Fire Emblem Engage Set a Visual Quality Standard
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- Опубликовано: 3 июл 2024
- Fire Emblem Engage Devs sat down to talk about a bunch of different programs, tricks and optimizations they made use of to get the game to look and run the way it did.
This video covers the parts of the interview I found the most interesting (and well, understandable) and is generally just what I think of some of the choices they made. It highlights art direction, graphical enhancements and optimization, battle animations, map design and more, and compares its aesthetics to Three Houses in some parts.
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#fireemblem, #fireemblemengage, #fireemblemthreehouses, 
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Happy 2024! Heres to a good year of epic FE content. Thank you for your support as always! Whats your favorite aspect of Engage's visuals?
I have always loved Engage’s art direction, but seeing some of the more technical steps involved was super cool. Amazing breakdown, I did not understand the interview…
I love the character designs, but my favorite part was the animations for combat. You can tell just how much work went into making them, this is about the only game where I felt like keeping them on even though it slows gameplay down. There is just so much detail and life in them. I think my favorites are the Eirika and Marth engage attacks, the House Leaders + Byleth engage attack, and the infantry sword classes animations. Super clean.
It's Blazing Blade
@@illialidur8244Same. The combat animations are spot on.
I strongly disagree FE Radiant Dawn had the best Visuals in an FE game like when Ike saved Lucia.
Besides all female characters having the same face shape is weird
Not sure if they are going to use Unity again after the debacle last year, but I would love to see animations on the same level as Engage for the next entry in the series.
Apparently the Unity debacle was resolved so it’s possible that the next game will continue to use Unity.
@@sollato0293but ALOT of people don't trust unity anymore because they did thar, even though they took it back people aren't going to trust them after HOW BAD that was
The sort of agreement a corporate entity would have with Unity is different from something independent developers have to deal with. I doubt anything would have changed for them regardless. The only reason to move off Unity would be for PR reasons, I guess.
What debacle?
@@mray4784 Just search Unity Change Agreement or something, and it happened this past year.
One thing I'd like to mention that Engage massively improved over several other titles, including 3H, is that the *regular combat animations are much faster.* I find this to be very important, not only because it looks better but even moreso because if regular attacks take too much time that slows down the pace of the gameplay alot.
3H was especially bad in this regard with normal attacks already being slow and then follow-up attacks often still having the character jump back and attack separately again even if there was no opponent counter-attack, and worst of all cavalry always leaning back before attacking.
If combat animations were always like Engage's going forward, that would be great.
It’s better because there’s no pause for the character portrait to cut in, which in turn breaks the flow of combat.
the animation in 3h are actualyl much faster. Engage feels heavier and slower
@@mihaimercenarul7467 Maybe it's the not the speed of the animation, but rather the flow of combat. 3H still uses the pause the battle, cut in character portrait and have the character say a line, then unpause the battle that started with Awakening. That breaks the flow of combat. Both the GBA titles and Engage doesn't do that, so the flow of battle is consistent.
I guess you've never experienced any type of armored unit walking up to their target in Radiant Dawn during battle animation...
this comment also really can be put 1:1 on Awakening to Fates.
Like armored units run slowly and realistically to the enemy, until their weapon reaches them. In Fates however they just dart forwardalmostlike a cannonball. It gives it such a faster flow and also makes the hits feel so hard! Especially on ninjas or on crit hits!
I just want them to use the writers from 3H, Hidari’s (character designer for Echoes) artstyle, and the graphical fidelity, awesome animations, and gameplay of Engage, and throw it all together for the next game
this precisely. echoes art style really feels like the definitive look that reminds me of all the games and three houses was what really made me appreciate the potential for the series though they definitely were hindered by the split paths choice.
if they can do all three then I have no doubt they will blow three houses success out of the water.
I’m not sure how I feel about the smaller size of the maps and lower movement in engage, the class system of Radiant Dawn vs Three Houses vs Engage, and engage exclusive mechanics.
Like after so many games where the maps are sized pretty wide and Cavs were king, having everything shrunk down definitely helps units like you early game armors keep up while also making sure fliers aren’t dashing around causing a havoc against the enemies. If we keep the map size and movement, I want to see them finally fix armors to be the frontline tanks they should be even in the late game and not just a damage sponge that dies to one use of fire. Low attack, all defense! And then there’s the whole promotion system.
I am still wondering how they could make the next promotion set without being too restrictive or free with what each unit can be. Will they give them a free promotion upon leveling up enough so you don’t need an item like RD, or would they make the system open to use with the right abilities so you can make special combinations of skills like 3H and awakening to an extent, or would they stick with how engage does it having only two tiers and just add a bunch of decent classes with few restrictions besides the preferred weapon types for the units?
And then there’s the whole load of other systems on top of those. Would we get back the normal weapon triangle with some extra feature to it, would we keep breaks or would we get a combination or the two? Are we gonna have knives and arts return as weapon type or would we get new alternatives to range and melee? Are we gonna keep the refine system or are they gonna improve it even more than the last game a second time? Are we gonna have a hub world that has stuff going on (unlike the somniel) before we go to the overworld map or are we just gonna have a set linear story (stories if there are multiple paths to it) and just interact with the characters in battles and menus?
