I think that the reason that a lot of characters in recent games get shit on because of how often youll end up hearing them explain their gimmicks 6 times in row in the C support vefore they have any development in the B and A support, so youll listen to someone like bernadetta scream the same lines over and over and give up on the character as a whole before they get to have any kind of significant change
That's definitely an issue. Gee Ignatz, do you like art but feel obligated to pursue a different career for your family's sake, you don't say... for the tenth time. It doesn't help that each house leader already sums up that character's quirk when you ask for picking a house. They didn't need to establish it that often.
Laura's support convos in RD talking about the goddess Ashera watching over and supporting her and her partner are just absolutely hilarious when triggered during the final boss fight... Against Ashera, Yeah I'm sure the goddess is watching over you she's literally right there.
I recently wrote some RD fan supports and one of them was Laura/Tanith - where Laura talked about this exact thing, having a crisis of faith by being forced to fight against Ashera.
One thing I really liked about three hopes was that some supports were locked behind story progression or even character recruitment. Leonie can never have an A support UNLESS you recruit Byleth and Jeralt. Otherwise it is impossible to get that support. I also liked that about three houses too where if you wait too long you might never be able to view a support conversation, again with Leonie, if you don't get a C support by the time Jeralt dies you can never get it ever again. Quite interesting
When I saw that I immediately thought “why wasn’t this a thing in past games!?” Cuz if used right it has pretty good support-story cohesion, like say Ferdinand’s A support or Leonie’s like you mentioned
@makotoyuki345 Path of Radiance essentially had this as well, by changing the entire dialogue of supports based on what chapter you were on or if a unit was still alive. Examples are Jill referring to Shirahim before or after Ch 20, or Makalov and Tormod referring to Marcia/Murarim if they are dead.
I could do without that honestly. It meant getting all the supports was a serious chore. Especially since you have to recruit other students into your house in 3 Houses, which already takes an asinine amount of time assuming you aren't doing NG+. I still prefer the Fates/Awakening/Engage version even though the supports were a bit lacking it was honestly the most lenient support system.
It's also helped that in Path of Radiance, we get base conversations which gives us time to learn more about a character without needing to field them. And as they are time sensitive, we see growth in characters that otherwise wouldn't get spotlight in the main story such as Jill.
5:57 Honestly, I think you're short-changing PoR here. There's a bunch of supports that directly reference, or are entirely based on events in the main story text: Ike and Soren's B support is about how Soren has become more withdrawn in Begnion; Boyd and Mist's A support has Mist crying over losing Lehran's Medallion; Jill and Mist's A support is prompted by the restoration of the Serenes Forest; and Jill and Lethe's A support is about how Jill decided to stay on Ike's side despite it leading to her father's death. PoR also has some of the only dynamic supports in the entire series. Titania and Mist's A support changes to reflect how Mist can't do the entire Liberation's Army laundry; Makalov and Astrid's supports change if Marcia is dead, with the C support mentioning that he's paying his respects instead of buttering her up with flowers; and Mist and Jill's A support has Jill going from being angry at her father to feeling like she betrayed him after his death -and also she confesses to mist.-
OH MY GOSH inlaying Macbeth's monologue over Lorenz's supports KILLED ME !! Oh my gosh the narrative irony 😭😭😭 that was so clever lmfao And was that the sci fi world war looking macbeth edition 🙈 I had to watch that in a Shakespeare class, what a wild movie I feel like 3 Hopes *started* to help with the support bloat problem more, limiting conversations and time locking them, but it did have a lot too. But I also felt like most of them were really interesting ??? I think it helps that some of them only got 1 conversation or maybe 2. Like Mercedes and Sylvain only have 1 but it shook me lol. I'm also reminded of fe4??? They have Way less supports, leaning too few, but the conversations they did have really stood out. Brigid and Edain, Lachesis and Eldigan, the spouses I accidentally put together. They felt way more tied in. Honestly I wish they'd bring back in-battle supports like in echoes ?? Very curious to see if supports will change at all in the future or if you're right that they'll stay bloated hmm! Happy to report however that fe9 stays winning 🙏 what having a non royal non divine gay guy as the protagonist does to a game fr
I think the supports are really being held back by fire emblem's tendencies to rely on archetypes established earlier in the series. They could have some really interesting conversations if they: a.) Didn't have every single support be a 1-on-1 conversation scaling from C to A. It could be very dynamic to have groups or cliques form through supports, etc. b.) Have supports trigger or build up in more varied ways. Maybe Roy automatically gets his B support with Marcus unlocked after reaching level 10 or maybe Dorcas gets a support with Rebecca after reaching D bows.
Id like to see supports linked with permadeath, characters mourning, consoling eachother, swearing vengeance for their friends, I think it would help make both permadeath and supports more interesting
This is why base convos (from tellius) are good, they're time specific and can also feature more than two characters at once, allowing them to A. be plot relevant, B. characterise multiple characters at once, and C. show growth over time.
3H's support chains sometimes being capped at B-rank is a tiny comfort in the face of 3H's pacebreakers being already significantly worse than the other games the use of the somniel itself is never actually necessitated other than to get to the final map in the game, which is something that helped it a lot in my opinion
I think another aspect that has been hampering quality supports is that newer supports are written as the only way to learn more about a character. Think about characters in other games where supports are praised. Fe4&9 come to mind for me (mostly because those are some of the latest games I’ve played). In fe4 the conversations are potentially skippable if a character dies or you just aren’t aware they have a conversation. But very few characters feel lackluster because they have ways to be tied into the story besides just you found them on your way from point A to point B. Lachesis is looking to persuade her brother twice. Jill has multiple convos on and off the battlefield about why she would betray her country and family. Now think about that for Three Houses or Engage. Three Houses only gives a couple characters like Ashe or Sylvain with any story relevance. Everyone else only gets their personal paralogue, and most of the time that’s barely anything. Engage does the same thing with character’s joining chapters. You get a glimpse of their surface level personality and then they are nothing but background pawns. The only way these modern characters see any bit of the spotlight is in their supports. There needs to be more effort trying to incorporate the cast with the other characters (both ally or enemy) as well as with the grand picture of the story. Someone following you until their death because you had tea with them twice doesn’t feel compelling. Give these characters other motives to follow your goals. Avenge a family member. Rescue a friend that’s been captured. It doesn’t matter what it is, just something more than what we are being given these days.
@@boshwa20 it’s not that unrealistic. They don’t need to have Lord or Avatar levels of plot relevance. Just more than “You bought me 6 flowers and now I won’t leave your side no matter what you do.” For example, fe6 has 15 more characters than 3H and I would argue most of those have a better reason for following you than the majority of the 3H cast. Some of them are extremely simple like “Your father hired our group of mercenaries so we will follow you until the job is done.” Fe4 even has more characters without including replacement units, and contains less chapters, and all but like Lana has a good reason to see their conflict to the end. All they need are like 2 or 3 lines of dialogue while recruiting them or after recruiting them so we have a more basic motive. Yes it is. They are both adorable. I don’t dislike engage, but I wish they would try a bit harder outside of support convos to get me to like characters
I absolutely agree with this point. I started myself on Awakening. But even I realize how much more natural its done in older titles. Like, not everyone has to be important to the overall story/narrative. Just enough to establish stuff. I was always a bit scuffed on Three Houses because of it both lacking this, and being more sandbox in approach. Which doesn’t help distinguish anyone when every character can go Wyvern Lord. Three Houses took the Breath of the Wild approach by basically giving you all the tools at the start. And while I think that approach can work, I do not think it gives the right strengths in the places FE is being written in. As in a chapter by chapter basis. Those moments inbetween are so half-assed. It hardly feels like we get time to get invested and interact with the characters. It’s a classic case of incorporating old FE writing tropes into a newer format that just doesn’t gel well. FE Echoes of Valentia might as well be a different beast altogether. You cannot convince me the same people made that game and Three Houses. It does so much better in almost every aspect of narrative, and has a unique style to its world to boot. Three houses feels flat in comparison. Which is really a shame when one is on the 3DS and the other on the Switch. They really should focus more on presentation. As it really does detract from any attachment one might express in the characters beyond them just being an investment.
I agree with these points, but also feel like some of the 3 Houses supports are deeper and better written. It could definitely be recency bias on my part.
@@altlover85There are certainly a handful of deeper convos in Three Houses. Sylvain has lots of childhood trauma around his crest. Petra has lots of convos that flesh out her past as well as what her goals are. But there are also those that are much more surface level characterizations just to remind you that Raphael likes food. Engage certainly doesn’t do this any better though. Why am I only finding out that Citrinne is third in line to the Brodian throne after getting a single specific A support? Or how come Panette and Pandreo don’t have a chat on the battlefield after not seeing each other for several years? There should be more ways for you to learn these basic character qualities on and off the battlefield so that the supports can focus more on unique details about a characters past or some qualities 2 or more characters share. Oddly enough, I think some of the best characterization Engage (and Fates) does to share more about a character quickly is their personal skills. Not all are super strong but at least they give you some idea of how the characters act compared to the other. Alfred basically rallies himself to be a better fighter. Hortensia is so much in your face that she has extra range with staves. Three houses on the other hand aren’t bad but they don’t tell me enough about a character. Over half of them are reused from Fates skills and altered so 2-4 characters have basically the same skill. Byleth and the lords all have basically the same skill prior to the timeskip. Dedue, Felix, Ferdie, Bernie, and Petra all have the same icon for their skill despite them functioning differently while Sylvain and Leonie have basically the same skill but have vastly different personalities. Again, I think just a bit more thought for each character outside of the supports at the base makes more sense. Give us their surface level personality and a good reason as to why they are joining on the battlefield. Then you can put more interesting details or plot relevant convos at the base or in the supports.
I feel like the best solution to supports might be fully replacing them with base conversations (like Radiant Dawn). While this is a really radical change that takes a lot of control from the players hands, it gives the writers a lot more control over where and when these conversations happen. Radiant Dawn didn’t use this system to its full potential because its cast size was too large to consistently shine a light in each character. With a smaller cast like Three Houses or Sacred Stones, I think this system could become the replacement Radiant Dawn wanted to be.
Base convos are definitely underrated. While people complain about the lack of "real supports" I never felt like much of the cast was as bland or uninvolved as people make them out to be, primarily from those base conversations. Plus this gives material ways to reward players for keeping particular unit sets alive and together beyond just minor stat boosts when near each other. Want the only Tempest Blade outside of steal shenanigans? Keep Edward and Leonardo alive deep into act 3. Want a sleep staff? Do the same but with Laura and Aran. Want an elixir and some interesting background on Volug? Put him with Nailah and Ike's army in act 4. The game DOES give these units character and purpose, but it does it through a more deeply integrated system.
I think path of radiance by far has the best support system. I think the only thing I’d change is letting a character have more than 5 conversations. And maybe some balance changes so certain supports aren’t massively better than others
@@ProfThelos I’d only really add one or two extra convos. That being said they don’t need to be balanced that much, but there are some types that are just worse than others. If you buffed support convos it would make them more fun to use and more impactful in the game
Funny you bring up the story/support/strategy/base time split, because I feel it's something that never used to be a thing, but grown as segments of fire emblem storytelling have been put in their own boxes. In genealogy, all base/story scenes/combat and character interactions all trickled in as you were playing the game (maybe with the exception of some arena grinding at the start of each chapter), and talk conversations in the jugdral games have a much more natural flow to them than supports. It'd be cool to see that story flow come back (as you said, it probably wont.) and just generally more story told in less static ways. Take Awakening's chapter 10 as a good example. instead of being greeted by all of Mustafa's story at the start of the map, its all staggered as the map goes on, accompanied by some excellent music and setting to convey the emotion the story wants to get across. We learn more about a character like that, then lets say chrom walking in on Robin in the bath. Theres more ways to tell a story than having two talking heads spew out their stories, and I feel its something old fire emblem had down to a T.
I was looking for a comment like this! Every time Telius base convos were brought up all I could think about was the funni words of Mekkah ringing out about "Kaga did it first" in terms of good supports. I actually did like the talk options in Jugdral, but I do think that they worked because the length of the map allowed for events to play out in a single chapter that having an option to see a character talking about such a recent event led to them feeling like a part of the game and story unfolding right then and there. I dunno how one is able to do that for ALL characters in the modern day Fire Emblem's typical chapter length. Like, maybe a support of 2 villager characters trigger when bandits reinforcements spawn to take out the village that maybe one of them have ties to, but that's like one chapter of a game and I struggle to find a way to make it work for every character just like Jugdral did with talks with their lover or events meant to increase love like the brave sword to Ayra or just other things like that. Maybe there is no solution and that's how it should be, where not every chapter has a talk option to avoid it feeling a little forced for and some characters with not much say will be left little in the way to characterize them. Not everything is perfect. Also, I say the avatar characters should probably die off since their innate ability to support everyone always makes them have the worst supports with only a handful being anything of substance. I honestly think their existence might have been a huge contribution to having this issue with supports being so many in number that they feel like a chore. They just gave others more supports since having a like 5 is too little in comparison so every one else got a little more plus the avatar support to lead to this problem. Plus, the avatar typically leads to a paired ending, so it is near impossible to have characters with pre established supports like lovers is impossible when avatars keep being implemented, so making Pent and Louise is literally impossible with avatars. I honestly think they have created so many problems in the world of supports that if we want better supports, removing the existence of an avatar character will solve so many problems it would only need very few mindful tweaks before it was ready to go. Alas, I guess avatars are just too good for sales that they will never be dropped, as Fire Emblem is more about waifus and what not, and so dating em via an avatar will always be in every new mainline game from now on.
I'm surprised you didn't go more into Echos as it pretty much had exactly the system you're suggesting. Supports were locked till the next story section and were limited so that each character would develop at a consistent pace. My perfect system Would just be Echoes pacing with characters getting a couple support options that eventually lock out others at a certain point. Symphony of War did it like this and I really enjoyed it.
