7 Things I Hope Fire Emblem Stops Doing.
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- Опубликовано: 2 июн 2024
- With every new Fire Emblem game, features get added, removed, refined or completely reset. Personally, I never really know what I actually want in Fire Emblem when it comes to a new mechanic. But what this editorial video concerns itself with today is... what are some of these features, mechanics and overall design decisions that the series doesn't need? What practices and the like shouldn't come back? This video focuses on both recent trends from games like Fire Emblem Three Houses and Fire Emblem Engage, as well as long standing practices that still are present in their newer titles.
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Script Writer: Faerghast
Script Editor: Moltz23, Mythril Zenith
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Footage Credits:
@poledoo
@Pheonixmaster1
@AlpaxLP
@SpikeyNDS
@Hawlo
YedKnowsAll / yedknowsall
Fates Class Tree Graphic imgur.com/hnyzhEc
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Intro 00:00
Save Slots 3:15
Reinforcements 4:43
Support Ranks 7:27
Resources 8:40
Gacha 13:25
Reclassing 15:03
Self-Insert 17:54
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Subscribe: goo.gl/1xHJzR
Patreon: / ghastpatreon
Twitter: / ghaaast
Instagram: / kdmey776
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#fireemblem #fireemblemengage #fireemblemthreehouses 
Игры
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Does shez count as a self insert? And how do you feel about her?
I WISH they would make someone like the Original Marvel's Punisher from our world, who ends up in one of the Fire Emblem worlds! I would love to see him or her beat up the bad guys.
And then interrogate the monsters against their will! That would be very INTERESTING!! Also, the new gameplay would be called, "INTERROGATE THE ENEMY!!"
How does Byleth fare as a self-insert. I think it is nice that there is other reason for his skills other than godhood, that being heritage and years of training and practice
Visually it's fine, but I did not find Zenless Zone Zero's combat to be particularly noteworthy.
wow
I kinda get the self-insert issue. It's too easy to break the immersion if everything revolves around the player too much. Instead of feeling close to the characters, the players will start feeling like the developers are trying to pander to them. Scenes of friendship and companionships can easily feel cringe if the players doesn't buy it.
This. 100%.
I almost died from cringe several times in Engage, my doctor advised me to stop playing entirely if Marth ever looks like he's about to turn to the screen and tell me I'm the Fire Emblem again, and gave me an eppy pen analogue I am supposed to shove into my leg if Framme ever approaches within a 20 foot radius. This also neutered several scenes where people profess their friendship, while all I have seen is a bunch of insincere feeling ass kissing from people I barely know and kinda hate.
These people aren't my friends, they're cultists at best. I don't think I'm paying any of them. It would have been a more interesting story if this was part of the plot, the ethical and existential questions that arise from someone who eminates an aura of brainwashing and mental dominance, and what that does to someone's perspective and personality. Robbing people of their free will just by being near them.
u weird lol@@aprinnyonbreak1290
I will say i did enjoy Byleth atleast
Byleth and Alear were the biggest problems of this writing, honestly. The latter had SOME potential with the Fell Dragon blood, but honestly the plot would have been way more interesting if the game started you off as a full Fell Dragon (with memories, no more amnesia please) having to earn the trust of characters who probably hate you on sight. And Byleth had no potential, they suck. Shez is probably the best protag we've had since Robin.
Yeah it gets to the point where the actual in-game characters are overshadowed by the self insert.
Number 8: Stop not revealing the FE4 remake
Still think that's going to be censored.
@@Rabbitlord108definitely, if not by the Devs, then by the disgusting dub team, look what they did to engage
No this is actually perfectly fine. It doesn't need one.
This
THIS IS THE TRUEST ANSWER
We know it is coming, just announce it already! I don’t care how far away it is, just solidify the hopes!
I personally liked that some supports in 3H only went up to B rank, it showed that not everyone you cross paths with will really be compatible with you and vice-versa, which fits the themes really well and in a more interesting way than simply making it so some people can't support at all.
Agreed i also loved how you could pair off everyone
Yeah, I think it is quite the opposite from what FG presented. Modern Fire Emblem has a serious support bloat problem. The amount of redundant and pointless support scenes in 3H and Engage is extreme. Support quality can be improved by just having fewer of them.
I made a lot of sense with say, Sylvain, the gigolo that can only bond beyond B with only a handful of female units
and I vastly prefer it to Engage's X and Y units just never talk
I like that not all suport reach A because it's feel natural everyone can't get along well
Look Hubert for an example he don't have suport at all with others class because he only care about Edelgard and peoples who's gonna become the future of the Kingdom and I like that
Something I wish 3 houses did was make some support levels different if you do them pre or post timeskip.
Also, regular frustration that FE9 did supports perfectly, with the battles per rank mechanic allowing them to be sure that certain plot developments would happen before certain conversations, thus conversations could reference the plot
Another thing about self inserts is the inability to have voice actors say your characters name. Nothing infuriates me more than watching them try to dance around it lol
Hey... You! You're the best tactician in the whole world, and half of the army wants to have your children!
Or have the inability to say an emblem rings name (chapter 23 I think it was.) When I learned that the characters did not have unique conversations with their own emblems and was written in a way where the same character will say the same thing no matter which emblem you pick up. THAT pissed me off! I mean, how hard is it to have the VA's read a couple of names? The VA's in 3H voiced every single line in the game! What is Engages excuse? The VA's don't even read text outside of battle. It's just lazy if I'm going to be honest (Not the VA's fault by the way. They were probably instructed to do this.)
An easy workaround is having their name be voiced out if you set the name to the default. That way for those who don't like the whole avatar system can just roll with the default and the game treats them like a normal character instead
This is the main reason I like RPG games where you can't name/customise your character (FFXII and on, Xenoblade series, etc)
@@binxthebinx6575 3 Hopes was likely affected by the Pandemic, and Engage didn't want effort in anything except SOME aspects of the gameplay
The fun and frustrating thing about the Fire Emblem series is that, as much as people like to talk about the direction the series is going, as far as I can tell, the series has never had a "direction" in its entire life. Every aspect of the game, from the writing, to the unit progression, to the map design, to ancillary elements, zig zags wildly from one game to the next. The range of quality in writing is especially unpredictable from one game to the next, or even from one route to the next in the same game. On the one hand, that means that an especially disappointing game doesn't put a damper on my hopes for the next one, but on the other hand, if a game is really good, I can't trust that I won't hate the next one.
RE: Supports. It's funny hearing you say that there shouldn't be partial supports, but that all supports should be full length. I just watched an entire video about how support convos should be removed from the game entirely.
I think one of the challenges facing FE is that different people come to it for different experiences. Some come to it for the strategy, and wish the game would pull back on the elements not directly relevant to unit improvement. I came to it because it was the first strategy game I encountered where individual units were characters instead of canon fodder, and I love all the "filler" stuff that just focuses on character development. But being a software developer myself, I'm sensitive to the logistical challenges of making compelling conversations for every paring of characters (which I think is probably the reason behind the shorter convos).
I find it weird why fire emblem does not do their own super robot wars original lol they could and be hype
There's an easy compromise: Separate the support mechanic from the support convos, like 3 Hopes already did. Then you don't have to make any filler support convos and make only the ones that actually have some substance of any kind. The extra budget can then also be put into giving those characters more story / event / exploration conversations that aren't restricted to being just 1on1 and having to be disconnected from the story like supports which can happen any time.
@@sunkeyavad6528 warriors did that too. everyone could support everyone, but a select few had an A+ support instead of an A support, the only difference being that A+ would trigger a conversation
@@sunkeyavad6528 Radiant Dawn had supports be 100% a gameplay mechanic, while characterization was handled by base conversations instead
@@sunkeyavad6528 that's not an easy compromise, I liked that the 2 were tied together
I'd like to point out that Three Houses *also* starts with the MC sleeping and waking up with someone nearby.
Granted, I'd argue it's even more natural than even Awakening's, because it's Byleth's father that's nearby, not two strangers that are having a conversion about finding you just lying on the ground, in the middle of a road.
Also, Byleth gets woken up because they're a mercenary being told to get ready for a job, and not concerned about if you're in a coma or not, or getting creepily woken up and receiving very awkward praise
yeah and byleth is in like an inn or some other kind of housing too
I'm right there with you in not wanting self-inserts. Robin and Shez are my favorite "avatar" characters because they still just feel like part of their army despite their powers.
Yeah they have a clear personality and takes. Kris counts too
While others seem more containers of the player and little else. Corrin (in Fates, FEW helped some) and Byleth (3 hopes did improve things a bit)
Everyone in Three Hopes treats Shez like a friend, and not like a super cool awesome person like all of the other avatars (for the most part.)
Admittedly, I have a soft spot for all of them, but I'd be lying if I said that Shez wasn't easily the best one.
I just hate the incessant jerking off of the player that keeps happening in these kinds of games, not restricted to, but done especially badly in Fire Emblem. If the avatar could just be like, a guy in the group, I wouldn't even care, the fact that they are not only the most important character, but usually have some stupid, cosmic importance nonsense stapled to them makes me just utterly despise them.
Alear is by far the worst, I didn't believe they could make a protagonist I hated more than Corrin, but they succeeded. Even Kris is pushing it, but is at least stomachable, because ultimately he's just a weirdly talented normie.
If Marth ever turns to the screen and tells me I am the Fire Emblem again, I'm boycotting the series on principle, I can't take it, it was almost fatal the first time.
I will say, on Byleth, I really, really appreciate that not everyone is protagonist-sexual. There's characters, like Hilda, Petra, or Felix that can go gay, just not for you. I wish this would be expanded on more, with characters that won't pair ending/S-support/whatever with the protagonist despite, y'know, being opposite gender, but I think there would be aneurisms if there was a female character that couldn't be waifu'd so...
I do not consent to Fire Emblem touching me anymore. Hands to yourself, Intelligent Systems.
I'm really still amazed how well Robin worked as an avatar. He felt malleable enough be a self-insert, but also had just enough traits to still be seen as his own character. He was talented both in story and gameplay which indulges a power fantasy for the player, without it feeling like everyone was just throwing themselves at his feet - I guess the difference between him and avatars like Corrin is not really how much of a Mary/Gary Stu they are, but how other people react to them for it. I think he was greatly aided by Awakening's overall tone though, which was pretty non-serious a lot of the time (especially in supports, where Robin interacts the most).
Incomplete support ranks was one of the best things 3H offered. Some people are simply close enough to be friendly with one another, but not close enough to share a kind of deep bond. That support system reflected this extremely well, and also made the supports they had generally flow much better. No need to artificially prolong a discussion just to reach rank A, or to force an unneeded third dialogue when things were already resloved well enough by B rank
Which is funny because sometimes these characters would have a B+ support which means 3 convos anyway...
