Mechanics/ Systems or character/ story elements you'd like to see in future Fire Emblems?

[DefyingFates]

Every era of FE has done something new with the core gameplay loop and I was curious if there were any ideas you'd like to see, especially with our last two FEs taking drastically different approaches to how classes and weapons work. Here are two versions of weapons and classes I came up with, each named after either 3H or Engage.

Three Houses+

Spoiler

Classes are removed altogether. Instead everyone can equip any weapon type again and there's a new "equipment" slot that can be either a mount or armor. Weapon Ranks work just like in Three Houses, but now there's also a Rank for each type of equipment - increasing this rank is the equivalent of promotions (e.g. a high Rank in Riding increases Mov). 3H made a distinction for magic wielders and I'm not sure how that would transfer over here. Perhaps canon mages would start with a high enough Magic Proficiency to use spells by default but others would need to earn it by building up that proficiency by equipping a "tome" item?

You could balance this by exaggerating the impact of bonus/ negative proficiencies from how they were in Three Houses. For example, if a character has a fear of heights, their Flying Rank would be locked at F (or even "X" to show it's impossible to improve).

Engage+

Spoiler

I actually talked about this idea here too.

The only change I'd make to Engage's system* would be to allow characters to use whatever equipment they're proficient in in any other class, e.g. someone good with swords keeping them as a Berserker. To balance this, the rank of that weapon would be capped at C. This lets each character have a custom version of every class in the game AND lets you "roleplay" better (e.g. you can still keep your Lord's sword on them even if they're in some other class, though you miss out on the good swords).

Also, instead of getting weapon bonuses from Emblems, they could be tied to weapon ranks again, so in addition to the choice Engage already gives you about whether you want a higher Rank in a single weapon or medium Ranks in two, now you'd also be trading high power skills (e.g. Sword Avo +5, Sword Power +5) for a few mid-range ones (e.g. Sword Avo +3, Lance Avo +3).

...and it goes without saying that brawling/ gauntlets would go back to the 3H formula of being pure Str weapons. While this may look silly in practice, I think it'd be cool if horses/ pegasi kicking at an enemy counted as a brawling attack if you were on a mounted class too.

* I'd also like it if the heavy weapons were useful for more than just Engage Attacks too. Maybe give them a defensive perk or enemy-phase brave attacks like Ephraim's Sunlight Bangle from FEH?

I really liked Three Houses' approach personally, but I know the freeform nature turned a bunch of people off too, which is why I wrote up the Engage version too. Do those ideas seem good to you? What would you suggest?

As for story, while this probably may not be a popular idea, I've been curious for a while what a Fire Emblem with a small cast would be like. Most characters outside of the MCs (or in recent years, the main Lords and the Avatar) fall out of relevance really quickly (even Three Houses only focused on Byleth, the Lord and MAYBE their advisor depending on the route), so... why not have a small group of protagonists who all get a ton of focus each? Permadeath likely wouldn't work here unless we start getting generic soldiers to fill in the gaps, but I'd like to see something like this at least once. Even Fell Xenologue did this, with Alear and the dragon twins being the only ones who could actually die. If balancing is a concern, maybe anyone who's defeated in battle has a debuff in the next so you're still incentivized to keep everyone alive as much as possible.

P.S. As for the turnwheel equivalent: I hope it either gets turned into a basic mechanic and not a narrative element, or the time travel part is taken out entirely. For example, the MC gets visions of things that can go wrong like Micaiah, or simply has an overactive imagination for a funnier version, something like that.

Thanks for reading this, everyone!

[Samz707]

I'd like to see "learned" magic maybe be present but take more of a back seat to Tomes/Staves.

I liked getting rare limited high end spells and in 3H you won't know who gets what if playing blind but when you do get them, you may as well spam them completely, since you're getting free refills every map.

I'd like to see units have smaller/longer to learn "Inherent" magic, with tomes/staves making up most of your magic.

So one character learning free warp in the late-game would be distinct but anyone can use a warp staff. 

 

Unarmed should replace fighting with broken weapons, it's funny and not being able to use 2-range when broken would be more of a drawback.