Path of Radiance's base mechanics stay winning. What you described here is very similar to one of my major gripes with the main casts of Persona 4 and 5. Because their Persona upgrades are locked behind their Social Links, their most important development happens in some hypothetical nether dimension and disconnected from the main story. Leaving them more or less static throughout the story after they've gotten their obligatory chapter in the spotlight. The Persona games before 4 integrated those character arcs and their Persona evolutions to the actual stories.
I feel thig so much. Social links with the main cast takes away waaaay more than it adds. A big problem i find with it is that it limits how much a character can change and what you can do with them. You can't have some very big character change or character moment happen in the main story, because then it would be jarring that this isn't reflected somehow in the social link, and you can't have something big happen in the social link either, because then it would be jarring in the main story. The characters are then just kinda left in a limbo, where notable character development is basically impossible. I feel like the best example here is with Persona 3, where the Jumpei, Akihiko and Ken who doesn't have social links(In the original) are actually very well developed with real story arcs. While Fuuka, Yukari and Mitsuru who all have social links gets basically nothing.
I mean I don't see the issue there really, in 4 and 5 their development in the social links still feel important. And they aren't entirely static in the story after their spotlight as they do get some main story involvement to a degree afterwards too. True but that leads to less social links and other chances for them to develop more. Hell not every Persona main character does that in 3 and other games, like Koromaru and Shinjiriro for example really did benefit from their social links that they origially didn't get.
3H's supports also often did not change based on narrative progress. While some supports would be locked until or become locked after a certain point in the narrative, many could be experienced before or after the timeskip, meaning a character couldn't meaningfully change in those 5 years. This is most visible with Petra's continued inability to grasp the language despite spending her formative years speaking it. I really wish they could've implemented a "Hey, remember when..." scene that led to flashbacks - it's lampshading, but I think it could have done wonders to allow characters to actually feel like adults post-timeskip.
Honestly, Petra still having difficulty speaking language even after years of speaking it is the most believable to me. My grandpa still struggled with english, even speaking english and tagalog in the same sententce, all the way up to his death
@creataria Oh the difference in pre and post skip voices in 3H not affecting supports (or monastery activities or teaching/training for most characters) drives me nuts! It makes me wish the game didn't have voice acting at all.
@@Gracereza At the same time characters mouths move without voices is pretty odd. Shadows of Valentia didn't have this problem because the actors didn't have to be restricted to mouth movement. It makes me question if Fire Emblem even transfers well in 3d?????
This honestly brought to life what my problem with Three Houses was. I loved it to death, still do, but hot damn, I didn't realize how lengthy supports were, when I thought it was the Monastery segments. I find myself not finishing playthroughs of every modern Fire Emblem game when a ball of supports show up at once, dreading to read all of it for so long, I put it off until I'm better off restarting the playthrough to get the ball rolling again.
What I like about the limited supports, beyond the sheer playtime devoted to them, is that the support bonuses can be made a lot more significant. GBA/Tellius supports are really strong and really incentizes strategic use of them. But you can't give that kinda bonus when a unit has 5 A supports on the map.
I wonder if everyone having only C supports would work as an intermediate solution - you get the fun of answering “I wonder how they’d get along” and then have like 3-5 “real” support chains with characters who actually have something to say to each other.
@@Ashunera468 agreed there. I liked that three houses capped some supports at B rank. Not everyone will get along that well. I think the everyone can marry everyone style in the avatar era is ridiculous but they have to do that to not offend anyone.
@@evanherynk5863 i think it’s less about “offense” and more about keeping up the pretense that any avatars but Kris and Robin (and even that’s arguable) have been a real “self” insert. Of course a self-insert can marry everyone!! :p which of course just diminishes the avatar MCs by, as you said, diluting the conversations.
@@evanherynk5863 this is true, also three hopes even capped some at C rank. I think varied chain lengths is critical to avoid bloat whilst still giving a variety of interactions
I see the problems with supports and how they interact with the plot but I think that they’re not meant to serve as a way to make the overall plot more interesting but rather to give more context to your characters and serve as a break from the main story. The execution of this is uhh pretty varied, but I think in an ideal world it would be a nice change of pace. Also, Fates specifically limits the amount of support points you can gain per map. Only characters with fast supports can unlock a c support in one map and if one pair reaches their support point cap in a map, then the second pair actually has a lower cap for support points. Listen, they’re trying to not make you have to read 8 supports a chapter. More than I can say for some parts of 3 houses, sadly.
A lot of support defenders always seem to ignore that most characters get literally no characterisation or development outside this formulaic, grindy time chamber units get locked into for a convo's duration. And that convo has no effect on either unit outside the limited confines of their chain and probably an ending slide, the highest form of writing known to man. Currently, supports are narrative black holes that suck up any kind of potential the vast majority of the cast and the world has, lock it behind a point grind wall, and force the player to trudge through hours of mediocre content to occasionally stumble upon a gold nugget. A nugget that will never affect a character in a meaningful way. The fact that their format has been stuck for over 20 years at this point is also just sad. Always 1-on-1 3-4 convos with incredibly boring presentation and no variability. Often repeating the same character beats and driving their gimmick into the player's skull with a sledgehammer. The saddest part is probably that the same issue applies to the essential units as of late, as well. Fates and Engage royals especially stop being characters soon after joining the party and become boring exposition bots with generic lines that could be assigned by a randomiser and nothing of substance would change. And there are a ton of potential tools to fix these issues and keep supports mostly as the fun fluff they are. Give most characters event chains throughout the game, be it map events, base convos or even a rare optional chapter. Tie certain characters' arcs together and alter them if one of them is dead. Give extended epilogues with varying ending scenes for these units, instead of boring slides. Lock certain supports behind this progression, while most supports remain the same. No need to make literally every support chain its own VN, but at this point I'll take any kind of experimantation over the current status quo.
"Narrative black holes" is such a good way to define the problems with the support system right now. FE4 and FE5 despite the lack of support built a good narrative through the use of in game events while you progress the chapter.
FE9 did supports the best by far IMO. -You didn't need to actively grind for them, since two characters only needed to be in the same map together to gain support rank -Since supports were based around the number of maps two chars had been together in, this meant they could "gate" supports behind story progression to an extent, meaning that they could actually tie into/reference the plot development -They were also backed up by base conversations, *and* a large number of characters (assuming they were alive) still appeared in main-story cutscenes throughout most of the game. Honestly FE9 has an incredible amount of effort put into its dialogue in general; if you look at the game script, there's actually a *huge* amount of dialogue changes in most scenes depending on which characters live or die.
Finally, someone put what I’ve felt about supports into words. I’ve always been more interested in the combat side of FE, but I’m still interested in watching supports and the story. I never go out of my way to grind supports, I just watch what I end up getting, but in modern games even I get an absurd bundle of supports each chapter. While I appreciate that the game is designed such that even a player who is not actively grinding supports can still get a good amount of them, every time I open the support menu I usually audibly say something line “god damnit” when I see the hour worth of reading I’m going to have to do when I really want to play the next chapter. I don’t want to skip supports because I actually am interested in the characters and their interactions with each other, but almost always it takes way too long to watch all the supports I obtained. It totally kills the pacing and gets boring about halfway through the bunch usually. I actually appreciated Engage’s supports being generally shorter than 3H because I didn’t have to wait *as long* when wading through supports.
You bring, as always, an interesting point in a concise, comprehensive manner, and I thank you for that. It is always great to see these short, albeit informative videos. i do say Radiant Dawn's or mystery of the Emblem's base conversations have a much better grasp on teh pacing and allow for meaningful conversations to happen, and if they had somehow implemented that into the supports themselves by for example, haivnggeneric supports that give some stats, but then having story-supported supports that give much better results, would have really nailed the concept and given a fair balance between freedom of choice for pairings and allowing stroyline growth for characters to appear. however, any system that tries to implement story-centric pairings and relationships will run into the issue of freedom of pairings: and many, many people love pairing characters for relationships. There really is no way to please eveyrone.
I think its this method of pairings that basically solves the whole issue that the "small army" fans have, because they always go on about how "ohh but a smaller cast is better because they can develop more", but like...first off, how often did those characters *really* develop over the main plot compared to Byleth and the house leader, and second, Radiant Dawn's system is giving dozens of units their own little chances to shine in conversations throughout the course of the larger story. Plus, add a few bonus objectives that can involve some of your units and bam, you got something special for these myriad side characters. Sure the pairing issue is still a thing, but even that might have a way of working out in the long run.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 It reminds me a bit of Sacred Stones and how characters were handled there. Some characters had small extra dialogue when deployed on certain maps, Joshua in Scorched Sands for example has special dialogue when fighting Caellach or Colm explaining to Eirika how thieves have improved sight on a fog of war map. I think what would add to that would be that when you select the characters for a map, certain charaters would have a "Wants to be here!" indicator and when deployed would give you a short explanation why.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 Yeah, it is a bit of a rethinking from the "recommended unit" from Triangle Strategy. In general there are a lot of things FE could innovate on....
I forget if you've played TRS yet, but supports in that game are kind of locked in, but there's also support conversations that happen as a part of the story that create or deepen the bonds. It's a really cool way to do it. I like how the characters are deciding who they like, instead of the tactician doing so.
I agree entirely with the point in the video, though I feel like the penultimate segment (about how more concise supports in limited amounts can strengthen just how much character the actors bring out) would be a perfect bridge to how Echoes is basically one of the only 2 games where supports actually have a good feel to them.
neat video, i enjoy the praise of fe9's base system, its combination of info convos and supports works well to give the characters room to talk about the context theyre in, and then have mini stories in the form of supports. i think its biggest development was the per map basis to unlock them, really cutting out some of the bullshit of gba games i do take the point about the cap of 5 cutting out the in between battles tedium, but i think its waaaay too limited, too far in the direction of too few supports (especially when theres a lot of good ones). i think it was clearly a gameplay consideration first, considering how busted the support gameplay effects are (which is one thing i do enjoy later games splitting apart)
I think that, so long as IS insists on having blank slate avatars, and I don't blame them for it, they sell, supports will be forever consigned to having to accomodate lore dumps, both for universe and for character, and they will suffer unnecessary bloat for this. It's an ill we'll have to reconcile ourselves to going forward. Great vid, as always. Also, thanks for reminding me there are still few great films by Louis Malle I have yet to see. Always love to see the cinematic allusions and references in your videos.
That's not entirely true. Byleth is not liked nearly as much as any of the house leaders, Corrin was one of the most hated characters in the whole series, at least when the game released in the west, and there are quite a few people who were instantly turned off from getting Engage because of Alear's design alone. Robin is still considered to be the best custom character partly because of how NOT a self-insert they are, but rather have a dynamic with Chrom.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 I'd argue that Byleth being an opaque viewing point for the real main characters of 3H, Dimitri, Edelguard & Claude, which then allows their actions and determinations to shine, a rarity in a series where everything needs to be filtered through the MC, makes him a better avatar character than Robin. Besides, my point was more about sales, and it is indisputable that 3H sold more than Awakening.
I hope I’m not late to the discussion. What I want to include is that, from a gameplay perspective, supports in most fire emblem don’t feel worth the investment because they improve your characters in a boring way. In most fire emblems all the supports do is increase stats. Which is why I like Fates. In fates reclassing options are tied to supports. The partner and friendship seals open up unit customization. Now characters can have multiple options while still having the player work for it.
I can’t help but think people are making a lot of assumptions about the purpose of supports and the “benefits” of removing them. To start, I don’t think supports are supposed to directly tie into the story. Why, because not every character is that important to the story and not all can be. Some characters are major, some are minor, and some are non-entities. You need something to give the characters with less presence some characterization and supports do that. Base conversations are good but aren’t a replacement. If you don’t believe me, look at RD’s new characters and tell me who’s memorable. I think the best solution is using base convos with supports and possibly add in moments that can happen on the map as well.
I wish supports werent predicated on whether or not you use the unit. If support conversations were unlocked whether or not you use or deploy the unit, you could instead set it to unlock after certain chapters, or after completing a paralogue, or god forbid, after another support conversation is viewed. You could have a support conversation that unlocks only if a certain character dies, or if a Unit has a certain Item equipped, or if a Unit reaches a certain stat benchmark. Any number of contextual prerequisites could be utilized, mixed and matched, and the prerequisites could feed into the context and narrative in a support. Imagine if a Support conversation unlocks when two characters exceed 10 strength, and they speak about each others training methods. And then you unlock a paralogue chapter after the conversation, and the next conversation unlocks after the paralogue. You could go a little fe4 and have certain conversations end with a unit getting an item or stat boost. The options are endless. All that needs to happen is the unshackle support from standing next to each other in battle.
While i agree to some of your points. The fact that the older games just cuts you short of a support chain. That would be like me reading two Hans Christian Andersen Fairy tales and being forced to stop before the ugly duckling learns they are a swan. That is not good game design or good story telling.
Yeah, no one is defending the travesty and nonsense of the GBA system, dont worry. That was just abject dog water and whoever thought that was a good idea needs to get owned by the devil axe. While attempting to wield it.
You probably don't want to hear this, but TearRing Saga and Berwick Saga are honestly strps in the right direction. Oh shit, Berwick Saga announcement... You will experience peak soon...
I liked it better when characters were limited to a couple conversations per playthrough. It made your support choices feel more impactful, it adds some replay value, and you wouldn't have to potentially sit through 5-8+ conversations after a chapter like in the modern games. Nothing makes supports feel more aimless than clicking on a unit during a map, and being greeted with a sea of letters above everyone's heads. Avatar characters have made this problem 10x worse for me. Less is more, and I think scaling down the amount of supports in total would only enhance things, both writing and gameplay-wise.
I'm intrigued why they haven't made certain abilities unlock through character specific supports. Not abilities that are locked on a class but much like how fates let you swap classes to unlock abilities, having a support with a sword master (for the sake of argument) might give the non-sword master Vantage or Astra. It could even be a different ability that is "between" the classes which are supporting. Maybe even a toned down version of the ability. Assassin supp giving Bane instead of the Lethality the Assassin class would have.