I agree that the three teams coming together would make the ultimate FE game, but on the gameplay side there are so many ways that the systems could go that I’m not sure it would look very similar to engage beyond the base systems in every FE game. (Sorry for the essay length reply)
But make it sci fi like xenoblade and warhammer 40k but with the plot from the movie dune and you get your recipe for a game of the year potential standing with the likes of Zelda breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom level of goty
And Camilla!!!!
Ehhhh I'm not exactly a fan of either the writing of Three Houses _or_ Hidari's artstyle.
I never get the whole "writing of Three Houses is the best of FE" thing, tbh. The only time where I feel like the _plot_ of the game even felt like it was worthwhile was Azure Moon, and Verdant Wind to a lesser extent; Crimson Flower was, if you ask me, a fucking hot mess, and Silver Snow even more so. The _character_ writing was... *mostly* fine, but there are times where it's leaning "misery for the sake of it", and it brings me apathy. And the _worldbuilding_ part of the writing... honestly, I think outside of Faerghust, the worldbuilding sucks ass.
I prefer brighter shades of color, and Hidari's style just don't really appeal to me in that category; I much prefer Yusuke Kozaki's work in Awakening and Fates over that of the Echoes style.
Even if this sets a quality standard, I don’t want this to set a visual standard. I really want art styles to improve and evolve, being made to fit the game or story it’s trying to tell. It would be really weird to make a Geenealogy remake look like this.
It might not look exactly like this but its almost impossible it will look like a 90s anime instead, reminding of the original art work.
As someone who read the genealogy manga, I am used to the big eyes and all for the Jungdrall characters. I think it actually fits if done well
If you look at the official art work for early Fire Emblem games, let’s say Gaiden for example, most *if* not all the characters had the body type of short torso with long legs - compact body type. But after a bit, the only body types for characters are either the balanced, or long torso with short legs - stretched body types. Wish to see the return of the compact body type.
They certainly will change the artstyle but the animations will probably be an improvement from engage eventho they were already really good.Probably not as flashy and colorful
I hope the next game keeps a similar approach to combat animations. They are so good.
Exactly Illia2, it actually matches to my fun with gba animations
@@bluedolphina8977 SILLY, I’m not IlliaTwo. He’s someone else entirely.
@@illialidur8244 if you remove the 8,4, and 4 you get illia 2 😃
No what I want for the next fire emblem game is to go for a sci-fi, setting art style should be similar to the Older Xenoblade games, xenoblade 1 and X but keep the atmosphere from fire emblem 1 to 3 houses when I say up to three houses, I say that Warriors, three hopes and engage is the most divisive entries in the series is that but is that they want to appeal to a western audience that’s all what I say is that they should go back with the old atmosphere from the older entries prior to Warriors, three hopes and engage but the art style would be Xenoblade one and X mixed with Warhammer 40k and also go for a major change in gameplay instead of srpg replaced with arpg like diablo
@@kevingame3198 that is the wildest take my guy. I doubt it will happen, but you may as well shoot for the stars.
The stylized faces in 3D like this have come a long way on the Switch. Especially with Engage and if you look at like Xenoblade 2 to Xenoblade Remaster to especially Xenoblade 3, they've made huge strides in making the anime style faces very expressive and even subtle movements. I would guess they all learn from each other too by analyzing it.
What version of Engage did you play? Because in mine everyone looked like a Vtuber or ripped out of a mobile game, and had next to non-existent expressions.
Nice to see appreciation for Engage, the visuals are great and should be praised. Also a pleasant surprise to see a bunch of my footage used in one of your vids.
The fact that the attack animations, particularly the specials or super moves, are closer to those seen in GBA titles is a welcome choice by IS. Never liked how they did it in Awakening to Three Houses, kind of breaks the flow of battle. *Hope* that this style of battle animations becomes the norm for all future FE titles.
Happy New Year, Ghast!
something tells me despite the animations of battle looking super clean af here in Engage, i don tthink they'll go back to this art style (oversaturated/genshin looking) due to sales and the fact that this was a game to celebrate FE's anniversary. i personally think it looks pretty good however i did personally like three houses gritter/academy art more. battle animations are mediocre at best and suffers from performance issues for fe3h sadly. hopefully the next game just capitalizes on the shortcomings of both games and make an even better FE. itd be so great to see something like 1440p 60fps smooth battle animations in Switch 2!
I couldn't agree more about Three Houses animations 😭 I'm currently running through it again and I had never bothered getting the dancer class before and oh my GOD, Dorothea literally does Fortnite dances now 😭 The dancer victory animation looks like those garbage clickbait mobile games (like High Heels) it's so embarassing
@@dumbbabey4220 im finally getting through dimitri's route after a long time never getting to it.. i just have animations OFF unless its a important main quest battle. i have gotten about 200 hours on this game so yea animations no matter what gets stale, but they def coulda added variety like 1-3 different animations for the same attack, added different animations for combat arts, a few different victory poses for each classes just to keep it fresh. considering the game is MEANT to be played multiple times with campaigns being 50 plus hours, they shoulda have thought of variety of animations. regardless they did well with voice lines at least which is above and beyond any other nintendo title lol.