Yes. And the inclusion of up to 4, or 3 but not an A as the previous commenter mentioned, just shows the writers’ grasp on the characters and the time they need to portray them without the necessity to write an ending for them all
There were definitely some that didn't make sense. Felix and Lysithea didn't need an A support, but Sylvain said Hilda did.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 Nah, Sylvain having a ton of supports stopping at B makes perfect sense. Sylvain has the highest number of supports that just stop at B on purpose, because he doesn't open up and deeply trust others easily, especially not women.
The one that REALLY doesn't make sense is him and Dimitri not having an A support. That's literally his king and his childhood friend.
@@Liezuli That's not what I was saying, I said only those 2 supports don't make sense
I assume that "incomplete" supports were intended to let the team write supports between more characters who wouldn't otherwise get one. I also like that not every relationship is defined by exactly three conversations. Idk, maybe it's actually viable to give every pair 3-4 or 5 conversations.
To add something to the self-insert point : ever since the game is voiced, they had to come up with ways other characters can refer to the main character since their name can be whatever your want. This works, most of the time, but there's some where it feels weird, like Gerald and Lumera never calling their own child by their name...
(I know it's not stricly a FE problem, every game with a choice of name and voiced lines has it, but it's still relevant)
If I hear fucking “divine one” one more goddamn time I’m gonna put a hole through my tv
Sometimes it works yeah like the students calling Byleth professor, but when other teachers or even Rhea calls them professor it gets weird (such as in that moment in Crimson Flower with Rhea), Engage get away with it better though for some reason the name you choose is written in the text but not said out loud, almost like Alear being named how you want was a last minute choice (and it visibly was)
Early in Three Houses Rhea calls Byleth "it." That one irks me the most.
@@redfoxoffire yeah that one’s off though you could argue Rhea doesn’t really see Byleth as a person and rather a vessel for Sothis, aka an object.
And unlike the critically acclaimed MMO FFXIV which lets you play the award winning Heavensward expansion up to level 70 with no restrictions on playtime, they can't just call you "Adventurer" when talking to you.
Supports not going to A was important in 3H: It signaled "These characters don't have an ending together". I suppose they could resurrect A+ or B+ supports for that role, but it wasn't without merit.
And on "incomplete supports", the 3H system also allowed for up to 6 conversations. No one got more than 5 but changing the limits from a set 3(+1 for romance) to 2-5 really makes a difference in the pacing allowed. Some pairings end as friends, some wary understanding, some as life partners or lovers. Not all of those need the same breadth of conversations, especially with often arbitrary cutoff points. GBA at least had the excuse of them being battlefield conversations; sometimes Fates characters will literally just end their conversation for no reason other than they've reached a third of the total script. With the 3H system, you can just have them need to build up to the second level before they start their soul-baring conversations, or really take their time and have 3 surface-level talks before they get to the deep stuff.
This is something I liked about it, yeah. It's technically bad from a support bonuses perspective, but the saying "less is more" truly is a thing. We don't get annoying filler conversations like Engage had, which is nice. Perhaps this issue of supports could be fixed by making every character able to reach A with every other character they can support with, but not every rank will have conversations, just like Three Houses.
Thus, it is still a step up from Engage, where everyone has supports that go up to A...but only Alear has any paired endings.
That was one of the WORST decisions in the game.
Shez is a great self insert because he actually has a good character and the world isn’t centered around him. His role in the story is his rivalry with Byleth while the main story is centered around the lords and the war. And plus he isn’t treated like this holy amazing person being worshipped by the entire cast and having the world centered around them like Corrin, Alear, and Byleth in 3 Houses. Byleth was done SOOOO MUCH BETTER in Three Hopes. Shez is kinda similar to Robin minus the customization of appearance.
Avatars should have the customization of appearance like Corrin and Robin but their roles in the story and interactions with the cast should be similar to Shez or Kris. And have freedom with how you want them to be in battle like classes.
This. But I still want main characters again who aren’t avatars.
Maybe an optional avatar who either just does tactics or who’s role in the story is a footsoldier without too much sway over the main character
Shez was also great cause his archtype stood in sheer contrast to most of the people in that world, the most common persona ever hanging out with the lords and they explore that, which is the real issues with self inserts. its cool to customise someone but they tend to be very shallow and bland, giving the characters nothing to bounce off of so they sit there going "yeah true" (though id say Robin does enough to be interesting on their own)
Shez was awesome
I don’t think Byleth is worshipped so much as the people around him grow to respect him, which is totally fair after we presumably play his tactics well and earn respect. Also because he’s just a strong unit. There’s also plenty of characters that don’t compliment him at all, or are straight up rude to him. The world is also more surrounding the three lords and the goddess more than it is Byleth, he’s just often caught in the crossfire because of the procedure done with Sothis’ heart
Do they even qualify as a self-insert? What's the difference to a lord like Sigurd then if they're just a full fledged character?
On class openness, I think the best strategy is to make it more restricted like fates or whatever on a new game BUT to blow it all open and allow anyone to be anything in new game+, they should also add a option to either randomise everyone or to pick everyone’s starting classes and growths in new game + too. Cause that’s what new game+ is there for no? To allow people to break the game and make some fun wacky builds.
If they give everyone one secondary class like in Fates, having an option for NG+ where everyone starts in their secondary class instad of their main class could make for fun challenge runs.
And it should also be way easier to implement than a full on randomizer while still offering a lot of replayability.
Great idea
i only accept that if game easy and new game is where ur just cheating with new op broken classes lmfao
Using good classes cheating@@ericx6969
I would like them to make the character models have actual designs on reclass instead of just reskin everyone with the same armor.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think a lot of this boils down to “Limit me because I’m not willing to play the game sub-optimally.” Fire Emblem to me has always been an example of the Fight Club line, “you decide your own level of involvement.”
I don’t grind exp, but I’m glad the option is there. I didn’t just pick the Uber classes in 3H but I’m glad the option was there. I didn’t really get into Engage and by the end I just wanted it to be over so I was glad to have options to make it easier.
Likewise I ignored the rewind mechanic on certain play throughs but I wouldn’t dream of wanting the option gone for others.
I agree. I think that giving the player options is rarely a bad idea. People that don't like them can simply not use them if they are implemented, but people who do like them cannot do the opposite.
Take Pokemon as an example. Nuzlocke's only ever became so famous because they are tied to the personal challenges that each player decides to add to them
"Limit me because I'm not willing to play the game sub-optimally."
... On the one hand, feels a bit like an exaggeration, but then I see people complain that turnwheel exist and then say something like "Was Casual Mode not enough?" Which just feels
Weird?
Okay, maybe YOU don't want it, but do you need to act like people that DO like it have something wrong with them? Why not just have options to do things like turn it off in the settings? Maybe you can say "No turnwheel" When you first make a file and then you just, never get the mechanic? I feel like that's so much easier and less annoying than trying to somehow pander to both sides? I feel like people need to calm down about all these "Issues" But at the same time they need to talk about them MORE because most of the talk can boil down to "Don't like it" or "Like it" Sometimes with literally no other information...
@@baxterbruce9827 I like to quote that one Doom Eternal tweet when it comes to these things:
"You choose the buttons you press"
like it is literally entirely optional, at no point in any game are you _forced_ to use a Turnwheel mechanic, you're just given the option to do so.
@@apossiblyhereticalalphaleg3595 I've been saying that a while, just... Stop, you don't need to use anything you think makes the game too easy
People also realize that usually, relying on a lot of these options makes your game harder in a way.
Biggest being: Casual. If you play Classic, resetting, playing safe, you will always have a strong team. But if you just bum rush the game work Casual, you are guarantee to have a team with a few under leveled units.
Another thing I hope they stop is trying to integrate the turn-wheel/rewind mechanic into the plot.
Not only does it end up sparsely used anyway, it opens up major plot holes.
Echoes did it fine with basically affirming that neither lords had any active control over it.
Echoes was the originator of the Mechanic and they did it the best, but I still see people mostly refer to it as anything BUT Turnwheel and it irks me to no end
I completely agree.
I wouldn’t mind it in the plot if they made it significantly less useful, being able redo several turns is too much. Plus in Engage, Alear doesn’t actually act like anything happened - if he’s going to time travel he should be aware of stuff that happened during the rewritten time. Wondering if some sort of penalty could be implemented where the MC gets weakened or risks dying the more the wheel is used.
3 Houses atleast "Tried" to give a reasonable explanation. With divine pulse being limited in use due to Sothis's weakened state. And only being able to truly rewind 30 seconds or so. But failed horribly in actually keeping that in tact since you can rewind multiple turns. Which is definitely past Sothis's 30 second rule
Its also only brought up once in the entire story with Jeralt being backstabed. Why didn't Byleth use this more times in the story if its shown they can, and alot of problems could be resolved with a quick 15 second rewind
@@Yarharsuperpirate I'd say that's because they couldn't have an organic way to both:
a) Have Byleth directly witness Jeralt's death.
and
b) Make it impossible for Byleth to prevent it.
I'd say that's something Three Hopes did better through one simple concession: Byleth *WASN'T THERE* to prevent Jeralt's death, being at a different part of the battlefield than Jeralt and only finding out what happened when it's too late for Sothis to do anything to prevent it.
5:28 Correction to make here: Conquest endgame reinforcements are not ambush spawns. They blend into the terrain but they do not ambush you. The only ambush spawn in all of base Fates is the Xander squad on Chapter 12 of Birthright.
You could also count the Chapter 18 reinforcements in Birthright but they spawn from tiles that are pre-marked as locations for Faceless to spawn.
of course you only talk about conquest. You never shut up about it, kiddo
If they bring back the rewind turn feature I just hope it's just a gameplay thing. Having the mc be able to actually rewind time ruins so many moments of the story.
personally I liked the incomplete support system. Yeah sometimes it caused annoying cases like Sylvain, but it also made for good character interactions that knew when to start and when to end (like Seteth and Felix, or Alois and Dimitri for example). I feel like FE has a huge problem of having every support go up to A, which causes some supports to just feel like complete filler and do nothing for the characters or for the player.
I like the idea of a self insert who isn't plot critical, and represents you as a sort of fly on the wall witnessing the story from your perspective, which would ideally combine with supports that you have a greater degree of control over as they relate to you specifically. You get to craft your own micro story within the larger narrative, essentially.
Marc perfectly describes the first half of that
Food for thought: what if there were no Byleth in 3H? Upon starting a new game, you were presented with Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude, along with a short summary of their personality and history, and then had to choose one? Instead of the same prologue, you got a few scenes and maybe a battle in their childhood (think Echoes) to set up their character motivations and get the player invested in them. Then, even if the events of Part 1 play out exactly the same as the real game, you'd have vastly different perspectives on the events. You'd be in on Edelgard's conspiracy from the start, watching her struggle with the choices she's reluctant to make. You'd have a first-person perspective of Dimitri struggling with his inner darkness. You could play Claude trying to piece together the mysteries and subtly trying to ferret out the secrets and influence events toward his goals. You wouldn't have as much leeway as a self-insert, but with three vastly different viewpoints you'd still have a good chance for every player to have a favorite they identify with the most.
