Fire Emblem Fates

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The next Fire Emblem game is Fire Emblem Fates for the 3DS. It just released in Japan and is due for release in Europe and North America sometime next year.

Stealing this from the Nintendo News thread, the big Fire Emblem Fates news of the day:

shoptroll wrote:

This is cool: Fire Emblem If/Fates will allow same-sex relationships for some characters. It sounds like some of the concerns raised following the Tomodachi Life controversy were listened to:

We believe that our gameplay experiences should reflect the diversity of the communities in which we operate and, at the same time, we will always design the game specifications of each title by considering a variety of factors, such as the game's scenario and the nature of the game play.

Yay new game.

Yay Nintendo being inclusive.

Here's a fresh Iwata asks for this game: http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interv...

(is this the first time we've seen the Iwata Asks before local release?)

I'm ready for more FE, let'ts go!

Gameplay footage with the developers and members of the localization crew:

More gameplay footage:

Cathadan wrote:

I'm ready for more FE, let'ts go!

Me too! Minus the typo

I'm ready for the characters to have feet! And also more FE.

Woot!

ahrezmendi wrote:

I'm ready for the characters to have feet! And also more FE.

Feet Emblem?
Fire Emblem: Feets?

Rated MF for more feet.

Fire Emblem if (introducing feet)

This is all really cute, but you guys do know that they only have feet in one of the two versions, right?

That... could actually be a really grim outcome to one of the choices in the game. I doubt they'd do that though... would they?

I'm not really in any position to comment on this, so take this with a big heaping bowl of salt.

Good on them for allowing gay couples, but that is becoming a bullet point. Like they put the feature in so this game won't get attacked for being exclusive but it's otherwise akin to letting you marry someone with blonde hair or green eyes. Which, you know, that's great. You should absolutely be able to do that. But also, big deal. Should we be so eager to reward what is becoming the standard?

Yes, we should. I'm happy to see more representation in this series, and I'm not going to ignore it or throw cold water on it just because it's overdue or not as expansive as I'd like to see.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Yes, we should. I'm happy to see more representation in this series, and I'm not going to ignore it or throw cold water on it just because it's overdue or not as expansive as I'd like to see.

My concern isn't so much that it's a bullet point. I worry the opposite. That any character can be wooed by any character. I actually fear the opposite. That in the course of making a game more representative they make a choice that says, "Sexuality is 100% a choice" and turns it simply into a game mechanic that's infinitely flexible and ultimately not meaningful progress.

But that's easy for me to say as I wasn't looking for relationships in my Fire Emblem games to begin with.

DSGamer wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Yes, we should. I'm happy to see more representation in this series, and I'm not going to ignore it or throw cold water on it just because it's overdue or not as expansive as I'd like to see.

My concern isn't so much that it's a bullet point. I worry the opposite. That any character can be wooed by any character. I actually fear the opposite. That in the course of making a game more representative they make a choice that says, "Sexuality is 100% a choice" and turns it simply into a game mechanic that's infinitely flexible and ultimately not meaningful progress.

You can always tell who actually read the link.

NintendoLife wrote:

In the Conquest edition of the game, there is a male character that the game's player may have his/her male main character marry after they bond in battle. Similarly, the Birthright edition features a female character that a female main character may marry after bonding in battle. Both of the aforementioned characters can be encountered in the third edition of the game

So much like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc... there are specific party members only that you can have a same-sex relationship with.

Ah, cool. Good on them. I didn't read the link. Way busy today and I still don't have a handle on what's marked as "read" in the new system.

I also did not read the link.

Because I am lazy.

VERY lazy.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I'm not really in any position to comment on this, so take this with a big heaping bowl of salt.

Good on them for allowing gay couples, but that is becoming a bullet point. Like they put the feature in so this game won't get attacked for being exclusive but it's otherwise akin to letting you marry someone with blonde hair or green eyes. Which, you know, that's great. You should absolutely be able to do that. But also, big deal. Should we be so eager to reward what is becoming the standard?

I made a point recently to a mate of mine who is a lesbian. I said it confused me when I saw on the front of newspapers that a celebrity has came out as gay, as I'm really not bothered and don't really see it as news because it's their personal life and they can do what they want!

But she told me that one of the good things about it is that it can maybe help people feel more comfortable about telling people about their sexuality if they're scared, and I agreed that it was a good thing! I kind of forget that I'm not everyone, and a lot of people still don't see that being gay is actually a normal thing.

In any case, the most important thing is that they have the return of the Awakening shopkeeper:

"What can I fix you with?!"

Tagging because I can't believe I haven't yet.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

This is all really cute, but you guys do know that they only have feet in one of the two versions, right?

which one has feet?

Cross-posting from the tropes thread, where I previously mentioned that the non-hetero plot characters in FEF are kind of messed up.

I'm really upset about this whole thing, as having to play a straight character in the original FE kind of got to me. Unfortunately, the way they're treating non-hetero characters seems to be actively worse. D:


Holy crap. More Fire Emblem Fates ultra-badness. D:

Content warning: gay conversion therapy, drugging without consent.

