Oh wow, I'm really hoping this isn't as bad as you're making it out to be. I love anime/Japanese video games, but man this overwhelming amount of moe/waifu crap from '04-present? I can't stand it.
Don't get me wrong, compared to some anime and games out there Awakening is rather tame. It's still a dissapointing direction to take the series though.
This is my general sentiment as well. I mean, it's not completely new to have quirky somewhat shallow character traits, like Illyana = hungry all the time and Devdan being Devdan, but yeah it did seem to be taken a little further than I enjoyed.
I agree. PoR/RD were pretty fantastic in terms of constructing the narrative and the world around it. There are numerous characters that fill roles in that narrative and there are many plot-dialogues/supports/info conversations throughout the games where several characters gain a sufficient personality. Some characters are featured more than others, yes, but it was a dramatic improvement in this regard from say, Fire Emblem 7 which was pretty much just Lyn/Eliwood/Hector. But even then, many other character backgrounds were fleshed out through the supports. Awakening's characters to me did feel more shallow just as you described, usually revolving a trait that felt gimmicky. And since many of them did /not/ really play a significant part in the narrative itself, that's all we have to go on.
Agreed. To me PoR/RD had a really good balance between entertaining cartoon sillyness and serious character drama and political intrigue. The level and system design were some of the very best in the series too.
I hope there will eventually be an HD PoR/RD collection for the Wii U - with much improved 3D graphics. It seems that Intelligent Systems was really having problems with 3D back then. It's probably no wonder a lot of people were put off by the look of those games.
I hope there will eventually be an HD PoR/RD collection for the Wii U - with much improved 3D graphics. It seems that Intelligent Systems was really having problems with 3D back then. It's probably no wonder a lot of people were put off by the look of those games.
I didn't know about Radiant Dawn bombing until this thread. Seems like a bit of a shame. It had its issues with some of the lategame stuff (like how the class-specific skills were completely ridic and so all your peeps became super-strong as soon as they hit the 3rd tier of classes and how it completely inundated you with uber-Laguz) but it was loaded with content and had a lot of charm. I thought it was pretty amazeballs on the whole.
I wish it had sold better, 'specially since Awakening left me pretty cold. But if wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets, I suppose.
There's some stuff I didn't like about awakening, but the characters weren't one of them. Its the same in all Fire Emblem, there's always the characters with the seemingly quirk-only personality that get more fleshed out as you give them supports. Like Saint in 7, The blond paladin from 8 that sleeps a lot, Illyana, etc.
Characters like Gauius might seem really one dimensional at first but then you support him with multiple characters and you learn that he is a good cook and knows how to sew and knit, and learn some insights about him. Its the same in most fire emblem games.
What's wrong with Awakening was the map design and the pair up system. I think the pair up system is interesting in concept, but there's never a situation where you don't want to pair up units because in Fire Emblem its always better to have few strong units rather than more weak units susceptible to die. The only thin you are missing is a bit of versatility, but the game was easy enough for that to not matter. Kind of funny since I at first though there would be times when not pairing up would be beneficial, but there's rarely any reason not to.
I am kind of stealing the words of a friend since I at first thought maybe the versatility would be good, but the more I played I realized he was spot on what he said about it.
I can agree with a lot of this.
Awakening's writing for the plot may be disappointing but I never felt the side characters to be handled much different than in previous games, as you say quite a few side characters in the series are usually running off a simple character archtype or defining gimmick so it was kind of par the course from my perspective. The difference I did find with Awakening's characters is that the greater conversation options did flesh them out a bit more though at the expense of highlighting each ones individual trait further giving off an impression perhaps that they were more one note than previous characters. They are a less serious batch though I will say that.
I have similar thoughts for the pair up mechanic and very limited scope for map objectives but those weren't my main gripes with the gameplay.
One of the things I've always liked about this series was that they were designed in a way that you never needed to grind with the constant chapter progression often following a gradual leveling curve. Awakening has this jumpy kind of leveling where one point towards the mid game the enemies suddenley all promoted wielding silver weapons to boot and in order to match up I had to take out the time to grind in the optional skirmishes which hurt the pacing. On top of this you've got the ability to level characters further by jumping between classes, gaining extra abilities and things start edging off into that stat grinding element that was never my style, it's optional of course but the games toughest content really feels geared towards that side of things.
Still enjoyed the game a lot mind you, I think it could be easily bettered by a sequel building upon its strengths, bringing back mission variety and a more carefully handled leveling curve.