This reminds me of how skills are unlocked in the first FE Warriors. Every character can reach A rank with one another in order to obtain the materials necessary to obtain each other's associated skills (only certain pairs have support conversations).
Having played Baldur's Gate 3 recently has made me really wish FE supports could feel as dynamic and alive as the conversations with companions in that game feel. Having far fewer characters to work with def helps, but still it would be amazing if FE could be closer to that same level.
Short in-map supports with fewer conversations per character (the way Echoes did it) is easily the best way for the series to do the system. It plays to the strengths of the format much more than a menu where you read endless conversations one after the other. Short supports don't ruin the pacing of maps, while keeping downtime between maps short. Also since there's no menu, it makes it a lot easier to just have a support conversation unlock after certain story progression, making it easier to write reactive supports. It's a shame that intsys seems adamant on keeping the Awakening/Fates format without much iteration.
About backwards development: Though i dont consider this a solution, I've come up with a mindset that allows me to get through the issue of characters seemingly going backwards, especially in the case of a C convo being unlocked after a B or A with someone else. The idea is that the conversation itself does not necessarily happen at the time you unlock/view the scene. Instead, it is assumed that the scene could take place before the time that you view it. Let's take Bernie as an example. You just watched her B support with Edelgard, where she starts to learn a little bit about how to control the impulse of her paranoia, and you've also seen her convo with Ferdie where she agrees to make an effort to go outside more often. After the next battle, let's say she unlocks a C with Felix, one where it seems like the prior two hadn't yet happen. In my mindset, that would be correct. In my mindset, the convo with Felix did in fact take place before the one with Edelgard or Ferdie, I just hadn't seen it yet. In that way, many supports that i unlock after certain points can then be treated like flashbacks.
The funny thing is that sometimes there are examples of characters who, after learning something in a past conversation with another character, end up applying it in a completely separate convo.
@@valtinryu8147 I think thats the exact scenario I recall! I also like that cross-recruited characters, specifically the ones from black eagles, have more critical conversations about the empire and their opposition to it. Very nice attention to detail.
My issue with SD (and to lesser extent RD) not having supports is that it makes most characters generic. RD has a base conversations that features each character at least once and most of them have benefit of being developed in PoR, but SD doesn't have even that. It becomes even more of whiplash when it's prologue is full of character interactions, then the main game starts, with some exceptions, no one beside Marth, Malledus and Nyna says a word and there are bunch of characters who only talk when they die. So the problem isn't that there are no supports, but that there's nothing to fill the void left in their place. Some characters have talk conversations, but most get nothing. On paper i like that Awakening and Fates have so many supports, what i don't like is the ratio of S and A supports - not only because most S supports make little to no sense, but it also doesn't let non romantic supports to have a place. Like why Ricken can't support with Donnel when they can relate to one another, Stahl with Frederick when he and Sully were both trained by him, or hell, how is that Chrom recruits the most characters, but has one of the smallest support lists, not counting those with 1 or 2 supports. He can't support at all with Ricken, Stahl, Cordelia, Virion, Miriel, Panne, Anna, Say'ri, Gangrel, Walhart or at the very least Emmeryn. You could axe about 100 S supports from the game - nothing of value would be lost - while adding more platonic ones, improving the pacing issue, because now you can increase the support points requirement since you don't have to (potentially) unlock S one, which means less supports per map. Now, there are some supports in Awakening that manage to avoid the issues mentioned in the video to some extent - my favourite example being Henry/Cordelia chain. It utilizes Henry joining post time skip and Chrom being married by this point so it doesn't feel completely separate from the story, both characters are at their best instead of devolving into a comedy sketch like some Robin supports tend to do, their S support doesn't come out of nowhere like aforementioned 100 and it's overall well written. So it is possible and perhaps if more supports were locked behind story progression they would've seen vast improvement as well.
You have the brain the size of a planet. Thank you put putting into words so many of the issues i have with the Support systems. I agree that PoR did it best, but I think the limit should have been a bit higher - 5 is just too low, give me at least 6 so I can see two full chains.
While Shadow Dragon doesn't have supports like the other games, it does have a handful of one-off "talk" conversations that can occur between specific character pairs. Shadows of Valentia's support system worked similarly but was expanded in scope. I think this system has a lot of merits over the current system and I wouldn't mind seeing it return in future games. I feel like the writers of SD and SoV excelled at squeezing a lot of characterization into those games while also keeping the overall amount of text relatively small compared to recent entries.
My take on the topic (i have more familiarity with GBA games): * Mechanical point of view: - Supports gained per map not per proximity and turns. In case there is a support limit (example: max 5 supports like GBA), keep counting points per maps with all units in case your previous supports dies and then you can instantly stablish new supports, maybe multiple levels of the same support. - If there is a cap of 5 supports per character, then there is no cap on attributes obtained by these supports or it is a high cap. If the game allows for all available supports there should be a low cap so characters don't get too overpowered. * Mechanical and story point of view: - Some supports offers small bonuses to attributes and others offers personal skills. Some supports should even gift weapons, offer new classes or change classes, new weapons compatibility or whatever. Don't let mechanics limit what the story of the support should be. Lets say we have some jagen with even some leadership star. Perhaps he can pass that leadership star to a chrismas cavalier before being benched. - If there is a cap of 5 supports per character, other take could be (maybe in very specific support) that the unit seeks revenge when the other character dies and manage to keep the buffs (and still count as achieved relationship). Maybe Roy got A rank with Lilina and then she dies. It could be a bit awkward for Roy to just pick a new waifu and get a new ending. He then perhaps obtain a "and in the end he got his revenge after killing the dragons". - There should be default non personal supports with really low buffs. Like putting all cavalies nearby gives them some buff. * Story point of view: - Supports should evolve due to other character relationships, death and the chapter of the story. Too much work, they just take the easy way out. - Supports should be shorter.
Very interesting how you ended a video about supports by implying your next video will be about Berwick Saga (assuming you're not trolling). Kaga sagas decided to rework character writing entirely by giving each character (or group of characters) their own subplots. Personally I think it works a lot better than supports at making you invested in the characters. That's why BWS has my favorite cast out of all these games.
I liked that 3 Hopes limited the number of support conversations, so that each support level wouldn't have a convo, and the ones that were there could be more quality & story relevant My radical fix for the Support Pacing problem would be to completely get rid of Support Conversations and have them be mechanical bonuses only. And instead replace them with the Info Conversations at the base between chapters, like Radiant Dawn had. This way the conversations could be appropriately timed to be story-relevant and character arc relevant, but easily skipped on repeat playthroughs, instead of having your units go on camping trips in the middle of a war campaign.
To me if I could make an FE game, this is how I would have supports go: Supports that have ranks (C,B, and A) would give no bonusses in battle but will give you the chance to learn more about the characters and world. You would unlock them by deploying 2 supporting units in the same chapter (aka like POR) and have the units talk in battle or after in the camp. Characters are allowed to max out 2 supports, but the first support that reaches A rank will give those 2 characters an ending together. The support would build every fast as it will take 1 to 3 points for each character that way it doesn't have GBA FE support problems of taking too long and spamming end turn each map for 100 plus turns While supports don't give bonuses, their will be passives supports like Mystery of The Emblem and Thracia. These bonusses will only be give to characters who have some form of history together and can work by each character receiving a bonus or only one giving or receiving a bonus. Some may even be formed due to in game events.
Something that makes 3H's supports more tolerable for me is that unit recruitment is a lot harder than in games like Engage. In your first few playthroughs, you most likely recruit only a few students from other houses, and only 8 out of Lorenz's 14 supports are with characters originally from his house. This made 3H's supports a lot more managable, as the supports you unlock are more spread-out across different playthroughs, at which point there is no need to rewatch the ones you have already seen. The amount of Engage's supports just feels so much more overwhelming to me. Then again, 3H was my first Fire Emblem, and maybe I've just grown tired of this style of support system.
So I was playing a Shadow Dragon h5 iron man and I lost minerva after a horrible blunder, when the whitewings joined they commented on it in a way that added to their character, made them feel real and made me regret my mistake even more, THIS is all fe needs, the personal stories of the characters and their development through the war is something that should emerge from your play, modern supports detract from that and almost feel like fanfic or worse if they feel like cannon then they kill your story by making it the fanfic. I guess a few base conversations are also nice, but it should be minimal and follow the story and the gameplay, just have characters react to story beats depending on how often they are fielded, who died and maybe even who got promoted. If you're gonna write a billion pages of text for dumb supports you can achieve more with less by making a lot of different versions of the same few convos such that they fit the emergent story. The main problem with such an idea is that you need to write tons of dialogue, but they already do that and it sucks. Also you can write a lot more for important units and just a few things here and there for the rando who joins as a replacement. I realize ofc that this is never gonna happen, fe has long moved away from this philosophy, but I just wanted to voice my grievances for a bit and this vid was a nice excuse
Honestly, part of what this video brings up may be what makes it harder for me to properly have issue with the very real problems supports have in modern FE. Sure, it's a slog to watch all the supports at every base visit now, but at least (in 3H) it's a slog with a bit of new narrative content in it, as opposed to everything else you do at the base, which is even more directly samey. Who thought putting a bunch of real-time minigames into the Somniel was a good idea? I will echo the people who said that Three Hopes did it surprisingly well, but I'll add that it had a big advantage of Three Houses creating a foundation before it. Certain events in the Three Hopes supports even directly reference information that can only be obtained through Three Houses supports. And that goes back to the big question of story coherency, where the only way to ensure it is to give the player more unmissable story content for each character. This is something the obligatory ensemble comment scenes in the Fodlan games actually failed at in my opinion, since they could only convey the attitudes of the characters to the events (in a manner that very quickly comes to feel artificial from how formulaic it is) but didn't affect the events themselves and didn't expound on the lore the way the supports did. And even then, individual scenes like Ferdinand's conversations with Hubert about Ludwig's escape ultimately contributed more. Basically, FE needs to get base convos back (properly, not just as Garreg Mach snippets where you're lucky if you get a really valuable one once in a chapter). And to bring more character agency back to maps. Put narrative content there and shrink the support pools. Supports with their static nature are still not the worst place to put secondary lore, but they're not the best vehicles for character development. The real issue is managing the cast sizes, since FE requires dozens of characters for its gameplay to work and has finite screentime to give them.
This is why I find Three Hopes Support Unlocks to be fascinating, because the conversations are limited, but impactful to the characters overall. Expanding on the original narrative, but also being short and sweet because these are the characters we already know and love from the previous title. But without that knowledge, the supports paint the characters the same way we would want them to if this were our first experience with them - as they do successfully with the new introductions of characters like Rodrigue, Monica, and the Death Knight
This is something that tearring saga fixes but also makes it slightly less accessible. Even though they aren't categorized in the way that they are in modern fire emblem games, having certain characters in the same party in certain world map locations during specific parts of the story will essentially give you support conversations that increase support bonuses. It makes it so that they never break the game's pacing or story, though at the cost of it being easy to miss out on them, especially if you miss the first one of the chain supports that require you to get them in order.
I'm surprised FE4's conversations were not mentioned. I know the game doesn't have support convos like we're used to, but it has conversations which are triggered after reaching a specific point of the plot, or game. Some give minor stat boosts, weapons, steer marriage for the game's 2nd generation. And even Legendary weapons are only obtainable after completing a Convo (Forsety and Yewfelle come to mind) Perhaps a contextual support system can be integrated.... Just a thought
While not directly related to FE and solving its support issue, the way Kaga implemented supports in Tear Ring Saga seems like a good starting point to rework supports. With TRS supports, They're short exchanges between two characters that occur after plot relevant maps and only if the two characters are on the same route. While not a fix all, as then we need every game to function similarly to Sacred Stones and Gaiden, and that the supports are still far too exclusive and shallow even while laced into the plot, Expounding upon the a system like TRS would reduce the monotony of support system and be rid of the dissonance the narrative faces by not applying any characters side growths into it.
My enjoyment while playing Three Houses and Engage went dramatically up when I started using the skip button on supports The ones in older games weren't so bad cause I could read them at my own pace and I read pretty fast, but when they switched to fully voiced it feels like the pace slowed to a crawl.
GBA titles spamming enemy phase is counterintuitive for ranks too. Instead i just read support chains or videos than torture myself having began FE7 then Awakening. Found odd Hector and Eliwood began chit chatting then no one ever support spoke. Will give Awakening credit visual indicator hearts you have a support pair vs GBA just guessing or having Serene's forest or gamefaqs back then open. The visual novel direction sells now and it's big of a slog for anime war chess focused on, well, war.
My ideal support system would have: Bonuses from awa / fates. Build-up (how points are gained) from awa / fates, (gained with actions, unlike gba, by ending turn besides on another). 3 support branches for most characters. 5 for the special characters, like the lord. Relevant support come with story progression, similar to SoV or fe16, just not after the same "event", chapters 3 and 4 in sov, timeskip for fe16. Base convos from telius, specially cutscenes for achieving certain unique events like sov (not rescuing Matilda, having all 3 whitewings).
Personally I put Supports in FE a similar vain to Persona's Socal Links/Confidants. Fun side stuff that is not always related to the plot but helps you learn fun stuff about the characters and I guess I'm easy to please but that's all I want in a support, something that helps me learn more about a character. Speaking of Persona, super hot take, but I feel like they should pull a P3 and add some more socal stuff as well as adding something I believe Echoes' did and allow us to explore towns, to let see what the characters do on their downtime in different locations. I never played 3H but it seemed to have something akin to this interms of the socal aspects, somethink I wish they did more with in Engage. I personally wanna see more of what the cast does when they're not in battle, because I find learning about stuff like that to be fascinating. In any case, that an idea that sparked in my mind, I'm most likely the minority in this opinion which is fine, feel free to agree or disagree. I just wanted to throw my 2 cents into the pond.
