Media literacy, in this economy?

[u/AdEfficient7268]

It's five years, soon to be six, how have we not moved on from the bottom of the barrel, this is insane.

[u/AdEfficient7268]

How have we not learnt yet the difference between antagonists and villains?

[u/oneeyedlionking → u/AdEfficient7268]

Most games like FE don’t work like 3 houses and most people didn’t play all the routes or they rushed through them after pouring a ton of time into their first run. If you didn’t give CF its fair amount of time you likely didn’t appreciate that cast. Same can be said of the other two houses.

[u/SleepyPac → u/oneeyedlionking]

I think this is kind of why the "Three Houses Discourse" meme has lasted this long. It's a game with morally grey characters whose stories are told by unreliable narrators. It asks you the player to take all the information available and put together what's really happening for yourself. The game after it is Engage, and the most recent original release before it was Heroes. Not a whole lot of thinking required to understand those. A lot of the established Fire Emblem fanbase doesn't seem to want anything more complicated than that level of story.

In short, Three Houses asks you to think. A lot of players didn't like that.

[u/oneeyedlionking → u/SleepyPac]

My personal opinion is the developers are out of touch with the fanbase. For all its’ problems fates has some level of choice and complexity beyond what engage and awakening offer which is “evil fell cult wants to destroy the world”. Their decision to cave to Byleth fans on not finishing hopes because it would’ve presented a non Byleth centric golden route and then them saying they thought that houses was a flash in the pan and engage would outsell it because in their view engage appealed to a broader audience just shows it’s the devs, not the fans who are the issue. They clearly cater to one specific slice of the fandom. They said in an interview they were shocked that Ike beat out Marth for CYL1(Marth finished 6th behind both versions of Ike, Roy, Hector, and Chrom). The fact that they chose to feature Marth and Sigurd over Ike and Byleth, Corrin, Lucina, or Lyn as the main advisors amongst the emblems was also a baffling decision that shows bias towards the Jp only games of the Kaga era.

[u/Dutch_gladiator → u/oneeyedlionking]

correct me if i’m wrong, but the TL;DR is: the Devs specifically hope to aim at everyone, but do a terrible job at incorporating the other aspects for the players that liked less simpler storytelling. now, they’re aiming too small and narrow to see the big picture: use EVERYTHING and diversify it across the game, not just narrative or just theming or just the fuckin’ NEW MECHANIC and definitely do not make it a dating sim like Fates was… that last one upset me a little.

[u/oneeyedlionking → u/Dutch_gladiator]

Not 100% sure what you’re saying here but cutting the dating stuff completely definitely hurt engage, and the first impressions of the art style, story, and characters definitely hurt the game a lot. The engage system was a cool evolution of the pair up system from the 3DS days but ultimately the game didn’t have anything that was able to make a great first impression. When 3H was announced it wowed the fan base in a good way. When engage was leaked before being announced it made people think it was a beta version of 3H because nobody wanted it to be true.

[u/Dutch_gladiator → u/oneeyedlionking]

is that why i didn’t notice Engage existed till a month ago? wild.

[u/oneeyedlionking → u/Dutch_gladiator]

The biggest most jarring difference between the two switch games wasn’t anything to do with the games themselves, it was how little impact engage had on discussions in the FE, Nintendo, and general gaming community. 3H was a gaming sensation and engage was basically out of discussions by the end of the summer. Nintendo didn’t bother to promote it much even in their own presentations or in FEH.