 

 

[lenticular]

• A reclassing system where it's easy to reclass to a similar class (eg Swordmaster to Hero, Sniper to Bow Knight, Bishop to Sage) and hard to reclass to a completely different class (eg Wyvern Lord to Sage). I'm imagining a system where it's theoretically possible to reclass anyone to anything, but that most possibilities would require so much daisy-chaining through different classes as to be impractical to pull off for more than one or two units in a run.
• More of a strategic and/or operational level. Fire Emblem has toyed with things like resource management in the past, but never really committed to it. I'd like to see a Fire Emblem that goes deeper into this side of things to complement the core tactical gameplay. It wouldn't need to be super deep or anything, but maybe something of a comparable level to what XCOM has.
• Magic that is a hybrid between the Three Houses system and the more normal Fire Emblem system. Basically, magic comes from tomes and staves, each tome/stave has a given number of uses, but those uses are per battle and will regenerate to full after every battle. So if I get a Rescue staff or a Bolting tome, I can give it to whoever I want, and then they get (eg) 2 uses per battle as opposed to 5 uses ever. (A similar system could also be used for physical weapons as a way to balance powerful regalia, and to apply some limits on weapon usage without having to have the tedium of weapon repair.)
• Height. I thought that ledges were great in Radiant Dawn, and would be interested to see them return and be expanded on.
• More and better-realised queer characters. That's not a surprise to anyone that I'd want that, right?
• A smaller scale story. Would be nice to have something that wasn't a continent-spanning war for once. Maybe a civil war in a single country could work well. Something like Radiant Dawn part 2 but expanded into a full game.

2 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

P.S. As for the turnwheel equivalent: I hope it either gets turned into a basic mechanic and not a narrative element, or the time travel part is taken out entirely. For example, the MC gets visions of things that can go wrong like Micaiah, or simply has an overactive imagination for a funnier version, something like that.

Agree with this entirely. This doesn't need to be a narrative element, and unless they're really going to commit to making time travel a core part of the story, having it there but not really explored just causes way more problems than it solves.

[Armchair General]

I want an arquebus. 

You've already got those fancy magical ICBMs and those cannons mounted on an ship. How hard can it be to make an flintlock rifle and call it the next Fire Emblem?

At least it actually harnesses the power of fire whenever you use it.

 

 

 

 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

• Height. I thought that ledges were great in Radiant Dawn, and would be interested to see them return and be expanded on.

I was just thinking today that an "elevation" system would make perfect sense in a Genealogy remake. There are quite a few maps where one portion is implicitly much higher than another, but there's no manifestation in gameplay. I think this could help with the storytelling, too - say,

Spoiler

when Aida's Fire Mages turn against Reptor and his troops, they'd have the "high ground", making them harder for his forces to hit back at. Would really sell the notion of a one-sided "ambush".

 

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

• Magic that is a hybrid between the Three Houses system and the more normal Fire Emblem system. Basically, magic comes from tomes and staves, each tome/stave has a given number of uses, but those uses are per battle and will regenerate to full after every battle. So if I get a Rescue staff or a Bolting tome, I can give it to whoever I want, and then they get (eg) 2 uses per battle as opposed to 5 uses ever. (A similar system could also be used for physical weapons as a way to balance powerful regalia, and to apply some limits on weapon usage without having to have the tedium of weapon repair.)

For my part, I was a fan of how 3H reimagined staves as "magical supplements" - that is, equippables that have some impact when casting spells. You could keep them this way, while having tomes cover both offensive and support magic. Alternatively, staves can go back to non-offensive magic, and the rings from Echoes can come back to affect aspects like spell range, or healing power.

But yeah, I broadly like the idea of doing spells on a "per map", rather than a "per campaign" basis. I tend to under-utilize my rare staves, because what if I need them later? The exception is Genealogy, since staves can be repaired there, but again, that's more in line with a "limited number of uses per map" model.

6 hours ago, Samz707 said:

I'd like to see units have smaller/longer to learn "Inherent" magic, with tomes/staves making up most of your magic.

So one character learning free warp in the late-game would be distinct but anyone can use a warp staff. 

I like this notion, too, of combining "innate spells" with "buyable tomes/staves". This way, some units get a benefit (i.e. Bolting that I don't have to buy), without it being totally exclusive to them. Personally, I kinda think the most "basic" spells should be class-linked. So, a Cleric can use Heal without any Staff, whereas a Wind Mage can use Wind without any tome. So, some magic is in their blood, some is in their class, and some is in what tools they bring into battle.

[lenticular]

3 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I like this notion, too, of combining "innate spells" with "buyable tomes/staves". This way, some units get a benefit (i.e. Bolting that I don't have to buy), without it being totally exclusive to them. Personally, I kinda think the most "basic" spells should be class-linked. So, a Cleric can use Heal without any Staff, whereas a Wind Mage can use Wind without any tome. So, some magic is in their blood, some is in their class, and some is in what tools they bring into battle.

One possibility that could be interesting would be to have different classes that get their magic from different sources. For anyone familiar with D&D, think of the difference between wizards and sorcerers. So there could be a class where you just use the character's innate magic and get their preset spell list, which might give you earlier access to certain spells than you'd otherwise have but wouldn't allow you the flexibility to assemble your own list. Then there'd be another option where you would need tomes or staves for all your magic which would be harder to gather together but would have a higher ceiling. I don't know how well a system like this would work in FE in practice, but I'd be interested to see it tried.