í humbely dissagree in at least some points: Three houses had an enormous amount of support-textes, yes. but that is, by all means, a good thing, rather than a bad one. nintendo gave these conversations some buildups. Cloude and Annette? unforgettable. Linhardt with...literaly everyone he can have a support conversation with , Shamir with Raphael ; every support conversation is nut just great in shaping the characters, it made them also much more likable for me when i gave them a chance. First time playing the game, i took the blue lions (one true house, hands down!) and so i dissliked a lot of the black eagle house-ppl for there way of being. But im a collector, so... i took them all in my second Run into my party after beating the game at first with just my house members. i was shocked how good the other houses members were; just as good as my beloved blue lion cast. there is , in the whole cast, not a single character i dont like. some of them more, some of them less, but i like them all! and this is bcs they have so much support conversations that make me _care_ about them. It was long, yes. but it puts also such a cool story of every character into the game that i gladly took the time enjoying it. Thats why i disslike "Engage" as a Fire Emblem Title so much. i couldnt care less for everyone:, the protagonist like every character the game have to offer. the talks between them are to short and awfully written. The talks between the characters and the Emblems are even worse; 8(!) Lines of dialogue spread on 3 Conversations. it tells no story; it is there because it "has to be there". This is _realy_ a waste of time. however i see the point that the time u actually have a support is very uncool while the story itself progressed. but three houses already invented the answere right away: just dont allow support-increases untill certain points in the story. it is far from perfect, but it helps a lot in terms of shaping moments on special times. When a edgy prince finally comes back to reason and starts talking to peolple again - for example. here, have my two cent. :) Still a great video :)
I don't mind a high volume of supports. In more recent games we have the option to unlock them for gameplay benefits, skip them, and watch them later. That said, the points about character regression and lack of cohesion with the story are ones I get. Those seem to be lesser issues in games with strong world building, e.g. Tellius and Fodlan games. The characters get to have interesting things to talk about, so it's not just two people interacting with each other in isolation.
This video reminds me of my realization that Fuyohiko is the only non-protagonist Danganronpa character to ever get a proper character arc, and they did that by locking you from starting his Freetime Events until chapter 4 (of 6, and the 6th doesnt have freetime)
You know, outside of the Pair Up games supports tend to be difficult to gain which means you likely arent spending much time reading them at all or benefiting from the gameplay buffs unless you really seek them out. Even for Engage you'd be lucky to get more than 1 support outside of Alear before the dlc updates, I couldnt even get Alfred and Celine to their C support before benching one post ch 11. I think supports are very flawed because their timing has to be balanced around the gameplay buffs they provide alongside the fact that permadeath makes it so that any potential story intergration becomes a nightmare to plan for a cast of 30+ characters, but I think the feeling of time spent wasted comes from the longer length of the more recent supports alongside what was said about how isolated each support line is due to any of them possibly being your first view of the character
Three Houses leaving character backstory and their related subplots, behind Supports (and the Paralogues from recruitments), and the shenanigans that can ensue, just makes the Support system a broken, but interesting mess.
As someone who fell in love with FE because of the supports in Awakening, I kinda wish the next Fire Emblem had a super minimal cast - higher quality, less quantity. I couldn't believe I was falling asleep during Engage's support convos, they used to be the most exciting thing for me. The way most character archetypes are mostly explored already doesn't help either.
Pretty much the only way you could actually eliminate supports without making every character seem one-note is if all of them were involved in the story in some minor or even major way. The chances of that happening are just about 0 though. You'd have to have either a really dedicated team (like Indie game creative level team) or have a small cast (15-20 characters tops). The former is a problem because no one is gonna make that complicated of a storyline for a 50+ cast of characters, 70 if you count possible npcs, villains, etc. The latter is just outrageous. You'd basically be making a Final Fantasy game with Fire Emblem gameplay. Which isn't necessarily an awful idea, but I don't see it being a brought up topic at IS meetings. It probably would solve the "I have too few deployment slots for my 50ish character roster." As for the current support systems here's my opinion: FE4: Know very little about it. Knew about Quan/Ethlyn A support and that's it. 3/10. FE6/7/8: Good idea on paper. Flawed execution. Only 5 supports per character per playthrough? I get how powerful supports can be, but jeez that's a bit much. 5/10. FE9: Slightly better than FE6,7,8, as supports are based on maps fielded together rather than turns passed smashing each other. And I do mean SMASHING. 6/10. FE10: The supports only amount to stat buffs and have little character building. 2/10. FE12: Supports revolve mostly around Kris, but are relatively easy to unlock and the bonuses are solid. 5/10. FE13/14: Supports at their peak imo. I can go on rants about why I don't like Fates or Awakening, but their support system is just about flawless. 2-3 maps per support, no limits per playthrough, pair up system with solid bonuses, and good character development. 9/10. FEW: Putting Warriors here cause I can. Its support system is okay, but not great. Grinding out supports is annoying, since the maps are more than likely slapfests anyways. The supports are really only one convos between two characters anyway, but are usually worth it. 6/10. FE15: Echoes had it rough. 1-3 supports per character. Some don't even have any. If you pick Deen over Sonya, Genny doesn't even have a conversation support. Earning the supports usually requires story progression which is slightly problematic, but not as much as the next entry. 4/10. FE16: 3H took what I enjoyed about FE13s support system and did a complete 180. Story progression supports as well as uncompleted supports (seriously, a B rank support is kinda dumb, even though I know A rank supports are exclusive for the ensured partner endings), and the support system has been replaced with a weird system that seems to be based off of how many enemies you kill. Which takes forever in some cases. The only thing I do like is that each character does have some good layers of depth in their supports (at least until you get past C support). 4/10. FE17: Engage proceeded to go back to Awakening's support system, so I'm happy, aside from certain characters having God awful characterization. 8.5/10. My opinion: stick with Fates support system. The gameplay becomes much more balanced than some of the other games and the best part is it doesn't require you to play the game multiple times to unlock every support (unless you're trying to get every S support, which, if that's the case good luck to you).
There's a few things at play here that make supports in recent fire emblem games feel more like a chore and less like a reward. Obviously the number of supports is a huge factor; when every character can support with almost every other character, you run into a lot of repeated motifs that quickly become boring and it just takes so long to get through if you actually want to sit and watch each conversation that pops after a chapter. I honestly think that the biggest factor is the transition to 3d and full voice acting. Having characters animated seems to have pushed the devs in a direction of more physical interactions between characters, but the range of animations that these models actually posses is a serious limitation on what these interactions can be. Any 'action' in these supports happens off screen, regularly accompanied by a thump sound, which worked fine when all you saw of the characters was a headshot, but in 3d it feels awkward to cut away from the characters only when they're supposed to be actually interacting with one another. Full voice acting just drastically increases the amount of time you spend with each support interaction. Prior to 3 houses you could progress through support conversations at your own pace without restraint, taking the time to enjoy conversations that interested you, or skimming through conversations that didn't. When everything is voice acted, you feel compelled to watch the ones that interest you (which takes much longer). For conversations you're not all too interested in, skipping lines of dialogue to get to the next line quicker makes you FEEL like you're rushing through because the voice actor has only said 3 words so far. When everything was plain text, I never felt like I was rushing to finish my chores because I still read everything.
Why don’t we make it realistic? Not only do we have support locked behind timestamp we also have support locked after time stamp, so like once a character finished B support some one and underwent character progression, all C support that only applies before progression are locked forever
Path of Radiance has the best support system in my opinion. I’m not a fan of the 5 support limit, but other than that it’s perfect. You have the base conversations that flesh out characters as kind of mini supports, as well as the standard supports. The best thing is the supports have effects on the story itself. For example, if you have Mist and Jill reach A support, Jill stays with your army when you fight her father. If not, she deserts. This carries over into Radiant Dawn as well, if you transfer save data, as PoR supports will be referenced in RD, with Mist being able to recruit Jill if they reached A support.
I think we need more base convos like SOV and POR. That said I don't think this amount of supports breaks the pace or is even really a problem. I'm a sucker for supports and I don't think that will change.
I’m coming back so much later after first watching this to say that almost every point you make is spot on, however I think that one critically important point is missing from this video: Modern Fire Emblem characters are meaningless. To make my point concisely, compare the cast of awakening, fates, and engage with that of Genealogy, Path of Radiance, and Thracia, and you will see that in the latter three, almost every character has some story related meaning, even if for an instant. Furthermore, they are accomplished pieces of world building simply by their existence. Lithis and Perne and Dagdar are examples of how varied thievery is in Thracia on a personal level, and Nephenee and Brom are literal farmer militiamen forced to take up arms. Compare that to modern casts in which they don’t provide any meaning beyond their singular character defining trait. Charlotte is a border guard who fakes being helpless I guess, 16 of engages characters are simply retainers for the sake of being retainers, and awakenings cast is comprised of “has no purpose aside from to be quirky” examples. When you have so many characters who are fundamentally useless to the story at large, it becomes almost impossible to write dialogue between them that doesn’t pull away from the main plot beats. If one were to make talk conversations for Thracia characters, there would be a treasure trove of potential to work with, since the developers established purposeful meanings for the cast of Thracia, and the Forseti’s Cut hack proves my point only too well. FE casts cannot be the Awake/Fates/Engage flavor of “haha quirky” while simultaneously being good or meaningful. It’s simply not possible.
as much as i really enjoy supports despite all the story and writing flaws, the one thing that for me, really adds a huge layer of tediousness to them is the way you unlock said supports in gameplay. I would find it a lot more bearable if it didn't involve playing the game in a very specific way just to unlock them. POR honestly has the best implementation of it since it wasn't restricitive nor did it get in the way of the gameplay.
I think a good example of supports done right is in three hopes sorta cause they just cheat. Cause In the game the characters are written like they’ve already gone through development. It feels like the characters are more developed with the two year timeskip than the five year timeskip in three houses. And that’s because they never have supports that happen before the timeskip and can proc after the timeskip.
A new problem is the voice actor and the protagonist vibes. The male va has much better delivery with Alear, but the script accommodates a female Alear much better. Not true for the main story but definitely the supports
To me, Echoes and the Jugdral games do it best. Echoes limited the supports between characters to a very reasonable degree and if I recall correctly (idk, it's been a few years) adapted well as the overall plot changed. Meanwhile I love fe4's implementation since player choice has limited impact. Conversations either don't do much but give character insight or are extremely helpful and develop plot points. Predetermining when supports (or just convos, no ranks!) happen makes characterizing and plot relevant supports much easier. Thracia is also nice because the gameplay depth is there from the start and it provides implicit characterization. In a perfect world, I'd want something a lot like fe4 with minimally impactful predetermined conversations that react to the plot, while the gameplay aspect remains easy to access a la thracia.
Supports can be nice, as a side thing or a thing that expands on characters I already care about, but in the modern games I've sometimes found them to be a chore. Am I the only one who thinks there are just way too many of them? They feel like a formality in a lot of senses.
I still think Path of Radiance was the peak of the Fire Emblem support system. It wasn't perfect, you still have to replay the game many times to see all of them. But, having the characters actually react and talk about what's going on in the story felt 10x more immersive than whatever else the series has going.
I'm gonna be honest, I don't see the problem with supports not being related to the story. Not everything has to be about the war campaign or two characters' past together. I enjoy the more lighthearted supports and even the slice of life nature of Engage's supports, meant to be just funny bits between two people.
Part of me wonders how well removing player action from building supports would help. By doing this, the writers could know exactly when supports would happen, so they could write them accordingly. Additionally, the game devs would know all of the supports and bonuses the player has access to. Limiting the amount of possible supports via two characters not having a support conversation could help as well. The main drawback of all of this is that is lowers player freedom in how to build and utilize supports, but at the same time, devs having a more concrete idea if what the players have access to allows them to make a more concise challenge.
Hey Bopper, great video. However, you are forgetting one important point about supports. My life is in shambles and seeing these fake people interact on my screen and form bonds and relationships is one of the few things to bring me joy in life, so less supports would limit that. Also I like having more times when caspar yells haha funny
PoR proving it's superiority yet again. We need the base back it's like the monastery but not shit. As novel as it is to run around and see the waifus instead of them just being jpegs, it has only prolonged the very streamlined base experience from PoR/RD and if you want to run around and see your waifu then keep the scrounging time after engages maps. I get the anger at RD having the most nothing supports ever, but honestly I'd rather them be short rather than the C rank support dredging of three houses.
I think that the reason that a lot of characters in recent games get shit on because of how often youll end up hearing them explain their gimmicks 6 times in row in the C support vefore they have any development in the B and A support, so youll listen to someone like bernadetta scream the same lines over and over and give up on the character as a whole before they get to have any kind of significant change
Yea, most of her early supports done my girl berny dirty
That's definitely an issue. Gee Ignatz, do you like art but feel obligated to pursue a different career for your family's sake, you don't say... for the tenth time.
It doesn't help that each house leader already sums up that character's quirk when you ask for picking a house. They didn't need to establish it that often.
Lysithea... it has been 5 years... NO ONE thinks you are a child anymore!
@@crowhaveninc.2103youd be surprised. a lot of people now think even 25 yr olds are children. like in real life.
And then there's Dorcas where its "My wife" "My wife" "If I put on the collar will you pay for the surgery? My wife."
Laura's support convos in RD talking about the goddess Ashera watching over and supporting her and her partner are just absolutely hilarious when triggered during the final boss fight... Against Ashera,
Yeah I'm sure the goddess is watching over you she's literally right there.
I recently wrote some RD fan supports and one of them was Laura/Tanith - where Laura talked about this exact thing, having a crisis of faith by being forced to fight against Ashera.
