblindness allele" on one X-chromosome, but not on the other X-chromosome, then she won't be colorblind (but she will be a carrier). This site explains it. The Y-chromosome never actually comes into the equation - people with Turner's syndrome (one X chromosome, no Y chromosome), experience colorblindness at the same rate as XY individuals.

Anyway, back to the core question presented... I'm fine either way. "The dream" would be to see unique children for every possible pairing, beyond just changing the hair color and available classes. But that's a lot of work, and means coming up with a ton of names. So on a smaller-scale, I think it'd be cool to have each possible parent with their own set of kids. Say, a woman in Gen I who always produces identical twin daughters in Gen II. Pair her with a man who always has his own daughter, and you've got a set of three kids. Pairings could result in anywhere from zero to four kids. Of course, this makes some pairings feel "stronger" than others, while also raising the "inheritance question", especially if they try to bring back Genealogy-style inheritance.

So the bottom line is, I don't really know. I think any system is fine, so long as it makes sense with the world that it's set in. 

[ciphertul]

I think for the games it should be Mothers as in most games we get less ladies then men.

[Metal Flash]

I agree that a mix would probably be the best option. The idea of specific couples getting specific children sounds fun, but would be difficult to implement.

The only thing I DON`T want from this is accidently getting locked out of child units. Be it through too few options or same-sex marriage.

[AnonymousSpeed]

22 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

I'mma be honest, I'd rather it go mixed, with some children locked to mothers and some locked to fathers. It allows for more sibling conversations, which Awakening and Fates could really have used more of. I understand why they probably didn't do that, but still.

2 hours ago, Metal Flash said:

I agree that a mix would probably be the best option. The idea of specific couples getting specific children sounds fun, but would be difficult to implement.

The only thing I DON`T want from this is accidently getting locked out of child units. Be it through too few options or same-sex marriage.

Y'know, I'm going to go against the grain here and say that the mixed option is actually a bad idea, as is having the child be determined by pairing. I'd prefer it be stuck to a specific parent.

Even if these hypothetical developers are free from human limitations, I am not, so I'd prefer the mechanic was simple to understand and manipulate.

Having a child unit tied to parent of a specific sex makes things a lot more readable. I see an S-rank support available for a couple, I know I'll get a child unit that is somewhat like them. I don't have remember whether the Laslow-Selena pairing gives me a child or not, which is something I'd have to look up if I were a blind player. Unless you wanted to give units a visible fertility rating, and I think there's enough dating sim aspects in Fire Emblem as is. I can easily determine that, if I want to make Midori an Oni Savage, I can do that by pairing Kaze with Rinkah, instead of getting a totally different character or potentially nothing at all.

One child per couple also spreads classes around more evenly, which I think it at least interesting, although you could debate whether that's good or not.

I'd say it's the better option for characterization, too. I would still like to see supports specific to the non-linked parent, and one of the advantages of that is you can see how Percy's relationship with his mother is different if she's Effie versus, say, Camilla. I think the writers would be forced to do more interesting things with that limitation than they would consciously choose to do if they made a different child for each pairing.

You could say something similar about how stats and skills work, too- the almost recklessly flexible nature of Fates pairings lets some pretty interesting builds arise naturally without them being intentionally designed.

Giving mothers and fathers a linked child each might kind of work, but I think that would also be a little complex to manipulate intelligently and runs the risk of giving you two characters who end up too similar.

19 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

It's entirely situational, honestly. Characters like Severa need to be attatched to Cordelia, while characters like Shiro need to be attatched to Ryoma. I'm fine with whatever, just whatever works best. I guess I'd prefer a mix.

That point about Severa and Shiro may be true, but I also think they were downstream of the decision to attach parents to mothers or fathers in their respective games.

19 hours ago, Jotari said:

This would mean a significant hit to gameplay diversity though. But really most characters only have a few parents that are truly optimal and you'll find most fans gravitate towards three or four obvious parings for gameplay or plot reasons too anyway.

But I don't want children with builds that are optimal, I want children with builds that are fun!