[Metal Flash]

I agree with a smaller scale story, heck, this could be a good opportunity to make more playable characters relevant to the plot. But even if that isn`t the case, it would still be nice to see a FE story focus more on a single country.

Elevation would be neat to see again. with the addition of units being able to be knocked off a ledge, like in Triangle Strategy.

While unlikely to happen, given the prominence of Avatars, I would like to see more arranged marriages in future titles. I have already mentioned wanting one for the Lords of a future title, but I could also work as a mechanic. Like, say, a powerful noble will only provide your cause with money and troops if you agree to have the prince marry his daughter. Or a lady in the army needs to marry so she can secure her territory from rivals, so you have to choose a viable candidate.

Another scenario for a future game I would like to see is a decoy protagonist. Basically, you have Lord A who is your standard Marth type. Then you have Lord B, a female who appears to be a side character and is more unique in character. As the story goes on, Lord A starts to being giving in to his worst impulses, encouraged by his allies. Finally, in chapter 10, a split happens in the army between those who support the now radical Lord A and those who side with the more measured Lord B. Lord A becomes a reoccurring antagonist afterwards. 

TLDR: a Marth type male Lord is replaced with a more unique female Lord after Lord A pulls a Dimitri, just without the redemption arc.

[Jotari]

Mostly I'm just super ready for a return to the Tellius skill system. Learned class skills are fine and all, but having skills as a manageable resource and something you gain at set points in the game is also a great system that the series is neglecting in a big way.

On a less traditional idea, I feel like we could definitely experiment with mounts being a resource for one or two games. There is standard cavalier class. Rather you can buy a horse and equip it to your mercenary to make a cavalier. With different horses/pegasus/wyvern having different stat bonuses and effects like Three Houses battalion (only not quite ubiquitous) with individual names and stuff too.

Edited September 10, 2023 by Jotari

[DefyingFates]

45 minutes ago, Metal Flash said:

Another scenario for a future game I would like to see is a decoy protagonist. Basically, you have Lord A who is your standard Marth type. Then you have Lord B, a female who appears to be a side character and is more unique in character. As the story goes on, Lord A starts to being giving in to his worst impulses, encouraged by his allies. Finally, in chapter 10, a split happens in the army between those who support the now radical Lord A and those who side with the more measured Lord B. Lord A becomes a reoccurring antagonist afterwards. 

Ooh, I would love something like this! It'd also be a push-back against developers (especially Japanese ones) refusing to have solo female leads in their games!

But I think this could work with an Avatar too, we already got something similar in Silver Snow... we'd just need an Avatar with more agency, like Alear, to work off of the Lord-turned-antagonist. Heck, I was just thinking about that fake FE Twilight leak earlier today, about how you would play as characters from both sides of a conflict; that could even be incorporated into a route split idea too (but in that case you'd probably want to turn the two Lords into the two forms of an Avatar, like Astral Chain or Pokemon does).

8 hours ago, lenticular said:

Magic that is a hybrid between the Three Houses system and the more normal Fire Emblem system. Basically, magic comes from tomes and staves, each tome/stave has a given number of uses, but those uses are per battle and will regenerate to full after every battle. So if I get a Rescue staff or a Bolting tome, I can give it to whoever I want, and then they get (eg) 2 uses per battle as opposed to 5 uses ever. (A similar system could also be used for physical weapons as a way to balance powerful regalia, and to apply some limits on weapon usage without having to have the tedium of weapon repair.)

Ooh, this would be really fun! I love this idea very much! It probably means we'd never get a staff like Aum or even Engage's Nodus, but being able to freely trade out tomes and staves between units AND let them be reusable would be really efficient and open up some fun possibilities for experimentation and the like!

8 hours ago, lenticular said:

More and better-realised queer characters. That's not a surprise to anyone that I'd want that, right?

Yes, please! Heck, I'm still amazed at how well Leon was written and am surprised we haven't gotten anything like that since. The only openly gay character we've had since was Monica I think, and she's too busy being obsessed with Edelgard to be interesting or well-written.

1 hour ago, Metal Flash said:

I agree with a smaller scale story, heck, this could be a good opportunity to make more playable characters relevant to the plot. But even if that isn`t the case, it would still be nice to see a FE story focus more on a single country

 

9 hours ago, lenticular said:

A smaller scale story. Would be nice to have something that wasn't a continent-spanning war for once. Maybe a civil war in a single country could work well. Something like Radiant Dawn part 2 but expanded into a full game.

I'm glad the smaller cast/ scope idea resonates with you too!