@@Nu_MerickThe developers stated they only intended players to play one route and only expected discussion. The game was not made with the intent to be played multiple times.
I really do love how beautiful Engage looks and the details they added. Like how promoted classes would dodge by deflecting attacks. Not to mention how colorful and expressive characters are. Also happy New Year's Ghast thanks for another amazing video.
@@mihaimercenarul7467 ?
The only visual problem I have with the game is that they could've better translated Pikazo's style into 3D... Animations are great, but the models themselves don't capture the edge and beauty in Pikazo's style, somehow the illustrations have more flow and movement than the actual moving models. That and the omission of 2D portraits, Pikazo's art for the character portraits would've been incredible and rivaled Hidari's for best character portraits in the series.
The game had a lot of potential to play around and get really creative with a style like Pikazo's, but everything while highly polished feels too sterile. Still it's a step in a great direction
I really agree, the 2D art is much more appealing to me, and it just didn’t translate super well to 3D, and a lot of the characters just look super different from their 2D art
@@rhettmitchell I haven't gotten far enough in the game to speak on every character compared to their art, but this is how I feel about Alfred. Looks like a total loser in game but his official render is awesome
2d art for portraits must never be abandoned in a game like FE. I may not like all art styles, like that one from Fates, but the art will always look better than a 3d model portrait anyway.
@@carlosaugusto9821 3D models were used in place of 2D portraits in Engage to facilitate the Engage mechanic. It's easier to let the Engaged models do the work than it is to create additional portraits for every combination of unit and Emblem. Even with Engage's relatively small cast, that would be wildly impractical. Plus, they get the cool side benefit of animating the portraits in a way they wouldn't be able to with 2D portraits. The Engage mechanic is _also_ at least part of why portraits were removed from critical hits, it had nothing to do with pacing (and in fact the pacing is still similar to how it was _with_ the use of portraits, because basically every crit animation has a slow-motion portion with a face close-up).
@@FlameUser64 Wow, you just made me dislike the Engage mechanic even more
I legit hope whatever FE is next for the series runs like a marvel just like Engage did. As much as I love 3H more, there's no beating around the bush that the game's optimization was laughable.
While I totally agree, if I had to choose which they focused on is the story. I personally find that maybe going back to the roots with more 2d based retro look like say octopath or sea of stars would not only have some cool potential but would likely leave more room to not allow the next FE game to fall as flat as engage did. The game’s beautiful but it definitely feels that maybe a little TOO much tlc went here instead of other much needed places.
@@shootout-shinobi6672You don't have to choose though. Now that we have the Engage engine, it won't need too much attention when being reused for future games.
@@Handles_be_dumb let’s hope so
@@shootout-shinobi6672Sea of stars yes. Octopath Traveler, heck no. Never would play an FE game with OT graphics.
@@ResurgentRaven how are they that different lol
Thanks for the video Ghast.
Technically speaking it's a nice looking game, HUGE step up from 3H. Still don't like the art direction and character designs.
Looking into this game. The only good character designs are the emblem. Which are those that came from the previous generation. The art style of this game is awful. Feels like every character is a drag queen engaging to war(No hate for the drag queens tho just a visual comparison)
Me, in the first part where I have direct control over my character: "MY HAIR GOES SWISHY SWISH! THIS IS AWESOME!"
i'm sorry, "a worry" that the next game would be made by KT? they get an outside studio and make the highest selling entry out of all FE.. let that sink in.
I honestly prefer 3H's look, but that's purely because I prefer its art style. Engage is better technically, and I hope they make a game with that level of polish in a style I prefer.
That said, with Unity speedrunning their company into the ground this past year, IS might want to keep its eyes open for alternatives, just in case.
But engage was not that good. The art style was pretty much too Genshin impact the same thing that happened with Xenoblade Chronicles 3 art style.
Same, 3H had a art style I enjoyed more. I think engage’s style is much more generic genshin/anime
@@kevingame31983 don’t you mean 2
@@ClaudevonRiegan_ Same with xenoblade chronicles 3
@@rexthewolf3149 no Xenoblade chronicles 2 came out before genshin impact just 3 years earlier and also it was sort of a mix between gravity rush and xenoblade chronicles X
I modelled a weapon once of Fire Emblem Engaged, and used it as a first person weapon, the exported it to Unreal Engine 4 and no it can't be eaten.
I appreciate all the effort they put into the visuals, but I still think they could've turned down the saturation by just a few notches.
Especially for some of the high rendered cutscenes. There was basically 2 styles for the cutscenes in this game. One basically looked like the in game models with toned down saturation while the other was so bright and saturated it became a bit blinding. I felt it was too inconsistent
Maybe. Personally, I'm a fan of bright colors, so I don't mind the saturation as much. On the opposite, I dislike muted colors much more.