@@jedisalsohere Laura could've been an amazing character what little she has (ie base conversations) is cute 😭
One thing I really liked about three hopes was that some supports were locked behind story progression or even character recruitment. Leonie can never have an A support UNLESS you recruit Byleth and Jeralt. Otherwise it is impossible to get that support. I also liked that about three houses too where if you wait too long you might never be able to view a support conversation, again with Leonie, if you don't get a C support by the time Jeralt dies you can never get it ever again. Quite interesting
When I saw that I immediately thought “why wasn’t this a thing in past games!?” Cuz if used right it has pretty good support-story cohesion, like say Ferdinand’s A support or Leonie’s like you mentioned
Nice pfp :)
@makotoyuki345 Path of Radiance essentially had this as well, by changing the entire dialogue of supports based on what chapter you were on or if a unit was still alive. Examples are Jill referring to Shirahim before or after Ch 20, or Makalov and Tormod referring to Marcia/Murarim if they are dead.
I could do without that honestly.
It meant getting all the supports was a serious chore. Especially since you have to recruit other students into your house in 3 Houses, which already takes an asinine amount of time assuming you aren't doing NG+.
I still prefer the Fates/Awakening/Engage version even though the supports were a bit lacking it was honestly the most lenient support system.
It's also helped that in Path of Radiance, we get base conversations which gives us time to learn more about a character without needing to field them. And as they are time sensitive, we see growth in characters that otherwise wouldn't get spotlight in the main story such as Jill.
5:57 Honestly, I think you're short-changing PoR here. There's a bunch of supports that directly reference, or are entirely based on events in the main story text: Ike and Soren's B support is about how Soren has become more withdrawn in Begnion; Boyd and Mist's A support has Mist crying over losing Lehran's Medallion; Jill and Mist's A support is prompted by the restoration of the Serenes Forest; and Jill and Lethe's A support is about how Jill decided to stay on Ike's side despite it leading to her father's death.
PoR also has some of the only dynamic supports in the entire series. Titania and Mist's A support changes to reflect how Mist can't do the entire Liberation's Army laundry; Makalov and Astrid's supports change if Marcia is dead, with the C support mentioning that he's paying his respects instead of buttering her up with flowers; and Mist and Jill's A support has Jill going from being angry at her father to feeling like she betrayed him after his death -and also she confesses to mist.-
OH MY GOSH inlaying Macbeth's monologue over Lorenz's supports KILLED ME !! Oh my gosh the narrative irony 😭😭😭 that was so clever lmfao
And was that the sci fi world war looking macbeth edition 🙈 I had to watch that in a Shakespeare class, what a wild movie
I feel like 3 Hopes *started* to help with the support bloat problem more, limiting conversations and time locking them, but it did have a lot too. But I also felt like most of them were really interesting ??? I think it helps that some of them only got 1 conversation or maybe 2. Like Mercedes and Sylvain only have 1 but it shook me lol.
I'm also reminded of fe4??? They have Way less supports, leaning too few, but the conversations they did have really stood out. Brigid and Edain, Lachesis and Eldigan, the spouses I accidentally put together. They felt way more tied in. Honestly I wish they'd bring back in-battle supports like in echoes ?? Very curious to see if supports will change at all in the future or if you're right that they'll stay bloated hmm! Happy to report however that fe9 stays winning 🙏 what having a non royal non divine gay guy as the protagonist does to a game fr
I think the supports are really being held back by fire emblem's tendencies to rely on archetypes established earlier in the series. They could have some really interesting conversations if they:
a.) Didn't have every single support be a 1-on-1 conversation scaling from C to A. It could be very dynamic to have groups or cliques form through supports, etc.
b.) Have supports trigger or build up in more varied ways. Maybe Roy automatically gets his B support with Marcus unlocked after reaching level 10 or maybe Dorcas gets a support with Rebecca after reaching D bows.
Id like to see supports linked with permadeath, characters mourning, consoling eachother, swearing vengeance for their friends, I think it would help make both permadeath and supports more interesting
This is why base convos (from tellius) are good, they're time specific and can also feature more than two characters at once, allowing them to A. be plot relevant, B. characterise multiple characters at once, and C. show growth over time.
3H's support chains sometimes being capped at B-rank is a tiny comfort in the face of 3H's pacebreakers being already significantly worse than the other games the use of the somniel itself is never actually necessitated other than to get to the final map in the game, which is something that helped it a lot in my opinion
I think another aspect that has been hampering quality supports is that newer supports are written as the only way to learn more about a character.
Think about characters in other games where supports are praised. Fe4&9 come to mind for me (mostly because those are some of the latest games I’ve played). In fe4 the conversations are potentially skippable if a character dies or you just aren’t aware they have a conversation. But very few characters feel lackluster because they have ways to be tied into the story besides just you found them on your way from point A to point B. Lachesis is looking to persuade her brother twice. Jill has multiple convos on and off the battlefield about why she would betray her country and family.
Now think about that for Three Houses or Engage. Three Houses only gives a couple characters like Ashe or Sylvain with any story relevance. Everyone else only gets their personal paralogue, and most of the time that’s barely anything. Engage does the same thing with character’s joining chapters. You get a glimpse of their surface level personality and then they are nothing but background pawns. The only way these modern characters see any bit of the spotlight is in their supports.
There needs to be more effort trying to incorporate the cast with the other characters (both ally or enemy) as well as with the grand picture of the story. Someone following you until their death because you had tea with them twice doesn’t feel compelling. Give these characters other motives to follow your goals. Avenge a family member. Rescue a friend that’s been captured. It doesn’t matter what it is, just something more than what we are being given these days.
Thats a shit ton of characters to incorporate into the main plot
Also, is that a picture of Citrinne hugging Engage Anna? Because that is adorable
@@boshwa20 it’s not that unrealistic. They don’t need to have Lord or Avatar levels of plot relevance. Just more than “You bought me 6 flowers and now I won’t leave your side no matter what you do.” For example, fe6 has 15 more characters than 3H and I would argue most of those have a better reason for following you than the majority of the 3H cast. Some of them are extremely simple like “Your father hired our group of mercenaries so we will follow you until the job is done.” Fe4 even has more characters without including replacement units, and contains less chapters, and all but like Lana has a good reason to see their conflict to the end. All they need are like 2 or 3 lines of dialogue while recruiting them or after recruiting them so we have a more basic motive.
Yes it is. They are both adorable. I don’t dislike engage, but I wish they would try a bit harder outside of support convos to get me to like characters
I absolutely agree with this point. I started myself on Awakening. But even I realize how much more natural its done in older titles.
Like, not everyone has to be important to the overall story/narrative. Just enough to establish stuff. I was always a bit scuffed on Three Houses because of it both lacking this, and being more sandbox in approach. Which doesn’t help distinguish anyone when every character can go Wyvern Lord.
Three Houses took the Breath of the Wild approach by basically giving you all the tools at the start. And while I think that approach can work, I do not think it gives the right strengths in the places FE is being written in. As in a chapter by chapter basis. Those moments inbetween are so half-assed. It hardly feels like we get time to get invested and interact with the characters. It’s a classic case of incorporating old FE writing tropes into a newer format that just doesn’t gel well.
FE Echoes of Valentia might as well be a different beast altogether. You cannot convince me the same people made that game and Three Houses. It does so much better in almost every aspect of narrative, and has a unique style to its world to boot. Three houses feels flat in comparison. Which is really a shame when one is on the 3DS and the other on the Switch.
They really should focus more on presentation. As it really does detract from any attachment one might express in the characters beyond them just being an investment.
I agree with these points, but also feel like some of the 3 Houses supports are deeper and better written. It could definitely be recency bias on my part.
@@altlover85There are certainly a handful of deeper convos in Three Houses. Sylvain has lots of childhood trauma around his crest. Petra has lots of convos that flesh out her past as well as what her goals are. But there are also those that are much more surface level characterizations just to remind you that Raphael likes food.
Engage certainly doesn’t do this any better though. Why am I only finding out that Citrinne is third in line to the Brodian throne after getting a single specific A support? Or how come Panette and Pandreo don’t have a chat on the battlefield after not seeing each other for several years? There should be more ways for you to learn these basic character qualities on and off the battlefield so that the supports can focus more on unique details about a characters past or some qualities 2 or more characters share.
Oddly enough, I think some of the best characterization Engage (and Fates) does to share more about a character quickly is their personal skills. Not all are super strong but at least they give you some idea of how the characters act compared to the other. Alfred basically rallies himself to be a better fighter. Hortensia is so much in your face that she has extra range with staves. Three houses on the other hand aren’t bad but they don’t tell me enough about a character. Over half of them are reused from Fates skills and altered so 2-4 characters have basically the same skill. Byleth and the lords all have basically the same skill prior to the timeskip. Dedue, Felix, Ferdie, Bernie, and Petra all have the same icon for their skill despite them functioning differently while Sylvain and Leonie have basically the same skill but have vastly different personalities.
Again, I think just a bit more thought for each character outside of the supports at the base makes more sense. Give us their surface level personality and a good reason as to why they are joining on the battlefield. Then you can put more interesting details or plot relevant convos at the base or in the supports.
I feel like the best solution to supports might be fully replacing them with base conversations (like Radiant Dawn). While this is a really radical change that takes a lot of control from the players hands, it gives the writers a lot more control over where and when these conversations happen. Radiant Dawn didn’t use this system to its full potential because its cast size was too large to consistently shine a light in each character. With a smaller cast like Three Houses or Sacred Stones, I think this system could become the replacement Radiant Dawn wanted to be.
Base convos are definitely underrated. While people complain about the lack of "real supports" I never felt like much of the cast was as bland or uninvolved as people make them out to be, primarily from those base conversations.
Plus this gives material ways to reward players for keeping particular unit sets alive and together beyond just minor stat boosts when near each other. Want the only Tempest Blade outside of steal shenanigans? Keep Edward and Leonardo alive deep into act 3. Want a sleep staff? Do the same but with Laura and Aran. Want an elixir and some interesting background on Volug? Put him with Nailah and Ike's army in act 4.
The game DOES give these units character and purpose, but it does it through a more deeply integrated system.
I think path of radiance by far has the best support system. I think the only thing I’d change is letting a character have more than 5 conversations. And maybe some balance changes so certain supports aren’t massively better than others
@@ProfThelos I’d only really add one or two extra convos. That being said they don’t need to be balanced that much, but there are some types that are just worse than others. If you buffed support convos it would make them more fun to use and more impactful in the game
Funny you bring up the story/support/strategy/base time split, because I feel it's something that never used to be a thing, but grown as segments of fire emblem storytelling have been put in their own boxes. In genealogy, all base/story scenes/combat and character interactions all trickled in as you were playing the game (maybe with the exception of some arena grinding at the start of each chapter), and talk conversations in the jugdral games have a much more natural flow to them than supports. It'd be cool to see that story flow come back (as you said, it probably wont.) and just generally more story told in less static ways. Take Awakening's chapter 10 as a good example. instead of being greeted by all of Mustafa's story at the start of the map, its all staggered as the map goes on, accompanied by some excellent music and setting to convey the emotion the story wants to get across. We learn more about a character like that, then lets say chrom walking in on Robin in the bath. Theres more ways to tell a story than having two talking heads spew out their stories, and I feel its something old fire emblem had down to a T.
I was looking for a comment like this! Every time Telius base convos were brought up all I could think about was the funni words of Mekkah ringing out about "Kaga did it first" in terms of good supports. I actually did like the talk options in Jugdral, but I do think that they worked because the length of the map allowed for events to play out in a single chapter that having an option to see a character talking about such a recent event led to them feeling like a part of the game and story unfolding right then and there. I dunno how one is able to do that for ALL characters in the modern day Fire Emblem's typical chapter length. Like, maybe a support of 2 villager characters trigger when bandits reinforcements spawn to take out the village that maybe one of them have ties to, but that's like one chapter of a game and I struggle to find a way to make it work for every character just like Jugdral did with talks with their lover or events meant to increase love like the brave sword to Ayra or just other things like that. Maybe there is no solution and that's how it should be, where not every chapter has a talk option to avoid it feeling a little forced for and some characters with not much say will be left little in the way to characterize them. Not everything is perfect.
Also, I say the avatar characters should probably die off since their innate ability to support everyone always makes them have the worst supports with only a handful being anything of substance. I honestly think their existence might have been a huge contribution to having this issue with supports being so many in number that they feel like a chore. They just gave others more supports since having a like 5 is too little in comparison so every one else got a little more plus the avatar support to lead to this problem. Plus, the avatar typically leads to a paired ending, so it is near impossible to have characters with pre established supports like lovers is impossible when avatars keep being implemented, so making Pent and Louise is literally impossible with avatars. I honestly think they have created so many problems in the world of supports that if we want better supports, removing the existence of an avatar character will solve so many problems it would only need very few mindful tweaks before it was ready to go. Alas, I guess avatars are just too good for sales that they will never be dropped, as Fire Emblem is more about waifus and what not, and so dating em via an avatar will always be in every new mainline game from now on.
I'm surprised you didn't go more into Echos as it pretty much had exactly the system you're suggesting. Supports were locked till the next story section and were limited so that each character would develop at a consistent pace. My perfect system Would just be Echoes pacing with characters getting a couple support options that eventually lock out others at a certain point. Symphony of War did it like this and I really enjoyed it.
Path of Radiance's base mechanics stay winning.
What you described here is very similar to one of my major gripes with the main casts of Persona 4 and 5. Because their Persona upgrades are locked behind their Social Links, their most important development happens in some hypothetical nether dimension and disconnected from the main story. Leaving them more or less static throughout the story after they've gotten their obligatory chapter in the spotlight. The Persona games before 4 integrated those character arcs and their Persona evolutions to the actual stories.
I feel thig so much. Social links with the main cast takes away waaaay more than it adds. A big problem i find with it is that it limits how much a character can change and what you can do with them. You can't have some very big character change or character moment happen in the main story, because then it would be jarring that this isn't reflected somehow in the social link, and you can't have something big happen in the social link either, because then it would be jarring in the main story. The characters are then just kinda left in a limbo, where notable character development is basically impossible.
I feel like the best example here is with Persona 3, where the Jumpei, Akihiko and Ken who doesn't have social links(In the original) are actually very well developed with real story arcs. While Fuuka, Yukari and Mitsuru who all have social links gets basically nothing.
