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(originally streamed on Jan 26, 2022)
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2:42-dan starts talking
Notes as I'm watching:
– I'm SHOCKED Dan hasn't heard the Colgate jokes. I think that's all I know about the game. I think a light blue or teal would have looked less … toothpaste.
– Ah the weird "Let's repeat ourselves ad nauseum to hammer things home" has infected this JRPG as well.
– 34:00 Zote cracked me up! It looked like he spawned on the grass.
– I like the unsureness of the Stewards in the animation. The writing … could use a trimming but otherwise gets characters across strongly.
– PLAID is my favorite fashion thing that has spread to character design lately. It adds a lot of variety.
– ALARMS: MILF ALERT, WE HAVE BOTH A DILF AND A MILF. Also thank you for shouting at the camera for acting so uncouth.
– I was so certain our mom would be a loli (shudder).
– Wow, I'm glad you break down hugs like that.
– Anime nonsense indeed.
– PLEASE tell me you'll do a Pokémon SV Wrong Play. There's a teacher with a twitchy hair that I'd love you to see. If it's patched out by then, I caught it on Twitter.
2:15:16
I've got a guess at the reason the cape (and fem's hair) are so high while jogging/running. It's the result of making the hair rise so much when the player *goes down stairs*. Let me explain.
Even at full run, if the cape flares back and up just a little, it will clip through inclines (like stairs) and doing it a lot also has the same problem (clipping more laterally than vertcally). To counter this, when traversing down inclines the game actually boosts how high the cape/hair rises above normal. It looks weird, but the transition would be even more abrupt if the cape/hair were lower in normal traverse. Thus I propose they set it high so that the 'pop' of the hair when going down stairs is lessened.
Note: I may have some anchoring bias here because the only footage of the game I've seen of this game is literally just stair traverse from the 'climbing stairs in videogames' gimmick twitter account.
That cape is 30% helium.
26:10 Carrie being instantly summoned anytime someone mentions coffee will never stop being hilarious to me.
wish he'd tried to use Framme in melee combat at some point, the martialist animations are great
I love me some Fire Emblem, but this game's writing is too dumb. Big silly anime battles are fine, but I need characters that act like people with thinky-brains. Also, they care more about fanservice than the female characters and that stings (Yes, she should absolutely wear a skimpy evening dress in a blizzard … For reasons!)
I'm not sure if I'm more distracted by the character design or all the clipping. At least I get to see old FE characters with voice acting? and the gameplay looks solid
Their eyes feel off Especially the main character's. I know it's automated but it feels really off.
If hugging is a challenge for animation, how much harder are grabs and throws in fighting games?
The writing in this game is painful.
23:21 Yeah as chat pointed out it's like 'falshion'.
If anyone's interested, a falchion is kinda like a hybrid between a normal medieval sword and a machete. They're usually single edged with a thin broad blade. It's a great weapon for fantasy settings because you can create some fancy designs and shapes with such a wide blade. They're often one-handed, but some two-handed historical examples can be pretty exotic looking.
I wish I had caught this live. I have so much I want to comment on.
9:30: There are a lot of reasons for that. you could argue that it's because animation is less important in Fire Emblem, focusing more on character writing than character animation and more on detailed tactics than broad spectacle. You could argue that Pokemon pushed the envelope on animation way harder than Fire Emblem, raising expectations higher. Or you could argue that Pokemon is one of the most recognizable franchises in the world, while most Fire Emblem characters are primarily known from their Smash Brothers appearances.
What I'm getting at is that whinging about Pokemon animation gets more clicks than whinging about Fire Emblem animation.
15:30: …the Dan has a point. Especially since characters don't really react to the deaths of other characters in battle. How could they? There are too many variables to account for—when in the plot they die (you'd mourn differently when there are days of travel between chapters than in the final rush to beat up God), their relationship to the deceased, whether the deceased had significant relationships with other characters (e.g. whether the decedent married the survivor's sister), the status of other characters…
If FE characters could develop in different directions, reacting to permadeath, it would fit better. But they don't.
31:35: I wonder if waking up and discovering that you're a Divine Dragon is supposed to be the narrative hook. In principle, that could be a neat premise for a Fire Emblem story; there's a forum game I'm playing over on Sufficient Velocity that's pretty similar, minus anyone in the world knowing who our shared PC is (and the amnesia). But that seems like an easier premise to sell in a forum game, where the author can tailor each scene to the specific actions taken earlier in the story, than in a video game, especially one as linear as FE games are. Especially if you're the kind of person who gets annoyed at people praising you for being awesome when you literally haven't done anything yet.
I see something they might have been going for. I don't think they got there. Or at the very least, the result doesn't appeal to me.
51:00: Well, that sounds impressive. If you're gonna commit to an idea like this, I'm glad they committed to it.
This whole system reminds me of how Awakening let you pair up units. Except that the Emblem spirits aren't actual units, they're more like equipment that can talk and remind you of previous Fire Emblem games. Hopefully there's some kind of Support-like system with them that helps them feel more like characters.
1:10:30: Not really. Older Fire Emblem games tended to be a lot more grounded than "amnesiac Divine Dragon child awakening from slumber". They usually started with princes getting involved in wars or something, low-fantasy stuff, with your one dragon unit getting introduced way later.
1:35:10: Eh, it's not that complex. I probably have a good frame of reference for this sort of thing. (goes back to playing Paradox grand strategy games and Factorio and base-builders inspired by Dwarf Fortress, all of which are heavily modded)
1:58:25: "No. Is there a reason that you think my mom trying to beat me up would stir up memories?"
7:10: I find it endlessly amusing that HoloCure's Halloween update was delayed almost to Valentine's Day.