I was kinda put off by the Awakening cast too but that might be more of how I decided to collect all the supports and since Awakening has a ton of supports, a character's gimmick gets worn out much faster (and that the ratio of insane and sane characters in Awakening skews more toward the former). Also, I didn't expect swimsuit and yukata DLC (or DLC in general) and I already started biased against that stuff.
The plot was messy but I figure it's supposed to function more as a greatest hits reel.
The FE team interviews did imply that the series was close to getting canned before Awakening. Whatever PoR and RD were selling, it probably wasn't good enough? I believe the DS games did better, at least.
Yeah, I remember seeing some figures awhile ago, and RD did seem to do quite a bit worse then PoR. Not that PoR sold extremely well or anything. But there was actually some marketing behind that game, whereas Nintendo seemed to send RD out to die.
The only place where we have hard data is Japan, and Radiant Dawn outsold Path of Radiance there, but both of them were relatively far behind all the GBA/DS games. It's hard to say in the rest of the world, especially because both games had low shipments and were hard to find quickly, but given its mid-2005 release date in Europe I'd be quite surprised it RD hadn't outsold it there as well. As far as I can tell the only game that really underperformed in the west was Shadow Dragon, which isn't all that shocking considering the combination of meh-ish reception and being released during the height of DS piracy.
The only place where we have hard data is Japan, and Radiant Dawn outsold Path of Radiance there, but both of them were relatively far behind all the GBA/DS games. It's hard to say in the rest of the world, especially because both games had low shipments and were hard to find quickly, but given its mid-2005 release date in Europe I'd be quite surprised it RD hadn't outsold it there as well. As far as I can tell the only game that really underperformed in the west was Shadow Dragon, which isn't all that shocking considering the combination of meh-ish reception and being released during the height of DS piracy.
Well, they did dub RD to the main European languages, whereas Awakening is English-only and it most certainly wasn't due to lack of time, so it can't have been a runaway success either.
I agree. PoR/RD were pretty fantastic in terms of constructing the narrative and the world around it. There are numerous characters that fill roles in that narrative and there are many plot-dialogues/supports/info conversations throughout the games where several characters gain a sufficient personality. Some characters are featured more than others, yes, but it was a dramatic improvement in this regard from say, Fire Emblem 7 which was pretty much just Lyn/Eliwood/Hector. But even then, many other character backgrounds were fleshed out through the supports. Awakening's characters to me did feel more shallow just as you described, usually revolving a trait that felt gimmicky. And since many of them did /not/ really play a significant part in the narrative itself, that's all we have to go on.
The failing of Awakening's narrative is because the sole focus on small group of people, or rather, one person while there is huge cast behind. The plot structure mostly resolved around Avatar only, with other characters beside Chrom hardly appeared more than one chapter or hold any significant to the story. To make thing worse, Avatar is created or self-insert character, which actually they obliged to make them as bland as possible but the game executed it otherwise as Avatar got too many personality. If Awakening is more about war between kingdoms rather than end-of-the-world, it would be much better game (maybe, I think).
Or just scrap Avatar already. They proved to be much trouble for the narrative.
The failing of Awakening's narrative is because the sole focus on small group of people, or rather, one person while there is huge cast behind. The plot structure mostly resolved around Avatar only, with other characters beside Chrom hardly appeared more than one chapter or hold any significant to the story. To make thing worse, Avatar is created or self-insert character, which actually they obliged to make them as bland as possible but the game executed it otherwise as Avatar got too many personality. If Awakening is more about war between kingdoms rather than end-of-the-world, it would be much better game (maybe, I think).
Or just scrap Avatar already. They proved to be much trouble for the narrative.
Looking back, you guys are right about the lack of character involvement in the Awakening's main plot. I never noticed it until I started to think about PoR again. I like the Avatar and I hope the character returns in some fashion. I think I've said this before but the Avatar was no ordinary tactician and I was ok with the game focusing on him/her but I hope next time more characters get involved.
The NPC tactician in FE7 was good imo but I would mind having a playable avatar again. One whose just one part of the story arc.
I would say FE12's use of the avatar was a lot better than Awakening's.
Still a self insert but the plot didn't revolved around them and instead used the Avatar to help develop characters personalities and backstory which the original game didn't do and they played it well with the Avatar's purpose of being Marth's supporter in the shadows.
He/she didn't distract from the main plot but still helped out like how history remembers them.
Looking back, you guys are right about the lack of character involvement in the Awakening's main plot. I never noticed it until I started to think about PoR again. I like the Avatar and I hope the character returns in some fashion. I think I've said this before but the Avatar was no ordinary tactician and I was ok with the game focusing on him/her but I hope next time more characters get involved.
The NPC tactician in FE7 was good imo but I would mind having a playable avatar again. One whose just one part of the story arc.
