Is Veyle supposed to be the main female lead of Engage?

[NotYourKindOfPeople]

Similar to Lucina for Awakening, Azura for Fates, Celica for Echoes, and Edelgard for Three Houses: Is Veyle supposed to be the female lead of Engage?

If so, she is kind of a lacking character, and not to mention that:
 

Spoiler

You can marry her in the Japanese version despite her being your biological sibling.

Did they not think that that will not fly among their international audience, and will affect her popularity very badly even in Japan?

EDIT: I need to explain my choice of words if that is alright. I am only talking from the perspective of a Japanese game developer, where majority of them believe that you can't sell a JRPG without a male lead. There are obviously exception to that rule, but the FE series as a whole is not among them. There has never been a FE with a sole lead who happened to be female, hence why I used the term female lead to distinguish the pattern that modern IS seems to follow where there is always a secondary female lead with a direct plot-connection to the lead character who is either male or an avatar character with option of changing between the genders but never solely female.

Edited April 30, 2023 by NotYourKindOfPeople

[Etrurian emperor]

Probably yeah. She's got the most plot importance and the biggest connection to the hero. 

 

[SnowFire]

I disagree with the premise of this question, that there is a "main female lead."  This is a valid thing to talk about for Echoes, which is very clearly a game about two leads where one of the divisions between them is indeed gender and this is important.  But I don't really agree about Awakening or Three Houses - you could gender swap Chrom & Lucina, and everything mostly still makes sense.  And Edelgard / Dimitri / Claude are flat out the lead characters of their own stories, and antagonists in the other routes.  3H is not a single combined story where Dimitri is the male lead and Edelgard is the female lead, like in Echoes.

Okay, that all said...  Veyle clearly is the most important non-main character in Engage, and in that respect she's similar to Lucina and Azura.  Those two also have the quirk of knowing more about the "real" plot of their games, while Veyle is more figuring out the plot at the same rate as Alear.  I do agree that given her prominence, she ends up underwhelming and seems to be less liked than either Lucina or Azura.  I just wouldn't use the terminology you used.

Finally, on the spoiler note, don't believe everything you read on the Internet.  The rumor you state is false.  What *is* true is that the localization adjusted to English idiom which has the effect of making more clear that there's nothing saucy going on, but that's not "censorship" or a change, it's just what happens in every single localization ever.  Crazy people just like to assume that anything other than a word-by-word dictionary translation (which would be AWFUL) means CENSORSHIP!!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Assuming female lead just means "most important female character", then Alear is the female lead if you choose that option at the start of the game. If not, or if we treat avatars as genderless for this conversation (which is implied by mention of Azura) then yeah, it's surely Veyle. Who else could it be?

I'm not even sure who I think the third most important character in the story is. The elder royal siblings are all kinda important but ultimately not too relevant to the "main" story. Zephia and Sombron both do some moving of the game's story but don't have that much screentime, especially Sombron.

[lenticular]

I agree with others that "main female lead" is a bit of an odd term to use. I mean, by comparison, would you say that the game has a "main male lead"? If it's Alear, then obviously Alear would be the main female lead as well. But if we're discounting Alear, then who? Sombron? Alfred? Mauvier?

Ultimately, Engage's story just isn't structured the same way as other games in the series. It's somewhat close to Fates in having a single obvious lead who is vastly more important than anyone else (Corrin/Alear), then a deuteragonist who is a long way behind the main character in importance (Azura/Veyle), then 8 royals who are a good way further back (two lots of four in Fates, four lots of two in Engage), and then the great unwashed masses. But even then, I'd say that Azura is more important to the story of Fates than Veyle is to the story of Engage. And Fates's royals are more important than Engage's royals too. Engage is just all in on Alear in a way that we haven't really seen since Marth.

By comparison, Shadows of Valentia has two co-leads who are supposed to be roughly equivalent in prominence. Awakening has three co-leads (Chrom, Lucina, Robin). Three Houses has maybe five (the house leaders, Byleth, and Rhea). They're all very different stories with very different characters filling very different roles.

[Florete]

Agreed with others that this question seems flawed from the very premise. Veyle's only similarity to those characters is being female and, sure, plot-important. I would never call her a "lead" since she's clearly not in any kind of protagonist position, unlike Celica and Edelgard. I don't think she's "supposed to be" anything except...Veyle, and she should only be judged on the character she is, not the way she fits into some weird mold.