Perhaps the player could still keep a certain level of influence on personality and playstyle: when selecting Edelgard, for example, you could get a choice of two or three styles of play (she does have a hidden talent in magic, after all, so maybe she could be pushed toward mage, general, or great knight 'paths') and you'd still have control of her dialogue choices: is she wholly unrepentant about what she feels she needs to do, or is she swallowing the guilt at every step? Maybe those choices don't matter at all beyond flavor, like the real 3H; maybe the devs push a little more depth into them and have other characters react to the personality you've chosen (enemy Dimitri is maddened and hateful of unrepentant Edelgard but expresses a wistful regret about the coming battle if Edelgard chose to be consistently humane); maybe we leap full into the crazy end of story development and allow forks in the story road (such as allowing an Edelgard who has made the proper choices the option to fill Claude in about Those Who Slither and recruit him to undermine them, a route that isn't possible if he doesn't trust her intentions).
I dunno. The problem I've always had with complete player freedom is that, ironically, it limits story creativity. If you're going to have one protagonist who fits into each story branch, that protagonist either needs to have a multiple choice past (in which case they're basically completely separate characters anyway) or those branches can't enjoy as much deviation as they could otherwise. If you're going to give the player complete control of the protagonist's personality and choices, then the rest of your cast and plot by necessity have to have vastly simplified interactions with them. I've been thinking lately that the better option is to compromise between story depth and player choice: instead of one freeform player avatar, build a few well-defined choices with some wiggle room. Three protagonists with a few class options each and three variations of the same core personality would still offer a lot of diversity of choice and replay value without over-limiting what you could write for them.
What you've just described is the Baldurs Gate 3 Origin characters.
@@bhume7535Yeah, sounds about right. I was thinking of Dragon Age: Origins, but you're right, Baldur's Gate took the same idea and ran even further with it.
If the issue is not knowing what your units will be, just do what Fates did.
They can keep Byleth they just have to write them as an actual character with set identity and restrain other big character aggressions like house recruitment that hurt the cast’s writing for the sake of justifying a game mechanic by making Byleth the sole reason of staying, which honestly could mean a more organic and stronger place for the characters in the cast and fixing the emotional scenes that get completely ruined by Byleth (biggest example being Dimitri’s wake up call after Rodrigue’s death). Basically just make Byleth another character in the game with no special treatment outside controlling them in the Monastery and picking paths, set gender, name, birthday (they already got this tbh), a personality, voiced dialogue, supports from C to A like the rest and ending working just the same
I thought Byleth was fun. The lords are the ones important to the plot. Byleth gets all the "OMG YER SO KEWL", thats true, but the driving motivations of each story are because of the house lords. Byleth plays the role of advisor, mentor, strategist and pope basically by the end. Byleth is the most literal interpretation of an avatar as well. Byleth's main characteristic is "Avatar of a god made flesh, dancing to the tune of a bored playful god." Byleth isnt the self-interst, Sothis is. Sothis is depicted as a playful, bored, child, who also happens to be a creator god with unlimited power. Sothis represents the player. Byleth is the character Sothis uses to interact with the world. When Byleth and Sothis merge it's because YOU take Sothis' place, so the fantasy is already set in your mind, so Sothis just fucks off basically, her narrative role fulfilled.
I just want the Avatar worshipping to stop.
one of my favourite things in fe the protagonist is saposed to be one of the most important people not a nobady
@@konstantinos-iliasstrempas4594 Awakening did that well with Robin, they're one of the most important characters in the story but everyone doesn't suck up to them and act unnatural to them like Corrin and Alear has going for them.
Best avatar is fe12
@@thefreshvince879 Blazing Blade did it best. You're just a strategist and an onlooker in the story.
What about Byleth? Sure his/her students worship him, but he/she is their teacher. A student is supposed to look up to their mentor. Although the whole relationship between Byleth and the Black Eagle/Blue Lions/Golden Deer/Ashen Wolves students can be considered grooming. I guess Byleth’s relationship with one of the teachers, Shamir for example, is more appropriate.
I really liked that supports in Three Houses could be anywhere from 2 to 4 conversations, rather than forcing every single pair into a three converastion mold.
About the self insert issue I think the best way to handle it would be making an avatar's behavior an actual reflection of the player's, via some sort of personality test at the beginning of the game similar to games like The 7th Stand User, where there are 18 or so possible personalities your character can have that would influence their dialogue and even gameplay throughout the playthrough.
Fire Emblem could benefit from this because it could make supports with the self insert feel more than one sided, and it could make it more interesting to initially force the player's character into a specific class with varied bases and growths based on personality, so they don't feel like a god who can master anything and have great potential in everything for no reason, they'd be equal to other units in that regard, and it could also make for good replay value to try a different personality with different stats and classes each time.
i really think the best avatar is shez. they’re such a unique character that has an outlook and opinion to provide to each route without overtaking the role of main character
Not to mention that Shez has an ACTUAL personality that isn't wood, compared to Byleth.
@@TheChildofAuraReborn And also isn't silent, meaning people can actually have a normal conversation with them, instead of talking awkwardly and immerions-breakingly around their silence.
Byleth in 3Houses should have been non-silent like in 3Hopes, imo. Then they also could have showed that Byleth warming up part.
Shez is also rare in consistently being a bit goofy. Other Self-Insert characters have a tendency to go from casual and easygoing to serious, confident, and hypercompetent without either state feeling connected to the other.
Shez has a wider range of emotions (anger, fear, joy, satisfaction), but these are all fairly grounded. Shez is extremely good at bonking people and decent at tactics, but openly admits to being somewhat uneducated (compared to the nobles) and less gifted at stuff like logistics and strategy due to lack of experience. When Shez says they’d rather be eating a good meal and getting drunk, it’s believable and consistent with the character, as opposed to Byleth or Alear trying to be relatable. Despite being explicitly superhuman, Shez is far more down to earth than most of the SIs, who frequently come off with “how do you do, fellow humans.”
Yep, completely agree. Shez played a supporting role, and you got to make meaningful choices (i.e., to maintain the rivalry with Byleth) and had realistic yet constrained ranges of choices and personality. Corrin and Alear on the other hand lack this entirely, and the games suffer for it
Shez is also a lot more vulnerable. A lot of Avatars like Alear and Byleth story-wise are treated like unstoppable meat grinders that plow through everything but the most tense of moments, Shez definitely doesn't win all their confrontations, especially early on. It feels like you can lose without the story telling you you're going to lose.
Honestly, i feel like Three Houses would have been even better if Byleth weren't a self-insert. I mean, we see how much they struggle with showing emotion and conversing in Three Hopes. It would have been cool to see their arc as they interact with the students, face off against TWSITD, and give their opinion on the ensuing war. Although, the house choosing and S supports, that I would still leave up to the player.
Three hopes Bylth left a great impression on me, then I found out they weren’t like that in three houses
Small correction for the ambush spawn section
Awakening Hard is when Ambush spawns start (they’re only absent in normal)
Fates doesn’t have ambush spawns at all in Conquest, only 2 technicalities in BR, CQ endgame doesn’t have ambush spawns
I hope they stop making the turn back time mechanic part of the story. That's an extremely OP power hard to write out of the story again, always begging the question "Why didn't the main character just turn back them when [bad event X] happened." It can just be a mechanic the player has, without it existing anywhere in the story.
Echoes made it so from a story POV the Lords didn't actually have control of it, which I feel is better than what they did with Divine Pulse and the Time Crystal
Edit: Now that I think about it, it was also at least in theory possible for Alm to MISS the Turnwheel
Amusingly, they did a better job putting it in the story when you *DON'T* have access to it by default.
Like how they handled the "Byleth couldn't save Jeralt" aspect better in 3 Hopes by simply having Byleth be too far away from Jeralt to do anything about his death. In fact, by the time Byleth realized that his/her dad was dead, it was far too late to do anything about it.
I feel like a way to excuse it would just be to say its us planning it out in our head, therefore instead of being rewinding time its just our leader going 'no that wouldn't work' job done
My personal gripe is they should stop making stories with multiple routes if they don't have the time and budget to do so. Fates and Three Houses suffer terribly from repetitive story beats and poorly explored plotlines because instead of devs and writers using multi-routes as an opportunity to explore different perspectives and add new things, they just rehash stuff in different coats of paint and obscure plotpoints for one route to show in the other to gouge players to do other routes and go through the repeated stuff again. Three Houses is especially egregious for the crime of teasing Death Knight but didn't even give him a real story until a patch update. Even Nergal and Sephiran's backstories are in the initial game, and their games don't get anywhere near the amount of budget and resources Three Houses gets.
A note about ambush reinforcements: While they are very unpredictable they can be counted on to at least get a turn before the player gets to act. Other reinforcements can more easily be spawn killed by the player. From a designers perspective this is a useful quality. I think you could get the best of both worlds if you simply telegraphed the arrival of ambush reinforcements with visual indicators on the players turn before the reinforcements appear. This would make them less surprising while still letting the reinforcements act before the player.
That makes me think of Mario & Rabbids Kingdom Battle where you would see the enemy's rabbit ears sticking out of the ground the turn before they joined the fight, and then they'd pop out of the ground and move before you could attack them. I thought that worked pretty well for making the reinforcements possible to plan around without being trivialized.
This.
The problem with ambush spawns is more the trial and error of it. You just suddenly die because the game developers said so.
If there's an indication that it's coming, it's fine, because you can take precautions and plan around it, which is the point of a strategy game. Even if you are suspicious of ambush spawns because they're incessant in the game, that doesn't help you because you can't plan around literally any unit coming out of literally anywhere while doing literally anything else
This.
Xcom 2 actually did this, the visual indicators are a god send since it is the difference between life and death.
Exactly what I thought. The question then would be how best to telegraph them and accomplish that goal of having a unit that is guaranteed to move before the player but give them enough information to plan around it.
I could imagine showing silhouettes of the enemies that are going to spawn and attack during the next enemy phase. Perhaps justify it in-universe by tying it to something like the draconic time crystal, where it gives the player character limited clairvoyance about units that are about to ambush them, appearing as silhouettes/shadows just before. Then there'd have to be a way to prevent players from blocking their spawns, perhaps by forbidding units to stand on tiles that are about to be ambush spawned.