I'm surprised by how popular ledges are, but having another type of terrain bonus like that would make positioning fun and add flavor to maps (e.g. when attacking a fort, most people in there would naturally have the high ground over you). So... yeah! If Genealogy really does lend itself to this mechanic, I'm curious to see if it comes back for the remake (I'm not holding my breath though :/)

[Jotari]

18 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Yes, please! Heck, I'm still amazed at how well Leon was written and am surprised we haven't gotten anything like that since. The only openly gay character we've had since was Monica I think, and she's too busy being obsessed with Edelgard to be interesting or well-written.

Uh, wasn't Leon like literally exactly that as well?

Edited September 10, 2023 by Jotari

[DefyingFates]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Uh, wasn't Leon like literally exactly that as well?

Yeah, he talked about Valbar a lot, but he did more than just talk about Valbar. Compare that to Monica, whose every Support seemed to involved Edelgard in some way, and even her Forging Bonds in Heroes was all about how much she liked her too (she was paired off with Tharja of all people, which really drives that home).

[Samz707]

11 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Yeah, he talked about Valbar a lot, but he did more than just talk about Valbar. Compare that to Monica, whose every Support seemed to involved Edelgard in some way, and even her Forging Bonds in Heroes was all about how much she liked her too (she was paired off with Tharja of all people, which really drives that home).

Yeah Leon wasn't comedically obsessed.

I still liked Monica though since she was at least funny about it. (As opposed to Tharja, who's just creepy, not to mention the Noire stuff...)

Granted I also liked Faye in SOV and Monica is basically Faye 2.0.

[Jotari]

25 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Yeah, he talked about Valbar a lot, but he did more than just talk about Valbar. Compare that to Monica, whose every Support seemed to involved Edelgard in some way, and even her Forging Bonds in Heroes was all about how much she liked her too (she was paired off with Tharja of all people, which really drives that home).

I think you might have some rose tinted glasses on there. Looking at Leon's text we have

1.His recruitment. Where he establishes himself very much as Valbar's man. He cries a bit of Valbar dies, which is nice, but, like, obviously Monica would be the same way if Three Houses allowed for that kind of alternate scenarios like Shadows of Valentia does.

2. His base conversations. Where, true, he doesn't talk about Valbar, but it's just him bitching about the sun, complaining about how its effecting his looks and being resentful of Celica for her youthful appearance. Not exactly steller characterisation. His other two base conversations are about Valbar, with the second continuing the theme of it being about his looks (and being somewhat nasty towards Celica). Only the third has anything resembling depth with Leon mentioning a previous lover (or object of affection it might be better to say) who died, only to wrap it back around to Valbar for saving him from that despair. I think that's at least on par with Monica's reason for admiring Edelgard coming from Edelgard rescuing her.

3. His supports, of which he has two. The first one is, of course, with Valbar. The C support has Valbar suggesting Leon would be a hit with the ladies, suggesting he is being either deliberately oblivious or genuinely unaware of Leon's (very) obvious feelings. The second is the most deep where they talk about Valbar's dead family, but it's more about Valbar. The third has Leon chastizing himself for feeling sorry for himself as his sorrow is nothing compared to Valbar...but then he reasserts how he's totally going to keep crushing on the widowed man who clearly isn't interested in him in anything beyond a platonic friendship.

4.His Kamui supports. C support he says Kamui is nothing compared to Valbar. B support, well, I'll just quote the entire thing, it's short

• Kamui: Tell me something, Leon.
• Leon: Something.
• Kamui: Oh, you're a laugh riot. But anyway, what do you think makes a good man?
• Leon: Hmm. That's not easily summed up in a few words, but... for starters, he should be kind, strong and mature... while maintaining a boyish innocence. He also needs to listen, but be ready to tell the hard truths when necessary.
• Kamui: Oh, come on. No one's that perfect.
• Leon: Someone is. And his name is Valbar.
• Kamui: You are definitely kidding yourself...

So, uh, yeah, definitely still about Valbar. The A support has Kamui questioning what Leon would do if Valbar wasn't the perfect epitome of masculinity to which Leon interprets it as Kamui coming on to him.

So, yeah, in summation, Leon's dialogue in entirely about Valbar in Shadows of Valentia. The only time he's not talking about Valbar, he's talking about his own vanity. Now, I'm not saying it's wrong to like Leon, if someone finds him likeable then that's great. But i do think in some objective sense of the word, it's just plain wrong to say he's better written than Monica when it comes to the amount of time he spends not talking about his unrequited love. It is very much the characters hat, and while you can still pull some depth out of that because there's a dead lover or dead family involved, it is still all very Valbar focused. I'm not going to go through all of Monica's supports looking for instances when she doesn't talk about Edelgard (because there are a lot more of them, and that really might be a cause why Monica might grate more than Leon as you'll probably hear her talk about Edelgard more in an objective ammount of word count even if her per capita crush word count, so to speak, is less than Leon's), but I'm sure there must be a few, she does have parents she mentions sometimes. But even if 100% of Moncia's interactions are Edelgard centric...that's not going to be much higher than Leon who is also hovering around 100%.