I would say FE12's use of the avatar was a lot better than Awakening's.
Still a self insert but the plot didn't revolved around them and instead used the Avatar to help develop characters personalities and backstory which the original game didn't do and they played it well with the Avatar's purpose of being Marth's supporter in the shadows.
He/she didn't distract from the main plot but still helped out like how history remembers them.
That sound really excellent use of Avatar character right there. I agree that self-insert character shouldn't be the focus, but instead relegated to support character or other similar role. It sounds that FE12 is a good game that we would never have the chance to play.
I think a lot of Awakening's character involvement problems could have been fixed with base conversations (like in PoR/RD). The supports in Awakening are great, but they're not really a substitute for the characters being involved in the story. By their very nature they have to be vague/obscure about current events (since you can get them at any point in the game).
Base conversations take place at a specific moment, and can show you what the characters are doing and thinking about the current events in the story. And since they're still optional, it fixes the problem of having characters that may be potentially dead participating in main story sequences. If they've died, their base convo just never pops up.
The base convos in RD and PoR were great, and I really wish Awakening would have had them.
I'm letting Awakening's faults pass on the premise that they were doing a "celebration of the entire Fire Emblem series".
The focus was on getting mechanics from all the previous games in one game, having characters that referred back to older ones, and allowing for multiple universes to be combined so that we could have a carousel of cameos play out. In the Iwata asks they said multiple times that they focused on making it emphasize the history of Fire Emblem.
If the next FE pulls a lot of the same crap and really skimps on the world building, then yeah, I'll be upset.
I figure the children mechanic will be back due to the series newfound popularity. That's fine... but I hope that not everyone has kids. I felt like the emphasis on kids just turned 90% of all support convos in to "hey, we're different... but now we're alike! Let's get married!" The beat-to-beat dialogue was still really well written though, so that's a positive for the series moving forward.
Also, Walhart is the most underdeveloped side villain they've ever written. Given how large of a chunk of the game he's given... once you defeat him it's like he was never important to begin with. PoR had me empathizing with characters I didn't even get to play with for a large percentage of the game. All of the Laguz kings and the heads of Begnion society were really interesting and maintained relevance through both PoR and RD. RD was enjoyable if only for the fact that it was really great to find out what happened with all these characters over the few years that had passed between the two games. And I think they handled everyone well. It didn't feel like anyone was just thrown in for the sake of being thrown in, as is the danger with sequels. It felt like the world moved to a logical conclusion that was at least thought of at some point in the writing of PoR.
Okay, now I'm rambling, but on the subject of characters potentially dying keeping them from participating in the story: They've managed their way around this a lot. Anyone who is crucial to the story is merely "severely wounded" and is kept from ever participating in battle again. If Soren "dies", he's still managing everything for Ike, just not fighting.
Finally got around to picking up new mystery of the Emblem. While I don't miss the obnoxious all Katakana text of the Famicom games, it's going to be hard to make myself struggle through looking all the Kanji and not just play skip the story scenes. The story does sound a lot better than Shadow Dragon though.
I figure the children mechanic will be back due to the series newfound popularity. That's fine... but I hope that not everyone has kids. I felt like the emphasis on kids just turned 90% of all support convos in to "hey, we're different... but now we're alike! Let's get married!"
I'm still bitter about Heroes of Light and Shadow never leaving Japan. I wanted some more Marth, and I though we were getting to the point where FE could be considered a staple for Nintendo consoles in the west, but noooo.
That's one of the things I loved with RD. Battles had such a nice flow to them, attacks were varied and they got such nice critical and skill animations, it was pretty awesome.
Okay, now I'm rambling, but on the subject of characters potentially dying keeping them from participating in the story: They've managed their way around this a lot. Anyone who is crucial to the story is merely "severely wounded" and is kept from ever participating in battle again. If Soren "dies", he's still managing everything for Ike, just not fighting.
Right, that's always been the case for units that are really important to the story. It would be shallow if no characters actually died, but just became wounded. Base conversations are a good middle ground, in my opinion, for all of the less important characters that disappear into the background after awhile.
Say...Tormod in PoR. After a certain point, he can die and be removed from the game permanently. If he doesn't die there are base conversations he'll participate in that let you know what he's up to and thinking about. If there were no base conversations, they would have to make him a character who never dies in order for us to have any idea what he thinks about current events, or what his current involvement in the story is.
Awakening in general had very brief story scenes after the first few chapters - the entire Valm arc especially seemed to have very short scenes before and after the battles. It's especially noticeable if you compare it with the big intermissions from FE9/10. They also removed the narrations between chapters, which were often used to describe locations or political movements, and only some chapters had exposition from the characters to replace those.