As someone who studied as a 3d modeler, this is SUPER fascinating to me
I'd like to get into doing that one day.
Making a Tactical RPG in Unity, and OMG this article was just pitch-perfect for all kinds of tools & optimization ideas. Just 2 days after watching the vid & reading the article, wrote my own in-scene ruler. Looking forward to IS doing more cool stuff with the engine in future.
Finding out all of the cool things the team did to get the game to look the way it does honestly makes me love the game even more. Thanks for sharing this!
Moving forward I only hope the gameplay, map design and visuals are on par or even better than engage
It's so dope to see how the story boarding is done!
Uh...
The two Switch FE games went with two different ways of approach. Three Houses went all in on the story, but the constant clipping of characters' hair and clothes made some weird visual looks. Engage went all in on the visual and graphics, but the story was lacking. If the next mainline FE game is actually a new game and not a Genealogy remake, then maybe they could combine the two approaches and we'd get a pretty good game.
I think the designs of Three Houses are so underrated by the community still, in the sense that they are like an ideal middle ground between anime and a more grounded medieval fantasy that didn´t alienate almost anyone, which you always need to become a mainstream success. Engage designs really took the full anime route and it showed with the initial impressions people had when watching the trailers and just judging the visuals and "V-tuber" protagonist.
Hope the keep the solid gameplay and maps, rein down a little the designs and come back with a proper multi path story and we could have the best game of the series in our hands
Engage has some really terrible clipping and pixelating issues because of how huge and confusing a lot of the unnecessary details are on some of the character designs. I immediately think of Zephia and Griss’ death cutscene……major yikes. A lot of the awkward static standing around talking gets interrupted by the big clothes and huge hair too
I remember when I first saw a character parry when they had been dodging for miss attacks I think my jaw dropped. I'm glad to hear that it has even more depth to it than I thought. I wasn't all that impressed with the story but enjoyed the game still for improvements and was very impressed with the animations throughout. Being a huge FE fan I really can't wait to see what the next game is even if it is a remake.
This game is just so nice to look at. Everything is so sharp and colourful. I feel like it's been the first game in a while that used the birghter half of the colour spectrum again.
Together with the gameplay and combat animations, I will keep saying the same thing:
Engage is the 4th GBA game I always wanted.
The fact that the attack animations, particularly the specials or super moves, are closer to those seen in GBA titles is a welcome choice by IS. Never liked how they did it in Awakening to Three Houses, kind of breaks the flow of battle. *Hope* that this style of battle animations becomes the norm for all future FE titles.
Thats a great way to put it. Engage is the 4th GBA game, and it looks good.
you have brain damage
allll i want is the 2d portraits back that’s all
I guess I’m the only one who actually likes the 3D models, I enjoyed seeing them move when I click on the characters. No shade on the 2D art.
@@duckyfishes9445 I'm honestly with you, mate.
The largest issue isn’t how characters look, being different to other games it’s the inconsistency. Want them all to look like vtubers? Then do it for every character. Want cute fantasy? Do that. Want specific styles dependent on the region in game? DEFINITELY do that. The desert cast was far too inconsistent and varied.
which is what happens when you don’t tell the lead artist how when and why the characters are and just say "make X number of characters"
The plot outline and general overview of the characters should be done before the character designs, not afterwards...
Could not disagree more. I love it when characters have their own distinct look, as if they each came from a different world. The visual variety makes it more interesting, and it's exciting to see a new character because you never know what you're going to get. It's why Kinu Nishimura is one of my favorite artists.
Not quite as inconsistent as fell seal arbiter's mark but I agree with what you said
thisss
@@Peter-jn9rb Ah yes. It's perfect when the characters are so "unique" that they don't even represent the country they come from. Nothing like a ginger party priest and a blonde chef to represent people that came from the desert lmao. Give me a break.
I thought everything was pretty great except for the story and character designs. A great framework for something even more amazing in the future I hope.
If finally switching to middleware solutions for engine and stuff helped them accomplish all this, I'm very happy. IS have great game and art designers available it seems. Less so on the technical side. I'm guessing that was part of outsourcing Three Houses technical stuff to Bandai Namco, etc.
I really am glad that the game visually turned out as I had hoped on the first trailers...
Because Three houses really had a good story but the graphics suffered from so many things, like putting anime-style people into realistic worlds which from a detail look even suffered tremendously from the limited VRAM buffer of the switch... It looked so awful to me...
The armor also looked weirdly polished to the point that they could have been mirrors aswell which is a weird choice to give on usually not so polished armor on every random soldier...
I could go on really... And I am not so versed outside of reading a bunch and playing around with blender and Unity.
One thing I especially appreciate about the battle animations in Engage is how we've finally gotten rid of the annoying Critical Hit Cut-Ins, they were nice for a while but all they really do is break the flow of combat. I like it when crits are a surprise.