And just to lay my biases out there, I'm not really a fan of either character. This isn't some kind of Fodlan > Valentia response (if I were to put the two head to head I'd no doubt choose Valentia).

Edited September 10, 2023 by Jotari

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Thinking on it...

Shadow Dragon style forging - if I want forging I wanna be able to just forge for that and not some +X version of the weapon for a billion times cost.

TH batallion effects except on magic and not an additional squad. Fireballs spanning some 3x3 tiles, elemental interactions - oh you are standing in some water? How bout some lightning?  Or some cool wind? 

A TH style equipment slot, besides the regular weapons - shields, armor, whatever.

A class line that actually focuses on medical knowledge to heal, instead of harhar heal staff go brrrrr. Apothecary -> Medicus (-> Feldscher). Items could be herbs, bandages, tonics and stat boosts could be part of the repertoire too.

[Etrurian emperor]

For a new story element I would like to see a more mean spirited approach to the Camus archetype. I'm fond of saying the various Camus characters are less in love with their country as much as they are in love with the idea of loving their country. However this is a disconnect no Camus seems to be aware of. They're not serving forces driving their country to ruin out of malice. 

So I think it be interesting for a new Fire Emblem to have the exact sort of Camus figure we know so well. Dashing, handsome, patriotic and reasonably benevolent. And that all these features are in fact a clever PR stunt, with the Camus only pretending to be patriotic while in truth being a violent war monger only in it for the glory. This Camus would know he serves an evil dragon or mad overlord destroying his country but would be fine with it as long as the continent spanning war gets him into the history books as a great general.

[Use the Falchion]

Story - A story told where each chapter has a different cast of characters, but they all meet up and join forces. Kind of like Radiant Dawn but only for a part of the game. 

Gameplay - More like Genealogy and Vesperia Saga (and the FEW games), where we'd have larger maps with things like side objectives and mini-missions to do on them per level. 

Magic - More like Disgaea in a way. where you can level up specific skills and have the shape of said skills change. For example, after getting a Fire/Thunder/Wind spell to Level 5, you can choose two spots for it to attack on a 2x2 grid for that character. For the next spell tier (Elfire/Wind/Thunder), get it to level 10 and it's 3 spots on a 3x3 grid. Final tier is 4x4 for the Arc-level of the spell. 

[DefyingFates]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

I think you might have some rose tinted glasses on there. Looking at Leon's text we have

Fair enough, but he at least comes off as a regular human being. Even that Valbar support you mentioned ends with Valbar turning him down and him accepting that. Now compare that to Faye who's implied to go stalking or spying on Alm in her ending even after both get married to different people, or the mess of an A Support Edelgard and Monica have which only serves to "justify" Edelgard knowingly letting her die in Three Houses for her own ends.

Again, Leon feels like a real person. Faye and Monica are just... neurotic, obsessive messes in human form, probably written that way because Tharja and Camilla were so popular before them.

But to bring this back on topic, if there's something I'd like to see in a future story it'd be a complete lack of the Tharja -> Monica archetype. This is something I liked about Engage (as much as people like bashing its plot and cast). Sure most of the characters are reverent towards Alear, but no one's deranged in how they treat them. Even when Ivy seems to be heading that way, it turns out she just blurted out something weird due to her lack of social skills and once she clears the air about that you find out she's just a normal person like everyone else.

Edited September 10, 2023 by DefyingFates

[lenticular]

10 hours ago, Jotari said:

Mostly I'm just super ready for a return to the Tellius skill system. Learned class skills are fine and all, but having skills as a manageable resource and something you gain at set points in the game is also a great system that the series is neglecting in a big way.

I'd definitely be up for that. Class skills as the basis of the skill system feels played out at this point. Anyone who has played through Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses has a good feeling for how the system works and how to min-max it, and a lot of it just feels like hoop-jumping at this point. It also puts a massive distance between an unspoilt first-time player and a repeat playthrough with guides open in front of you. Knowing which class you need to go to for all the best skills creates a big power-level imbalance which can do weird things to the game's difficulty. With Tellius-style skills, that's far less of an issue.

9 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Ooh, this would be really fun! I love this idea very much! It probably means we'd never get a staff like Aum or even Engage's Nodus, but being able to freely trade out tomes and staves between units AND let them be reusable would be really efficient and open up some fun possibilities for experimentation and the like!