I've always felt odd about the avatars but couldn't put it to words. I'm glad you could summarize and explain your points so well
I think with regards to the Self-Insert problem, the main issue stems from the idea that the avatar character needs to be as generic as possible or with a nonexistant backstory to easily relate to. FE12 I think had a good way of circumventing this, with the questions you answer at the start of the game allowing you to somewhat customize your avatar's backstory or motivations, despite these choices barely impacting the game's script at all. If we could get something like that but more fleshed out, or with a bigger impact on character interaction, that would add so much replayability to a Fire Emblem game. For example, you decide to play as an avatar who is a Mage and is passionate about reading books, you could maybe have a special interaction with another studious character in your army, just as a throwaway line of dialogue in a support. Little things like that would make a new avatar character so much deeper.
Maybe I'm just spoiled by how deep Baldur's Gate 3 lets you customize your generic avatar character in a story sense, but I'm just dying for Fire Emblem to have a real, customizable avatar again since Fates.
I never liked the self-insert in any form of media not because I don’t like being pandered too, but because the moment the self-insert does something I wouldn’t do the illusion is broken and now I’m left with this weird narrative thing that doesn’t feel real.
I may not have agreed with Marth, Ike or Micaiah on a consistent basis but that’s fine because they’re their own person, not the person I’m meant to be projecting onto
Heavy agree on the self inserts. Fates i would say is the worst with it because at least in Engage other characters will at least talk about their own issues with the rest of the cast. I will never forgive Camilla and Ryoma's support in Revelations because its literally two nobles whose countries have hated each other for years and instead of talking about that, they just talk about Corrin and how apparently thats the only thing they have in common. The convo literally starts with Camilla admitted shes only talking to Ryoma because Corrin wants them to get along.
I don't know if you have played Conquest too, but obsessing over Corrin is Camilla's "quirk" if that makes any sense, which makes her my least favorite character between the noir siblings. Literally all the royals go through some sort of development during the main story...except Camilla and that shows during most of her supports. I haven't really tried to go through many of the supports in Revelations, but in Conquest I know that Xander, Leo and Elise have a ton of good ones that do at least address things about their relationship, but I will say this. I did get A support with Xander and Ryoma and literally all they talk about is protecting Corrin and not at all about their countries. So I guess it is a little bit of both things, but we can both agree that Revelations os the worst fire emblem game right?
@@binxthebinx6575 camilla would be a much better character if she just stopped doting on corrin like that. she is already a complete character without that quirk. a broken woman with a messed up past exploring how depraved the nohrian royal court really was. taking on a doting mother figure persona for her younger siblings to cope with her own mommy issues. that in itself is enough to make her engaging. yet the excessive focus on fanservice and the sheer amount of doting she does on corrin completely ruins her as a character
on a similar note, i have that same issue with nina. she is one of the most interesting characters in the game, doing a shady job for a good cause, and having an estranged relationship with her father where both sides make a good point. despite this, she gets reduced to a one-dimensional yaoi shipper whenever she makes an appearance, especially in crossover material. remove that quirk and she becomes a much better character overall, because then she is allowed to be an actual person and not a bland stereotype
@@Underworlder5 That's fair. The truth is I would probably like Camilla more if she wasn't mainly pushed out the door due to fan service. Why do you think they chose Camilla as DLC over any of the other Noir siblings? The argument will probably be "well we don't have a weavern rider ring" which...sure fine, but even still. She is the only character from Conquest that has been in three consecutive games and I just feel the other siblings at least deserve something. Mostly Xander though as he seems to always get pushed aside in favor of Camilla--
But we don't talk about Hoshido. By Engages logic, there not worth representing (as in IS knows Birthright is the least liked out of the two games.)
@@Underworlder5Actually It would be good If Camilla's arc was exploring how her obssession with Corrin is due to her childhood trauma and in the end she manages to overcome it or at least work more on overcoming it.
@@binxthebinx6575 Let's just be honest she's solely there for fan service. That's Camilla's role in the game entirely. Or for people who like the Tsundere trope, they have Hinoka. A number of characters are very fan servicey. But none more than Camilla
19:45 100% agree. People need to remember that not everybody even does *self-inserting.* I for example have never done that every in any game or other fiction. I just don't do it. That character is not me. I'm just controlling them. Because of that self-inserts are just always jarring and immersion breaking for me.
Another thing that many writers writing these self-inserts can often not stop themselves from doing is constantly stroking the ego of that self-insert. Constantly overpraising them, and making evt about them. That too is not something everybody likes. Again myself included for both not wanting my ego stroked and also again finding it immersion breaking for its unrealism and artificially nerfing other characters in the story, just so it can be the great self-insert hero yet again, who does the thing, even if it would make way more sense for another character to do that.
I agree. I'm bored of seeing everyone being so nice to the avatar. I mean no one can get along with everybody! And why should I be so important for everyone?
And besides giving some characterization to the main character doesn't prevent some kind of self insert if I want (since I control the character), but I also get a real character if I don't want to self insert.
This, plus often the self-insert is very different from me anyway so it doesn’t work. Alear’s way of talking to people and his interests and fears are not mine, so it’s weird that the game tries to treat me like I’m him (or her).
I know what you mean. I love Xenoblade Chronicles one, but if I imagine shulk being replaced by a self insert I would hate it, cuz I love seeing a good story but not want to be in it
@@theloverofnothing7120 I couldn't agree more on this one! Shulk is a very good character, it would be a shame to lose his reactions and fire.
And him not being a self insert doesn't prevent me from feeling close to the characters of the party.
@@theloverofnothing7120 That's funny because they do that in Xenoblade Chronicles X and as someone who played it. I personally did not care for the game in general and I think a lot of other people felt the same way as it's the only Xenoblade game not currently on the switch.
100% agree on the open class system, part of the fun of the 3ds games was how even conceptually similar characters were unique in what classes and skills they had access too. It was a good experiment in three houses, but I just don't think it's as fun as fates and awakening.
personally i found the open classes more fun, but that's because that's just how i like it, i like having whatever options i want
@@lejon73Casual gaming is fine, but I don't think casual gaming should be included in a STRATEGY GAME WHERE YOU HAVE TO THINK
@@waddledottz i respectfully disagree, fire emblem having sstems for more casual players makes it far more accessible to more players, if you don't like open classes, that's fine, nobody will force you to have them anything other than the classes you want them, and fire emblem having more casual options, such as no longer forcing permadeath, has done nothing but boost it's popularity overall, ,i can see why you'd not be fond of it, but the game never forces you to use it, and does make it so that if you want to be challenged and limited you can, because the options to make it more casual are all optional, meaning it's that kind of mentality that's kinda restrictive to people who just want to enjoy the game casually, especially since it can still be enjoyed in the classic and more strategically challenging way
@@waddledottz I wouldn't bring that up with FE, it is very toned down compared to lots of tactics games.
From stuff like the Free counters or due to having limited class pools it encourages the devs to design the world around the classes you must have and the spread you must have. In turn meaning you don't have to think as you will naturally be forced into having the solution.
Tactics Ogre, FFT, Fell Seal, or many others all have some of the hardest fights in Tactical RPGs because you have to use strategy and some fights become impossible if you don't make use of the free systems. You actually have to figure out the solution as opposed to having a set few to choose from.
I think it should be a new game plus option
On the subject of Avatar characters, I feel the way it’s handled in Engage is both weird, but I also enjoy it
Like Alear is very much their own character, they have their own thoughts and emotions, there’s no dialogue choices, and basically no customization aside from their class (which goes for every character) I simply can’t imagine anyone ACTUALLY self inserting on Alear. Which feels confusing as to why you’re able to set their name in the first place
From that standpoint, I really like Alears character. They’re pretty simple, sure, but I enjoy the way they interact with all these characters that are super obsessed with them. It’s a comment I see often, “Alear is the only normal person in a cast full of insane people” and I think that has a lot of comedic value, which makes Alear pretty endearing in my eyes as their own character. I don’t insert onto Alear and think “this game is weird for sucking me off”, rather, I think “Oh these are funny supports seeing how this basic person handles all these people going crazy over them.” It’s almost like it’s an intentional spin on the self insert trope, or perhaps that’s just me coping with the bad writing in Engage
honestly, i got a chuckle at the beginning of the game when alear first meets the corrupted. it seems like a perfect setup for a fight, and what does alear do? run away. oddly amusing bait and switch, and also a rare bit of realism. after all, if there is danger present, there is an option to flee, and there is nothing to gain from fighting, then most people WOULD flee
overall, i do kind of like alear as a protagonist. my only real complaints about alear are them actively rejecting their fell dragon heritage (veyle proves that being a fell dragon does not necessarily make you evil) and having a customizable name, forcing the writing to awkwardly work around calling them by name
As someone who really wanted to hate engage, I absolutely agree. I love Alear, even if they look ridiculous lol. They're silly but they're also shockingly normal for some "divine being", and I think it's really funny to see everyone worshipping them like a god when realistically Alear is the FE protag equivalent of a sopping wet cat.
Regarding what the reply says, I think them rejecting their fell dragon-ness is fine, almost (ironically) makes them more human too. Sure Veyle proves that having fell blood doesn't make you inherently evil, but Alear's whole thing is being the divine dragon, so to find out so suddenly that "surprise, you're the fell dragon actually!!" would be really difficult for them i think. Even if Alfred + co. don't think any differently of Alear, they no doubt think differently of themself and feel like a fraud. It's like extreme, literal impostor syndrome LOL. I agree with the bit about customizable names though. With a character as characterized as Alear, in a fully voiced game, giving them a customizable name is an interesting choice. Halfway through my 2nd playthrough I was so tired of hearing everyone say divine one over and over again lol
Engage definitely suffered a lot from the really weird choice being able to name Alear a LOT. The dialogue of them skirting around saying your name got really insufferable.
I havent beaten engage yet but as I have seen it's both a good idea and poor writing
What i wish is for them to expand on when you have supports. I wish some supports only happen after an event in the story so it feels more characters are talking about their current situation rather than random conversations. Three houses kind of got this right with some supports only happening after timeskip but i want it to feel more natural. Like if two siblings had a normal C support together then after their mother died they can have a B support talking about it. Maybe even dynamic supports for how early or later you have supports with someone but that'd be a little extra and probably take too much resources.
Three hopes is kinda similar, you can only view certain parts after certain chapters or events. One im missing is Ingrid and Sylvian cuz you have to kill Bylith and in turn lose Rodrige (which makes me so sad)
It's been mentioned that Path of Radiance tying support progression to a minimum number of maps the partners are deployed to together, in a game that lacks optional battles, is a way for this to be able to be done organically.