I hope the actual story cutscenes can get some more attention in the next game. Honestly, with the very few MMO-style emotes they cycle through in an empty boring environment, just having it as still character portraits like in the GBA and 3DS games' visual novel style would have been better.
As someone who’s been tinkering with these assets in blender. It is genuinely cool how many modeling tricks they used in making these characters. Hair uses multiple uv maps, one for hair color and another for the highlights, as well as vertex color settings for extra hair color settings, allowing for dynamic changes, such as engaging without overloading on separate textures. Eyes use a handful of layers of black and white decals allowing for color parameters not unlike the hair. Faces use custom uv maps, allowing for the incremental look in facial shading, vertex color again to dictate outline thickness, and a “multi” texture with separate color channels acting as miscellaneous maps, (like Ambient occlusion). Not only that. But many parameters allow things like the skin tone, armor color, and even body part sizes to shift and naturally match each character. Engage is genuinely one of the greatest use cases of 3d work made for real time rendering since I started doing hobbyist 3D shenanigans for myself.
This is so neat! Thank you for sharing these cool details. ^.^
as a big anime fan the engage attacks where great i love "ultimate move" types stuff in games and they always looked cool to me.
While everyone here is adding their opinions, thought I would add mine. While Engage is very graphically advanced with great graphics and animations, there is just something that it lacks that often makes it tough to look at for certain people. Maybe it's the art design that was meant to be eye-catching but instead drove people away or the lack of shading that makes the models look lower quality or just the oversaturation of colors that makes the environment feel like it's from a different game entirely. Fire Emblem has always mixed different colors, art styles, and methods that give a charm to the game, often blending muted colors with more vibrant ones. However, Engage wants to be as eye-catching and "bold" as possible while playing safe on everything else, leading to a tonal whiplash and a divide in the fanbase over how the next game should be. As for me, I just hope this art style doesn't come back and we get ones from Tellius, Echoes, and Three Houses. Sadly, only time will tell how the franchise fairs in the future and which vision of the game will succeed. Wish you all luck.
The art style drags this game a lot. A lot of moment that I will be amazed by the amazing graphics and animation then I'll see the character designs, my amazement falls from 100 to 0.
@@ron.webdev And then you have the character and story writing that just drags the game even further despite the amazing gameplay in my opinion. its a shame Engage had such great gameplay only for it to be tied to the characters, story, and world shown in the game. Again this is my opinion but you can agree or disagree however you want.
Exactly. It's funny how they put focus on the "different eyes" when the characters basically have 2 faces used for the whole cast. Like, where was THAT attention to detail?
Also, the overly bright and cheery aesthetic completely clashes with the genuinely serious scenes that they want you to care about.
@@eternaldarklight8204 It's a shame because I think using the previous characters as emblems for nostalgia is really a good idea. They missed the opportunity. In addition to that, Three Houses has a really good replayability(different path and character routes), they just have to make things better from the good things that they have done before. Played 2-3 hours of Engage and I missed Three Houses already.
@@RLCguy The eyes are terrible. Not only the Artstyle is terrible it is inconsistent as well. Face design wise(most specially the eyes), one character looks like from a different game, the males and female characters don't look like they are in the same universe. Then the NPCs looks like from a different game as well. The game feels like a project of different artist being compiled together.
Ik this is a bit off topic, but what do you think about a crossover between Zelda and Fire Emblem?
Damn I guess this didn’t apply to the support conversations
Usually I'm a huge advocate for gba/sprite based ds styled games, especially with the nintendos limited hardware capabilties, but engage is probably one of my favourite games to look at
Does this mean that I should expect the next Pokémon to actually run properly on a modern console.
No, that is a foolish hope. Pokemon will never get better until it stops selling units and they are forced to make it better or be canceled.
@@boobalooba5786Get new material.
I dont want to play as vtubers in fire emblem
The absolute LEAP in visual quality from Three Houses to Engage still floors me. Easily one of the most visually appealing games I've ever played. Very happy to see Studio Anima knocking it out of the park as always. And combat animations haven't looked this good since the GBA era.
Agreed, never liked how they did it in Awakening to Three Houses. The fact that the attack animations, particularly the specials or super moves, are closer to those seen in GBA titles is a welcome choice by IS. *Hope* that this style of battle animations becomes the norm for all future FE titles.
Everybody's acting like Fe echoes SoV never happened
Those combat animations were amazing smh
Agreed but again the art style seems too very much Genshin impact which also had a similar problem with Xenoblade chronicles 3 because the next fire emblem game I’ve been thinking of is to go with a more realistic style art style, but take it into a sci-fi setting akin to the movie Dune mixed with xenoblade and warhammer
@@jfp4lifenobody played it.
@@jfp4life FE E SoV still has the break the flow of combat style of attack animation used in Awakening to Three Houses.
I would love to see a remake(s) of PoR and RD in this style, especially the cutscenes. Leave some Engage stuff out, namely the Somniel and reclassing system to stay true to the original, and you have a game that I would buy five copies of.