Honestly, I think it would still be perfectly fine to have staves like Aum or Nodus. If you only get them very late in the game when there's only two or three maps left then having a very powerful staff that you can use once per map for those final maps seems fine to me. Esepcially since the maps could be balanced around them.

9 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Yes, please! Heck, I'm still amazed at how well Leon was written and am surprised we haven't gotten anything like that since. The only openly gay character we've had since was Monica I think, and she's too busy being obsessed with Edelgard to be interesting or well-written.

Dorothea is canonically, openly, and unambiguously bisexual. Edelgard is too, I think, although far less obviously. And while I haven't played enough Engage to have seen all of his supports, I think that it's fair to say that Rosado is at the very least gender non-conforming, which I would include in the queer spectrum (I am very much a lumper rather than a splitter). So it's not as if there haven't been any queer characters; it's just that I want more. (I will also point out, for the record, that I didn't play Three Hopes, so I have no opinion of Monica's portrayal there.)

9 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

I'm glad the smaller cast/ scope idea resonates with you too!

Smaller cast is a weird one. On the one hand, I like the idea that fewer characters means that the ones that are there could be more fleshed out. On the other hand, one of the thigns I like about Fire emblem is that if I don't like a character, I can easily just not use them. Having a big cast means that there can -- at least in principle -- be a very varied cast. We often end up with pretty milquetoast main protgaonists;. If someone is forced to be on everyone's team then it's arguably more important that nobody hates them than that anyone loves them. But for secondary characters, it's often the opposite. There's a clear advantage to having characters that will be loved by some players even if that means that other players hate them. And I would hate to lose the design space that a large cast offers. Ultimately, if they announced a new FE with a small cast, I'd at least be willing to give it a try and see if the benefits outweighed the detriments.

5 hours ago, Imuabicus der Fertige said:

TH batallion effects except on magic and not an additional squad. Fireballs spanning some 3x3 tiles, elemental interactions - oh you are standing in some water? How bout some lightning?  Or some cool wind? 

Agree with this. FE has grown better in its last few entries about making archers feel distinct from other martial characters, but magic hasn't really evolved much and feels pretty boring a lot of the time. Three Houses and Engage both have a bunch of cool magic style effects, but they're limited to battalions and emblems. I'd like to see some of those effects brought into the framework of tomes and staves (or their equivalent). Let me have a Stride staff, and Impregnable Wall staff, a Warp Ragnarok tome, a Torrential Roar tome, and so on.

1 hour ago, DefyingFates said:

This is something I liked about Engage (as much as people like bashing its plot and cast). Sure most of the characters are reverent towards Alear, but no one's deranged in how they treat them.

I'd disagree with that. A lot of the interactions with Alear were what gave me my initial poor impression of Engage's writing. I'm thinking of stuff like Clanne and Framme's fan club, Chloé watching them sleep, and Merrin treating them like a zoological specimen. These interactions didn't work for me at all, and I'd definitely describe them as at least pushing towards the deranged side of things. It's a different type of deranged to someone like Tharja -- and let us give thanks for small mercies there -- but they're not exactly well-adjusted.

[DefyingFates]

13 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I'd disagree with that. A lot of the interactions with Alear were what gave me my initial poor impression of Engage's writing. I'm thinking of stuff like Clanne and Framme's fan club, Chloé watching them sleep, and Merrin treating them like a zoological specimen. These interactions didn't work for me at all, and I'd definitely describe them as at least pushing towards the deranged side of things. It's a different type of deranged to someone like Tharja -- and let us give thanks for small mercies there -- but they're not exactly well-adjusted.

I saw those as being quirky than obsessive or creepy. Obviously some reactions are a bit unhealthy like Framme and Chloe's, but I found most of them funny myself. Of course that could just be because I was relieved there was no new Tharja analogue.

13 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Dorothea is canonically, openly, and unambiguously bisexual. Edelgard is too, I think, although far less obviously

I had Dorothea in mind too, but considering S Supports are a thing, I thought Leon was a better example as someone who seems to only like guys. I think Edelgard's situation is a lot more subtle. Outside of her crush/ mild obsession with Byleth I think the only hint of her being bi is playing along when Dorothea flirts with her? Heck, it speaks volumes compared to Ingrid who gets weirded out when she gets flirted with of course!

13 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I will also point out, for the record, that I didn't play Three Hopes, so I have no opinion of Monica's portrayal there

She just talks about Edelgard all the time. Even her Supports with other characters are about how she envies how much Edelgard respects them (e.g. Hubert and Shez), or about how she or her conversation partner should be doing more for Edelgard's sake. I think the only exception is her Support with Dorothea, but that's only because she turns out to be an overbeating fangirl of hers too.

(There's a reason Samz called her Faye 2.0 earlier.)