Anyone remember that weird story telling mechanic from post awakening where the game starts with a dream a character had relating to future events
Kinda glad they stop doing that
the only wake up conversations that felt slightly normal in Engage are the ones where the characters were just coming in to wake you up (probably at you or Vander's Request) I think Etie has one like that, the others like Framme and Clanne are definitly so jarring
The wake up conversations are written in like "hey we're gonna send one of your allies in to yell at you so you don't sleep for another thousand years!!" but some of them are still.... weird. probably the closest they could get to fates' petting minigame without it actually being.... a petting minigame. and everything about framme and clanne is jarring to me LOL
I'm not even sure if Alear should be considered a self insert since they have a set design , pesonality , voice and story, with the only thing you are able to influence about them being their name (and class but that applies to everyon in the game)
They are 100% a self insert. They are "The divine dragon" so there's a narrative reason for everyone to be worshipping the player first and an actual lore reasons second. Does alear do anything in the story that any other fire emblem protagonist couldn't? What is so "divine" about them when they're just as smart and strong as the royals? They don't have extra powers, the time rewind feature is from a crystal and not them, and the only sign they're a dragon is a stone and unit bonuses from emblems.
A self-insert is just a character who is meant to be "you," the player, in the game. Customization often comes with this but is not required. Alear definitely fits the bill.
Plus the name might have been a last minute change based on cut content
@@nigini6092 "they don't have extra powers" motherfucker the only reason we can awaken the emblems is because they're a dragon !
@@nigini6092 Maybe we need to separate self-inserts from main character pandering. Those are independent issues that just tend to happen together, but don't have to.
They gotta stop making dragon characters without letting us see their dragon forms. For example, Alear, Anonkos, Sothis and most of her crest children such as Seteth.
Being considered a Devine Dragon is basically just a status symbol for Alear, like why say she’s a dragon and never let us see her/him in their dragon forms? It was a perfect opportunity in Fell Xenologue, with there being dragon stones for Nel & Refal to use.
Don’t get me started with Sothis, never shown in 3Houses, ok. She appears in FEH, says she can’t show it here, alright. Warriors 3Hopes arrives, still nothing.
In three hope’s defense it never told use she could, so blissfully unaware? I didn’t know she could so I feel bad for three houses players
Anankos is literally the final boss of Revelation and Heirs of Fate dude
The one issue with Fate’s reclass system is the weapon levels. Like, sure if you put in the work you can make anyone anything, but by the time you can, say, make Takumi a Wyvern Lord, he’s gonna be restricted to E rank weapons, and unless you got a +7 iron axe he isn’t gonna be able to do much without grinding up his weapon levels.
This generally means that, while yes you could do a ton of customization with reclassing, it is rarely ever worth it. I do still prefer a more restrictive system like this compared to Three Houses’ “make everyone a Wyvern Lord or a magic class” system, but I did like how three houses weapon rank system worked with the tutoring.
Tbf that’s just fate having shitty weapon ranks, just make it so any promoted class as at least D and maybe make bronze weapons give more exp and it will be fine because only really E rank really suck
I hope they stop locking any options like highest difficulty, or varialbe/fixed growth settings behind having to complete the game at least once. Just allow people to pick whatever options they want. Some people want to start with the hardest possible setting right away, or prefer the non-default option.
hilda stopping at a B support is explained in my headcanon by the fact that she was just too lazy to bother to talk to sylvain again.
But if Sylvain likes her, he should be hitting on her more often
I actually want them to keep trying with the avatar units, but in a different way.
I always found that Mark (i get he's literally there to tutorialize the first part of the game, hear me out) was underutilized in his role as a tactician. Robin, while i like them in a story sense, i think swung too hard in the wrong direction as a unit.
I personally think it would be awesome to have a tactician character be a non-combat unit. Have them be able to buff allies with commands, and maybe give convoy access like Merlinus.
Just a thought, but i think it would be an interesting risk/reward mechanic to have a unit that has to stick near the combat and can't defend themselves, but provides mechanical improvements to units nearby. Maybe like roll the Rally skills into a Commands system, on a unit that has no combat (or very little).
Just my two cents on that topic.
I think that what your looking for is a Dancer Avatar, think about it right, Dancers are some of the most important units in the game, but they don’t do much themselves, they only help others. AND it gives a perfect excuse for why the main lord would recruit you for their army, and it also fits the “tactician” archetype that Robin and Mark fulfil story wise, as learning how to use your dance most effectively each turn is some of the most tactical thinking you can do in fire emblem, and obviously the player is the one making the tactical decisions cause they’re the player, so it feels normal that the avatar is the tactician of the group. Also it allows the avatar to have a cool unique class without giving the avatar the “chosen hero god” class and overshadowing the lord and other characters who have to use the normal classes.
Or a thief, they’re pretty rare in most games so they’re special but they’re not combat gods.
@@ninjakirby777 Agreed. I actually considered Dancer as well, and maybe they could have that be a part of the kit, just flavored for the role.
I do agree that a Self Insert shouldn't be made at the expense of the rest of the characters. They have to be part of the story not be the story in my opinion. There are plenty of stuff that I enjoy that has been introduced and thrown to the wayside. I do hope that we'll get a formula that works well for many people and makes the game fun and well balanced
One thing that I think would be good for future FE’s to keep is having a completed save file be accessible after beating it. Engage, Fates, Awakening, etc. do this by having your file pick up before the final battle. However, in other games, you can’t access the file at all because it either saved before the credits/epilogue, or doesn’t even give you that and is only used to load the file for NG+. The most egregious example is Three Houses, where I really wanted to look back on my units and how well they did, what class were they, etc. but couldn’t at all. So I hope in future FE games they continue doing what Engage, Fates, Awaekning, etc. do. On the self-insert discussion, I agree that avatar-worshipping should stop. I can take or leave customization, but I’d really like to hear the characters say their names instead of what it was in Three Houses and Engage. If the player leaves the canon name, let the characters say it.
I agree on save files, the game radiant historia lets you separate carry over data from playable data and when you reopen your file it puts you in the “chapter selection”. It’s a little different that traditional chapter selection but I don’t want to bore people
I didn't think I was going to agree with you about the self insert thing but that's actually my greatest gripe about Engage. I've had friends try to explain to me that it makes sense that everyone fawns over Alear (or myself) and it's really frustrating. The only characters I really like aren't constantly head-over-heels over the Divine Dragon. A preist of the DD's church is less in your face about his devotion than everyone else and its astonishing to me. He treats Alear like a regular person face to face and does his worshipping elsewhere, even if he's constantly throwing parties in their name.
I do actually agree a lot with your take on reclassing! I keep replaying Fates over and over again, even though there are newer games to play, simply because I *LOVE* its class system so much! I find strategizing the best way to get my units to have the skills I want so rewarding. I also prefer it as a way to earn skills over the teaching mechanic in 3H or the rings in Engage, personally.
17:30 I don't mind having an open system every once in a while, especially if the units are still unique enough via very distinct growth rate distributions and strong personals, however overall I agree that the restricted system is more fun long term, because it makes every unit more unique and allows for more specifically geared builds. However I disagree with Fates being the best version. Fates allowed only a single reclassing path for each unit. That's too low in my opinion. I think the best system would be more like a combination of Awakeing and Fates, where where the average is 3 and you can get extra classes via sth like friendship seals, but I would also always want to have at least 1 robin type unit that can become anything and also some variability from unit to unit, in such that some might have 5 reclassing trees and others only the standard 2.
Robin's access to every single class simultaneously was too much. The problem with having too many class options, at least in games like Awakening and Fates, is that you could switch and pick the most OP skills before picking your preferred class (even then it was still kind of an issue for e.g. every single unit with access to the mechanist class in Fates). The approach they chose with Corrin was very obviously meant to fix that pitfall.
So when I saw the last two topics, I was ready to roll my eyes, because I really do feel like reclassing and the avatar tend to be old guard punching bag, and a lot of it boils down to, "I don't like it." But we ended up agreeing on basically everything. I love Reclassing, but friends were talking about how characters felt like they lost their identity in some of the newer games, and the issue I found was that the unrestrained reclassing doesn't work well when you don't make strong enough units on their own. I like Fates's method of reclass, but I think we could slowly start moving away from Classes, and into something more character specific. For example, let's say you've got two similar esque Myrm style characters, high speed, and skill, 2 strength, etc, one's your traditional swordy, but the other is axe/lance because they started out on a farm or something. They follow a similar progression, but they diverge specifically because of their background, so they'll have different strengths, and downsides by the end of it. You could even lean further into Fates style by having the ability to sort of pass traits onto other characters via support; so I don't know, you get to A support with the Axe/Lance myrm, and you can add Axe or Lance (but not both) into the other characters's repetoire, and they acquire something else.
I personally lean towards this because I don't particularly like weapons being locked to specific classes; I think you could make more interesting characters by breaking from the tradition class structure.
And the other was Avatar. I don't like Avatar as much as I used to, but I do like the option for existing. I tend to not Self-insert myself; I have another OCs that I can fabricate into the story over myself, but my issue has always been how much does the story revolve around the Avatar. Unless they're like a Robin, I don't want the Avatar to be the main focus, I don't want things to revolve around the avatar. I don't want all of the character to be like, "Oh you're amazing, tee hee." when it makes almost no sense for them to do that. If it happens, sure, whatever, but the narrative should never bend specifically, around the avatar to make them feel special. It's why I think Byleth is my least favorite avatar character wise, because unlike Robin and Corrin, Byleth does not have their own voice, and on top of that, the entire narrative is predicated on is Byleth there, or isn't Byleth there. It's nothing to do with the characters themselves, it's whether or not Byleth is there to be the silent support, which feels really bad to me.
I think the Avatar needs to be an overwatch, rather than the focal point. They should be involved, but it needs to be the characters that are the focal point, and if the Avatar is to be the focal point, then they need to not be written as a self-insert, they need to be written as an honest player in the grand scheme of the game. The fanservice, and such, I don't mind that personally, but the unnaturalness of it all is the crux of what makes it not great. Because then it's not the avatar experiencing these things, it's the player, and I don't think it should be like that.
On the topic of classes...
I feel like part of the issue is we always have the same classes coming back again and again, and most of the time when a new, interesting, or unique class pops up, they're around for one game and gone the next, they also just, outright refuse to combine certain traits.
If they want to keep to a traditional class system, they need to experiment more than they do, not just with Reclassing but with the classes themselves
And, this could actually go into what you said about breaking from a traditional class system too, though in this case it may need to come with restricting support amounts again (So one unit can't get access to all their bonuses from this), which while it encourages replayability... I feel like it was done weird in the past
If they want a self-insert character, they could always just do what a lot of RTS games do and have the player be the commander/tactician of the army with the characters occasionally addressing you directly rather than an avatar character. That way you can still feel like you are somewhat involved, but you aren't the primary focus.
Gonna gush about how 3 Hopes had the best avatar in Shez because they're a grunt footsoldier and the story treats them like that instead of everyone worshipping, not really a blank slate self insert but I don't have much of an issue with that as I do with the player worship characters have for the other avatars. It also had the least uncomfortable version of Skinship/Teatime/Nap Time with Expeditions
I want no avatar or split routes.