Though Engage didn't hook me quite like I hoped, its art, animation, and quality all really stood out to me. I hope that they take the lessons learnt from this game and make the next Fire Emblem absolutely terrific.
It's interesting thought. To me personally I couldn't play for long because of its art direction. Three houses was anime but somewhat realistic and consistent. Engage is all over the place. Cannot take it seriously. Hopefully next one is more serious entry.
Hopefully the next game will keep the beautiful animation and gameplay. Those were engage strong point. The rest like the story characters and the vtuber art style can go
The combat animations look so fun but ,even though I understand their decision to go with that particular artist, some consistency with past entries is needed or it comes off badly.
It also set a new low in terms of narrative standard.
And that's a good thing. No more pseudo intellectual garbage. Just gameplay like it should be.
@@mpo48 No one's stopping you from playing games from the 80's, other strategy RPGs, or chess
@@AkameGaKillfan777 except that most games from the 80s except chess are out of print and the consoles they are played on and copies of said games cost 1000000000000000000 on amazon or ebay
Found the 3H stand
@@UncannyEXP Hello mobile game enjoyer
I cannot articulate how much I would LOVE to play through the Tellius games with the modern fluidity and conveniences in Engage. C'mon, Nintendo, announce a remake, please!
Hopefully the success in visuals can translate over to writing
I didn't love the game itself; I missed all the stupid little things past FE games had, as well as the focus on characters other than the player. If the game is going to focus on the player, at least let me feel as if it truly is a self-insert. Engage was however visually pleasing, even with how anime it was. Very beautiful.
Yeah Engage had great visual quality, and I hope they keep it up with the great combat animations and stuff, and many of the locations especially the snow places in Elusia, and the Somniel. I hope they use the same team for the next game. One thing I do hope they stop doing though is making the characters have a shared body type. I hate how Boucheron looks normal in his main outfit, but in different outfits you use for him in the Somniel customization, or certain classes makes him look too skinny, and this has always been something I disliked. Even in Fates I hate how they’d remove things like Hinata’s arm scar, or take the muscle from bigger characters, or make smaller characters look too big, or remove specific character traits like scars.
If this is just about combat animations and map aesthetics, sure, I can see it. The animations aren't that big a leap, compared to SoV, but the overall visual design of Engage during the on-map gameplay is pretty great.
But holy hell, the dialogue animations are still just as bad as in 3H, and the scene direction is genuinely bad at times. Any time a baddie escapes being captured/interrogated by slowly running offscreen is hilarious.
But the worst example of this is the end of ch 10, where characters appear and disappear from/into thin air, especially noticible when the game switches between engine and CG cutscenes. Not to mention Veyle becoming a ghost, then telling us she stole the time crystal or the game making a big deal of the party being trapped and cut off from the cathedral's gate by the Hounds, only for the chracters to somehow escape offscreen. I guess it's not strictly a visual problem, but that aspect certainly doesn't help the writing to make me take anything that happens during this emotional climax seriously.
The supports still look cheap and stiff af.
Bruh, if you struggle so much with anything non-combat when it comes to 3D maybe just go back to sprite based presentation for the most part and put effort in the vital story moment? Would save them a lot of embarrassment.
Me personally am a big hater of Engage. But I will not deny that the game has great, polished, and very smooth graphics and visuals that I hope make a return in whatever the next entry is.
Nah I'm the world's biggest engage hater.
the blinking changes expressions
As many issues as I have with Engage, I can’t deny it looks amazing. You can tell the animators really put their all into this game.
not really but ok
Man, honestly, I watch all your Engage videos and find them fascinating, but at the same time, it makes me feel guilty that I could not stomach the story at all and quit after 4 hours when I've been a fan of the series since I played my first game in 2016. It's such a weird feeling.
The gameplay with the emblems and all the skills is super fun though! And I ended up loving a lot of the characters after getting to know them outside the main story, which mostly does them no favours lol (with a few exceptions)
You would not have survived Fates.
@@JF-vz1ju Maybe they did. It's the superior game after all
I hated how engage didn’t have npc solders in the backgrounds three houses felt more like an actual war with all the characters on screen
This! Three houses gave us a big realm feels.
And I hated when they just stood around like idiots
It’s also the main reason why TH animations are so laggy(according to an interview) so please never again
This is enjoyable, well-researched, and informative.
Yes... i have to agree. Engage did look very pleasing to the eye. Maybe the negative things clouded my judgement a bit, but now that i take a step back and try to look at it more objectively, everything looked gorgeous. I'm still not the biggest fan of some character designs, but that's personal.
Awesome video!
Graphically I think Engage looks stunning but its also quite the visual mess ESPECIALLY when it come to character designs. I prefer something more in with the previous entries and not let just throw a bunch of balls together and call it a dress
This game did LOOK and SOUND absolutely magnificently. Sadly, the story didn't get me interested in playing another run
I'm on run no. 10
8:05 "keeping with Unity engine" uhhh...
They need to improve their choreography.
