#Sylvain imo was basically the same but actually written well in the main story

[dmclemblems]

Nopes really whitewashed almost everyone tbh. Edelgard for one. Duke Aegir and Count Gloucester don't even seem as bad; I even agree with Count Gloucester that Claude isn't to be trusted in GW! SB tries to convince you that Lonato not bad, actually, and that Ashe will ditch Faerghus for Lonato. Gustave reunited with Annette way earlier this time around (this isn't whitewashing, it's more that he has a faster character arc lol). Felix is also way nicer in general, Hubert less aggressive, etc.

To an extent I don't mind them adding in humane traits for some of those characters. They shouldn't be all black and white, good or evil. Most real people aren't like that and in a story like the one they're telling in the Fodlan games it'd be odd to have so many characters specifically on one end. It's one thing to have a small few at best, but I do enjoy seeing aspects of characters that are good when we've only heard bad things about them.

That said I do agree that they made some characters a lot softer and kinder like Hubert. Felix makes sense imo because things happened differently in this timeline. He became the Duke very early and presumably spent a lot more time with Rodrigue and grew into his position. With Dimitri I think it's that maturity that he's grown into that helped reduce how cruel he was.

Rather than just making some of them kinder and whatnot though, I noticed they took a lot of characterization away from some character. For example, Dorothea, Raphael and Caspar were... pretty bland. Normally I like Dorothea but I borderline couldn't stand her in this game. All she does is bitch and moan about the war that she willingly fights in this game and worries about Edelgard constantly at camp. There's basically nothing to her character in the main story outside of simping for Edelgard and I feel like the only reason she's recruitable in AG is because she's so popular and they figured they should make her recruitable in all routes. Her supports with Flayn would be cute if not for Dorothea going on about how she thinks she should've died with the other soldiers and how much she laments being there. She fought for Edelgard because she wanted to, which makes Flayn directly her enemy and yet she acts fine and dandy around Flayn in their supports. If not for the context in the rest of the game their supports could've been cute, but I can't really see it that way with all the things Dorothea goes on about.

Lonato is definitely worse in this game imo if only for the fact that he's willing to go along with the guilt tripping against Ashe. The whole thing came off as even worse than Houses made it out to be.

There's a lot of give and take with the characters in this game that I've noticed. Some of them are worse at the expense of making others better. Hilda for example I like a lot more in this game and she feels more like a real person than her Houses counterpart, but Dorothea only seemed kind of decent to me in some of her supports. Caspar was reduced to not caring who or what he fought for other than the Empire, even if it was being led by Thales and people were burning entire villages to the ground and murdering all the residents (even though his father even told him he could flee and he wouldn't blame him for it).

I'm okay with seeing characters like Erwin have some good traits and qualities. It's one thing that he seems scummy in Houses, but that doesn't mean he's devoid of all humane traits. I can see it working out that his people would love him/his leadership but he's doing underhanded things behind the scenes when he doesn't trust other nobles (like the former Duke Riegan and how he didn't like or trust him. You could argue he did it out of concern for the Alliance based on what we know in Hopes while still acknowledging that it was a scummy way to go about things).

Ludwig is a special case in AG because in SB he's still total trash. Pretty sure SB Ludwig had zero redeeming qualities lol. Like I mentioned before, I feel like they needed to use him because they had nobody else they could use to take the same role Cornelia and Shahid had in their respective routes. AG gave him more opportunity to not be quite as awful. It makes sense to me because if he was just total scum of the earth, I can't see how Ferdinand would even care about him, father or not. In Houses he's distraught at his father's death, so there had to be something there.

Matthias though to a point I do agree was altered a little bit on the "too good" side. He tried to get Sylvain to go alone to stop the remaining bandits from Miklan's group and Sylvain expresses to Byleth that there's no way he's doing that and thinks it's weird of his father to even suggest that. The way he also mentions Matthias to be "pulling his weight" in the timeskip makes it sounds like he... doesn't do very much for the Kingdom? Like, my impression of him from Houses was that he was a total dick but very loyal to Faerghus. Like, he'd do what he had to do for his country but was so emotionally detached that his own son didn't expect much of anything from him. He's kind of in a similar boat as Erwin, where I do like seeing the humane aspects of them but it feels like they really pushed toward the good side instead of the middle (when it would've been totally fine if they made them a bit better than how Houses portrayed them but not quite so seemingly kind).

Yuri kind of seemed a little less... scheme-y and antagonistic (even jokingly/tauntingly/teasingly), so I do prefer him in Houses.