I mean I don't see the issue there really, in 4 and 5 their development in the social links still feel important. And they aren't entirely static in the story after their spotlight as they do get some main story involvement to a degree afterwards too. True but that leads to less social links and other chances for them to develop more. Hell not every Persona main character does that in 3 and other games, like Koromaru and Shinjiriro for example really did benefit from their social links that they origially didn't get.
3H's supports also often did not change based on narrative progress. While some supports would be locked until or become locked after a certain point in the narrative, many could be experienced before or after the timeskip, meaning a character couldn't meaningfully change in those 5 years. This is most visible with Petra's continued inability to grasp the language despite spending her formative years speaking it. I really wish they could've implemented a "Hey, remember when..." scene that led to flashbacks - it's lampshading, but I think it could have done wonders to allow characters to actually feel like adults post-timeskip.
Honestly, Petra still having difficulty speaking language even after years of speaking it is the most believable to me. My grandpa still struggled with english, even speaking english and tagalog in the same sententce, all the way up to his death
@creataria Oh the difference in pre and post skip voices in 3H not affecting supports (or monastery activities or teaching/training for most characters) drives me nuts! It makes me wish the game didn't have voice acting at all.
@@Gracereza At the same time characters mouths move without voices is pretty odd. Shadows of Valentia didn't have this problem because the actors didn't have to be restricted to mouth movement.
It makes me question if Fire Emblem even transfers well in 3d?????
This honestly brought to life what my problem with Three Houses was. I loved it to death, still do, but hot damn, I didn't realize how lengthy supports were, when I thought it was the Monastery segments.
I find myself not finishing playthroughs of every modern Fire Emblem game when a ball of supports show up at once, dreading to read all of it for so long, I put it off until I'm better off restarting the playthrough to get the ball rolling again.
What I like about the limited supports, beyond the sheer playtime devoted to them, is that the support bonuses can be made a lot more significant. GBA/Tellius supports are really strong and really incentizes strategic use of them. But you can't give that kinda bonus when a unit has 5 A supports on the map.
I do think we need limited support partners. The conversations are just way too diluted as they are now.
I wonder if everyone having only C supports would work as an intermediate solution - you get the fun of answering “I wonder how they’d get along” and then have like 3-5 “real” support chains with characters who actually have something to say to each other.
@@Ashunera468 agreed there. I liked that three houses capped some supports at B rank. Not everyone will get along that well. I think the everyone can marry everyone style in the avatar era is ridiculous but they have to do that to not offend anyone.
@@evanherynk5863 i think it’s less about “offense” and more about keeping up the pretense that any avatars but Kris and Robin (and even that’s arguable) have been a real “self” insert. Of course a self-insert can marry everyone!! :p which of course just diminishes the avatar MCs by, as you said, diluting the conversations.
@@Ashunera468 yeah this is what I was trying to convey.
@@evanherynk5863 this is true, also three hopes even capped some at C rank. I think varied chain lengths is critical to avoid bloat whilst still giving a variety of interactions
I see the problems with supports and how they interact with the plot but I think that they’re not meant to serve as a way to make the overall plot more interesting but rather to give more context to your characters and serve as a break from the main story. The execution of this is uhh pretty varied, but I think in an ideal world it would be a nice change of pace.
Also, Fates specifically limits the amount of support points you can gain per map. Only characters with fast supports can unlock a c support in one map and if one pair reaches their support point cap in a map, then the second pair actually has a lower cap for support points. Listen, they’re trying to not make you have to read 8 supports a chapter. More than I can say for some parts of 3 houses, sadly.
A lot of support defenders always seem to ignore that most characters get literally no characterisation or development outside this formulaic, grindy time chamber units get locked into for a convo's duration. And that convo has no effect on either unit outside the limited confines of their chain and probably an ending slide, the highest form of writing known to man.
Currently, supports are narrative black holes that suck up any kind of potential the vast majority of the cast and the world has, lock it behind a point grind wall, and force the player to trudge through hours of mediocre content to occasionally stumble upon a gold nugget. A nugget that will never affect a character in a meaningful way.
The fact that their format has been stuck for over 20 years at this point is also just sad. Always 1-on-1 3-4 convos with incredibly boring presentation and no variability. Often repeating the same character beats and driving their gimmick into the player's skull with a sledgehammer.
The saddest part is probably that the same issue applies to the essential units as of late, as well. Fates and Engage royals especially stop being characters soon after joining the party and become boring exposition bots with generic lines that could be assigned by a randomiser and nothing of substance would change.
And there are a ton of potential tools to fix these issues and keep supports mostly as the fun fluff they are. Give most characters event chains throughout the game, be it map events, base convos or even a rare optional chapter. Tie certain characters' arcs together and alter them if one of them is dead. Give extended epilogues with varying ending scenes for these units, instead of boring slides. Lock certain supports behind this progression, while most supports remain the same. No need to make literally every support chain its own VN, but at this point I'll take any kind of experimantation over the current status quo.
"Narrative black holes" is such a good way to define the problems with the support system right now.
FE4 and FE5 despite the lack of support built a good narrative through the use of in game events while you progress the chapter.
FE9 did supports the best by far IMO.
-You didn't need to actively grind for them, since two characters only needed to be in the same map together to gain support rank
-Since supports were based around the number of maps two chars had been together in, this meant they could "gate" supports behind story progression to an extent, meaning that they could actually tie into/reference the plot development
-They were also backed up by base conversations, *and* a large number of characters (assuming they were alive) still appeared in main-story cutscenes throughout most of the game.
Honestly FE9 has an incredible amount of effort put into its dialogue in general; if you look at the game script, there's actually a *huge* amount of dialogue changes in most scenes depending on which characters live or die.
Finally, someone put what I’ve felt about supports into words. I’ve always been more interested in the combat side of FE, but I’m still interested in watching supports and the story. I never go out of my way to grind supports, I just watch what I end up getting, but in modern games even I get an absurd bundle of supports each chapter. While I appreciate that the game is designed such that even a player who is not actively grinding supports can still get a good amount of them, every time I open the support menu I usually audibly say something line “god damnit” when I see the hour worth of reading I’m going to have to do when I really want to play the next chapter. I don’t want to skip supports because I actually am interested in the characters and their interactions with each other, but almost always it takes way too long to watch all the supports I obtained. It totally kills the pacing and gets boring about halfway through the bunch usually. I actually appreciated Engage’s supports being generally shorter than 3H because I didn’t have to wait *as long* when wading through supports.
You bring, as always, an interesting point in a concise, comprehensive manner, and I thank you for that. It is always great to see these short, albeit informative videos. i do say Radiant Dawn's or mystery of the Emblem's base conversations have a much better grasp on teh pacing and allow for meaningful conversations to happen, and if they had somehow implemented that into the supports themselves by for example, haivnggeneric supports that give some stats, but then having story-supported supports that give much better results, would have really nailed the concept and given a fair balance between freedom of choice for pairings and allowing stroyline growth for characters to appear. however, any system that tries to implement story-centric pairings and relationships will run into the issue of freedom of pairings: and many, many people love pairing characters for relationships. There really is no way to please eveyrone.
I think its this method of pairings that basically solves the whole issue that the "small army" fans have, because they always go on about how "ohh but a smaller cast is better because they can develop more", but like...first off, how often did those characters *really* develop over the main plot compared to Byleth and the house leader, and second, Radiant Dawn's system is giving dozens of units their own little chances to shine in conversations throughout the course of the larger story. Plus, add a few bonus objectives that can involve some of your units and bam, you got something special for these myriad side characters.
Sure the pairing issue is still a thing, but even that might have a way of working out in the long run.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 It reminds me a bit of Sacred Stones and how characters were handled there. Some characters had small extra dialogue when deployed on certain maps, Joshua in Scorched Sands for example has special dialogue when fighting Caellach or Colm explaining to Eirika how thieves have improved sight on a fog of war map. I think what would add to that would be that when you select the characters for a map, certain charaters would have a "Wants to be here!" indicator and when deployed would give you a short explanation why.
@@aureliodeprimus8018
"Wants to be here indicator"
Oh my God thats genius!
Honestly, great point overall :)
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 Yeah, it is a bit of a rethinking from the "recommended unit" from Triangle Strategy. In general there are a lot of things FE could innovate on....
I forget if you've played TRS yet, but supports in that game are kind of locked in, but there's also support conversations that happen as a part of the story that create or deepen the bonds. It's a really cool way to do it. I like how the characters are deciding who they like, instead of the tactician doing so.
I agree entirely with the point in the video, though I feel like the penultimate segment (about how more concise supports in limited amounts can strengthen just how much character the actors bring out) would be a perfect bridge to how Echoes is basically one of the only 2 games where supports actually have a good feel to them.
neat video, i enjoy the praise of fe9's base system, its combination of info convos and supports works well to give the characters room to talk about the context theyre in, and then have mini stories in the form of supports. i think its biggest development was the per map basis to unlock them, really cutting out some of the bullshit of gba games
i do take the point about the cap of 5 cutting out the in between battles tedium, but i think its waaaay too limited, too far in the direction of too few supports (especially when theres a lot of good ones). i think it was clearly a gameplay consideration first, considering how busted the support gameplay effects are (which is one thing i do enjoy later games splitting apart)
hi pent@@Percevalko
I think that, so long as IS insists on having blank slate avatars, and I don't blame them for it, they sell, supports will be forever consigned to having to accomodate lore dumps, both for universe and for character, and they will suffer unnecessary bloat for this. It's an ill we'll have to reconcile ourselves to going forward. Great vid, as always.
Also, thanks for reminding me there are still few great films by Louis Malle I have yet to see. Always love to see the cinematic allusions and references in your videos.
Alear wasn't really a blank slate though. If they were i dont think it wouldve changed much in how Engage executed its supports
That's not entirely true. Byleth is not liked nearly as much as any of the house leaders, Corrin was one of the most hated characters in the whole series, at least when the game released in the west, and there are quite a few people who were instantly turned off from getting Engage because of Alear's design alone.
Robin is still considered to be the best custom character partly because of how NOT a self-insert they are, but rather have a dynamic with Chrom.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 I'd argue that Byleth being an opaque viewing point for the real main characters of 3H, Dimitri, Edelguard & Claude, which then allows their actions and determinations to shine, a rarity in a series where everything needs to be filtered through the MC, makes him a better avatar character than Robin. Besides, my point was more about sales, and it is indisputable that 3H sold more than Awakening.
@@michaelberube5236 That's not why the games have been more successful, it's just a coincidence.
I hope I’m not late to the discussion. What I want to include is that, from a gameplay perspective, supports in most fire emblem don’t feel worth the investment because they improve your characters in a boring way.
In most fire emblems all the supports do is increase stats.
Which is why I like Fates. In fates reclassing options are tied to supports. The partner and friendship seals open up unit customization. Now characters can have multiple options while still having the player work for it.
I can’t help but think people are making a lot of assumptions about the purpose of supports and the “benefits” of removing them. To start, I don’t think supports are supposed to directly tie into the story. Why, because not every character is that important to the story and not all can be. Some characters are major, some are minor, and some are non-entities. You need something to give the characters with less presence some characterization and supports do that. Base conversations are good but aren’t a replacement. If you don’t believe me, look at RD’s new characters and tell me who’s memorable.
I think the best solution is using base convos with supports and possibly add in moments that can happen on the map as well.
I wish supports werent predicated on whether or not you use the unit. If support conversations were unlocked whether or not you use or deploy the unit, you could instead set it to unlock after certain chapters, or after completing a paralogue, or god forbid, after another support conversation is viewed. You could have a support conversation that unlocks only if a certain character dies, or if a Unit has a certain Item equipped, or if a Unit reaches a certain stat benchmark.
Any number of contextual prerequisites could be utilized, mixed and matched, and the prerequisites could feed into the context and narrative in a support. Imagine if a Support conversation unlocks when two characters exceed 10 strength, and they speak about each others training methods. And then you unlock a paralogue chapter after the conversation, and the next conversation unlocks after the paralogue.
You could go a little fe4 and have certain conversations end with a unit getting an item or stat boost. The options are endless. All that needs to happen is the unshackle support from standing next to each other in battle.
While i agree to some of your points. The fact that the older games just cuts you short of a support chain. That would be like me reading two Hans Christian Andersen Fairy tales and being forced to stop before the ugly duckling learns they are a swan. That is not good game design or good story telling.
Yeah, no one is defending the travesty and nonsense of the GBA system, dont worry. That was just abject dog water and whoever thought that was a good idea needs to get owned by the devil axe.
While attempting to wield it.
supports dont have to be related to the story ive played 2 fe games {3 houses engage} and realy like the supports and hoe many there are
@@konstantinos-iliasstrempas4594 Oh absolutely, but still, the overall structure of providing supports in this manner solves the issue in its own way
You probably don't want to hear this, but TearRing Saga and Berwick Saga are honestly strps in the right direction.
Oh shit, Berwick Saga announcement... You will experience peak soon...
I liked it better when characters were limited to a couple conversations per playthrough. It made your support choices feel more impactful, it adds some replay value, and you wouldn't have to potentially sit through 5-8+ conversations after a chapter like in the modern games.
Nothing makes supports feel more aimless than clicking on a unit during a map, and being greeted with a sea of letters above everyone's heads.
Avatar characters have made this problem 10x worse for me. Less is more, and I think scaling down the amount of supports in total would only enhance things, both writing and gameplay-wise.
I'm intrigued why they haven't made certain abilities unlock through character specific supports. Not abilities that are locked on a class but much like how fates let you swap classes to unlock abilities, having a support with a sword master (for the sake of argument) might give the non-sword master Vantage or Astra. It could even be a different ability that is "between" the classes which are supporting. Maybe even a toned down version of the ability. Assassin supp giving Bane instead of the Lethality the Assassin class would have.