In cutscenes or in battle, cause I wholeheartedly agree for the choreography in cutscenes and supports being just downright weird or odd for certain gestures and movements.
In battle however, all the choreography and animations are smooth, yet rigid at the same time as each strike is impactful and every dodge feels timed to the second.
The attack animation was probably the best aspect of the game. Each hit had weight! The combat was smoother in all aspects. It definitely contributed to my overall enjoyment of the game. I know a lot of people didn’t like the character designs, but I found them really fun, but maybe wish it was a little less saturated. The class designs were fire tho (except for a couple). Models looked good and the animation during the story was probably the only well done part of it 😂
I lol'ed at the statement "Above anything else, the characters should look appealing. Our concept is give them looks that have a sense of real existence to them..." when one of the main problem with FE engage is the character designs overall. They looked appalling , the clothing aren't cohesive and all of them looked out of place.
ALL THE CHARACTERS have MAIN CHARACTER SYNDROME dialled to the max.
I still have that sentiment. Its really weird that people just warmed up to Engage. I couldn't get through the game myself sadly. The artstyle is too offputting for me.
I feel like FEtubers needed to like the Engage to force content out.
Edit: One forgets that this is supposed to be more ancient times. So when designing a character they should look the part. I didn't quite like the academy arc of Three Houses for this reason. Though I would appreciate if they took a step back and gave characters simple yet unique designs. It would be nice to go back to the GBA and SNES era when the characters looked normal. Not overly complicated or imposing with their clothes. You can have normal looking armour that isn't all shoulders either.
I dunno the character designs look kinda.... Ehhhhhh
Cool video! I wonder if Celine's dress was awful to animate as well lol
One thing I REALLY wish Engage had done and hope they do in future entries is use the already existing 2D retro sprites and use them in a more detailed mini map. That'd be rad as hell
On that regard I hope they keep the 3H trend and continue using those 2D sprites, they're charming even if not really necessary
I also really like the character animations for when you are scrolling through menus/ selecting units, and readying a unit for an attack.
They are subtle but a nice touch.
I like how the sound design plays into the visual effects as well, like when a character puts their sword back into they're sheath, which is why I prefer some classes over others, like Diamonts Lord class over his Successor class.
I also prefer his sword crit from the Lord over the Successeur as well.
As a current art student, I've found a whole new appreciation into the process of making art and visuals for things. It's hard to comprehend just how complicated and difficult it can be until you yourself are learning how to do the process.
Three Houses made me a bit worried about the graphical quality but Engage made me more hopeful. I hope they don't confuse disdain for art style for disdain of the graphics in general and keep this process and improve on it.
idk i still much prefer three houses graphics personally, looks a lot less cartoonish and doesnt go over the top with the art style or animations. i think that stuff does work for engage though as its a lot less heavy a game, just not my style
Three houses looked so depressing and ugly. Absolutely not for me.
@@Lookklaus yeah totally, and it is quite a depressing game, but fire emblem does have a good amount of variety so theres usually something for everyone
now they can learn how to write a better story
It looks very good, but my stance is still that the best technical achievements of the franchise in all time was the GBA era, from a reasoning based on these factors: it was a radical departure and a radical improvement over the Snes games; and it matched very well in the technical standards of other Nintendo GBA products of the same time, and the the standards in general GBA products (it could be said to be above average even); and it didnt need a huge jump in hardware capacity, more like the right ideas artistically and the animation talent.
I believe this works better because it leaves little room for fanboy delusions to get too far (that is a problem that i see in a good part of the community). Like some older games in the series just cant be respected for their technical standards if one has his mind open to the context. Like Fire Emblem 3 on the snes is from the same year of Final Fantasy 6, Fire Emblem 4 came after Tactics Ogre, Front Mission, Breath of Fire, etc. Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn are also mediocre for their release date, compared to the standards of other Nintendo products and general gaming. And i wont even talk about the Ds games... those ones have less defenders of their quality even among the fanboys.
So in that sense the franchise's technical standards became overall better since the 3ds era, not looking so much average, in terms of that proposed logic. The Switch games also can be rated pretty well according to that logic, but the GBA games are slightly above to me. But to be fair im also open to arguments in the line of: the early GBA era didnt have strong competition of games pushing ambitious graphical work, compared to Switch library. Indeed there were few games as good looking around the same time like FFTA and Golden Sun, which helped to make the GBA FE stand out a lot.
Aside from the CGI cutscenes, only Fates and Echoes are impressive from a technical standpoint while Awakening isn't. The battle animations are lame, the characters don't have feet, the audio sounds like it's coming out of an A.M. radio, and the whole game looks like it has some weird blur filter over it.
Man I was following you until you said people were worried Koei would develop the next FE, I was under the impression we liked Koei. Did I miss something?
No, I think the next game is gonna be a change of direction. Sure we are going to get fire emblem echoes genealogy of the holy war, but the next mainline entry is going to be hugely different this time it’s not gonna be srpg it’s going to be arpg like Diablo I expect this game to be out by 2027 or 2028 just four years after fe4 remake
What’s weird about Engage for me personally is that I love the graphics and flair and animations, but dislike the art style itself (especially for the characters).