Although part of it likely came from budget issues or just development time, I think the removal of the narrator, especially might indicate that they wanted to make the main story less text and exposition heavy with most of the dialogue in the optional support conversations. I won't be surprised if the next FE keeps that approach to the story. Although maybe they'll find a better balance or execute it better. I guess base conversations could help there.
Also, Walhart is the most underdeveloped side villain they've ever written. Given how large of a chunk of the game he's given... once you defeat him it's like he was never important to begin with. PoR had me empathizing with characters I didn't even get to play with for a large percentage of the game.
I'm letting Awakening's faults pass on the premise that they were doing a "celebration of the entire Fire Emblem series".
The focus was on getting mechanics from all the previous games in one game, having characters that referred back to older ones, and allowing for multiple universes to be combined so that we could have a carousel of cameos play out. In the Iwata asks they said multiple times that they focused on making it emphasize the history of Fire Emblem.
If the next FE pulls a lot of the same crap and really skimps on the world building, then yeah, I'll be upset.
Yeah, this is what I'm hoping too. I really hope that they don't just look at the sales numbers and decide that that is what they need to do with all future games. I really wish the main story would have spent one or two additional chapters early on just your group performing their duty as Shepards, like fighting bandits to protect the citizenry. Kind of like how Path of Radiance does it for the
Greil Mercenaries for the first few chapters.
I figure the children mechanic will be back due to the series newfound popularity. That's fine... but I hope that not everyone has kids. I felt like the emphasis on kids just turned 90% of all support convos in to "hey, we're different... but now we're alike! Let's get married!" The beat-to-beat dialogue was still really well written though, so that's a positive for the series moving forward.
I wouldn't mind if the marriage mechanic stays in, but I don't really know if the whole children thing should stay. It would seem the only way it would be able to work is either A.) Time travel or B.) Time jump. Also I think the support convo limitations should be brought back, but if they keep the whole rank S concept, then they should bump the max supports per unit to like 7 or something (therefore, one unit can have an S rank support and an A rank support at most).
Also, Walhart is the most underdeveloped side villain they've ever written. Given how large of a chunk of the game he's given... once you defeat him it's like he was never important to begin with. PoR had me empathizing with characters I didn't even get to play with for a large percentage of the game. All of the Laguz kings and the heads of Begnion society were really interesting and maintained relevance through both PoR and RD. RD was enjoyable if only for the fact that it was really great to find out what happened with all these characters over the few years that had passed between the two games. And I think they handled everyone well. It didn't feel like anyone was just thrown in for the sake of being thrown in, as is the danger with sequels. It felt like the world moved to a logical conclusion that was at least thought of at some point in the writing of PoR.
Yeah, I think Walhart was underwhelming. To just keep going with the PoR comparisons,
Oliver
was actually a really good side villain. He was given a lot of character and even his final chapter
was split into four parts
. On top of that, while his story arc has nothing to do with the main threat at hand, it does helps develop a lot of other characters and flesh out the world in a meaningful way, and the overall impact that is made at the end of that chapter is very significant.
Okay, now I'm rambling, but on the subject of characters potentially dying keeping them from participating in the story: They've managed their way around this a lot. Anyone who is crucial to the story is merely "severely wounded" and is kept from ever participating in battle again. If Soren "dies", he's still managing everything for Ike, just not fighting.
When I replayed Path of Radiance, I actually liked the feature where you could have Ike just talk to random people while at the base camp. It was a nice way to help further flesh out characters, even if you didn't use them and thus wouldn't have access to their supports.
I realize I talk a lot about Path of Radiance in this topic. I love that game, though.
Don't get me wrong, compared to some anime and games out there Awakening is rather tame. It's still a dissapointing direction to take the series though.
It's not new for the series. Genealogy of Holy War had it too. I'd be worried if it showed up in every game but I don't think that'll be the case at all.
It's not new for the series. Genealogy of Holy War had it too. I'd be worried if it showed up in every game but I don't think that'll be the case at all.
I wouldn't mind if the marriage mechanic stays in, but I don't really know if the whole children thing should stay. It would seem the only way it would be able to work is either A.) Time travel or B.) Time jump. Also I think the support convo limitations should be brought back, but if they keep the whole rank S concept, then they should bump the max supports per unit to like 7 or something (therefore, one unit can have an S rank support and an A rank support at most).
Eh, I don't think so unless they really want to jump the shark with the series. The problem is justifying it within the game. Both GoHW and Awakening have reasons for putting it in that work and the story is kinda structured with it in mind. Trying to shoe horn marriage/kids in again really isn't going to work.
