#sorry I know people don't really care about the gameplay side to the fe games but its what got me into the series

[emblemxeno]

FE Support Conversation Rant, sorry this is really incoherent lol

How many issues that people have with Fire Emblem's support system can be solved by answering "Your own lack of willingness and imagination is not a writing issue."

Pre support era, characters had a purpose beyond being faceless pieces on a board. These guys are loyal squad mates to their leader cuz the leader saved them from hardship. These are royal knights on the verge of being executed. This closed off village has been hounded, and a girl has been kidnapped because the bad guys saw she had potent magic. This princess is being forced to fight against her will for a foreign nation because her nephew has been kidnapped.

Each character had purpose that works and is meaningful once you give it more thought. Even the near-blank slates in Thracia or Shadow Dragon, you can still discern who they are by when you recruit them, how you do it, what they were doing beforehand, etc. Further on, you can glean more info through the gameplay. This guy has poor strength, but great speed, yet he's not a myrm or a thief, he's an axe fighter! Must be a technical guy instead of a big swinger, the village said he used to do woodwork!

That's fun! That's cool! That's engaging in a story through gameplay despite limited dialogue.

Supports didn't ruin this aspect, because you can still ascribe reasons as to why characters do what they do, what cause they fight for, who they are as people, how they do things, etc.

Supports didn't take away simple nobody recruitments like Rebecca, lost royalty like Elffin or Joshua, or mercenaries like Ike's group. Lon'qu is a man of few words, his name doesn't match other Feroxi names, he cares only about swordsmanship; that's interesting! Nohr's retainers are almost all gutter trash or nobodies who worked to get to their positions, whereas Hoshido's retainers are nobles or respected lineages bred for their roles. These things aren't first seen in supports, they are just in the small info boxes when you click on their names. That's intriguing!

3H, for as much as I give it shit, does this well too! It front loads the cast, because they're all in the monastery for some reason, and the house leaders (as well as early game mandatory monastery wandering) give you enough to say "oh i'd like to know more" or "oh this makes my brain tingle, what's a person like that doing here."

Supports are nebulous, story-insignificant because they're supposed to be. They are rewards for using characters you care about more and more. They are "what if GI Joe and Malibu Barbie hung out" given form. IMO, they aren't meant to supplement the main story in a way that changes things unequivocally, they're meant as a way to peek in how characters just are, as people. Handling day to day tasks, what their routines are like, what trivial things they like and don't like, what they believe, what in their past may or may not influence their behavior.

They are puzzle pieces, that are just as beautiful individually as they are put together as the whole, the whole being the entire story/game.

Having every character be significantly important to the story is functionally impossible, especially given the costs that go into making these games now. The voice acting alone! Why even have it if you're not gonna have a guaranteed selection of conversations to lean on in order to not waste the talent's time or your money? In the current gaming climate, simply being "a chilavrous thief who steals from war profiting nobles who joins your side after some convincing", while more than serviceable and great, simply doesn't cut it anymore when it comes to cost benefits and losses. As sad as it is, people need more than a 1 chapter exclusively cool introductory scene and their own imagination to bother caring about your cast after they paid $60 for your game.

Even base conversations, for as well written they tend to be, are still dependent on you having access to the characters involved, and that can't always be the case due to perma-death being a staple-and removing that is something that I think would be an invariably bad choice, as it is a core part of FE's reputation and a significant part of how each person engage's with each game's gameplay cycle.

Nothing's perfect, and the support system is very flawed, but it's better to have them than nothing at all. Ideally, we'd have supports alongside base conversations, cool boss dialogues, interesting recruitment requirements, awesome non-main character story scenes. If we're being honest, all of that is possible, they just have to not front load character recruitment as much as they do in modern titles, with Awakening and ESPECIALLY Fates being the absolute worst at this (due to needing characters ASAP in order to make them breed with each other and still have maps to sic their demon spawns on).

Hell, that's why I found Engage's cast so refreshing, because you still are getting new blood well into the late teen chapters of a story that ends after chapter 26.

So uh... keep doing it like that IS, and add back some stuff that makes the side cast look cool. Everyone wins.

[mirensiart]

We can be Fe3h trauma buddies together 🤝. I don't like the gameplay style of the FE series, but I was curious about the hype of Fe3h so I watched a streamer play it. And I really liked it and enjoyed the BL story a lot and then they started BE and I didn't care much for Edelgard at the start (due partially from starting with the BL story), but I wanted to see how her story went. I don't care what people like, I am not one to get upset that my fave isn't someone else's fave, but the chat refused to hear any even vaguely negative takes on Edelgard that I dropped the series right before the time skip of the BE. Like, I couldn't even say that I wasn't as immersed in the BE story without being attacked. It was horrible. Fe3h was interesting from the stories I got to see, but its fandom definitely made me weary to go into any other game. Also, being unfollowed/attacked because you don't like a character is so stupid, like those people need to grow up. They are all fictional!!!!! Anyway, sorry for the rant, just wanted you to know you are not alone in your Fe3h trauma.

Sincerely, a Blue Lions/Dimitri enjoyer who has no issues with you not liking him.

Ok so this is my personal hot take

But I feel like the best way to play fe3houses is by starting with the Golden Deer

Golden Deer is the one route that deviates from the whole Edelgard vs Dimitri drama, like it IS there, but it's way more subtle since Claude focuses more on other aspects of the whole fodlan shenanigans going on, going deeper into the church conspiracies, etc

Blue Lions is like extremely biased against Edelgard and like, it IS understandable why! And the Black Eagles have the Blue Lions as their main opposition since they side with the church and Edelgard is against the church, so again, if you start with the Black Eagles it IS understandable why you'd be biased against Dimitri

I personally started with Golden Deer and like, I didn't personally cared for the whole family drama between Edelgard and Dimitri when I later played BE and BL, like I didn't feel too strongly for either of them

(I prefer Edelgard over Dimitri but like I'm a lesbian what did you expect lmao but Claude clears both of them imo)

Anyway this is a very long way to say that the earlier discourse surrounding fe3houses is mostly cause people were (and still are I feel) very biased and protective over their first house, ESPECIALLY between the black eagles and blue lions fans

Which again, I get why since the game pushes a narrative if you start with any of those two, but it got ridiculous at some point

The golden deer are my first house and I love them deerly (lol) the only reason they're not my top 1 house is because it has my least favorite character in like the franchise lmao but she's also a fan favorite so I don't like talking about how I dislike her 🙈

Also, as a side note, the other games don't have fandoms as polarizing as this one, I LOVE the fandom when it comes to other fire emblem games, but the fire emblem 3 houses fandom is like a niche fandom of its own and I don't like engaging with it at all

You should give the series another try, fire emblem has excellent stories and characters, it's just the fe3h part of the fandom that's rotten sometimes

[swordwife]

hehe