Also hate how the arrows curve 😒
Say what you will about the character designs (I like most of them but I know that’s not the opinion of most people), but the visuals in general look amazing in engage, from the environments to magic effects to critical animations. I hope they bring all of that visual prowess to the next fe game.
The character designs are all good the problem is that half of them don't fit where they're from which is because the lead artist was told to make X number of characters but not told any actual context to fit them into besides the Royals.
not amazing, just mediocre
I was on the fence about getting this game but this makes me think about it from a new perspective> I'm looking forward to trying it out.
Quality? Yes. Art style? Oh God no.
Looking into this game. The only good character designs are the emblem. Which are those that came from the previous generation. The art style of this game is awful. Feels like every character is a drag queen engaging to war(No hate for the drag queens tho just a visual comparison)
@@ron.webdevDrag Queens also know they're supposed to look over the top and flashy, because they're, you know, actually competing, not fighting life or death battles?
Much like the gameplay improvement, flashy animations can't distract me from what an absolute eyesore the character design is. No thanks.
Engage is amazing. Having fiddled with animation a bit in the past, it's one of the things that stood out to me immediately - very *very* few games get their animations working this well. Hope we continue to see this level of quality, even if the artstyle changes going forward. :)
For one I like that they keep changing the design and artstyle of each game. The last 3 main games of the series have had very different artstyles with Fates, Three Houses and Engage all having recognizable and district approaches not only to characters but to armor and even the world itself.
It's fantastic they are improving greatly their 3D animations that have finally reached the point where static 2D portraits are finally obsolete and I'm genuinely looking forward to the next step in the series, which will likely also be very different from what we've seen before.
Nice
The graphics and aesthetics of Engage were always great. It was always something I enjoyed.
But I also enjoy a good story, so... I really don't trust IS to create a good FE story nowdays...
definitel want them to keep the rendering engine and model quality even with the inevitable different artstyle as well as the animation quality for future entries, especially the maps, Three Houses was genuinely an ugly game IMO, even though Engage is the one made in Unity it's 3H that looks like Asset Store dreg.
The animation quality is so much better than 3houses. Its amazing
If you look at the official art work for early Fire Emblem games, let’s say Gaiden for example, most *if* not all the characters had the body type of short torso with long legs - compact body type. But after a bit, the only body types for characters are either the balanced, or long torso with short legs - stretched body types. Wish to see the return of the compact body type.
Oh, no, hard disagree! But I appreciate your justification here!
0:06 It's one of the ONLY things they put efforts in, aside from map and combat.
Really wish they put as much effort on the story, characters and Supports.
Looking forward to the next entry looks like Engage or better, characters are full of life and very expressive, the details in animation are outstanding.
Engage is a incredible looking game
Engage was my first Fire Emblem and I feel like that's put me on a weird footing with FE veterans who romanticise the GBA animations to no end while I actualy prefer Engage's 3D ones lol. I think if the level of quality they went with here is maintained or exceeded then people will begin to come around that 3D's issues are mostly not fundamental and can be solved if they developer will is there.
Also, as a Pokemon enjoyer Game Freak could stand to learn a lot from IS on how to make vibrant and expressive animations like this. There's a lot of parallels to be drawn on how both series' abandoned 2D sprites in the early 2010s for 3D models that frankly just weren't as good to look at.
Be glad you didn’t start with Awakening up to Three Houses. The attack animations when doing a special or super in those titles would pause, cut a character portrait in, then unpause, thus breaking the flow of battle. What Engage did with battle animations was step closer to what they did in the GBA titles, so even fans of the GBA games would appreciate Engage. While I did start with the GBA titles, the two that were localized, I don’t sing their praises at all. I’m just making a comparison...after sitting through the odd choices used in Awakening to Three Houses.
It's because they're only talking about the wacky moves the unit does before they actually land their hits, which is only half of combat. The other half is how the opposite unit reacts to getting hit, and all that happens in the GBA games are they shake a little bit and disappear.
Not very impressive.
The visual design of Engage has really grown on me. At first I thought "this is too much" but now i look at the character art and it feels pretty damn good. Also hell yeah this game has some of the most crisp battle animations in the franchise.
Admittedly, I was a bit put off with Engage's artstyle when it first revealed. However, I was completely on board with it when I started the game. I absolutely love how vibrant everything looks and the visuals are gorgeous! Knowing that the animations included the capes themselves to prevent clipping is such a neat detail. I think Engage really did succeed in translating the GBA visual style of colour into the modern era, and I wanna see it continued.
What about the fact that attack animations are closer to what GBA titles did, and *not* they did in Awakening to Three Houses?
@whitewolf3051 I know that, its just that I'm focusing on Engage's visuals first. It's animations also helped the style shine brighter.
Can’t say the same for the character designs… or the dialogue… or the writing
3D models do a huge disservice to the characters, 2D portraits or models are so much better.