13 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Smaller cast is a weird one. On the one hand, I like the idea that fewer characters means that the ones that are there could be more fleshed out. On the other hand, one of the thigns I like about Fire emblem is that if I don't like a character, I can easily just not use them. Having a big cast means that there can -- at least in principle -- be a very varied cast. We often end up with pretty milquetoast main protgaonists;. If someone is forced to be on everyone's team then it's arguably more important that nobody hates them than that anyone loves them. But for secondary characters, it's often the opposite. There's a clear advantage to having characters that will be loved by some players even if that means that other players hate them. And I would hate to lose the design space that a large cast offers. Ultimately, if they announced a new FE with a small cast, I'd at least be willing to give it a try and see if the benefits outweighed the detriments.

Fair enough, but I think games like the Tales or Persona franchises handle this well. They give you 6 - 10 characters to use and limit you to using four at a time, so unless you hate everyone, you'll still be able to build a team of just the characters you like and have all your bases covered (e.g. DPS, support, tank) since they're designed to have overlapping roles.

Edited September 10, 2023 by DefyingFates

[Metal Flash]

12 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Ooh, I would love something like this! It'd also be a push-back against developers (especially Japanese ones) refusing to have solo female leads in their games!

But I think this could work with an Avatar too, we already got something similar in Silver Snow... we'd just need an Avatar with more agency, like Alear, to work off of the Lord-turned-antagonist. Heck, I was just thinking about that fake FE Twilight leak earlier today, about how you would play as characters from both sides of a conflict; that could even be incorporated into a route split idea too (but in that case you'd probably want to turn the two Lords into the two forms of an Avatar, like Astral Chain or Pokemon does).

Yeah

While I could see that working, I would prefer FE move away from Avatars as main characters and go back to having the Lord(s) be in charge.

8 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

For a new story element I would like to see a more mean spirited approach to the Camus archetype. I'm fond of saying the various Camus characters are less in love with their country as much as they are in love with the idea of loving their country. However this is a disconnect no Camus seems to be aware of. They're not serving forces driving their country to ruin out of malice. 

So I think it be interesting for a new Fire Emblem to have the exact sort of Camus figure we know so well. Dashing, handsome, patriotic and reasonably benevolent. And that all these features are in fact a clever PR stunt, with the Camus only pretending to be patriotic while in truth being a violent war monger only in it for the glory. This Camus would know he serves an evil dragon or mad overlord destroying his country but would be fine with it as long as the continent spanning war gets him into the history books as a great general.

That sounds like a really cool idea, it could deconstruct the archetype in a interesting way.

[Samz707]

2 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

 

Fair enough, but I think games like the Tales or Persona franchises handle this well. They give you 6 - 10 characters to use and limit you to using four at a time, so unless you hate everyone, you'll still be able to build a team of just the characters you like and have all your bases covered (e.g. DPS, support, tank) since they're designed to have overlapping roles.

The issue with that would A: be permadeath and B: low unit counts for battles.

I consider Hopes having only 4 characters per map for every map too little. (You get 4 "AI only" units extra units for the big final map of each chapter but A: that's annoying they aren't controllable and B: I wish that was actually the standard.)

I really like having the big battles and controlling roughly 12 at minimum units in FE, part of the reason I heavily dislike Pair-Up is how it effectively often relegates units to stat backpacks so it feels like you're only playing with like 5 "real" units.

[DefyingFates]

8 minutes ago, Metal Flash said:

While I could see that working, I would prefer FE move away from Avatars as main characters and go back to having the Lord(s) be in charge.

Maybe a game could split the difference: have the protagonists be a brother/ sister pair. You pick one to play as per the norm but each sibling ends up with a different story. Imagine if the Corrins were twins and one picked Hoshido and the other Birthright, for example. I'm sure some game has already done this idea though.

8 minutes ago, Metal Flash said:

That sounds like a really cool idea, it could deconstruct the archetype in a interesting way.

Deconstruction itself could be a fun theme for the next anniversary game. Engage was a celebration of it; the next one could be all about turning old traditions on their heads or looking deeper into what those archetypes would actually be like... as long as the plot doesn't start writing in plot twists for the sake of having them like GoT S8 did, of course.

@Samz707: regarding permadeath with a smaller cast... I think there just wouldn't be any*. You could have some other kind of penalty though, like an injury that costs someone a bunch of stats for the next battle (or entirety of the next chapter). Fell Xenologue already played with this idea: there are only a few people involved in the plot canonically, so the game enforces a casual mode.

* so yes, most would probably immediately confine such a game to "only a spin-off" jail, but the idea of a smaller cast and conflict would have likely done that already I think.