A New Degree of Homophobia in Fire Emblem Fates
(Andrea Ritsu's tumblr, 2015-07-02)

What the actual heck. D:

Edit:

Apparently, that was something of a misinterpretation, but the whole scenario is still pretty f*cked up.

Hypatian wrote:

Cross-posting from the tropes thread, where I previously mentioned that the non-hetero plot characters in FEF are kind of messed up.

I'm really upset about this whole thing, as having to play a straight character in the original FE kind of got to me. Unfortunately, the way they're treating non-hetero characters seems to be actively worse. D:


Holy crap. More Fire Emblem Fates ultra-badness. D:

Content warning: gay conversion therapy, drugging without consent.

A New Degree of Homophobia in Fire Emblem Fates
(Andrea Ritsu's tumblr, 2015-07-02)

What the actual heck. D:

Edit:

Apparently, that was something of a misinterpretation, but the whole scenario is still pretty f*cked up.

That's sad to hear. Just when it seemed like they were being a bit more progressive, it's like 2 steps back. I can't really say fully, as I don't know about these things, but is this maybe a culture issue? Is there a huge negative reaction to this in Japan? I'd hope so, but I know in different countries they view things differently on how offensive they can be to people.

Culture thing probably, hopefully they adjust that in the localization process

Clusks wrote:

I can't really say fully, as I don't know about these things, but is this maybe a culture issue?

Legally homosexuality seems pretty well accepted. But when it comes to people's actual behaviors... I have a feeling it is just as mixed as it may be in America, perhaps even more so. And honestly, these gay relationships are likely designed with Yaoi and Yuri fans in mind, not gay players. So their characterization being troublesome is of no surprise to me, honestly, though in a sort of negative "it figures" manner.

I'm withholding judgement about any of that until we see what the official localization of it all is. I've seen this kind of thing plenty of times where a story aspect from a game gets picked up by people who imported the game, paraphrased in wikis and on social media, and people get upset about it. Then when the official translation rolls around, the offending material is either absent or presented in a really different way.

Do I expect good things? Honestly, no. Same-sex relationships aren't something Western developers making games for Western consumers have been able to get right with any degree of consistency. A Japanese developer making a game for a Japanese audience that touches on what is currently the most contentious political topic in the United States? That's not going to end well.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm withholding judgement about any of that until we see what the official localization of it all is. I've seen this kind of thing plenty of times where a story aspect from a game gets picked up by people who imported the game, paraphrased in wikis and on social media, and people get upset about it. Then when the official translation rolls around, the offending material is either absent or presented in a really different way.

Do I expect good things? Honestly, no. Same-sex relationships aren't something Western developers making games for Western consumers have been able to get right with any degree of consistency. A Japanese developer making a game for a Japanese audience that touches on what is currently the most contentious political topic in the United States? That's not going to end well.

All the +1s. You has them.

Just came to post that the internet's angry again. Seems the way they get "around the gay," because it is apparently an obstacle to overcome, is by

Spoiler:

slipping Soleil a "potion" so she sees all women as men.

Which, to be fair... come on, Nintendo. Even were that not terribly offensive it's still kinda stupid. Some early defenders are saying it's a translation error or somesuch but I don't know. Someone tell me what to think so I can move on.

I don't think equality means the homosexual couples have to be more "moral" than the hetero couples (cisnormative? Is that right?), and I don't think we're going to get to real equality while we pat ourselves on the collective back for making gay couples paragons of morality. People are screwed up. More so people who have grown up in an unnatural, suppressed manner, as is sadly common with gay people. I think we can and have created universes big enough for both.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm withholding judgement about any of that until we see what the official localization of it all is. I've seen this kind of thing plenty of times where a story aspect from a game gets picked up by people who imported the game, paraphrased in wikis and on social media, and people get upset about it. Then when the official translation rolls around, the offending material is either absent or presented in a really different way.

Do I expect good things? Honestly, no. Same-sex relationships aren't something Western developers making games for Western consumers have been able to get right with any degree of consistency. A Japanese developer making a game for a Japanese audience that touches on what is currently the most contentious political topic in the United States? That's not going to end well.

Localization and translation from Japanese to English is hard. Conversational Japanese is highly contextual, and takes into account things like where the speaker is in the social hierarchy relative to their audience, personal relationship with the audience, personal gender identity, relative physical location, and other stuff. All of that context results in the choices that speakers use for pretty much everything: personal pronouns, verbs, honorifics, etc.

And that's not even getting into local dialects.

But at the same time, proper localized English requires things that a Japanese translation may not provide. Gendered pronouns don't exist in Japanese, so things like "he" or "her" might be(depending on the familiarity between the two) originally the subject's name, or just "man" or "woman". Again, highly contextual, which makes direct translations nearly unreadable, and can turn a completely fine scene into something highly problematic when localized into something readable.

The lack of gendered pronouns also has effects on how translations can assign gender to characters, too. It's almost trivially easy to write a complete non-gendered character by having other characters refer to them by name only, giving them an asexual appearance(and this is the point where I wish I could say that we all don't look alike... but... well... sigh), and having them use very formal language.

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