No more avatars, please for the love of God! I want a main character that's his/her own thing and is allowed to have a personality and a compelling story arc without the God damn worshiping! I don't know if anyone else feels the same way, but this is where I stand on the topic. The avatar steals the spotlight from other characters that probably deserve the main character role more. (Xander/Ryoma from fates, Dimitri, Edelgard and Claude from 3H, and Diamant/Ivy from Engage.)
The weird B supports limit in Three Houses feels like they didn't think of a paired ending for all the supports they wanted so just stopped. Though sometimes I think they had a reason to do it.
Sylvain for example. He has the most B supports in the game, especially with the ladies. That's kinda a fun in a way to help characterize him. It's just some of them feel incomplete. His support with Bernadetta always jumps out to me as feeling incomplete. Overall I wouldn't want this to return just I think they sometimes had a method to madness.
Also on the self insert thing. After playing 5 of the 6 games with one. Robin and Shez are the best self insert hands down. They feel the most like they're own characters and with minor tweaks could just be a character. That's honestly my biggest issue with the avatar character they all have enough to just be they're own character but they restrict them just enough to not be. It doesn't help they make the actual "lord" character very interesting or at least charismatic, where you could almost imagine the story without you.
Which is why Fates, Three Houses and Engage suffer. Fates and Engage more so because you are the sole protagonist of the game. Three Houses at least, in Three of the Four routes has a primary Lord character to balance it out but they still treat you like the lynchpin of everything. Though regardless the game is hurt by the simple fact Byleth doesn't talk so it's got it's own problems that no other game has.
Wait whats stopping them from just not making it a paired ending?
@@Doobie-kx8fk idk aside from them not thinking of one. I'm just trying to understand some of there thought process. Three Houses is a game with souch rushed/unused content I wouldn't be surprised if something's were cut.
I definitely agree with the self insert thing. I loved how in awakening Robin starts off as very suspicious (which is ironic considering what he actually did) so he has to earn his spot in chroms circle.
In engage there was a support with etie where she comments how weird it is for him to be starring at her but since he's the divine dragon that makes it ok. In awakening when Robin did something weird he rightfully got treated as so. I really wanted to see how alier handled being awkward or bad at something
I think I agree with your thoughts about the class system in Fates being the most engaging we've had, but I think it's also very important to highlight that this system is very heavily tied to a more controversial mechanic: the child units. Using heart seals to get the classes of the character someone paired up with is cool and all, but the far more important aspect of the system was how it made the child units incredibly distinct based on who their non-fixed parent was, and it gives the player something of a puzzle in terms of deciding who they want to pair together to get an optimal team (assuming you don't just play matchmaker with personalities and let the class chips fall where they may)
Of course, it's no secret that this mechanic was somewhat less well received in Fates compared to Awakening, since in Awakening the child units were directly tied into an interesting aspect of the story, while in Fates they seemed to just be there because they were popular in Awakening. I feel like the developers might not feel too much incentive to bring back this style of class system again unless they can incorporate child units again, and I'm not sure if and how they'll take that plunge.
You nailed the issue with Avatars.
I come from Western RPGs. Avatars are the norm there. But WRPG avatars are not exactly worshipped. In many of these games, they can flat out leave you because they disagree with your choices.
Well not everyone in Awakening worshipped Robin and Byleth. And Alear told his/her team to tone down the hero worshipping and focus on the task in hand.
The self-insert is so real… it’s handicapping all of the stories that they’re in. It’s unnecessary; I’m not saying never have avatars again, but I’d like to see FE go back to MCs like Ike and Micaiah
When I saw the avatar topic I was fully expecting it to be overly and unnecessarily harsh but I very much agree with you. I'm one of those people that LOVES to self-insert and have a fully customizable character to plug myself into the story. But I've always felt the power fantasy angle they go for always detracts from the game and also from the self-insert. I know my experiences can't speak for everyone but I personally love supporting others and seeing discussions online I don't dare mention that I'm the type to reclass my Robin/Corrin into a Cleric/Priestess/Troubadour and I think if the avatar were scaled back to just being another member of the team (prominent in the story like in FE12 but with someone else as the main character) then I feel like it would benefit the most people.
For those who don't want a self-insert, they can just be a highly customizable character, for those that do, you can pick your favourite class and roleplay that you're going on an adventure alongside legendary heroes. It shouldn't be the case where your avatar is so much stronger than the rest of the cast that reclassing them to a healer is considered a cardinal sin >.< and equally shouldn't be the case where your character is so important that everyone is in awe by their very presence.
So while I fully expected to see another rant about how avatars are ruining the series, I'm very glad to see you talk about the actual problem points rather than just wanting them gone outright.
Really nice video
There are three things I want Fire Emblem to stop doing more than anything.
Routes: Every single time they are included, every single route suffers from the split development. Three Houses would've been a better game if it just picked one, and the same could be said of Fates. Bits of lore getting chopped off for other routes, clearly incomplete or rushed sequences or even entire unfinished routes, tons of repeating content, etc. They need to stop doing routes and reinvest it into choices that impact a single story, instead of stretching the development thin trying to make these games so wild in scope.
Refusing to Evolve: There are two ways in which Fire Emblem does this, treating great new mechanics as gimmicks to be forgotten about and always carrying forward outdated ideas that should've been changed a long time ago. Things like Base Conversations and BEXP should've become staple features but shockingly only exist in the Tellius games, Pair-Up as implemented in Fates is one of my favorite strategy game mechanics of all time even after being one of my most hated in Awakening and now it's just gone, and bad implementations of mechanics like cancerous way the Speed Stat works and Fire Emblem's awful permadeath implementation (such that it necessitated a mechanic to rewind as a crutch) have for some reason endured for decades even as other games like XCOM and Valkyria Chronicles showed what superior implementations could look like. I want to Fire Emblem grow, expand, change, and learn but it feels like it never really does for more than a game or two.
Lighter Storylines: Fire Emblem is a game wherein the central mechanic revolves around the permanent loss of actual characters, that loss means nothing when the story doesn't reinforce that mechanic thematically. Games like Engage or any other generic Fire Emblem game suffer from severe ludonarrative dissonance. Three Houses should've been the standard for Fire Emblem storytelling going forward. Though I love the Tellius games, Three Houses was the first time Fire Emblem has ever felt mature and it worked so well it baffles me that Engage even happened.
I agree about the ligher story lines. Engage honestly felt like a parody that I hope falls into oblivion.
Hell no I really do not want every FE game to be the same tone as 3H. That’ll make every game way too samey. As for the deaths and lighter tone conflicting with one another, you clearly haven’t seen a lot of anime aimed at kids where the tone is lighter but deaths still are treated seriously. It’s why people attribute Engage to the vibe of a Saturday morning anime. Nothing wrong with that vibe. And I’m not saying I’d want every FE game to be like that either. But I’d rather not every game be stuck to the same formula. Hell I really wish FE stories weren’t so formulaic and we got more variety.
My complaint about the open reclassing is actually quite different. It comes from a narrative standpoint, actually. There really shouldn't be an open choice for a class change of a character if it doesn't fit the character and contradicts the character's supports. I don't want to hear a character talking about practicing with swords, learning swordfighting from their dead parent, living and dying by their sword, taking their sword out on a date, all the while that character was changed into a mage and shoots fireballs, because they got the Ronan treatment. Or a character talking about living their whole life in the church, praying to their diety of choice, following their teachings, bragging how they love healing and preserving life, only for that character to be class changed into a ruthless life taking swordmaster because that SPD base and growth are kinda lit, or to turn them into a dark mage that uses vile magic contradicting the character's beliefs and whole character. Examples like these are what make me actually hate the in-game freedom. I never complained about Ronan being an archer. Would've he made a better mage? Damn right he would have. But he's a fisherman, possibly illiterate, he runs fast. He will always be that whacky archer. Or to use the modern examples: Felix. Guy dreams about swords, he's a classic broody swordfighter. His weapon proficiencies indicate "hey, I use swords". So why would he listen to some professor who is basically like "Okay, I need you to pray three times a day, take this staff and make sure to hug it like your body pillow every night when you sleep, because by golly you're gonna be a fun cleric". This especially is jarring if there's magic involved. If literally anyone can become a mage, then it's not special in narrative to be a mage. Oh, you studied magic all your life, taught by the greatest mage of our era? Well, Bob here was a farmer turned soldier, he can cast fireballs as well, although less hard. But the enemy doesn't know what a RES stat is, so have fun with the whole team of mages. If there was a narrative reason for a drastic class change, then sure. Maybe Ronan's dad was one of Victor Velthomer's bastard children and Ronan carries Fyalar holy blood, that would be a nice reason to have him change from an archer to a mage. Or heck, imagine if a mage got stripped from their source of magic through a curse or something, making them have to become a physical class. You know, things that would make narrative sense. But complete open? Nah.
Agreed with most stuff.
I have always hated any kind of reclassing with a passion. Same with the avatar characters.
One of the things that FE is supposed to have going for it over most strategy games is that your units are unique characters. If your units are unique characters, their class should be part of their character writing (i.e. Florina having a connection with her pegasus and it being a part of a lot of her support convos in 7 vs Marianne similarly having a connection with Dorte in 3H and the possibility existing of her never even being in a horse class).
I think Sacred Stones did it best where you have some options to promote to but they all make some sense for the base class of the character. It's simple, clean, and with a 2nd promotion added like in Radiant Dawn it could be open enough to still feel customizable.
I honestly think the best thing FE could do that would help fix a lot of issues is to cut the total roster size in like half. That way each character gains value, there's more space to develop them and for them to matter narratively and strategically, you can design maps more tightly, add more support levels instead of just 3 or 4. Go for deeper characters instead of just more.
I can agree on reclassification. I have only played the two warriors games so I can’t have a opinion on avatars, but one thing I love is when you play without reclass and are forced to use your least favorite units cuz it’s almost another layer of challenge instead of reclassing your favorites/strongest
I get that having more saveslots is never a bad thing but I also have no idea why someone would need more than 4 saves, 3 for a normal playthrough in case you need to go back up to 2 chapters to redo like maybe you lost a lot of people and realized you might be too far underpowered now, and 1 for any random special moment, like when I got a 10 mov Ronan going into chapter 9.
For some games like Three Houses you definitely more than 5, but I feel for games like Engage 10 is a good amount
*definitely need more than 5
Eh. I find the complaint understandable. Because Mercenaries Rebirth (Another SRPG on Switch) has a whopping TWENTY-FIVE SAVE SLOTS.