It's not new for the series. Genealogy of Holy War had it too. I'd be worried if it showed up in every game but I don't think that'll be the case at all.
Eh, I don't think so unless they really want to jump the shark with the series. The problem is justifying it within the game. Both GoHW and Awakening have reasons for putting it in that work and the story is kinda structured with it in mind. Trying to shoe horn marriage/kids in again really isn't going to work.
They don't need to always have a child component. But I think having wide control over pairings, romantic or otherwise, will definitely almost always be present.
I'm still bitter about Heroes of Light and Shadow never leaving Japan. I wanted some more Marth, and I though we were getting to the point where FE could be considered a staple for Nintendo consoles in the west, but noooo.
Yea I'm not sure what Nintendo was thinking. It could have been because of the sales of the titles before hand. Iirc, I don't think Awakening was automatically gauranteed in NA region. Didn't we get the official announcement randomly at E3 one year? My memory is failing me right now.
Yea I'm not sure what Nintendo was thinking. It could have been because of the sales of the titles before hand. Iirc, I don't think Awakening was automatically gauranteed in NA region. Didn't we get the official announcement randomly at E3 one year? My memory is failing me right now.
The story behind how Awakening got confirmed for NA release is pretty funny.
At the very last moment at E3 2012, Reggie got asked by some guy from Kotaku if Fire Emblem was coming, and he said yes and pointed to the online press kit to see for themselves, but it wasn't there and apparently Nintendo didn't intend on that being announced then and there. Damage control ensues when the NOA's Twitter spits out a "Oh, and Fire Emblem is coming too by the way guys!" tweet, then Nintendo discusses the game again in a Direct later that month but with no English footage whatsoever. It wasn't until October when it seemed like the game got a real, proper announcement, haha.
I believe the 8-4 interview had someone on the team say that they had always intended on localizing Awakening.
The story behind how Awakening got confirmed for NA release is pretty funny.
At the very last moment at E3 2012, Reggie got asked by some guy from Kotaku if Fire Emblem was coming, and he said yes and pointed to the online press kit to see for themselves, but it wasn't there and apparently Nintendo didn't intend on that being announced then and there. Damage control ensues when the NOA's Twitter spits out a "Oh, and Fire Emblem is coming too by the way guys!" tweet, then Nintendo discusses the game again in a Direct later that month but with no English footage whatsoever. It wasn't until October when it seemed like the game got a real, proper announcement, haha.
I believe the 8-4 interview had someone on the team say that they had always intended on localizing Awakening.
Yea I'm not sure what Nintendo was thinking. It could have been because of the sales of the titles before hand. Iirc, I don't think Awakening was automatically gauranteed in NA region. Didn't we get the official announcement randomly at E3 one year? My memory is failing me right now.
I don't care if Shadow Dragon bombed they should always nurture the audience and diversify their first party portfolio. I thought the second remake was coming, NOA was kinda pushing the series, and then they let some bad sales frighten them. Fans be damned.
NOA's weirdness on Awakening coupled with the fact that last game never arrived to the west created a lot of doubt in some peoples minds. I felt like we would be getting it considering it was made for a new console that needed software at the time, but I would by lying if I said I was 100% healed from the New Mystery burns.
The story behind how Awakening got confirmed for NA release is pretty funny.
At the very last moment at E3 2012, Reggie got asked by some guy from Kotaku if Fire Emblem was coming, and he said yes and pointed to the online press kit to see for themselves, but it wasn't there and apparently Nintendo didn't intend on that being announced then and there. Damage control ensues when the NOA's Twitter spits out a "Oh, and Fire Emblem is coming too by the way guys!" tweet, then Nintendo discusses the game again in a Direct later that month but with no English footage whatsoever. It wasn't until October when it seemed like the game got a real, proper announcement, haha.
I believe the 8-4 interview had someone on the team say that they had always intended on localizing Awakening.
I think if you go all the way, they were labeled as Companions rather then Husband/Wife on the status screen (for the NA version at least). Same with other potential brother-sister pairs for most of gen 2 involving Chrom and Lissa's kids. Not that it made the S-ranks less touchy feely.
Awakening's plot sucked because of the time traveling mechanic, they didn't handle it gracefully.
But they wanted the time traveling so you could have the FEIV's kid system, with out the whole butchering of the first generation.
edit.
I'm one of those people who didn't love Path of Radiance.
But i think it's fully based on the fact that the game was too slow, and I base that on the engine and console. If there was a remake using Awakening's engine, but it kept the same mechanics I think it would be much more popular.