Edited September 10, 2023 by DefyingFates

[lenticular]

I tend to enjoy maps the most when they have a unit limit of around 8-10. Up to about 12 is fine too. More than 12 and I start to feel that it's a slog to move everyone, and that not everyone is really serving a unique purpose. Fewer than 8 feels too limiting in terms of what I can do tactically. But with that said, there are some memorable maps across the series with only four (or fewer) units, mostly at the starts of games. Journey Begins, Winds of Rebellion, An Inevitable Encounter. I'd be interested in playing a game that leaned into that sort of map design, but had them suitably scaled up for the increased abilities of higher level units. It would play very differently from a standard Fire Emblem, but I could see it being pretty fun. Class design would have to be changed pretty radically, though. Consider that there are 6 basic FE weapon types (sword, axe, lance, bow, tome, staff), and that's before you even start to consider potential beast units, daggers, brawling, and dark magic. And then also different movement types on top of that. With fewer unit slots, class design would probably have to prioritise versatility over the ability to do a single job but do it well. Which could be fun in and of itself. Hybrid attacks might finally have a chance to shine.

3 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

I had Dorothea in mind too, but considering S Supports are a thing, I thought Leon was a better example as someone who seems to only like guys. I think Edelgard's situation is a lot more subtle. Outside of her crush/ mild obsession with Byleth I think the only hint of her being bi is playing along when Dorothea flirts with her? Heck, it speaks volumes compared to Ingrid who gets weirded out when she gets flirted with of course!

I don't really want to go too deep into this, since we're starting to drift further and further off topic, but I'll just say that I completely reject the idea that a gay male character is a better example of a queer character than a bisexual female character.

[Metal Flash]

7 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Maybe a game could split the difference: have the protagonists be a brother/ sister pair. You pick one to play as per the norm but each sibling ends up with a different story. Imagine if the Corrins were twins and one picked Hoshido and the other Birthright, for example. I'm sure some game has already done this idea though.

That could work too.

[SnowFire]

On fake-out lords: Multiple storylines are always cool.  I had an old somewhat similar idea for one of my ways to ever take a fantasy story, although kinda in reverse.  Basically the Marth-type lord in the first section of the game would have all the usual paladin-esque qualities": loyal, honest, believes in friends, fights for justice, etc.  Could even be slightly OP for a "Lyn mode tutorial" type experience if desired.  The game wouldn't cue the multiple paths, however, there'd be fake stuff like future upgrade trees that suggests this guy is gonna be your lead character the whole game.  Anyway after you defeat the Big Bad of the first arc (your Gangrel-equivalent), the government of HappyGoodGuyLandia would send your team on some sort of easy fetch quest out in the wilderness, complete with another team of soldiers to support in case anything happens.  I think you can see where this is going: actually, the king/prince/chancellor/whatever is justly worried that Our Hero's great popularity would make them a political threat & rival in the long term, so after you're already at the bottom of the mines or top of the tower or whatever with no escape, Our Hero is betrayed and killed in a sudden attack a la Sigurd (but in a less populated area).  The remaining team fights their way out against the government assassins and then skedaddles. 

Anyway the chipper good-always-wins female archetype (usual disclaimer: this role doesn't have to be female, but it ends up this a lot of the time, especially in older media) would actually get some character development, if of the negative kind, about learning to never trust The Man and wanting to build a monument to Our Hero's ideals in a pile of corpses of those who betrayed the team.  So yeah the surviving members of your team from part 1 would be villains (or at least very conflicted anti-heroes) in part 2, and all of those allies you built by doing nice deeds and helping people out in part 1 would be allied to or at least sympathetic to them for your part 2 team.  Basically it'd end up sorta like how Fates tries to humanize the other 'team' by letting you play as them in another route, except this would be a single game where part 1 was really just an extended backstory for at least one of the villain sets.  (And the government of HappyGoodGuyLandia could well end up a mutual antagonist shared by both the part 2 crew & the angsty part 1 survivors.)  Can obviously go a lot of ways for who exactly the good guy team is in part 2 and what their thing is, really the idea is more "extended fake-out involving deceiving the player into thinking they're watching the start of Our Hero's quest rather than the sidekick's backstory before they became an extremist maybe-villain ."

--

On the off-topic diversion of Leon "vs" Dorothea: I will say that for the very narrow use case of "how a game is perceived by extremely sheltered people and chuds," there's something to be said for canonically gay no-questions-asked characters.  Which is not to say that bisexual people shouldn't be in fiction (a ridiculous idea), but rather that they are able to be perceived as hetero but "quirky" if you really want to put some blinders on or aren't literate in this area.  I'm not sure how much of an issue this is in 2023 for the naive case (visibility is much better now than even 2 decades ago), and you shouldn't design your plots around the lowest 20% of media literacy types, but... it's something to be said for having a few Leon-esque characters.