12:45: If stream bits are eligible for PlayFrame highlights, I nominate this one.
18:00: Trying to decide if I like her design. It's more cohesive than our heterochromic avatar, but it's still pretty extra. A strong tropical-island-fruit vibe, but still clearly designed by the Colgate lovers that brought us Alear. At least I can tell what they were going for; she looks like an actual character, while Alear looks more like a Deviantart original character (do not steal).
25:45: The few videos I've seen speculating about FEE mentioned that the trailers implied a lot of (possibly literal) Avatar Worship would be going on. And if this is the first thing we see of Alear outside the flash-forward combat bit…if this is the note the game chooses to introduce their character to the world…
Anyways, the kids and their Jagen have solid designs. It's hard to notice them next to someone as…eye-catching as Alear, but they work.
27:30: Ugh. If someone talked to me like that I'd become the world's first divine antitheist.
34:00: The idea that Alear's hair is Like That because of the twin twerps is hilarious. Not canon, for some reason, but hilarious.
45:45: Oh good, I thought he was Smash Marth for a second.
54:00: I appreciate Dan saying it before I could.
58:35: A dragon-child, put into a thousand-year slumber by her dragon-parent at the outbreak of a war with an evil dragon…is very similar to the forum game I mentioned earlier. If the cavaliers are named Lancel and Axton I'm gonna tell its author to sue.
1:02:30: Alear's hair looks like a cape. It's all stuck together and stuck to her neck…does she style her hair with toothpaste?
I love long hair, I think it's neat and pretty and stuff. If you need to go this far to avoid some weird stuff happening with the Rapunzel hair, shear her like a sheep.
…wait, she has an actual cape under that mane? Why? Nobody's ever going to see it!
1:30:30: In fairness, they're probably expecting the player to go "Oh, the Azure Twins must be Eirika and Ephraim!" at least once or twice.
Also in fairness, that's far from the only exposition sin this scene commits. My gosh, can't you break up the infodump with some characterization or plot or something? Or at least use the fact that one character is infodumping about their special, plot-relevant interest as characterization?
1:42:45: I don't think this is what people mean when they complain about Fire Emblem having anime nonsense, but it's absolutely a shonen battle anime thing to do.
1:46:40: As is this "I was only using a fraction of my true power" stuff. And you know what, as an excuse to break up an hourlong exposition dump with gameplay, it works.
1:51:50: He's the Jagen, the bigger danger is that he'll steal all your other units' XP.
2:01:00: Long ponytails are also awesome.
2:13:40: It's less ridiculous now that it isn't being weighed down by several pounds of toothpaste-matted anime hair, but it's still ridiculous. Especially when you start walking. This feels like an early-draft, "We'll get to the cape after we fix all of these bigger problems" sort of animation. It looks good at some speeds and okay at most, but breaks down on closer examination.
The cape actually billows so much behind you because of all the fans this game was made for.
For the character designs while they are hit or miss it everyone does feel like that exist in a universe that have fantasy aviators, which you can wear around the base area a little later one, which makes them amazing
The MC designs for this are, in my not so humble opinion, horrendous messes. The side cast look great and the MC's look like they're from an early 2000's "How 2 draw manga" book.
34:05 new headcanon and only reasonable explanation for that hair choice lol
38:20 so… its not as good as other FE games you've…. engaged with??
14:55 Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn actually did the 'Easy, Normal, Hard' thing and it seriously backfired, because 'Hard' in Radiant Dawn was actually the Japanese ' Lunatic' mode, which was borderline unplayable and, even when played perfectly – which required memorizing and watching small, obscure mechanics that did not matter in the other difficulties – relied on a lot of luck. One of my friends used to be a huge completionist and he actually did that mode. It's one of the games that broke that habit in him because it was not worth it.
For the record, Radiant Dawn is my favourite FE game, but it has a fair few janky decisions and that's one of the worst.
Also, Permadeath does work in the older FE games, it worked in the challenge of those games – and especially worked seeing as, aside from Sacred Stones, you're just doing story missions one after another with a few side missions thrown in where they worked for the story – but Awakening changed a lot about the core furmula and two of the things it did which kinda made Permadeath not fit were add in a bunch of side-missions and grinding and break the game's balance.
Like, ever since Awakening, the balance has been *bad*, and never in a consistent way; the balance is bad in Awakening, but it's also bad in Fates and Three Houses and all in completely different ways; in Awakening, you need strong Res or you're useless once Act 3 rolls in as you can't dodge reliably and there's so many mages. In Fates, the whole game is really heavily slanted towards offence, so you have to play so cautiously to avoid losing anyone. In 3 Houses, the whole game's balance kinda relies on you already understanding the class system, which is really messily designed; good concept, terrible execution as you need to know what you want your endgame classes to be and how to get there from chapter 1 in order to obtain them as the Master Classes are both really specific and niche and require a lot of investment to unlock.
I wonder if they had equal time for (fe/)male model and this might be a factor for long hair / cape conundrum. Female hair in motion looks really simillar to male cape. This could be a reason why there is so much space under male cape – it might have another cape under…
Kinda sad the twitch archive doesn't seem to have the chat playback? I'd love to see how chat responds to whats happening.
39:45 "Chess that you can date" I'm dead XD
54:40 your commentary on hugs makes me think of a moment in Zelda: Majora's Mask where if the player completes a certain side quest an additional time, there is a small chance where the reward is a scene of a character giving Link a hug. The fact that they put the effort to model that scene that a vast majority of players won't see anyway, in the game that they only had a year to develop and on the N64 no less, is pretty incredible to me. Reason #99 why i'd love you to play Majora's mask on your channel:)