7 hours ago, lenticular said:

One of the things I didn't like about those games was how the mechanic reduced the cast diversity and just turned it into "hot young singles in your area", more or less.

That's not an inherent problem with the mechanic though- you could always add more "Corrinsexuals".

Having a pre-existing couple give you a child could an interesting way to introduce the mechanic.

5 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

It's not exactly the case that the X chromosome "dominates" over the Y chromosome - or at least, that doesn't explain colorblindness rates by sex. Rather, it's that people with two X chromosomes essentially have a "backup" for each gene. If a man (XY) has the "colorblindness allele" on his X-chromosome, then he's colorblind. Whereas, if a woman (XX) has a "colorblindness allele" on one X-chromosome, but not on the other X-chromosome, then she won't be colorblind (but she will be a carrier). This site explains it. The Y-chromosome never actually comes into the equation - people with Turner's syndrome (one X chromosome, no Y chromosome), experience colorblindness at the same rate as XY individuals.

So the bottom line is, I don't really know. I think any system is fine, so long as it makes sense with the world that it's set in. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

Not really the biggest fan of a second gen to start with, but...

I will say that, given that Awakening decided to have all kids based off the mothers, I was glad Fates turned around and had them all based on the fathers. I get that basing them all of one gender of parent is easier so if you must do that, alternate.

That said if they do it again I'd prefer a more mixed approach. I also like the idea of cutting down on potential parent/child combos, so don't do the weird "everyone can marry everyone... as long it's heterosexual" thing that previous games have done. Take the Chrom and Sumia models and extend them to everyone. This also allows the child + non-canon parent supports to be less completely awkward than they were in Awakening and Fates.

And please please please more gay characters (including ones who have children! Either adopt or magic), more asexual characters, more characters in established relationships, you name it.

I don't really understand the fascination people have with being "locked out" of children, since I never got all of them on one playthrough anyway? Even you do end up forced to miss a couple it's a Wallace/Geitz situation and I don't think that's a bad thing.

5 hours ago, ciphertul said:

I think for the games it should be Mothers as in most games we get less ladies then men.

Fortunately recent games have moved away from that, and if that trend reverses again I'll be more disappointed than anything they could possibly do with respect to children.

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, ciphertul said:

I think for the games it should be Mothers as in most games we get less ladies then men.

That is...still technically true, but by and large the last two casts (Fates and Three Houses) have had a pretty even split in genders. In Fates there's 34 boys and 33 girls+Corrin and Kana. In Three Houses it's 21 boys to 18 girls+Byleth (Three Hopes added four new playable males, but also took away four males, while it added one to three new females depending on how you count them and took away one). And of course Heroes has a tonne of girls on it, though I'm not counting up what the overall gender ratio in it is. We'll have to wait and see if Engage continues this trend of being just one or two characters shy of gender uniformity.

39 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I can easily determine that, if I want to make Midori an Oni Savage, I can do that by pairing Kaze with Rinkah, instead of getting a totally different character or potentially nothing at all.

Nothing at all is already something they do though. I remember pairing Reina with Ryoma expecting some result only to realize a few maps later that Reina is completely and inexplicably barren >.> (seriously don't get that decision in Fates, in Awakening it made some sense as it was late game characters, butin Fates it just seemed to be randomly assigned). Which is to say if they don't produce a child, they don't have an S support. A+ instead or something.

 

Edited October 22, 2022 by Jotari

[AnonymousSpeed]

10 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Nothing at all is already something they do though. I remember pairing Reina with Ryoma expecting some result only to realize a few maps later that Reina is completely and inexplicably barren >.>

I'm a bit confused. I'm pretty sure Reina and Ryoma don't support each other.

9 hours ago, lenticular said:

One of the things I didn't like about those games was how the mechanic reduced the cast diversity and just turned it into "hot young singles in your area", more or less. If characters are too young, too old, not interested, in a pre-existing relationship, etc. then they shouldn't be shoehorned to try to fit into the system.

13 minutes ago, Jotari said:

seriously don't get that decision in Fates, in Awakening it made some sense as it was late game characters, butin Fates it just seemed to be randomly assigned

This is a good fandom. I hate it.