[NotYourKindOfPeople]

29 minutes ago, Florete said:

Agreed with others that this question seems flawed from the very premise. Veyle's only similarity to those characters is being female and, sure, plot-important. I would never call her a "lead" since she's clearly not in any kind of protagonist position, unlike Celica and Edelgard. I don't think she's "supposed to be" anything except...Veyle, and she should only be judged on the character she is, not the way she fits into some weird mold.

Even so, she is the central piece on the Elyos Collection, so least the devs think she is more important than most characters.

[Jotari]

Is Guinevere the main female lead of Binding Blade? Is Eyvel then main female lead of Thracia 776? Yes, no, anyone can decide whatever they want. Fire Emblem is formulaic but it's not that formulaic. Veyle is, indeed, a major character for the plot who is also female. That doesn't make her analogous to Lucina or, especially Celica. If we're looking for narrative parallels to her from across the series then she's far closer to Shadow Dragon's Tiki than anyone else in both design and function.

Edited April 30, 2023 by Jotari

[Light magic is cool]

Fictional incest rocks.

[NotYourKindOfPeople]

33 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Is Guinevere the main female lead of Binding Blade? Is Eyvel then main female lead of Thracia 776? Yes, no, anyone can decide whatever they want. Fire Emblem is formulaic but it's not that formulaic. Veyle is, indeed, a major character for the plot who is also female. That doesn't make her analogous to Lucina or, especially Celica. If we're looking for narrative parallels to her from across the series then she's far closer to Shadow Dragon's Tiki than anyone else in both design and function.

From what I understand, Engage had some of the same writers as Fates. Veyle does share some similarities with Azura with how she is a central figure in the MCs life and that she has

Spoiler

blood connection to the MC like Azura who was Corrin's cousin in that game. That is not even counting the whole barefoot aesthetic.

 

Edited April 30, 2023 by NotYourKindOfPeople

[Florete]

47 minutes ago, NotYourKindOfPeople said:

Even so, she is the central piece on the Elyos Collection, so least the devs think she is more important than most characters.

I said she was plot-important. I just don't consider her a "lead," but this might come down to how you use the word.

 

5 hours ago, NotYourKindOfPeople said:

EDIT: I need to explain my choice of words if that is alright. I am only talking from the perspective of a Japanese game developer, where majority of them believe that you can't sell a JRPG without a male lead. There are obviously exception to that rule, but the FE series as a whole is not among them. There has never been a FE with a sole lead who happened to be female, hence why I used the term female lead to distinguish the pattern that modern IS seems to follow where there is always a secondary female lead with a direct plot-connection to the lead character who is either male or an avatar character with option of changing between the genders but never solely female.

I guess you can say Veyle fills the role of "prominent female character," but I don't see what's so special about that or why a specific comparison needs to be drawn to past characters. I can see a comparison to Azura, but the other three feel pretty different to me.

[Jotari]

24 minutes ago, NotYourKindOfPeople said:

From what I understand, Engage had some of the same writers as Fates. Veyle does share some similarities with Azura with how she is a central figure in the MCs life and that she has

  Hide contents

blood connection to the MC like Azura who was Corrin's cousin in that game. That is not even counting the whole barefoot aesthetic.

 

By that logic if Mist took off her shoes she'd be the "female lead" of Path of Radiance.

[NotYourKindOfPeople]

45 minutes ago, Jotari said:

By that logic if Mist took off her shoes she'd be the "female lead" of Path of Radiance.

Well I see you are on the side that thinks she is not the lead, that is fine by me; my original question was asking for opinions if she is or not after all.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, NotYourKindOfPeople said:

Well I see you are on the side that thinks she is not the lead, that is fine by me; my original question was asking for opinions if she is or not after all.

I wouldn't exactly say she's not the lead. It's a round peg square hold situation. Could she be described as the lead? Well sure, why not? A lot of the plot revolves around here. But if you're trying to use the term to parallel other characters in the series then it needs to be defined. And being a blood relation with no shoes is a pretty poor definition.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Jotari

[lenticular]

6 hours ago, NotYourKindOfPeople said:

EDIT: I need to explain my choice of words if that is alright. I am only talking from the perspective of a Japanese game developer, where majority of them believe that you can't sell a JRPG without a male lead. There are obviously exception to that rule, but the FE series as a whole is not among them. There has never been a FE with a sole lead who happened to be female, hence why I used the term female lead to distinguish the pattern that modern IS seems to follow where there is always a secondary female lead with a direct plot-connection to the lead character who is either male or an avatar character with option of changing between the genders but never solely female.