For the open class change one, while I’ve certainly enjoyed it as mainly a modern FE player, I think I enjoyed how Echoes handled it more. I kinda prefer having class lines pre-assigned to most of the units: I still get that feeling of promoting and progressing them while having that set in stone idea of what a character’s good at and how I should use them. With villagers serving as the special cases where you CAN choose almost whatever path you want, made special in Echoes’ case by having most be childhood friends truly just starting out as soldiers.
Helps a bit that Echoes is the one game I’ve played where armor knights were any good. And by armor knights, I mean Lukas.
I liked that bit of Free DLC Echoes had, with Pitchforks letting you reclass 3 otherwise set chararacters per playthrough.
Fire Emblem Echoes was my favorite FE title on the 3DS because it had no self-insert character. Awakening was my first Fire Emblem game, so at the time I just thought self-insert characters were normal for the series, but then Echoes came along and I was like "oh my god, we get to have a REAL story with ACTUAL character development?"
Number 8: NO MORE NOSTALGIA GIMMICKS! When the only Fire Emblems to not have one are the Koei Tecmo produced Fodlan games, you know it’s a problem.
My opinion on the "Self Insert/Avatar" Character is that they shouldn't be strictly the main character. My preferred option would be:
1. If it's a brand new game in the series, make the character like Robin again, except they don't necessarily have to be high born or anything. A common person who ends up being part of Dual Protagonist, but not the sole protag. Also bring back look customization, otherwise what is the point of the avatar.
2. If it is a remake of an older game, and they want to add an avatar, Kris is the perfect example of that. They didn't effect the story really at all, added some paralogues with a side story, but like that was it and it's skippable is you want to. They are there and are part of the story, but nothing important changes around them.
Overall, my opinion is that the avatar can be a main character, but no the sole main character. Also they have to have a personality and talk because silent, emotionless protagonists don't work for FE with how much character interaction there.
I hope IS eventually realizes that people care about story and characters, and I hope they also realize that it doesn’t need to come at the cost of gameplay either.
With all the issues people had with the story of Engage, the most telling thing is that even the Japanese fans thought the story was subpar, so you can’t make the excuse of, “Oh, they’re just pandering to the otaku audience.”
I’ve always felt like people’s critiques of the games have fallen on deaf ears since IS just does whatever they want with each game, but stuff like pandering to the player at the cost of the character writing is egregious and shouldn’t be tolerated in any game.
There are so many parts of _Engage_ that feel like it was written by a teenager. The fact that they dump the entire Four Hounds backstory just as they’re dying feels so cheap. For one, it’s too late to make us care, and two, it makes no sense in the context of the story because Zephia killed Marni with no remorse earlier.
Fully agreed with the same turn reinforcements and class changing. Ambush spawns just encourage turtling which I despise , and being able to be any class strips the characters of identity. Branching paths are good for class changing though
Hey everyone! Thanks for watching. What do you think are mechanics/features/practices in the series that could be improved on or removed? Let me know down below! And as always, liking and commenting helps this video get found by others! Have a good weekend!
Here to boost this comment's performance so people actually see it
Do you believe that A+ Support In three house With or without romance implies great chemistry Between Two Chracters.
With Felix and Dorothea It Makes Sense.. We have to think about why is it that felix Is Dorothea Only A+ Support?..Maybe It Felix Not Tolerating any B.S..He Makes It Clear That He's not playing any games.. He warms up After The Timeskip/A Support When he Spars with Her..Even More When He Realizes She is Singer. Perhaps Dorothea Is Drawn To Him Because He Looks Past Her Appearance and Appreciate her Strengths
This isn't really a mechanic, but I'm really tired of a large portion of the games having messy stories. It is pretty obvious with Engage and Fates that someone did not care enough, and it really is why the mainstream has a hard time sticking around.
Fog of War could really stand to take cues from Advance Wars. The enemy having an advantage has been justified like... Once, in FE12? And maybe in FE8, Monsters could have darkvision or something? Otherwise, it makes no sense that the enemies immediately see you.
If the story must revolve around the self-Insert, make 'em *work* for it. Make them a growth unit- a Trainee with like 2-3 Speed, even- and don't have the other characters give them undue reverence.
Here's one idea I had: make the Jagen an Archsage. He'd be very old and slow, with only like 4 move, but would otherwise be solid overall and start with healing access. 4 move also means he doesn't invalidate other healers, so he wouldn't necessarily even need to pull a Siegfried!
I think they need better final boss variety.
There's several good ones, don't get me wrong... but just too many dragons.
Also...
Nemesis I feel was mechanically my favorite boss in a fire emblem game.
I loved the concept of there being steps to take the final boss down and then the map being a poison swamp too I think creative variety like that rather than just choking you out with reinforcements Is good final boss game design.
I also wish they would have a couple more maps in recent games with multiple ways to win like in radiant dawn where you can kill the commander or hold the fort to win
To be fair regarding when it comes to Alear. They are confirmed to be a deity that people for over 100+ years have marched to and prayed to for guidance and miracles while asleep. I mean, imagine if the Vaticant state had the actual body of Jesus in their possession, whom people could visit to pray in front of, only to then said body waking up like it was nothing... That would be a big deal...
That being said... yeah, they aren't exactly well written at all.
1000 year old little dragon girls
thank you for saying this about the reclassing system! some of my favourite memories in fire emblem were figuring out how to get units into nonstandard and interesting classes in fates, like master ninja xander in conquest. while the open class system (and mostly unrestricted weapon types) made sense for three houses because of the teaching mechanics, having the class system in engage be so open was a missed opportunity to add depth. at the very least they could have tied different class lines into emblems somehow
I hope they *stop tying combat support levels to support conversations* and then make an endless amount of filler supports about tea/fishing/cooking/etc. and instead switch to how they did it in Three Hopes, where not all support levels had a conversation attached to them and there were less, but on average higher quality supports.
The writing and voice acting budget they save from that, can then be put into having the characters have more conversations with multiple characters during the story missions, or exploration or other event based optional conversations like the Tales series does with their skits, that are actually about the ongoing events of the story instead of isolated 1on1 only non-story conversations like most support convos are.
Ultimately the way supports and characters work and function in Fire Emblem necessitate the limited cutscene cast and the side-plot nature of supports. Supports can't often be relevant to story events because generating support points has nothing to do with story progress. It'd be a bit weird, for example, if Celine and Alfred started talking about the road to Brodia in one of their supports if you only got it, say, after fleeing from Elusia, and it'd be frustrating if you just couldn't continue that support line because you missed the window to build it.
On the other hand, the casts of cutscenes are so tiny because of the staple mechanic of permadeath. A character cannot show up in cutscenes following their recruitment chapter, because of the possibility of them being dead by the time of that cutscene. Of course, royals are permitted to permanently retreat and appear in future cutscenes, but come on, we all know people would be *infuriated* if non-royals did that, they already get angry with the royal exception as is.
I feel you on the self insert. I like Robin and Byleth. Corrin was pretty cringe, but it was no surprised with how contrived the story was. The thing I wish they would fix is the RNG. I noticed it seemed pretty inconsistent between games, as if the battle forecast was at times inaccurate with variables not being disclosed to the player. And also some type of limiter with characters getting F'd with too many bad stat growths.
My ideal version of ambush spawns: The game will mark the spaces that the units will spawn onto the turn beforehand. This way, the player will have time to adjust any injured/weak characters away from the area, but the actual units spawning will still be a surprise and will be protected during this specific player phase.
Doesn't it keep that player wariness/slow progress aspect, though? Unless I'm told what the reinforcement unit will be, I'd keep *everyone* as far away as possible: for all I know, it could be a strong, high movement, flying enemy with a Killer weapon or something like that.
@@VonFirflirch IMO, on the highest difficulty, you should be wary and be forced to plan for the worst case scenario. It is inconvenient/slower, but playing on a higher difficulty is all about making a map as inconvenient as possible, is it not?
Ambush spawns are terrible because they do not even give you a chance to react to a potential worst case scenario; they show up and your unit dies.
3 houses also starts with Byleth waking up (well with a dream cutscene first). And not main series but 3 hopes starts with Shez waking up too
I completely agree with what you said about the avatars, especially when it came to Alear. I honestly disliked a lot of their interactions with the other characters 😅. On the other hand, I feel like Shez was a great avatar. They just felt a lot more like they were their own characters.
I wonder if they could make parents of the Avatar work within a story. Instead of just instantly killing them off.
See Byleth's supports with Jeralt in Three Hopes for a glimpse of that missed potential.
While watching those, for as much as I enjoyed them, all I could think about was: "Why didn't we get more of this back in Three Houses!?"
Regarding the open class system, I think that more needs to separate units from one another outside of growths and 1 personal skill.
Compare Raphael to Dedue in 3H. Raphael has better growths and a better personal skill, so an optimizer might sub out Dedue for someone better. While a restricted class system with more defined paths would help, I think adding more properties that adjust a character’s playstyle would be a neat idea. Seeing as Dedue gains defense from waiting, imagine if he’d have a later personal skill that added on more buffs to the waiting. Or maybe Dedue could get a skill that would obscure allies he waits next to, improving the chances of him being attacked.
Even if you made everyone the same class, Dedue would stick out because of how he’d be played rather than his growths being the best. Even if they’re not the end all of unit viability, they clearly dictate which units standout the best
Could you imagine making a alternative timeline to your most popular title, a completely different gameplay with it's own protagonist and it's own routes and endings and not fully committing to the story department because "we wouldn't want the player to dislike the old protagonist that could turn vilain according to your choices" ?
Psch not me that's for sure
Regarding class openness, I think an interesting system could be having limited mounts. It doesn't really make sense for the game to just spawn in horses and wyverns when in the middle of battle or during tense parts of a story, like when rushing to Solm Castle. It could also be a good tool for map design, since the devs know exactly how many horses and fliers the player has access to. They can even go a step further and have the mounts have their own stats like battalions, some having additional move or maybe an unruly horse giving -2 speed. Perhaps these can be unlocked/overcome with a riding rank, or some need a specific rank to be ridden at all. They could even give the mounts names and personalities based around their stats. Like if Dorte was a mount in 3H, he could have a move and defense buff when ridden by Marianne or something. I'm sure there's at least some people who would like having some pets who do more than drop metal every map
*Defining self-inserts, Avatar.* I see alot of people conflating the self insert and main character pandering issues. So how about separating those defintions. I'll give it a try:
*Avatar:* Player customized and controlled character.
*Self-insert:* Often silent or close to and barely any personality to encourage self-inserting and the player sets their opinions & most decisions & conversation responses.
And then there's main character pandering. All three of those can happen together or separately.
*Examples* of various Avatars and what I consider them to be:
*Byleth:* Self-insert and pandered to.
*Shez:* Not a self-insert and not pandered to.
*Robin:* Not a self-insert and not pandered to.
*Alear:* Not a self-insert (too much personality, opinions of their own, they make their own decisions), but heavily pandered to.