This reminds me of how skills are unlocked in the first FE Warriors. Every character can reach A rank with one another in order to obtain the materials necessary to obtain each other's associated skills (only certain pairs have support conversations).
Having played Baldur's Gate 3 recently has made me really wish FE supports could feel as dynamic and alive as the conversations with companions in that game feel. Having far fewer characters to work with def helps, but still it would be amazing if FE could be closer to that same level.
Short in-map supports with fewer conversations per character (the way Echoes did it) is easily the best way for the series to do the system. It plays to the strengths of the format much more than a menu where you read endless conversations one after the other.
Short supports don't ruin the pacing of maps, while keeping downtime between maps short. Also since there's no menu, it makes it a lot easier to just have a support conversation unlock after certain story progression, making it easier to write reactive supports. It's a shame that intsys seems adamant on keeping the Awakening/Fates format without much iteration.
I'm very interested in you talking about Berwick Saga next video 👀
About backwards development:
Though i dont consider this a solution, I've come up with a mindset that allows me to get through the issue of characters seemingly going backwards, especially in the case of a C convo being unlocked after a B or A with someone else.
The idea is that the conversation itself does not necessarily happen at the time you unlock/view the scene. Instead, it is assumed that the scene could take place before the time that you view it.
Let's take Bernie as an example. You just watched her B support with Edelgard, where she starts to learn a little bit about how to control the impulse of her paranoia, and you've also seen her convo with Ferdie where she agrees to make an effort to go outside more often. After the next battle, let's say she unlocks a C with Felix, one where it seems like the prior two hadn't yet happen. In my mindset, that would be correct. In my mindset, the convo with Felix did in fact take place before the one with Edelgard or Ferdie, I just hadn't seen it yet. In that way, many supports that i unlock after certain points can then be treated like flashbacks.
The funny thing is that sometimes there are examples of characters who, after learning something in a past conversation with another character, end up applying it in a completely separate convo.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 that is true. Iirc, there is a Marianne convo with Sylvain that gets referenced in her convo with someone else.
@@valtinryu8147
I think thats the exact scenario I recall! I also like that cross-recruited characters, specifically the ones from black eagles, have more critical conversations about the empire and their opposition to it. Very nice attention to detail.
My issue with SD (and to lesser extent RD) not having supports is that it makes most characters generic. RD has a base conversations that features each character at least once and most of them have benefit of being developed in PoR, but SD doesn't have even that. It becomes even more of whiplash when it's prologue is full of character interactions, then the main game starts, with some exceptions, no one beside Marth, Malledus and Nyna says a word and there are bunch of characters who only talk when they die. So the problem isn't that there are no supports, but that there's nothing to fill the void left in their place. Some characters have talk conversations, but most get nothing.
On paper i like that Awakening and Fates have so many supports, what i don't like is the ratio of S and A supports - not only because most S supports make little to no sense, but it also doesn't let non romantic supports to have a place. Like why Ricken can't support with Donnel when they can relate to one another, Stahl with Frederick when he and Sully were both trained by him, or hell, how is that Chrom recruits the most characters, but has one of the smallest support lists, not counting those with 1 or 2 supports. He can't support at all with Ricken, Stahl, Cordelia, Virion, Miriel, Panne, Anna, Say'ri, Gangrel, Walhart or at the very least Emmeryn. You could axe about 100 S supports from the game - nothing of value would be lost - while adding more platonic ones, improving the pacing issue, because now you can increase the support points requirement since you don't have to (potentially) unlock S one, which means less supports per map.
Now, there are some supports in Awakening that manage to avoid the issues mentioned in the video to some extent - my favourite example being Henry/Cordelia chain. It utilizes Henry joining post time skip and Chrom being married by this point so it doesn't feel completely separate from the story, both characters are at their best instead of devolving into a comedy sketch like some Robin supports tend to do, their S support doesn't come out of nowhere like aforementioned 100 and it's overall well written. So it is possible and perhaps if more supports were locked behind story progression they would've seen vast improvement as well.
You have the brain the size of a planet. Thank you put putting into words so many of the issues i have with the Support systems.
I agree that PoR did it best, but I think the limit should have been a bit higher - 5 is just too low, give me at least 6 so I can see two full chains.
I would be able to put up with the worst of Engage's supports if I at least got paired endings out of it.
Character recruitment remix over a scene from My Dinner with André never ceases to slay me 😹
While Shadow Dragon doesn't have supports like the other games, it does have a handful of one-off "talk" conversations that can occur between specific character pairs. Shadows of Valentia's support system worked similarly but was expanded in scope. I think this system has a lot of merits over the current system and I wouldn't mind seeing it return in future games. I feel like the writers of SD and SoV excelled at squeezing a lot of characterization into those games while also keeping the overall amount of text relatively small compared to recent entries.
My take on the topic (i have more familiarity with GBA games):
* Mechanical point of view:
- Supports gained per map not per proximity and turns. In case there is a support limit (example: max 5 supports like GBA), keep counting points per maps with all units in case your previous supports dies and then you can instantly stablish new supports, maybe multiple levels of the same support.
- If there is a cap of 5 supports per character, then there is no cap on attributes obtained by these supports or it is a high cap. If the game allows for all available supports there should be a low cap so characters don't get too overpowered.
* Mechanical and story point of view:
- Some supports offers small bonuses to attributes and others offers personal skills. Some supports should even gift weapons, offer new classes or change classes, new weapons compatibility or whatever. Don't let mechanics limit what the story of the support should be. Lets say we have some jagen with even some leadership star. Perhaps he can pass that leadership star to a chrismas cavalier before being benched.
- If there is a cap of 5 supports per character, other take could be (maybe in very specific support) that the unit seeks revenge when the other character dies and manage to keep the buffs (and still count as achieved relationship). Maybe Roy got A rank with Lilina and then she dies. It could be a bit awkward for Roy to just pick a new waifu and get a new ending. He then perhaps obtain a "and in the end he got his revenge after killing the dragons".
- There should be default non personal supports with really low buffs. Like putting all cavalies nearby gives them some buff.
* Story point of view:
- Supports should evolve due to other character relationships, death and the chapter of the story. Too much work, they just take the easy way out.
- Supports should be shorter.
This is why I love Path of Radiance's supports and I think it's the best game in the series.
Very interesting how you ended a video about supports by implying your next video will be about Berwick Saga (assuming you're not trolling). Kaga sagas decided to rework character writing entirely by giving each character (or group of characters) their own subplots. Personally I think it works a lot better than supports at making you invested in the characters. That's why BWS has my favorite cast out of all these games.
I liked that 3 Hopes limited the number of support conversations, so that each support level wouldn't have a convo, and the ones that were there could be more quality & story relevant
My radical fix for the Support Pacing problem would be to completely get rid of Support Conversations and have them be mechanical bonuses only.
And instead replace them with the Info Conversations at the base between chapters, like Radiant Dawn had.
This way the conversations could be appropriately timed to be story-relevant and character arc relevant, but easily skipped on repeat playthroughs, instead of having your units go on camping trips in the middle of a war campaign.
To me if I could make an FE game, this is how I would have supports go:
Supports that have ranks (C,B, and A) would give no bonusses in battle but will give you the chance to learn more about the characters and world. You would unlock them by deploying 2 supporting units in the same chapter (aka like POR) and have the units talk in battle or after in the camp. Characters are allowed to max out 2 supports, but the first support that reaches A rank will give those 2 characters an ending together.
The support would build every fast as it will take 1 to 3 points for each character that way it doesn't have GBA FE support problems of taking too long and spamming end turn each map for 100 plus turns
While supports don't give bonuses, their will be passives supports like Mystery of The Emblem and Thracia. These bonusses will only be give to characters who have some form of history together and can work by each character receiving a bonus or only one giving or receiving a bonus. Some may even be formed due to in game events.
Something that makes 3H's supports more tolerable for me is that unit recruitment is a lot harder than in games like Engage. In your first few playthroughs, you most likely recruit only a few students from other houses, and only 8 out of Lorenz's 14 supports are with characters originally from his house. This made 3H's supports a lot more managable, as the supports you unlock are more spread-out across different playthroughs, at which point there is no need to rewatch the ones you have already seen. The amount of Engage's supports just feels so much more overwhelming to me. Then again, 3H was my first Fire Emblem, and maybe I've just grown tired of this style of support system.
Ok and I have a "shoplifting problem" but you don't see me complaining about it???
So I was playing a Shadow Dragon h5 iron man and I lost minerva after a horrible blunder, when the whitewings joined they commented on it in a way that added to their character, made them feel real and made me regret my mistake even more, THIS is all fe needs, the personal stories of the characters and their development through the war is something that should emerge from your play, modern supports detract from that and almost feel like fanfic or worse if they feel like cannon then they kill your story by making it the fanfic.
I guess a few base conversations are also nice, but it should be minimal and follow the story and the gameplay, just have characters react to story beats depending on how often they are fielded, who died and maybe even who got promoted. If you're gonna write a billion pages of text for dumb supports you can achieve more with less by making a lot of different versions of the same few convos such that they fit the emergent story. The main problem with such an idea is that you need to write tons of dialogue, but they already do that and it sucks. Also you can write a lot more for important units and just a few things here and there for the rando who joins as a replacement.
I realize ofc that this is never gonna happen, fe has long moved away from this philosophy, but I just wanted to voice my grievances for a bit and this vid was a nice excuse
This entire thing screams "play Berwick Saga".
Honestly, part of what this video brings up may be what makes it harder for me to properly have issue with the very real problems supports have in modern FE. Sure, it's a slog to watch all the supports at every base visit now, but at least (in 3H) it's a slog with a bit of new narrative content in it, as opposed to everything else you do at the base, which is even more directly samey. Who thought putting a bunch of real-time minigames into the Somniel was a good idea?
I will echo the people who said that Three Hopes did it surprisingly well, but I'll add that it had a big advantage of Three Houses creating a foundation before it. Certain events in the Three Hopes supports even directly reference information that can only be obtained through Three Houses supports. And that goes back to the big question of story coherency, where the only way to ensure it is to give the player more unmissable story content for each character. This is something the obligatory ensemble comment scenes in the Fodlan games actually failed at in my opinion, since they could only convey the attitudes of the characters to the events (in a manner that very quickly comes to feel artificial from how formulaic it is) but didn't affect the events themselves and didn't expound on the lore the way the supports did. And even then, individual scenes like Ferdinand's conversations with Hubert about Ludwig's escape ultimately contributed more.
Basically, FE needs to get base convos back (properly, not just as Garreg Mach snippets where you're lucky if you get a really valuable one once in a chapter). And to bring more character agency back to maps. Put narrative content there and shrink the support pools. Supports with their static nature are still not the worst place to put secondary lore, but they're not the best vehicles for character development. The real issue is managing the cast sizes, since FE requires dozens of characters for its gameplay to work and has finite screentime to give them.
What's the music at around 2:00 from?
After the Rain from the Berwick Saga OST
This is why I find Three Hopes Support Unlocks to be fascinating, because the conversations are limited, but impactful to the characters overall. Expanding on the original narrative, but also being short and sweet because these are the characters we already know and love from the previous title. But without that knowledge, the supports paint the characters the same way we would want them to if this were our first experience with them - as they do successfully with the new introductions of characters like Rodrigue, Monica, and the Death Knight
This is something that tearring saga fixes but also makes it slightly less accessible. Even though they aren't categorized in the way that they are in modern fire emblem games, having certain characters in the same party in certain world map locations during specific parts of the story will essentially give you support conversations that increase support bonuses. It makes it so that they never break the game's pacing or story, though at the cost of it being easy to miss out on them, especially if you miss the first one of the chain supports that require you to get them in order.
I'm surprised FE4's conversations were not mentioned. I know the game doesn't have support convos like we're used to, but it has conversations which are triggered after reaching a specific point of the plot, or game. Some give minor stat boosts, weapons, steer marriage for the game's 2nd generation. And even Legendary weapons are only obtainable after completing a Convo (Forsety and Yewfelle come to mind)
Perhaps a contextual support system can be integrated.... Just a thought
While not directly related to FE and solving its support issue, the way Kaga implemented supports in Tear Ring Saga seems like a good starting point to rework supports. With TRS supports, They're short exchanges between two characters that occur after plot relevant maps and only if the two characters are on the same route. While not a fix all, as then we need every game to function similarly to Sacred Stones and Gaiden, and that the supports are still far too exclusive and shallow even while laced into the plot, Expounding upon the a system like TRS would reduce the monotony of support system and be rid of the dissonance the narrative faces by not applying any characters side growths into it.
My enjoyment while playing Three Houses and Engage went dramatically up when I started using the skip button on supports
The ones in older games weren't so bad cause I could read them at my own pace and I read pretty fast, but when they switched to fully voiced it feels like the pace slowed to a crawl.
GBA titles spamming enemy phase is counterintuitive for ranks too. Instead i just read support chains or videos than torture myself having began FE7 then Awakening. Found odd Hector and Eliwood began chit chatting then no one ever support spoke.
Will give Awakening credit visual indicator hearts you have a support pair vs GBA just guessing or having Serene's forest or gamefaqs back then open. The visual novel direction sells now and it's big of a slog for anime war chess focused on, well, war.
My ideal support system would have:
Bonuses from awa / fates.
Build-up (how points are gained) from awa / fates, (gained with actions, unlike gba, by ending turn besides on another).
3 support branches for most characters.
5 for the special characters, like the lord.
Relevant support come with story progression, similar to SoV or fe16, just not after the same "event", chapters 3 and 4 in sov, timeskip for fe16.
Base convos from telius, specially cutscenes for achieving certain unique events like sov (not rescuing Matilda, having all 3 whitewings).