In modern Fire Emblem (defined as anything from Awakening onwards) there also hasn't ever been a single male lead either.* That may have been how game design was conceived thirty years ago, it may even be how some games/series are built these days, but I just don't see any evidence that it's how modern Fire Emblem is put together. These days, the pattern is for male and female main characters to be approximately equal in prominence. For whatever reason, Fire Emblem developers are now every bit as committed to female leads as they are to male leads, and I'm personally glad for that.

 

*OK, technically you could say that Itsuki fits those criteria, but that's a spin off game that isn't built at all like a normal Fire Emblem game, so I don't think we should read too much into that.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

In modern Fire Emblem (defined as anything from Awakening onwards) there also hasn't ever been a single male lead either.* That may have been how game design was conceived thirty years ago, it may even be how some games/series are built these days, but I just don't see any evidence that it's how modern Fire Emblem is put together. These days, the pattern is for male and female main characters to be approximately equal in prominence. For whatever reason, Fire Emblem developers are now every bit as committed to female leads as they are to male leads, and I'm personally glad for that.

 

*OK, technically you could say that Itsuki fits those criteria, but that's a spin off game that isn't built at all like a normal Fire Emblem game, so I don't think we should read too much into that.

I think it could easily be argued that Awakening itself doesn't have a female lead. Lucina is of course s big character, and of course she's popular so she's definitely prominent but she's not actually relevant until half way through the story. Change her class from lord to swordmaster and take her out of the animated intro and people wouldn't be viewing her any different to Elincia or Deirdre when it comes to prominence. Likewise I'd take issue with describing Edelgard as the "female lead". She's a major character and she happens to be female, but she's not the leading protagonist of the story. She's a choice for a protagonist but more often acts as an antagonist (even in her own route you fight her). There's also Sothis I guess if someone needs to be designated the female lead, but she vanishes half way through the game and overall serves more as a mascot than a leading character (she has zero interactions outside of Byleth). She's also not a protagonist at all in Three Hopes meaning only Edelgard can be shoved into the hole of leading female.

I also think the thirty years ago comment is quite uncharitable to older Fire Emblem. If there's any female lead in the series I'd say it's Nyna in the original Shadow Dragon. As she's one of the few consistently speaking characters in the game, and also the one with the dramatic love story. You could have easily have given her a unique class and made a her a co-lord with Marth, but they designed the game with just one playable protagonist in mind (the idea was probably tossed around given we got Alm and Celica as a duo next).

If we take Veyle as fulfilling enough criteria to he a female lead, then I'd say the only Fire Emblem games without a female lead is Mystery of the Emblem. All the other games have some prominent lady that could slot into the space (though you'd be a little harder pushed in Thracia).

Edited May 1, 2023 by Jotari

[lenticular]

17 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I think it could easily be argued that Awakening itself doesn't have a female lead. Lucina is of course s big character, and of course she's popular so she's definitely prominent but she's not actually relevant until half way through the story. Change her class from lord to swordmaster and take her out of the animated intro and people wouldn't be viewing her any different to Elincia or Deirdre when it comes to prominence. Likewise I'd take issue with describing Edelgard as the "female lead". She's a major character and she happens to be female, but she's not the leading protagonist of the story. She's a choice for a protagonist but more often acts as an antagonist (even in her own route you fight her). There's also Sothis I guess if someone needs to be designated the female lead, but she vanishes half way through the game and overall serves more as a mascot than a leading character (she has zero interactions outside of Byleth). She's also not a protagonist at all in Three Hopes meaning only Edelgard can be shoved into the hole of leading female.

I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here. You seem to be trying to argue against a point I'm not making? I'm not trying to say that every modern FE game has "a female lead" and "a male lead". Rather I'm saying that they don't really have either of those things. I'm also not sure what point you're making about Lucina. That she'd be a less prominent character if you removed the things that made her prominent?

35 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I also think the thirty years ago comment is quite uncharitable to older Fire Emblem.

My point there wasn't that old Fire Emblem was bad or sexist. It's that trying to look for patterns across the entire history of the series is pointless because too much has changed over the past 30 years. Whatever design philosophies were in place in the early 90s have been long since been replaced, so if we want to figure out how IS are approaching gender balance in current titles, then looking back to anything older than Awakening isn't going to tell us anything useful.

For the record, I have no opinion on anything about any of the Japan-only Fire Emblem games, since I've never played any of them (and probably never will, since I don't do emulators).