*Corrin:* Not self-insert, also heavily pandered to.
Aside from that, I guess you could also look at how central to the overall story a character is, although that tends to align with the pandering part anyway with Alear and Corrin being the ones the world & story revolves around the most, then Byleth, followed by Robin and lastly Shez, who is the least central.
Even if we split them I don't really agree with the categories you've put them in. For example I don't think they pandered towards Byleth that much and I feel that Alear is just as much a self-insert as Byleth was, the only difference is that Alears supports and cutscenes were voiced while in 3H they were text only.
Regarding the avatars, I do believe they're moving away from them. Byleth and Alear to me feel more like their own characters. To clarify for Byleth, I'm talking about Byleth from Three Hopes and Engage. Hell if Byleth just talked in Three Houses, way more people would like him as a character. He shows hints of genuine growth as a character that get hindered cause the game doesn't let him talk or express himself. The "worship" kinda works with Byleth cause he more or less earns it by being a teacher. Alear's worship feels worse but she still feels like her own character. If it were up to me, a character like Shez is the way to go for future "avatars" if they don't ditch them.
Lowkey want more Avatars like Shez tbh. They reminded me a lot of how Robin was handled during most of Awakening in spite of both characters being nothing alike.
@@Dakress23the virgin Corrin versus the chad Shez
Yes I agree because so many of the avatars are just worshipped and loved and accepted despite never earning that worship or love like Alear and Corrin. Despite the growing character writing of avatars, they are often still badly written in my opinion in some areas because some avatars like Corrin and Alear take away the spotlight to characters that would be better suited to it like Takumi or Diamant that show signs of being decent characters. To be honest all I want for the next game is the gameplay of POR and Fates with the character writing of Three houses and POR since it will help stop people from comparing games for either category and help pacify many divided fans.
Honestly, Byleth would be improved a lot if their voice actors actually said the lines you chose. Byleth still executes criticals and has victory dialogue. I know what they sound like IS!
@@samueltitone5683 I agree. I didn't mind Byleth's character in 3H. It was well integrated in the plot an made sense. If they had voiced the lines you chose in his supports and cutscenes etc then he would feel very different. People call him/her a silent protagonist but they actually spoke quite a bit, its just that the lines were not voiced.
Regarding the self-insert: The few problems I have with self-inserts isn't even that self-insert are one of the main characters. One problem I have with them is that most of them feel kinda the same (a goody-two shoes everyone likes). I mean, yeah, they're self-inserts, that's obvious, but I would prefer to either let them have at least some defining traits to make them more unique or go back to have original main characters like Ike. Another thing is that our self-inserts seldom struggle and when they do, it's usually not for long. Imagine how cool (or at least interesting) it would be if a certain event like a massive failure on the self-insert's behalf would lead to the entire army or a part of them taking a negative stance until you progress further in the story affecting gameplay like not beong able to raise support levels or at least gaining more points for them and maybe even some stat decrease when in close proximity. And on that note, can we please stop having every unit and character kiss the MU's a**? Like, I get that Corrin is a long lost prince connected to both sides of the war, Alear is literally a god to his people and there isn't a problem with having respect but it would be very refreshing not to be the the center of the universe for once. Honestly it kinda breaks my immersion of the game if there aren't people who aren't the enemy to challenge my character's ideas.
I honestly find that self insert characters reduce my immersion because I wanna be sucked into a world and story and I want to play as someone with their own pre-defined personality. I don't mind Robin for instance but having characters be like some reflection of me turns me off.
Robin and Shez work as self inserts because they are *important* but the world doesn't revolve around them, especially in fan-servicey ways. I'd like to see the next self-insert be more like FE7’s Mark, though, where you are valuable as a tactician, and it gives an in-universe explanation for you controlling an army of units, but you don't intrude on the story, people aren't obsessed with you and you don't get into the battlefield yourself
Definitely want the series to strike the balance of self-insert inclusion a bit better. I don't hate it, but I definitely see how the Engage approach might(?) have not been as engaging for some of my friends
On the resource and balance department, i would like to see how Bonus EXP from PoR and Radiant Dawn would work in a modern FE Game combined with restriction on how you can use it to f.ex. the highest level in your squad. Or to further expand on this idea, combine it with either how triangle strategy handle xp rubberbanding, or simply put a level restriction on how far you can bump a unit up for each chapter.
Another idea is implementing a milestone system for levels of all characters in your army, with standard growth rate and all that jazz. BUT units you use in your active squad gains bonus stats trough a seperate experience system. Now with these changes of mine, you have a baseline of what you can expect the player to have access to, and better scale the difficulty in the different modes. A solution is having a "personal skill tree" where you can use this seperate xp into stats, that gradually becomes more expensive to buy.
To be fair to "avatar being the centre of the game's world", Robin is literally the main villain, just amnesiac due to temporal shenanigans, so it makes sense for him to be a central character. Byleth too, kinda, as he contains Sothis' spirit and was given such by Rhea herself, who also makes him a professor.
Corrin...not so much, and Alear - in a way? Main villain's child, but purified by Lumera during his healing nap, while also being a figure of worship (likely due to Lumera, like Rhea before her).
Honestly, ambush spawns have their place when used to force a player to play properly. Both to encourage "proper" play (e.g. this level theme is that you're on the run, so ambush spawns are used to make you run) as well as to discourage "degenerate" play (e.g. we don't want you to warpskip this particular challenge, so here's an ambush).
As for (un)limited resources; there's always a player who's willing to do some mindnumbingly boring grinding for a minimal advantage.
Trying to stop those type of players from abusing optional content to overlevel, grind a stupid amount of gold, or overuse things like the time-crystal for absurd strategies, is futile. Plus, trying to stop them tends to make the game worse for everyone else. So having some players who do that kind of thing, and complain they are "forced" to do it even if its entirely optional, is more or less unavoidable.
I know that the ambush spawns are much worse in three houses, but I will admit I was pretty annoyed by the reinforcements in Engage as well. It's not that defeating them is hard, it's more so the fact that this seems to be the only way IS knows how to boost the difficulty in their game. How do we make this more challenging for players? Just spawn more random units, it's fine. There are other ways you can make the game more difficult without spawning more units every other turn (Camilla and Chrome's maps are the worst in this regard.) It's like IS is padding out many of the maps with reinforcements when it doesn't need it. It makes an hour, sometimes two hour maps longer then they need to be and on hard mode. You really start to get sick of it towards the end game. I would like new challenges, not waves and waves of reinforcements.
I'm fine with self inserts if they are like robin aka not the hero and the villain or just a regular soldier like Kris who raises up through the ranks
Corrin byleth and toothpaste are all the chosen one self insert and I hate that about the story. Corrin the idea is there with how many royals have legendary weapons but it doesn't work while toothpaste could have worked if the story wasn't mid. Byleth was just being carried by the story. A fifth route of not caring about anyone of the other factions could have worked in breaking down the systems everywhere.
I am an avid defender of Three Houses’s class system. I love how I can just put every unit in every class and I love how magic spells are character specific instead of being generic tomes, makes it fun to put random people in magic classes to see how they do. But I will say the skills in Three Houses become kind of void, and it makes it so at one point you have all Brigands and Mages for the blow skills, rather than have unique builds, because some skills are objectively better than others.
Fates, while still not being as open as Three Houses, at least makes it so that skills play a major role in a build. You still can’t get any skill on any character and the skills in question have much more effect so they are much more attractive to players to get. I also agree with your point that a class becomes much more part of a character’s identity than in Three Houses (despite every character having a “canon” class).
I hope the next game is a lot more like Three Houses than Engage was, and if we get another open class system, I hope it’s balanced in such a way that skills become much more viable.
Or else I just want Fates’s class system.
Something I'd like to see the devs stop with is the bait-prelude that started first with Awakening but has since become overdone and misused.
I think we see self inserts in fire emblem are there to let the story unfold in a way more similar to something like GTA or Persona. It is a way to fight the story as cutscene format. (Though FE still overly relies on cutscenes to story tell)
The self inserts in Persona suck as well though
You either end up with a boring blank slate (like original Yu Narukami, before his anime characterization stuck), or a half-character that's too fleshed out to be a proper self insert and their characterization actively suffers from pretending to be one (like Joker)
@@creativename1673 I think self inserts in persona are more of them creating an avatar than a character. If ya ask me there are advantages to having them fill the roll of avatar than characters. It allows the story of the games to focus on the other characters not the protagonist and let's the player experience and personality interpret deside what the character is like.
However it definitely isn't perfect, for example the worst of it is persona 4 with all the constant pandering to the audience. Like why did Rise have to think Yu is hot it servers ZERO purpose and took me out of the game. Also if the characters are going to be so fluid I think the player should have some kind of avatar creation, ya know like changing your appearance or let's get crazy for a sec, there gender without making it an entire different route with different music.
But what am I trying to say. I guess it's that looking at just characterisation is kinda missing the point. The reason I defend it is that it does alow me to enjoy it a bit more. I use P5 as an example for this, joker not talking or having a clear character actually allowed me to put myself into his shoes. In the opening hours I was constantly thinking about how I would react if I was through into his situation and made me think about times my life changed drastically both for the good and the bad. It helped get me to grow attached to the game better than having a super detailed and characterised protag could have.
I hope they stop being cowards and actually give you the units they are going to kill off. Just imagine how much more impactful that one character death in Awakening or the various ones in Three Houses would have been, if had gotten those characters as full team members with more interactions and supports aswell so you can get more attached before they're taken away. As for returning the resources you've invested in them, they could simply give you an inheritance of XP and stat booster items of the exact amount that you invested in that character that you can then redistribute.
It's also a soft indirect spoiler, because people can also predict something is going to happen to these kinds of central characters, that for some reason never become part of their army.
Three hopes did that to me😭 I loved having Rodrige on the team then he was taken from me in the bad blue lions route
Yes on the forced wake-up scenes. However I find Fates also makes sense inter-relationally as Corrin is a forced sheltered child up until the story goes on. So that wake up scene with Felicia and flora- I always caught the vibe of corrin having a plethora of “staff” as Garon controlled Corrins wearabouts up until a certain point.
But on the same point- I’d like as much attention to other unit supports as with the main character. Golden deer in my mind was a very rewarding route because all the relationships were really enjoyable to watch. And in golden deer- many of the characters traits actually were included in battles. Leonie being competitive around men and in battle that giving her a stat boost if male units were adjacent.
And Hilda being convincing in her support stories in getting male units to do labor for her- and in battle she gives stat boosts to all male units if they are close by. And if they crit, she’ll make a cute little compliment in battle. Theo are the little relational details I can’t get enough of when done right
I'm so glad someone feels the same way on avatars! Let me be, like, some villager/soldier who joins the main lord, rather then literally god(twice)