Personally I put Supports in FE a similar vain to Persona's Socal Links/Confidants. Fun side stuff that is not always related to the plot but helps you learn fun stuff about the characters and I guess I'm easy to please but that's all I want in a support, something that helps me learn more about a character. Speaking of Persona, super hot take, but I feel like they should pull a P3 and add some more socal stuff as well as adding something I believe Echoes' did and allow us to explore towns, to let see what the characters do on their downtime in different locations. I never played 3H but it seemed to have something akin to this interms of the socal aspects, somethink I wish they did more with in Engage. I personally wanna see more of what the cast does when they're not in battle, because I find learning about stuff like that to be fascinating. In any case, that an idea that sparked in my mind, I'm most likely the minority in this opinion which is fine, feel free to agree or disagree. I just wanted to throw my 2 cents into the pond.
They should be limited to six supports per character. It would be a start at least to allow for tighter quality control.
í humbely dissagree in at least some points: Three houses had an enormous amount of support-textes, yes. but that is, by all means, a good thing, rather than a bad one. nintendo gave these conversations some buildups. Cloude and Annette? unforgettable. Linhardt with...literaly everyone he can have a support conversation with , Shamir with Raphael ; every support conversation is nut just great in shaping the characters, it made them also much more likable for me when i gave them a chance.
First time playing the game, i took the blue lions (one true house, hands down!) and so i dissliked a lot of the black eagle house-ppl for there way of being. But im a collector, so... i took them all in my second Run into my party after beating the game at first with just my house members. i was shocked how good the other houses members were; just as good as my beloved blue lion cast. there is , in the whole cast, not a single character i dont like. some of them more, some of them less, but i like them all! and this is bcs they have so much support conversations that make me _care_ about them. It was long, yes. but it puts also such a cool story of every character into the game that i gladly took the time enjoying it.
Thats why i disslike "Engage" as a Fire Emblem Title so much. i couldnt care less for everyone:, the protagonist like every character the game have to offer. the talks between them are to short and awfully written. The talks between the characters and the Emblems are even worse; 8(!) Lines of dialogue spread on 3 Conversations. it tells no story; it is there because it "has to be there". This is _realy_ a waste of time.
however i see the point that the time u actually have a support is very uncool while the story itself progressed. but three houses already invented the answere right away: just dont allow support-increases untill certain points in the story. it is far from perfect, but it helps a lot in terms of shaping moments on special times. When a edgy prince finally comes back to reason and starts talking to peolple again - for example.
here, have my two cent. :) Still a great video :)
I don't mind a high volume of supports. In more recent games we have the option to unlock them for gameplay benefits, skip them, and watch them later.
That said, the points about character regression and lack of cohesion with the story are ones I get. Those seem to be lesser issues in games with strong world building, e.g. Tellius and Fodlan games. The characters get to have interesting things to talk about, so it's not just two people interacting with each other in isolation.
This video reminds me of my realization that Fuyohiko is the only non-protagonist Danganronpa character to ever get a proper character arc, and they did that by locking you from starting his Freetime Events until chapter 4 (of 6, and the 6th doesnt have freetime)
You know, outside of the Pair Up games supports tend to be difficult to gain which means you likely arent spending much time reading them at all or benefiting from the gameplay buffs unless you really seek them out. Even for Engage you'd be lucky to get more than 1 support outside of Alear before the dlc updates, I couldnt even get Alfred and Celine to their C support before benching one post ch 11.
I think supports are very flawed because their timing has to be balanced around the gameplay buffs they provide alongside the fact that permadeath makes it so that any potential story intergration becomes a nightmare to plan for a cast of 30+ characters, but I think the feeling of time spent wasted comes from the longer length of the more recent supports alongside what was said about how isolated each support line is due to any of them possibly being your first view of the character
Three Houses leaving character backstory and their related subplots, behind Supports (and the Paralogues from recruitments), and the shenanigans that can ensue, just makes the Support system a broken, but interesting mess.
As someone who fell in love with FE because of the supports in Awakening, I kinda wish the next Fire Emblem had a super minimal cast - higher quality, less quantity. I couldn't believe I was falling asleep during Engage's support convos, they used to be the most exciting thing for me. The way most character archetypes are mostly explored already doesn't help either.
Babe, wake up! Class is in session
Pretty much the only way you could actually eliminate supports without making every character seem one-note is if all of them were involved in the story in some minor or even major way.
The chances of that happening are just about 0 though. You'd have to have either a really dedicated team (like Indie game creative level team) or have a small cast (15-20 characters tops).
The former is a problem because no one is gonna make that complicated of a storyline for a 50+ cast of characters, 70 if you count possible npcs, villains, etc.
The latter is just outrageous. You'd basically be making a Final Fantasy game with Fire Emblem gameplay. Which isn't necessarily an awful idea, but I don't see it being a brought up topic at IS meetings. It probably would solve the "I have too few deployment slots for my 50ish character roster."
As for the current support systems here's my opinion:
FE4: Know very little about it. Knew about Quan/Ethlyn A support and that's it. 3/10.
FE6/7/8: Good idea on paper. Flawed execution. Only 5 supports per character per playthrough? I get how powerful supports can be, but jeez that's a bit much. 5/10.
FE9: Slightly better than FE6,7,8, as supports are based on maps fielded together rather than turns passed smashing each other. And I do mean SMASHING. 6/10.
FE10: The supports only amount to stat buffs and have little character building. 2/10.
FE12: Supports revolve mostly around Kris, but are relatively easy to unlock and the bonuses are solid. 5/10.
FE13/14: Supports at their peak imo. I can go on rants about why I don't like Fates or Awakening, but their support system is just about flawless. 2-3 maps per support, no limits per playthrough, pair up system with solid bonuses, and good character development. 9/10.
FEW: Putting Warriors here cause I can. Its support system is okay, but not great. Grinding out supports is annoying, since the maps are more than likely slapfests anyways. The supports are really only one convos between two characters anyway, but are usually worth it. 6/10.
FE15: Echoes had it rough. 1-3 supports per character. Some don't even have any. If you pick Deen over Sonya, Genny doesn't even have a conversation support. Earning the supports usually requires story progression which is slightly problematic, but not as much as the next entry. 4/10.
FE16: 3H took what I enjoyed about FE13s support system and did a complete 180. Story progression supports as well as uncompleted supports (seriously, a B rank support is kinda dumb, even though I know A rank supports are exclusive for the ensured partner endings), and the support system has been replaced with a weird system that seems to be based off of how many enemies you kill. Which takes forever in some cases. The only thing I do like is that each character does have some good layers of depth in their supports (at least until you get past C support). 4/10.
FE17: Engage proceeded to go back to Awakening's support system, so I'm happy, aside from certain characters having God awful characterization. 8.5/10.
My opinion: stick with Fates support system. The gameplay becomes much more balanced than some of the other games and the best part is it doesn't require you to play the game multiple times to unlock every support (unless you're trying to get every S support, which, if that's the case good luck to you).
They did that already, it’s called Thracia, and it’s not remotely difficult
There's a few things at play here that make supports in recent fire emblem games feel more like a chore and less like a reward.
Obviously the number of supports is a huge factor; when every character can support with almost every other character, you run into a lot of repeated motifs that quickly become boring and it just takes so long to get through if you actually want to sit and watch each conversation that pops after a chapter.
I honestly think that the biggest factor is the transition to 3d and full voice acting. Having characters animated seems to have pushed the devs in a direction of more physical interactions between characters, but the range of animations that these models actually posses is a serious limitation on what these interactions can be. Any 'action' in these supports happens off screen, regularly accompanied by a thump sound, which worked fine when all you saw of the characters was a headshot, but in 3d it feels awkward to cut away from the characters only when they're supposed to be actually interacting with one another.
Full voice acting just drastically increases the amount of time you spend with each support interaction. Prior to 3 houses you could progress through support conversations at your own pace without restraint, taking the time to enjoy conversations that interested you, or skimming through conversations that didn't. When everything is voice acted, you feel compelled to watch the ones that interest you (which takes much longer). For conversations you're not all too interested in, skipping lines of dialogue to get to the next line quicker makes you FEEL like you're rushing through because the voice actor has only said 3 words so far. When everything was plain text, I never felt like I was rushing to finish my chores because I still read everything.
1:54 - Anyone know the name of the song that kicks in?
After the Rain from the Berwick Saga OST
@@ProfessorBopper thanks for the quick response! Great vid btw.
Why don’t we make it realistic? Not only do we have support locked behind timestamp we also have support locked after time stamp, so like once a character finished B support some one and underwent character progression, all C support that only applies before progression are locked forever
Because that makes them less fun gameplay wise (imo)
Path of Radiance has the best support system in my opinion. I’m not a fan of the 5 support limit, but other than that it’s perfect. You have the base conversations that flesh out characters as kind of mini supports, as well as the standard supports. The best thing is the supports have effects on the story itself. For example, if you have Mist and Jill reach A support, Jill stays with your army when you fight her father. If not, she deserts. This carries over into Radiant Dawn as well, if you transfer save data, as PoR supports will be referenced in RD, with Mist being able to recruit Jill if they reached A support.
Did Awakening's supports tread the line between not being too restrictive or too overbearing?
I think we need more base convos like SOV and POR.
That said I don't think this amount of supports breaks the pace or is even really a problem. I'm a sucker for supports and I don't think that will change.
I’m coming back so much later after first watching this to say that almost every point you make is spot on, however I think that one critically important point is missing from this video: Modern Fire Emblem characters are meaningless.
To make my point concisely, compare the cast of awakening, fates, and engage with that of Genealogy, Path of Radiance, and Thracia, and you will see that in the latter three, almost every character has some story related meaning, even if for an instant. Furthermore, they are accomplished pieces of world building simply by their existence. Lithis and Perne and Dagdar are examples of how varied thievery is in Thracia on a personal level, and Nephenee and Brom are literal farmer militiamen forced to take up arms. Compare that to modern casts in which they don’t provide any meaning beyond their singular character defining trait. Charlotte is a border guard who fakes being helpless I guess, 16 of engages characters are simply retainers for the sake of being retainers, and awakenings cast is comprised of “has no purpose aside from to be quirky” examples.
When you have so many characters who are fundamentally useless to the story at large, it becomes almost impossible to write dialogue between them that doesn’t pull away from the main plot beats. If one were to make talk conversations for Thracia characters, there would be a treasure trove of potential to work with, since the developers established purposeful meanings for the cast of Thracia, and the Forseti’s Cut hack proves my point only too well.
FE casts cannot be the Awake/Fates/Engage flavor of “haha quirky” while simultaneously being good or meaningful. It’s simply not possible.
as much as i really enjoy supports despite all the story and writing flaws, the one thing that for me, really adds a huge layer of tediousness to them is the way you unlock said supports in gameplay. I would find it a lot more bearable if it didn't involve playing the game in a very specific way just to unlock them. POR honestly has the best implementation of it since it wasn't restricitive nor did it get in the way of the gameplay.
I hear that berwick music, hell yeah.
I think a good example of supports done right is in three hopes sorta cause they just cheat. Cause In the game the characters are written like they’ve already gone through development. It feels like the characters are more developed with the two year timeskip than the five year timeskip in three houses. And that’s because they never have supports that happen before the timeskip and can proc after the timeskip.
A new problem is the voice actor and the protagonist vibes. The male va has much better delivery with Alear, but the script accommodates a female Alear much better. Not true for the main story but definitely the supports
To me, Echoes and the Jugdral games do it best. Echoes limited the supports between characters to a very reasonable degree and if I recall correctly (idk, it's been a few years) adapted well as the overall plot changed. Meanwhile I love fe4's implementation since player choice has limited impact. Conversations either don't do much but give character insight or are extremely helpful and develop plot points. Predetermining when supports (or just convos, no ranks!) happen makes characterizing and plot relevant supports much easier. Thracia is also nice because the gameplay depth is there from the start and it provides implicit characterization. In a perfect world, I'd want something a lot like fe4 with minimally impactful predetermined conversations that react to the plot, while the gameplay aspect remains easy to access a la thracia.
"bifurcated" Bopper leaning hard into the Professor aspect of his moniker.
Wake up babe, new Bopper lecture just dropped
Supports can be nice, as a side thing or a thing that expands on characters I already care about, but in the modern games I've sometimes found them to be a chore.
Am I the only one who thinks there are just way too many of them? They feel like a formality in a lot of senses.
Echoes just can't stop winning
Except in sales figures
The Boppification of man fr
Meanwhile TRS supports...
I feel like I’m expected to say something.
i realy liked the supports of three houses and angage
I still think Path of Radiance was the peak of the Fire Emblem support system. It wasn't perfect, you still have to replay the game many times to see all of them. But, having the characters actually react and talk about what's going on in the story felt 10x more immersive than whatever else the series has going.
I'm gonna be honest, I don't see the problem with supports not being related to the story. Not everything has to be about the war campaign or two characters' past together. I enjoy the more lighthearted supports and even the slice of life nature of Engage's supports, meant to be just funny bits between two people.
The part with Lorenz LOL
omg my dinner with renault, my favorite film
Part of me wonders how well removing player action from building supports would help. By doing this, the writers could know exactly when supports would happen, so they could write them accordingly. Additionally, the game devs would know all of the supports and bonuses the player has access to. Limiting the amount of possible supports via two characters not having a support conversation could help as well. The main drawback of all of this is that is lowers player freedom in how to build and utilize supports, but at the same time, devs having a more concrete idea if what the players have access to allows them to make a more concise challenge.
Hey Bopper, great video. However, you are forgetting one important point about supports. My life is in shambles and seeing these fake people interact on my screen and form bonds and relationships is one of the few things to bring me joy in life, so less supports would limit that. Also I like having more times when caspar yells haha funny
Honestly they should just use base convos instead
Bring back Tellius base conversations.
PoR proving it's superiority yet again. We need the base back it's like the monastery but not shit. As novel as it is to run around and see the waifus instead of them just being jpegs, it has only prolonged the very streamlined base experience from PoR/RD and if you want to run around and see your waifu then keep the scrounging time after engages maps. I get the anger at RD having the most nothing supports ever, but honestly I'd rather them be short rather than the C rank support dredging of three houses.
Hot take: Radiant Dawn has the best support system