[Jotari]

8 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here. You seem to be trying to argue against a point I'm not making? I'm not trying to say that every modern FE game has "a female lead" and "a male lead". Rather I'm saying that they don't really have either of those things. I'm also not sure what point you're making about Lucina. That she'd be a less prominent character if you removed the things that made her prominent?

More that her central narrative focus is not that of a leading protagonist. It's the bells and whistles that make her seem like one more than actual narrative flow.

8 minutes ago, lenticular said:

My point there wasn't that old Fire Emblem was bad or sexist. It's that trying to look for patterns across the entire history of the series is pointless because too much has changed over the past 30 years. Whatever design philosophies were in place in the early 90s have been long since been replaced, so if we want to figure out how IS are approaching gender balance in current titles, then looking back to anything older than Awakening isn't going to tell us anything useful.

For the record, I have no opinion on anything about any of the Japan-only Fire Emblem games, since I've never played any of them (and probably never will, since I don't do emulators).

Awakening itself is ten years old now, so I don't think that's much of an indicator of trend as what came before it. I think the only thing that IS and Nintendo really care for their future decision making is what is still on the market not and making money for them (which would be mostly just Three Houses/Hopes and Engage). Much as people like to divide Fire Emblem with Awakening,the design philosophy of the passed five years has been significantly different to the design philosophy of the five years previous to that. And, even more significantly, the design philosophy in the five years leading up to Awakening (the DS era) was hugely different to the previous five years before that (GBA and Tellius).

[NotYourKindOfPeople]

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

More that her central narrative focus is not that of a leading protagonist. It's the bells and whistles that make her seem like one more than actual narrative flow.

Awakening itself is ten years old now, so I don't think that's much of an indicator of trend as what came before it. I think the only thing that IS and Nintendo really care for their future decision making is what is still on the market not and making money for them (which would be mostly just Three Houses/Hopes and Engage). Much as people like to divide Fire Emblem with Awakening,the design philosophy of the passed five years has been significantly different to the design philosophy of the five years previous to that. And, even more significantly, the design philosophy in the five years leading up to Awakening (the DS era) was hugely different to the previous five years before that (GBA and Tellius).

I think the Awakening/Fates philosophy is very much alive at least in FEH, which makes sense since that has the same director. Blue-haired knight, helped by an avatar character is the entire basis of that story. And with FEH being the most selling FE of all time, I don't see them changing that mentality anytime soon. Kouhei Maeda might be a controversial figure among fans, but each of his games are among the most selling FEs of all time with FEH being at the absolute top.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, NotYourKindOfPeople said:

I think the Awakening/Fates philosophy is very much alive at least in FEH, which makes sense since that has the same director. Blue-haired knight, helped by an avatar character is the entire basis of that story. And with FEH being the most selling FE of all time, I don't see them changing that mentality anytime soon. Kouhei Maeda might be a controversial figure among fans, but each of his games are among the most selling FEs of all time with FEH being at the absolute top.

That's such a basic premise as to have no actual narrative significance, yet I don't even know who you're using it in reference to for FEH, assuming FEH is Heroes. But, for what it's worth, Heroes has had the most radical departure for Fire Embelm design in the entire series for a title not named TMS. It's gameplay it more similar than the Warriors titles, but everything from its marketing, it's format of release, it's iterative and seasonal story and even it's character building are entirely distinct.

[NotYourKindOfPeople]

33 minutes ago, Jotari said:

That's such a basic premise as to have no actual narrative significance, yet I don't even know who you're using it in reference to for FEH, assuming FEH is Heroes. But, for what it's worth, Heroes has had the most radical departure for Fire Embelm design in the entire series for a title not named TMS. It's gameplay it more similar than the Warriors titles, but everything from its marketing, it's format of release, it's iterative and seasonal story and even it's character building are entirely distinct.

The season stories are their own thing, but the main story shares a lot of the same formula as Awakening/Fates style story-telling, and even shares the same director as those games. You can deny it if you want, but it is hard to ignore that the Maeda formula is more dominant in the franchise than one introduced by any other director.

[Jotari]

51 minutes ago, NotYourKindOfPeople said:

The season stories are their own thing, but the main story shares a lot of the same formula as Awakening/Fates style story-telling, and even shares the same director as those games. You can deny it if you want, but it is hard to ignore that the Maeda formula is more dominant in the franchise than one introduced by any other director.

The season stories are the main story though...

[Seazas]

Veyle is the Tiki of this game, no one calls Tiki a main lead.